be thankful friday chex mix

It’s been kind of a scary week.

After our group luncheon on Tuesday to meet the new boss really nothing anyone really gleaned from it. No one really knows if we’re staying in the same locations, doing the same duties or if it will get shaken up. Larry and Sherry The Wonder Twins may finally get separated and Sherry’s been worried. Sherry’s worried because she’s never been the engineer she’s been hired to BE. She just got on because Larry told Baxter (our old boss) that he wasn’t coming (in more ways than one) without Sherry. Now with the new boss Sherry might actually have to do some work. Patricia took the most recent package to leave so she will be gone at the end of this month. I think she saw the writing on the wall and decided to go back to truck driving with her husband.

The other day Shampa and I were instant messaging and (me liking to stir up shit out there) said that according to Sherry she thought everyone was moving back over to the old construction office where Larry and her sat. I knew this would stir up that office because they all sit OTP and would hate driving to inside the fruit loop. But, she apparently turned around and called another person on the team who in turn called Sherry and guess who’s company phone went off around 4:30 yesterday – mine, from Sherry. Sherry wondered why I was telling everyone that she said we were moving back there.

I asked, well didn’t you tell Dan this morning? Dan’s been talking about it all day.

Dan and I share an office and he often drives me crazy.

Just know that anything you tell Dan goes into concrete as fact.

I wanted to say, You’re the stupid bitch that started the rumor by telling Dan. It’s not my fault he took it as fact.

Afterwards, I texted Shampa that I took it that she told Sherry about our conversation. (BITCH) That’s the last time I tell her anything.

Meanwhile, I’m not so sure that the involuntary force reduction they got recently won’t turn into a voluntary reduction soon. Especially, getting a new boss in the mix. I saw dark clouds on the horizon so I started looking again. Well, I had been applying to some things since May. The other day I had a telephone interview with a large company similar (but different) than the one I’m with. I thought the interview was a disaster because the guy had me on speaker phone and I could barely hear anything he said. It took all my concentration just to hear what he was saying. At one point I made him repeat a question and even said, I’m having a hard time hearing you because you have me on speaker phone I’m getting an echoing effect.

Instead of saying, Oh I’ll take you off speaker phone, he said, Sorry and repeated the question. Not what I wanted, dude.

After hanging up I thought, Well, I bombed that one. Until last night I got an email from the recruiter saying Chris (was that his name? wow good thing I didn’t call him Dick which is what I thought he said his name was) really enjoyed your conversation concerning the position and would like to invite you to meet the team for on site interviews (wait for it) all day. Please send me your availability for all-day blocks starting from July 27……

All I could see was ALL DAY. I’ve never had an interview last ALL DAY. Oh my God. What could we possibly talk about ALL DAY? I’m kind of trying not to freak out about it. I’ve already dragged my suit out of the closet (I think it’s been almost a year since I’ve been on an interview) and made sure it fit. I’m going to work on a portfolio package to bring with me.  I guess all I can do is put it in my mind that I will nail it either way. (I have a lot of meditation to do between now and then).

I’ve saved the worst for last because this stuff sounds trivial compared to what my friend it going through. I have this friend I worked with at the Department of  trying to build roads but only threw people under the bus Transportation. Her brother has been kidnapped and we don’t know what to think. It’s been in the news and then they found a body in a lake nearby but they can’t identify it yet so they don’t know if it’s him or not. It’s been an ongoing nightmare for my friend and we feel so terrible for her and her family and all we can really do at this point is pray for them.

All that really puts things into perspective and it’s also really scary. We go about our day-to-day business not knowing what can happen next. Anything can happen at any time so it’s important to thank our lucky stars that we have a job to go to, people at work to bitch about and ALL DAY interviews. So, happy Friday, hug your person and tell them you love them and have a great, safe weekend!

Cheers!

Advertisements

friday chex mix -continuing education edition

Well, finals week is over, thank God! I think I scraped through with a B in both classes. The last final with the meathead of a prof I got an 88 but he still has to grade our projects, two labs and an xtra credit assignment so who knows after that. I’m just done and ready to be off until the fall semester.

Right as I was going into my final last night I happened to check my work email and saw that our boss sent out a meeting request after everyone had left for the day. This is very odd but honestly not surprising for him. Between us I’ve always felt he couldn’t manage himself out of a paper bag let alone a group. This meeting could go good or bad but I wasn’t going to worry about it at that moment. All I cared about was getting a B or higher on that final and getting out. 88% later I was in the car heading home in time to sit out on the back porch with Charlie and have a beer and toast the summer quarter being over.

So, this morning we learned we’re getting a new boss – which, from my personal perspective the new guy can’t be much worse than the old one. I’m like, A new face? Bring it!

Yeah, he could be worse than the old boss but the one advantage is that the resource manager d*ckhead that’s all buddy-buddy with the old boss will either A. have to leave with the old boss in order to keep that symbiotic relationship or B. He will lose any special treatment he has within the group because his buddy is leaving. Also, I think the wonder twins are gone, too. They won’t want the new boss moving into their office because the new boss may not be cool with them having an ongoing work affair. They will most-likely go back to construction together. So, without d*ckhead and the twins it’s bound to be somewhat of an improvement.

