Musings on a Small Life

My work week has felt like one of the longest in recent memory. Nothing to do with politics in any part of the world, just too many opportunities for awareness that my values (work and non) and the values of half the people I now work with definitely are not in alignment. I feel out of sync, like the proverbial round peg trying to fit into a square hole. Or vice versa. I am far too old for this bullsh*t and far too young to retire.  I suspect that the time change is playing havoc with the way I feel this week as well. It's dark so early now and that's thrown me off a bit. It feels like I should be heading home when it's only 3 PM, and it's fully dark shortly after I do get to the house. But as I was walking home today, I kept looking up at the sky and clouds, feeling how amazing this world still is, knowing that the earth and sky will remain long after we're gone, long after all our human concerns have dissolved into the wind. It's a reminder ...

[Work rant, sorry, have to vent! Best to skip this one.] I've decided that my job title, in my email signature, should be "Lesser Bobblehead," Department Such and Such. Well, my little bobblehead is spinning today, out of control. Just one of those frazzled days. Plus, the staff union (from which I'm excluded due to confidentiality, as is everyone else in this office) voted to ratify the newly-negotiated contract with the university. I get--all we non-unionized staff get--exactly what they get. Which is nothing for the first year, other than a $750 (gross) lump sum payment. No step increase. I'm due a step increase, so I'm pissed off about that. The "big" lump sum (net) amounts to less than half of what a step increase would give me. Next year, step increases for those who qualify, plus 1%. Then in July 2017 another step increase plus 1.25%, and the same beginning July 2018. The university saved their money for faculty a...

There are too many choices when it comes to cell phone plans, be they prepaid (as mine is) or on contract. After going into the Telus store in the local mall, I came home and dithered for ages, then ended up just going for their basic add-on of 500 outgoing and unlimited incoming texts, plus 50 minutes of free local calling, at $15 plus tax per month. No data, at least not at this point. None of their prepaid/auto-renew plans has long distance, unfortunately. But at least I can send and receive texts Canada-wide and to the U.S. too. I don't need 500 outgoing texts per month, let alone international capability, but I wanted some voice coverage and this was the only way I could get it. And on the topic of "voice," I spoke with Mom a short time ago. She's found a private facility for Harry; he'll move there on Wednesday, from the hospital. The place is about 20 minutes outside of the city, in a quiet setting, rather like a lodge in the woods. Six or se...

So we had a staff update meeting yesterday. Mercifully they're only every other month. BUT. The "big" boss has decided that we're all going out her place on Wednesday May 13, late AM, to have a BBQ and then to have an HR facilitator come in and do the DiSC personality assessment with us all. (It's a lot like True Colors, if anyone remembers that, which was big in the late '90s and early 2000's. I did True Colors three times.) I didn't look at my coworkers when she announced this, but I knew exactly what they were thinking. We're all on the same page in how we feel about it. We're not in our 30s anymore, like most of the other half of the team. We know our personalities, we don't want to do stupid "team building" sh*t that's an utter waste of time. This would be why I want to win enough to retire before then. $1.5M CDN will do. LOL. Guess I'd actually better start buying lotto tickets soon, huh? Hope no one else...

Aiii yiiii yiiiii. *** On a nicer note, it's 20C out! 20! That's 68F. OMC, we're in heaven, feels like summer, after the miserable winter and spring we've had. I can't wait to get home and let the boys into the back space. :-) I took some tulip pics at a nearby park at lunch time (masses of red tulips around a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first prime minster) and hope at least one or two came out. I should walk home, if I can muster the energy (have walked a lot already today). The LCBO (liquor store) is on my way home. It could be a double rye kind of day.  :-P "F*ckit" -- yeah, that's my word for the last hour of my work day.

Based on something our soon-to-be-retired staff member said to me yesterday. This now is printed out and is posted up right beside my "Fukitol" graphic. Inside my cube walls, of course. I'm crazy, not stupid. BTW, my "new" boss breezed in this AM, said good morning to another co-worker whose office is across from my cube, and didn't even turn her head to acknowledge my presence. Nice. Biteme.

