Domestic Geek

I've been trying not to write about work stuff on here anymore. Mostly because it's boring, crappy news. SSDD. I need to write about this, though, because it is really bugging me.

With the "economic downturn," first we started having to pay part of our health care and then they stopped contributing to our retirement plans. Next came the mandatory week furloughs. Normally, I would understand why we have to take a week off each quarter (using vacation if you've got it, unpaid if you don't), but the management has been calling in other people to work OT to get the work done while we're still being required to take mandatory time off. How is this saving the company any money? Not to mention that it's causing morale issues amongst those that are not offered overtime. It's lame. Couple that with a cryptic note in our paychecks today that doesn't really say whether we get the 4th of July off or not, and attitudes amongst my coworkers is dropping further in the toilet.

It's looking like once Marcus and I get back from vacation, I'm going to have to find a secondary source of income. I won't have any vacation hours left and I can barely pay my bills with my bare minimum paycheck. Now that I've gone back to my old position, my opportunities to sneak in an extra hour or two of overtime a week are gone.

I know I should be grateful I have a job. There are a lot of people out there who don't have one. Still, the nonsense occurring daily is driving me insane. I get grumpy when I can't afford yarn or Tokyo Joe's.

On a related note, I'd never be this hard up for a job. Apparently, if you want to work for the city of Bozeman, MT, you have to give up user names and passwords. According to an article on cnet:

The Rocky Mountain city instructs all job applicants to divulge their user names and passwords for "any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."

Uh, invasion of privacy anyone? Shame on them for asking and shame on those who willingly give up such information. No freaking way am I giving those up for the possibility of getting a job.I agree that they have the right to base employment decisions on what an applicant may have posted online, but demanding access to logins? Disgraceful. I really am starting to wonder what country I live in anymore.

Thanks to Google Alerts, I found another "Domestic Geek" blog. This person has found some pretty cool things to share, so go check out another Domestic Geek. (We're going to take over the world!)

Oddly enough, I'm being neither Domestic or Geeky lately. OK, still knitting and stuff, so a little domestic. I still haven't finished coding this site. My 101 Things in 1001 Days site is atrocious! I found a neat Wordpress theme that I'd like to try to make work, but don't have the energy. I bought myself a new mouse for my birthday last week that is still sitting in its box. I want to sew. I want to scrapbook. I want to draw. I want to bake. I even want to clean my house. I just don't have the energy. I blame work.

Work is literally draining the life out of me. I'm on my feet 12-14 hours a day doing manual labor. It's not even work I enjoy doing. I've lost all respect for my superiors. I was actually told my my main supervisor the other day that my standards are too high and I need to quit expecting so much out of others. Really? Is it too much that we have guidelines as to how things are supposed to be done and I expect other employees to do things right? Whatever happened to expecting more and people will rise to the challenge? It isn't like we've been particularly busy and people have more than ample time to double check their work. There is absolutely no consequences for those employees that do a half-assed job and jack stuff up. Some days I'm amazed we're still in business with all the stuff that gets screwed up. <sarcasm>I guess I'm out of line.</sarcasm> Also, I don't have time to cook healthy meals for half the week, so I end up eating crap late at night. My insomnia is back. My feet hurt so bad some days I can barely walk. I know I need to find something else to do with my life, I just don't know what yet.

OK, that's not true. I do know what I want, I just don't know how to get there.

I know I haven't posted the details here yet about the crap that went down at work. I'll do a Reader's Digest version (as my Mom used to say) soon. Anyway, normally I'd be stressing because I'd be leaving for work in about 10 minutes, but tomorrow is my first day back on day shifts. w00t! The hell of working 6pm-6am (and worse the Midnight to 6am shift on Wednesdays) is over. I'm going to be doing a different job than I was and honestly, this new job will be very stressful and boring, but it will be a welcome break to the PITA that my old job had become. This was a choice of a lesser of two evils, so I'm still keeping my eyes open for a better opportunity. It's still 12 hour shifts (7am-7pm) and the schedule will still flip flop every 4 months. I'll get the details later in the week as to what days I will be working. At least I'll get my Friday night date night back with Marcus and I'll be able to go to my knitting groups again. That said, I'd better head off to bed. I sure hope somebody told the evening supervisor that my schedule changed and nobody tries calling me after midnight to find out why I didn't come to work. LOL

