All I do is work, come home, eat, and sleep.
When I sleep, no matter what I do, I cannot prevent myself from dreaming about work.
Occasionally, when I'm not too absolutely fucking exhausted, I will shower, clean part of the house, or try to catch up on Parks and Recreation on Netflix.
My beard is growing out more not because I'm trying to grow it, but because I never have the energy to shave or keep it trimmed up. A beard, I might add, that is rapidly going grey.
This job has consumed my life, and not in the good way.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Gravitas, Part I
A year ago today, my youngest sister -- a girl I'd never met, yet was my sister anyhow -- was killed in a car accident. It is a day I haven't forgotten, obviously, and it cast an ominous pall over what would become a rather shitty October, in retrospect.
The full year since has given me many changes and many challenges. I have dealt with and done a remarkable amount of things in the past year, from moving to another state and getting married to starting a completely different career. There is very little of the me from a year ago that still remains now, in most aspects anyhow. Comparing the two years is akin to a snake shedding its skin. While some of you may find it morbid that I'm using the anniversary of my sister's death as a milestone, and it is, it was also a turning point of sorts in my life -- the turning point upon when everything started to slowly begin changing.
Make no mistake, if you read my posts from a year ago I did mourn my sister's death, but I did so in a rather detached way. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, really; I was hip-deep in the semester and I had never met or even spoken to the girl. That doesn't change the fact that she was flesh and blood, of course. I was shaken up indeed, though nothing about my life had changed. I tend to process death a lot differently than most people I know do. I'm the person who will cry at sad scenes in movies, and will cry when someone famous and/or I admired dies, but when someone normal dies, such as a friend or family member, I'm much of the attitude "yeah, well, that happens," and I go on with my life. I don't know why that is. I did not cry for my sister, but I did cry when George Carlin died. I came pretty close to crying when Robin Williams died. I don't know if this is a personality flaw or if I'm some sort of low-level functioning sociopath, or what.
Today starts my sixth week at work, and it feels like I've been there much, much longer than I have been. Again, my weekends go far too quickly and my weeks do not. In a few more weeks, I will be fully accustomed to the job and its duties right as I am thrust into the proverbial pit of hell over Halloween weekend when almost everyone will be out of the office -- meaning I'll have to do all of their work. That's part of why, as I mentioned in my last post here, I've been training on gatekeeping. I will not only have to be gatekeeper, but I will have to work as many issues as I can handle because nobody else will be there. Even a month out, the thought makes me shudder. The job is busy enough as it is when I'm doing my own work. I do not yet dread going to it, but I get the feeling that I will soon enough. The work is challenging and I learn something new every day, but you want to be bored shitless and stressed out of your skull at the same time, boy, this is the job for you. As I slap on my professional attitude every day I'm there, there's never been a day where I've not thought remember the paycheck, remember the paycheck at least five or six times. It is indeed a far cry from teaching college students three days a week. That was so much simpler, I had autonomy and I was actually in charge of something then. As I've probably mentioned before, I am now a corporate cog. I have job security, yes, but that's about it.
So, not all changes over the past year have been for the better...as you're probably gathering at this point.
Today it is storming. Well, at the moment, it's just raining hard. The rain started right as I was getting dressed and ready to go in to work, and I found about half an hour before I had to leave that Pete had yacked all over the couch in the living room...so that was fun to clean up. I used to love rain and storms -- for many, many years -- until I found that upon moving to Omaha, where I smoke on the porch outside, there's nothing to stop me from getting completely soaked. Therefore I dread rain and storms now when I'm at home.
Daisy, while I'm at work today, has a lot of stuff to take care of -- while cleaning last week, she found her passport, which will now allow her to change her name in the eyes of the federal government (read: the only place aside from work that she doesn't have my last name already). She also has to renew her car's registration, which expires today. It's 2:15 PM and she's still sleeping, so she'll have to wake up soon to do these things. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, I'll be in a cubicle until midnight because that's apparently my lot in life now if we want to be able to survive and pay the bills.
Do I sound bitter? That sounds bitter. I'm really not trying to be bitter about anything, but as most of you know, I tend to see the bad in everything much more than I see the good.
Anyway. This will continue later. I'm nowhere near done talking about life as of late, but I do have to go to work now.
The full year since has given me many changes and many challenges. I have dealt with and done a remarkable amount of things in the past year, from moving to another state and getting married to starting a completely different career. There is very little of the me from a year ago that still remains now, in most aspects anyhow. Comparing the two years is akin to a snake shedding its skin. While some of you may find it morbid that I'm using the anniversary of my sister's death as a milestone, and it is, it was also a turning point of sorts in my life -- the turning point upon when everything started to slowly begin changing.
Make no mistake, if you read my posts from a year ago I did mourn my sister's death, but I did so in a rather detached way. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, really; I was hip-deep in the semester and I had never met or even spoken to the girl. That doesn't change the fact that she was flesh and blood, of course. I was shaken up indeed, though nothing about my life had changed. I tend to process death a lot differently than most people I know do. I'm the person who will cry at sad scenes in movies, and will cry when someone famous and/or I admired dies, but when someone normal dies, such as a friend or family member, I'm much of the attitude "yeah, well, that happens," and I go on with my life. I don't know why that is. I did not cry for my sister, but I did cry when George Carlin died. I came pretty close to crying when Robin Williams died. I don't know if this is a personality flaw or if I'm some sort of low-level functioning sociopath, or what.
Today starts my sixth week at work, and it feels like I've been there much, much longer than I have been. Again, my weekends go far too quickly and my weeks do not. In a few more weeks, I will be fully accustomed to the job and its duties right as I am thrust into the proverbial pit of hell over Halloween weekend when almost everyone will be out of the office -- meaning I'll have to do all of their work. That's part of why, as I mentioned in my last post here, I've been training on gatekeeping. I will not only have to be gatekeeper, but I will have to work as many issues as I can handle because nobody else will be there. Even a month out, the thought makes me shudder. The job is busy enough as it is when I'm doing my own work. I do not yet dread going to it, but I get the feeling that I will soon enough. The work is challenging and I learn something new every day, but you want to be bored shitless and stressed out of your skull at the same time, boy, this is the job for you. As I slap on my professional attitude every day I'm there, there's never been a day where I've not thought remember the paycheck, remember the paycheck at least five or six times. It is indeed a far cry from teaching college students three days a week. That was so much simpler, I had autonomy and I was actually in charge of something then. As I've probably mentioned before, I am now a corporate cog. I have job security, yes, but that's about it.
So, not all changes over the past year have been for the better...as you're probably gathering at this point.
Today it is storming. Well, at the moment, it's just raining hard. The rain started right as I was getting dressed and ready to go in to work, and I found about half an hour before I had to leave that Pete had yacked all over the couch in the living room...so that was fun to clean up. I used to love rain and storms -- for many, many years -- until I found that upon moving to Omaha, where I smoke on the porch outside, there's nothing to stop me from getting completely soaked. Therefore I dread rain and storms now when I'm at home.
Daisy, while I'm at work today, has a lot of stuff to take care of -- while cleaning last week, she found her passport, which will now allow her to change her name in the eyes of the federal government (read: the only place aside from work that she doesn't have my last name already). She also has to renew her car's registration, which expires today. It's 2:15 PM and she's still sleeping, so she'll have to wake up soon to do these things. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, I'll be in a cubicle until midnight because that's apparently my lot in life now if we want to be able to survive and pay the bills.
Do I sound bitter? That sounds bitter. I'm really not trying to be bitter about anything, but as most of you know, I tend to see the bad in everything much more than I see the good.
Anyway. This will continue later. I'm nowhere near done talking about life as of late, but I do have to go to work now.
Monday, September 22, 2014
The Keymaster
Last night I made one of the (many) Transformers themes the ringtone on my iPhone, and it was the most exciting thing I've done all week.
No, seriously.
I've been working variable shifts at the office; they're training me on a new system/task, and because of that I have to be there when the regular person who does that is there so that I can get some on the job shadowing/training. This means I've been coming in and working 1-10PM most days. I don't really mind this to be perfectly honest, as it means I'll be getting off earlier than the usual, but my sleeping schedule has now readjusted itself to where no matter what, whether it's a weekday or weekend, I will awaken at 9-9:30 AM. This, this I mind. I don't function well in early morning daylight, and I still classify that as early morning. On Saturdays I will still work the 3-12 shift, but for the foreseeable future on weekdays, at least until my training/shadowing is complete, I'll be there 1-10.
As mentioned before, the job is mentally draining, and as I haven't worked a 5-day, 40-hour week in a long time, I come home at night, eat (if I haven't eaten yet), and crash within two hours or so. The weeks are very long, or at least seem very long most of the time, and when I get my two weekend days off they go very quickly and I can't really get anything accomplished during them. Then it's back to work for another five days in a row, repeat. Look, the money is good, the job itself is fine, and I really like the people I work with (including the wife, obviously) but it really feels like I can't enjoy any of my free time any more because there's so little of it and/or every time I clock in at work it feels like I've just left the place. I can't make any plans to do anything because I don't have the time or energy, and the one real day Daisy and I get together off every week (Monday) we have to fill with doing the things that we haven't had time to do throughout the rest of the week -- like the grocery shopping and cooking actual meals. Or paying bills. Or all of the above. There's no real downtime where there's not something to do that desperately needs to be done.
Yes, all of our bills are now being paid more easily than ever, but still.
The new system I'm training on at work is more of a process, and it's called "gatekeeping." It boils down to me being responsible for making sure everyone has an evenly distributed workload when I'm there, but it doesn't come with any managerial power or a higher salary or anything like that. It's just another aspect of the job. I will train on doing it off and on for about a month before I'll take it over fully when necessary once I know all of its ins-and-outs. About 1/3 of the people on our shift know how to gatekeep fully, and most everyone has at least some cursory experience of it. I'm being trained to do it as a full backup, which means when the normal gatekeeper(s) is/are not in for the day, I can jump in and run everything. Again, this is something that (overall) I'm fine with; having another skill under my belt at that place won't just be job security, but it'll more than likely eventually help me move up through the company. What I, and most of the rest of us in the office, do now is basically middle management. That's fine for the moment, and I do like my job for the most part, but obviously it's not something I plan (or want) to do forever.
In other news...
Daisy and I purchased a large dining room table last week. While I've been rather lax in updating this blog (based solely on the time I have available to do it and the lack of any breathing space during the work week), last Sunday afternoon we went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, picked one out, and bought it. We then set up the delivery for today, as we wouldn't have time to clean out/clear out the dining room before this past weekend, and yesterday we received the call that it would be delivered between 8 and 10AM today.
"That probably means we'll be their first delivery of the day," Daisy said.
In hindsight I should've realized that myself; we scheduled the delivery a week in advance, so of course we'd probably be the first on the docket.
This also meant that we had to empty out the dining room (still cluttered with boxes and bags of everything from not only the move, but from the wedding/bridal shower) and clear a patch for the delivery guys to bring in the table. This was a much longer, much harder task than I thought it would be. it also involved firing up the steam cleaner for the first time and scrubbing the floor under where the table would be, as we'll probably not have the chance to do that again until we eventually move out of this place.
We completed these tasks at roughly 4AM, then crashed. Daisy's phone rang at 8:05, telling her they'd be here in 10 minutes. She got up, let them in, they brought it all in and set it up, and then she went back to bed with me. She's still sleeping now.
As for the table itself, it's nice. As you know, Daisy and I have very different senses of taste, style, and decor when it comes to furnishing living spaces, and for the most part I just let her take the proverbial wheel on it. While I have opinions about different styles and colors, they really don't matter and it's not worth fighting over (remember folks, if you're married, pick your battles). We found the table -- over five feet long on its own, and it comes with three two-foot leaves and six chairs -- and the price was right, I liked the finish, Daisy liked it, so we got it. I'm not going to tell you how much it cost, because fuck, but I will say that yes, it was a good deal, and we now have a table and chairs, and we can finally have friends and the parents over to the house for dinners and the like.
Daisy has also been decorating the house for fall; she was able to find some affordable decorations at a few stores, including the Dollar Tree, and our place no longer has completely bare walls or the "minimalist with a lot of clutter spread around" feel. It's beginning to feel more like a home. I told her we should probably order our Christmas tree on Amazon soon, as we're likely to get a much better deal on it now instead of two months from now.
However, our next big purchase -- which will probably happen during the month of October, once we get paid again on the 3rd -- will be a new, larger television.
Let me explain. My flatscreen HDTV I bought in 2011 is fine, it's nice, yes. But it's also small. It was perfect for the house I had in Newton because it sat in the living room, the living room was small there, and I used it primarily for DVDs or football only -- which meant that during 90% of the year (roughly) it was off. But, when it was on, it was the perfect size, brightness, and loudness for that room. The same cannot be said for it now, as the living room here in Omaha is more than twice the size of the one I had in Newton, making a 22-inch widescreen HDTV look more like a computer monitor stuffed into a corner than an actual television set. And, while it was plenty loud enough for broadcast television, it is not loud enough for Netflix most of the time unless I crank the volume (it has shitty speakers in it).
So, because we're a dual-income household now and are doing decently well budgeting our finances, and because new TVs are super-cheap for what we need/want, that's going to be our next big purchase. We've already done some price searching/matching, and this is something that Daisy is going to let me handle on my own as I know what I personally am looking for. Basically it boils down to nothing below 46 inches, and with as many HDMI ports and AV inputs on it as possible. There is much more to it than that, of course, but those are the important things. I am not yet sure where we'll get one from, but it'll be several more weeks before we have to worry about that anyway.
With the table and chairs taken care of and the TV about to be taken care of, the last "big" thing right now I have to focus on, at least in the long run, is my car.
I mentioned back in June how my insurance dropped by a lot when I moved to Omaha and registered the Monte Carlo here; part of that is because I've kept the same insurance on the same car for multiple years, I'm sure, but part of it is also because I updated my account on their website to tell them that I'm only driving about 20 miles per week. This is true, actually -- it's about four miles to and from work, round trip, five days a week. As I was already planning on working where I am now even back in June when I renewed my insurance, this information remains accurate. Anyway, as I'm not putting anywhere near as many miles on the car as I was when I lived in Kansas, I'm saving a ton of money on gasoline and other maintenance on it.
However. All is not good.
Several times in the past few weeks, the car decided it just didn't want to start. Not the whole "turn the key and the starter whirrs and whirrs but won't start the car," no. That I would actually be okay with as long as after the second or third try it would fire up. No, this is, to be completely accurate, putting the key into the ignition, turning it part-way and having the lights inside come on like they're supposed to (showing me that there is indeed power in the car and the battery is fine) and then turning to start it and....nothing happens. Just silence. Nothing whirrs, nothing spins, nothing moves, nothing does anything.
Take the key out, put it back in, try again a few times. Still nothing. Try it one or two more times and the car remembers it's a car and fires up normally, with no dashboard error messages or lights or anything.
I...yeah, I don't know. I've got nothin'.
I'm sure this means something; I'm sure this means that an expensive part or component is starting to burn out or otherwise go bad, and this is my baby car trying to tell me or give me some sort of advance warning of it. Could be the starter, could be the alternator, could be any number of things. The car's been running and driving perfectly fine otherwise -- in fact, it feels like she's been running a lot better and/or more smoothly since I'm not putting 200 miles on her a week anymore -- but this isn't exactly a good sign. It has me a bit on edge, especially as I need the car five days a week now (compared to three or four, max, when I was teaching). Still, it's only done this a handful of times over the past month or so -- maybe five or six times at the most, and I've always been able to get her started after trying for a few minutes, so I don't know. I'd chalk it up to the car being old and temperamental as always, except it's not like I've been abusive to her or anything over the past several months.
"Could be anything," Daisy said. "You haven't had an oil change in how long?"
"It's not the oil, babe," I said. "The oil's not even low, nor is the coolant, and that's not going to stop a car from starting when the key is turned."
I thought it could be the spark plugs again, or the wires, but if it were I'd have the flashing light on my dashboard like I had before. So, yeah. I'm pretty much clueless here. It doesn't appear to be a battery issue, even though the battery is a few years old, as I will always have full power to the lights, fans, and other electrical stuff in the car even if it won't turn over, so....
Ahem. Anyway. So that's the next big thing I'm going to have to deal with. I told Daisy that I'd much rather buy a newer car outright off of Craigslist or someplace to avoid a car payment (read: yet another bill we'd have to pay every month), but that may not be possible as it's not like we're ever flush with cash up front. If we were, neither of us would have anything on our credit cards right now.
"If I have to go to a dealer," I said, "I'm going into one with very specific wants and needs -- I'm going to tell them I want certain makes/models between, say, 2001 and 2005, I'm not paying more than $3500 total for a vehicle, and I'm not paying any more than $150 a month."
"You can do that," she said.
I do have a shortlist of makes and models I'm interested in, starting with the upgraded version of the Monte Carlo I have now (or an Impala), as well as a few others. Older Firebirds/Camaros are on the list, but I also have smaller, more economical vehicles like the Toyota Echo and older Subaru Foresters. So, eh, it's not exactly a shortlist as much as I thought it was.
Anyway. That's about all that's going on right now. I shall update you when I have the time, but because of my work schedule and the need to do everything I can do on my days off because I have limited time to do so, I cannot yet tell you when that may be.
No, seriously.
I've been working variable shifts at the office; they're training me on a new system/task, and because of that I have to be there when the regular person who does that is there so that I can get some on the job shadowing/training. This means I've been coming in and working 1-10PM most days. I don't really mind this to be perfectly honest, as it means I'll be getting off earlier than the usual, but my sleeping schedule has now readjusted itself to where no matter what, whether it's a weekday or weekend, I will awaken at 9-9:30 AM. This, this I mind. I don't function well in early morning daylight, and I still classify that as early morning. On Saturdays I will still work the 3-12 shift, but for the foreseeable future on weekdays, at least until my training/shadowing is complete, I'll be there 1-10.
