dianaschnuth

So, one of the things Amy suggested to me over the weekend was not to go through with my plan of writing a memo to my supervisor about department morale. She said management really doesn’t give a shit, and if I can possibly stand it, just to keep my mouth shut so as not to make things worse on myself. I hemmed and hawed… and agreed not to rock the boat.

Until today.

Andrew, my supervisor, apparently having been tipped off to the morale problems from some other source, sent the entire department an e-mail today. "I would like your input," he wrote, "on where you would like to see the department heading in the upcoming months, and suggestions or concerns that you might have regarding processing, prepping [preparing work to be processed], or overall moral [sic] issues would be appreciated." He asked us to have these comments to him by the afternoon, and informed us that the issues would be addressed in a meeting tomorrow.

So, I wrote him a two-page e-mail. That’s two full pages printed out.

I categorized my e-mail into three sections: On the Logistics of Processing, On Having an Informed Department, and On General Morale Issues.

Quotables from my e-mail that would make sense to The World Outside Lockbox:

• "We understand that you have compiled statistics on the running of the department. Still we as employees and ‘team members’ would like to be consulted regarding potential changes…"
• "Overall, we just want to be kept ‘in the loop.’ That’s all. Let us know what the plans are, so we’re not surprized when they happen."
• "I feel that we need some form of (admittedly cheesy) positive reinforcement."

I hope I didn’t step on any toes, because I told the truth about everything I could think of… except one thing: I didn’t tell him how bad he smells after a smoke break.

Loni, completely opposite of my approach, wrote a short e-mail of about three very brief paragraphs, detailing how we’re "made to feel like peons" and should be asked about changes before they happen. Her message was short and to the point… and quite unprofessional and even a touch rude, even though she stated at the end that she hoped she didn’t upset anyone with her comments. (Her grammar and punctuation are also absolutely atrocious.) She asked my opinion on her message before she sent it… and I told her it seemed fine. Well, it did seem like something Loni would say. I’m so evil. 🙂

Other random blog updatables:

I’ve been very good on my no-Dew week. Aaron bought Iced Tea instead of Mountain Dew, so although I hadn’t planned on drinking any sort of non-water beverage, I’ve been partaking in the Nestea Cool every now and then. However, I’ve been splurging on chocolate in a bad way all week. I think I’m going to make next week No Pasta Week, since I’ve actually not been craving pasta much at all this week.

The company name of the day: ABDICK.

The Kia smells like a fucking swimming pool, thanks to the overturned leaky bottle of bleach recently relocated from the backseat to the trunk to the trash. I’m slightly annoyed by it, but I’m afraid that Aaron is or will be pissed. I don’t know why I think I piss Aaron off so much, when I know I don’t really. I just feel like it’s my fault — I already leaked bleach onto two of his favorite shirts, and now most of the bottle has seeped into the trunk of the Kia. Go me. *sigh*

Next year’s Saginaires and Northern Aurora alumni picnic is once again scheduled for the Saturday after Labor Day. Once more conflicting with the Black Swamp Arts Festival. I’m not going to miss it every damned year… I wonder if Amy would come up on Friday, drive with me up to Saginaw for the picnic on Saturday, then back to spend Saturday night and Sunday at the Black Swamp. I sure hope so. Both things are important to me, and I’d hate to miss either one or the other for the next several years.

I was so pissed. I was driving home in my car, fuming, planning the scathing blog entry about hating my job and twelve-hour days and having to work holidays, all the while driving like a moderate maniac, peeling out from red lights and honking at the stupidity that regularly happens on the roads of Bowling Green.

I pulled into our driveway, maintaining my righteous anger. Stomped into the house. Turned on the computer. Went into the bathroom and peed. Went into the kitchen and got a brownie. Laid down on the couch to eat my brownie and watch a little TV (forgetting that my computer doesn’t take that long to boot up anymore).

Fell asleep.

Sigh… nothing like a half-hour nap to defuse your righteous rant about work and life and stuff.

Anyway, I really am sick of my job. I really do need to find a new one. And I really do need to stop drinking Mountain Dew and eating chocolate brownie stuff if I’m ever going to ease myself into this Atkins thing.

And I really do need to finish writing about P-Funk… later.

Latest on the computer saga: Sheryl called 1-800-2-MAXTOR to find out WTF was up with my second hard drive. She says they told her what to do to make it go, so she’s going to try it tonight and hope it works. See, fdisk was saying the partitions were non-DOS partitions, which makes things difficult. Hopefully this portion of the general computer stupidity will be solved soon. Let’s hear it for Maxtor Tech Support!

I’ve discovered the joy of SHOUTcast, now that I don’t have my many-GB collection of mp3’s to keep me company. My current favorite (when normalradio isn’t on, of course) is Club 977: The 80’s Channel. Right now it’s being a little bitch, losing Glenn Fry’s signal, but this is the first time I’ve had any load problems with it after a couple days of listening. Great selection of tunes, no repeats, wide variety of genres and levels of popularity. I’ve heard songs on here that I never even considered downloading and had successfully forgotten about for years. Not to mention songs I’ve never even heard before. Check it out.

