Category Archives: Work

More Meaningless Drivel.

Work, ,

In which I talk about work.

I was informed today that I have received a raise.

A raise of one quarter per hour. Yes, a whole quarter. Per hour! That’s two dollars a day, if you do the math!

I haven’t gotten a raise of less than a dollar in years. But then again the last two places I worked promised reviews but rarely managed to conduct them. This company is going to review me every three months for my first year, so if I get a quarter every time that’ll be my dollar and all will be well.

I was also informed today that I now work Saturdays. (Note: This means I am working six days this week. Go me.) Tuesday through Saturday: that’s my new schedule. Tuesday through Friday I work noon to nine, and on Saturday I work nine to six.

I told admin that I would do this cheerfully for a few months, but as soon as the weather gets nice I’ll start bitchin’ about it. They said they’d be prepared to discuss it by then. Right now my schedule hardly matters, but I can’t be workin’ on Saturdays if I’m gigging on Friday nights come spring!

Holy Howling Winds, Batman!

Weather, Work, ,

In which the weather went just plumb crazy.

A massive storm rolled in this morning. We had 60-mile-an-hour-PLUS wind gusts, and the atmosphere was filled with tons of suspended dust.

Dust storm

All the stuff on the porch ended up in a pile. Gramma went out and released our retired Christmas tree from its stand, and the whole damned tree blew away – we haven’t seen it since.

Tree limbs hit the roof and fell to the ground, littering the yard with broken branches.

Storm Debris

Two of the three guy-wires holding my uncle’s old ham radio antenna have snapped. Half the shingles came off our neighbor’s rear roof elevation and are piled up in our yard (but I didn’t notice any missing shakes from our roof when I went out to look) and very few people still know where their garbage cans are. The entire city lost power for over five hours.

My employer’s data center (‘the vault’) was down for 45 minutes, because the generator battery failed. I didn’t have to come to work until 3 o’clock, because with no power the call center couldn’t operate. And now that I am here, I’m calling hundreds of customers who’d left voice mails to explain why our auth and email servers didn’t work earlier today.

Here are more pictures of the carnage, taken by a co-worker’s friend.

There are houses with trees through them, cars with trees on them, downed power lines, and general chaos everywhere. (In other words, if you’re an insurance adjuster, you should load your fuckin’ ladder and get the the hell out here. There’s mega mad damage, yo.)

In other news, there’s capuccino cream pie in the break room!

Update: It’s 9:17 and I just spoke to Gramma. She tells me the power’s still off at home, which means no reading in bed for me. Ugh.

Squeaky wheel. Grease.

Work, , ,

In which I get my way! Amazing!

Today the guys at work gave me a UPS so I don’t have to shut my computer down at night. BOOYAH!

They also told me not to learn from this event that bitching will get me my way in the future. I promised them most emphatically that I do not now nor shall I ever think that. Never!

We had a potluck at work today. The food was killer. AND the entire office is all decorated with Xmas lights. You know how I feel about Xmas lights: I *heart* them!

In other news, the album is out! Dig some clips:


Jonas%20%26%20The%20Seventh%20Ray

You can buy it here. (I can’t give it away because I don’t own it – I just sang backup – and it was expensive to record, and there were investors that need to be paid back. So buy it if you’re feeling like you need some nice spiritually positive tuneage in your library. (If you’re really poor and you really want it, email me and we’ll see what can be done.)) I like the album overall and I’m proud that I’m on it, but mostly I just liked singing into this baby.

In other other news, thank God it’s Friday. I’m so ready to lie around watching vids on the ol’ laptop all day tomorrow. This working full-time crap is for chumps, I’m tellin’ ya.

Piss and Moan

Work,

In which I’m cranky and feel like complaining about work.

Apparently the power went off at work last night. When I got to work this morning, the first thing that my trainer said when I walked through the door was that I had to turn my computer off at night. That annoyed the shit out of me because I only turn machines off when they need to be rebooted. I leave them on because waiting for Windows to boot and then opening all the programs I need and arranging all the windows to my liking takes for-fucking-ever. But this place is too cheap, apparently, to buy UPSes, so they’ll be paying me for 10 minutes every morning from now on while I wait for my shit to reboot. So stupid.

It also means that – since our time clock is software-based – I’ll have to clock out before shutting down. I realize it’s only a minute or so every night, but I’m already clocking off before setting the alarm, and those few minutes times every night for a year will add up to a few unpaid hours. Screw that noise.

Then my first few calls were frustrating as hell. The customers were cranky and short-tempered, and their computer skills were so incredibly limited that I could barely even understand what the hell the problem was, let alone figure out how to get them to fix it. (One guy called in because “the purple icon was missing from the dock thingy.”) (???) (I figured it out eventually; he was on OSX and the purple icon was, I guess, his dialer.)

Good news, though, comes in threes: (1.) I now have root access to the POP server, so I can reset passwords myself rather than having to wait for someone else to do it. (2.) The company Xmas party on December 20th will feature free-flowing company-bought booze and really good food (which is probably why they can’t afford to buy me a UPS – hah!). (3.) One of the engineers made apple pie liqueur over the weekend and left pints on everyone’s desk, so I’ve got booze to drink when I get home tonight!