As mentioned before, the job is mentally draining, and as I haven't worked a 5-day, 40-hour week in a long time, I come home at night, eat (if I haven't eaten yet), and crash within two hours or so. The weeks are very long, or at least seem very long most of the time, and when I get my two weekend days off they go very quickly and I can't really get anything accomplished during them. Then it's back to work for another five days in a row, repeat. Look, the money is good, the job itself is fine, and I really like the people I work with (including the wife, obviously) but it really feels like I can't enjoy any of my free time any more because there's so little of it and/or every time I clock in at work it feels like I've just left the place. I can't make any plans to do anything because I don't have the time or energy, and the one real day Daisy and I get together off every week (Monday) we have to fill with doing the things that we haven't had time to do throughout the rest of the week -- like the grocery shopping and cooking actual meals. Or paying bills. Or all of the above. There's no real downtime where there's not something to do that desperately needs to be done.
Yes, all of our bills are now being paid more easily than ever, but still.
The new system I'm training on at work is more of a process, and it's called "gatekeeping." It boils down to me being responsible for making sure everyone has an evenly distributed workload when I'm there, but it doesn't come with any managerial power or a higher salary or anything like that. It's just another aspect of the job. I will train on doing it off and on for about a month before I'll take it over fully when necessary once I know all of its ins-and-outs. About 1/3 of the people on our shift know how to gatekeep fully, and most everyone has at least some cursory experience of it. I'm being trained to do it as a full backup, which means when the normal gatekeeper(s) is/are not in for the day, I can jump in and run everything. Again, this is something that (overall) I'm fine with; having another skill under my belt at that place won't just be job security, but it'll more than likely eventually help me move up through the company. What I, and most of the rest of us in the office, do now is basically middle management. That's fine for the moment, and I do like my job for the most part, but obviously it's not something I plan (or want) to do forever.
In other news...
Daisy and I purchased a large dining room table last week. While I've been rather lax in updating this blog (based solely on the time I have available to do it and the lack of any breathing space during the work week), last Sunday afternoon we went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, picked one out, and bought it. We then set up the delivery for today, as we wouldn't have time to clean out/clear out the dining room before this past weekend, and yesterday we received the call that it would be delivered between 8 and 10AM today.
"That probably means we'll be their first delivery of the day," Daisy said.
In hindsight I should've realized that myself; we scheduled the delivery a week in advance, so of course we'd probably be the first on the docket.
This also meant that we had to empty out the dining room (still cluttered with boxes and bags of everything from not only the move, but from the wedding/bridal shower) and clear a patch for the delivery guys to bring in the table. This was a much longer, much harder task than I thought it would be. it also involved firing up the steam cleaner for the first time and scrubbing the floor under where the table would be, as we'll probably not have the chance to do that again until we eventually move out of this place.
We completed these tasks at roughly 4AM, then crashed. Daisy's phone rang at 8:05, telling her they'd be here in 10 minutes. She got up, let them in, they brought it all in and set it up, and then she went back to bed with me. She's still sleeping now.
As for the table itself, it's nice. As you know, Daisy and I have very different senses of taste, style, and decor when it comes to furnishing living spaces, and for the most part I just let her take the proverbial wheel on it. While I have opinions about different styles and colors, they really don't matter and it's not worth fighting over (remember folks, if you're married, pick your battles). We found the table -- over five feet long on its own, and it comes with three two-foot leaves and six chairs -- and the price was right, I liked the finish, Daisy liked it, so we got it. I'm not going to tell you how much it cost, because fuck, but I will say that yes, it was a good deal, and we now have a table and chairs, and we can finally have friends and the parents over to the house for dinners and the like.
Daisy has also been decorating the house for fall; she was able to find some affordable decorations at a few stores, including the Dollar Tree, and our place no longer has completely bare walls or the "minimalist with a lot of clutter spread around" feel. It's beginning to feel more like a home. I told her we should probably order our Christmas tree on Amazon soon, as we're likely to get a much better deal on it now instead of two months from now.
However, our next big purchase -- which will probably happen during the month of October, once we get paid again on the 3rd -- will be a new, larger television.
Let me explain. My flatscreen HDTV I bought in 2011 is fine, it's nice, yes. But it's also small. It was perfect for the house I had in Newton because it sat in the living room, the living room was small there, and I used it primarily for DVDs or football only -- which meant that during 90% of the year (roughly) it was off. But, when it was on, it was the perfect size, brightness, and loudness for that room. The same cannot be said for it now, as the living room here in Omaha is more than twice the size of the one I had in Newton, making a 22-inch widescreen HDTV look more like a computer monitor stuffed into a corner than an actual television set. And, while it was plenty loud enough for broadcast television, it is not loud enough for Netflix most of the time unless I crank the volume (it has shitty speakers in it).
So, because we're a dual-income household now and are doing decently well budgeting our finances, and because new TVs are super-cheap for what we need/want, that's going to be our next big purchase. We've already done some price searching/matching, and this is something that Daisy is going to let me handle on my own as I know what I personally am looking for. Basically it boils down to nothing below 46 inches, and with as many HDMI ports and AV inputs on it as possible. There is much more to it than that, of course, but those are the important things. I am not yet sure where we'll get one from, but it'll be several more weeks before we have to worry about that anyway.
With the table and chairs taken care of and the TV about to be taken care of, the last "big" thing right now I have to focus on, at least in the long run, is my car.
I mentioned back in June how my insurance dropped by a lot when I moved to Omaha and registered the Monte Carlo here; part of that is because I've kept the same insurance on the same car for multiple years, I'm sure, but part of it is also because I updated my account on their website to tell them that I'm only driving about 20 miles per week. This is true, actually -- it's about four miles to and from work, round trip, five days a week. As I was already planning on working where I am now even back in June when I renewed my insurance, this information remains accurate. Anyway, as I'm not putting anywhere near as many miles on the car as I was when I lived in Kansas, I'm saving a ton of money on gasoline and other maintenance on it.
However. All is not good.
Several times in the past few weeks, the car decided it just didn't want to start. Not the whole "turn the key and the starter whirrs and whirrs but won't start the car," no. That I would actually be okay with as long as after the second or third try it would fire up. No, this is, to be completely accurate, putting the key into the ignition, turning it part-way and having the lights inside come on like they're supposed to (showing me that there is indeed power in the car and the battery is fine) and then turning to start it and....nothing happens. Just silence. Nothing whirrs, nothing spins, nothing moves, nothing does anything.
Take the key out, put it back in, try again a few times. Still nothing. Try it one or two more times and the car remembers it's a car and fires up normally, with no dashboard error messages or lights or anything.
I...yeah, I don't know. I've got nothin'.
I'm sure this means something; I'm sure this means that an expensive part or component is starting to burn out or otherwise go bad, and this is my baby car trying to tell me or give me some sort of advance warning of it. Could be the starter, could be the alternator, could be any number of things. The car's been running and driving perfectly fine otherwise -- in fact, it feels like she's been running a lot better and/or more smoothly since I'm not putting 200 miles on her a week anymore -- but this isn't exactly a good sign. It has me a bit on edge, especially as I need the car five days a week now (compared to three or four, max, when I was teaching). Still, it's only done this a handful of times over the past month or so -- maybe five or six times at the most, and I've always been able to get her started after trying for a few minutes, so I don't know. I'd chalk it up to the car being old and temperamental as always, except it's not like I've been abusive to her or anything over the past several months.
"Could be anything," Daisy said. "You haven't had an oil change in how long?"
"It's not the oil, babe," I said. "The oil's not even low, nor is the coolant, and that's not going to stop a car from starting when the key is turned."
I thought it could be the spark plugs again, or the wires, but if it were I'd have the flashing light on my dashboard like I had before. So, yeah. I'm pretty much clueless here. It doesn't appear to be a battery issue, even though the battery is a few years old, as I will always have full power to the lights, fans, and other electrical stuff in the car even if it won't turn over, so....
Ahem. Anyway. So that's the next big thing I'm going to have to deal with. I told Daisy that I'd much rather buy a newer car outright off of Craigslist or someplace to avoid a car payment (read: yet another bill we'd have to pay every month), but that may not be possible as it's not like we're ever flush with cash up front. If we were, neither of us would have anything on our credit cards right now.
"If I have to go to a dealer," I said, "I'm going into one with very specific wants and needs -- I'm going to tell them I want certain makes/models between, say, 2001 and 2005, I'm not paying more than $3500 total for a vehicle, and I'm not paying any more than $150 a month."
"You can do that," she said.
I do have a shortlist of makes and models I'm interested in, starting with the upgraded version of the Monte Carlo I have now (or an Impala), as well as a few others. Older Firebirds/Camaros are on the list, but I also have smaller, more economical vehicles like the Toyota Echo and older Subaru Foresters. So, eh, it's not exactly a shortlist as much as I thought it was.
Anyway. That's about all that's going on right now. I shall update you when I have the time, but because of my work schedule and the need to do everything I can do on my days off because I have limited time to do so, I cannot yet tell you when that may be.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Foreseeable Futures, Part II
Yesterday afternoon we went shopping at Gordman's. I ended up finding six or seven "business casual" workshirts I could wear to the office, several of them being green (the others were black, blue, or grey, which I can wear with pretty much anything). I'm not a big fan of bright colors anymore; whereas when I was teaching it was basically anything goes as a professor because I'd get admiration and respect from the class anyway, the same is not true in corporate jobs in the private sector. As I live in the shadow of my wife while working at that job, I also have proverbially larger shoes to fill than most other employees, and the last thing I want to do is stand out for any reason.
Yes, any reason. I doubt many of you have had the opportunity to work in the same office as your spouse, but let me tell you, it does create an interesting work dynamic. Learn things too quickly and excel at your job too quickly, and you'll both be singled out for favoritism, as logic would dictate that there's some handholding and extra training going on with you that hasn't been given to the other employees equally. Learn things too slowly and/or find yourself unable to grasp the job itself or its duties (or, conversely, screw up too much), and everyone thinks you're an idiot (and, by extension, they'll think my very intelligent wife married an idiot, which doesn't make her look good). No, until I'm comfortable in the work environment fully, and until I can learn all of the nuances of the internal office politics, I'm staying under the radar -- I'm showing up, clocking in, doing my job, and clocking out. Just because my wife works there and just because she's a supervisor doesn't make me special or any different than anyone else. Moreover, I don't deserve nor do I want special treatment. If I screw up, I don't want to be treated with kid gloves because of who I am -- I am independent and my own person, and my responsibility is my responsibility alone.
All I can do is attempt to keep my head above water, and do it even more when Daisy is not there working with me. Excelling when she and I aren't working together that particular day is fine -- for example, two of my five days this week (tomorrow and Wednesday) she has off. She normally works Wednesday, but took it off as her own Labor Day makeup holiday. She doesn't work today either as it's one of her normal days off.
Anyway.
So I now have work clothes -- or at least more of a variety of work clothes I can wear on a daily basis to my job. Two of the shirts are long-sleeved, even though i generally hate long-sleeved shirts that aren't hoodies. While I can wear hoodies/jackets/etc to work if necessary, dress code dictates that it's not work-appropriate enough attire to actually work in. Or something like that, anyway. Truthfully I didn't pay attention any more closely than I had to, and I wore one of my fleece zip-ups for my entire shift one day last week when it was cold and rainy. I'm getting the feeling that as long as you show up, do your work, and don't make waves...nobody really cares as long as you attempt to look decent.
I also got a new belt, some coffee, and a shaving/shower gel set from Gordman's as well. The one nearest to our house is the one we went to, and it's not the "good" one. I paid $10-15 for each of my shirts there and everything I got was on clearance -- the one closer to the parents' place has a bigger selection and I was getting shirts there last year for teaching outfits for $5-10 each at the most.
After the Gordman's trip we went to the Dollar Tree, where Daisy was able to find some stuff to decorate the house for fall. She got a wreath and some fake leaves, as well as two little scarecrow-like figures, and she's going to hang them up and decorate the interior of our home. I asked her why.
"What do you mean?"
"The point of decorations is for people to see them," I said. "Nobody is ever in our house but us. Exterior decorations I'm fine with, but interior decorations for fall/Halloween? Eh, what's the point?"
She and I don't see eye to eye on this, of course, but whatever makes her happy makes me happy. I've learned to pick my battles and not put up a fight when it's about her doing something which makes her happy.
Mind you, we did get a lot of other stuff at the Dollar Tree, stuff I/we needed as I haven't actually been to a Dollar Tree for real shopping since I was living in Newton. I shop for bargains -- if there's something I can get for $1 that would cost me $3 or $4 at Walmart for the same thing, I just get it there. That includes stuff like deodorant, shaving cream/razors, my allergy medicine, garbage bags, etc.
"I want to go to the mall," she told me while we were Dollar-Tree-shopping.
"Of course," I said. I hadn't been to the mall since, oh, last fall? Before Christmas? Possibly last summer -- I can't remember, really.
Apparently there was a big sale (and she had a good coupon as well) at Torrid, which (if you're not aware) is like the girly, plus-sized version of Hot Topic without most of the glitz and glam. A large chunk of Daisy's wardrobe comes from Torrid, something I support because she looks fucking hot in almost everything she buys there. So yes, I'm fine with tagging along with her to the mall and to Torrid. She found a shirt she wanted and an embossed peacoat jacket that looked so good on her that if she hadn't bought it, I would've bought it for her that very second in a heartbeat.
Not every man goes to Torrid with his wife.
Ahem. Anyway. Afterwards, we wandered the mall for a bit. I found two t-shirts in JCPenney, one a Superman shirt and the other a John Lennon shirt. At the last remaining Suncoast store I've seen in operation anywhere in the past fifteen years or so, I purchased Pacific Rim on DVD for $7.99. Daisy, not to be outdone, got herself some stuff from Bath & Body Works (where I also picked up a new body scrubber for my shower). The rest of the trip, however, was a bust -- I wanted to see if Old Navy had anything I needed or wanted, and they did, but none of it was in my size or it was too expensive. I was also in there to look to see if they had their winter coats out yet, as I'd found a peacoat there a few years ago that I loved and would replace the one I have now (which is falling apart after about four years of daily wear in the wintertime). Then we came home.
We do still have to go grocery shopping tonight as soon as I get home from work, though -- we were too tired last night and had been on our feet all day running around stores and the mall. I told Daisy to be ready as soon as I get off at midnight, because she'll be home and will be awake -- and the clock, after that, is ticking until I'll absolutely need to eat and pass out. While I could go shopping myself without her, there's probably a fair amount of things she needs, and it's something we generally do together due to, well, the amount of stuff we get. Tonight it'll be a fast, but big, trip -- we should've gone two nights ago and we didn't, and now the stuff I needed before I desperately need now because i'm either out of it or very close to being out. I also know Daisy doesn't want to spend any more time shopping at midnight than she has to, and I don't blame her because I don't either. It's my first day back at work for the week and I'm super-tired already; who knows how I'll feel at midnight.
Yes, any reason. I doubt many of you have had the opportunity to work in the same office as your spouse, but let me tell you, it does create an interesting work dynamic. Learn things too quickly and excel at your job too quickly, and you'll both be singled out for favoritism, as logic would dictate that there's some handholding and extra training going on with you that hasn't been given to the other employees equally. Learn things too slowly and/or find yourself unable to grasp the job itself or its duties (or, conversely, screw up too much), and everyone thinks you're an idiot (and, by extension, they'll think my very intelligent wife married an idiot, which doesn't make her look good). No, until I'm comfortable in the work environment fully, and until I can learn all of the nuances of the internal office politics, I'm staying under the radar -- I'm showing up, clocking in, doing my job, and clocking out. Just because my wife works there and just because she's a supervisor doesn't make me special or any different than anyone else. Moreover, I don't deserve nor do I want special treatment. If I screw up, I don't want to be treated with kid gloves because of who I am -- I am independent and my own person, and my responsibility is my responsibility alone.
All I can do is attempt to keep my head above water, and do it even more when Daisy is not there working with me. Excelling when she and I aren't working together that particular day is fine -- for example, two of my five days this week (tomorrow and Wednesday) she has off. She normally works Wednesday, but took it off as her own Labor Day makeup holiday. She doesn't work today either as it's one of her normal days off.
Anyway.
So I now have work clothes -- or at least more of a variety of work clothes I can wear on a daily basis to my job. Two of the shirts are long-sleeved, even though i generally hate long-sleeved shirts that aren't hoodies. While I can wear hoodies/jackets/etc to work if necessary, dress code dictates that it's not work-appropriate enough attire to actually work in. Or something like that, anyway. Truthfully I didn't pay attention any more closely than I had to, and I wore one of my fleece zip-ups for my entire shift one day last week when it was cold and rainy. I'm getting the feeling that as long as you show up, do your work, and don't make waves...nobody really cares as long as you attempt to look decent.
I also got a new belt, some coffee, and a shaving/shower gel set from Gordman's as well. The one nearest to our house is the one we went to, and it's not the "good" one. I paid $10-15 for each of my shirts there and everything I got was on clearance -- the one closer to the parents' place has a bigger selection and I was getting shirts there last year for teaching outfits for $5-10 each at the most.
After the Gordman's trip we went to the Dollar Tree, where Daisy was able to find some stuff to decorate the house for fall. She got a wreath and some fake leaves, as well as two little scarecrow-like figures, and she's going to hang them up and decorate the interior of our home. I asked her why.
"What do you mean?"
"The point of decorations is for people to see them," I said. "Nobody is ever in our house but us. Exterior decorations I'm fine with, but interior decorations for fall/Halloween? Eh, what's the point?"
She and I don't see eye to eye on this, of course, but whatever makes her happy makes me happy. I've learned to pick my battles and not put up a fight when it's about her doing something which makes her happy.
