New year improvement
So, let's see. Training the young cats not to be so hunger-maddened at feedings progresses. Noonish feedings have been helpful in convincing them that starvation isn't imminent. (Though earlier today, a bit before noon, Gabe got on top of the fridge and started trying to get into the one box of cereal I'd gotten recently that hadn't been decanted into a tupperware container.)
Last week on my last shift before the New Year I left three hours early and put a note on the time adjustment sheet to dip into my paid time off to get my time card up to 40 hours for the week. (Which is what most of us were having to do the last couple of weeks of the year, the workload being a smidge light and especially so on the weekends before the holidays.) And then last week, there was enough work left in the mornings at the ends of my shifts that I could have picked up that missing three hours (or close to it) -- but since we had that holiday for New Year's Day, I wouldn't have gotten any overtime pay even if I did. I would have had to put in over three hours extra work to catch up on Sunday morning before it started adding any hours to my timecard for the week (at the regular non-hourly pay rate, mind you), so I had no motivation at all to stick around late in the mornings.
(This has been helping me keep my one New Year's resolution: Watch more TV! Which is to say, clearing the DVR backlog, not letting newly taped episodes stack up -- and getting some quality knitting time in.)
Of course, this led to a data entry backlog on Saturday morning, which led to the guy who sometimes picks up a few extra hours on Saturday nights coming in to help. And as usual, he stayed just a little too long and didn't leave us enough work to get our full eight hours that morning, meaning I started this week with an hour and a half deficit. I've caught up on it, though, and left work on time this morning because our supervisors are warning that their supervisors are raising hell about too much overtime in our department. Bet I can still get away with picking up a few extra hours over the weekend because of the whole weekend-skeleton-crew-understaffing thing.
Another thing on the "to do" list that I got taken care of -- hmm, was it the first week of the year? -- was getting the various tulip bulbs (some regular, some species tulips and even a package of crocus bulbs) planted. Some went into big outdoor pots and some into the center of the raised garden bed, but a lot went into the front flower beds. Also a few went into the backyard around the edges, where I had planted daffodils last fall -- which is why I was out scrabbling around in the leaf litter and finding out just how many daffodil spikes are poking out of the ground. We should have a gorgeous view in a few months...
I also had a few hyacinth bulbs, which I stuck into pots and put on the kitchen windowsill with the rest of the garden rescues. I was a day late in getting foil covering them to protect them from the cats, and one of the pots got dug into, but I refilled it and covered it over. I poked little holes in the foil over each bulb to give it somewhere to grow out through. Two of the new bulbs are showing green tips. Two bulbs were saved from last year in the hopes of getting them to rebloom (I think this is the pot that got attacked the day after planting) and they don't look promising.
I took the Xmas tree down on, hmm, Saturday I think. Mom felt like crap so didn't get the outside lights till Sunday afternoon, and delegated to me the task of hauling it all out to the garage. The inside decor is still up (Mom's planning on dealing with it this weekend) and so I'm ignoring the boxes in that corner of the living room until we've swapped out the holiday wall-hangings for the regular pictures and crafts. (Some of the year-round living room stuff is in boxes in that waiting pile of storage containers.)
Monday I was productive and got the rabbit cage cleaned early because I had an appointment at 2pm to go get my first-ever mammogram. (No family history and I just turned 40 in October, so no reason to get checked out any sooner.) The results came in today's mail, incidentally -- nothing found, so I'm good.
Also arriving in today's mail was a box of checks. I've been able to go full digital or use my check card for so long that my last box of checks has lasted me for years and years. I was only ever writing checks to the rabbit sanctuary for my big box of hay every five or six weeks -- which made it sort of grimly amusing that I had the wildlife charity design with pictures of wolves on them. But anyway, I used up my very last check a week or two back, so I went online and after a bit of browsing around went back to the very same company I'd gotten my last round of checks from. The one set I really liked was in the seasonal category -- four Halloween designs in a set I couldn't resist. So, that's what I've got now.
And still on the topic of packages in the mail: Last week after discovering my yarn had supposedly been delivered the Friday before Xmas, I went to the USPS site and tried filing a claim for it. The site is not mobile-friendly and the pull-down menus in the form refused to work (in either of the browsers I tried it in), so I saved the claim for later. Tuesday morning I turned on the desktop (for the first time in about a month) and completed the claim. Then I faffed around with photos, posted some to my journal, and got off the computer to go do other things on my "to do" list. I decided to see if the mail had run yet, opened the front door -- and found a Priority Mail package tucked between the inner and outer doors. It was from the Loopy Ewe, it had been shipped December 19th -- and it was showing water damage, indicating it had been sitting on someone's porch (or maybe in someone's bushes) where it could get rained on for a while. Either it just got found (hiding in bushes, or by the mostly-absent neighbors), or the people it got mis-delivered to only just got around to bringing it by.
So I was delighted (the yarn inside was plastic-wrapped and unaffected by the weather), though mildly annoyed at having to fight my way through automated menus to talk to post office customer service about cancelling my claim. (I couldn't figure out how to do it on the website, and the phone setup was obnoxious. Not having a claim number yet didn't really help -- though at least it meant being able to cancel it before it started being processed.) And over the last couple of days I've been working on my vest while getting stuff off the DVR. (And missing out on some sleep, but part of that is due to being woken up by hungry cats earlier than I was hoping and then going back to bed afterwards for another few hours.)
