the ongoing saga of my job, weight loss

Atkins and Aaron and work. (oh my)

Even though my site seems to be down, I’m still going to post an update.

Aaron and I are finishing up Day #3 of the Atkins Diet, and doing surprizingly well. People have told me they felt like crap during the initial induction phase of the diet — I feel great. I feel less lethargic than I did, though I’d stop short of saying I actually feel energetic. I at least feel more alert… though that could have something to do with my attempts to get to bed before midnight this week and last.

I’m enjoying having him home when I get home. It’s like every night is a weekend-night. All except for Monday, when I worked 12 1/2 hours.

At work, we swapped off what clients’ accounts we each process, and our temp, Rama, has apparently hit her breaking point with the stuff I used to run. She’s now complaining to our boss that she should only be working 30-35 hours a week as a temp, and she’s working 40+, and she wants to swap off with one of the other temps, so they can process for awhile and let her prep the work like they do. No dice, as per our meeting last week, but our supervisor, Andrew, said he’ll step in whenever she’s ready to go home. She was not satisfied with that answer, since it seems like he’s just trying to placate her, and not deal with the problem at its source — the problem being that the processors work 45-hour weeks (soon to be longer still), and the preppers are scrambling to barely make their 35 to 40.

We’re all at a snapping point. We’re sincerely hoping that we can all quit at once, having found other jobs, and leave Andrew floundering. We’ll see…

roadtrips, weight loss

Gravity Games

Hey, remember this from the front page?

Week #1
9/7 – 9-13
No Dew Week

Week #2
9/14 – 9/20
No Pasta Week

Week #3
9/21 – 9/27
No Candy Week

Well, nix that. I’m joining Aaron on his full-on foray into Atkins, starting Monday. (That’s tomorrow.) I’ve got my Atkins profile up on their website, and checked out some recipes. Aaron’s gone full-force and bought the carb-counter book and the Atkins cookbook, and borrowed another low-carb cookbook from the library. He likes to eat more meat than I usually do, anyway, so I think the hardest thing for him is going to be cataloguing the carb content of everything that goes into his mouth.

Me, I’ve already broken myself of my Mountain Dew addiction, and I’ve pretty much cut out pasta. Those were the hard parts. Now I just have to get up early enough to eat breakfast, and remember to make myself a lunch before I go to bed the previous day (since I won’t just be grabbing a frozen meal from the freezer on my way out).

So, we’ll see how that goes. I’m looking forward to it myself.

Yesterday, Aaron and I headed out to Cleveland for the Gravity Games. For those of you who aren’t big “Extreme Sports” freaks, the Gravity Games includes skateboard vert (ramp) and street (men’s and women’s), freestyle motocross, wakeboarding, inline skating street and vert, and bike dirt, street, and vert. We watch it on NBC every year, and it’s been in Cleveland for the past couple of years, but we haven’t gotten out to watch it live. This year, though, since we got the heads-up at the Taste of Cleveland, we went out and got tickets for this bad boy.

We left around noon, and got there around two-ish. Found parking for five bucks, walked the couple blocks to the Games, brandished our tickets, received loose-fitting wristbands, opened my camera case (for no one to actually search it), and we were in. We walked around the Festival Village, which was basically the marketing and merch fairway, and got some stickers and a sampler CD of some kind. Could have gotten more stuff, had we actually been able to approach some of the booths, but the stuff we got was pretty much shoved at us by booth attendants out in the middle of the fairway.

We wandered over and found a bike dirt venue, where kids were allowed to go down a ramp and do their best trick on a five-foot dirt hill. I finished up the roll of film that was in my camera by snapping photos of the kids, and of the one guy who was running the show, who would go down the ramp occasionally, to keep it interesting. He turned a backflip almost as soon as we got there to watch, so I didn’t get that on film. 🙁

One of the great things about the Gravity Games being in Cleveland (besides the fact that it’s close enough to drive) is that your ticket gets you into the Rock Hall for half-price. So, we spent about an hour and a half, I think, wandering around the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. And we didn’t even get upstairs! We decided that our little taste of the Rock Hall was just enough to make us want to go make a day of it sometime in the future.

