Category Archives: work

Vive le Weekend!

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Albeit a short weekend, it’s still a day off! As of this moment, I have 37.5 hours left before I have to clock in again. About 14 of those hours will be spent sleeping. How much can I do in 23 hours? For starters: this blog post!

There are so many things I need to get done. One might think that just because you have time off work, you must spend all of that time doing personal things that need to get done. I protest! I think it’s important to spend at least half of your time off doing things you enjoy doing as well. I enjoy being lazy resting. I just worked 11 days in a row, including 50 hours in the past six days. I think some rest is not only well-deserved but downright necessary!

I have a couple of movies I bought for $1.99 each at a nearby Blockbuster that’s closing. I plan on watching at least one of those. I also must give my seriously neglected camera a workout. I long to create a new piece of jewelry, too. However, you can’t force creativity to happen in a small window of time. So that may not happen … unless I watch movies at the same time. I do enjoy multitasking!

The main things I need to do are office related (including taxes). After working so much, personal office work is the last thing I want to do, though. :roll:

Nope! Twenty-three hours is just not enough time! Once a new manager is in place and the new staff is put on the weekend schedule, I think I might press for a full 4×10 work schedule so I can have my Sundays back. Having a full two days off in a row is more important to one’s mental well-being than I realized.

Vive le weekend!

Rethinking Goals and Schedules

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After two (or has it been three?) weeks in a row of mandatory five hours overtime with a max of ten (and of course, I do the full ten), I decided to take my full day off yesterday and not start before my scheduled late start time today. I didn’t even touch my own computer in that time. Refreshing and relaxing!

Experiencing that feeling made me want to rethink my goals and schedules. To get everything done, I generally multitask or switch gears quickly several times per day. My goal of five blog posts per week is now ridiculous in my head. I mean, who am I posting for? Why is it important to gather “followers” to my blog? What self satisfaction do I really get from that? I’d like to think that someone out there finds helpful information in some of my posts, but often, I post to ramble. So my goal is now modified to three posts per week. My weekly photo self assignments has been modified to at least twice per month.

Finally, I’m still pushing for a modified work schedule. The 4×10 (four ten-hour days) schedule is becoming more popular and has been mentioned as a possibility for the department I work in as well. Since I work two half days per week, I’ve suggested a twist on this for myself: 3×10 + 2×5. So five hours on Sunday afternoons and Wednesdays, and ten hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays with Thursdays off. Then I would still work the first Saturday (ten hours) of each month in exchange for the preceding Monday off. Ten hour days may sound like a lot to some of you reading, but I’d rather get work out of the way like this and get an extra day off to relax and feel more like this…

P.S. I clocked in today to find that we now have mandatory overtime of TEN hours overtime this week. It’s a good thing I already worked an extra two hours on Sunday. :)

Sick

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What happens when you’re sick and shorthanded at work? If you’re me (and I am), you work 9.5 hours in your PJs and robe! This should absolutely count as going beyond expectations.

Me today…

The Mother Ship | New Office Progress

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I’m thinking of calling it “The Mother Ship” … my new work/play room (office/crafts). Half of it sort of looks like a huge storage closet right now because I have two metal shelving units that are mostly filled with old scrapbooking supplies and tools. Going through all of that will be a process. At least they’re in here now.

I brought my rug down. The curtains will come down later. The blues actually do play nicely with the green on the walls! Yay! So here is my work in progress now (shots snapped with cell cam)…

The red behind the desk is my fuzzy robe. It gets COLD down here! Also notice my space heater aimed directly at where I sit.

Maybe by Wednesday I’ll be able to start crafting. I have the day off. After working 55 hours last week on top of all this moving, I fully intend to do my own thing!

P.S. With the shelves moved in here, Greg is working on his side of the basement. More on that later!

New Office Progress

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I fully planned on working 11 hours today to round out my 50 hours and then work on moving everything to the new office later tomorrow or Sunday, but nope! I never had a chance to clock back in because I enticed Jason and Kennah over by texting Jason that I have egg nog! So the move has begun earlier than expected. All electronics are now in place and running faster than ever because I am completely hardwired down here. Yep! Desktop computer, work laptop, and work phone … all connected via ethernet. :)

I knew with my desk in this position, there would certainly be some ugly wire cluster truck going on. Maybe I can entice Josh to work his zip-tie magic again and make it a little better. It’s all kind of blocking the bottom drawer of my file cabinet, too. That’s not good. Oh well. Once everything is down here, I’ll work out the kinks.

