When Life Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro...
Life... has just taken a turn for the weird. More weird, I mean. Aside from some personal drama that I don't wish to go into and some extremely fun writing in Three Thieves that people'll eventually see (mmmmm, heist! holy shit, heist note! brain going owieee), work has done something odd.
Following a recent annual evaluation, my workplace sent me a letter. I picked it up last night but figured it was just a 'hi, your tax category/employment code/color of your cubie walls has changed .015%, so we have to legally notify you of this' kind of thing. Wrong-oh. When I opened it this morning, it read:
1. Guess what? As of your most recent annual evaluation, you've reached the top limit of your pay-grade for your particular category of employment. This means No Moar 4% Raises.
2. However... since you did a damn fine job, instead we're giving you a 4%-of-your-annual-salary Incentive Bonus. So you get some money anyway, only all at once instead of per paycheck.
My brain's kind of going "............urk?............"
I mean, it's a GOOD thing, I get this nice chunky grand-and-something check (it's going straight into the Savings-Which-Cannot-Be-Touched account.) And that is shiny indeed. On the other hand, it means that even though the cost of living will rise, my paycheck no longer has that option. And while I'm okay at the moment, that means I need to start thinking about other ways to earn money in the future. I have no idea what income tax season'll mean this year, what with inherited money and stuff-- I do my own taxes via www.TaxAct.com, which I like MUCH better than TurboTax-- but I may have to ask a few professional questions this year. We'll see. **ponders**
Moving right along...
I have to tell this just to make y'all giggle. See, when I buy produce that doesn't do well in the fridge (apples, potatoes, citrus sometimes) I usually put it on a stepstool in my kitchen or in the hanging wire-baskets over my sink. I bought a box of 5 lbs of clementines, the tiny mandarine-orange mutations that are so tasty, and I had those, some small red potatoes and a few apples on said stool. After a couple of days I noticed a surprising lack of all three, i.e., way fewer clemintines, ONE potato, and two apples where there'd been four. I then managed to catch one of my ferrets (Tan) stealing a clementine-- he was running like hell with one dangling from his jaws. And so, last night, I went hunting.
And I'll be mogadored if I didn't unearth no less than five potatoes, two apples and eleven clementines from beneath my futon couch. See, it has this slant where the back meets the wall, and I cleaned beneath it not long ago-- my floor, for a change, is very neat at the moment, there're not even shoes under the couch. So I didn't think of there. Tan, however, had, and the little monster'd been stockpiling fresh produce like he was expecting WWIII to start any day now. He was highly indignant that I'd happened on his store and resisted my raiding the cupboard with hops and wardances and lots of enraged bocking. Considering that he had to move these one at a time-- I mean, 18 things!-- I guess I can't blame him. The apples were a bit banged up, the potatoes were okay and the clementines, while perfectly sound, looked pretty scruffy; I chopped 'em into quarters and juiced them, and then I gave Tan a treat for not biting my ankles. I have to admire his enterprising spirit; most weasles would've stopped at three or four, not carried eighteen pieces of produce away. **snort**
Okay, back to work for me. Gonna be a long day, I think.