Category: Work

Here I am at the end of another week

It is NOT as if time was crawling when I was unemployed, but now it’s going so fast I’m feeling like every second is a blur of paper.

I am making stupid mistakes and good catches at work.  I hope it averages out to continued employment.  You just don’t get a team like this every day… everybody is so civilized and hardworking (compared to me).  I could whine about the variability of it, but that’s what food is like.  Prices go up and down in the cycle of the seasons and nothing stays the same.

One of my fave coworkers is off in her homeland visiting rellies. I miss her because she is one of the most intelligent and yet sunny tempered individuals I have recently met. (I keep wanting to introduce her to my son, which would be grossly inappropriate in so many ways). I miss her because the most administrative portion of her job fell to me in her absence and it’s fussy and important.  So, nervous.

I am going to work on crochet and forgiveness this weekend; along with some stuff I should have attended to ages ago.  Although I am tired all the time, certain kinds of energy I didn’t have last fall have come back into my life.

I am having better communication with people I am intimate with, and that makes me calmer.  I don’t feel like everybody should be able to read my mind any more.  I know I can be a sore trial as a friend sometimes, when I’m not expansive and entertaining.

Jeff loaned me the vehicle yesterday.  I got home much faster than usual and it made a big difference to my mood all day.  I am very grateful, especially since it did inconvenience him.

Keith is apparently hiking off to Edmonton in mid May.  I will miss him, but he’s at the point in his life when he’s going to take off and adventure, and that’s good.

I learned from Katie that the baby will take her last name.  That was a calming bit of news.  I had lunch with her on Sunday as I was checking out.  It was a blessing to see her.  She’s still not showing; yet the ultrasound shows what looks to be a very robust looking kiddo.

Rob W phoned last night and we talked writing.  I don’t know what makes me an expert, except that I do more of it.  Volume is not necessarily a good aspect of production – think farts and you’ll know what I mean.  And yet it is by writing crap that we open the channels to the good stuff.

Well, off to find clothes and bus tickets and get out the door.  Boss lady is back today and much activity is in store.

Cuppa Joe serves the best hot chocolate in the city.  Srsly.

I has a gladsad

My son is going to check out Edmonton for work.  I am very pleased, and also just downcast.  If he likes it he will probably be gone by the beginning of May, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be unemployed, which he has not much use for at all.

He and Paul are away so I have to do cat care tonight on the way home from work.

Time to get dressed and be off to work.  I’m dressed, it’s just the wrong clothing.

I have another homily in May, Theology at the Movies.

 

A good week

I’ve had another great week at work; we’re doing a bunch of training for a new computer system and after Epicor’s Avante it’ll seem like roasting marshmallows and drinking beer.

And I got paid.

Gotta like that!

I descuzzed the kitchen surfaces (except the sink, Jeff got to it  before I did) and now am contemplating the agony of getting on the floor and cleaning out the fridge, which smells like Something Dead, since bending knees and back does not suit me.  I have had to learn how to step down off the bus all over again; if I lead with my right foot I nearly collapse on the ground from the pain, so I have to remember it’s left foot first.

Jeff and I are very much enjoying Downton Abbey and recommend it.

Coming up – last episodes of Warehouse 13, the season ender for Justified, more Archer and hopefully more Rick & Morty.  And Game of Thrones starts up again tomorrow night.

I need to transfer some music onto my phone to relieve the tedium of the bus ride, and also maybe some TED talks or books on tape.  Apparently the Dunnett novels are all available but of course I haven’t found a free one.

I opened up the novel again and worked away at it for a bit last night.  I’ve booked the Easter weekend to do nothing but write, but that’s two weekends away.  Maybe I’ll even finish it; there’s a novella length single scene I have to write for close to the beginning of the book, and it’s going to be hopelessly and most soppily romantic, so I’ll have to really be in the mood.

Haven’t heard from Katie lately, but apparently she’s not throwing up constantly any more, so yay.  She lost a lot of weight, poor lamb, and that is never good.  It’s as well that we’re made of tough stuff.

I answered the door today to a couple of Xtian types wearing my screaming blue “I am on the side of the scientists’ t-shirt, which I acquired from a geekgrrl at Conflikt VI.  Happy days! Declined their dead tree, have enough of my own thanks.

