Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
I need a new job
June 30th, 2008
Remember way back when I wrote about 13 meetings in one week? Since then, we’ve had a few of those high-level video teleconferences (VTCs). We had one this morning at 0830 (that’s 8:30 a.m. for you civilians). It takes about 1/2 hour to set up the VTC. At 8:25, there still wasn’t anyone at work who could set up the VTC. I really tried to let it go, but God, I was pissed. So much so, I’m thinking of taking the rest of the week off. (I have a couple of doctors’ appointments, so perhaps that’s not such a bad idea.)
Then, just a bit ago, four people were standing in my space having a conversation (that didn’t include me). And three of these people have individual offices! Why couldn’t they meet in one of those offices? They’ve departed now, but it just reinforces my discontent.
I’m trying to figure out how I can last another 3 years in this job. I’m feeling like I’m too old (and too good) to be in the environment I’m in, stuck in a freakin’ cubicle. I suppose I could look for a new job, even a promotion, but I’m not sure I want all that responsibility. Too bad I’m such a big under-achiever.
Posted in General, Griping, Work | Comments (0)
Bleah
May 8th, 2008
I’ve started eating a little bit better in the past week and have felt much better. Basically eating breakfast at home and having a reasonable evening meal. But last night I gave into laziness and ordered a pizza. Ugh. I could really tell a difference, both in how I felt when I went to bed and when I woke up.
I was going to start taking my lunch to work, but I think I’ll just work on breakfast and dinner for now. But the cafeteria at work has been closed for a few weeks. It changed management & apparently they have found several “unexpected surprise guests.” So while the guests are being shooed away, a catering truck, aka “roach coach,” has been supplying lunch. Their specialty is beef hot dogs with all sorts of toppings (I prefer sauerkraut). I love hot dogs, so I haven’t been complaining. Their pork barbeque sandwich is also pretty good, with tasty cole slaw and potato salad.
But I just didn’t feel like getting a sandwich today and ended up eating a lunch of sunflower seeds. We also had a bake sale going on, so I sandwiched the sunflower seeds with two pieces of cake. (Temporally sandwiched, not physically!) 
So of course I continue to feel bleah. Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day for the roach coach, so I think I’ll celebrate it with a couple of hot dogs. Who knows when I’ll have them again?
New Supernatural tonight. It better be better than the last 2! You hear me, Kripke??
Posted in Musings, Supernatural, Work | Comments (0)
April Fools—only not!
April 1st, 2008
The head honcho of the Army (called the Chief of Staff of the Army, or CSA) is coming to visit the place where I work tomorrow. This is a humongous deal. Humongous! The CSA is the highest ranking guy in the Arm. The only way another Army officer could outrank him is if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was an Army officer. (But currently it’s a NavyAdmiral.)
This is really a huge deal. Oh, I guess I said that already. The CSA is coming to see the organization I work with, not the host command, not the headquarters command. He’s coming to visit this small, little organization that’s a speck on the face of the Army. It’s obviously a real feather in the cap of the guy in charge of the organization, who isn’t even a general.
You should see the commotion. People clamoring for a chance to sit in the meeting with him. Some of them not even Army! (Fortunately, that was squashed.)
I so want to be someplace else tomorrow. But a couple of people in my “chain of command” will be here, so I figure I ought to be present. Of course, these two people (who have dissed me in the past—even though I was right and they were wrong) most likely won’t even give me the time of day. But that’s ok. I don’t really care for them anyway.
I’m so glad I don’t give a shit about the politics of the job. Of course, it’s probably part of the reason I’m not in a higher position (along with my incredibly under-achieving nature), but I don’t think I’d be genuine if I “played the game.”
Posted in Military, Work | Comments (0)
Thursday Thirteen (minus 8)
March 27th, 2008
Because I can’t come up with 13, even though I have several of them in my drafts.
1. I was once again taking a look at the houses Sue showed me yesterday. Man, I want this one so badly, my mouth is watering.
2. I signed up for a business course for next week. I’m pretty excited. I’ve been thinking about starting a home business (had a couple very different ideas in mind) for a long time, but it’s mostly been a pipe dream. But I started reading “Home-Based Business for Dummies” and am actually getting pretty excited. (Oh, I guess I said that already.) 
I’ve even been thinking about how to market the business, which is the least favorite thing I want to do.
3. I managed to officially piss off a Supernatural cyber-queen yesterday. (I don’t mean that derogatorily. She really is an internet celebrity in the Supernatural realm, and deserves to be.) I suppose it’s the natural outcome of things. I’d met her last summer when I went to see “A Few Good Men” with Jensen Ackles in Fort Worth, TX. I guess the age thing raised its ugly head, because I felt her friends were very uncomfortable with me around. And when I went to talk with them at intermission, I was totally ignored. I tried to be magnanimous about it, especially when she wrote that she loves meeting new people and welcoming them into her world, but the hurt is always there in the back of my mind. And while I feel a little bad about her being pissed (which was a misinterpretation on her part), I think it’s actually cathartic and will eventually help me give up my LiveJournal activities.
