Short n sweet
Mood:  mischievious
Slept in the new house yesterday. Took a shower too. That's about the most exciting thing that's happened in the past week. Well, that I can talk about anyway. :) Point is, I'm alive, we're moving. Nuff said.

Curses, foiled again!
Well, I called the lady at Camera Concepts on Friday. She said she'd been doing some thinking, and would probably be restructuring the open position. As a result, she won't be making a decision for a couple of weeks. She said she'd call me. Yeah, sure. I'll call her if I haven't heard from her by Aug 1.

On a more positive note, a former coworker of mine will be coming back to work soon. This is very good news, for a couple of reasons. First, I miss the girl, she makes me laugh. Second, she'll take over second shift, so Jim and I will both be on third. This means we'll be able to use only one vehicle, and will be able to afford things like...food...lol. Or an occasional night on the town. The manager says she'll try to make sure Jim still has at least 35 hours a week. So, our budget should stay about the same. The best part about this is that if we're both on the same shift, we'll see a LOT more of each other. Right now, I get home from work at about 8:30am. Jim wakes up (sort of) and talks to me for a little bit. He gets up, and I go to sleep. Later that day, Jim wakes me up to tell me he's going to work, and I get up. I putter around for a while, and I usually end up calling Jim at work. Sometimes, I go and pick up (or fix, God help us both) dinner, and take it to him. Then, at about 10:45, I go to work. Jim comes home about 11:30. So, on a typical day, we spend about an hour together, sometimes up to three. We rarely have days off together, when I have a day off, Jim works my shift. On his day(s) off we see more of each other, but still no more than about 5 hours. How on earth we can call that a relationship, I don't know. But, we're doing the best we can. Things are bound to get better before too long. God willing, they won't get much worse.

Eh?!?
Mood:  not sure
Called the lady at Camera Concepts on Friday, she'd had someone with more experience come in, and was going to interview her and another person, but said she'd call me on Monday. Well, as of 10:30 Wed night, I haven't heard from her. Plan to call her in the morning. By the time anyone reads this, I should know whether I got the job or not. I'd be crossing my fingers if it wasn't so hard to type that way. :p

In other news, the write up I signed on Tuesday morning was indeed for sleeping. I did my best to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't budge. So, I may fly off the handle a little when I talk to her this morning. I'm going to ask her why we still have 2 people on staff when I've repeatedly reported them using messenger. She can't pick and choose the rules she's going to enforce. If she's going to enforce one, she's got to enforce all of them. And if her reasoning is that she didn't catch them personally, well, then we have a problem. At that point I will be angry enough to contact the owner.

In other other news, we bought a truck today. We traded Jim's 88 Bronco in for a 93 Ranger. It sounds old, but it only has 62000 miles, and really looks like it's new. It has the sport package, but it's only a 4 cyl. And, it's a manual. I can drive it, but it may get on my nerves. No perks, no power locks or power windows, but it has a really nice cd player. It's a step side, short box. I'll try to get a picture of it on here soon. Jim was really fond of his Bronco, and is having trouble adjusting, but he should be ok. :) He says it doesn't sound right when he steps on the gas. He's used to a huge v8 vroom, and what he's getting is more like a lawnmower. lol. Poor guy, he's suffering from power withdrawal. This is the first vehicle he's had in about 20 years that isn't a 4x4. We looked and looked, but couldn't find a truck that was both a 4x4 and in our price range. With any luck, we'll do ok with what we got. I'm pretty happy with it, but it is more my style than Jim's. I hope he doesn't hate it too much, but on the other hand, he did pick it out...(sigh)