It has been more or less unremarked that the first climate change refugees left their Pacific Island this week.  Very sad.

The global banana crop is about to fail due to a pathogen which has now been found on every continent. Also, sad.

 

 

Weigh in

I hadn’t weighed myself in a while, but my clothes were getting tighter, so I was delighted to see from the scale this morning that the weight I lost after I broke my shoulder has stayed off.  Now I’m getting ridiculous amounts of exercise, since I have to walk a minimum of 2 kilometres a day through terrain plus two sets of transit stairs just to get to work, so I expect the weight will stay off.  My hips and back are better; my knees and feet are shouting things ungodly at me.  I’m sleeping better and staying up later.

Jeff has commented that he’s getting interesting pings from various muscle groups now that he’s back exercising regularly with his new rowing machine.  One of these days I’ll check it out but I’m never wearing shoes when I’m downstairs…

Many hugs to Jeff for letting me borrow the car yesterday after my phone freaked out and I ended up being late getting out the door in consequence … I brought home some treats.

The family that ________s together…. 

In one of those bizarre coincidences, I mentioned the cave of Chauvet in my last homily, and until she broke her ankle, our speaker this Sunday was to be a woman taking as her text Werner Herzog’s unbelievably amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  Since she can’t do it, we’re subbing in three church members talking about their creative paths, and I helped one of them since he was being put to it on short notice and he said he was feeling apprehensive and I gave him some advice.  He appeared happy to get it (my enthusiasm is a substitute for skill sometimes) and I await with pleasure how he will deal with the creative challenge of a minihom. So I would have enjoyed the booked homily and will definitely enjoy the substitute homily, and that’s pretty much how she goes at church.  Which reminds me, I should scare up a ride.

Benedict Cumberbatch will be taking on Hamlet in 2015, live somewhere in England.  Sigh.

Currently watching: Archer Vice (interesting, but no longer quite as funny), Rick and Morty (most recent show? the last two minutes took me to an unanticipated height of awesome), Justified (Boyd Crowder, how you do blow things up!), Downton Abbey, NCIS, NCIS Body Count, CSI, Person of Interest, Castle, plus the occasional Frontline and 60 Minutes.  I’ve pretty much given up on White Collar, mostly because those whackdoodles at Netflix don’t appear to want to stream it to my profile, and Jeff’s burned out on Burn Notice (ha!) although I still want to finish the show.  Person of Interest continues to be the show that Jeff and I are most likely to halt on the PVR so we can talk about the issues they are raising.  It’s a show that demands close attention and thought, and Root walked the dog Bear last episode.

Jeff is trying to get caught up on March Madness, otherwise known as the Squeaky Squeaky show from the sound of all those basketball shoes squeaking on those nice wood floors.

I wonder if two zone bus passes are available yet?  I’ll need one of those.  I do think longingly of getting a car, but I’ll be better off in at at least three ways without one.

Happy Friday to you all!  The port strike is over, although the drivers are still plenty choked.

 

Chubblies

Chubblies is Lady Miss B’s name for the cherries which are blooming in such profusion in Vancouver right now… to the point where I curse every time it stops raining, since the pollen count is grievous whenever they get a chance to start pushing out their nasty tree sex stuff.

I have a morning routine now, always pleasant. It’s an hour door to door now, with lots of lovely exercise. When the weather is crappy I will get off at Main because it is both safer and flatter.  Currently I have to cross two two-lane roads and two sets of train tracks with no level crossing, through a bramble bush, all in rapid succession, to get to work.  I am a determined older worker.

I spent thirty dollars on tea and tea related items yesterday, as I am tired of drinking crappy tea. And Friday Afternoon Tea is far away.

My new welovecolors.com order came!

Brain training doesn’t work, says a crappily researched article on the internet today.  I subscribe to Lumosity, and it has done two things that I can see for sure.  One is that my field of vision is huge now; I can see what’s going on in front of me with proper attention, to the point when I will catch things on tv shows and Jeff will run it back to look, and Jeff is an attentive viewer.  It made driving easier, too, I felt more confident that I could see the full picture. The other is that my short term memory is definitely better.  Not improved to the point I am happy with it, but better.  Anyway, as long as I see benefits I’ll keep training.

We have weekly staff meetings. Happy sigh. With Skype, even.

