Corner of Bourbon & Division

curtana has asked me to write about the music I love. If I had infinite amounts of time, I would never get to the end of this subject, and tonight I only have about an hour in which to write this post, get dressed and run to work. Alas.

Working 911 here has been exhausting (in a good way), because not only is it quite busy but I also have to learn everything anew, since each comm centre works differently. So instead of waking up at 14:30 or even 15:30, I've been sleeping until 16:00 or even 16:30 every day (I also finish later in the morning, which means a bit less sleep than usual), and today I had a half-hour phone call with my parents, which resulted in my having even less time than usual for writing.

( Let me sing you the song of my people! )

I'm out of here in a few minutes. The micromanagement continues apace, although I find that there's a lot of stop-and-go as I try to figure out what works for me and what doesn't.

I miss line dancing. I miss the people, I miss the energy, I miss the music, and I miss having something to look forward to in the evenings. Now all I do at night is work, and the day is filled with errands and cleaning and being responsible.

I'm thinking of applying to be a dispatcher for the RCMP. They're looking for people. The shift work would be brutal, but it pays about twelve grand more than I'm getting now, and I'm beginning to dislike the atmosphere at work. It's not a good sign when 95% of the employees in a place are unhappy with how things are being run.

So I get to update my CV (should put that on the to-do list), and start shopping around again. I feel a little disloyal about looking for a new position so soon, but after Monday's little unpleasantness I feel less guilty than I might. I don't enjoy being told that I'm a hypocrite who doesn't care about my work, because that's patently not true. Whatever. I refuse to get into that again. I spent far too long being upset over what is essentially an empty threat and a couple of insults.

I haven't been updating this thing properly lately. In fact, I haven't been doing much at all that involves the computer at home. Mostly, I've been too tired to do anything in the evening before going to bed other than read through the day's LJ entries, post something short and pithy about cleaning, and then collapse in a tired heap. I've been writing at work, so the August Writing challenge continues apace, even if I'm not posting the results every day.

Everything else has pretty much gone by the wayside.

( cut for length )

So this is what's been going on in Phnee's world of late. As you can see, dear readers, you're not missing all that much. Mostly it's cleaning and cooking and cats, a little bit of writing, and a lot of seeing friends and generally being all sociable-like. Nothing earth-shattering, just domestic tranquility.

I have been reading LJ, as mentioned, but just haven't had the energy to comment on most entries. My apologies for that. Once I get used to the new schedule I've imposed on myself, I shall doubtless start commenting more.

Yesterday was pretty gruesome at work. Here's a tip: if you have more than two people in the same office who think they're the centre of the universe, things will NOT run smoothly. The less said about my day at the office, the better. I've already ranted to some very nice and forbearing people about it, so I'll leave it at that.

Went dancing after being away from my club for about a week. Well, I was there on Tuesday, but I skipped last Friday. Had fun. I always do. Very few people, as there was an event somewhere else in town keeping people busy. Did not see the Mahones, as their appearance date is supposedly in August now.

Got to the rehearsal space at 10am (that's early for me on a Saturday) and nailed the intro to "Enter Sandman." karine and owldaughter showed up at 11am, and we practiced both the intro to "Enter Sandman" (I showed off my l33t n3w sk1llz) and then beat "J'Veux Pas Vieillir" into bloody submission. Booyah!

I then went through a whole lot of Excedrin Migraine to get rid of the foot-long white-hot needle someone decided to stab into my right eye. I really think it's the smell of hopps that's doing it. I can't think of anything else that might be provoking this.

I decided to reward myself for being awesome by going to see "Pirates of the Caribbean 2," which was a lot of fun, but not nearly as good as the first one. Also, ( Mild spoiler ) Anyway, I had fun.

Spent some time at Indigo ogling the books, and managed not to get a parking ticket while I was at the movies. This is the problem with parking downtown and going to see a movie. Movies last over two hours, unless they're made by Pixar. Parking meters have a time limit of two hours. So if I'm going to see a movie, my meter will run out about half an hour to an hour before the end of the movie. Meh. However, the parking gods were merciful this time around and I was spared. I am pleased.

The staff at Indigo were completely useless. I asked a likely-looking boy for recommendations for a new mystery writer. Unfortunately, he was going on break and foisted me off onto his complete nitwit of a co-worker. She wandered vaguely around the mystery section and rattled off names at random to me. Every time I pressed her for more details, she would confess to not having read anything by the author she'd just recommended. She eventually sheepishly admitted to not reading mysteries at all, but was recommending stuff based on what she'd heard from other people.