In other news, the weather here is weird. Not only is it relentlessly windy, but I’ve been in the Midwest for so long that it breaks my brain when it gets warmer out after the sun goes down! Friday night, Gramma and I went to the Christmas Lights Parade with my uncle and his wife (they bought us peppermint mochas!), and when we pulled up at a quarter to six it was 28 degrees outside, with ice and snow on the ground. An hour later, a Chinook had blown in and the temperature went up ten degrees. By morning, the snow had all melted off. Spooky, huh? (Gramma’s dog Chipper is afraid of wind. If you let him outside when it’s windy out, he goes and sits in the middle of the street. He’s freakin’ miserable, the poor little guy.)

Update: Apparently everyone in management where I work has read this post. Apparently I should have been more judicious with the word “cheap.” Doya think I can plead hormones?
😉

The Ass-crack of Dawn

Work

In which there’s early, and then there’s “It’s so early I’m a total retard.”

I had to be at work at eight, so I got up at six-thirty. (!!!) It was so early that I actually forgot to wash my hair in the shower. I mean, hello.

Thank God my normal schedule will be noon to nine.

Gramma made me a fried egg and toast and a cup of tea. It’s lucky she did or I wouldn’t have had time to eat. (She rocks. She also had the jeep towed to her favorite shop yesterday ’cause she thinks I should have wheels with winter coming on.)

I walked to work down Second Ave, and because it was so early I was stupid, it took longer than necessary and I was three minutes late. (Gah!)

Training is going well because I’m so over-qualified that my trainer and I spent 45 minutes this afternoon discussing four-wheeling and the details of what he’s going to do with his Bronco.

I should probably be taking calls by the end of the week if I’m lucky. Since I already understand Internet connectivity issues, all I really have to learn are the specifics of the DSL hardware they use here and their proprietary call logging/ticketing software.

In other news, I hope to order a DSL connection soon so can get online from home.

Gainfully Employed

Work

In which I got a job within 48 hours, ’cause I’m cool like that.

I got here Wednesday night. Thursday afternoon I had a phone interview. Friday morning I had facetime with the three principals, and before I’d even made it all the way home they’d called to hire me and to invite me back for lunch at one o’clock so I could meet everyone.

I HAVE A JOB IN MY INDUSTRY! Finally! I work here, doing tech support. I took the first job offered to me because they gave me what I wanted for an hourly rate and because it’s within walking distance – the jeep’s still dead and may not be running for awhile (even though grandma seems to be having it towed to the shop she uses while I’m at work today, which is WAY COOL OF HER).

My lunch break is over in two minutes, so I’d better git. As soon as I have an Internet connection at home I’ll start posting regularly again.

Yesterday was a particularly lovely day!

Travel, Work

In which Friday totally kicked ass, dudes.

Yesterday my mom bought me four knitting patterns from Fiber Trends (including this one omg how cute is that?!). This makes me very, very happy. (It also means I’ll be knitting felted plush toys for the next five fuckin’ years, but there are worse things!)

If that weren’t good enough, in the afternoon we went to some nearby town in Colorado so my mom could do a little shopping. During the drive, I finished knitting the first of a pair of what will soon be very cool felted clogs. (Yay!) Then, after visiting a[n extraordinarily ugly] media store called Hastings and making a quick stop at a super K-Mart, we went out for Mexican food. And my mom, who doesn’t really like food, bravely ordered Dungeness crab enchiladas… and was surprised to learn that she liked them enough to actually eat them! (My stepDoug and I cleaned our plates, of course.)

And to make it all even better, while we were out wandering around I received two calls from ISPs I’ve applied to! I have an interview next Friday with Blue Mountain Internet, and will probably have another interview with Pocket iNet soon too. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

That night, we watched Branaugh’s Hamlet – all five hours of it – and had dessert for dinner.

Naturally, today I am leaving for Washington state. I may or not blog tonight, depending on what sort of motel I land in, but I’ll Twitter from my cell phone so you’ll know when I get totally lost in Utah.

T Minus 29 Days

Work

In which I use the great power of the Internet to apply for jobs that are far away.

Fairfield was being really cute this morning. People smiled at me in the post office for no good reason, and then I saw Bartender walking to work and she waved at me, and then I saw Baby Girl sitting on her stoop as I drove by and she waved too, and I was all, “I won’t know everybody any more when I move away!”

I feel nervous about giving notice at work. I’ve only been there six months, so I kinda feel like an asshole. They don’t really need me, but still. I’m nervous anyway. (Once I get it done, though, I’ll feel awesome! Nothing more real than giving notice at work, am I right?)

I applied for what sounds like a kick-ass help desk job in Wyoming (yes, I know I don’t want to live there, but beggars can’t be choosers and it is on my way… right on I-80, as a matter of fact) and two office jobs – via the local workforce development office – in Walla Walla. I don’t know what the help desk job pays, but one of the the office jobs pays $2.29 an hour more than I’m making right now, and it’s just a basic office/clerical job.