 

Shorter commute

I was only an hour door to door getting home last night so that was pleasant.  I’m going to try to work something a little different this morning going in as well.  There will be a ‘sweet spot’.

This is an entertaining comic.  Human sexuality is weird, but what the animal kingdom gets up to is amazing. Very mildly unsafe for work.

Indian food for dinner last night.  Desi Turku (2020 says THAT’S DESI TURKA AND WE ORDERED FROM THEM LAST WEEK)  is a new restaurant but I don’t think we’ll be ordering from them again, their food is all too salty for Jeff’s taste – I can tell but I don’t mind.

Sandy is calling me this morning for a tarot reading.  Wonder what’s up?

 

Payday!

They pay up to date.  Amazing.  I love working for a small company.

The commute does not have any stinky people on it, on the basis of three days’ worth, although somewhere around Fraser somebody gets on who smells so strong of dank (in the marijuana sense of the word) that my eyes pop open and I wanna yell, “Where’s the party!?”

I have made a listless and ineffectual stab at the laundry.  Right now I want to write. (and I did, 250 words).

I’m doing coffee in church tomorrow with Sue.  I am bringing cheese and crackers.

No comment

Katie is feeling so crappy she may be visiting the ER today.  I hope she takes a minute to text me.

I won’t be commenting any more about work unless something really interesting happens.  And since all I’m doing is working and sleeping I suspect my blog will be even more boring than it has been lately.  Unless you hear otherwise, I’m happy.

Schnitzel for dinner yesterday.  The greek salad that came with was full of moldy vegetables.  Sigh.

There’s a Cuppa Joe’s café in the complex where I work.  I now have a place to go when I’m early for work, which, when the weather is inclement is a big deal, because there’s no shelter from the bus stop to the office.

Jeff looked at me yesterday and said, “I guess the laundry is winning.”

It’s a new day

I have a  long commute and work right next to the Fraser River (as in, if there’s a century flood, goodbye office and possibly job and life), but I am really happy with their offer and my decision to take it.  I’ll be happier when I have my own log in so I can own my own mistakes (I made a doozy today, but we quietly tidied it up.)  Also, no tea.  There’s coffee but no tea.

I’m doing honest work for an honest day’s pay.  It’s all good. They made me work yesterday!

The office will be moving to larger quarters in the next couple of months.  Ah, office moves!  I survived two at Statpower, and I changed desks about once a year for more than a decade, so I’m an old hand.

Breakfast for supper last night, made French toast.

What happened?

I am really nervous about going back to work.  What if I screw up something major on my first day?  I know we’re talking almonds, not arteries, but even so…

They gave me a signed employment contract with a list of my duties.  I have never had that.  It’s like a miracle.

I’ve been reading and watching all the speculation about what happened to that Malaysian flight 370 and it’s like watching the media lose its groupmind 24.7.

It appears this is the single political act of an angry relative of a Malaysian politico who got stuck in jail on trumped up sodomy charges.

What a world.

 

From Lady Miss B’s blog:

 

Customer: “This photocopier is so expensive!”
Floor manager: “Why, I remember when it was just a farthing!”
Customer: “Are you sassing me?”
Floor manager: “Yes ma’am.”
Customer: “That’s why I shop here.”

Another customer: “Are you eight feet or nine feet tall?”
Floor manager (who is 6’2): “3 and a half, sir, plus Pharmasave-brand insoles.”

I love my co-workers.

 

Waiting to hear back

I am waiting to hear the results of my interview yesterday, which is for a job a short commute away working for a privately owned company.  I was pleased with getting the interview.  I will know by Friday about the job I interviewed for on the 5th.

I have printed out my manuscript so far and will start assembling it.

I am feeling pretty good today, and the sunshine is most glorious.

I’ve been invited for a jam on Saturday.  Picture me having slept in my clothes and hungover for church next Sunday….

Wonderful interview

I had a fabulous interview yesterday.  The owner and the office manager interviewed me, seriatim, and I want to work there and I hope they want to hire me.  It’s a small growing company.

500 words yesterday.  I am not settling.  If, as I suspect, they hire me to start on Monday (!?) I have a couple of days to finish the novel (just joking, but I should make like Winsocki and buckle down).

Jeff kindly loaned me his car for the interview, thank you!

I give a homily at church this weekend.  I need to get the children’s story finished.

This is a remarkable photoset.