4. Ok, so I can’t count, but this ties in with the attempt to quit LiveJournal. I may be getting a handle on my icon-mania. I did not enter any icon contests (called icontests, isn’t that cute?) this week. I actually made some of Jensen Ackles, but am not going to enter them. I will post them though, because they’re pretty nice, and one of them is (at least in my humble opinion) fabulous. Of course, the subject matter is pretty amazing.
5. I ordered the Dark Angel DVDs from NetFlix. Batch #2 came yesterday. But I’m not watching them in order. I saw the next to the last episode on the SciFi channel a couple weeks ago, and was anxious to see the series finale. Can just say, I was underwhelmed. But then, I think they might have been expecting to have a 3rd season so they didn’t want all the questions to be answered.
Posted in Couch Critic, Musings, Supernatural, Work | Comments (3)
Opportunity lost
March 25th, 2008
I had a(nother) frustrating day at work yesterday. Nothing I say is right, nothing I do is enough. It’s very demoralizing. I’m absolutely burned out. I’m eligible to retire on April 2oth. The problem is I’d take a serious cut in retirement pay. But I’ve been so unhappy lately. Is it really worth the aggravation to try to stick it out another 3½ years?
And then, last night, I received a letter from a couple in Baltimore who are interested in moving to Alexandria, and particularly into my community, and specifically into a 3-bedroom layout (which is what I have). (In fact, I have one of the nicest, if not the nicest condo in the complex.) The problem is, it is in serious disrepair.
I’d actually set up a schedule (and even a blog) to chart my decluttering and redecorating, but haven’t made any progress in the past couple weeks. I finally made the decision this week to hire a professional organizer. I’d really like to be ready the next time an opportunity like this comes my way. (Plus, it would be nice living in a clean and neat home.)
For a moment though, I dreamt of leaving the job behind, selling the home and moving to a quieter, less expensive locale. But when I looked at the real estate on Yahoo, I found the house I really wanted in Clear Lake, Iowa sold. Maybe next time.
Posted in Work | Comments (4)
The week that I wish wasn’t
March 15th, 2008
This week has been hellish. I had a serious meltdown on Wed. I hadn’t had one in quite a long time, and was trying to figure out what triggered it. I don’t get PMS anymore, so that wasn’t it. The bitchiness of menopause has long since passed. And my happy pills have been working quite well for the past year—I’ve been able to let things roll off my back and not take things personally. But something triggered me to get VERY upset. Well, it was a series of somethings that started on Monday.
Granted, it’s been a very high-tempo, high-stress week, with VIP visitors and super-VIP briefings, very similar to the week I noted here, only worse. And while times like this are stressful, I can usually cope.
I finally figured out what the problem was on Friday. Besides all the high-tempo stuff, it was the first week of daylight savings time. Perhaps my circadian clock is off.
Either that, or I actually cared about what I was doing. I’m going with the daylight savings time, because if I don’t, I’m not sure I’ll make it to retirement.
Posted in Head Games, Work | Comments (3)
Friday’s review of Thursday
February 8th, 2008
1. First of all, let’s talk Supernatural, because in my universe there’s nothing more important (and soon, more rare) than a new episode on Thursday night. “Dream a Little Dream of Me” was a great episode, one I definitely need to watch again. And probably again and again. 
And holy-foreshadowing, Nuj! Last week Nuj talked about how hot Dean with demon eyes would be. So I started working on an icon for her. And this week? There he is! Demon-eyed-Dean! Will we start calling him DED? Because we all know Dean is so hawt he killz us ded.
2. While in the cafeteria yesterday for lunch, a man behind me saw my boot and said “Please tell me you received that on your time off and not at work.” I looked around, smiled and said, “Nope. I fell down those stairs right there.” Turns out the guy is the safety manager for the place where I work. He didn’t know about my accident because all my workman’s comp paperwork went through the place where I’m employed, which is not my “place of duty.” (It gets even more complicated than that, but I’ll spare you the gory details.) He was great. He wanted the details and took my name & number. I told him about how I really don’t like that particular stairwell because the steps all blend into one another. He said that’s precisely the type of thing he needs to know about so that he can do something about it. *facepalm*
3. I had a hell of time with Thursday Thirteen yesterday. First of all, about 90% of the participants use Blogspot, which I can’t access at work. (Ok, so I shouldn’t be blogging at work, I know.) And when I tried commenting on WordPress.com blogs, my reply timed out. And a few choice blogs I wanted to comment at had not updated. Guess it just wasn’t my day for T13.