Aaron’s doing so well with his guitar-playing! I’m excited for him. Today when I came home early from work, before he left, he showed me how much he could play of Wish You Were Here. I’m quite impressed, considering that he has about zero musical background… not including that summer he played trumpet in the backyard facing toward the turnpike in 4th or 5th grade.

Aaron also got home early last night — 2:00am instead of 3:30 or four. I shouldn’t have been awake, but I was, so I got to see Aaron for a few minutes before I went to sleep. You know, part of me wishes I could get to see him more often, but part of me thinks that maybe having schedules like this helps us to appreciate the time we do have together, instead of taking it for granted. I mean, I always get so excited when I can spend time with Aaron during the week. Sure, we’re still newlyweds, but we’ve been together for over seven years total, and living together for a year and a half. How many people out there have been with someone that long and still get all giggly and smiley when they spend time together? I think it’s cool.

At work, our supervisor has instituted a new schedule of mail pickups. See, usually the courier shows up with the mail from the Toledo post office between 9:30 and 10:15am. It takes about half an hour to open all 80-some-odd bags with mail in them, and another few minutes to get some work ready for me, Rama, and Loni (or, this week, Andrew) to process. So, we don’t usually get started with our day until at least 10:30am. It’s a good thing we do have such long Mondays, since the rest of the week usually consists of 7-hour days, give or take a half-hour lunch.

The new and improved plan means a much earlier day for everyone. The couriers head up to Toledo bright and early, to get a run of mail to us by 8am. The preppers open the mail and get the heaviest accounts ready to process. We start processing the work at 9am, what there is of it, and the second, normal run of mail shows up between 9:30 and 10:00am. But that’s an hour of work we got done earlier—so even if we have to stay and scratch our asses to get a full 8 hours in, it means staying until 6:00 or 6:30, not some retarded time like 7:30 on a Friday. I’m OK with the earlier start time. I’m sure Loni will be too, when she comes back next week.

Oh, did I mention? Loni’s out on vacation because her daughter-in-law had her third child. Loni’s first granddaughter, out of five grandkids total. Her daughter, Maria, lives in Indiana with her husband Mike, and they have two young boys. Loni’s son, David (aka Crockett) lives around BG with his wife Jolene, and they also have two young boys, in addition to little Lena. So, Loni took the week off of work to help Crockett and Jolene with the boys, and to spend massive quantities of time with her new grandbaby.

Aaron’s massive vacation extravaganza starts in a couple weeks or so. Four weeks straight. No work. Dang. So… this weekend, we’re going to the Taste Of Cleveland on Saturday to eat lots of food and watch P-Funk for $7.00, then next weekend is Black Swamp (which I assume Amy is still coming to…?), and the following weekend is the beginning of Aaron’s massive vacation. I still have about a week total left of vacation, personal, and floating holidays, so I’m planning to take some of that time off to spend with Aaron. This is going to be so cool.

…That’s the sound of My Life.

Seriously. That’s the sound of the Zip disk labeled "My Life," from way back in 1997 or so, clicking in my built-in Zip drive.

Luckily enough, the Zip disk parallelled my actual life in that very little of what was really, reeeeeally important to me then remains important to me now. I managed to use my old-school RCC skillz to Norton UnErase a couple important things, like "Sheryl Is Our ‘Puter Bitch" (sung to the tune of the Hall of the Mountain King), and my genealogy files (actually, I transferred those just a few days before it clicked). Unfortunately, the Saginaires and Northern Aurora alumni database just went poof. Thankfully, I had pdfs and HTML output of the last known version, so the transition to ASP should be a little less cumbersome than manually entering in all the info again. Go Dan. w00t.

Today’s major gripe, though, is my heat rash.

Now, I know that most of my regular audience is not overweight. You folks, just bear with me. I know there are a couple of you out there who will feel my pain, so I will forge on.

See, my thighs touch at the top. No, truth be told, they just kind of moosh together these days. So, when I walk during the summertime, the friction, together with the unavoidable sweat, generates this amazing rash. Especially since I kind of adjust my pants downward so I don’t have an assfront (you know, when your front looks like your ass — kind of the fat version of a camel toe). Now, I know this is TMI, but my legs rub together right where the crotch of my pants ends up living. This makes for some amazing, sweaty, red and inflammed pain.

What confuses me, though, is that I woke up with this rash this morning. Yesterday, when I went to sleep, I was perfectly fine. We even had our new A/C on in the bedroom all night. This confuses me.

At any rate, I have to wonder if anyone noticed me adjusting my pants funny at work, and sitting a little more unladylike at my desk.