long busy weekend, and my legs still hurt!
it's been awhile since i posted. yay work. so here's what's been happening the last few days...
thursday i started my new temp job at united guaranty. i think we insure mortgages, but i'm not entirely sure. something to do with mortgages. since i don't really have much to do with anything, i guess it doesn't matter. anyway, every time a borrower makes a change to his/her policy, a new certificate is generated and it is automatically faxed to the lender through our electronic fax system. sometimes the faxes don't go through properly. it's my job to work with the electronic fax system: look at each error, see if the fax went through or not. if it eventually went through (the system will try up to 5 times to send the fax, so if an error occurs the first try and it goes through on the second, an error log is still generated), then i just delete it. if the fax hasn't gone through, then i get to call the fax number and see what's up with it. maybe it was just busy before and now it's working, in which case i just resend. but more often, the number has changed or was entered incorrectly or something, which means i get to do further research to try to find the correct fax number. most of the time, i can find some number to fax to just by looking in the system, but occasionally i have to actually call the company to get the number. the funny thing about this job is that the certificates we're faxing are pretty much extraneous; 90% of our customers can just look up the information online, and do. but the system is in place, and it is flawed, so i have a job. my other duties include creating accounts for mortgage brokers at various companies so that they can use our online systems; there's a purpose to that, at least.
the job isn't bad. i can listen to music, i can go home early if there's nothing to do, and i have shelly and marlene to chat with. shelly is the girl who had my job before me; she moved to a permanent position in a different department, and she's nice. she drives a mustang and loves tim mcgraw, racing, bullriding, cowboys, and fishing. when i told jorn about her, he said, "you're working with a redneck!" i told shelly this and she laughed and agreed. marlene is another trc temp who works down the hall from me, and she's really nice. having some man troubles and some roommate troubles, though. but she agrees that orlando bloom is a hottie (although she had to ask what movies he's been in!).
so that's my job. i started on thursday and shelly trained me. thursday night i had a nasty headache, but i tried to help jorn pack as best i could. friday shelly continued to train me (ie, we sat in my cube together and chatted, mostly), and we left at 3 because we could. then i went to play ultimate frisbee with MFA folks. players included me, ezra, tom, dan, elan, angie, patrick, casey, gerry, brian, hardy, virgil, jeremy, and i think a couple other people. it was really fun. my bare feet got incredibly filthy, i was all itchy from contact with the grass, and halfway through my legs started hurting and haven't stopped since, but it was fun. i caught at least half of the tosses that were thrown to me (one of which scored a goal) and two of my tosses were caught (although a bunch of my throws were awful and uncatchable). later that night, i watched the third austin powers movie with jorn. shagadelic, baby. the opening sequence was really funny, the only really funny part in the whole movie. some things kind of made you chuckle, and others made you groan and put your face in your hands with shame that you had actually rented this, but i thought the opening sequence made it all worthwhile. while lying in bed that night, i started freaking out hardcore because i had scheduled myself to work at blandwood all weekend and we were supposed to be moving all jorn's stuff with a moving van on sunday. i got quite upset. it was fixed pretty easily, though, as you'll soon see.
saturday, got up early. my legs were so, so sore, especially my calves. but i couldn't just sit around, or even sleep in, because i was due at blandwood at 10:45. only gave one tour. it was better that way. when i got home, i called david (director/curator of blandwood) at his home to see if he had a phone list so i could call some people and find a sub for sunday afternoon. he was really nice, said not to worry about it, and he took care of it (i assume, because i didn't go, and i haven't heard anything about it). anyway, saturday afternoon we went to a cookout at jenny's to celebrate her engagement with miller (a guy, not a beer). it was fun, and some people actually ate my jello. saturday night, watched enterprise with jorn, and then i packed stuff while he was at the radio. i went through almost all of the boxes that were random things and papers that he had been meaning to go through and instead had been moving since boston (some since providence). i threw out a *lot* of stuff. old columbia house brochures. old car insurance stuff (he doesn't even have that car anymore). tons of other things. i collected a huge bag of things to be shredded, like bank statements and old bills--jorn's filing skillz might not be spectacular, but he had kept every bill he ever paid between 2000 and today. a *large* pile of things to shred. sigh. i also made sure to keep every scrap of paper with rhymes on it, or phone numbers that were halfway intelligible, and most of the video game notes, too. i condensed like five big boxes into one smallish flat box of papers and one box of Stuff, plus i also packed up everything that was fragile into a "fragile" box and did a box of cassette tapes, too, plus i did the dishes. all this while stumbling like the bride of frankenstein around jorn's apartment because my legs still were sore and refusing to work. yay for me.