Mind you, we did get a lot of other stuff at the Dollar Tree, stuff I/we needed as I haven't actually been to a Dollar Tree for real shopping since I was living in Newton. I shop for bargains -- if there's something I can get for $1 that would cost me $3 or $4 at Walmart for the same thing, I just get it there. That includes stuff like deodorant, shaving cream/razors, my allergy medicine, garbage bags, etc.
"I want to go to the mall," she told me while we were Dollar-Tree-shopping.
"Of course," I said. I hadn't been to the mall since, oh, last fall? Before Christmas? Possibly last summer -- I can't remember, really.
Apparently there was a big sale (and she had a good coupon as well) at Torrid, which (if you're not aware) is like the girly, plus-sized version of Hot Topic without most of the glitz and glam. A large chunk of Daisy's wardrobe comes from Torrid, something I support because she looks fucking hot in almost everything she buys there. So yes, I'm fine with tagging along with her to the mall and to Torrid. She found a shirt she wanted and an embossed peacoat jacket that looked so good on her that if she hadn't bought it, I would've bought it for her that very second in a heartbeat.
Not every man goes to Torrid with his wife.
Ahem. Anyway. Afterwards, we wandered the mall for a bit. I found two t-shirts in JCPenney, one a Superman shirt and the other a John Lennon shirt. At the last remaining Suncoast store I've seen in operation anywhere in the past fifteen years or so, I purchased Pacific Rim on DVD for $7.99. Daisy, not to be outdone, got herself some stuff from Bath & Body Works (where I also picked up a new body scrubber for my shower). The rest of the trip, however, was a bust -- I wanted to see if Old Navy had anything I needed or wanted, and they did, but none of it was in my size or it was too expensive. I was also in there to look to see if they had their winter coats out yet, as I'd found a peacoat there a few years ago that I loved and would replace the one I have now (which is falling apart after about four years of daily wear in the wintertime). Then we came home.
We do still have to go grocery shopping tonight as soon as I get home from work, though -- we were too tired last night and had been on our feet all day running around stores and the mall. I told Daisy to be ready as soon as I get off at midnight, because she'll be home and will be awake -- and the clock, after that, is ticking until I'll absolutely need to eat and pass out. While I could go shopping myself without her, there's probably a fair amount of things she needs, and it's something we generally do together due to, well, the amount of stuff we get. Tonight it'll be a fast, but big, trip -- we should've gone two nights ago and we didn't, and now the stuff I needed before I desperately need now because i'm either out of it or very close to being out. I also know Daisy doesn't want to spend any more time shopping at midnight than she has to, and I don't blame her because I don't either. It's my first day back at work for the week and I'm super-tired already; who knows how I'll feel at midnight.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Foreseeable Futures
I have now been working my new corporate job for a total of three weeks -- two weeks of training first, and this past week I've been on the floor doing my actual job.
This, of course, is why I haven't updated the blog in the past three weeks. No, I'm not dead; I am, in fact, very much alive and more financially stable than I've been in a long, long time.
As for the job itself, I can't really talk much about it. Legally, I mean. I had to sign a bunch of nondisclosure agreements when I took the job, as it is a corporate job in which I'm dealing with and working with/for very high-profile customers and accounts...and that's about all I can really say about it. I am little more than a middleman (in fact, I've been told that most of the job is "middle management") between those accounts and the massive corporation I work for as a business contractor of sorts. That's about as in-detail as I can go.
Everything I was told about the position is correct, however -- it is not necessarily a difficult job, but it is a very detail-oriented and somewhat stressful one. I'm seeing that already, even after only working one week of my normal shifts. And no, I've never done anything like this before, so it comes a little less naturally to me than to people who have worked in similar environments for years. However, each day I'm learning more and I'm able to work more quickly and naturally. In another week or two of experience at it, I'll be on par with pretty much everyone else in the office.
After all, this is what I wanted, right? A desk job in an office. Well, I got what I was looking for, at least. And, as you may already know, I get to work with the wife.
My shifts are staggered with hers, and I took second shift (3PM to midnight) when it was offered specifically for that reason. I work that shift Tuesday through Saturday. Daisy works the overnight shift Wednesday through Saturday. Four of my five at-work days, I will work more than half my shift with her. I am not working tonight, even though it is a Saturday night, because I got tonight as a paid day off to make up for Labor Day, which is a day I would've had off regardless as it was a Monday. Yeah, this company does that sort of nice thing for its employees -- anytime there's a paid holiday off that I wouldn't work anyway because of my schedule, I'll get a makeup day for it sometime during the rest of that week so that everything balances out. So does Daisy, technically, even though as a manager/supervisor she's a 24/7 employee. She's taking hers later this coming week, I think, as she can do that whenever she wants since she's fully salaried and not hourly (read: she doesn't clock in and out like the rest of us do).
As I've mentioned before, though Daisy is a supervisor there, she is not my supervisor. Technically she can't be, as it would be construed as favoritism/nepotism. There are several "teams" in the office led by three different supervisors, and I'm under one of the other ones. We also, of course, have to be professional in the office even though we're husband and wife, so this basically means we have to act like strangers in front of one another despite the fact that yes, we do sleep in the same bed together at home. I'm fine with this, though it's yet another new dynamic to me -- just because she's my wife doesn't mean I can talk to her and act like she's my wife at work; because she is a supervisor, even though she's not mine, she does technically rank above me and I have to treat her as a superior just as I would any other supervisor at any other job. This is not without its difficulties, but I think I've managed to deal with it fine. I can be professional and quite serious when I need to be, especially in a working environment.
Really, my goal in my new job is just to do well; Daisy now gets to see that firsthand. It's always been my goal in every job I've ever worked to do the best possible job I can do in my position and to be eager and look forward to going to work because it's another opportunity I have to learn something new and improve myself. That applies more to this position than any other position I've ever worked anywhere, I think. As I mentioned, there is a learning curve to the job -- some people take to it faster than others. I know people working there now who are picking up the ball and running with it quite well, and I know people who are taking a long time to learn all of the systems we have to use. I've been told I'm good, and I've been told I'm learning quickly, but really I don't think I'm doing any better or worse than anyone else at this point. I'm still new, and I'm still learning processes and procedures in the position every day. It's hard to memorize them all until I've been "on the floor" and experienced for longer than I have been now.
At the same time, I've thought in the back of my head already that this is not a job I want to do my entire life from this point forward, but it's actually somewhat fun (thus far) and challenging for me, which is something I haven't experienced in a long time. Teaching, for example, came naturally for me. It was not hard, it was not a challenge, even though it was very time-and-work-intensive at times. But, here's the thing -- this company has incredible opportunities for advancement, and it's a company that's never going away (it's headquartered here in Omaha, for one, and for two it's getting bigger every year). This is a position that -- as long as I can do the work and do it well -- pays me extremely well compared to any other job I've ever had, and in six months I qualify to begin moving upwards through the company if there are positions available. That's what Daisy did; she started out in the position I'm in now, applied for the supervisor position when she could, worked it on an interim basis for a few months, and got it officially shortly after our wedding.
So, if I like the company and enjoy the work I do for the company, I see myself working there in some capacity for the foreseeable future. If that means I eventually move up through the ranks, then so be it. If not, at least I have a position that pays me really well for what I do. Make no mistake, I am incredibly thankful I have this job. No, it's not teaching, but this actually feels like the beginning of a career for me -- and I haven't felt like that since before graduate school when I was working for the newspaper.
Ahem. Anyway.
A lot of little things have happened in the past three weeks, not all of them work-related of course (though it does seem like I'm there more often than I'm at home). It's been really stormy and nasty most days, and when it hasn't it's been either 90 degrees or 50 degrees with no real rhyme or reason to the weather patterns. As a result, my allergies have gone fucking nuts yet again. No wonder Daisy's doctors told her she was allergic to Nebraska -- apparently so am I, because my allergies won't go away. Like, ever. Oh, sure, I'll have some good days where they won't bother me that much, but I'll also have days where they systematically crush me and I can't breathe or go more than five minutes without blowing my nose. Let me tell you, that's fun to deal with when you're busy at work all night.
A week into my training, I went out to the car to go in one morning only to find that my car had been broken into and all of my stuff inside the car (read: what few things I've ever kept in the car) were all scattered and in disarray.
No worries, there was no damage to the car. Why? Well, it's probably because I can't lock my doors. I mean, I can, but I wouldn't be able to get back into the car afterwards because I don't have (and have never had) the door key. Yeah, my car is that old, so old that it has two different keys -- one for the ignition and one for the trunk and doors. I never got the latter key when I bought the car. Seriously. So for the past several years I've owned and driven my Monte Carlo, no matter where I've gone I've never locked the doors.
Whoever "broke into" my car rifled through my stuff, unsuccessfully tried to tear out my (non-working) stereo, and they took my really old GPS that was about useless and I got on Amazon for $30 or so used several years ago, but that's it. I'd even forgotten that I'd had the GPS in the car because I haven't used it in so long. My insurance cards and registration was still there, and the car itself was and is fine, so eh. Daisy called to report it to our apartment's management office (as it happened less than, oh, 40 feet from the building), and all they told her on the phone was "Oh, well, we haven't had any other reports."
As if that helps me or solves anything, right?
There's no use to file a police report or anything; I don't care about the GPS and there's nothing the cops could do anyhow -- other than tell me "well, we'll make a report, but it's not like you'll ever get your GPS back." It's just the principle of the matter that pisses me off. I told Daisy that if the thieves really wanted to fuck me over, they could've left the door ajar, as that would've killed the battery. We do have a security detail that does sweeps of the properties every night at least once or twice, but as the thieves were probably in and out of my car in less than 30 seconds, that doesn't help much.
I got my first paycheck yesterday, and Daisy got paid as well -- and we immediately began paying bills. Mine is a paper check right now as the direct deposit doesn't kick in until the second check, so I have to deposit it physically at the bank on Monday. However, eh, not a big deal. I completely paid off my Amazon Chase card tonight -- the card with the highest interest rate -- and over the next two months or so I'll be paying the others down and/or off completely as well. This weekend, on the days we have off together, we need to do our normal grocery shopping as well as run a few other errands -- such as hitting up the local Gordman's to see if I can get some workshirts with green in them. Literal green, as in, one of the colors in the shirt -- Dad gave me a ton of his old slacks and pants when he lost a lot of weight earlier this year, and many of those pants are a dark forest green. I have almost no workshirts with green in them, which means that while I look damned good in the pants, none of my "business casual" work attire will actually match them.
Yes, the dress code at work is "business casual" and it is fairly strict. Dress shoes every day -- no tennis shoes or other shoes/sandals of any sort. Shirts must have a collar. No jeans (except on Fridays). Slacks or khakis of any sort is fine, but no cargo pants. Women must wear hosiery with all skirts and dresses. Etc. Stuff like that. However, I've found that a lot of people don't necessarily stick completely to the dress code -- they only stick to it just enough to get by. For example, the dress code also states that all shirts must be tucked in. To that, I say "well, good luck." Most of my shirts won't tuck in (they're either not long enough or they won't fit under my belt/waistline and still allow me to button my pants), or they'll immediately pull out when I make any movement of my body above my waist. I've not once tucked a shirt in at my new job, neither in training nor in my actual position, and nobody's said a word to me about it. I'm not bringing it up if nobody else does.
I'm still getting used to my iPhone -- I'm a lot more comfortable with it now than I was before, and I know how to do/use most of the things on it, but I don't really mess with it that much. It's a phone, and I hate phones as it is. Today I was frustrated with it because you can't download files to it (unless they're, say, picture attachments) no matter what you do. For example, I sent an mp3 to myself this afternoon, an mp3 that I had edited and had turned into a ringtone. I can play it, yes, but I can't download it from my email and set it as my ringtone. You can't even turn a song you've purchased -- a song you own -- into a ringtone and save it that way. Apple won't let you. Can you buy ringtones from them and have them save to your phone? Of course. Want to do it yourself? Sorry, you're shit out of luck. There are apparently workarounds for it, but all of them involve installing iTunes on your computer and editing your own ringtones through that, then sending them to your phone, where Apple will apparently "recognize" them somehow and they'll work. Yeah, no, I'm not wading through all of that bullshit. To put this into perspective, I could download and set any ringtone I wanted, any ringtone I'd gotten from anywhere, on my Motorola Razr V3, and that was seven years ago. Want to do that on an iPhone? Sorry, denied.
While I love my phone and I love what it can and does do, it's little things like that which piss me off. I get super-irritated about little things in all walks of life though, as you have probably gathered by this point.
On that note, that's about all that's going on right now. I'll continue to update when I can, though with my new schedule I'm not sure how often that will be. Is it possible I won't write another post here for three more weeks? Yes, but it's also possible that I'll write another one tomorrow.
This, of course, is why I haven't updated the blog in the past three weeks. No, I'm not dead; I am, in fact, very much alive and more financially stable than I've been in a long, long time.
As for the job itself, I can't really talk much about it. Legally, I mean. I had to sign a bunch of nondisclosure agreements when I took the job, as it is a corporate job in which I'm dealing with and working with/for very high-profile customers and accounts...and that's about all I can really say about it. I am little more than a middleman (in fact, I've been told that most of the job is "middle management") between those accounts and the massive corporation I work for as a business contractor of sorts. That's about as in-detail as I can go.
Everything I was told about the position is correct, however -- it is not necessarily a difficult job, but it is a very detail-oriented and somewhat stressful one. I'm seeing that already, even after only working one week of my normal shifts. And no, I've never done anything like this before, so it comes a little less naturally to me than to people who have worked in similar environments for years. However, each day I'm learning more and I'm able to work more quickly and naturally. In another week or two of experience at it, I'll be on par with pretty much everyone else in the office.
After all, this is what I wanted, right? A desk job in an office. Well, I got what I was looking for, at least. And, as you may already know, I get to work with the wife.
My shifts are staggered with hers, and I took second shift (3PM to midnight) when it was offered specifically for that reason. I work that shift Tuesday through Saturday. Daisy works the overnight shift Wednesday through Saturday. Four of my five at-work days, I will work more than half my shift with her. I am not working tonight, even though it is a Saturday night, because I got tonight as a paid day off to make up for Labor Day, which is a day I would've had off regardless as it was a Monday. Yeah, this company does that sort of nice thing for its employees -- anytime there's a paid holiday off that I wouldn't work anyway because of my schedule, I'll get a makeup day for it sometime during the rest of that week so that everything balances out. So does Daisy, technically, even though as a manager/supervisor she's a 24/7 employee. She's taking hers later this coming week, I think, as she can do that whenever she wants since she's fully salaried and not hourly (read: she doesn't clock in and out like the rest of us do).
As I've mentioned before, though Daisy is a supervisor there, she is not my supervisor. Technically she can't be, as it would be construed as favoritism/nepotism. There are several "teams" in the office led by three different supervisors, and I'm under one of the other ones. We also, of course, have to be professional in the office even though we're husband and wife, so this basically means we have to act like strangers in front of one another despite the fact that yes, we do sleep in the same bed together at home. I'm fine with this, though it's yet another new dynamic to me -- just because she's my wife doesn't mean I can talk to her and act like she's my wife at work; because she is a supervisor, even though she's not mine, she does technically rank above me and I have to treat her as a superior just as I would any other supervisor at any other job. This is not without its difficulties, but I think I've managed to deal with it fine. I can be professional and quite serious when I need to be, especially in a working environment.
Really, my goal in my new job is just to do well; Daisy now gets to see that firsthand. It's always been my goal in every job I've ever worked to do the best possible job I can do in my position and to be eager and look forward to going to work because it's another opportunity I have to learn something new and improve myself. That applies more to this position than any other position I've ever worked anywhere, I think. As I mentioned, there is a learning curve to the job -- some people take to it faster than others. I know people working there now who are picking up the ball and running with it quite well, and I know people who are taking a long time to learn all of the systems we have to use. I've been told I'm good, and I've been told I'm learning quickly, but really I don't think I'm doing any better or worse than anyone else at this point. I'm still new, and I'm still learning processes and procedures in the position every day. It's hard to memorize them all until I've been "on the floor" and experienced for longer than I have been now.
At the same time, I've thought in the back of my head already that this is not a job I want to do my entire life from this point forward, but it's actually somewhat fun (thus far) and challenging for me, which is something I haven't experienced in a long time. Teaching, for example, came naturally for me. It was not hard, it was not a challenge, even though it was very time-and-work-intensive at times. But, here's the thing -- this company has incredible opportunities for advancement, and it's a company that's never going away (it's headquartered here in Omaha, for one, and for two it's getting bigger every year). This is a position that -- as long as I can do the work and do it well -- pays me extremely well compared to any other job I've ever had, and in six months I qualify to begin moving upwards through the company if there are positions available. That's what Daisy did; she started out in the position I'm in now, applied for the supervisor position when she could, worked it on an interim basis for a few months, and got it officially shortly after our wedding.
So, if I like the company and enjoy the work I do for the company, I see myself working there in some capacity for the foreseeable future. If that means I eventually move up through the ranks, then so be it. If not, at least I have a position that pays me really well for what I do. Make no mistake, I am incredibly thankful I have this job. No, it's not teaching, but this actually feels like the beginning of a career for me -- and I haven't felt like that since before graduate school when I was working for the newspaper.
Ahem. Anyway.
A lot of little things have happened in the past three weeks, not all of them work-related of course (though it does seem like I'm there more often than I'm at home). It's been really stormy and nasty most days, and when it hasn't it's been either 90 degrees or 50 degrees with no real rhyme or reason to the weather patterns. As a result, my allergies have gone fucking nuts yet again. No wonder Daisy's doctors told her she was allergic to Nebraska -- apparently so am I, because my allergies won't go away. Like, ever. Oh, sure, I'll have some good days where they won't bother me that much, but I'll also have days where they systematically crush me and I can't breathe or go more than five minutes without blowing my nose. Let me tell you, that's fun to deal with when you're busy at work all night.
A week into my training, I went out to the car to go in one morning only to find that my car had been broken into and all of my stuff inside the car (read: what few things I've ever kept in the car) were all scattered and in disarray.
No worries, there was no damage to the car. Why? Well, it's probably because I can't lock my doors. I mean, I can, but I wouldn't be able to get back into the car afterwards because I don't have (and have never had) the door key. Yeah, my car is that old, so old that it has two different keys -- one for the ignition and one for the trunk and doors. I never got the latter key when I bought the car. Seriously. So for the past several years I've owned and driven my Monte Carlo, no matter where I've gone I've never locked the doors.
Whoever "broke into" my car rifled through my stuff, unsuccessfully tried to tear out my (non-working) stereo, and they took my really old GPS that was about useless and I got on Amazon for $30 or so used several years ago, but that's it. I'd even forgotten that I'd had the GPS in the car because I haven't used it in so long. My insurance cards and registration was still there, and the car itself was and is fine, so eh. Daisy called to report it to our apartment's management office (as it happened less than, oh, 40 feet from the building), and all they told her on the phone was "Oh, well, we haven't had any other reports."
As if that helps me or solves anything, right?
There's no use to file a police report or anything; I don't care about the GPS and there's nothing the cops could do anyhow -- other than tell me "well, we'll make a report, but it's not like you'll ever get your GPS back." It's just the principle of the matter that pisses me off. I told Daisy that if the thieves really wanted to fuck me over, they could've left the door ajar, as that would've killed the battery. We do have a security detail that does sweeps of the properties every night at least once or twice, but as the thieves were probably in and out of my car in less than 30 seconds, that doesn't help much.
I got my first paycheck yesterday, and Daisy got paid as well -- and we immediately began paying bills. Mine is a paper check right now as the direct deposit doesn't kick in until the second check, so I have to deposit it physically at the bank on Monday. However, eh, not a big deal. I completely paid off my Amazon Chase card tonight -- the card with the highest interest rate -- and over the next two months or so I'll be paying the others down and/or off completely as well. This weekend, on the days we have off together, we need to do our normal grocery shopping as well as run a few other errands -- such as hitting up the local Gordman's to see if I can get some workshirts with green in them. Literal green, as in, one of the colors in the shirt -- Dad gave me a ton of his old slacks and pants when he lost a lot of weight earlier this year, and many of those pants are a dark forest green. I have almost no workshirts with green in them, which means that while I look damned good in the pants, none of my "business casual" work attire will actually match them.
Yes, the dress code at work is "business casual" and it is fairly strict. Dress shoes every day -- no tennis shoes or other shoes/sandals of any sort. Shirts must have a collar. No jeans (except on Fridays). Slacks or khakis of any sort is fine, but no cargo pants. Women must wear hosiery with all skirts and dresses. Etc. Stuff like that. However, I've found that a lot of people don't necessarily stick completely to the dress code -- they only stick to it just enough to get by. For example, the dress code also states that all shirts must be tucked in. To that, I say "well, good luck." Most of my shirts won't tuck in (they're either not long enough or they won't fit under my belt/waistline and still allow me to button my pants), or they'll immediately pull out when I make any movement of my body above my waist. I've not once tucked a shirt in at my new job, neither in training nor in my actual position, and nobody's said a word to me about it. I'm not bringing it up if nobody else does.
I'm still getting used to my iPhone -- I'm a lot more comfortable with it now than I was before, and I know how to do/use most of the things on it, but I don't really mess with it that much. It's a phone, and I hate phones as it is. Today I was frustrated with it because you can't download files to it (unless they're, say, picture attachments) no matter what you do. For example, I sent an mp3 to myself this afternoon, an mp3 that I had edited and had turned into a ringtone. I can play it, yes, but I can't download it from my email and set it as my ringtone. You can't even turn a song you've purchased -- a song you own -- into a ringtone and save it that way. Apple won't let you. Can you buy ringtones from them and have them save to your phone? Of course. Want to do it yourself? Sorry, you're shit out of luck. There are apparently workarounds for it, but all of them involve installing iTunes on your computer and editing your own ringtones through that, then sending them to your phone, where Apple will apparently "recognize" them somehow and they'll work. Yeah, no, I'm not wading through all of that bullshit. To put this into perspective, I could download and set any ringtone I wanted, any ringtone I'd gotten from anywhere, on my Motorola Razr V3, and that was seven years ago. Want to do that on an iPhone? Sorry, denied.
While I love my phone and I love what it can and does do, it's little things like that which piss me off. I get super-irritated about little things in all walks of life though, as you have probably gathered by this point.
On that note, that's about all that's going on right now. I'll continue to update when I can, though with my new schedule I'm not sure how often that will be. Is it possible I won't write another post here for three more weeks? Yes, but it's also possible that I'll write another one tomorrow.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Countdown
With three days to go before I start my new job (or at least start the two weeks' worth of training for it), I've been trying to take care of what needs to be done around the house. This includes paying bills, keeping up with correspondences, printing/filling out paperwork for said job, etc. It feels like, no matter what I do, there's something I'm forgetting. This is nothing new, of course; I always feel like I'm forgetting something no matter when or how I take care of everything. I've made sure to pay the bills I have due; this is good, as I can forget those now that the vast majority of them are paid online with paperless statements. We only have two bills that I/we don't pay online -- one of them is my Citi card's bill, as their website won't let me in without some stupid pin number I set up for the account five years ago (which, of course, I cannot remember now) and the other is the water/trash bill. Everything else but the rent is paid through until well after I'll get my first paycheck, so we're good. Finally we'll be somewhat financially stable again. Daisy gets paid a week from today, and then two weeks after that we'll both be bringing in paychecks every two weeks, and our income will double from that point forward.
Both Daisy and I are paranoid about money; I think I tend to be much more paranoid about it than she does, as for many years I have lived a life of abject poverty. However, she is very smart with money, probably because she is very sensible about most things and, well, because she spent a few years working in a credit union. I have to be smart with money because I've spent many years of my life really poor and scraping by. Yeah, there's a reason why I drive an eighteen year old Monte Carlo with 233,000 miles on it, and only a small part of that reason is because it's fast. So, yeah, it's really nice that we'll be a dual-income household and really nice that said income will allow us some breathing space.
Aside from those chores and tasks, everything's been quiet all week. I'm getting used to the iPhone, I suppose, though I haven't really done much more on it than before. Apple did see fit to send me a really long email with this, though:
I mean, I like the phone, and it's really useful for some stuff already, but it's going to take a loooong time for me to actually use it like an Apple master or anything like that. I have a few apps, I have my numbers programmed into it that I need, and I tried out the GPS tonight by plotting in the address of the place I have to go on Monday morning for my processing/ID badge creation/etc. It's apparently three miles away, and will take me eight minutes to get there. That's useful info. But aside from run of the mill calling, texting, and reading the news? Yeah, so far I've not done much more than that with it and I don't know how much more I will do with it. I actually need to read the manual, which the phone doesn't come with -- it's all online, apparently. I don't even know how to turn the phone off and on, or how to turn the sounds off and on. Yeah. It's a complicated little device.
I did special order and put a rubber case on it, though, because I needed to do that. iPhones are really smooth and sleek, and I have the feeling that if I didn't put a case on it, eventually it would slip out of my hand and I'd drop/break it. I'd rather not do that, especially as the phone retails for more than I paid for my car.
Anyway.
I still follow the news for back in the Wichita/Newton area if only out of mild curiosity for the place in which I spent five years living. Apparently there was a shooting today in Newton, which is really rare for a town like that. The newspaper (which I worked for, as you may recall) was reporting on it like crazy, as was the Wichita news channels. Shootings in Omaha are nothing new -- several per week, gang violence in certain parts of the city, etc etc -- but down there it's a major event when something like that happens. I looked it up on the map and found that it was maybe a mile or so from my former house, out by the discount grocery store I went to often.
The university starts back up on Monday, same as WVU does back home. My mother informed me that today is "move in day" at WVU and she's glad she has the day off so that she doesn't have to navigate student traffic. My friends who remain in Wichita, the few who are still there finishing their degrees (read: less than ten grad students who I actually know and know well) aren't looking forward to the beginning of the semester. Well, Parker probably is, as I'm sure he's itching to get in front of a classroom full of students again. It will be the first fall semester in five years that I will not be teaching classes when Monday rolls around, but it is clear that the fates have a cruel sense of humor, as I will be reporting to work on Monday morning for the first time since the semester ended in May. That seems so long ago now; I wasn't even married yet when the semester ended. I was still living in Kansas when the semester ended. I had really long hair and a really full, thick beard when the semester ended. It's so weird to think of how much really can change in the span of a few short months.
"Are you nervous about starting your training?" Daisy asked me tonight over her lunch hour.
"No," I said. "Psh. I just don't want to do it."
That may be the most honest sentence I've uttered all summer. I don't want to do it. I've been enjoying sleeping on my schedule, eating on my schedule, being able to shower and shave and smoke and go to the bathroom when I've needed or wanted to instead of when I have time to. The concept of being trained to do a job where I will have to report to people above me and have little to no autonomy in said job whatsoever isn't so much nerve-wracking or dread-inducing as it is frustrating. For the past five years, I've been teaching -- and when you're a teacher, you are more or less in charge. When you lead a classroom and teach lessons, you tell students what to do and how to do it. Because I was damn good at what I did, I rarely had to report to anyone. Yes, there were superiors above me, and yes, I did consult them when necessary, but for the most part, I was in charge of what I did and how I did it. The same does not apply to this new job I'll have. I will have at least three direct supervisors to report to, and while Daisy isn't allowed to be in charge of me at this job (nepotism, etc etc), she is ranked above me...and everyone there I'll work with knows she's my wife. In fact, from what Daisy tells me, I am the most anticipated new employee joining the crew.
That's something that may be really hard to live up to, honestly. Truth be told, I've never done this sort of work before. I've never even done anything close to it. Now, you give me enough training and I can do damn near anything and do it well, but I'm also a fairly slow learner when it comes to stuff that I have absolutely no experience with.
"You're lucky," Daisy said. "Things are starting to slow down right now. This is the beginning of the slow part of the year."
Okay, well, yes. That's good. That will help.
There are many upsides to the job, of course; I'll get to work with my wife, I'll get to work (after the training period, anyway) a schedule that is, quite possibly, the best schedule I could've been assigned, and unlike being a professor my job will goddamned end when I clock out for the day. I can't tell you how freeing that will feel again. I haven't had a job that actually ended (aside from breaks between semesters) since 2009 -- as a professor, yes, you go home at the end of the day/night, but there's still always lesson planning that must be done, there's still stacks of papers that must be graded, grades that must be entered on Blackboard, quizzes and handouts to write and make, etc. It was a very rare occurrence that there was nothing I could be doing for my students in one capacity or another. The fact that I don't have to do that stuff anymore is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how one looks at it.
So, that's about all that's going on. I'm sure I'll update you again over the weekend, provided I have the time and energy to do so.
Both Daisy and I are paranoid about money; I think I tend to be much more paranoid about it than she does, as for many years I have lived a life of abject poverty. However, she is very smart with money, probably because she is very sensible about most things and, well, because she spent a few years working in a credit union. I have to be smart with money because I've spent many years of my life really poor and scraping by. Yeah, there's a reason why I drive an eighteen year old Monte Carlo with 233,000 miles on it, and only a small part of that reason is because it's fast. So, yeah, it's really nice that we'll be a dual-income household and really nice that said income will allow us some breathing space.
Aside from those chores and tasks, everything's been quiet all week. I'm getting used to the iPhone, I suppose, though I haven't really done much more on it than before. Apple did see fit to send me a really long email with this, though:
I mean, I like the phone, and it's really useful for some stuff already, but it's going to take a loooong time for me to actually use it like an Apple master or anything like that. I have a few apps, I have my numbers programmed into it that I need, and I tried out the GPS tonight by plotting in the address of the place I have to go on Monday morning for my processing/ID badge creation/etc. It's apparently three miles away, and will take me eight minutes to get there. That's useful info. But aside from run of the mill calling, texting, and reading the news? Yeah, so far I've not done much more than that with it and I don't know how much more I will do with it. I actually need to read the manual, which the phone doesn't come with -- it's all online, apparently. I don't even know how to turn the phone off and on, or how to turn the sounds off and on. Yeah. It's a complicated little device.
I did special order and put a rubber case on it, though, because I needed to do that. iPhones are really smooth and sleek, and I have the feeling that if I didn't put a case on it, eventually it would slip out of my hand and I'd drop/break it. I'd rather not do that, especially as the phone retails for more than I paid for my car.
Anyway.
I still follow the news for back in the Wichita/Newton area if only out of mild curiosity for the place in which I spent five years living. Apparently there was a shooting today in Newton, which is really rare for a town like that. The newspaper (which I worked for, as you may recall) was reporting on it like crazy, as was the Wichita news channels. Shootings in Omaha are nothing new -- several per week, gang violence in certain parts of the city, etc etc -- but down there it's a major event when something like that happens. I looked it up on the map and found that it was maybe a mile or so from my former house, out by the discount grocery store I went to often.
The university starts back up on Monday, same as WVU does back home. My mother informed me that today is "move in day" at WVU and she's glad she has the day off so that she doesn't have to navigate student traffic. My friends who remain in Wichita, the few who are still there finishing their degrees (read: less than ten grad students who I actually know and know well) aren't looking forward to the beginning of the semester. Well, Parker probably is, as I'm sure he's itching to get in front of a classroom full of students again. It will be the first fall semester in five years that I will not be teaching classes when Monday rolls around, but it is clear that the fates have a cruel sense of humor, as I will be reporting to work on Monday morning for the first time since the semester ended in May. That seems so long ago now; I wasn't even married yet when the semester ended. I was still living in Kansas when the semester ended. I had really long hair and a really full, thick beard when the semester ended. It's so weird to think of how much really can change in the span of a few short months.
"Are you nervous about starting your training?" Daisy asked me tonight over her lunch hour.
"No," I said. "Psh. I just don't want to do it."
That may be the most honest sentence I've uttered all summer. I don't want to do it. I've been enjoying sleeping on my schedule, eating on my schedule, being able to shower and shave and smoke and go to the bathroom when I've needed or wanted to instead of when I have time to. The concept of being trained to do a job where I will have to report to people above me and have little to no autonomy in said job whatsoever isn't so much nerve-wracking or dread-inducing as it is frustrating. For the past five years, I've been teaching -- and when you're a teacher, you are more or less in charge. When you lead a classroom and teach lessons, you tell students what to do and how to do it. Because I was damn good at what I did, I rarely had to report to anyone. Yes, there were superiors above me, and yes, I did consult them when necessary, but for the most part, I was in charge of what I did and how I did it. The same does not apply to this new job I'll have. I will have at least three direct supervisors to report to, and while Daisy isn't allowed to be in charge of me at this job (nepotism, etc etc), she is ranked above me...and everyone there I'll work with knows she's my wife. In fact, from what Daisy tells me, I am the most anticipated new employee joining the crew.
That's something that may be really hard to live up to, honestly. Truth be told, I've never done this sort of work before. I've never even done anything close to it. Now, you give me enough training and I can do damn near anything and do it well, but I'm also a fairly slow learner when it comes to stuff that I have absolutely no experience with.
"You're lucky," Daisy said. "Things are starting to slow down right now. This is the beginning of the slow part of the year."
Okay, well, yes. That's good. That will help.
There are many upsides to the job, of course; I'll get to work with my wife, I'll get to work (after the training period, anyway) a schedule that is, quite possibly, the best schedule I could've been assigned, and unlike being a professor my job will goddamned end when I clock out for the day. I can't tell you how freeing that will feel again. I haven't had a job that actually ended (aside from breaks between semesters) since 2009 -- as a professor, yes, you go home at the end of the day/night, but there's still always lesson planning that must be done, there's still stacks of papers that must be graded, grades that must be entered on Blackboard, quizzes and handouts to write and make, etc. It was a very rare occurrence that there was nothing I could be doing for my students in one capacity or another. The fact that I don't have to do that stuff anymore is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how one looks at it.
So, that's about all that's going on. I'm sure I'll update you again over the weekend, provided I have the time and energy to do so.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
The iMan
So. I have an iPhone.
After doing lots of different research through different companies and different carriers/sites/et cetera, Daisy and I realized that none of the options were going to be any better than any other, and some of said options were incredibly expensive to even start out with a new contract. For example, one carrier I looked at charged $250 up front for the phone and the first month's service plan, and that was a plan with very limited data and talk/text limits as well.
"So what do you want to do?" Daisy asked.
"I suppose we just go to Sprint and see what they can do," I said. "Nothing else is remotely reasonable and/or won't require me to buy the phone off-the-shelf up front."
I don't know if any of you have ever purchased a cell phone off-the-shelf before, but let me tell you, it is not fucking cheap. Most current smartphones cost more than my desktop computer did. Some of them cost more than I paid for my car. If you buy a phone yourself outright before signing up for a plan, yes, you may save some money in the long run, but it's so little that it's negligible when spread out over the length of a cell phone contract.
And of course, there's the fact that we don't have $400-600 to just spend all at once on a phone before any sort of plan even comes into play.
My iPhone 5c (they were sold out of the 5s; apparently there's some sort of promotion going on right now where current customers can get a free upgrade) was, on paper, $549. That is more than I paid for my car. That is much more than I paid for this desktop computer. However, it's worked into my contract that I don't pay it all at once, but over the course of the two years I'm with Sprint.
When it was all settled and done, I had a white iPhone 5c 16GB running iOS 7.1-something, unlimited talk/text/data, and I'm paying somewhere around $80 a month. When it comes to cell phone carriers, the phone I have, and the plan I have, that's a really good deal, actually. We priced Verizon beforehand as well -- they charge over $200 a month for a very similar plan. We got the best deal we could for the money. The 5c was (obviously) cheaper than the 5s as well.
As for the phone itself? Eh, I'm happy with it. No, it's not the metal-and-glass 5s, but it's good. It's fine. I still don't really know how to use it that well yet. Mind you, I've never owned a smartphone, and the only experience I've had with one is the handful of times I've had to make a call on Daisy's phone, or when she handed me the phone while driving and told her to text Mama something. Beforehand, I consulted Parker, who is an Apple-phile and owns basically every new i-device, on the learning curve of an iPhone for someone who's not only never owned one before, but who has never used a smartphone before. He gave me some good tips on how to use it, what services to turn on/turn off, and then told me that it's going to take a week or so to get used to it. I can totally see and believe that.
I haven't done much with the phone yet; I installed the Facebook and Twitter apps, installed an app for one of my favorite podcasts, and put Instagram on the phone despite the fact that I do not yet have an Instagram account. I called my mother as well as my grandmother, since I can now actually talk to them without having to worry about dropping a call or running out of minutes, and gave them my new number. I migrated my number book from my old phone into the new one manually, one contact at a time, weeding out the numbers of people I've not called in years and/or no longer need. I texted a few close friends to let them know I have the new phone and a new number.
I also got my first wrong number phone call not half an hour after I got the phone. They were asking for someone named Charlene.
"That's a bad sign," Daisy said. Daisy herself has had the same number for years, and she still gets calls for some woman who apparently had her number before her and didn't bother to change it for certain things (like prescription refills and the like).
I haven't gotten any more wrong number calls yet, but it's not like anyone really ever calls me to talk to me, so it doesn't really matter. What's important is that I now have a reliable phone that actually gets signal around the city, and can finally let the other old one die -- not that it works here anyhow.
So that's done, at least. That was a major thing I needed to get taken care of since, well, basically since I moved up here. It's a new expense, yes, but it's one we just have to bite the bullet on and take -- it's not like I could go forever without having a phone, because that's just not feasible in today's world. I justify it to myself by saying that I've finally leapt into the 21st century by getting a GPS that updates itself, by getting a way of actually talking to people that I don't have to pay for per minute or per message, by having a device that fits in my pocket that lets me access the entirety of the internet anywhere, anytime.
It's not like I needed any of those things to survive, mind you, and I'm sure to many of you, this is nothing new -- many of my friends have had iPhones (or equivalent smartphones) since their inception almost ten years ago now. But to me, it's all new. I am so inexperienced with it that I have no clue where to start. I'm like a child given a new toy with all sorts of different ways to play with it. When I was a child, most of my toys were pretty basic. The newest game system was a NES. The most complicated toys were Transformers. Now, with children growing up in the world of fully electronic toys that I only wish I would've had as a kid, and playing Xboxes and Playstations that have games that look real, the iPhone is the last thing that I really have left in this world that I can actually marvel at as an adult -- as I've never experienced anything like that before. If I were to leap back in time to 20 years ago, 1994, and tell my younger self that in 2014 I would have a phone half the size of my hand that accessed the entirety of human knowledge and recreation and allowed me to take it anywhere and talk to anyone I wanted as long as I wanted in various ways? I'm not sure I would've believed my future self. So yeah, I'm stoked that I have a new piece of technology, and no, I wouldn't have changed waiting this long to get it for anything. Will I use it as much as the average smartphone users use their phones? Probably not, but the fact that I can is what's exciting about it.
After doing lots of different research through different companies and different carriers/sites/et cetera, Daisy and I realized that none of the options were going to be any better than any other, and some of said options were incredibly expensive to even start out with a new contract. For example, one carrier I looked at charged $250 up front for the phone and the first month's service plan, and that was a plan with very limited data and talk/text limits as well.
"So what do you want to do?" Daisy asked.
"I suppose we just go to Sprint and see what they can do," I said. "Nothing else is remotely reasonable and/or won't require me to buy the phone off-the-shelf up front."
I don't know if any of you have ever purchased a cell phone off-the-shelf before, but let me tell you, it is not fucking cheap. Most current smartphones cost more than my desktop computer did. Some of them cost more than I paid for my car. If you buy a phone yourself outright before signing up for a plan, yes, you may save some money in the long run, but it's so little that it's negligible when spread out over the length of a cell phone contract.
And of course, there's the fact that we don't have $400-600 to just spend all at once on a phone before any sort of plan even comes into play.
My iPhone 5c (they were sold out of the 5s; apparently there's some sort of promotion going on right now where current customers can get a free upgrade) was, on paper, $549. That is more than I paid for my car. That is much more than I paid for this desktop computer. However, it's worked into my contract that I don't pay it all at once, but over the course of the two years I'm with Sprint.
When it was all settled and done, I had a white iPhone 5c 16GB running iOS 7.1-something, unlimited talk/text/data, and I'm paying somewhere around $80 a month. When it comes to cell phone carriers, the phone I have, and the plan I have, that's a really good deal, actually. We priced Verizon beforehand as well -- they charge over $200 a month for a very similar plan. We got the best deal we could for the money. The 5c was (obviously) cheaper than the 5s as well.
As for the phone itself? Eh, I'm happy with it. No, it's not the metal-and-glass 5s, but it's good. It's fine. I still don't really know how to use it that well yet. Mind you, I've never owned a smartphone, and the only experience I've had with one is the handful of times I've had to make a call on Daisy's phone, or when she handed me the phone while driving and told her to text Mama something. Beforehand, I consulted Parker, who is an Apple-phile and owns basically every new i-device, on the learning curve of an iPhone for someone who's not only never owned one before, but who has never used a smartphone before. He gave me some good tips on how to use it, what services to turn on/turn off, and then told me that it's going to take a week or so to get used to it. I can totally see and believe that.
I haven't done much with the phone yet; I installed the Facebook and Twitter apps, installed an app for one of my favorite podcasts, and put Instagram on the phone despite the fact that I do not yet have an Instagram account. I called my mother as well as my grandmother, since I can now actually talk to them without having to worry about dropping a call or running out of minutes, and gave them my new number. I migrated my number book from my old phone into the new one manually, one contact at a time, weeding out the numbers of people I've not called in years and/or no longer need. I texted a few close friends to let them know I have the new phone and a new number.
I also got my first wrong number phone call not half an hour after I got the phone. They were asking for someone named Charlene.
"That's a bad sign," Daisy said. Daisy herself has had the same number for years, and she still gets calls for some woman who apparently had her number before her and didn't bother to change it for certain things (like prescription refills and the like).
I haven't gotten any more wrong number calls yet, but it's not like anyone really ever calls me to talk to me, so it doesn't really matter. What's important is that I now have a reliable phone that actually gets signal around the city, and can finally let the other old one die -- not that it works here anyhow.
So that's done, at least. That was a major thing I needed to get taken care of since, well, basically since I moved up here. It's a new expense, yes, but it's one we just have to bite the bullet on and take -- it's not like I could go forever without having a phone, because that's just not feasible in today's world. I justify it to myself by saying that I've finally leapt into the 21st century by getting a GPS that updates itself, by getting a way of actually talking to people that I don't have to pay for per minute or per message, by having a device that fits in my pocket that lets me access the entirety of the internet anywhere, anytime.
It's not like I needed any of those things to survive, mind you, and I'm sure to many of you, this is nothing new -- many of my friends have had iPhones (or equivalent smartphones) since their inception almost ten years ago now. But to me, it's all new. I am so inexperienced with it that I have no clue where to start. I'm like a child given a new toy with all sorts of different ways to play with it. When I was a child, most of my toys were pretty basic. The newest game system was a NES. The most complicated toys were Transformers. Now, with children growing up in the world of fully electronic toys that I only wish I would've had as a kid, and playing Xboxes and Playstations that have games that look real, the iPhone is the last thing that I really have left in this world that I can actually marvel at as an adult -- as I've never experienced anything like that before. If I were to leap back in time to 20 years ago, 1994, and tell my younger self that in 2014 I would have a phone half the size of my hand that accessed the entirety of human knowledge and recreation and allowed me to take it anywhere and talk to anyone I wanted as long as I wanted in various ways? I'm not sure I would've believed my future self. So yeah, I'm stoked that I have a new piece of technology, and no, I wouldn't have changed waiting this long to get it for anything. Will I use it as much as the average smartphone users use their phones? Probably not, but the fact that I can is what's exciting about it.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
El Bandito
I've been doing a lot of things, both mentally and physically, to prepare myself for my new job, which starts a week from tomorrow. Some of these things are small and needed to be done anyway (such as vacuuming the house), and others are larger and/or more far-reaching.
For example, tonight I shaved off my beard again. Well, most of it. I left my mustache and a rounded/flared-at-the-bottom strip on my chin. I think it makes me look either like a criminal from a spaghetti western, or Guy Fawkes. I'm not sure which. Daisy, who I was worried would hate it, actually loves it and says it makes me look sexy and/or sophisticated. I'll take that.
As you folks probably know, I shave off the beard several times per year -- usually about three or four times. Even when I do, it is very rare that I leave no facial hair whatsoever; the only time in the past, oh, two years or more that I've done that was after the wedding earlier this summer, and that was only because I wanted to be cooler over the summer months. I was surprised that the beard grew back much more quickly, and much more fully, than it normally does. Maybe, for some reason, getting married allowed me to grow a full, thick manly beard more quickly. Who knows, but it grew in fast.
Meanwhile, it's taking a lot longer than usual for my hair to get longer after I had it cut two months ago, so I suppose there's give and take.
Anyway, I shaved it because I want to look at least somewhat respectable (and not like a wild bushman) when I start my job next week. I get my ID photo taken on day one, almost immediately after arriving and going through processing. The ID is one of those magnetic strip cards that you need in order to get into the building and the like, so it's something you have to keep on your person at all times. Granted, I've not yet worked there, but I don't know if it has to be visible at all times for people or not; Daisy keeps hers in her cell phone case now (because she's now management, so it's not like she has to prove to people who she is and that she's in the right place anymore), but I remember her needing to wear her ID on a lanyard for a long time -- if only because she kept misplacing the lanyard. Oh, and I bought her the lanyard.
Eh. I don't know. My point is that I'd rather not look like a crazy bushman in my ID photo even though yes, I will be growing out the beard and my hair again as the fall and winter months arrive and I need to keep my head and face warm. My Nebraska driver's license photo doesn't look like me either; it was taken two days after my haircut and when I had a clean-shaven face. I look like a penis. Or, barring that, a mental patient. And one who is either drunk or stoned as well -- the DMV takes terribly unflattering pictures. I thought it was just me, but no, Daisy's new license picture (when she changed her name after the wedding) is just as bad as mine is.
As an aside, I've only had one ID picture taken of me that I actually liked, ever -- and it wasn't a license, but my Missouri non-driver ID before I got my license. It was a great picture of me. My Kansas license photo wasn't bad, but it also wasn't good -- it was taken in the middle of summer on a 100+ degree day after I'd spent almost an hour sweating in the DMV waiting room, which in the part of Kansas I lived in, was literally a trailer. Yes, a trailer.
Anyway, whatever works.
I mentioned before that I need to get a new phone. Daisy and I are having trouble with that. Daisy's phone is through Sprint, which basically runs Omaha when it comes to the cellphone business -- AT&T apparently doesn't have coverage here (Daisy looked it up), and Verizon is much more expensive. T-Mobile, as you know, is what my current phone is, and it only works in about 10% of the city even though they say Omaha is in its coverage area.
There are pages upon pages of complaints like that for T-Mobile in Omaha. I'm not kidding.
So, forced with little other choice that doesn't involve me/us spending four hundred fucking dollars on a phone that may or may not work and do what I need it to do when I need it to do it, Daisy and I basically have to stick to Sprint. Oh, we've looked at other options. None of them are any more affordable or easier to do. None of them are inexpensive. None of them are justifiably, in my eyes, worth their costs or hassles. And if they have the iPhone -- which is what I'm getting if I must have a smartphone -- it's neither cheap nor a usable model (read: more than 8GB).
To be fair here, Sprint has what I want: an iPhone 5s 16GB (I'd rather have the 32GB, but it's another $200) with unlimited talk/text/data. If I'm going to get a new phone with a plan, I'm not going to be unsatisfied with it, nor will I get a low-end phone that won't have enough space or will be outdated within a few months -- I'm going whole hog, so to speak, or I'm doing nothing. Nobody else here has that for a more reasonable price/plan than Sprint has. They just don't. It's what Daisy has and it's what she uses, though she has an Android phone, which I don't want -- for one, her phone is bigger than my hand, and it won't fit in the pocket of most of my pants or shirts, and for two, well, if I'm getting a smartphone I just want an iPhone.
We've looked at plans from all sorts of different places and avenues -- all of them may be cheaper per-month, but all of them also require you to shell out the $400 or more for the phone before you can use them. I'm not doing that. Frankly, I'm disgusted with how much cell service/phones cost, and can't fathom why or how people could or would pay that much per month for a phone. Mind you, I'm coming from a lifestyle of barely ever touching my phone, and my phone being a prepaid phone that, if I'm having a particularly talky year, I only spend $100 on total, for the entire year. And make no mistake, I love my prepaid flip phone and would be perfectly happy keeping/using it until the damned thing dies...if only it got any signal whatsoever. In 2014 it's simply appalling that I can't get signal in a major midwestern city on my cell phone, no matter the carrier. It's not like it's 1996, no, it's 2014. So, unless something else comes up, we're basically set on getting me on the same plan Daisy is on at Sprint, just with an iPhone 5s instead of some Android phone.
"I want what you want, babe," Daisy said.
Daisy and I are very different people when it comes to cell phones, which I'm sure by this point you have guessed. Despite our only six-year age difference, she and I are of almost completely different generations when it comes to technology in general, really. All of her formative years throughout high school and college she always had a cell phone. I did not; I didn't have a cell phone until 2006, after I moved out here to the midwest, and that was only because I desperately needed a phone of some sort if I wanted to be able to keep in contact with anyone (this was in my three or four month "transition period" when my computer was in storage and I had no internet). I didn't even have a laptop that actually did anything until 2010, the same year I bought this desktop computer. I had two different, very old-and-slow desktop computers until then. I was still using dial-up internet until mid-2007, and didn't get a Netflix account until three months ago. Suffice it to say that I don't keep up with technological trends and don't waste my money on anything I don't need. And until now, well, I've never needed a smartphone. At all. I barely use the phone anyhow -- nobody calls me (and I like it that way), and I haven't sent ten text messages total in the past year. When I need to call someone, I use Google Talk because it's free and integrated into my Gmail account. Either that or Skype, which I haven't used since upgrading this machine so I don't even know if it's still functional. The last person I Skype called was Rae...before the wedding. Yeah. It's been a while.
Anyway. We'll see what happens. I'd rather we not spend all of our money on getting me a new phone just because I don't have one and would use a few of the features on it (GPS, iMessage, etc) but the only other options are to continue to use/own a phone that I can only rarely get signal on, or to find a prepaid phone similar to my own but on a network where there's actual signal -- and choices for that sort of thing are pretty slim.
For example, tonight I shaved off my beard again. Well, most of it. I left my mustache and a rounded/flared-at-the-bottom strip on my chin. I think it makes me look either like a criminal from a spaghetti western, or Guy Fawkes. I'm not sure which. Daisy, who I was worried would hate it, actually loves it and says it makes me look sexy and/or sophisticated. I'll take that.
As you folks probably know, I shave off the beard several times per year -- usually about three or four times. Even when I do, it is very rare that I leave no facial hair whatsoever; the only time in the past, oh, two years or more that I've done that was after the wedding earlier this summer, and that was only because I wanted to be cooler over the summer months. I was surprised that the beard grew back much more quickly, and much more fully, than it normally does. Maybe, for some reason, getting married allowed me to grow a full, thick manly beard more quickly. Who knows, but it grew in fast.
Meanwhile, it's taking a lot longer than usual for my hair to get longer after I had it cut two months ago, so I suppose there's give and take.
Anyway, I shaved it because I want to look at least somewhat respectable (and not like a wild bushman) when I start my job next week. I get my ID photo taken on day one, almost immediately after arriving and going through processing. The ID is one of those magnetic strip cards that you need in order to get into the building and the like, so it's something you have to keep on your person at all times. Granted, I've not yet worked there, but I don't know if it has to be visible at all times for people or not; Daisy keeps hers in her cell phone case now (because she's now management, so it's not like she has to prove to people who she is and that she's in the right place anymore), but I remember her needing to wear her ID on a lanyard for a long time -- if only because she kept misplacing the lanyard. Oh, and I bought her the lanyard.
Eh. I don't know. My point is that I'd rather not look like a crazy bushman in my ID photo even though yes, I will be growing out the beard and my hair again as the fall and winter months arrive and I need to keep my head and face warm. My Nebraska driver's license photo doesn't look like me either; it was taken two days after my haircut and when I had a clean-shaven face. I look like a penis. Or, barring that, a mental patient. And one who is either drunk or stoned as well -- the DMV takes terribly unflattering pictures. I thought it was just me, but no, Daisy's new license picture (when she changed her name after the wedding) is just as bad as mine is.
As an aside, I've only had one ID picture taken of me that I actually liked, ever -- and it wasn't a license, but my Missouri non-driver ID before I got my license. It was a great picture of me. My Kansas license photo wasn't bad, but it also wasn't good -- it was taken in the middle of summer on a 100+ degree day after I'd spent almost an hour sweating in the DMV waiting room, which in the part of Kansas I lived in, was literally a trailer. Yes, a trailer.
Anyway, whatever works.
I mentioned before that I need to get a new phone. Daisy and I are having trouble with that. Daisy's phone is through Sprint, which basically runs Omaha when it comes to the cellphone business -- AT&T apparently doesn't have coverage here (Daisy looked it up), and Verizon is much more expensive. T-Mobile, as you know, is what my current phone is, and it only works in about 10% of the city even though they say Omaha is in its coverage area.