Meh
I'm still here, and more agitated every day. Most mornings my manager comes in, I give her a shift report, we talk a little about this and that, and I go home and go to bed. Lately, we've had things to do, so either I take a short nap, and get up again at noonish, or I don't go to bed at all until the afternoon. Neither one is a good option, because the very act of changing my sleep habits is likely to change my brain chemistry and bring on a hypomanic episode. That very thing happened last week, in my opinion. That's the only explanation I can come up with for surviving four days on 10 hours of sleep. And that's not 10 hours at once, it was three installments of 2, 3, and 5 hours. It's not that I didn't have the opportunity to sleep. I just had trouble falling asleep because my mind was so crammed full of stuff racing around, and once I did get to sleep, I woke up a couple of hours later, and couldn't get back to sleep. So, when I got home on Friday, we loaded Jerry's truck and Janet's truck and headed up to Plainview. "I'll have you home and in bed by noon" Jim says. Well, it was closer to two, but I crashed. In fact, I crashed so hard that I didn't get up until 9am on Sunday, 19 hours later. Even that wasn't enough. I worked Sunday night, went with Jim and Robert to pick chokecherries Monday morning, and was in bed again at two. Got up at 11 (9 more hours), and came into work at midnight on Monday. It's now 6:30am, and I'm feeling pretty good. When I got here, I was in a pretty foul mood, but I'm much better now. I was in a pretty foul mood when I got home yesterday morning too. During my talk with the manager, an employee's name came up. I was under the impression that this person had quit, as she had reportedly told one of the other supervisors that, and she was nc/ns for a shift. (That means no call/no show, in case you didn't know.) Well, turns out this person had mentioned a couple of months ago that she was planning a leave of absence to go out of state and visit her mom. She had discussed her plans with the manager, but hadn't selected a date yet. The manager asked her to let us know as soon as she decided when she'd be leaving. Well, I guess she forgot. The girl didn't even call us, we had to call her to find out why she didn't show up for her shift. Well, she was in Ohio by then. All of this is well and good, but what really ticks me off is this: we have a three strikes program for disciplinary action, with the exception of nc/ns. You only get two strikes, in other words, your first nc/ns, you get a written warning. If you nc/ns for another shift, you're terminated. This was her second offense. Thus, either she quit or she's fired, right? WRONG! Huh? you say? Me too. Apparently, if the manager feels that we're short staffed, she has the right to override this policy. I have no problem with granting her that power, but we have 20 people on staff right now. We are far from short staffed. Her secondary reasoning for not firing this person (who, in my opinion should have been fired long ago, for a variety of reasons), is that the girl was an alternate supervisor. That means, in order for the regular supervisors to have a weekend off, one of the alternates has to work. Well, while it was nice having a couple of weekends off the past 6 weeks, this person should never have been allowed to run a shift. She let people download messenger, a big no-no as that's how we got viruses on the dialer in the first place. (I have proof, she admitted it in writing on the system messenger, and neglected to remove the record.) She is not what I would call mature, and I don't appreciate her attitude. What I'm trying to say, is the (bleep) has to go. I don't care if she's been here longer than me, and I don't care if I have to work every weekend between now and Christmas. I'm not going to sit here and be "good" and follow all of the rules if she can get away with everything but murder and not get even a slap on the wrist. She's habitually late, sometimes up to a couple of hours. Sometimes she doesn't show up at all. Why should I work my butt off if she doesn't have to? The answer is simple. I can sum it up in one word: ETHICS. I am punctual, respectful (most of the time), and enforce the rules because I, unlike her, have ETHICS. And boy, does it suck. Why? Because my damn sense of ethics prevents me from acting like she does just because I can. Oh, and it gets better. Last week, during my period of sleep deprivation, I dozed off for about 15 minutes from 7:30 - 7:45. Trouble is, I got caught. Today, when I got here, there were several little notes taped to the time clock. One of them had my name on it. It said, "Jess, contact me. I have a write up for you to sign from the other day. Andrea" If this has anything to do with my dozing off, I'm going to be livid. There are no less than three people currently working here that should have been fired for repeated downloading and use of messenger. To my knowledge, they may have been written up once, if that. I've reported them dozens of times. Why are they still here? Like I said, livid. I'm angry enough to walk out, but my damn ethics won't let me. Well, them and my car payment. I really like my car, I don't want to lose it. And I REALLY don't want to make the guy who cosigned the loan angry. (No, it wasn't my dad. Even if it was, I still couldn't do it.) So, I will just continue to suffer. I'm not exactly suffering in silence, but persevere I must. I am, however, rapidly drawing near to the point that I no longer care what the manager thinks of me. If (when?) I get to that point, I will be contacting the owner. If things don't change then, I don't know what I'll do. Probably have myself committed. Meh. "Crazy? I was once crazy. They locked me in a padded cell. There were ants in that cell. Ants make me crazy. Crazy? I was once crazy..."