sunday. got up early, did some packing, picked up the truck, did some more packing, called angie and jake. started packing things into the truck. i didn't count how many cd boxes there were, but there were a lot. and angie and jake were exactly the right people to call, because jake is superpackingman. he got us to fit way more things in that truck than we thought we could. jorn and i figured since we weren't quite done packing things in boxes yet (and we kept running out of boxes, which sucked) we'd just take over the big items, like furniture and the cds, to the storage room on sunday, but jake was so enthusiastic we ended up taking a whole bunch of boxes too. from jorn's place we went to my place, and jake disassembled my bedframe (more complicated than i thought it would be) and packed it and my mattress and tv and howard's desk into the truck, and we brought up jorn's mattress and tv and dvd player. from there we went to the uhaul and put everything in the storage room. it all fit with room to spare, and we got to ride on the fun carts down the halls. and when jorn dropped off the truck, since we'd only gone like maybe three miles, the gas gauge was still on full. somehow that "$19.95" truck cost $37, but whateva, most of the stuff got moved. then we took angie and jake out for pizza. pizza is good. then jorn and i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening moving things around in my apartment so we could get the furniture into good places, which was a pain in the ass, especially when dealing with my huge, heavy, and unwieldy desk, but we got all the furniture in place. woot. then we watched toy story and collapsed into bed.
after my post-frisbee shower on friday night, i did not shower again till monday morning.
monday: work was work. afterwards i started cleaning and arranging and straightening up my apartment. it looks pretty livable now--there's just a stack of boxes in the dining room that need to go into storage, plus a few other things that need to be done, but it's looking pretty cozy. i also helped jorn pack more stuff at his place, but we couldn't get a lot done because 1) we still didn't have enough boxes, and 2) he had to make a bunch of phone calls regarding his stolen credit card (which, if he hasn't posted about already, he probably will--i'm typing this in notepad because i'm afraid to spend too much time online, and i haven't checked my friends list in a while). but we collected up all the things that needed to go to my place and took them there, except for the sheets, which jorn went back for because he was doing laundry anyway.
tonight: jorn hoping to get more boxes and pack the rest of the random items strewn around his house. i'm hoping to repot a few of my plants that keep falling over and dying and stuff.
and hi to erin--i'll be adding you to my friends list probably when i get home tonight (again, afraid my internet use is being monitored). i should probably do some work now, but typing this up did kill some wonderful time. :)
thursday i started my new temp job at united guaranty. i think we insure mortgages, but i'm not entirely sure. something to do with mortgages. since i don't really have much to do with anything, i guess it doesn't matter. anyway, every time a borrower makes a change to his/her policy, a new certificate is generated and it is automatically faxed to the lender through our electronic fax system. sometimes the faxes don't go through properly. it's my job to work with the electronic fax system: look at each error, see if the fax went through or not. if it eventually went through (the system will try up to 5 times to send the fax, so if an error occurs the first try and it goes through on the second, an error log is still generated), then i just delete it. if the fax hasn't gone through, then i get to call the fax number and see what's up with it. maybe it was just busy before and now it's working, in which case i just resend. but more often, the number has changed or was entered incorrectly or something, which means i get to do further research to try to find the correct fax number. most of the time, i can find some number to fax to just by looking in the system, but occasionally i have to actually call the company to get the number. the funny thing about this job is that the certificates we're faxing are pretty much extraneous; 90% of our customers can just look up the information online, and do. but the system is in place, and it is flawed, so i have a job. my other duties include creating accounts for mortgage brokers at various companies so that they can use our online systems; there's a purpose to that, at least.
the job isn't bad. i can listen to music, i can go home early if there's nothing to do, and i have shelly and marlene to chat with. shelly is the girl who had my job before me; she moved to a permanent position in a different department, and she's nice. she drives a mustang and loves tim mcgraw, racing, bullriding, cowboys, and fishing. when i told jorn about her, he said, "you're working with a redneck!" i told shelly this and she laughed and agreed. marlene is another trc temp who works down the hall from me, and she's really nice. having some man troubles and some roommate troubles, though. but she agrees that orlando bloom is a hottie (although she had to ask what movies he's been in!).