Yeah, yeah, I know, cost of living, blah blah blah. The point is, there’s stuff to apply for. Yay!

Sometimes My Guru Is My Friends.

Work

In which a very good question is asked.

The whole maternal side of my family is converging on the ancestral home in Walla Walla, WA next month for Grandma’s 80-somethingth birthday celebration. In email discussions, both my aunt and my grandmother have mentioned that I might like to ‘come home.’ Gramma informs me, “You might find something interesting to do here. The town has changed a lot the past few years. Wineries, fancy restaurants, bedroom community for the bigger cities etc. so employment picture has changed. I still have a spare room.”

Last night AmmZon came home hot and tired and verging on cranky and couldn’t decide what she wanted for dinner, so I made nachos because it was the only suggestion she didn’t crinkle her nose up at. While I was cooking and she was snapping beans, she asked, “So, really, like, what are your plans? Do you have any goals for yourself?”

I’m such a piece of shit that my first – and ruthlessly rejected – response was, Why? What, do you want me to move out now that I’ve finally quit thinking of this place as temporary? But I didn’t utter my first reaction because not only was it defensive and confrontational, but I know that most of my first responses are crap and have trained myself to discard them. Instead I said, “Well, uh, a full-time job, I guess. I need money. I’ve been separated from The Ex a year this month, and I just started feeling better a few months ago. I didn’t realize I’d been clinically depressed until I stopped being depressed, but I think I’m ready to get my shit together now.”

Soon the topic changed, but I spent the rest of the evening trying to look truthfully at my life: I’m nearly 40, I rent a room in someone else’s house, I work a part-time job totally off of my career path, and I drink vodka and read and sleep a lot. Sure I have great friendships, and I feel strongly about the music The Seventh Ray band is making, but other than that what am I doing with myself?

What I’m doing is nothing. Nothing at all. And to be fair that was the point for the past year: rest and recuperate, relocate myself. I was depressed, had been depressed for a few years, and didn’t realize how badly until the fog lifted a few months ago. (Lately I’ve been having moments during which I’m suddenly overcome by how cool my life is, how wonderful it is and how very much I dig it, and these moments amaze me because I used to always have them but they’d been gone for years.) I’m verging on being well again, being the active and life-loving and positive person I used to be, and this little nest I’ve made for myself is starting to feel less like safe and nurturing and more like lazy and cowardly.

Continue reading Sometimes My Guru Is My Friends. →

Home so totally rocks, peeps!

Social, Spiritual, Work

In which it’s good to be home.

(First of all, let me just get it out of the way: I love my blue dog soooo much! K thx.)

Saying “I had such a good time at Amma!” is so silly I’m not even going to say it. I didn’t have ‘a good time,’ I was led back to myself – as I am every year when I go to see Her – and I feel several orders of magnitude better than I have in a long while. (And yes, I’ve started the Amma post but it isn’t finished yet.)

Saturday Nite BBQWhen NLW dropped me off yesterday, Truck was on the porch. He told me he was going to have a few people over later; I said that would be fine ’cause I didn’t think anything short of a full-on rave in my room was gonna keep me up past seven or eight because I’d slept from 5 to 11 that morning and was a wee bit behind on my sleep.

All sorts of groovy folk showed up, and I had a BBQed veggie burger and some lovely carbonized carrots and sweet onions, too. I played with kids a lot ’cause they were sort of right there and couldn’t be ignored.

Then I went to bed and slept for 12 hours. Yay!

This afternoon I called The Ex and he said I could swing out to the house tomorrow evening. I’m going to take some boxes out and try to organize my shit; I also want to grab some summer clothes (IT IS SO FUCKING HOT IN JULY OMGWTFBBQ) and some books and my altar and crap like that.

In other news, I may have an interview this week in Cedar Rapids, IA for a support job of some kind. I don’t even really know what the job description is yet, but if it turns out to sound way cool I’ll want your good vibes.

I quite possibly should be getting off my arse here soon, and using my life for something more profound than trying to do as much sleeping and avoidance of stress as I can. There’s a lot to be said for a nice decompression period, but part of the battle I fought in my marriage was about being trapped too far away from the things I wanted for myself. Now I’m nearing the one-year mark (I left The Ex last August) and I think I’m about to rejoin the land of the living. The booze and drugs and laziness and sleep-a-thons were great, but hardly the best use of my life. Or if I’m going to continue to live like that, I should at least do it in sexier shoes, which means I need to make some money.

I’ve been considering and shelving a variety of ideas about what I want to do now – I hadn’t moved out of Fairfield before because it seemed impossibly hard while I was recovering from depression – but now it seems like something I could actually manage. I am rather a city girl at heart, and I enjoy things like being able to eat at restaurants on Sundays, public transportation, culture, and fewer flying insects. Maybe I’ll live in Iowa City for awhile; who knows.

Today I ate leftover broccoli and potatoes from brunch and have spent much of the rest of the day in my room. Truck’s started making electric guitar noise in a different key than the song I’m listening to, though, so it might be time to turn off the iTunes and head outside for a bit.