Domestic Geek

I saw some tweets last week about the Google Pac-Man game they had on their homepage to honor the 30th anniversary of the game. Many people were lamenting how much time they had wasted playing it. Fortunately for our company, our department is not allowed to use the Internet during the work day for non-work activities (we have to log in to a firewall to get to the Internet and those logs are reviewed frequently). Other companies were not so lucky. Apparently, more then 4.8 million work hours were wasted by people playing the game.

Ok, since I can't seem to get myself to blog on a regular basis anymore, I'm giving myself a little assignment. Every Monday I'm going to log in here and doing a recap of the week before (going off my tweets and Facebook statuses). Maybe that little bit of effort will develop into a blog writing habit again (because the inability to blog lately is just that I've gotten out of the habit).

Last Monday I took myself on a little road trip since I was feeling the need to get out of the house. I had been looking for some orange cotton yarn to make the Pumpkin Washcloth on this page. I was having a heck of a time finding a pumpkin orange, though. That's one thing I really hate about trends in crafts...sometimes its hard to find what you want. I decided to head up to Boulder and see if the store up there had any. Well, they ended up having a burnt orange (not quite what I wanted), but it was more money than I was willing to spend for a washcloth.

Feeling a little defeated (since I've looked at all the yarn stores around me, as well, with no luck), I decided to treat myself to lunch. I had received a freebie card from Larry, the owner of Tokyo Joe's, during a little promotion he did on Twitter/Facebook. I stopped at the location in Louisville and then was going to go up to the quilt store in Lafayette since I was in the area. I thought the card got me a free bowl or something. When I fished it out of my purse, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it entitled me to an entire comped meal. WooHoo! So, I went ahead and ordered a big steak bowl, sushi and a drink. I tweeted my thanks to the owner while I was eating and got a reply back. I'd love to meet Larry one day. He seems like a really cool dude.

I had decided to check the web site of the quilt store to make sure they were open on Mondays before I headed North. Good thing I had, they were closed. For good. I was really bummed. That was such a great little store and though I couldn't visit often, it will be missed.

A friend suggested (via a Facebook plea I made) that orange cotton could be obtained at Wal-Mart. I didn't really want to go there as I had decided earlier never, ever to shop there again, but I was weakened by my disappointments earlier in the day and just wanted to get the darned washcloth cast on. I stopped at one on the way home and they did have some. I thought about picking up some other stuff, but I stuck to my intent and left with two balls of cotton. I decided to stop into the Hobby Lobby down the street to kill some time as it was now rush hour and I am really hating driving in Denver with a passion anymore. I was looking at the Halloween and Christmas decorations. I don't know if it is my want to simplify my life or if stuff out anymore just sucks, but I was not tempted to buy one single thing. I did grab a skein of brown cotton that was on sale. Maybe I'll make a turkey washcloth to go with the pumpkin one.

Tuesday night I went to my knitting group in Parker, but I was the only one that showed up. I'm a little bummed, because it appears for all intents and purposes that the group is dead. It's not the first time I had been the only one or it was just me and one or two others. There is a group that meets there on Wednesday (and I did go this week), but it is only two hours and sometimes it is a royal pain to fight rush hour traffic to go down for a two hour group. Plus, I work early Thursdays and sometimes I have stuff I need to do. I really wish there was a group that was closer to where I live, but there is not.

Work was slow this week. I didn't put in a full 13 hour shift any of the 3 days I was scheduled.

Thursday, I won a free dinner for two at Tokyo Joe's from a contest that was on Facebook. I'm on a roll!

Thursday was also when that whole Balloon Boy hoax nonsense started. What a crock. Then I saw a tweet from one of the local news stations that David Layne (the Ward Churchill attorney) was going to represent the Heene family. One attention whore representing another. These people are real pieces of work. This is what this whole reality TV insanity creates. I really wish people would stop watching this garbage.

Friday I got permission to leave work early (not hard when there was little work) and attended a class on starting an embroidery business. Marcus got me a machine two years ago and frankly, I've been scared to learn to use it. It's insane the little games I play in my head, but I think I'm finally ready to give this a shot. One thing the instructor said that really rang true with me is that sometimes we have a hard time giving value to what we do. We think that because we can do it, why couldn't somebody else? Why would they want to buy something I make so easily? I have this problem with my graphic design skills, too. I'm going to head over to the sewing store either later today or first thing tomorrow to see if I can find someone to teach me to run my machine. Today, though, I need to clean the craft room so that I can actually get to the machine. It is a disaster area and I literally can't get in the door. The woman that taught the class owns an operation in Chattanooga, TN. In February, she's going to start allowing people to come to her for 3-day seminars to learn all they can from her about the business. I really want to go as I believe the experience would be awesome. Starting to save up my money to go now.

Yesterday (Sunday), Marcus agreed to go the the pumpkin farm with me. I'm wishing I hadn't asked him to take me. I knew from news stories that the hard freeze we had a couple of weeks ago did major damage to the pumpkins in the fields. Together with the wetter than normal spring and the cooler than normal temps this summer, the crops weren't very good this year. I was still cautiously optimistic that I would find some decent pumpkins. Yeah, not so much. First, the crowds were bigger than I have ever seen. The pumpkins were tiny compared to previous years and mushy from the freeze. Plus, they were still charging full price. I asked Marcus to take us home and apologized profusely for dragging him up there. Oh, well...next year. Fortunately, Target is having a sale on pumpkins this week. I picked up a couple of nice ones for $2.99/ea. They're better than nothing.

