the ongoing saga of my job

Tonite There’s Gonna Be A Jailbreak…

Remember Loni from Lockbox, the nice God-loving woman who’s my Mom’s age (almost exactly) and has been trying to get a new job for a couple years now? Well, she finally made a jailbreak, and will be working in Deposit Support, which is my department. Not Quality Control, our… sub-department, I guess, but still in the same realm. She’s supposed to be moving to her new job in two weeks or less.

Having been there, wanting to leave the crazy hours and moderate stress of Lockbox, I feel so happy for her. She’s getting ready to move to an 8-to-5, ultra-low-stress position, which may not pay her more money but will still be infinitely worth it.

We’re all going to lunch tomorrow—current employees of Lockbox, and former (myself included). It’ll be fun to get together with everyone again… and Loni and I will try not to rub it in how much better off we are (or will be).

gardening

RIP MMB

Just got done “double-digging” a quarter of the flower garden. Basically, it’s just turning over the soil, but doing it so that the dirt from Point A ends up at Point B, and vise versa. I was also pulling out roots and rocks as I went. Holy crap, that’s a lotta roots. I only did that for half an hour or 45 minutes, but my hands are all tired and I feel like I’ve done some serious work. At least I’m a quarter of the way done, though—only three more days of double-digging. Then off to get some Miracle-Gro Garden Soil and mix that in. Then off to get some plants.

I was surfing around online just now, basically just wasting time, and discovered that bosstones.com is no longer active. Hmm. After a little Googling, I found a Mighty Mighty Bosstones fansite that says,

I’m sorry to inform you that this site is dead. The reason being is that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones have “Basically” split-up. In Technical Terms, they no longer are touring together. They are on “HIATUS”, or so they say.

Projects:
Dicky Barrett – Announcer for Jimmy Kimmel Live – Catch him at 12:00 on ABC on weekdays
Other Band Members – They are taking time off to be with their families, and those without familes are touring with other bands like “Less Than Jake” and doing their own thing.

Wow. The boys have been together for nigh on 15 years (ten if you only include the quasi-original lineup that split a few years back), and they finally decided to take a breather. (Kind of like Catherine Wheel, who has been “parked” for the past three or four years.) Anyway, another site’s forum gives indication that this has been in the works for a year and a half now. Damn, I’ve been out of the loop.

And, as a side note, pages with white text on a black background hurt my eyes after a while.

drumcorps

LakeShoremen Brass

Yesterday’s LakeShoremen Brass rehearsal wasn’t all that bad. I drove an hour and a half up to Clawson and met my ride, Barb and Russ, and then rode with them the 40 minutes up to Holly from their house. We ended up arriving 15 minutes late—and not because of me, either, thank goodness. Rehearsal lasted about three hours total (two hours playing, one hour bullshitting). Paul, incidentally, didn’t show up and didn’t tell anyone for sure that he wouldn’t be there. He told one person that he might not make it if he couldn’t find a sitter for the kids, but that’s not the same.

Next Sunday’s full-corps rehearsal is up in Montrose… another half hour farther north than this Sunday’s. I’m leaving my place at 9:15am to be at the Braman household by 11:00am, and to Montrose by 1:00pm. Is this really worth it for a four-hour rehearsal?

I guess we’ll know for sure when our first parade happens on May 16th…

drumcorps

w00t… yardwork.

My fingers aren’t too keen on typing right now—I just got back in from doing a little over an hour of yardwork. Forgot to take a picture of what it looked like beforehand, but I’ve got almost all of the out-of-control forsythia bushes hacked down. Don’t worry, I took cuttings, so they’ll be back… only much more controlled next time.

This afternoon, Fries helped Aaron pick up our free washer and dryer from Aaron’s buddy Joe from work. I guess he had some issues getting the washer hooked up—the hose connector squirts everywhere, which is ungood. We need to hit Lowe’s tomorrow and get some new hoses or hose fittings or something.

Actually, we have a whole crapload of stuff that needs to be done around the house, especially outside. Doesn’t it just figure that this is when the drumcorps season starts to kick in with extra weekend rehearsals and parades and such? That pretty much wipes out about every other Sunday from now until early September, with a few exceptions. To make it worse, the initial joy of being in a drumcorps again has been overshadowed by the insanely long distance I have to drive to get to rehearsals now. But I can’t back out: 1.) because I know I’d regret it later, and 2.) because I committed to stick out at least this season and probably another one or two on top of that. Oh, yeah, and 3.) because I’m the only damn mellophone. Four or five trumpets, four baritones, a tuba, and one lowly mellophone. Poor Diana. No pressure, none at all. *crosses eyes* Oh, yeah, and did I mention I can’t get excited about practicing at all?

That reminds me: I need to e-mail my potential car-pool hookup from Clawson to Holly. I’m not planning to ride with Paul again. The caravan thing didn’t really appeal to me. Nope. Kind of defeated the purpose. So, not again.