Saturday is our company's annual holiday party. Neither Marcus nor I are attending. The biggest factor is that Marcus is not a social guy and I have no desire to go by myself. Also, the people that are attending are mostly those that I wouldn't care to socialize with outside of work. You know the type...their only form of entertainment is getting stinking, stupid drunk, especially with an open bar provided. It's being hosted at a venue way down in the South metro area, way too far for me to drive, especially if I had anything to drink. One of the people organizing it, while trying to finalize the list of who was and was not attending, mentioned that this party costs the company $100 per employee that attends (since most bring a spouse or guest). Geez, I'd much rather just have the $100 as a bonus or something.

We will be down in Colorado Springs and Woodland Park instead on Saturday, though. It's tree cutting time.

I didn't get to go to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert tonight. Boooooo! Maybe next year.

Van Halen tickets for the Denver show go on sale on Saturday. Too bad I can't find anybody to go to that show with me, either.

I ran across an article today that mentioned something about how you can tell whether a blog is good or bad by the amount of comments it has. The author's premise is that if a blog is not generating a conversation, then it's bad. I'm getting so sick of reading stuff like that. There are as many reasons for blogs to exist as there are people that have them. You can't declare a blog to be wrong or bad just because it doesn't fit into some preconceived notion of what a blog "should" be. If someone wants to have conversation, be popular and have tons of traffic, so be it. I don't really care if people read this or not. I blog for my own personal reasons. If I'm not interesting to others, so be it.

I was told at work today that they are interviewing a new preflighter tomorrow and if they hire this person, I'll have to give up my archiving room duties. I know I should be happy because it means I'm almost a full-fledged prepress operator, but at the same time I'm sad and almost angry that "my room" is going to be under the control of someone else. I like working back there. Not only does it give me a chance to get away from everyone for a while, it breaks up the monotony of being on the computer for a straight 8-hour shift. I've worked damn hard to get that place in order and it is the closest thing I'll ever have working there to having my own space. I'm sure it will all be fine in the end, I'm just a little bit of a control freak and I have to not let my perfectionism not get in the way of advancing my career. That said, I hope if this person is a woman that I can tolerate her. I personally can't take another woman in the department that I can't stand (I have a really hard time getting along with a lot of women - females for the most part really annoy me).

Well, I guess I'd better head off to bed. I always end up staying up too late on Thursdays because I really hate working Fridays. It ends up being the most stupid and draining day of the week. The energy in the department is always negative and yucky on Fridays due to the nature of our business and the particular supervisor that runs the shift. It's also not a payday Friday, which is worse.

I've got quilting and decorating to look forward to this weekend, though. We're supposed to get a little snow tomorrow, but I hope it's not a lot. I'd like to get the rest of my lights up this weekend and be done with it. We're going to go cut our tree on the 8th, so I'd like to have everything else done before that. We're hosting the annual Christmas Eve party for our friends and I vowed I would not save shopping, decorating and baking until the very last minute like I always do. I actually purchased the fudge-making supplies while I was out today.

I bought How the Grinch Stole Christmas today at the iTunes store with some of my birthday credits. I wish they had more classic Christmas stuff on there.

Dang, just realized I forgot to do Thursday Thirteen yet again. Thanksgiving seems like it was just yesterday — how did a whole week go by already?

Heh, now I know why I didn't want to go to work yesterday. My intuition must have been warning me that the chick I am having issues with decided to show for a couple of hours. Yeah, she's the last person I want to see on a day I volunteer to do extra work. I had a relatively peaceful 6 hour shift today, though. A lot of my filing in the Archive Room is now caught up.

Depending on how this week goes, I'm going to try to take the whole weekend off next weekend. I have much to do and would really like to have two whole days away from work. Of course, if I don't put any OT in during the week and the weekend is the only time I can get some extra hours, I'll probably take them.

I stopped by the Great American Quilt Factory and found my final piece of fabric I need. w00t! Now I just need to clean up the mess I've made recently in my craft room and get quilting!

When is enough enough? I saw an ad in a magazine today for the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. Um, how about Hollywood get off their collective asses and come up with an original move idea. I'm so sick of old stuff being regurgitated. Seriously.

I watched a movie called Surf's Up last night. It was ok, but definitely not one of the better animated movies I've ever seen. I know they were trying to do it in a documentary style, but it was a bad documentary style. I wasn't impressed.

