Real Life Update
First off, let me say that Artemis is doing well. We had her on meds until I basically said, we need to stop. Lou trusted a bit too much (imo) on the doctor's opinion, until I *gently reminded* the doctor that we don't know what her levels were BEFORE we started her on the medication. So now that she's not constantly losing weight, throwing up, and is, in fact, gaining weight and throwing up usually only a hairball (with an occasional stomach-dumping contents one, like once a month), then we really don't need to keep her on ANY medication.
We've moved them back to free feeding dry food. The Wellness Complete Health. The Wellness CORE was a bit TOO much protein and made their poops an issue (sticking to their butts!!). We still do wet food twice a day, but Artemis rarely eats much of it, as she prefers the dry food. Athena, of course, goes to town on the wet food. This is all in an attempt to move them back to dry food free feeding so we don't have to board them when we go away in August to GenCon, and then later to TurkeyCon. Possibly just have Lou's mom come by every other day to restock the dry food and give them some wet. We need to take them in for shots, though, and we'll get Artemis reweighed then. Here's hoping she's at least maintaining her weight.
On the job front, I've been reduced to 80% time, starting July 1. This is through December 31st, depending funding, etc. I'll get a review in November to see if I will be kept on after that. The basic deal is I'm happy to still have a job instead of total layoffs, and I've got 6 months to find another one. The job interview I had at the Physics Department a few months ago ended up with me being a "strong second candidate." I basically didn't have enough secretarial-type experience that they wanted.
Really happy that I never even got a call back or anything from the 38 Studios job I had applied for. Sadly, in this case, that they had to fold, but I am still really pissed that so many people are blaming Chafee, when seriously, the company had to rely on "savior investors" to meet payroll twice before they finally stopped being able to, so how can you say that he's the one at fault? Yes he may have scared off potential investors, but any SERIOUS investor would have done their due diligence!
Never got anything from Cook's Illustrated, which is just as well, since they fucked me over for the same type of job some years back. I really didn't want to app, but in this job market, I can't afford to hold old grudges.
In looking at my LJ now, I see that perhaps none of you know about the job situation, as I mentioned it a bit on twitter and to some people in mail or IMs. My office was forcibly "merged" with the Education Department at Brown, and we've been struggling to figure out what we're doing ever since. We're supposed to be a separate entity, but that's not entirely working out yet. We're on the lookout for a new Director, and our current Interim Director has applied for it. One can only hope she gets it, and not some crony of the head of the Ed. Dept, which is I think what he has planned. We don't have any new funding coming in atm, so we're just kinda struggling with what we have. My officemate is also on 80% time.
Right now I think we'll be okay for a while with the pay reduction. I will have to move some stuff off autopay from my check I think, and do some reduction of payment amounts for some other things (we pay some more on a loan that would have been paid off by the end of this year, and we pay more on Lou's car that sadly we can't get to go into principle, so it's really just paying off the next month's payment some each month). I want to SEE how much I'll actually be taking home with the reduction, so I can then play with things, but since I get paid once a month, and that's the end of the month, we won't know until the end of July. I have some padding money in the account to cover it though. Then we can look at it. There's only 2 accounts that are variable that come out of my paycheck; gas and electric. And right now the gas bill is small, and the electric will be getting higher with the ACs in the windows. We're not on a budget yet, but we're trying to seriously cut down our spending on things we don't desperately need (like Lou just bought some more clothes and I bought some more pants, which we do need).
The good news is that I decided we'd still do a CSA this year! It's a new place for me, and I do my first pickup this Wednesday, and they TELL US IN ADVANCE what we're likely to get! Our email says we'll get:
Strawberries
Eggs
Kohl Rabi
Lettuce
Chinese Cabbage
Scallions
Spinach
Kale
So more greens, which means more salads. I'm really excited to try out the eggs, honestly! I hear local fresh eggs are so much different-tasting than supermarket eggs. Depending on how many we get, I may try to fry/scramble some up on Wednesday night, since Lou is not a huge egg fan. But we also can get cheese and jam and mustard and olive oil! Since Lou and I don't do lobster, that's also an option, but not for us. This CSA was a little bit more expensive than the last one, but I am hoping for a better variety. Time will tell (and I will be picture taking this year too). We also have a *possibility* of trading out some items if they have extras of others if we don't like them. So maybe we can skip all the eggplant this year!
In CSA-related and job-time-reduction news, Lou has been bringing his lunch rather than eating out every day! \o/ I'm hoping this will be a HUGE savings in cost, even if it means we spend a bit more at the supermarket. It's just so much cheaper to buy sliced ham and cheese and bread than to eat out at Taco Bell every day, you know? Plus, healthier! He's still eating out once a week (Mondays) for his dinner since his game is at the store, but he's going to try to eat home on Wednesdays with me (depending on how long it takes to pick up the farmshare), and also eating home on Sundays before going to his other game. We'll still eat out on Thursday nights, and probably one other night a week (I still want my Chinese food!), but it's a huge cutback in spending.
We're also still doing GenCon, as mentioned above. Since we've already set aside the money, and paid for the cost of the con (non-refundable), we can still make it work. We'll just have to be more cautious about spending while there. I rarely buy anything anyway save a few t-shirts, so this year will have to be a non-t-shirt buying year. No biggie. I have too many as it is (and gave a bunch away already).
I am half-hoping my office mate gets her house sold soon and moves to Texas (where her son will be going to school) and then that means they might let me back to work full-time, since they wouldn't have to pay her. I'd need to learn to do some of her work, but no way could I do all of it; I don't have the DB knowledge. It would also mean an end to the thermostat wars, which have been happening since I moved in to share an office with her (she's from India; if the temperature is below 78F, she's cold).
Anyway, time to eat lunch. Sorry I've been absent; I'll try to be a bit better.