New developments
Mood:  not sure
Jim was cruising the NE Workforce Development site on Monday and noticed a listing he thought might interest me. He was at work at the time, I was at home. So, he called me up to tell me about it. It's a (supposedly) full-time evening position (5pm - whenever the work is finished) at Camera Concepts, which is a full-service (for lack of a better term) photograpy shop. They sell new and used cameras and accessories, photo albums and scrapbooking supplies, film, batteries, and other photo stuff. They offer film development - usually in about half an hour, custom framing, and they have an in-house studio for professional portraits. They also shoot weddings and other events. Like I said, pretty much full-service. Well, I looked over the ad, it's for a photo finisher. That means someone to run the development machines, and assist in other areas as needed. I thought to myself, that doesn't sound too bad, and maybe I could get a discount on a wedding package as a perk. I just happen to know the head salesman, so I decided to stop over this morning after work to check the place out, and maybe set up an interview. I got there before they opened, and didn't feel like sitting in my car twiddling my thumbs for 20 minutes, so I went to Shopko to pick up a new curling iron. Of course, I managed to find several other things to spend money on while I was there. Anyway, got back to Camera Concepts about 45 minutes later. Went in, talked to the guy I know, he didn't know anything about an opening, but called the owner out to talk to me. Nice lady, she handed me an application, and asked if I was available that afternoon for an interview. Thinking to myself, "hey, who needs sleep?", I said yes, but the later the better. So we arranged to meet again at 4pm. I immediately went home and filled out the application, then took a short nap. Got back up at 2:30, found some interview-worthy clothes, put on a little makeup, and off I went. That was the easiest interview I've ever been through. She didn't ask any of the typical interview questions that I rack my brain trying to answer the right way. I hate it when they ask me "What would your previous supervisor say about you?" "Well, since I called her a bitch the day I quit, I can't imagine it would be anything flattering, so let's just leave her out of it, ok?" Heh. Basically, we just sat and talked about the store and what they do, and what I know how to do, for about 45 minutes. Turns out that they handle all of the developing for the Affiliated stores in the area. (In other words, when you drop your film off at an IGA store, it gets sent to Norfolk.) About 30 minutes in, she told me she'd only talked to 2 other people. One hadn't scheduled an interview, the other one had come in at 2pm. Then she said that after talking to me, she wasn't planning on scheduling any more interviews. She didn't feel it would be necessary. She said she was going to hold off on doing the paperwork until Thursday, but that she would call me either at 5pm on Thursday, or Friday morning to let me know for sure that I got the job. I've been griping to Jim for 2 months about how hard it would be to find another job. Well, I just did, and it was the quickest, most painless and stress-free experience I've ever had in the job market. I'm still floored. Not sure how I'm going to tell my boss. She's going to flip. And she's really going to flip when Jim tells her he's in no way shape or form going to take over 3rd shift when I leave. Ok, now for the bad news. It's 35-40 hours, but I'll make a dollar less than I make now. And, in a fit of insanity, I agreed to start training immediately, which means that starting next week, at 5pm I go to work at Camera Concepts, then I report to my job here at HCM at 11pm. (read: 15 hour shift, 4 days a week) So, as mugh as I've been complaining that all I do is work, eat, sleep, repeat...for the next couple of weeks, it's going to be a reality. The good news is, once I'm done with the two-week notice bit, I'll work 10am - 6pm on Saturdays, and have Sundays off! The bad news is, when the heck am I going to have the time, not to mention the ENERGY, to move? I've been saying it will take us a month to get moved into this house. Well, in all reality, since we signed the lease May 11th, it will probably be more like 2 months. Jim and I both have Saturday off, and I asked for Sunday off too. Jim will probably end up working my shift. But, we should be able to get some moving done then, maybe even enough that we can start sleeping there. (crossing fingers)