so that's my job. i started on thursday and shelly trained me. thursday night i had a nasty headache, but i tried to help jorn pack as best i could. friday shelly continued to train me (ie, we sat in my cube together and chatted, mostly), and we left at 3 because we could. then i went to play ultimate frisbee with MFA folks. players included me, ezra, tom, dan, elan, angie, patrick, casey, gerry, brian, hardy, virgil, jeremy, and i think a couple other people. it was really fun. my bare feet got incredibly filthy, i was all itchy from contact with the grass, and halfway through my legs started hurting and haven't stopped since, but it was fun. i caught at least half of the tosses that were thrown to me (one of which scored a goal) and two of my tosses were caught (although a bunch of my throws were awful and uncatchable). later that night, i watched the third austin powers movie with jorn. shagadelic, baby. the opening sequence was really funny, the only really funny part in the whole movie. some things kind of made you chuckle, and others made you groan and put your face in your hands with shame that you had actually rented this, but i thought the opening sequence made it all worthwhile. while lying in bed that night, i started freaking out hardcore because i had scheduled myself to work at blandwood all weekend and we were supposed to be moving all jorn's stuff with a moving van on sunday. i got quite upset. it was fixed pretty easily, though, as you'll soon see.
saturday, got up early. my legs were so, so sore, especially my calves. but i couldn't just sit around, or even sleep in, because i was due at blandwood at 10:45. only gave one tour. it was better that way. when i got home, i called david (director/curator of blandwood) at his home to see if he had a phone list so i could call some people and find a sub for sunday afternoon. he was really nice, said not to worry about it, and he took care of it (i assume, because i didn't go, and i haven't heard anything about it). anyway, saturday afternoon we went to a cookout at jenny's to celebrate her engagement with miller (a guy, not a beer). it was fun, and some people actually ate my jello. saturday night, watched enterprise with jorn, and then i packed stuff while he was at the radio. i went through almost all of the boxes that were random things and papers that he had been meaning to go through and instead had been moving since boston (some since providence). i threw out a *lot* of stuff. old columbia house brochures. old car insurance stuff (he doesn't even have that car anymore). tons of other things. i collected a huge bag of things to be shredded, like bank statements and old bills--jorn's filing skillz might not be spectacular, but he had kept every bill he ever paid between 2000 and today. a *large* pile of things to shred. sigh. i also made sure to keep every scrap of paper with rhymes on it, or phone numbers that were halfway intelligible, and most of the video game notes, too. i condensed like five big boxes into one smallish flat box of papers and one box of Stuff, plus i also packed up everything that was fragile into a "fragile" box and did a box of cassette tapes, too, plus i did the dishes. all this while stumbling like the bride of frankenstein around jorn's apartment because my legs still were sore and refusing to work. yay for me.
sunday. got up early, did some packing, picked up the truck, did some more packing, called angie and jake. started packing things into the truck. i didn't count how many cd boxes there were, but there were a lot. and angie and jake were exactly the right people to call, because jake is superpackingman. he got us to fit way more things in that truck than we thought we could. jorn and i figured since we weren't quite done packing things in boxes yet (and we kept running out of boxes, which sucked) we'd just take over the big items, like furniture and the cds, to the storage room on sunday, but jake was so enthusiastic we ended up taking a whole bunch of boxes too. from jorn's place we went to my place, and jake disassembled my bedframe (more complicated than i thought it would be) and packed it and my mattress and tv and howard's desk into the truck, and we brought up jorn's mattress and tv and dvd player. from there we went to the uhaul and put everything in the storage room. it all fit with room to spare, and we got to ride on the fun carts down the halls. and when jorn dropped off the truck, since we'd only gone like maybe three miles, the gas gauge was still on full. somehow that "$19.95" truck cost $37, but whateva, most of the stuff got moved. then we took angie and jake out for pizza. pizza is good. then jorn and i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening moving things around in my apartment so we could get the furniture into good places, which was a pain in the ass, especially when dealing with my huge, heavy, and unwieldy desk, but we got all the furniture in place. woot. then we watched toy story and collapsed into bed.
after my post-frisbee shower on friday night, i did not shower again till monday morning.
monday: work was work. afterwards i started cleaning and arranging and straightening up my apartment. it looks pretty livable now--there's just a stack of boxes in the dining room that need to go into storage, plus a few other things that need to be done, but it's looking pretty cozy. i also helped jorn pack more stuff at his place, but we couldn't get a lot done because 1) we still didn't have enough boxes, and 2) he had to make a bunch of phone calls regarding his stolen credit card (which, if he hasn't posted about already, he probably will--i'm typing this in notepad because i'm afraid to spend too much time online, and i haven't checked my friends list in a while). but we collected up all the things that needed to go to my place and took them there, except for the sheets, which jorn went back for because he was doing laundry anyway.
tonight: jorn hoping to get more boxes and pack the rest of the random items strewn around his house. i'm hoping to repot a few of my plants that keep falling over and dying and stuff.
and hi to erin--i'll be adding you to my friends list probably when i get home tonight (again, afraid my internet use is being monitored). i should probably do some work now, but typing this up did kill some wonderful time. :)