Now, okay. I can understand not being a fan of mystery novels. However, if that's the case, why didn't she say so to begin with? If I'd known, I wouldn't have wasted my time with her. Sheesh. This girl was also none too bright anyway.

Spent the evening with the Parental Units. It was surreal: my father turned on the television (which happens once in a blue moon with him anyway) and discovered "Godzilla vs Mothra: the battle for Earth" playing. He decided to watch. Soon enough, we were all mesmerized by the mind-blowing badness of it all including the singing Japanese pixie twins and the piss-poor special effects of doom. I can't even begin to reproduce my parents' commentary. Even if I could, you probably wouldn't believe me. My mother thought that Mothra was "such a lover! Look, he's just like a teddy bear!" and yet was rooting for Godzilla to win, because he had "such a nice smile."

My father liked the singing Japanese pixie twins (who were, disturbingly enough, kept in a cage by one of the heroes). We were all somewhat perplexed by Mothra at the beginning, but after he spun a giant artificial cocoon the movie... umm, I hesitate to say that it began to make more sense, but at least the creature looked like a moth after that.

It was bizarre, but fun.

The rest of the Satursay-night lineup was pure crap. Why oh why is television so crappy lately?

Okay, bed now.

I've been going to bed ridiculously late all week. Decided that staying out dancing until 2am was not the answer to my sleep-deprivation problems, especially as tomorrow is not only going to start early, it's also going to finish late.

So.

Stayed home.


I have many things simmering on the back burners of my brain. You know how stoves usually only have the four heating elements? The stove in my brain seems to have been designed for a large-scale restaurant.

I don't need to rethink my life. Not right now. Things are, all in all, pretty good. I do, however, want to clarify some of the goals and projects I have in mind. I have a fair amount of energy these days, which is all to the good. I'm also feeling tired and often stressed out (mostly at work, but also about some personal stuff), which is generally a Big Neon Sign that I need to take a step back and chill the fuck out before I do something I'll regret.

The first step is getting more sleep. I always, always, and I do mean always, do better when I've slept my requisite seven to nine hours a night. So tonight there will be a slightly earlier night than previous nights this week (glancing at my clock informs me that "early" ended about two hours ago).

After that, there will be progress. Things will percolate, and there will be good results. This weekend especially, I am counting on Good Things to happen all around. I said so, therefore it's true. I dare reality to tell me otherwise.

I hadn't been to my dance club since last Friday, and I've been leaving early-ish due to a major case of the tired.

Tonight I stayed a little later, until midnight, and suddenly I remembered why I love going so much. It was just one of those nights when dancing was fun. Not just pleasurable, not just neat and enjoyable, but fun.

It started out slowly: I was volunteering for the first half of the evening (during the lesson), but managed to learn the new dance anyway. Then I had many fun conversations, first with Robert V., who's one of the other volunteers, about adventures in babysitting forty years ago, and then with my buddy Richard and his boyfriend Jacques. We talked about cooking for the better part of half an hour, laughing and joking the whole way. There's nothing I enjoy quite like talking about food with people who know how to appreciate it, especially if they love to cook as well.

And then there was the dancing. It's summer, so there are fewer newbies and only the diehard line dancers who've been members of the club for years. Everyone either knew the dances, or else we realized we'd forgotten half the steps and improvised our way through. There was shouting and laughing and good-natured teasing of people on the dance floor, as some of the more excitable members (like Skippy) decided to make a game of trying to distract the dancers by clapping at random intervals and making faces. For a while we were laughing too hard to dance at all, let alone get the steps right.

A man named Kurt came in around 9pm or so, a little hesitant about whether or not he wanted to stay. Turns out he was from California, and we managed to convince him to stick around. Everyone was very glad he did. He was friendly, affable and open, and danced remarkably well. I danced three times with him: two different two-steps and a walz, which I'd never danced before. He two-steps like nothing I'd ever experienced before, with completely different moves and techniques than the ones I'd learned. I counted very loudly in my head and let him push me all over the dance floor, and had a blast doing it. It was refreshing to dance not only with someone who knew what they were doing, but someone who knew what they were doing so well that they were able to communicate it to another person who was unfamiliar with the process.