Ok, on to a seemingly unrelated subject. I don't know what exactly is going on with me, but something is different. I haven't been feeling quite like myself for the last few weeks. It's really intensified the past few days. The most noticable change has been in my energy/motivation levels, and how much sleep I need. Normally, I'm about as motivated as a cement bench. And I generally sleep an average of 7-9 hours a day. I'm also about as domestic as a college frat boy. I don't cook, I don't clean, I don't really do much of anything. Well, in the past 3 days, I've had a cumulative total of 10 hours of sleep, have done 3 loads of laundry (2 of them folded and put away), the dishes, and had an interview. I'm really tempted to think that I might be having a manic episode. After I left Camera Concepts, I stopped by Arby's and picked up supper for Jim and myself. Sat with Jim at HCM and ate, got home about 6:30ish. Tried to take a nap, but gave up at 7:15. At no point have I felt like I'm going to crash into a 13 hour sleeping fit, which is usually how I feel after an extended period of sleep deprivation. I did get drowsy at 3:30am, but I feel ok now. I've had less than 4 ounces of coffee, and no other caffeinated beverages that I'm aware of in the past 18 hours. I'm starting to feel a little tired now, but that's really a bad thing, because I have tonight (Wed) off. I'm supposed to call Jim to make sure he's awake at 7 so he's ready to go when I get home. We're going to move at least one dresser, and one of the beds up to Plainview this morning, and possibly take another load later today. I don't have time to sleep today, I have to stay awake until at least 9pm. Well, I suppose I could probably get away with going to bed at 6 or so, but I want to spend as much time with Jim as possible, because we don't get much time together, and we'll get even less in the weeks to come. I guess we'll just have to see how the next few hours go. I was seriously considering taking a nap at 4, when my last coworker left. I still might. I've got 2 hours until anyone else gets here, and I'm not expecting calls. I don't really think I should though, because I'm so sleep deprived that I doubt I'd wake up if a call came in. Once I finally get to sleep, I'm going to sleep like the dead. Not a good idea to be in that state propped up in a chair with a headset on. Anyway, I think this post is quite long enough, so I'll be signing off now. Ciao!

Appropo
Mood:  lyrical
Been meaning to post these lyrics for a week, just getting around to it. Strange when you find a song from your past that seems to fit what's going on in your present. I performed this in a high school honor choir, don't remember which. It has yet to vacate it's spot in my internal jukebox, for very good reason. Anyway, without any further ado...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Home is a Special Kind of Feeling
Words by David Grant, Music by John Rutter
This song is the finale from The Wind in the Willows, and was originally written for The King's Singers and the City of London Sinfonia.

Home is a special kind of feeling:
The feeling of a place where you belong;
A feeling that the world is left behind you,
Like a shelter from your care
That seems to want you to be there.

Home is that special kind of feeling:
The feeling that you've make it all your own;
Somewhere which you know is really your place;
A place for living;
Your special place, your home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just about says it all, doesn't it? Home sweet home.
Home has a welcome kind of feeling:
The firelight and the warmth of hearth and home;
A welcome that you know will always cheer you,
Like a gentle fond 'hello'
That seems to touch you with a glow.

Home has a quiet kind of feeling:
An island when you need to be alone;
A haven for the times you spend together;
There's nowhere better,
No other place like home.

Mood:  special
Happy Independence Day everybody!
From every mountainside, let freedom ring...

Eh?
Topic: House Hunting
Jim seems to think that the only thing we have left to pack is our clothes. He may be right. I don't really know. I didn't bring that much stuff with me when I moved to Norfolk, but he has 5+ years worth of stuff in that house. I think he's forgetting all of the things he has. I know I have more stuff in the storage unit in Columbus, and in my mom's garage. Don't know where we're going to put all of it.

We have the kitchen halfway set up in the new house, and have even eaten a meal there. Ok, so it was frozen dinners cooked in the oven, but still. We sat at our tiny kitchen table (just right for the 2 of us), and used our brand new silverware. We've taken up some boxes of general stuff, but have yet to move any of the large furniture, and none of our clothes. Still trying to figure out how we're going to move the piano. My goal for tomorrow (today, for you normal people) is to get the dishes done, and do at least 3 loads of laundry. That's the problem with packing our clothes. None of them are clean. And when I say none, I mean NONE. Well, ok, maybe I have some clean socks and underwear, but that's about it. So, before we can pack, we have to do some major laundry. I think I'll sort mine into levels of importance. I'll do the things I wear the most often first, then do sweaters and stuff like that. For heaven's sake, it's July, I don't need clean sweaters that badly. It's 90 degrees! But I can't pack them dirty, that's just wrong.

