Life goes on, as life does.
The past few weeks in general have been quiet and (mostly) uneventful. Work has been steady; we'll have our busy days as well as our really quiet ones, and some in-between. The good news for the past week or so is that it's been really unseasonably warm in Omaha -- yesterday the temperature reached 58, and right now it's 50.
The bad news? Well, I'm not sure it can really be classified as bad, but more of the unknown at this point -- our company is being sold to another company, who bought out our contract with our real employer (and not just the building who we work as contractors for -- yeah, it's complicated).
What does this mean for us and our jobs? Well, at the moment, not a whole lot that we can tell. Seniority and pay will roll over into the new company. Our hours will remain the same, our schedules and reporting managers/directors will remain the same, and the job itself that we do every day will remain exactly the same as it is now. As for paid time off and insurance plans/benefits? Yeah, we don't know that yet, but as the company who paid for us won't want to lose a large number of its new employees out of the gate, I'm guessing that it'll remain the same or better. So, really, when the entire process is completed by the end of March, it looks like the only noticeable change we may have to endure is getting new keycards/name badges with our new company name on them.
Personally, I'm in the camp of folks who aren't really worried at all about this transition. I'm also in the camp of folks who would like to see the current dress code disappear (as it's not like we physically see any of the customers we work with, ever). I hate having to actually dress professionally every day for no good reason, and want to be able to wear my normal wardrobe to work. I'd also like to get more holidays off per year -- for example, I want everyone to have Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Black Friday, MLK Day, President's Day, Columbus Day, etc, off. Currently, those are all days we work. We've already been told that since our benefits package is basically the federally-mandated minimum, those can't get any worse (yeah, I know, right?), but past that there's not a whole lot of further information coming down the pipe.
There are, of course, people who are nervous and are using this interim time to either jump ship or move to a different part of the company. One of our second shift coworkers worked his last day with us yesterday, and another put in his two-week notice as he's accepted another position someplace else. A third will more than likely be switching shifts, a fourth and fifth will be leaving soon as well, and a sixth already switched to another shift. My six months at the job is a month from tomorrow, and it's only after that point when I can apply for, and move around freely within, the company itself -- getting promotions, applying for different positions, etc. Most people there, the ones who care about the job and don't mind the work (even on the stressful days) stay the course, and they are the backbone of our office. Daisy's shift on overnights tends to keep people longer than second shift does, as well, so they're an even stronger backbone and deserve more credit than they get for what they do.
Anyway, so there's that. I will, of course, keep you updated as much as I can on anything that happens within the job, but again, we're really not that concerned. Well, I'm not, anyway.
In other news, no, I do not have a new car yet. I more than likely won't for a while. Daisy and I are saving our money for the time being, and we're attempting to pay down our credit cards as much as possible over the next few months. On the plus side I will be able to pay off one of my cards (my Citi Card) completely by this time next month, and the others are following suit slowly but surely. Daisy is doing the same as much as she can afford to as well, and we're keeping a close eye on our finances since we're obviously trying not to put anything more on those cards than necessary when we're trying to pay them off. Meanwhile, I haven't even cashed the check yet for the Monte Carlo, and won't be able to this weekend when I'm off as banks are closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday. I'm also hoping that as a lot of places are closed on Monday, today at work will be quiet.
But no, no car for me yet. I don't exactly know what I want anyway, and to get something reliable that's relatively new-ish, it will be way out of our price range for a while. Daisy's car is reliable, but even with it being six years old, it would still be about $8k or so used. I don't want to pay even half that for a car. I'd like to pay about a quarter of that, max, for something that will run and has locking doors, a working radio, and heat. That's really all that matters. And an automatic transmission, of course, as I'm not driving stick in this town. Anything we'll be able to afford for me will be at least ten years old unless I get some crazy deal from someone.
On that note, I do have to go wake the wife now, as I start work soon. Cheers, folks.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Friday, January 9, 2015
The Death of the Monte Carlo
The Monte Carlo is no more.