Skippy and I are still struggling with "Ring Ring," but we're getting better every time. Now we just have to figure out why we're not ending up in a "skater position" in the second-to-last section of the dance.

Tonight was a good night. In fact, I'd have to say that this week was an unqualified success on all fronts.

Good night, folks. :)

Technically it's Saturday now. Oh well.

Spent all day with owldaughter in a pretty productive writing jam. I wrote a bit about it in secret_history so I won't go into it here, but let's just say it went very well indeed and industrial quantities of tea were consumed. I also snagged myself some more Amelia Peabody and Jane Austen mysteries. I am a happy camper.

Went to my dance club afterward, where I met up with miseri who was kind enough to lend me a few copies of the Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He left early, and I ended up only staying until about 11:30 or so, since I was hit with a massive anvil of tired.

Skippy (one of the members of my club) and I have finally, we think, mastered this dance that was giving us trouble. It's a fun little dance, with a "windmill" step (basically it's a half-turn shuffle, but instead of keeping your arms either at shoulder or waist level, you raise them over your head in a windmill motion) and some tricky little steps in the middle that it took us forever to figure out. However, tonight we conquered it, and it was fun.

Tomorrow there will be band practice, and then I've agreed to drive miseri to IKEA after to get a wardrobe. He's moving on Sunday, and has nowhere to put his clothes. After IKEA, depending on how much time I have left over, there will be chili, and then I'm off to my club again for a special event.

I wasn't going to go to the special event, actually, given the state of my finances. See, it costs $15 to get in (not counting drinks and whatnot) and, well, I just don't have that kind of money these days. However, my friend C from the club, upon learning that $15 was all that was standing between me and the special event, informed me that he was going to buy a ticket for me and that I had no choice whatsoever in the matter. :)

Have I mentioned that my friends rock? Even the ones you all don't know. If there's one thing I can pride myself on, it's my excellent choice of friends.

Sunday will be spent continuing my cleaning spree. I haven't come close to finishing yet, but I am making headway, slowly but surely. I shall also make chili, if I don't have time tomorrow.


As you may have noticed, I am still connected to the internet. I managed to get Bell Canada the minimal amount of money it would take to not get all my services cut. Go me!

I have decided to get rid of the car when the lease expires in August. I realized I was just being stubborn about it, and when that realization hit I actually felt relieved. The car was, like I said before, a huge damn financial albatross, and while it was useful while I had it, I don't think it's worth the massive amounts of stress it generated for me.

So, as of August 31st, the car goes bye-bye.

More as events unfold. ;)


Good night!

Today was mostly an exercise in frustration, caused as usual by the CAM. Suffice it to say that after she cut into my lunch hour yesterday ("I need ten minutes of your time" turned into half an hour of my time, predictably enough), she did it again today. Her clients wanted coffee, and they wanted it *now* and basically bitched and moaned that we hadn't provided lunch (for a half-hour meeting!), so I got dispatched to fetch the poor dears coffee and cookies.

Normally, this would be fine. Today, there were two problems with this plan: 1) L is not there, which means that I have to be at my desk to answer the phones; 2) It was ten minutes before I was scheduled to go to lunch.

So, I got one of the admin girls to mind the phones while I was gone, and cut into my lunch break yet again. The admin girl was very nice about it, considering that she has her own work to do and can't always be covering for me when the CAM has one of her fits.

The CAM later gave me more work which involved wrestling with our ever-cantankerous fax machine, and so I spent about two and a half hours on something which would have taken maybe twenty minutes of her time if she'd bothered to do it herself and do it properly. Then she told me to "relax" and not take everything so much to heart, as though it was somehow wrong of me to take my job seriously and want to do it well and thus get frustrated when I can't. Meh.

Otherwise, the day went pretty well. I finished my filing, and so of course Boss!Lady provided me with a whole new unprecedented batch of filing. I actually got a fair bit of that done too, in-between fighting with the fax machine and running interference with various clients.

Someone told me the other day that it sounded in this LJ as though I really hate my job. That's not exactly true. I do like the people I work with: they're all extremely nice, and there's a definite sense of departmental loyalty here that I reallly like. The work itself is tedious and repetitive and unrewarding in the extreme, and that's what I don't like about it. I also seriously resent the fact that I haven't been made a permanent employee. Having a few health benefits and, oh, paid vacation time would go a long way to reconciling me with this job.