And, right. Time to post this and get some shuteye...
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.
Last week on my last shift before the New Year I left three hours early and put a note on the time adjustment sheet to dip into my paid time off to get my time card up to 40 hours for the week. (Which is what most of us were having to do the last couple of weeks of the year, the workload being a smidge light and especially so on the weekends before the holidays.) And then last week, there was enough work left in the mornings at the ends of my shifts that I could have picked up that missing three hours (or close to it) -- but since we had that holiday for New Year's Day, I wouldn't have gotten any overtime pay even if I did. I would have had to put in over three hours extra work to catch up on Sunday morning before it started adding any hours to my timecard for the week (at the regular non-hourly pay rate, mind you), so I had no motivation at all to stick around late in the mornings.
(This has been helping me keep my one New Year's resolution: Watch more TV! Which is to say, clearing the DVR backlog, not letting newly taped episodes stack up -- and getting some quality knitting time in.)
Of course, this led to a data entry backlog on Saturday morning, which led to the guy who sometimes picks up a few extra hours on Saturday nights coming in to help. And as usual, he stayed just a little too long and didn't leave us enough work to get our full eight hours that morning, meaning I started this week with an hour and a half deficit. I've caught up on it, though, and left work on time this morning because our supervisors are warning that their supervisors are raising hell about too much overtime in our department. Bet I can still get away with picking up a few extra hours over the weekend because of the whole weekend-skeleton-crew-understaffing thing.
Another thing on the "to do" list that I got taken care of -- hmm, was it the first week of the year? -- was getting the various tulip bulbs (some regular, some species tulips and even a package of crocus bulbs) planted. Some went into big outdoor pots and some into the center of the raised garden bed, but a lot went into the front flower beds. Also a few went into the backyard around the edges, where I had planted daffodils last fall -- which is why I was out scrabbling around in the leaf litter and finding out just how many daffodil spikes are poking out of the ground. We should have a gorgeous view in a few months...
I also had a few hyacinth bulbs, which I stuck into pots and put on the kitchen windowsill with the rest of the garden rescues. I was a day late in getting foil covering them to protect them from the cats, and one of the pots got dug into, but I refilled it and covered it over. I poked little holes in the foil over each bulb to give it somewhere to grow out through. Two of the new bulbs are showing green tips. Two bulbs were saved from last year in the hopes of getting them to rebloom (I think this is the pot that got attacked the day after planting) and they don't look promising.
I took the Xmas tree down on, hmm, Saturday I think. Mom felt like crap so didn't get the outside lights till Sunday afternoon, and delegated to me the task of hauling it all out to the garage. The inside decor is still up (Mom's planning on dealing with it this weekend) and so I'm ignoring the boxes in that corner of the living room until we've swapped out the holiday wall-hangings for the regular pictures and crafts. (Some of the year-round living room stuff is in boxes in that waiting pile of storage containers.)
Monday I was productive and got the rabbit cage cleaned early because I had an appointment at 2pm to go get my first-ever mammogram. (No family history and I just turned 40 in October, so no reason to get checked out any sooner.) The results came in today's mail, incidentally -- nothing found, so I'm good.
Also arriving in today's mail was a box of checks. I've been able to go full digital or use my check card for so long that my last box of checks has lasted me for years and years. I was only ever writing checks to the rabbit sanctuary for my big box of hay every five or six weeks -- which made it sort of grimly amusing that I had the wildlife charity design with pictures of wolves on them. But anyway, I used up my very last check a week or two back, so I went online and after a bit of browsing around went back to the very same company I'd gotten my last round of checks from. The one set I really liked was in the seasonal category -- four Halloween designs in a set I couldn't resist. So, that's what I've got now.
And still on the topic of packages in the mail: Last week after discovering my yarn had supposedly been delivered the Friday before Xmas, I went to the USPS site and tried filing a claim for it. The site is not mobile-friendly and the pull-down menus in the form refused to work (in either of the browsers I tried it in), so I saved the claim for later. Tuesday morning I turned on the desktop (for the first time in about a month) and completed the claim. Then I faffed around with photos, posted some to my journal, and got off the computer to go do other things on my "to do" list. I decided to see if the mail had run yet, opened the front door -- and found a Priority Mail package tucked between the inner and outer doors. It was from the Loopy Ewe, it had been shipped December 19th -- and it was showing water damage, indicating it had been sitting on someone's porch (or maybe in someone's bushes) where it could get rained on for a while. Either it just got found (hiding in bushes, or by the mostly-absent neighbors), or the people it got mis-delivered to only just got around to bringing it by.
So I was delighted (the yarn inside was plastic-wrapped and unaffected by the weather), though mildly annoyed at having to fight my way through automated menus to talk to post office customer service about cancelling my claim. (I couldn't figure out how to do it on the website, and the phone setup was obnoxious. Not having a claim number yet didn't really help -- though at least it meant being able to cancel it before it started being processed.) And over the last couple of days I've been working on my vest while getting stuff off the DVR. (And missing out on some sleep, but part of that is due to being woken up by hungry cats earlier than I was hoping and then going back to bed afterwards for another few hours.)
And, right. Time to post this and get some shuteye...
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.