Well, I'm sure it exists. Somewhere, at least. Pieces of her, anyway. Sitting in a lot somewhere as pieces are pulled off, re-sold, re-distributed until there's not much left but a shell.
It is a sad, depressing ending for such a beautiful, powerful vehicle, isn't it?
These are the last photos I have of her, taken on December 31 when the U Pull It truck came to haul her away, writing me a check on the spot for $300. It was more than I was expecting them to offer and more than the scrap metal value of the car (we checked), even though aside from the ignition, that car was far from scrap.
Some of you may be confused, especially any new readers I may have here -- this was my car. My first real car -- paid off, name on the title, insured, and well taken-care-of as much as I reasonably could afford. I bought this car in 2011 for the last $500 of my 2010 tax return when I posted an ad on Craigslist in Newton, Kansas, asking if anyone had a car that would work as a daily driver on trips between Newton and Wichita, had to be an automatic transmission (while I can drive stick, I have not done so in over fifteen years) in decent mechanical shape, and I had $500 to offer. I was contacted by the wife of a family there in town a few miles from my house, who said she had a Monte Carlo that had been in storage for over two years, but her husband had taken it out, fixed it up, and had driven it back from Kansas City (so she knew it was in decent shape).
I made an appointment and went over that afternoon, taking the car for a test drive. I really liked it. My ex, who I was with at the time, told me I probably wasn't going to get a better deal for $500 on something that would actually run and be worth owning, so I bought the car then and there, drove it the two or three miles to get it home, and put plates/insurance on it over the course of the next few days, and customized it to make it my own in the weeks afterwards -- I put two Decepticon stickers on it (one large one on the hood, and a second smaller one on the back glass) as well as an Imperial logo on the opposite side of the back glass, scraping off the obnoxious "Cowgirl Up" sticker that was there when I bought the car.
Mind you, the car wasn't flawless. It'd had at least two previous owners, if not more -- I know this because I purchased it from one of them, and there was a worn-out "Payless Auto Sales, Emporia KS" decal on the trunk, so it was well-used. When I bought it, it had 217,000 miles on it. It had two bad spark plugs and one bad plug wire. The "Service Engine Soon" and "Low Coolant" lights rarely, if ever, went off. The anti-lock brake controller was burned out, so the car itself had normal brakes (something which I absolutely loved, compared to the anti-lock brakes in Daisy's car). It liked to burn off, and occasionally leak, oil -- sometimes to the tune of a quart every three weeks or so. In the hot Kansas summers, the thermostat in the car would get stuck, and it would leak coolant out of the overflow valve onto the pavement (or, just like the oil, slowly burn it off). The radio didn't work for 90% of the time I had the car. The power windows did work (at least the motors for them did), but both windows were off-track. The power locks, while they worked flawlessly, could never be used as I didn't have a door key for the car -- just a key for the ignition. The inside driver-side door handle was broken and would not open the door. The air conditioner, though it did blow cool air, needed a freon recharge when I bought the car, and stopped blowing cool air completely after the first month or two I owned and drove the car. These were just a handful of the small problems the car had, and as you can see, most of them are cosmetic or did not affect the car's daily-driver status, which I put it into almost immediately after purchase.