I'm still here
Much to tell you. Hope you're comfortable, because this is going to be the longest post yet. I had Thursday and Friday night off this week, Jim worked the overnights in my place. While I was gone, all hell broke loose. The building Jim and I work in used to be a hotel. Our office is the old ballroom. The hotel rooms have been converted into low-income housing. One of our employees, "Candy", lives in one of these apartments, just down the hall from the office. Her spouse-type person , "Earl" (they aren't married), used to come in and sit with her while she was working. Well, for a while it was cute, but then he started getting on everyone's nerves. Things started going downhill when this guy got arrested and spent some time locked up. We were told he was in Omaha, but now we aren't so sure he wasn't in Madison the whole time. We also don't know whether he was in jail or a mental health facility of some sort. Anyway, the problem is, Earl would call here collect, and want to talk to Candy. When we stopped accepting the charges after the first call, he found another way to call. He called 80 times in one day. I talked to him one night, told him I couldn't go and get her because I was the only one there, and I was expecting calls. The situation was rapidly getting out of hand. Earl had called the night before and got Jim, and threatened him when he wouldn't go get Candy. Well, we filed a police report, and Candy got a restraining order against Earl for domestic abuse. We weren't sure exactly when he was going to be out of jail, so we were keeping the doors locked and bolted and all that jazz. Which is a HUGE pain in the butt, because the building is supposedly "secure". (translation: wait at the front door for someone to go out, and anyone can get in) That means that whenever someone gets here, they have to knock on the front door so we know to go down and let them in. Hard to hear them knocking with the doors closed and the huge a/c fans going. To make matters worse, Earl had managed to get himself locked up with our spare key to the front door. The management changed the locks, but in the end, it didn't matter. Candy let the moron in herself. She got a couple of fists in the face as a thank you. The good news is, she got the (now useless) key back from him, which we traded in on a new one. That key has now been assigned to Jim and I. We are allowed to loan it out to people going on break, but are responsible for getting it back right away. Besides our key, the manager has one, and all of the tenants in the building have at least one. I guess Earl is back in jail again, this time we know he's in Madison. He called several times today, and talked to different people. When he talked to Jim at 7am, he mentioned that he knows several people's addresses, including ours, and he knows that some of those houses have kids in them. He said something along the lines of "why make all these people pay for something you did", and threats less vague that that. Guess he didn't know his calls were being recorded. Jim was really late getting home from work this morning, he had to stay and file another police report. Jim is filing a personal terroristic threats charge against Earl. Our manager talked to the prosecuting attorney today, and they will be asking Earl if he was in the building at any point in the past week. The guy's dumb enough that he'll admit it, probably proud of himself. Well, that will put him in violation of the restraining order, and will lose Candy her job and her apartment. Can't say I'm sorry to see her go, she's been one of our troublesome employees. I'm not happy about throwing her out on the streets, but I can't be responsible for other people's choices. I refuse to go on working in an environment that requires me to keep my little can of tear gas/pepper spray in easy reach. If she was only endangering herself, I might be more sympathetic. But, by letting her abuser into the building, she is endangering me, and everyone else that works here. None of us are happy about it. Jim was so mad we had to go blow some lead to cool him off. (Take THAT, ya stupid box!) More on the subject of target shooting another day.

That's not the only thing that happened at work while I was off. I guess one of our other employees decided she'd had enough, and quit with no notice. She didn't even bother to tell us that she'd quit, we found out when she didn't show up for her shift on Friday. The supervisor on that shift finally got in touch with her, and she's in Ohio! Hope she's not planning on having a job if/when she comes back. If she was, she's out of luck. The manager just about blew a gasket when she heard that one. Kind of leaves me thinking...sheesh, what's next?

and...
Mood:  celebratory
After much discussion and deliberation, Jim and I have decided to get a mobile phone from Cellular One rather than a land line. He's still of the opinion that it stays at the house most of the time. We'll see. Extenuating circumstances may prevail. He also said we can get one for each of us, but I'm not sure we can afford that right now. Anyway, thought you all would like to know. We can also be reached (more or less) at the Norfolk house number, for the time being. Like I said before, we're going to be pretty busy, so if we don't answer, leave a message. :)