It's a job I can do, and that I can do well. It's not what I'd rather be doing with my time, but I can think of worse jobs. In fact, I've been in worse jobs (Bell Mobility and Fast Scaffolding spring to mind). It pays the bills, and the working environment has a lot going for it.

So, that's me setting the record straight.


In other news, since people have asked, my arm is almost 100% better now. I went back to the hospital about three weeks after my accident for x-rays and various poking and prodding, and they basically told me to go my way and sin no more. They didn't even think I should bother with physio, and just told me to use my arm as much and as normally as possible. So that's what I've been doing, and now I only get occasional twinges in my wrist and shoulder, which is where there was the most soft tissue damage (as opposed to the elbow, which is the bit that actually broke, ironically enough).

The main difficulty I have is hauling around heavy files, but even that gets easier every day. I can now dance entirely pain-free (and let me tell you that's a relief!), and I started back with Random Colour the day after I got rid of the sling without too many ill effects. Apparently beating on things with sticks doesn't pose any kind of problem for me.

Dancing has been going extremely well, I might add. I've been going to as many of the classes as possible, although I've been good about keeping my Sundays free of club activities. I've been doing this for about a year and a half now, and to be honest I can't imagine living without some sort of dancing now. It's even hard for me to imagine how I managed before, when all I was doing was staying home in the evenings.

The one disadvantage, if I can even call it that, is that there are lots of other things I would love to be doing as well. There are projects I want to work on, people I want to see, and places I want to go, and when three out of seven nights a week are taken up with dancing, well, that leaves very little time for these other things. Monday nights are booked for 24, and that leaves Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Sunday evening is generally not good for staying out late and what have you, as it's a work night, ditto for Wednesdays, and suddenly you're left with Saturdays, when everyone else has ten million things scheduled.

I can't really complain. Things are going, well, smoothly is perhaps too strong a word. But I'm treading water, keeping my head above the surface, and I'm not too tired yet, to push this metaphor to its limit. I'm still reasonably optimistic that one of these days I'll stop treading water and actually start swimming toward a goal. Right now, though, treading water is a good thing. Definitely better than the panicky drowning I was doing two years ago. A lot of things in my life still suck (especially financial stuff), but at this point I am cautiously hopeful that I'll eventually be able to get a handle on it, and that's more than I was able to say before.

Okay, bed. I am rambling and in serious danger of getting maudlin, or worse. The serial has been posted, LiveJournal has been updated for the first time in a long time, and I have a whole day's worth of filing ahead of me (Whee.), so I'm going to get some shut-eye.

G'night folks!

Well, February is over, and in spite of ruthless attempts on its part, it didn't suck. I think I was too busy to notice if it sucked.

The moral of the story? Phnee needs to keep herself busy during months that are generally of the suck.

Here's what I figure: dispatcher course + 28 installments of serial > broken elbow + job insecurity.

So, no sucking. Little bits of suck, perhaps, but overall a damned good month.

I think I'm going to see if I can manage dancing on Friday. It doesn't involve actually using my arm, and since the arm only hurts when I'm trying to use it, then it might just work. As long as no one knocks into me on the dance floor.

Using my Telus Bunnies icon, just because. :D

Such were the comments at the office this morning. It's raining cats and dogs out there, and the ground is absolutely covered in slippery, wet ice.

I managed to get to the bus stop without killing myself only because I was following a group of little kids, and avoided every single patch of ice they slipped on. Don't worry, they were fine: they don't weigh much and they were dressed in thick snowsuits that padded their falls. I suspect I would have hurt myself much worse if I'd been the one to fall.

I am declaring today the Day of Soggy Paper. Everyone who comes in either drips on my papers or else hands me a very wet envelope. Which in turn leads me to one of my favourite passtimes, writing open letters to the asshats who make my day-to-day existence more annoying.

Dear Asshats Who Send Us Stuff By Messenger,

For the love of God, stop stapling your goddamn checks together. This is bad enough on normal days, when I have to unstaple them all at risk to life and limb. However, on days when it's raining, stapling your papers together means that they tear when I unstaple them, which is bad for everyone concerned.

If you're so goddamned worried about your checks, use a goddamned paperclip. It's not hard.

No love,

Me


Anyway, that's all for now. I'm hungry and a bit cranky, but otherwise things are well with the world. I didn't go to dance class last night, but instead passed out around 9pm and slept all the way through to 7am. Obviously I needed the sleep. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on the class I missed next week.