The following April, the serpentine belt and belt tensioner blew out on me while driving home from work on the interstate at 10:30 PM. That was about $350 to fix, and when it blew out my back tires were dangerously dryrotted as well, so I had those replaced also. That fall, during the middle of the semester, the remaining spark plugs (all but one) blew out, dropping my gas mileage to about eight miles per gallon and slowing the car's acceleration to a crawl -- yet it still ran. I had to drive it like that for a few days before I could get it fixed, as I couldn't just up and not drive back and forth to/from school -- my schedule was hectic. That was another $1100 fix (thank you, student loan money), but the mechanics were able to get the radio working again (for a while; it stopped working again shortly before I moved up here) as well. After that, the car never needed any further service until about two months ago when I replaced the other tires and got another oil change. I made 50-mile-plus round trips in it three to four days a week to teach and attend my classes when I was in grad school, and continued that trend afterwards when I continued to teach for another year. Even in the hottest weather or most bitter cold, the car fired up every time, shifted smoothly, accelerated and decelerated wonderfully, and gave me about 20-22 miles per gallon. Yes, she was occasionally old and whiny. Yes, she did occasionally stall out on me when I pulled into a parking space or if it was muggy/humid and I was in stop-and-go traffic, but even with all of her flaws otherwise, she was a very good car.
I drove the car up here to Omaha from Newton the day after my teaching job had ended in May, in order to move it up here without having to worry about towing it behind a U-Haul. I was quite worried that it would blow a major part on the trip, that driving the car for over five hours straight with the only stops being for gas would finally kill it. It did not; the car gave me a record 23-25 miles per gallon (based on my rough estimates then) and purred like a kitten the entire time, driving as if it were new. It didn't even get close to hot/overheating until I was within a few miles of the parents' house in stop-and-go stoplight rush hour traffic, when it started to warm up a little. Air-cooled, naturally-aspirated engine; can't do much about that when there's no air rushing through it.
I registered the car in Nebraska shortly after the wedding, in June. The Kansas license plate I had on it since 2011 was removed, washed off very well, and hung on the wall in our living room as a reminded of not only the independence that car had given me, but as a symbol of knowing my roots, and knowing all of the places that plate had gone while attached to the back of the car.
Shortly thereafter, during my two weeks of training for my current job, someone broke into the car in our apartment parking lot and stole my old, near-useless GPS out of it. They tried to rip out my (by then) non-working stereo as well, though they weren't able to get it out. I was pissed off as the car is about ten yards from the front door of our building in a relatively well-lit parking lot. No further damage was done, of course, and because of that I didn't really care as much as most people might.
Then, of course, the week before Thanksgiving, the car got broken into in our parking lot at work. In doing so, the thieves not only successfully stole the non-working radio, but tore up the rest of the inside of the car, including bashing open my glove box, destroying the interior lights/controls/rearview mirror, and (the most egregious of all) tearing out my ignition in an attempt to steal the vehicle. Once the wire was cut on the ignition switch, the car wasn't going anywhere as that -- and its key -- is the anti-theft system. As I mentioned when it happened, the first part that they cut off was the key-reader system, as the key has a chip in it. See below:
Without the car's ability to read that security chip, it will not start no matter what.
That key is also the only actual piece of the car I have left. It now hangs on the wall in the living room under the car's Kansas license plate as a shrine to my lost baby.
Anyway.
With the car rendered undriveable, the next day I had it towed back to our apartment complex, duct-taped the glove box shut so that the light inside wouldn't stay on and drain the battery, and there it sat. For over a month. In that time we got a quote from the best steering column mechanic in town (as the damage was so extensive the entire column and wheel would have to be replaced to render the car driveable again), and the quote was between $300 and $500. The steering column, ignition, and wheel were easy enough to fix and parts were readily available for them, but the problem was that because of that car's security key (again, see above), if we couldn't find a steering column and ignition switch with its own key as well, the car would have to be completely re-keyed -- adding another $150 or so to the repair total.
Even though this car was wonderful, and I viewed it as an extension of myself or like my child, I just couldn't do it. We had the money; we have a savings account for emergencies or unforeseen expenses, but it just wasn't worth it. I paid $500 for the car to begin with, and in the years I owned her, taking care of her cost me another two grand or so just to keep her running and safely on the road. And there was no guarantee that if I paid that much and fixed the car up, the same sort of break in wouldn't happen again or that another major, expensive part (like the transmission, fuel pump, etc) wouldn't blow out the next day, week, or month. I made the very emotional decision to let it go and to sell it for, basically, whatever I could get out of it. I put in for quotes from U Pull It twice, and even paid a month's worth of insurance on it when it was sitting in the parking lot undriveable, but it was Daisy who finally arranged the car's pick up from them on the 30th, while I was at work. On the afternoon of the 31st, in the bitter cold, they came to take away my baby, winching her up onto the flatbed truck you see in the pictures at the top of the page, and hauling her away.