There are pages upon pages of complaints like that for T-Mobile in Omaha. I'm not kidding.
So, forced with little other choice that doesn't involve me/us spending four hundred fucking dollars on a phone that may or may not work and do what I need it to do when I need it to do it, Daisy and I basically have to stick to Sprint. Oh, we've looked at other options. None of them are any more affordable or easier to do. None of them are inexpensive. None of them are justifiably, in my eyes, worth their costs or hassles. And if they have the iPhone -- which is what I'm getting if I must have a smartphone -- it's neither cheap nor a usable model (read: more than 8GB).
To be fair here, Sprint has what I want: an iPhone 5s 16GB (I'd rather have the 32GB, but it's another $200) with unlimited talk/text/data. If I'm going to get a new phone with a plan, I'm not going to be unsatisfied with it, nor will I get a low-end phone that won't have enough space or will be outdated within a few months -- I'm going whole hog, so to speak, or I'm doing nothing. Nobody else here has that for a more reasonable price/plan than Sprint has. They just don't. It's what Daisy has and it's what she uses, though she has an Android phone, which I don't want -- for one, her phone is bigger than my hand, and it won't fit in the pocket of most of my pants or shirts, and for two, well, if I'm getting a smartphone I just want an iPhone.
We've looked at plans from all sorts of different places and avenues -- all of them may be cheaper per-month, but all of them also require you to shell out the $400 or more for the phone before you can use them. I'm not doing that. Frankly, I'm disgusted with how much cell service/phones cost, and can't fathom why or how people could or would pay that much per month for a phone. Mind you, I'm coming from a lifestyle of barely ever touching my phone, and my phone being a prepaid phone that, if I'm having a particularly talky year, I only spend $100 on total, for the entire year. And make no mistake, I love my prepaid flip phone and would be perfectly happy keeping/using it until the damned thing dies...if only it got any signal whatsoever. In 2014 it's simply appalling that I can't get signal in a major midwestern city on my cell phone, no matter the carrier. It's not like it's 1996, no, it's 2014. So, unless something else comes up, we're basically set on getting me on the same plan Daisy is on at Sprint, just with an iPhone 5s instead of some Android phone.
"I want what you want, babe," Daisy said.
Daisy and I are very different people when it comes to cell phones, which I'm sure by this point you have guessed. Despite our only six-year age difference, she and I are of almost completely different generations when it comes to technology in general, really. All of her formative years throughout high school and college she always had a cell phone. I did not; I didn't have a cell phone until 2006, after I moved out here to the midwest, and that was only because I desperately needed a phone of some sort if I wanted to be able to keep in contact with anyone (this was in my three or four month "transition period" when my computer was in storage and I had no internet). I didn't even have a laptop that actually did anything until 2010, the same year I bought this desktop computer. I had two different, very old-and-slow desktop computers until then. I was still using dial-up internet until mid-2007, and didn't get a Netflix account until three months ago. Suffice it to say that I don't keep up with technological trends and don't waste my money on anything I don't need. And until now, well, I've never needed a smartphone. At all. I barely use the phone anyhow -- nobody calls me (and I like it that way), and I haven't sent ten text messages total in the past year. When I need to call someone, I use Google Talk because it's free and integrated into my Gmail account. Either that or Skype, which I haven't used since upgrading this machine so I don't even know if it's still functional. The last person I Skype called was Rae...before the wedding. Yeah. It's been a while.
Anyway. We'll see what happens. I'd rather we not spend all of our money on getting me a new phone just because I don't have one and would use a few of the features on it (GPS, iMessage, etc) but the only other options are to continue to use/own a phone that I can only rarely get signal on, or to find a prepaid phone similar to my own but on a network where there's actual signal -- and choices for that sort of thing are pretty slim.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Getting Old
I haven't written here in over two weeks, and for that I apologize. There really hasn't been much going on, to be honest with you. When nothing happens in my life, I don't write anything. It's really as simple as that. I'd rather not become repetitive in writing about doing laundry again or cleaning the cat box again or anything else like that.
Daisy's headlights were fixed quickly; both bulbs had blown out at the same time, and she had a bad fuse somewhere that they replaced as well (free of charge, I might add). Both bulbs blowing out at once isn't unheard of, but it is uncommon. After a two-hour auto shop experience, we came home and everything's been running fine ever since. Daisy takes care of her car; the week before that she had an oil change and had all of her filters replaced at another shop here in town she likes to go to. I, however, am more of the "as long as the car's running and nothing's broken, fuck it" sort of person -- at least when it comes to the Monte Carlo, anyway. As long as the Monte Carlo starts up and gets me from point A to point B and back? Fuck it. It's too much money to get any of the comparably minor issues it has worked on or fixed.
I have taken my car out several times as of late, by the way, for short shopping trips -- at least twice down to the Walmart a few miles from the house, the other about five or six miles across town. Seems to be running as per the usual. Dad reminded me that it's good to do this so that the seals don't dry up and the like, which he's right about. I still haven't put gas in the car since the drive up here back in May because I don't use it enough to warrant letting a full tank of gas just sit there in it in the parking lot. I will have to fill it, however, sometime in the near future as I'll need gas to get to and from work once my job starts.
Speaking of that job, I have a little more than a week left of relative "vacation" before it starts. While that sounds like it's a long time, of course, it really isn't -- it will be gone very quickly. There are several things I'd like to do or get done before I have to start working five days a week, but I don't know if I'll be able to. For example, I'd like to watch as much of Mad Men as I can, because who knows when I'll have the chance to watch it once I start working, and I'm only at the beginning of the third season. There are about four movies either in theaters now or movies that will be in theaters between now and the day I start my job, and seeing as we haven't gone out to see a movie since before we were married (I believe the last one we saw was Mr. Peabody and Sherman), and they're movies I really want to see, I want to do that as well. I also have to figure out how to get to and from the main offices of said new job, as the training/orientation session I have to go to on the first day is in that place and not where I'll be working. According to Daisy, that's where they do all of the processing (it's where I went for my interview, but it's not like I can remember how to get there and back now), and the training itself will take place in the building I'll end up working in. This was confirmed to me a few days ago when I got an email containing my itinerary and schedule for that first day, as well as the employee rulebook, information on pay and the dress code, and forms I need to sign, print, and bring with me that morning.
There are other things, of course. We need to reorganize and clean the house, run our new steam cleaner over the spots that need to be cleaned, go through our clothing and other mixed belongings to sort out stuff to donate to charity, etc.
Mind you, I donated a ton of stuff to charity before I moved up here from Kansas, but upon moving in and unpacking things, I've found that there's simply not room for a whole lot of the stuff I did bring with me -- especially stuff I boxed up and packed well over a year before moving out. This is partially because there's not as much storage space here in our apartment, and partially because I'm living with another human again who has her own stuff as well (obviously). There's not even half the cupboard/pantry space here as there was in my house in Kansas, for example -- so a good chunk of my glassware and dishes, which we now have no room for, have to be donated. The same goes for a lot of the stuff Daisy brought over here from her old bedroom at the parents', and for a lot of our excess clothing that we now no longer have room for.
I did reorganize and clean the spare room (where this computer is) enough to allow the cats back into it without having to worry about them getting into anything, and in doing so was able to go through the rest of the wedding presents, make note of who got us what (if it wasn't written down before) and put said presents to use or put them away for Daisy to use later. The bridal shower gifts are (still) right where they've been for months in the dining room, and I (still) don't know what's in them.
As for the rest of things going on? There hasn't been much to report. For a few days last week, Daisy was sick; she's recovered now, but she doesn't know if it was the flu or otherwise. I've remained immune to whatever sickened her, so I'm not sure either. This tends to happen a lot, honestly -- no matter how sick Daisy has gotten (a handful of times since we've been together), even when I've been around her and in close quarters with her during visits and the like before the wedding, I've never gotten sick. Either I am immune to Daisy's illnesses or she isn't a "carrier," so to speak -- meaning she'll get sick herself, but won't transmit the illness to others. It's the first time she's been sick in a year or so. I had stomach issues a few days ago, but nothing else -- save for the low-grade off-and-on sinus infection that I'm sure has been caused by allergies this summer. Nebraska is a completely new environment for me and I'm sure it'll take me the better part of a year, maybe longer, before my allergies get used to it. In the meantime I've been taking decongestants and Zyrtec, and both seem to help.
One of the detriments of moving to Nebraska, however, is that I'm out of contact with a lot of people. More so than before, even. Now, mind you, even when I lived in Kansas I wasn't an especially social person -- during the summers (unless I was teaching) I became a super-hermit because I had no money, which meant I couldn't afford to go anywhere or do anything. During the semesters I was less of a hermit, yes, as I was teaching and/or taking classes, which required me to be on campus a lot and be social with a lot of friends and colleagues...but I've noticed that since I've gotten married it's almost like a switch has been flipped, and many close friends are no longer in contact with me at all. Part of that, I'm sure, can be chalked up to it being summer still and even more of it can be attributed to most of said friends graduating and going back to their homes to start their professional lives, but not all of it. I'd need both hands, or more, to count the number of friends I have who have almost (or completely) dropped off the radar since I got married and moved up here in May. I consider this unusual just because of the timing of it all -- some of them I was in contact with up to the wedding itself...and then they just disappeared. More disturbing is the fact that several of them RSVPed to the wedding and said they wouldn't miss it for the world, and then never showed up and never told me/us or talked to me/us at all afterwards. That is strange to me.
Look, I realize that people have their own lives and problems, of course, and sometimes people just go antisocial or under-the-radar for a long time. I do it myself on occasion, as you probably know. And, to their merit, I do have some friends who live far away now who made sure to send us a card or a gift for the wedding even though we're not in contact much anymore, and I appreciate them more than words can say. But this isn't about that, it's about my own isolation more than anything else.
As I've written here before, I am very isolated in Nebraska -- possibly more so than anywhere else I've lived. Yes, I have Daisy and her family, and a small handful of her friends who I've gotten to know over the course of the past two years or so, but the common running theme there is that they're her friends. Not mine. They know me through her, and many of them are very nice, but it's not like I could call any of them up and say "Hey, this is a cool city, let's go out and do something" one night while Daisy was at work without it being extremely awkward and/or a major social faux pas on my account. I don't have my own friends here. The closest thing I have to a friend of my own is Rae's boyfriend, who I've barely talked to and have only met twice. It would be extremely awkward for me to ask him to go do something. He'd probably wonder if I was hitting on him.
Truth be told, I know next to no one in this town. Obviously that will change eventually, but right now I feel more like a hermit than I have in years. Daisy goes out four days a week (because, ahem, she works) and I'm lucky if I leave the house once -- usually for a visit to the parents' and/or for shopping. I'd go out more if I knew my way around the town or had the motivation to do it solo, but I just don't. And what would I do anyway? I don't even like to go shopping without Daisy by my side unless I absolutely have to and it can't wait. I'm also a really boring, nerdy person -- going out to do something, especially alone, just seems like a colossal (and usually expensive) waste of time.
Daisy has told me that she wants us to go out and celebrate my getting the job before I start working, including a dinner at a place of my choice and a movie. The movie part we already covered -- we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy on Monday night. I'm not even sure I really want us to spend the money going out to dinner somewhere -- we have enough food in the house to eat, and she's continually exhausted now with her work schedule, which sometimes requires her to work several hours of overtime every morning, depending on how busy it is. She can do that, of course, and is basically required to do that when necessary, since she's now no longer an hourly employee after her official promotion. During my training, at least, I'll be working 8-5. My schedule changes after that. At least that's what I've been told, anyhow. Instead of going out I'd much rather just spend some quiet downtime with her here at home while we can still get it. Once I start my training, for those two weeks I will see her for approximately an hour per day and only one weekend day, Sunday.
In this next week, though, there are still errands that need to be run in the meantime; I have to get a new phone, for one, which is something I've been putting off ever since moving up here and finding that my T-Mobile phone has no service in 90% of the city. Not just "low bars," no. Zero service whatsoever. Like it's in a complete and total dead zone. She has Sprint, and I'll probably get a phone on her plan. I don't really even care what it is (though I'd like an iPhone), and I really don't care if I have to get a new number or not, because it's not like anyone calls me anyhow. I'd almost rather get a new number, actually.
I sprained or pulled my arm muscles somehow during the day today; how, of course, I have no idea. It feels similar to how I tore my muscle when I was moving a few months ago, but I haven't done anything particularly strenuous. It didn't really start bothering me until I vacuumed the house tonight -- back and forth motion pushing/pulling the vacuum doesn't really feel that great when you have, apparently, a pulled muscle. It's in the upper arm, front of the upper arm, and the front of my shoulder. So, basically, almost exactly the same as the other arm injury, just on the other arm.
I'm getting too old for normal movement, apparently. I've pulled muscles in my sleep before, as I'm sure many of you have, but I was fine when I got up this morning, so I have no clue why I suddenly have this muscle-pulled, aching arm. Daisy became worried about me when I told her about it, telling me "please don't die from a heart attack."
"Um...that would be pain in the left arm, neck, and jaw," I told her. "This is my right arm, and it's just a pulled muscle, babe."
Daisy is fiercely protective and always incredibly concerned for me when I mention that I don't feel well or that I'm in pain. While it is appreciated and very sweet of her, I mean, I have lived almost 32 years on this planet without dying yet from minor pains.
So...yeah. That's where things are right now. Life continues on as normal; I spend my days either sleeping or doing (quiet) household chores while Daisy sleeps, and spend my nights (when she's at work, at least) much the same way. I'm just trying to somewhat enjoy my last days of relative freedom before I am once more back to the grind of a daily job -- even if it's a daily job that's much different than anything I've done before. The fact that it's going to pay me a hell of a lot more than I've ever made before also helps lessen the dread of starting there -- or working again in general, really. You know me. I'm a lazy sloth of a person by nature, but when there's a job to do, I do it.
Daisy's headlights were fixed quickly; both bulbs had blown out at the same time, and she had a bad fuse somewhere that they replaced as well (free of charge, I might add). Both bulbs blowing out at once isn't unheard of, but it is uncommon. After a two-hour auto shop experience, we came home and everything's been running fine ever since. Daisy takes care of her car; the week before that she had an oil change and had all of her filters replaced at another shop here in town she likes to go to. I, however, am more of the "as long as the car's running and nothing's broken, fuck it" sort of person -- at least when it comes to the Monte Carlo, anyway. As long as the Monte Carlo starts up and gets me from point A to point B and back? Fuck it. It's too much money to get any of the comparably minor issues it has worked on or fixed.
I have taken my car out several times as of late, by the way, for short shopping trips -- at least twice down to the Walmart a few miles from the house, the other about five or six miles across town. Seems to be running as per the usual. Dad reminded me that it's good to do this so that the seals don't dry up and the like, which he's right about. I still haven't put gas in the car since the drive up here back in May because I don't use it enough to warrant letting a full tank of gas just sit there in it in the parking lot. I will have to fill it, however, sometime in the near future as I'll need gas to get to and from work once my job starts.
Speaking of that job, I have a little more than a week left of relative "vacation" before it starts. While that sounds like it's a long time, of course, it really isn't -- it will be gone very quickly. There are several things I'd like to do or get done before I have to start working five days a week, but I don't know if I'll be able to. For example, I'd like to watch as much of Mad Men as I can, because who knows when I'll have the chance to watch it once I start working, and I'm only at the beginning of the third season. There are about four movies either in theaters now or movies that will be in theaters between now and the day I start my job, and seeing as we haven't gone out to see a movie since before we were married (I believe the last one we saw was Mr. Peabody and Sherman), and they're movies I really want to see, I want to do that as well. I also have to figure out how to get to and from the main offices of said new job, as the training/orientation session I have to go to on the first day is in that place and not where I'll be working. According to Daisy, that's where they do all of the processing (it's where I went for my interview, but it's not like I can remember how to get there and back now), and the training itself will take place in the building I'll end up working in. This was confirmed to me a few days ago when I got an email containing my itinerary and schedule for that first day, as well as the employee rulebook, information on pay and the dress code, and forms I need to sign, print, and bring with me that morning.
There are other things, of course. We need to reorganize and clean the house, run our new steam cleaner over the spots that need to be cleaned, go through our clothing and other mixed belongings to sort out stuff to donate to charity, etc.
Mind you, I donated a ton of stuff to charity before I moved up here from Kansas, but upon moving in and unpacking things, I've found that there's simply not room for a whole lot of the stuff I did bring with me -- especially stuff I boxed up and packed well over a year before moving out. This is partially because there's not as much storage space here in our apartment, and partially because I'm living with another human again who has her own stuff as well (obviously). There's not even half the cupboard/pantry space here as there was in my house in Kansas, for example -- so a good chunk of my glassware and dishes, which we now have no room for, have to be donated. The same goes for a lot of the stuff Daisy brought over here from her old bedroom at the parents', and for a lot of our excess clothing that we now no longer have room for.
I did reorganize and clean the spare room (where this computer is) enough to allow the cats back into it without having to worry about them getting into anything, and in doing so was able to go through the rest of the wedding presents, make note of who got us what (if it wasn't written down before) and put said presents to use or put them away for Daisy to use later. The bridal shower gifts are (still) right where they've been for months in the dining room, and I (still) don't know what's in them.
As for the rest of things going on? There hasn't been much to report. For a few days last week, Daisy was sick; she's recovered now, but she doesn't know if it was the flu or otherwise. I've remained immune to whatever sickened her, so I'm not sure either. This tends to happen a lot, honestly -- no matter how sick Daisy has gotten (a handful of times since we've been together), even when I've been around her and in close quarters with her during visits and the like before the wedding, I've never gotten sick. Either I am immune to Daisy's illnesses or she isn't a "carrier," so to speak -- meaning she'll get sick herself, but won't transmit the illness to others. It's the first time she's been sick in a year or so. I had stomach issues a few days ago, but nothing else -- save for the low-grade off-and-on sinus infection that I'm sure has been caused by allergies this summer. Nebraska is a completely new environment for me and I'm sure it'll take me the better part of a year, maybe longer, before my allergies get used to it. In the meantime I've been taking decongestants and Zyrtec, and both seem to help.
