I miss my own bed…

I miss my own room… I miss Little “L” sleeping awkwardly close to my face… I miss Lady “T” sleeping next to him… I miss Baby “X’s” sweet little breathing in his bassinet next to her…

I’ve had to travel for the first time since we became “four” and my hotel room is just not the same… I miss home…

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This is the way it ought to be…

Well, the reason is not actually the best — Little “L” is home today with a mild case of pneumonia — but I’m working from home today. These are special circumstances where I essentially don’t have any vacation time left and have no babysitting/support options today to help out Lady “L” look after the two munchkins.

Suprisingly, I’m getting a lot done. I wish I could work from home everyday.

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Passive Activist…

So, at work we have a social event coming up commemorating a former coworker’s retirement and I’m doing my little bit by helping out with certain decorations and ordering the coffee from a local vendor… So far I haven’t had a chance to start designing any on the decorations yet. I did, however, manage to get down to Timothy’s coffee shop to place the order for the coffee…

Now, I used to go to this place every day — EVERY DAY — but stopped going recently because the daily coffee/tea plus treat I was getting ended up costing upwards of $45 a month… some months more than that I’m sure. I know that $45 is not much but when trying to cut down on spending to manage other monthly bills it actually works out to be a whole heck of a lot… try over $500 a year!

Either way, that was a bit of a pseudo-digression… the point of which was to say that it has been a while since I’ve been down for my “usual”. So when I went down today (with a co-worker), I was a bit surprised to see that I didn’t recognize any of the staff… I knew that school had started back up and I knew that some changes were happening so I didn’t think that much of it at first. I proceeded to order the coffee (four urns: 2 regular, two decaf) from a gentleman who was apparently the new owner. I off-handedly mentioned that I didn’t recognize any of the staff — kinda wondering about the back-to-school theory — and he indicated that none of the old staff was left.

As I finished up the order and started walking back to work, I thought to myself that this really sucks because I’d gotten to know a few of the workers really well…

Please keep in mind that I am quite sleep deprived so it takes a while for certain this to sink in…

The co-worker I had gone down with mentioned that the new owner was going to force all of the old employees to re-interview for their positions and impose a pay cut to those who continued to work there. Needles to say, the employees were… well… how can we say this… pretty fuckin’ livid. So on the first day the new owner was supposed to take over none of them showed up. Not a single one. This of course left Mr. New Guy in a pickle… he had to shut down the shop and hire a whole new staff.

Wait a second…

Things start to sink in…

I just ordered coffee from this guy after he treated these people — some of whom I had grown quite attached to — like crap!? Now I’m not to happy with myself… I get back to wortk and explain what happened to a couple of other co-workers, Mr. Miko and Julé. Mr. Miko said that I should cancel the order…

I wish I had thought of that…

So, I hop on board and decide that this is exactly what I’m going to do… march right back down to Timothy’s and cancel the order and inform Mr. Latte that we have placed an order with someone else. Mr Miko was quick to point out that while was all-fine-and-dandy (my words not his), this will not let Mr. half-caf know that we don’t approve of his business practices — which is of course the real reason for cancelling the coffee order — and that today, he (Mr. Miko) was a bit of a self-proclaimed “crank” and perfectly in the mood to let Mr. no-foam-with-a-dash-of-cinnamon know why we were cancelling the order.

[sigh] I’m not built to be confrontational…

And so he did… Mr. Miko marched down to Timithy’s and cancelled the order that I should have cancelled… said his piece, which should have been mine to say… and earned my appreciation and admiration, which should have been a quiet proud moment I shared with myself…

[double-sigh]

I could promise myself that next time I’ll do it but I never make a promise that I can’t keep… so I didn’t. I turn thirty on Saturday… that should be grown up enough… to bad I always feel like a terrified kid in situations like this…

I wonder if I ask for a backbone for my Birthday if it would arrive by Saturday…

How would you wrap that?


steelie

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Jared’s last day…

Well, today was Jared’s last day at work… a sad day indeed. We had all been joking/talking about how we were going to leave early for the day, find a nice pub/bar with a nice deck, and share in a few drinks to toast Jared and give him a proper send-off…

Okay, so that sort of happened…

First of all, barely anyone was in the office — everyone was on vacation or had other plans they couldn’t cancel or we just plain didn’t ask them. Secondly, we didn’t get to leave early — we were there right until closing. I even stayed a bit later to copy some files I needed to work over the weekend [fun]. Thirdly, half of us were just too tired to make the event worthy of being called an event…

…but it was still nice. We’ll miss you, Jared. Be sure to come back and harass us. Skype for the Mac now has video* capabilities so we’ll have to figure that one out.
Have a great trip and be sure to come bug us when you get back.

steelie

*The version they have for download from the official website does NOT have video capabilities but the “unofficial” latest BETA release, which you can download here, does have it.

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A big week ahead…

Well, I decided to write over my initial VOX-test-post with something a bit more substantial… well, short but more significant.


I don't have a lot of time to post about it right now but this week, I've been given way more resposibility than usual. I'm am to essentially oversee all aspects of preparing display and event graphics for an even that happens in four weeks from yesterday. I've never done anything like this before… my managers are on vacation… all co-workers who have previously worked on these types of events — potential resources essentially — are on vacation… and I'm having a bit of brain freeze because I'm not sure of how to start.


I'm sure posting this is not the best use of my time… I don't even know what the event space looks like to plan where any graphics would go… I only found out about this on Friday morning when I was asked to “participate” in a tele-confernece, when in-fact, all I did was stared wide-eyed at a telephone as some disjointed voice — that I only know as JP — laid out the schedule of my life for the next three weeks.


First things first… I need to find out who TF JP is and get info on the space…


Oh, there will be way more to say about this four weeks from now…

steelie

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