So, last weekend my younger second cousin was in town. This is the cousin who recently just came out as a lesbian in the family – the second since I came out. I’m telling you the straight people should move over and shut the hell up because we’re taking over the family. Her Dad hasn’t been taking it well despite his brother being gay and who has been with his partner for 29 years – a record and one that my younger cousin shouldn’t scoff at since he has two ex-wives.

I insisted on getting my cousin, Emily, a plane ticket down here so she could see how the more civilized half of the family lives and experience being in the life away from our po-dunky small town. She’s very quiet and you almost had to coax things out of her but she would talk after a while. We went out to lunch in Little 5 points after I picked her up and then I took her to a feminist bookstore where I bought her some age-appropriate reading. We also went to an Atlanta Dream game (she’s a huge basketball fan) and on that large skyview wheel in downtown Atlanta as well as an Imax movie at Fernbank.

The day before she left we borrowed our neighbors golf cart and drove it down to the neighborhood pool and swam and then we took her to Twains to catch the last of the Croatia/Russia game and play pool. She got to do a lot while she was here.

I think she had a good time, however, next time either her parents are going to get the plane ticket or she’s going to have to get a part-time job and save up once she’s driving age. Her parents are so like my family – narcissistic to a point where it’s an illness. Her Dad is a small chip off the block of my old man – he reminds me of him. It’s like dealing with a younger version of my Dad and I can only imagine what it’s like for her growing up there because I went through it. At least they can come out younger these days unlike me and my cousin- we would have been lynched if we would have in high school.

I tried to talk to her a little bit about college but bit back the If you don’t go to college you’ll never get out of there bit. I made sure I pointed out all the colleges down here that we drove by.

See this is Georgia Tech where the Dream plays.

We’re passing by Georgia State now they have really good business and law schools. Oh here’s Emory – they’re good in the medical field.

Well, this is Agnes Scott and they have all kinds of studies in Phycology and Public Health.

We also have University of Georgia that has really good veterinary and pharmacy programs.

Heeeello is any of this sinking in? I wanted to say. Not that she couldn’t live with her mom in Indianapolis and go to IUPUI and have a part time job which is what half of my family did. Nothing wrong with that. At least her Mom is more supportive about her sexuality and I feel wouldn’t hold her back, however, she really pushes sports on her and I don’t feel like at this rate that will get her anywhere. No one from our high school has ever gotten a sports scholarship anywhere. She’d be better off if she focused on her school work and not getting back into basketball – which is another thing. She busted her foot in practice two weeks prior and do you think anyone in my family could call me up and tell me Hey, cuz, Emily has a foot in a boot.

Nope. That’s just how asinine my family is.

Like I said, the whole fam are naval gazers focused THERE and not anything else around them. Despite her being in a boot and on crutches we still made it work. She mentioned coming down for Gay Pride in October and I told her that her parents would have to start a dialog with me about it. (which, I’m not holding my breath over). I got the ball rolling now the rest is on her. If she wants it she needs to make it happen because they won’t.

 

Happy Friday everyone and have a great weekend! Cheers!

 

 

 

hell week

It’s finals week and I am shot. I have one more final Thursday and then I’m done until fall semester. I must say that I hated both of my classes this summer. The reason why I had to take two classes over the summer is because they are both prerequisites for all the other classes that I need to take so I had to cram them in or else I would have been fucked.

One class was online which the labs in itself were hell. It took around 3 hours to finish each one and there were 8 of them. I just took the final in that class tonight and scored an 84% which I thought was bad because I studied my ass off for it.

The other class is a networking class that I had on Thursday evenings. The professor was a total joke. He would lecture for 3 hours and say, Oh, you can work on your labs now. This would be at 9:00 and the class ended at 9:30. Who the fuck wants to sit there from 9-10:00 at night working on a lab after listening to him yap for 3 hours? Not. Me.

I started doing the labs on my own because he wouldn’t go over them in class anyway. The grading so far in the class was pretty loose – as long as you turned them in on time you would most likely get full credit for them. Until last week we had a subnetting assignment. Everyone bombed it and it dropped us all a letter grade. I had a solid A in the class until then. I was incensed. Then, the week before a holiday he hands out a major project that’s due the same week as finals along with two labs.

So, we’ve all been working our asses off doing the project, doing the labs, and he handed out another subnetting xtra credit assignment and we were like, HELLO – WE ALL BOMBED THIS THE FIRST TIME  and unless you give us the answers to the original assignment how the hell are we supposed to not bomb this one, too?

Yeah, he graded the first one and just gave a low score but the actual homework wasn’t marked up and graded so you couldn’t see what you got wrong. Finally, he sent out a corrected copy of the homework but said the xtra credit homework could only be applied to the final project so if you got an 80 on the final project he would add 20 pts of the xtra credit to it to get a 100 but you couldn’t use that xtra credit towards your final exam or your final class score. I’m so calling bullshit on this. This guy is such a dick.

Anyway, I will be so glad when this week/semester is over. On Thursday after I take my final in there I’ll be like: