Seriously, I think 2011 hates me...
Sorry, sorry, still no chapter 7 for OWS. My email to Aera went into a black hole, so she didn't realize that there was a chapter to edit. She's on it now, but that means no chapter at this moment. I'm trying to work on ch8 in the meantime, but man, it's been hard to focus lately.
However, I do have a birthday present from the_god_of_sun to share with you--Squall from OWS! I do so love the pic and I hope you enjoy, too.
Last you all heard, I had a bad interview. No new interview since then, but I'm thinking that nothing will come up until September or October at this point. I'm so done with my current job, but more about that later.
It's been consistently in the high 90s in Colorado this summer, and of course, my air conditioner died. Completely. It came with the house, so it's 10yrs old and it isn't much of a surprise that it finally died, but man, it had to be now? Two years ago, it was the heater. Last year, it was the water heater. Now the A/C. I just can't keep up with this, especially when I'm being paid much lower than what I should. Again, hoping for a new job soon.
I went home to my parents for my birthday, and two days before leaving, Skid had another seizure. At 4am before I had to go to work. That puts him at about one seizure a month, when he's not going to the vet. Stress events seem to be his big trigger, so I wonder if he's having nightmares or something like that.
I had a great time with my parents, although it was only for a couple of days. My dad is scaring the crap out of me, though. He has decided that he's bored with life, and therefore is taking up flying again. This man is 70 next year and has the memory of a spastic squirrel. Seriously, we are worried that he may be developing Alzheimer, which we always assumed that his father had. Recently, he told me this whole story about confusing the Itunes button with the Ipod button on his Iphone, and he expects to fly a plane with a hundred more buttons??? Yeah.... Whenever I try to voice my worry, he just says that I'll be rich if he crashes and dies, and this doesn't please me. At least my mother is a wise woman and said from the start that she will NOT be flying with him, that she doesn't want two parents gone from one crash. Still, every time I talk to my father, he makes me more worried and I really, really hope this is a passing phase of his.
Then last Friday night, my friend who tried to commit suicide in June made a Facebook post of "anyone around?" and then made a comment that someone needed to take his gun away and that he had drank a half-bottle of vodka. Then he made a Facebook post that, seriously, someone had to take his gun. The next morning when we read those posts, a mutual friend couldn't get a hold of him and I couldn't either. The mutual friend called the police, and they knew of our friend and went to check on him. Meanwhile, I knew that the friend never told his family about the first attempt and it never settled well with me. With these FB posts, enough was enough. I told his family, freaked out his brother in the process.
Turns out my friend was okay, passed out in his apartment. He turned over his gun, but got really angry at the idea of going back to the hospital. According to him, it was a bad mistake. He was drunk, remembered that he wanted to get rid of his gun that he had for shooting range purposes, and decided that FB would be better than calling people at 10pm on a Friday night. He didn't want to do anything, but yeah, that's NOT the way to do it. Long story short, he's okay, he's out of the hospital, and he hates himself for stupid decisions rather than hating us friends for calling the police and his family. Still, last weekend was a very, very stressful weekend. Spoke to his mother plenty of times, which included the whole "why aren't you dating him?" talk (which isn't fun telling a mother). Hate to be selfish here, but I honestly could have done without that whole mess. ^^;
Now, work. Turnover is shit. In the last five weeks, our group of eleven people has lost five people; almost half of our group is gone! This has made things very frustrating, especially when our managers have decided to take the route of hiring non-degree people to try to keep someone longer than a few months. So yeah, now I'm being paid a whole dollar more than people who don't have a freaking degree. I'm really to the point of walking out the door, but in all reality, I can't. No one is hiring the unemployed, so I'm going to stick with it for now. I just keep up the mantra of me being gone by October.
Meanwhile, something else came up at work, and long story short, I talked with a director within human resources about our turnover problems and general management issues. And this week has been crazy in terms of management. They feel out of control with their employees, so they have taken a strangle-hold on the things they can control. One of those things is cracking down on hoodies. Yes, evil hoodies that people wear because the A/C goes out of control on occasion. I mentioned this to the HR person and her immediate response was, uh, we don't have a dress code. Jeans is the norm at work, and there's nothing written about hoodies.
Overall, I had a good talk with the HR person and I honestly think she wants to figure out solutions. She was funny, too, mentioning how she was disappointed that I was set on leaving since she wished that she had a "spy" in the trenches to see if any reforms that happen are being received well. She also mentioned that she was disappointed by my leaving because I'm obviously the type of person who tackles everything with my all (Bachelors and Masters in chemistry, MBA in Accounting, passed all of the CPA exams in the first round) and that's the type of person who can easily be used in any role within a company... but no one took advantage of that, so I'm going. It's nice that someone realizes the opportunity they fucked up, though.
And thus, 2011 still sucks. I was even thinking about taking a fiscal year approach starting in July (per raceulfson's great idea), but yeah, obviously that wouldn't have made a lick of difference. I'm sorry to say that all of this has affected my ability to write, but I hope you all can understand. ^^; I will do my best, and OWS will be finished before the end of 2011, no matter what 2011 has to say about it.
However, I do have a birthday present from the_god_of_sun to share with you--Squall from OWS! I do so love the pic and I hope you enjoy, too.
Last you all heard, I had a bad interview. No new interview since then, but I'm thinking that nothing will come up until September or October at this point. I'm so done with my current job, but more about that later.
It's been consistently in the high 90s in Colorado this summer, and of course, my air conditioner died. Completely. It came with the house, so it's 10yrs old and it isn't much of a surprise that it finally died, but man, it had to be now? Two years ago, it was the heater. Last year, it was the water heater. Now the A/C. I just can't keep up with this, especially when I'm being paid much lower than what I should. Again, hoping for a new job soon.
I went home to my parents for my birthday, and two days before leaving, Skid had another seizure. At 4am before I had to go to work. That puts him at about one seizure a month, when he's not going to the vet. Stress events seem to be his big trigger, so I wonder if he's having nightmares or something like that.
I had a great time with my parents, although it was only for a couple of days. My dad is scaring the crap out of me, though. He has decided that he's bored with life, and therefore is taking up flying again. This man is 70 next year and has the memory of a spastic squirrel. Seriously, we are worried that he may be developing Alzheimer, which we always assumed that his father had. Recently, he told me this whole story about confusing the Itunes button with the Ipod button on his Iphone, and he expects to fly a plane with a hundred more buttons??? Yeah.... Whenever I try to voice my worry, he just says that I'll be rich if he crashes and dies, and this doesn't please me. At least my mother is a wise woman and said from the start that she will NOT be flying with him, that she doesn't want two parents gone from one crash. Still, every time I talk to my father, he makes me more worried and I really, really hope this is a passing phase of his.
Then last Friday night, my friend who tried to commit suicide in June made a Facebook post of "anyone around?" and then made a comment that someone needed to take his gun away and that he had drank a half-bottle of vodka. Then he made a Facebook post that, seriously, someone had to take his gun. The next morning when we read those posts, a mutual friend couldn't get a hold of him and I couldn't either. The mutual friend called the police, and they knew of our friend and went to check on him. Meanwhile, I knew that the friend never told his family about the first attempt and it never settled well with me. With these FB posts, enough was enough. I told his family, freaked out his brother in the process.
Turns out my friend was okay, passed out in his apartment. He turned over his gun, but got really angry at the idea of going back to the hospital. According to him, it was a bad mistake. He was drunk, remembered that he wanted to get rid of his gun that he had for shooting range purposes, and decided that FB would be better than calling people at 10pm on a Friday night. He didn't want to do anything, but yeah, that's NOT the way to do it. Long story short, he's okay, he's out of the hospital, and he hates himself for stupid decisions rather than hating us friends for calling the police and his family. Still, last weekend was a very, very stressful weekend. Spoke to his mother plenty of times, which included the whole "why aren't you dating him?" talk (which isn't fun telling a mother). Hate to be selfish here, but I honestly could have done without that whole mess. ^^;
Now, work. Turnover is shit. In the last five weeks, our group of eleven people has lost five people; almost half of our group is gone! This has made things very frustrating, especially when our managers have decided to take the route of hiring non-degree people to try to keep someone longer than a few months. So yeah, now I'm being paid a whole dollar more than people who don't have a freaking degree. I'm really to the point of walking out the door, but in all reality, I can't. No one is hiring the unemployed, so I'm going to stick with it for now. I just keep up the mantra of me being gone by October.
Meanwhile, something else came up at work, and long story short, I talked with a director within human resources about our turnover problems and general management issues. And this week has been crazy in terms of management. They feel out of control with their employees, so they have taken a strangle-hold on the things they can control. One of those things is cracking down on hoodies. Yes, evil hoodies that people wear because the A/C goes out of control on occasion. I mentioned this to the HR person and her immediate response was, uh, we don't have a dress code. Jeans is the norm at work, and there's nothing written about hoodies.
Overall, I had a good talk with the HR person and I honestly think she wants to figure out solutions. She was funny, too, mentioning how she was disappointed that I was set on leaving since she wished that she had a "spy" in the trenches to see if any reforms that happen are being received well. She also mentioned that she was disappointed by my leaving because I'm obviously the type of person who tackles everything with my all (Bachelors and Masters in chemistry, MBA in Accounting, passed all of the CPA exams in the first round) and that's the type of person who can easily be used in any role within a company... but no one took advantage of that, so I'm going. It's nice that someone realizes the opportunity they fucked up, though.
And thus, 2011 still sucks. I was even thinking about taking a fiscal year approach starting in July (per raceulfson's great idea), but yeah, obviously that wouldn't have made a lick of difference. I'm sorry to say that all of this has affected my ability to write, but I hope you all can understand. ^^; I will do my best, and OWS will be finished before the end of 2011, no matter what 2011 has to say about it.