With sarcasm. My past personal issues with the former co-worker (over what she had said to me almost three years ago re: Annie) already got me in "trouble" on Monday. The first day. Mind you, I didn't say anything to that person at all, she had been speaking loudly , in her strident, grating way, at me about something. (In my books that's ranting.) I told my boss I wasn't going to tolerate it and things kind of went downhill from there. Long story short, after a chat with my boss yesterday, at his request (both she and I having to meet in the middle--me not to take things so personally and she to tone it down), I emailed her and sorted things out, told her how hurt and angry I had been, that Annie had died the next day, etc. So we have a peace on that, I guess, and are moving forward, new start, blah blah. But I can tell you that hate it here. I'm right in the middle of the suite, people coming and going, more open than I was. I hate, absolute...

I'm pretty sure I made Santa's naughty list this morning. I popped into the office before errands, with the intent of moving one of my bookcases (orders not to move ANY furniture be damned). I ended up moving the one...then the other, and then the two filing cabinets that are in my new cubicle space as well. I might have pulled something in my left glute (lol), as the cabinets (a) were full and (b) were extremely heavy, but I managed. I also removed the fluorescent bulb in the light fixture above my desk and put it back in above my old desk (I had removed that one three years ago). Those lights give me massive headaches. I won't tell you how I managed to gain the extra inches in height to do this, while standing on the desks, but I made sure I did it safely. Really.  Now, the furniture movers are external to our university, so not covered under union rules. But it's still a no-no to do this kind of thing yourself. (The movers are coming on Monday.)  However, ...

Well, our office gets to move back downstairs to the "dungeon" next month, to be squished in with the other 5 members of our larger group. Into the same place we moved OUT of three years ago. At that time there were 9 of us (our 6 plus 3 from another department) crammed into that small space, barely room to move around with all the storage cabinets and bookcases having to be in the aisle. Now we'll be 11. Yay for us. It sucks sheep shit.  In my case I suppose I'm lucky, being the lowest on the totem pole in terms of rank (though not seniority), I've only ever had a cubicle. Most of my coworkers will be giving up their offices and having to go back to tiny cubes. I'll just lose my lovely, roomy cubicle space. Did I say it sucks sheep shit? And I get to be around two people, one of whom is a former coworker, I really have no use whatsoever for. Maybe it's not just sheep shit, maybe it's also turkey turd. Doggie doo-doo. Cat crap. You g...

It's a full moon tomorrow night. I swear on all that's holy that it makes me crazier than I already am. I got in to work this morning to a voice mail message from our business officer, questioning whether my boss's breakfast receipts at a receipt conference were valid, because if the conference provided breakfast, he couldn't expense it.  I immediately replied via voice mail, in a very snitty, uppity tone of voice that my boss has never submitted receipts that weren't valid, that breakfast wasn't included and that he doesn't commit fraud. Then I thought, oops, I'd better double check with him, because maybe the breakfast was provided and he chose not to eat it (the food being crappy, perhaps). So I emailed him and told him not to make me eat crow, please. And he replied that the conference "breakfast" was a sticky bun at 8:30AM and that he had real food in the hotel at 6:30AM each day, along with many other attendees who...

[Work rant, feel free to skip/ignore.] Hell of a work week so far. My boss has been off, of course, because of the death of his mother. Monday AM our senior analyst came in and told us that he found out last week that our boss's boss has decided that because he does a fair bit of work for their unit (technically we're three units combined into one now), he's being physically moved as of May 1st, to an empty office downstairs with them. So they don't have to walk up one flight of stairs or call him or send him an email, presumably. Never mind the huge amount of work he still does for our unit and the number of times a day we're in and out of his office. He found out last Tuesday afternoon. Surprise! And surprise, 20% of his job will be given over to another department entirely, to do data reporting for them. And another surprise, this other department hadn't even been told yet, or told that they'd be paying for 20% of his salary! This is all at ...