Posted in Blogging, Supernatural, Work | Comments (6)
Miscellany
January 16th, 2008
I’m officially a Thursday Thirteener. Woot! Thanks, Carol, for being patient with me. I thought about doing this post as a Thursday Thirteen, but can’t seem to come up with 13 idle thoughts.
With all the advances in modern medicine, you’d think they could come up with something better and easter to use than crutches. I fell down the stairs at work last Monday (Jan 7) and broke my left foot. This is the first broken bone I’ve ever had. I spent over a week in a semi-cast (a “splint,” which has all the negatives of a cast) and on crutches. Not fun.
I had my follow-up with the doctor yesterday. When I was getting ready to go (my first time out of the house since I broke the foot), I looked out the window and it was (f***ing) snowing! Why couldn’t I have gone last week when it was 60 degrees and beautiful? Oh yeah. I had to wait for the worker’s comp paperwork to go through.
The place I went to is the same medical facility where I had my sinus surgery last October. So how come when I went there for all those post-op check-ups, I could find a great parking spot, but when it was cold & snowy & slippery, and I was on crutches, I had to park in the boonies? Oh life, you are a cruel mistress.
Oh, and I can now verify that sprains really are more painful than breaks. I injured the same foot about 20 years ago—doing the same thing. I missed a step and fell down. My friend who was with me said she heard a crack. Nothing was broken, but I’d severely sprained my left ankle. (Apparently you can hear tendons and ligaments break, too.) The sprain was indeed more painful than the break, but that’s not to say I didn’t need the pain killers.
I’m now in a boot & still have the crutches. I can walk a short ways without the crutches, so at least I can pick things up around the house and put them away. Last week I was putting everything in plastic grocery bags and carrying them to & from my destinations. So I guess that’s progress.
Posted in Couch Critic, Musings, Work | Comments (0)
Some days are good, some are bad and some are good & bad.
December 10th, 2007
I often have a hard time letting things roll off my back. I’m much, much better than I used to be, but sometimes I still get pulled into that trap. That’s kind of how I’m feeling right now.
One of our senior sergeants, I guy I really like, retired today. Retirement and promotion ceremonies can be a formal or relaxed as you want. This one was pretty formal. Several of the military folks were in their “Class A Uniform” (as apposed to the “Army Combat Uniform,” or ACU, I see them in every day). I was walking down the hall and saw the unit’s senior enlisted man, who was coordinating everything. I commented that I barely recognized him all dressed up. He said “Master Sergeant B’s retirement ceremony is today. I think he’d like it if you were there.” I was planning to go anyway, but this little comment made me smile. When people I admire accept and appreciate me, it makes me feel good.
One of the neat things some of the enlisted folks did was present the flag, very similarly to how the honor guards do it. I always love the folding of the flag, because I have special memories of it. My dad taught me how when I was around 10 or so & in the Girl Scouts. (And when he died, his coffin was draped with the flag, because he was a veteran. As the American Legion fellows were folding it, and the bugle was playing taps, I could see my dad sitting in his comfy chair, leaning forward, instructing me fold by fold.) This folding was very precise and as each fold was made, the emcee spoke of what each fold means. I’d never heard that before and it was quite interesting, if a bit dated.
But this afternoon, all I got was “I need your help” for things that aren’t my responsibility and beyond my control. The crowning moment came when I sent a request to my headquarters asking for some assistance. What came back was a snotty e-mail saying to look it up on Google. The guy then called to say he had Googled it and found the answer in 2 minutes. As I was driving home, I wondered why this irritated me so much and found the answer. If I had been in his shoes and found the information, I would have passed it on.
People often tell me I’m too nice. Maybe I am, but I’m not sure I could live with myself any other way.
Posted in Family, Head Games, Military, Work | Comments (0)
Take this job & shove it
October 11th, 2007
I was going to write a Thursday 13 today, but instead I just feel the need to bitch. And ironically, the 13 was going to be about work. Maybe next week
I am just so sick of being belittled by my co-workers. I make comments & recommendations, only to be shot down by my bosses. Then, their bosses say the same thing I said and now it’s all fucking ok. I’ve been in this business a long time, and while I’m not a technical person, I know what works and what doesn’t; what’s fair & what’s not. Perhaps people feel the need to discount me so they can make themselves feel better.
I’m not part of the”in crowd” in my organization. I suppose I should count that as a blessing, since the organization is considered one of the worst in the Department of Defense.
This is one of those times I need to remember that I am not defined by my job.
On the good side, tonight is a new Supernatural. Even though I wasn’t particularly impressed with the season premiere, a mediocre Supernatural is better than no Supernatural at all.
Posted in Work | Comments (0)