One of the detriments of moving to Nebraska, however, is that I'm out of contact with a lot of people. More so than before, even. Now, mind you, even when I lived in Kansas I wasn't an especially social person -- during the summers (unless I was teaching) I became a super-hermit because I had no money, which meant I couldn't afford to go anywhere or do anything. During the semesters I was less of a hermit, yes, as I was teaching and/or taking classes, which required me to be on campus a lot and be social with a lot of friends and colleagues...but I've noticed that since I've gotten married it's almost like a switch has been flipped, and many close friends are no longer in contact with me at all. Part of that, I'm sure, can be chalked up to it being summer still and even more of it can be attributed to most of said friends graduating and going back to their homes to start their professional lives, but not all of it. I'd need both hands, or more, to count the number of friends I have who have almost (or completely) dropped off the radar since I got married and moved up here in May. I consider this unusual just because of the timing of it all -- some of them I was in contact with up to the wedding itself...and then they just disappeared. More disturbing is the fact that several of them RSVPed to the wedding and said they wouldn't miss it for the world, and then never showed up and never told me/us or talked to me/us at all afterwards. That is strange to me.
Look, I realize that people have their own lives and problems, of course, and sometimes people just go antisocial or under-the-radar for a long time. I do it myself on occasion, as you probably know. And, to their merit, I do have some friends who live far away now who made sure to send us a card or a gift for the wedding even though we're not in contact much anymore, and I appreciate them more than words can say. But this isn't about that, it's about my own isolation more than anything else.
As I've written here before, I am very isolated in Nebraska -- possibly more so than anywhere else I've lived. Yes, I have Daisy and her family, and a small handful of her friends who I've gotten to know over the course of the past two years or so, but the common running theme there is that they're her friends. Not mine. They know me through her, and many of them are very nice, but it's not like I could call any of them up and say "Hey, this is a cool city, let's go out and do something" one night while Daisy was at work without it being extremely awkward and/or a major social faux pas on my account. I don't have my own friends here. The closest thing I have to a friend of my own is Rae's boyfriend, who I've barely talked to and have only met twice. It would be extremely awkward for me to ask him to go do something. He'd probably wonder if I was hitting on him.
Truth be told, I know next to no one in this town. Obviously that will change eventually, but right now I feel more like a hermit than I have in years. Daisy goes out four days a week (because, ahem, she works) and I'm lucky if I leave the house once -- usually for a visit to the parents' and/or for shopping. I'd go out more if I knew my way around the town or had the motivation to do it solo, but I just don't. And what would I do anyway? I don't even like to go shopping without Daisy by my side unless I absolutely have to and it can't wait. I'm also a really boring, nerdy person -- going out to do something, especially alone, just seems like a colossal (and usually expensive) waste of time.
Daisy has told me that she wants us to go out and celebrate my getting the job before I start working, including a dinner at a place of my choice and a movie. The movie part we already covered -- we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy on Monday night. I'm not even sure I really want us to spend the money going out to dinner somewhere -- we have enough food in the house to eat, and she's continually exhausted now with her work schedule, which sometimes requires her to work several hours of overtime every morning, depending on how busy it is. She can do that, of course, and is basically required to do that when necessary, since she's now no longer an hourly employee after her official promotion. During my training, at least, I'll be working 8-5. My schedule changes after that. At least that's what I've been told, anyhow. Instead of going out I'd much rather just spend some quiet downtime with her here at home while we can still get it. Once I start my training, for those two weeks I will see her for approximately an hour per day and only one weekend day, Sunday.
In this next week, though, there are still errands that need to be run in the meantime; I have to get a new phone, for one, which is something I've been putting off ever since moving up here and finding that my T-Mobile phone has no service in 90% of the city. Not just "low bars," no. Zero service whatsoever. Like it's in a complete and total dead zone. She has Sprint, and I'll probably get a phone on her plan. I don't really even care what it is (though I'd like an iPhone), and I really don't care if I have to get a new number or not, because it's not like anyone calls me anyhow. I'd almost rather get a new number, actually.
I sprained or pulled my arm muscles somehow during the day today; how, of course, I have no idea. It feels similar to how I tore my muscle when I was moving a few months ago, but I haven't done anything particularly strenuous. It didn't really start bothering me until I vacuumed the house tonight -- back and forth motion pushing/pulling the vacuum doesn't really feel that great when you have, apparently, a pulled muscle. It's in the upper arm, front of the upper arm, and the front of my shoulder. So, basically, almost exactly the same as the other arm injury, just on the other arm.
I'm getting too old for normal movement, apparently. I've pulled muscles in my sleep before, as I'm sure many of you have, but I was fine when I got up this morning, so I have no clue why I suddenly have this muscle-pulled, aching arm. Daisy became worried about me when I told her about it, telling me "please don't die from a heart attack."
"Um...that would be pain in the left arm, neck, and jaw," I told her. "This is my right arm, and it's just a pulled muscle, babe."
Daisy is fiercely protective and always incredibly concerned for me when I mention that I don't feel well or that I'm in pain. While it is appreciated and very sweet of her, I mean, I have lived almost 32 years on this planet without dying yet from minor pains.
So...yeah. That's where things are right now. Life continues on as normal; I spend my days either sleeping or doing (quiet) household chores while Daisy sleeps, and spend my nights (when she's at work, at least) much the same way. I'm just trying to somewhat enjoy my last days of relative freedom before I am once more back to the grind of a daily job -- even if it's a daily job that's much different than anything I've done before. The fact that it's going to pay me a hell of a lot more than I've ever made before also helps lessen the dread of starting there -- or working again in general, really. You know me. I'm a lazy sloth of a person by nature, but when there's a job to do, I do it.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
New Horizons, Part II
I found it sort of poetic that, now that I have a job, I got up this morning and found an email waiting for me from the university -- rejecting me for the position I'd interviewed and had done the presentation for.
"It was meant to be," Daisy said.
It's fine, really. As good of an interview/presentation as I gave, it's not like I expected to be offered the university position. I'm sure, eventually, that if I want to get back into academia, I'll have the chance. For now, however? I have to focus on the hand I've been dealt, and that means accepting and working the job that I was offered, and for the moment I am perfectly happy with doing that.
I also think it's somewhat amusing that I expected this, and bought those new shoes for said job a few days before I actually got it.
"When it comes to the training," I asked Daisy tonight on her lunch hour, "am I allowed to wear what I want, or is it all the same sort of 'business casual' that I'd have to wear every day when I'm there normally?"
"It's the business casual," she said, looking at me as if I was nuts. "They'll send you home from training if you walk in there wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And if you get sent home during training, you generally get fired."
I looked down at myself. I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Looks like I'm going to have to put away a lot of that stuff soon.
"Well, I'm glad I took out all of my collared shirts and polos now," I said. "I figured I'd wear the same sorts of stuff I wore to my interviews, like the purple shirt I wore last week and all of the nice pants Dad gave me -- stuff like that."
"Yeah," she said. "That's fine. Shirts with collars, slacks, dressier shoes. No ties necessary; nobody there wears ties."
So, basically the same outfits I wore when I was on the main campus as a professor and wanted to look somewhat impressive. Okay.
This is good, as I don't know where any of my ties are. They're boxed away with the rest of my clothing that I won't need until winter; I only unpacked the stuff that I knew I'd wear over the summer...which was basically my t-shirts and button-up shirts, shorts, and my sandals. Oh, and underwear, of course.
I know roughly what my work schedule will be once I start the job, barring any unforeseen changes, and it seems reasonable and decent enough. It's actually (honestly) the best schedule I could ask for, and I hope it remains that once I actually start. I'm not going to mention it here for fear that I may jinx things. Because yeah, even though I am an educated man in his thirties, I still get somewhat superstitious about things like that.
Daisy and I long ago had a long discussion about what would happen once I got a job, especially a job that was stable and full-time work, and it boiled down to what we could and would do with our finances. I told her that first and foremost, our priority was paying the monthly household bills (obviously) which will be made much, much easier with two incomes. The second priority was to pay down our credit cards -- all of them -- as much as we could. We've been doing this now, yes, but we're still using said cards more than we're paying them off, and once I start bringing in another paycheck every payday, we won't have to worry about that as much.
The third priority we discussed was to finally get the table and chairs we need (as we will now be able to afford them) and get a larger television for the living room. My TV was fine for the small living room I had in Newton; 22 inches was perfectly fine for that place. Here? With a living room probably three times the size of that one? Yeeeeeah, not so much. We need something bigger and easier to see/hear from across the room.
The last priority is to get me a newer car. That's a big priority, yes, and it's the most expensive of all (obviously). We've discussed it, and I've even had discussions with Dad about vehicles, as Daisy's parents recently got a new, really nice SUV. However, the car has to be the last priority as it's currently infinitely more important that we pay down our credit cards first and can sock away money into our savings account once or twice a month. Well, unless the Monte Carlo dies sometime soon, anyway.
However, a lot of this has to be done, well, rather quickly. Why? Because once November rolls around, my year of student loan forbearance will be up. And with this job, I'm pretty sure I'll make more than it takes to qualify for it again. That means said forbearance will end, and I'll immediately have to start paying off monthly student loan bills. Which, obviously, I don't want to have to do right after I've started a job, but it's relatively unavoidable. So we have to do a lot of this stuff within the next few months while we can still afford to do it. We'll be a two-income household, yes, but paying student loans will take more than 1/3 of my monthly pay, I'm guessing. And if I recall correctly, forbearance goes by the yearly salary, not monthly. I cannot remember for certain, though. I'm sure I'll find out in November when it comes looming again. Daisy isn't immune to this either; while she has less to pay back in loans than I do, she's also on forbearance right now, as she applied for it a month or two after I did so that we could save money for the wedding and the move. Hers will have to be re-upped or ended eventually as well.
On the plus side? For the moment, for a while, we'll be one of those DINK families. You know, dual income, no kids. And that's exciting.
I'll find out more about the job and the schedule stuff in the next few days/weeks, I would imagine. I'm guessing they'll send out an itinerary for their new hires that will detail where they're supposed to be and when. Then again, they may just do that when one arrives for training, so who knows.
In other news, I did get to take out the Monte Carlo last night and drive it around as I'd needed to do, but the reason I did/had to wasn't a good one.
Daisy's car headlights no longer work.
No, we don't know why.
I will say this: one of them works -- the passenger side lower parking light. None of the other lights come on at all. To drive at night, she has to drive around with her high beams on (which do work) if she wants to see at all, and apparently the switch for that isn't working correctly either, as she has to hold it to keep them on instead of just hitting the switch and having them stay on. We found this out last night when she was off work and wanted to go out to pick up a few things from Walmart. We got halfway down the street before I asked, "Hon, are your lights on?"
Well, they were turned on, but they weren't working. Turn signals and hazard lights work fine, but the actual normal headlights don't. So we turned around and came home, and we took my car out. The Monte Carlo has a lot of problems and it's old, yes, but at least its damned headlights work. All of them.
When we got home she researched the problem and found out that it's fairly common, apparently -- and it could be a fuse (or several fuses) or a larger problem, such as the lights' control board (or something like that). She set up an appointment for in the morning with an auto shop that her parents and sister have used before, and we're taking it in. They also honor her extended warranty as well, which is one of the reasons she chose that place.
We don't know how much it will be to fix it. It could be a cheap fix or it could be hundreds of dollars...dollars that we don't exactly have right now. Well, we do, but we can't afford to blow all of them on the car's headlights, of all things. This is a new problem, as well; the lights were fine two or three nights ago. It's only now that they're not working correctly. Here's hoping it's something simple and cheap like fuses. Seriously.
"Well, they'll be able to tell you what it is within five seconds once they plug the computer into it," I said. "Then we'll know."
I'm going with her to the auto shop this morning to take it in; the techs there told her they'd try to fix it while we were there, but it's possible that they may need to keep it for the day. If that's the case they'll give us a ride home and I'll take her back there later to pick it up (or, conversely, take her to work tonight and pick her up in the morning if it's not done by the time her shift starts this evening). Obviously this isn't ideal for anyone involved, so we're hoping it's something simple they can fix while we're there this morning. Going by my own gut, if even one of the lights is on normally (and yes, one is), my instincts tell me it's a fuse issue. But that's just me; I could be wrong. Daisy's car is a lot newer than mine is, which is why having any problems with it whatsoever is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like either of us abuse her car -- we don't even speed in it, and she gets the oil and filters changed regularly. Hell, we just did that last week. But sometimes these things happen, I suppose, and they have to be dealt with.
"I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things," I told her last night, "but I know that it sucks and I know I'd be stressed out if it happened to my car. I just want you to know I understand that frustration, love."
Daisy isn't the kind of person to get stressed out about many things, let alone something so small and otherwise insignificant. She and I are very different people in that regard, as even the small things stress me out and make me twitch -- especially things that involve money and/or vehicles.
So, I suppose, we'll see what happens this morning. She also accidentally left her purse here over her lunch hour -- which has her license, wallet, and everything else in it -- so here's hoping she doesn't get pulled over on her way home this morning from work...
"It was meant to be," Daisy said.
It's fine, really. As good of an interview/presentation as I gave, it's not like I expected to be offered the university position. I'm sure, eventually, that if I want to get back into academia, I'll have the chance. For now, however? I have to focus on the hand I've been dealt, and that means accepting and working the job that I was offered, and for the moment I am perfectly happy with doing that.
I also think it's somewhat amusing that I expected this, and bought those new shoes for said job a few days before I actually got it.
"When it comes to the training," I asked Daisy tonight on her lunch hour, "am I allowed to wear what I want, or is it all the same sort of 'business casual' that I'd have to wear every day when I'm there normally?"
"It's the business casual," she said, looking at me as if I was nuts. "They'll send you home from training if you walk in there wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And if you get sent home during training, you generally get fired."
I looked down at myself. I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Looks like I'm going to have to put away a lot of that stuff soon.
"Well, I'm glad I took out all of my collared shirts and polos now," I said. "I figured I'd wear the same sorts of stuff I wore to my interviews, like the purple shirt I wore last week and all of the nice pants Dad gave me -- stuff like that."
"Yeah," she said. "That's fine. Shirts with collars, slacks, dressier shoes. No ties necessary; nobody there wears ties."
So, basically the same outfits I wore when I was on the main campus as a professor and wanted to look somewhat impressive. Okay.
This is good, as I don't know where any of my ties are. They're boxed away with the rest of my clothing that I won't need until winter; I only unpacked the stuff that I knew I'd wear over the summer...which was basically my t-shirts and button-up shirts, shorts, and my sandals. Oh, and underwear, of course.
I know roughly what my work schedule will be once I start the job, barring any unforeseen changes, and it seems reasonable and decent enough. It's actually (honestly) the best schedule I could ask for, and I hope it remains that once I actually start. I'm not going to mention it here for fear that I may jinx things. Because yeah, even though I am an educated man in his thirties, I still get somewhat superstitious about things like that.
Daisy and I long ago had a long discussion about what would happen once I got a job, especially a job that was stable and full-time work, and it boiled down to what we could and would do with our finances. I told her that first and foremost, our priority was paying the monthly household bills (obviously) which will be made much, much easier with two incomes. The second priority was to pay down our credit cards -- all of them -- as much as we could. We've been doing this now, yes, but we're still using said cards more than we're paying them off, and once I start bringing in another paycheck every payday, we won't have to worry about that as much.
The third priority we discussed was to finally get the table and chairs we need (as we will now be able to afford them) and get a larger television for the living room. My TV was fine for the small living room I had in Newton; 22 inches was perfectly fine for that place. Here? With a living room probably three times the size of that one? Yeeeeeah, not so much. We need something bigger and easier to see/hear from across the room.
The last priority is to get me a newer car. That's a big priority, yes, and it's the most expensive of all (obviously). We've discussed it, and I've even had discussions with Dad about vehicles, as Daisy's parents recently got a new, really nice SUV. However, the car has to be the last priority as it's currently infinitely more important that we pay down our credit cards first and can sock away money into our savings account once or twice a month. Well, unless the Monte Carlo dies sometime soon, anyway.
However, a lot of this has to be done, well, rather quickly. Why? Because once November rolls around, my year of student loan forbearance will be up. And with this job, I'm pretty sure I'll make more than it takes to qualify for it again. That means said forbearance will end, and I'll immediately have to start paying off monthly student loan bills. Which, obviously, I don't want to have to do right after I've started a job, but it's relatively unavoidable. So we have to do a lot of this stuff within the next few months while we can still afford to do it. We'll be a two-income household, yes, but paying student loans will take more than 1/3 of my monthly pay, I'm guessing. And if I recall correctly, forbearance goes by the yearly salary, not monthly. I cannot remember for certain, though. I'm sure I'll find out in November when it comes looming again. Daisy isn't immune to this either; while she has less to pay back in loans than I do, she's also on forbearance right now, as she applied for it a month or two after I did so that we could save money for the wedding and the move. Hers will have to be re-upped or ended eventually as well.
On the plus side? For the moment, for a while, we'll be one of those DINK families. You know, dual income, no kids. And that's exciting.
I'll find out more about the job and the schedule stuff in the next few days/weeks, I would imagine. I'm guessing they'll send out an itinerary for their new hires that will detail where they're supposed to be and when. Then again, they may just do that when one arrives for training, so who knows.
In other news, I did get to take out the Monte Carlo last night and drive it around as I'd needed to do, but the reason I did/had to wasn't a good one.
Daisy's car headlights no longer work.
No, we don't know why.