It feels weird down here. I’ve used this room once before for crafting before Greg started using it to sleep in during the day when he worked nights. Then Jason took it over. I’m so far away from all the hub-bub. That’s good while I’m working, but if I’m on my computer or crafting, I think the kids might be less likely to come in and talk. I have already found that I need music going while Greg’s gaming in the next room on his computer. He shouts into that headset like he does on a cell phone! 8O If I work in the evening, I’ll have to put earbuds in! {As if on cue, he just shouted “BOOM!” and I jumped!}

So I’ll get my first taste of a new morning routine (and longer commute) tomorrow because I do still plan on finishing my overtime.

Changes

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Many people don’t like change … unless, of course, it’s to their benefit. I think it’s because they don’t like the process necessary to get through a change. How you deal with your feelings about that process makes a lot of difference.

Moving my office, crafting stuffs, and photo equipment into a new space in my house is to my benefit, but the circumstances and the process isn’t all sunshine and laughter. It took an adult child leaving the nest and is involving a lot of elbow grease to get there. Of course, the boy took what he needed and left the scene in a bit of a shambles. My husband worked on cleaning that up as well as priming the crimson red walls, aided by the eldest daughter. Then I took over and painted the walls with a little creative (see photo) and trim work help from both daughters. Carpet cleaning is on the agenda for this morning. The actual move will have to wait until we get some help in the form of fairly big muscles because my desk is pretty heavy. Then there’s the task of hooking everything back up.

The tan was still wet in the lower right photo and dried slightly darker. The green was dry in the same photo and had dried slightly lighter. Weird how that happens! The tan was actually paint we had left over from our master bedroom (resourcefulness). After working with the Behr paint (green), I’ll never go Gliddon (tan) again!

It jut hit me that this move is going to alter my morning commute. Currently, I walk down a very short hall, hit the power button on the computers (work and personal), then I go get my coffee, let the dogs out, and fill their food & water bowls. By the time I get back upstairs, everything is ready for me to log in. Now I’ll have to rethink that whole process. Do I want to go all the way downstairs to power up before coffee & dogs? If only all of life’s dilemmas were this taxing!

There’s just one more issue to be dealt with down there. Eight-legged ememies! We have a partial basement with crawl space and subfloor over dirt. This makes it even easier for these critters to venture into our space. I’m pulling the plug on Orkin for budget reasons, plus they raised their rates. So I need to know if I can purchase that powder stuff they spray on window sills and such that poisons spiders but is not deadly to dogs. Picture it: I’m on the phone with an advertiser and suddenly let out a scream as I realize a spider is crawling up my leg! 8O

Memories of Retail & Yearning to Craft Again

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The Old Logo

Whenever I shop at Michaels in Southlands, I kind of feel at home. I have fond memories of working there, and I really enjoyed it. The only thing that started getting to me were the hours (including weekends). Get a fuller story here. I especially miss the 25% employee discount!

I worked under the old tag line “The Arts and Crafts Store”. Apparently they’re under new management and have made changes. Their new tag line is “Where Creativity Happens” with a much simpler logo.

The New Logo

No more red aprons, either. Now they require khaki pants and black tops. In the beginning of the changes, they wiped out all classes offered except for Wilton Cake Decorating (only kept because of a contract with Wilton). They finally brought the classes back, though! I had a brief, fleeting thought of becoming a Jewelry class instructor again for a little extra cash and for the discount, but the position has already been filled. Just as well! My availability would be very limited anyway.

Crafting is more enjoyable when you’re not being paid to do it actually. I hope to be able to make time for it again once I’m moved into my new office/craft space. My problem with making time is that I like to dive into projects and not surface again for hours. If I know I don’t have that long, I just put it off. <– said as I glance over at a necklace that has been laid out ready to be pieced together for many weeks now!

Rosetta Stone Italian – Online!

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I’ve been given access to Rosetta Stone online to learn Italian through work! How cool is that?! So I get up early this morning to start only to find out that I need a speech component downloaded and installed before I can use it. I don’t have admin privileges to install anything on my work computer and had to submit a ticket to IT to request this install. Again, I wait. I don’t have a mic on my own desktop computer, or I would access it from there (preferred). So today’s lunch break +breaks may include a run to the store to buy a headset with mic.

Double whammy … my internet access is annoyingly lagging this morning, further frustrating my attempts to access the program. This is not a good morning so far, and I hope it’s not indicative of how the entire day is going to turn out. I can see it now … on a call helping someone resecure their account and telling them, “I’m sorry, my page won’t load. Please give me one moment while I try again.” Now that’s professional and comforting!

Shaking it off! Time to brush up on a task I’ve only done twice several months ago and have to do today. After that, I’m taking the time to go over some other procedures that I’m not comfortable enough with to have the confidence to do at work. I don’t like to just jump in and call a person to help them unless I’m confident in my own knowledge and the steps required. I don’t think it’s professional, and I’m sure it doesn’t make the person on the other end of the line feel confident in the company to work with a fumbling rep on the phone.

There! I’ve spilled my frustrations for the morning. Now I can attempt to breathe back to center and focus. If every day were like this morning, I might actually consider taking up jogging just to get the feeling of running away from it all! :D

P.S. I chose Italian because I think it’s beautiful. I don’t care for the phlegm-ish French, and German sounds a little angry to me. I took Spanish in high school for just one year and while Italian is similar, there’s something more appealing about it than Spanish.

Working From Home Not Always Lonely

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An article on my daily feed from Summify.com sparked my attention: Why Are Web Workers Happier? I’m always mystified by “research” and “statistics”. Sure, some people take such jobs because it may be a last resort or all they can find, but a majority of web workers chose to take their jobs because they want to work from home.

One point was made about controlling your own time and the ability that affords you to juggle home and work responsibilities. I want to point out that not everyone who works from home has the luxury of picking their own hours. In fact, that can be quite dangerous. I have set hours, which is great for me because I work much better on a schedule. I will say that my luxury lies in the fact that I don’t spend an hour or two (round trip) in traffic each day, which makes working overtime when needed much easier and lets me sleep a little longer in the morning. :)

Another issue brought up was isolation. I don’t feel isolated at all! Aside from the fact that I prefer to work alone, I do have a “virtual office” by way of a popular instant messaging service. We are all available at any time, and our status shows what we are currently working on at all times. This is also a great accountability tool as is the report we submit daily detailing the work we accomplished, which is verifiable by a multitude of automatically generated reports through the programs we use. Why is everyone always so concerned with socialization vs. isolation?! :x Maybe if one didn’t have a choice, they might have an issue with it. When a person chooses to work alone from home, though, what business is it of anyone else’s to judge how socially well-adjusted someone is or is not? (Sound familiar to any homeschoolers?!)

Chained to the Computer | Day 4 of Vacation

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At least I got to stay in comfy frumpies all day while chained to the computer. After taking the new mixer for a spin making Granola Blondies, I caught up on two weeks worth of money tracking on my ultimate Excel workbook then made sure I had everything I needed in my file of tax information. After a little more hesitation, I grabbed a sandwich and a tall glass of water and dove into TurboTax. Two hours later, I resurfaced to catch my breath and let out a sigh of relief that we didn’t owe again! Last year’s mistake not repeated, plus having one in college to give a nice tax credit as well as our changing our W4 forms last year all helped. Lingering medical bills can now be obliterated at last!

By the time I finished, it was nearly 3:00. It’s hard to find something interesting to do at that time of day and not ruin dinner, so I thought I’d be bored the rest of the afternoon. Then Jason reminded me that I needed to renew our FAFSA info for 2011/2012 school year, which he just officially entered today. UGH! More computer work, but at least I had the taxes completed necessary to renew this thing. Before working on that, though, I e-filed Jason’s taxes as well so he would get his return faster than if he mailed them (he already had them completed).

Now two major things have been scratched off that to-do list. These are major accomplishments. So why do I feel like I got absolutely nothing done today to validate my exhaustion?  It can almost make a person resentful that vacation time needs to be used to get things like these accomplished (take a day off work to, well, work), but I’m glad I was able to get it completed in one day so I don’t have to feel trapped at home for the rest of the week.

Tomorrow: Red Riding Hood and lunch at The Movie Tavern, a little shopping, and The Golden Spoon for froyo!