We've been lucky this year as far as wasps. Yesterday, our luck broke. When I opened the door to see what the weather was like, wasps were swarming like crazy around our front door. Looks like there might be a nest up the light pole. After we got back from the pumpkin farm, I set about baiting the wasp traps. Looks like I've caught quite a few already today. Man, I hate wasps.

Today I've got several projects on the agenda. Besides housework, I'm working on a sleeve for my Macbook.I want to finish my pumpkin washcloth. I've got a quick graphic design project for a friend that I need to complete. I have to paint the trim on a tile floor Marcus build to put under the rabbit cage and I need a nap. Also, now that Marcus upgraded our webserver so that my craft blog no longer crashes php like it has been doing since January, maybe I can finally finish up my craft blog design and start the reworking of this site.

There. That sums up last week. Let's see if I can get back into the blogging habit.

I don't know what's going on with my subconscious lately. The last two nights I've been having really bad dreams involving work. Hello, these are my days off. Don't think about this stuff. They are those kind of dreams that even if you wake up from it, you go right back into it when you fall asleep again. I hate those. I even remember them vividly, which is also weird because I usually can't remember what I dream a few hours later unless I write it down.

The night before last, the company had purchased a new digital printer of some sort because a new client demanded it. Well, it didn't come with instructions or any kind of support to teach anyone how to use it. They made me go try to figure it out, but I wasn't having any success. The plant manager came and yelled at me because I couldn't make it work. I yelled back that if he was so damned smart, he could figure it out. Don't know if it got me fired or not, as Marcus' alarm woke me up at that point.

Last night, they decided to hold a company BBQ in the room where we house the digital printers. They had a George Foreman grill set up next to one of them. Never mind that there was a live job that needed to go out the door in the midst of this and the grilling burgers was splattering grease everywhere. As soon as we all ate, we went back into the prepress department to discover that all of our Macs had been replaced by tiny little netbooks and they had hired 3 more operators and crammed us all onto one tiny bench. They wouldn't give me a mouse and some kid kept kicking my chair. Turns out one of the new hires was allowed to bring his kid to work because he couldn't afford day care. I was just getting up to walk out the door when I woke up this time.

It's no secret that I don't like my job or the way things are run at the company for which I work. The sad thing is, as ludicrous as the dreams were, they're not too far off from some stuff that has been happening lately. I'm angry and frustrated at work because I don't have any input because those in power really don't care. I know things will never change. I was hoping the scare of this bad economy would help, but it hasn't. In fact, it has caused even more ridiculous things.

I came to the sad realization on Saturday that I have been putting up with this crap for almost three years. For some reason, I thought I had only been there two. I know, for my own sanity, that I either need to find a new job or start my own business. I don't want to be one of those people, like some of my coworkers, that have worked there for 10 years or better complaining about the same stuff.

From the "Just When I Think I've Heard it All at Work" file:

Our company hired a new out-of-state salesman. Since his new laptop hadn't arrived yet, he had to access company email via webmail. Unfortunately, until the company upgrades Exchange, webmail doesn't work in IE 7 or above. The woman who oversees the sales staff sent Marcus and email asking what the salesman could do. He sent back a reply that he could use any other browser, i.e. Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc., to check webmail. She shot back another email asking if he could put that into layman's terms. Um...yeah.

I've been trying not to write about work stuff on here anymore. Mostly because it's boring, crappy news. SSDD. I need to write about this, though, because it is really bugging me.

With the "economic downturn," first we started having to pay part of our health care and then they stopped contributing to our retirement plans. Next came the mandatory week furloughs. Normally, I would understand why we have to take a week off each quarter (using vacation if you've got it, unpaid if you don't), but the management has been calling in other people to work OT to get the work done while we're still being required to take mandatory time off. How is this saving the company any money? Not to mention that it's causing morale issues amongst those that are not offered overtime. It's lame. Couple that with a cryptic note in our paychecks today that doesn't really say whether we get the 4th of July off or not, and attitudes amongst my coworkers is dropping further in the toilet.

It's looking like once Marcus and I get back from vacation, I'm going to have to find a secondary source of income. I won't have any vacation hours left and I can barely pay my bills with my bare minimum paycheck. Now that I've gone back to my old position, my opportunities to sneak in an extra hour or two of overtime a week are gone.

I know I should be grateful I have a job. There are a lot of people out there who don't have one. Still, the nonsense occurring daily is driving me insane. I get grumpy when I can't afford yarn or Tokyo Joe's.

On a related note, I'd never be this hard up for a job. Apparently, if you want to work for the city of Bozeman, MT, you have to give up user names and passwords. According to an article on cnet:

The Rocky Mountain city instructs all job applicants to divulge their user names and passwords for "any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."

Uh, invasion of privacy anyone? Shame on them for asking and shame on those who willingly give up such information. No freaking way am I giving those up for the possibility of getting a job.I agree that they have the right to base employment decisions on what an applicant may have posted online, but demanding access to logins? Disgraceful. I really am starting to wonder what country I live in anymore.