Bob Burnquist, Rune Glifberg, and Andy Mac watch one of the lower-ranking skaters (Sandro Diaz?) pull off a tailgrab. (c) Pat Wright, Gravity GamesAround 4:00, we headed out and tried to find a spot in the bleachers by the vert ramp. It took some patience, and several seat relocations, but we ended up on the top row of bleachers, right by the WKYC Channel 3 sign. (So, if you happen to watch the Gravity Games on some Sunday afternoon in the next two months, and watch the Men’s Skateboard Vert Finals, look for us.) We ended up watching the Women’s Skateboard Vert Practice and Demo, so we could have our good seats for the Men’s Finals later that evening. I spent one roll of film on the Vert ramp, so we’ll see how that comes out.

It was great being able to see some of the skaters live: Bob Burnquist, Andy MacDonald, Bucky Lasek, Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Rune Glifberg… Too bad there was no Tony Hawk, but I guess you’ll have that when you retire. *shrug*
We headed out around 9:15pm — after the Finals were over, but before the scores were announced. Made it to the car, found I-90 West, and stopped for dinner at a TGIFridays in Westlake on our way home. Got home around 12:30am or so, which is early for coming in from an out-of-town excursion. Usually it’s 3am. 🙂

So, good weekend. Yeah. And Aaron’s got the next four weeks off of work, so he’ll be home when I get home from work every day. w00t! That makes things a little better, too.

the ongoing saga of my job

I Suppose I Should Be Mourning Like The Rest of the Goddamned Country

nobody knows the trouble i've beenInstead, I’m playing on CafePress. I have a cheesy new store, with a boring new name: schnuthdesigns. I have one design (which is actually a ripoff of a shirt my Mom had when I was little), and I’ve got it in infant tee and creeper, baby doll tee, and baseball jersey. I only wish I could do different colored tees than just white… oh, yeah, and I wish the base prices weren’t so damn high. Nobody’s going to buy this shit.

Let’s see… where’s the list as long as my arm of random piddly blogables…? Ah, yes.

Continue reading →

randomness

Rocking the Boat

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.

ruminations

Therapy with Amy

Not sure how to start. Not that it was so earth-shattering that I’m at a complete loss — I just simply don’t know where to start. At the beginning, I guess.

Amy came to visit for the Black Swamp Arts Festival this weekend. She ended up being a few hours behind schedule, due to every little errand blowing up into a gigantic WTF sort of fiasco. Stopping by work, taking a "shortcut" suggested by Grampa… Anyway, when she arrived at 11pm, we went to get some pizza at Myles, and were constantly accosted en route by the drunks from campus. I got a high five from a dude that looked just like Nick Lawson, we got offered a piece of pizza from some random guys (who then claimed to have "nutted" on the pizza), and we had one particularly bookish-looking fellow tell us, "the bars are that way!"

Ate pizza, talked, came home, walked some more, and talked some more. Stayed up till Aaron got home, then talked some more. Basically, that’s what the weekend was all about: talking with Amy.

On Saturday, we checked out the artists’ booths. We were underwhelmed this year, and were particularly disappointed that some of our longtime favorites weren’t at the Festival this year. We did end up buying at least one token "I Was Here" item apiece, but we weren’t terribly geeked about them this year.

Things I discovered while talking to Amy this weekend:

  • I miss having someone to talk to like that. I talk to Aaron, yes, but it’s different. We still talk about important stuff, but Amy has a different perspective on things.
  • If I want a new job, I need to work toward getting one. If I can live with my job for now, I need to do the things that make me happy (photography, web design) in my time away from work, to make the mediocre work worth it.
  • I have more of a social life than I give myself credit for, even if it is just on the weekends and with Aaron’s and my mutual friends instead of alone with my own friends. It’s still social, and it’s still fun.
  • I need to stop belittling myself and beating myself up for my shortcomings. I also need to stop feeling like others are focusing on said shortcomings, and instead be thankful that others (especially Aaron) are patient enough to deal with my faults and still like me for who I am.