I couldn't watch as they took the car out of the parking lot -- it was bad enough watching the guy pull her up onto the truck, forcefully. He asked me if I had the keys to the car, and I replied I did, but it wouldn't do him any good. I wanted to keep the key anyhow, because (again) it's the only piece of the car I have left. It's like cutting a lock of hair off your dead child to keep forever. At least, it is in my mind.
A few days ago I called Geico to cancel the insurance on the car, since (obviously) I'm not going to keep it ongoing. It was done over the phone in about five minutes, and I was informed that within fourteen days, I'd get a refund check for the amount of insurance I'd paid on but had not used (since I'd re-upped it last month). Said refund is something like $28; I don't remember the exact amount.
The Nebraska plates stayed on the car and went with her; they're useless now anyway, and as I may not have another car before June anyhow (when I'd renew them), it's not like I'd bother to transfer them or to try to get a refund on my registration. It's not worth it. I've also not yet deposited the $300 check from U Pull It that they gave me for the car. It'll go directly into our savings account anyway, because I would somehow, for some reason, be really angry with myself if I put it into our normal bank account and the money for my car went to paying bills or getting groceries.
So, what are our next steps here? Well...
The plan is to pay down all of our credit card bills over the next few months, enough to where we would qualify for a (hopefully small) low interest auto loan, and then to get me a car that's newer and more reliable, safer and possibly big enough to use for child transport (as we will, eventually, have children). That narrows down my selections quite a bit, but I've made it a point to tell Daisy that even though I will take every suggestion and recommendation into consideration, ultimately I and I alone will be the one who selects my next vehicle -- whatever it ends up being. From a security and reliability standpoint, basically anything newer with doors that lock, windows that work, and a good heater is a step up from the Monte Carlo. From a stylistic standpoint, it will be a tough car to beat -- and Daisy knows that as well. That car was basically a vehicular version of me: heavy, old, somewhat dirty and broken in places, covered in nerdy designs, but a workhorse with a heart of gold and a fast engine, always ready for the next challenge. It's going to be very difficult for me to find another vehicle with that much... soul.
So that's where we stand now. I've been working on this post for a few days now, trying to get it right, trying to fill in all of the gaps and make it a fitting tribute. We can resume our normal blogs now, as we did before. And I will be sure to keep everyone updated on my car hunt.
Well, I'm sure it exists. Somewhere, at least. Pieces of her, anyway. Sitting in a lot somewhere as pieces are pulled off, re-sold, re-distributed until there's not much left but a shell.
It is a sad, depressing ending for such a beautiful, powerful vehicle, isn't it?
These are the last photos I have of her, taken on December 31 when the U Pull It truck came to haul her away, writing me a check on the spot for $300. It was more than I was expecting them to offer and more than the scrap metal value of the car (we checked), even though aside from the ignition, that car was far from scrap.
Some of you may be confused, especially any new readers I may have here -- this was my car. My first real car -- paid off, name on the title, insured, and well taken-care-of as much as I reasonably could afford. I bought this car in 2011 for the last $500 of my 2010 tax return when I posted an ad on Craigslist in Newton, Kansas, asking if anyone had a car that would work as a daily driver on trips between Newton and Wichita, had to be an automatic transmission (while I can drive stick, I have not done so in over fifteen years) in decent mechanical shape, and I had $500 to offer. I was contacted by the wife of a family there in town a few miles from my house, who said she had a Monte Carlo that had been in storage for over two years, but her husband had taken it out, fixed it up, and had driven it back from Kansas City (so she knew it was in decent shape).