I agreed to go into work today, but I couldn't make myself get out of bed. When I finally got going and started driving, I really couldn't do it. Yesterday was a really trying day and I really didn't want anything to do with that place. I got as far as I-225/Parker Rd., then decided I was going to go check out the new location of a quilt store in Parker that I used to frequent instead. I called my supervisor and asked if it was OK if I came in tomorrow instead and then I continued on. The store I was going to is called High Prairie Quilts. I originally found this store way back when I worked at AutoZone and I used to have to drive the parts truck to Parker to deliver filters and junk to this one mechanic. The quilt store was in the same shopping center and I'd stop in and browse if I didn't feel like going back to work right away. I would tell my manager that traffic was really bad if he asked what took so long, and as that was the case on a lot of days, it didn't hurt to use it. One day when I went down there looking for something in particular, they were no longer there. I didn't think anything more about it until I started working where I am now. We actually print their newsletter, so I had their new address and made a mental note that if I ever had to go by that area again, I would stop in.

I found a pattern for a table runner that I really want to do, but except for three fabrics, they didn't have what I wanted. This started one of my "Toodles." This is what Marcus calls my little treks that takes me all over town, the state or into another state (as one trip took me to Wyoming). I used to do it so frequently that Marcus would joke with me after I'd had a day off about what state my "Toodle" had taken me to today. Since my periods of underemployment hit a couple of years ago and the soaring gas prices continue to rise, I've not allowed myself to take such trips. It felt really good to just drive about.

After Parker, I hit Holly's Quilt Cabin at Holly and County Line Rd. I then went to The Creative Needle over on Broadway (South of Arapahoe). There is also a JoAnn's in that shopping center, so I hit that and all quilting notions were 50% off! I got myself a quilting square and a mini iron that I've been wanting for over 10 years and never allowed myself to get. I then went to Fabric Expressions on Platte River Drive and Bowles, but they were no longer there. The website is still up, but I don't know whether the store closed or moved. After lunch at Wendy's, I continued on to Harriet's Treadle Arts in Wheat Ridge over on 44th, between Wadsworth and Sheridan. I checked out the Pointsettias and other holiday goods at Paulino Gardens. My final stop was Heirloom Treasures' new location up at 136th & Huron. I wanted to make a stop at The Great American Quilt Factory over on Hampden & Tamarac, but by this time I was tired and I wanted to do was head home. I'll hit that one on my way home from work tomorrow. I think that's everywhere I went. I may have made a couple of other stops, but I'm not remembering at the moment.

While I was at Paulino Gardens, I saw the most pretty purple Pointsettias. There were also some navy blue ones. I was curious as to how they bred such a color, touched a leaf to inspect it and ended up with purple dye or paint all over my thumb and index finger. Yeah, these things are white plants that are airbrushed or something. Yuck. I would've realized that if I had seen the neon pink, blue or orange ones I came across later. I didn't get any yet because they're still a little pricey. I know if I wait until closer to Christmas or go to Lowes or Home Depot, I can get them cheaper.

It became official this evening that Marcus and I are hosting the annual Christmas Eve get-together. I've got a lot to do between now and Christmas to get ready, especially if I want to actually finish this table runner I got today. I'm also making a Christmas theme for the blog that I hope to have live next Saturday (since I totally never finished my fall theme). Guess I'd better head to bed so I can get to work tomorrow and then get cracking on holiday stuff.

Heh, I totally did what I said I wasn't going to do yesterday. I racked up almost 5 hours of OT today. I had a project that was kicking my ass and I wanted to see it through to completion. Partially because I love a challenge and didn't want it to beat me and partially because it was a real learning experience. What sucks is the files that were submitted shouldn't have been allowed. They were everything that a PDF for print shouldn't be (RGB, missing fonts, low resolution images), but we were told to make it work. Frustrating.

I did make it to the liquor store to get the orange liqueur I needed for my cranberry recipe. I also splurged and got myself a six pack of Michelob.

I've baked my pumpkin pies and am in the middle of a cheesecake. Marcus is going to put the turkey in the oven for me while I'm at work. I'm not sure if I'll put in my full shift tomorrow. Turns out the supervisor working is not one of my favorites. We'll see how busy we are and how crazy she makes me.