I will say this: one of them works -- the passenger side lower parking light. None of the other lights come on at all. To drive at night, she has to drive around with her high beams on (which do work) if she wants to see at all, and apparently the switch for that isn't working correctly either, as she has to hold it to keep them on instead of just hitting the switch and having them stay on. We found this out last night when she was off work and wanted to go out to pick up a few things from Walmart. We got halfway down the street before I asked, "Hon, are your lights on?"
Well, they were turned on, but they weren't working. Turn signals and hazard lights work fine, but the actual normal headlights don't. So we turned around and came home, and we took my car out. The Monte Carlo has a lot of problems and it's old, yes, but at least its damned headlights work. All of them.
When we got home she researched the problem and found out that it's fairly common, apparently -- and it could be a fuse (or several fuses) or a larger problem, such as the lights' control board (or something like that). She set up an appointment for in the morning with an auto shop that her parents and sister have used before, and we're taking it in. They also honor her extended warranty as well, which is one of the reasons she chose that place.
We don't know how much it will be to fix it. It could be a cheap fix or it could be hundreds of dollars...dollars that we don't exactly have right now. Well, we do, but we can't afford to blow all of them on the car's headlights, of all things. This is a new problem, as well; the lights were fine two or three nights ago. It's only now that they're not working correctly. Here's hoping it's something simple and cheap like fuses. Seriously.
"Well, they'll be able to tell you what it is within five seconds once they plug the computer into it," I said. "Then we'll know."
I'm going with her to the auto shop this morning to take it in; the techs there told her they'd try to fix it while we were there, but it's possible that they may need to keep it for the day. If that's the case they'll give us a ride home and I'll take her back there later to pick it up (or, conversely, take her to work tonight and pick her up in the morning if it's not done by the time her shift starts this evening). Obviously this isn't ideal for anyone involved, so we're hoping it's something simple they can fix while we're there this morning. Going by my own gut, if even one of the lights is on normally (and yes, one is), my instincts tell me it's a fuse issue. But that's just me; I could be wrong. Daisy's car is a lot newer than mine is, which is why having any problems with it whatsoever is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like either of us abuse her car -- we don't even speed in it, and she gets the oil and filters changed regularly. Hell, we just did that last week. But sometimes these things happen, I suppose, and they have to be dealt with.
"I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things," I told her last night, "but I know that it sucks and I know I'd be stressed out if it happened to my car. I just want you to know I understand that frustration, love."
Daisy isn't the kind of person to get stressed out about many things, let alone something so small and otherwise insignificant. She and I are very different people in that regard, as even the small things stress me out and make me twitch -- especially things that involve money and/or vehicles.
So, I suppose, we'll see what happens this morning. She also accidentally left her purse here over her lunch hour -- which has her license, wallet, and everything else in it -- so here's hoping she doesn't get pulled over on her way home this morning from work...
New Horizons, Part I
Warning: nerdspeak ahead for most of this post, but the subject does change and I give out important news further down, so stick with me.
Last night, after at least two years of not doing it, I finally upgraded my computer from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS. In doing so, the goddamned thing crashed and the upgrade failed.
Look, I have a good computer, and I do love my Linux, but there's a lot of shit Ubuntu has done over the last several years that I really don't like, and every time I update/upgrade my OS I have to dick around with it for a good two or three hours afterwards to get all of my settings back to where they were. If I can, anyway. An upgrade from an old OS to a newer version generally disables about half of the customizations I've made over the years, as well as a good chunk of the special programs I've installed and modified (such as for gaming and for storage). This also includes the user interface, which I have to change/disable every single time I do anything. Ubuntu's default GUI is a terrible, tablet-like interface called Unity, which is difficult to navigate through, doesn't have a taskbar, and everything is done in panels. Ugh. I much prefer the GNOME 2 interface, which is the classic Linux desktop experience and the GUI that I used on every version of Linux I've ever had on my machines:
To use that classic desktop, you have to go in and specially/manually add it after every system upgrade (if it's available for your specific system, of course, which it usually is). Otherwise you're stuck using Unity. The screenshot above is a good representation of what it looks like, though that photo is a much older version of what I'm currently running.
Anyway.
I was able to download and initialize the upgrade fine, and it installed correctly, but then at the end it told me "the upgrade has been performed successfully, but there were errors." Okay, what the fuck does that mean?
At the end of any system upgrade, of course, you're prompted to restart to finish the upgrade. At least on Linux, anyhow; I don't know how it works on Mac or Windows machines, since I haven't used either one in almost ten years now. So I restarted. It brought me, as always, to the login screen. I typed in my password as always, and hit enter. Nothing happened.
Well, something happened, and that something was that the screen would go to the blank 12.04 splash screen (remember, I had just upgraded to 14.04, so that 12.04 splash screen should've been gone) ...and then it would just sit there. I could move the mouse around, but there was nothing to click on. It just sat there. I restarted several times, tried to login as a guest, tried to login under a different GUI, and nothing. Sometimes when I changed things, it would just lock up and freeze, others it would basically reset and take me back to the login screen, as if it didn't want me to do anything at all.
Okay, so whatever those errors were, they'd locked me out of my own computer.
I got out my laptop and booted it up, convinced that I'd have to download and burn a fresh image of the OS itself to install it manually, which would wipe my desktop's entire HD. This I did not want to do, obviously, as even though I'd backed up all of my data, all of my custom settings would be wiped and I'd have to go back out and get every program all over again, set them up, and reconfigure them. This was not something I wanted to do, as that takes hours and hours of tedious work.
At about this time, Daisy came home from a night out with her best friend, right at the time where I was at my most stressed and frazzled about the damn computer not wanting to just work. I very calmly and lovingly told her that I'd be out in a while, and that I needed some time/concentration to fix the damned thing, and she understood, gave me a kiss, and let me work in the dark of our computer room like some sort of mad scientist.
I downloaded the installation image and made a bootable flash drive with it, and burned an extra copy onto a blank DVD as backup -- which was a task in itself because it took me nearly an hour to find my spindle of blank DVDs after the move.
When I booted it (with the flash drive first), it gave me the option to reinstall my installation, which basically translates to repairing all of the broken bits and letting it completely redo itself. Which is what I did. An hour later I had a perfectly functioning desktop computer again, with the upgrade leaving most of my configurations and the like alone. This is a very good thing. I installed the GNOME 2 interface again, and my computer is back to normal -- faster, prettier, and completely up-to-date. There were, of course, some programs I had to re-add or re-install (Skype, Google Chrome, Dropbox, etc), but eh, it wasn't bad.
So, that's done. That was part one of my plans for "stuff I need to do around the house but haven't gotten to yet." And then Daisy and I went to bed.
Daisy, as an aside, is on a strange schedule right now. Yesterday morning, really early, she went to help Mama renew her visa. As I mentioned here in the past, Daisy's mother is a Canadian citizen, but a permanent resident here in the states (as she's been living here for longer than I've been alive, and is married to an American). Because of that, Daisy and both of her sisters have full dual citizenship in both countries (and two of their combined six children do as well). However, since Mama isn't an American citizen, she periodically has to go to immigration and renew everything...despite the fact that yes, she has been living here forever and she is married to an American. It's a very stressful -- and according to Mama, somewhat degrading/dehumanizing -- experience, so Daisy accompanied her. It went well, apparently.
However, and here's the part I alluded to at the beginning of the post, when I got up this afternoon I had a message waiting for me from Daisy that said I had missed a call on my cell phone. This in itself is slightly amusing, because most of the time at our place, the phone gets zero reception whatsoever. It'll show me the little receiver symbol with a line through it, will say "searching" because it can't find a network that's even somewhat compatible with my phone, and it'll search and search until it drains the battery and it dies. So really, I was surprised it received a call at all.
I looked at the number and it was a local number, and I knew from the prefix that it was from Daisy's company. Aha. Finally.
I checked my email and found that one of the HR people had sent me a message asking if I was still interested in the position I'd applied/interviewed for, and if so to give her a call. Note that this was a completely different HR person than the one I'd been calling/emailing (I later found out that this one was an intern), so I logged into Google Talk and called back -- which led to me being officially offered the position and given a start date for training: August 18.
I have a job. Well, technically, anyway.
The training period lasts two weeks, Monday through Friday each week, usually from 8AM-5PM. It'll start on the 18th and then my real start date, provided I start the full position immediately after the training ends, will be on Tuesday, September 2. The position pays quite well -- it's the same job Daisy had before she formally got her promotion (so I know the salary) and it's full time.
I gave the lady on the phone my birthdate and SSN for background check info (which, of course, will turn up completely clean) and she gave me the location I need to be at on the morning of the 18th -- it's the building in which I originally interviewed. Daisy later told me that's where they do all the processing of forms (like payroll and tax forms) and then they give you another address to go to for the actual training most of the time. I would imagine that I'll more than likely train in Daisy's building, as that's where I'll be working, but I'm not sure -- so don't hold me to that. The company has numerous locations all around the city, and at least six or seven different buildings at those locations. I'm fine either way, obviously; you give me a job and I'll go do what you tell me to do wherever you tell me to do it.
Now, some of you may be thinking something along the lines of why did you accept it immediately instead of waiting to hear about the university position? Well, my answer to that is fairly simple: I knew I had a much better shot at this than at the university gig, this is full-time and stable with a yearly salary that I already know, and aside from knowing several of the people I'll eventually work with, I also know that it's very close to my home and that it's a job that I'll be able to do within an office and with no travel involved. Why wait for a job like the one at the university that may be fun, but isn't stable and involves a lot of things that I'm not necessarily the right person for?
I hung up the phone and breathed a big sigh of relief. The long, desperate hunt for a job was finally over, and not only was it over, but I still had almost a month of vacation-like time where I could decompress, relax, and finally enjoy my downtime without being constantly stressed about money and survival issues. A little less than a month before I start is fine; we'll survive and pay all of the bills and rent with what we have now with no issue.
More details will become available as I get them, of course; I got another email a while later from the HR lady asking one last quick question of who'd referred me -- I told her, of course, that was my wife. When an employee referral comes into question, the employee who did the referring gets a bonus for the reference.
"Yeah," Daisy said, "...after you have worked there for six months."
"I have to work there for six months before you get your bonus?"
"Yep."
"Well, shit."
I don't think that will be a problem, however. We'll need the money. It's also not until after that six-month point before I'll be able to become eligible for a promotion or position change within the company, so even if I don't like the job I'm doing, I'm still locked into it for at least that long.
Last night, after at least two years of not doing it, I finally upgraded my computer from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS. In doing so, the goddamned thing crashed and the upgrade failed.
Look, I have a good computer, and I do love my Linux, but there's a lot of shit Ubuntu has done over the last several years that I really don't like, and every time I update/upgrade my OS I have to dick around with it for a good two or three hours afterwards to get all of my settings back to where they were. If I can, anyway. An upgrade from an old OS to a newer version generally disables about half of the customizations I've made over the years, as well as a good chunk of the special programs I've installed and modified (such as for gaming and for storage). This also includes the user interface, which I have to change/disable every single time I do anything. Ubuntu's default GUI is a terrible, tablet-like interface called Unity, which is difficult to navigate through, doesn't have a taskbar, and everything is done in panels. Ugh. I much prefer the GNOME 2 interface, which is the classic Linux desktop experience and the GUI that I used on every version of Linux I've ever had on my machines:
To use that classic desktop, you have to go in and specially/manually add it after every system upgrade (if it's available for your specific system, of course, which it usually is). Otherwise you're stuck using Unity. The screenshot above is a good representation of what it looks like, though that photo is a much older version of what I'm currently running.
Anyway.
I was able to download and initialize the upgrade fine, and it installed correctly, but then at the end it told me "the upgrade has been performed successfully, but there were errors." Okay, what the fuck does that mean?
At the end of any system upgrade, of course, you're prompted to restart to finish the upgrade. At least on Linux, anyhow; I don't know how it works on Mac or Windows machines, since I haven't used either one in almost ten years now. So I restarted. It brought me, as always, to the login screen. I typed in my password as always, and hit enter. Nothing happened.
Well, something happened, and that something was that the screen would go to the blank 12.04 splash screen (remember, I had just upgraded to 14.04, so that 12.04 splash screen should've been gone) ...and then it would just sit there. I could move the mouse around, but there was nothing to click on. It just sat there. I restarted several times, tried to login as a guest, tried to login under a different GUI, and nothing. Sometimes when I changed things, it would just lock up and freeze, others it would basically reset and take me back to the login screen, as if it didn't want me to do anything at all.
Okay, so whatever those errors were, they'd locked me out of my own computer.
I got out my laptop and booted it up, convinced that I'd have to download and burn a fresh image of the OS itself to install it manually, which would wipe my desktop's entire HD. This I did not want to do, obviously, as even though I'd backed up all of my data, all of my custom settings would be wiped and I'd have to go back out and get every program all over again, set them up, and reconfigure them. This was not something I wanted to do, as that takes hours and hours of tedious work.
At about this time, Daisy came home from a night out with her best friend, right at the time where I was at my most stressed and frazzled about the damn computer not wanting to just work. I very calmly and lovingly told her that I'd be out in a while, and that I needed some time/concentration to fix the damned thing, and she understood, gave me a kiss, and let me work in the dark of our computer room like some sort of mad scientist.
I downloaded the installation image and made a bootable flash drive with it, and burned an extra copy onto a blank DVD as backup -- which was a task in itself because it took me nearly an hour to find my spindle of blank DVDs after the move.
When I booted it (with the flash drive first), it gave me the option to reinstall my installation, which basically translates to repairing all of the broken bits and letting it completely redo itself. Which is what I did. An hour later I had a perfectly functioning desktop computer again, with the upgrade leaving most of my configurations and the like alone. This is a very good thing. I installed the GNOME 2 interface again, and my computer is back to normal -- faster, prettier, and completely up-to-date. There were, of course, some programs I had to re-add or re-install (Skype, Google Chrome, Dropbox, etc), but eh, it wasn't bad.
So, that's done. That was part one of my plans for "stuff I need to do around the house but haven't gotten to yet." And then Daisy and I went to bed.
Daisy, as an aside, is on a strange schedule right now. Yesterday morning, really early, she went to help Mama renew her visa. As I mentioned here in the past, Daisy's mother is a Canadian citizen, but a permanent resident here in the states (as she's been living here for longer than I've been alive, and is married to an American). Because of that, Daisy and both of her sisters have full dual citizenship in both countries (and two of their combined six children do as well). However, since Mama isn't an American citizen, she periodically has to go to immigration and renew everything...despite the fact that yes, she has been living here forever and she is married to an American. It's a very stressful -- and according to Mama, somewhat degrading/dehumanizing -- experience, so Daisy accompanied her. It went well, apparently.
However, and here's the part I alluded to at the beginning of the post, when I got up this afternoon I had a message waiting for me from Daisy that said I had missed a call on my cell phone. This in itself is slightly amusing, because most of the time at our place, the phone gets zero reception whatsoever. It'll show me the little receiver symbol with a line through it, will say "searching" because it can't find a network that's even somewhat compatible with my phone, and it'll search and search until it drains the battery and it dies. So really, I was surprised it received a call at all.
I looked at the number and it was a local number, and I knew from the prefix that it was from Daisy's company. Aha. Finally.
I checked my email and found that one of the HR people had sent me a message asking if I was still interested in the position I'd applied/interviewed for, and if so to give her a call. Note that this was a completely different HR person than the one I'd been calling/emailing (I later found out that this one was an intern), so I logged into Google Talk and called back -- which led to me being officially offered the position and given a start date for training: August 18.
I have a job. Well, technically, anyway.
The training period lasts two weeks, Monday through Friday each week, usually from 8AM-5PM. It'll start on the 18th and then my real start date, provided I start the full position immediately after the training ends, will be on Tuesday, September 2. The position pays quite well -- it's the same job Daisy had before she formally got her promotion (so I know the salary) and it's full time.
I gave the lady on the phone my birthdate and SSN for background check info (which, of course, will turn up completely clean) and she gave me the location I need to be at on the morning of the 18th -- it's the building in which I originally interviewed. Daisy later told me that's where they do all the processing of forms (like payroll and tax forms) and then they give you another address to go to for the actual training most of the time. I would imagine that I'll more than likely train in Daisy's building, as that's where I'll be working, but I'm not sure -- so don't hold me to that. The company has numerous locations all around the city, and at least six or seven different buildings at those locations. I'm fine either way, obviously; you give me a job and I'll go do what you tell me to do wherever you tell me to do it.
Now, some of you may be thinking something along the lines of why did you accept it immediately instead of waiting to hear about the university position? Well, my answer to that is fairly simple: I knew I had a much better shot at this than at the university gig, this is full-time and stable with a yearly salary that I already know, and aside from knowing several of the people I'll eventually work with, I also know that it's very close to my home and that it's a job that I'll be able to do within an office and with no travel involved. Why wait for a job like the one at the university that may be fun, but isn't stable and involves a lot of things that I'm not necessarily the right person for?
I hung up the phone and breathed a big sigh of relief. The long, desperate hunt for a job was finally over, and not only was it over, but I still had almost a month of vacation-like time where I could decompress, relax, and finally enjoy my downtime without being constantly stressed about money and survival issues. A little less than a month before I start is fine; we'll survive and pay all of the bills and rent with what we have now with no issue.
More details will become available as I get them, of course; I got another email a while later from the HR lady asking one last quick question of who'd referred me -- I told her, of course, that was my wife. When an employee referral comes into question, the employee who did the referring gets a bonus for the reference.
"Yeah," Daisy said, "...after you have worked there for six months."
"I have to work there for six months before you get your bonus?"
"Yep."
"Well, shit."
I don't think that will be a problem, however. We'll need the money. It's also not until after that six-month point before I'll be able to become eligible for a promotion or position change within the company, so even if I don't like the job I'm doing, I'm still locked into it for at least that long.
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