I made an appointment and went over that afternoon, taking the car for a test drive. I really liked it. My ex, who I was with at the time, told me I probably wasn't going to get a better deal for $500 on something that would actually run and be worth owning, so I bought the car then and there, drove it the two or three miles to get it home, and put plates/insurance on it over the course of the next few days, and customized it to make it my own in the weeks afterwards -- I put two Decepticon stickers on it (one large one on the hood, and a second smaller one on the back glass) as well as an Imperial logo on the opposite side of the back glass, scraping off the obnoxious "Cowgirl Up" sticker that was there when I bought the car.
Mind you, the car wasn't flawless. It'd had at least two previous owners, if not more -- I know this because I purchased it from one of them, and there was a worn-out "Payless Auto Sales, Emporia KS" decal on the trunk, so it was well-used. When I bought it, it had 217,000 miles on it. It had two bad spark plugs and one bad plug wire. The "Service Engine Soon" and "Low Coolant" lights rarely, if ever, went off. The anti-lock brake controller was burned out, so the car itself had normal brakes (something which I absolutely loved, compared to the anti-lock brakes in Daisy's car). It liked to burn off, and occasionally leak, oil -- sometimes to the tune of a quart every three weeks or so. In the hot Kansas summers, the thermostat in the car would get stuck, and it would leak coolant out of the overflow valve onto the pavement (or, just like the oil, slowly burn it off). The radio didn't work for 90% of the time I had the car. The power windows did work (at least the motors for them did), but both windows were off-track. The power locks, while they worked flawlessly, could never be used as I didn't have a door key for the car -- just a key for the ignition. The inside driver-side door handle was broken and would not open the door. The air conditioner, though it did blow cool air, needed a freon recharge when I bought the car, and stopped blowing cool air completely after the first month or two I owned and drove the car. These were just a handful of the small problems the car had, and as you can see, most of them are cosmetic or did not affect the car's daily-driver status, which I put it into almost immediately after purchase.
The following April, the serpentine belt and belt tensioner blew out on me while driving home from work on the interstate at 10:30 PM. That was about $350 to fix, and when it blew out my back tires were dangerously dryrotted as well, so I had those replaced also. That fall, during the middle of the semester, the remaining spark plugs (all but one) blew out, dropping my gas mileage to about eight miles per gallon and slowing the car's acceleration to a crawl -- yet it still ran. I had to drive it like that for a few days before I could get it fixed, as I couldn't just up and not drive back and forth to/from school -- my schedule was hectic. That was another $1100 fix (thank you, student loan money), but the mechanics were able to get the radio working again (for a while; it stopped working again shortly before I moved up here) as well. After that, the car never needed any further service until about two months ago when I replaced the other tires and got another oil change. I made 50-mile-plus round trips in it three to four days a week to teach and attend my classes when I was in grad school, and continued that trend afterwards when I continued to teach for another year. Even in the hottest weather or most bitter cold, the car fired up every time, shifted smoothly, accelerated and decelerated wonderfully, and gave me about 20-22 miles per gallon. Yes, she was occasionally old and whiny. Yes, she did occasionally stall out on me when I pulled into a parking space or if it was muggy/humid and I was in stop-and-go traffic, but even with all of her flaws otherwise, she was a very good car.
I drove the car up here to Omaha from Newton the day after my teaching job had ended in May, in order to move it up here without having to worry about towing it behind a U-Haul. I was quite worried that it would blow a major part on the trip, that driving the car for over five hours straight with the only stops being for gas would finally kill it. It did not; the car gave me a record 23-25 miles per gallon (based on my rough estimates then) and purred like a kitten the entire time, driving as if it were new. It didn't even get close to hot/overheating until I was within a few miles of the parents' house in stop-and-go stoplight rush hour traffic, when it started to warm up a little. Air-cooled, naturally-aspirated engine; can't do much about that when there's no air rushing through it.
I registered the car in Nebraska shortly after the wedding, in June. The Kansas license plate I had on it since 2011 was removed, washed off very well, and hung on the wall in our living room as a reminded of not only the independence that car had given me, but as a symbol of knowing my roots, and knowing all of the places that plate had gone while attached to the back of the car.
Shortly thereafter, during my two weeks of training for my current job, someone broke into the car in our apartment parking lot and stole my old, near-useless GPS out of it. They tried to rip out my (by then) non-working stereo as well, though they weren't able to get it out. I was pissed off as the car is about ten yards from the front door of our building in a relatively well-lit parking lot. No further damage was done, of course, and because of that I didn't really care as much as most people might.
Then, of course, the week before Thanksgiving, the car got broken into in our parking lot at work. In doing so, the thieves not only successfully stole the non-working radio, but tore up the rest of the inside of the car, including bashing open my glove box, destroying the interior lights/controls/rearview mirror, and (the most egregious of all) tearing out my ignition in an attempt to steal the vehicle. Once the wire was cut on the ignition switch, the car wasn't going anywhere as that -- and its key -- is the anti-theft system. As I mentioned when it happened, the first part that they cut off was the key-reader system, as the key has a chip in it. See below:
Without the car's ability to read that security chip, it will not start no matter what.
That key is also the only actual piece of the car I have left. It now hangs on the wall in the living room under the car's Kansas license plate as a shrine to my lost baby.
Anyway.
With the car rendered undriveable, the next day I had it towed back to our apartment complex, duct-taped the glove box shut so that the light inside wouldn't stay on and drain the battery, and there it sat. For over a month. In that time we got a quote from the best steering column mechanic in town (as the damage was so extensive the entire column and wheel would have to be replaced to render the car driveable again), and the quote was between $300 and $500. The steering column, ignition, and wheel were easy enough to fix and parts were readily available for them, but the problem was that because of that car's security key (again, see above), if we couldn't find a steering column and ignition switch with its own key as well, the car would have to be completely re-keyed -- adding another $150 or so to the repair total.
Even though this car was wonderful, and I viewed it as an extension of myself or like my child, I just couldn't do it. We had the money; we have a savings account for emergencies or unforeseen expenses, but it just wasn't worth it. I paid $500 for the car to begin with, and in the years I owned her, taking care of her cost me another two grand or so just to keep her running and safely on the road. And there was no guarantee that if I paid that much and fixed the car up, the same sort of break in wouldn't happen again or that another major, expensive part (like the transmission, fuel pump, etc) wouldn't blow out the next day, week, or month. I made the very emotional decision to let it go and to sell it for, basically, whatever I could get out of it. I put in for quotes from U Pull It twice, and even paid a month's worth of insurance on it when it was sitting in the parking lot undriveable, but it was Daisy who finally arranged the car's pick up from them on the 30th, while I was at work. On the afternoon of the 31st, in the bitter cold, they came to take away my baby, winching her up onto the flatbed truck you see in the pictures at the top of the page, and hauling her away.
I couldn't watch as they took the car out of the parking lot -- it was bad enough watching the guy pull her up onto the truck, forcefully. He asked me if I had the keys to the car, and I replied I did, but it wouldn't do him any good. I wanted to keep the key anyhow, because (again) it's the only piece of the car I have left. It's like cutting a lock of hair off your dead child to keep forever. At least, it is in my mind.
A few days ago I called Geico to cancel the insurance on the car, since (obviously) I'm not going to keep it ongoing. It was done over the phone in about five minutes, and I was informed that within fourteen days, I'd get a refund check for the amount of insurance I'd paid on but had not used (since I'd re-upped it last month). Said refund is something like $28; I don't remember the exact amount.
The Nebraska plates stayed on the car and went with her; they're useless now anyway, and as I may not have another car before June anyhow (when I'd renew them), it's not like I'd bother to transfer them or to try to get a refund on my registration. It's not worth it. I've also not yet deposited the $300 check from U Pull It that they gave me for the car. It'll go directly into our savings account anyway, because I would somehow, for some reason, be really angry with myself if I put it into our normal bank account and the money for my car went to paying bills or getting groceries.
So, what are our next steps here? Well...
The plan is to pay down all of our credit card bills over the next few months, enough to where we would qualify for a (hopefully small) low interest auto loan, and then to get me a car that's newer and more reliable, safer and possibly big enough to use for child transport (as we will, eventually, have children). That narrows down my selections quite a bit, but I've made it a point to tell Daisy that even though I will take every suggestion and recommendation into consideration, ultimately I and I alone will be the one who selects my next vehicle -- whatever it ends up being. From a security and reliability standpoint, basically anything newer with doors that lock, windows that work, and a good heater is a step up from the Monte Carlo. From a stylistic standpoint, it will be a tough car to beat -- and Daisy knows that as well. That car was basically a vehicular version of me: heavy, old, somewhat dirty and broken in places, covered in nerdy designs, but a workhorse with a heart of gold and a fast engine, always ready for the next challenge. It's going to be very difficult for me to find another vehicle with that much... soul.
So that's where we stand now. I've been working on this post for a few days now, trying to get it right, trying to fill in all of the gaps and make it a fitting tribute. We can resume our normal blogs now, as we did before. And I will be sure to keep everyone updated on my car hunt.
Friday, January 2, 2015
The Christmas and New Year Aftermath
I realize it's been well over a week since I last wrote here, but that's mostly because the past week and a half or so has been fucking nuts, and when you have a job that doesn't actually give you any time off but the days of the actual holidays (Christmas Day and New Year's Day), not only do you have very little time to do anything but work, but your work/sleep cycles and patterns get majorly fucked up as well.
Plus, of course, it's the holidays, so there's all sorts of holiday-ish shit to do.
Ahem. Anyway. Happy New Year, folks. 2015 marks the eighth year that this blog has been in existence, as I started it in August 2007. And 2014 was a strange year for me, with lots of good and lots of bad. It was a year of change and upheaval, as well as a year of many, many stresses. I am not sad to see it go, nor am I (for once) happy to see it go, either. It was simply average for the most part, with the good balancing out the bad.
I'd originally planned to write a further recap of Christmas here in the blog, and tried to several times over the course of this past week, but I never had the time to really do so. I've barely touched my computer in the past week, to be honest with you. If I'm not at work being bored or stressed (you know, depending on the day and all) I'm at home spending time with Daisy or sleeping. There aren't enough waking hours in the day to do everything I want (or need) to do, and as a result, work around the house is piling up and I'm constantly tired.
Of course, this could've been avoided had our workplace actually given us more than the two actual holidays off, y'know, like a lot of companies who care about their workers do.
Anyway. Again.
Christmas was very nice and very quiet; Daisy woke up at 4AM and called the rest of us "lazy bums" (in a joking way, of course) for daring to wake up at 6 or 7. We had breakfast, we had presents, it was nice. Even now, as we go into January, there are still two of Daisy's gifts and one gift for Mama that have not yet arrived. I may have mentioned earlier that I received a postcard from the company I ordered said gifts from telling me that two of them had been backordered and would not be available for 4-6 more weeks. However, the third gift hasn't gotten here yet either, and there are still several more things I've ordered that are still on the way as well. We came home on Christmas night by 6PM, and since Daisy had gotten up so early, she almost immediately went to bed. I spent a few hours completely zoning out playing on my phone and/or 2DS before I joined her, as both of us had to work the next day.
Work, even though it's work, has been really quiet since around my birthday. This is (obviously) due to the holidays, and now that the holidays are over, we should expect a ramped up number of issues again -- probably close to our normal numbers and steadily increasing until we plateau at those normal numbers. Today, I'm working 1-10 instead of my normal shift of 3-12 or 2-11, because I'm gatekeeping this afternoon. This means I woke up early this morning, will be getting a shower soon, and will have to wake the wife by a little after noon so that I can get to work on time.
New Year's Eve was fine, though there's a bigger story behind the events of that day that I'm saving for my next post here. We both had to work on Wednesday night, as we usually do, though as the offices were closed all day yesterday for the 1st, we all got off at midnight. Because of this, our overnight staff worked 2nd shift hours with the rest of us, so we had fifteen people there when, normally, we have about eight to ten. We were so quiet that people who had PTO and wanted to use it were going home early just because there was really nothing to do. I had all of my work actually finished by 8:30, and sat on it for a while in the case that anything would come back to us before we all left (as if anything came back, well, they were SOL until this morning, pretty much). I had a live stream webcam of Times Square running in the background on my work computer, which allowed me to watch the ball drop live and in real time (at 11PM central time, of course). When midnight hit, the power went out in our building as someone on the hill above us quite obviously hit a transformer/power line with one of the thousands of fireworks which were being shot off at midnight. Power was out behind our building and on the other side of the street for a good stretch, but the good thing about our workplace is that it has backup generators.
After that, of course, I don't know what else happened; we came home, ate dinner, and watched Gilmore Girls before going to bed around 3.
In other news, I didn't mention earlier (though I probably should have at some point) that one of my closest friends, Rae, moved to Omaha last week. For those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time, you know that I went to grad school with Rae and the two of us are very close -- I have always regarded the woman as family, as a sister, and she was even in my wedding (in the groom's party, of course). Rae moved here because her boyfriend is here in Omaha and works for the university here, and the distance between them was too great. The plans for her move had been set in motion for many months, almost since our wedding. She solidified those plans earlier in the fall, and she finally made it out here last week -- with her dog in tow, and in a brand new car.
As an aside, at this point I can't help but be a little jealous of anyone with a new car, for obvious reasons.
So she made it to town safely and has spent the past several days unpacking/setting everything up here in Omaha, and yesterday we had lunch with her and her beau (partially to celebrate the new year, partially because we were all off work, but mostly because I missed the hell out of that woman). She seems to be settling in fine and getting used to the Omaha landscape, and it's very nice to finally have one of my own friends here in town with me. If you've never left your hometown, or you otherwise live in reasonably close vicinity of most of your friends and family, it's probably difficult for you to fully understand how hard it is to live in a town/city (or several of them over the course of the past nine years, for me) where you know -- and have no connection with -- anyone. Part of why I was a hermit for so long was choice, yes, but a larger part of it was because I knew virtually nobody in the towns in which I lived after moving here to the midwest. The only friends I've ever had in said towns were people I worked with, and after I would leave said job(s) I would very quickly fall out of contact with those people most of the time and for the most part. Rae is one of the few friends I've kept in regular contact with over the past five years or so now, and one of the closest friends I've ever had. She and Daisy love each other as well, so it's a huge comfort that she's here in town. I don't feel so alone anymore.
In other news, the cold and snow -- with the exception of yesterday and today -- has been unrelenting. It's not so much the snow as it is the cold; the high temperature earlier this week was 5. Five degrees. The low was well below zero. This pattern is supposed to repeat again this weekend as well, with the possibility of more snow tomorrow/tomorrow night. As you probably know, I hate winter and everything about winter, and desperately wish it would go away more quickly so that I can break out the t-shirts and flip-flops again. As it's only January 2, I have serious doubts of that happening anytime soon.
We return to work today, as mentioned before, and our normal work schedules of five days a week continues from now through...Memorial Day? Something like that? I don't think we have any other days off work until then, which is really goddamned depressing. We don't even get Martin Luther King Day off as far as I know, though as it's a Monday neither myself nor Daisy would have to work it anyway.
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