So should you have bothered to check back in here manually, you probably just noticed that a shit ton of entries just went up dated between now and mid-June. This is because work has been super busy and I haven’t gotten to updating squat.

The reason why I’m suddenly able to update everything is because Mom had eye surgery on Tuesday and she wanted me here this weekend on babysitting duty. This of course translates into “sitting around watching a lot of Hallmark while she sleeps”-type stuff, so for once I’ve had plenty of free time to get some writing done and some entries posted. Huzzah for shrinking my massive pile of personal project writing that needs to get done!

Also, Mom seems to be doing okay, if tired and having her eye hurting. She doesn’t have a patch on except for sleeping and showering, and while I suspect she doesn’t want to leave the house at the moment since her eye is generally looking kinda red and wet, she seems okay. Whew. Also, last I heard from her the doctors don’t sound too interested in doing TWO surgeries now, so maybe we’re off the hook for the last shitty thing happening this year! (Well, other than the election. That is some fun reading today, lemme tell ya.)

Anyway...here’s another roundup of things that don’t involve improv or sketch comedy for roughly the month of September and the first week of October.

Work drama continues!

* We had two people quit and another one go on medical leave, so pretty much any of the units that have to wait on the general public are down to one permanent employee apiece. And sadly, our temps’ contracts are all running out right about now. I got yelled at for looking not busy when someone peeked through the door and I got ripped a new one for apologizing too much at work and screwing things up and...yeah, the usual sort of thing that comes with public service. I thought that sort of thing was supposed to end?

* Though on the good news side, the coworker who had hand surgery is able to type for most of the day now, so she’s not on the counter all the time. But now they’re so short-staffed on student employees too now (I was all, “Really?!” but apparently they all have class during open hours), the remaining three public service people are back to shifts again. Whee for them. But nobody’s making me answer the phones any more and if they’re short staffed, the managers do it, so yay for me.

* As of this past Monday, I am now 100% out of doing public service work. Which is great for me, but confusing to all of the population that e-mails me. Someone sent me a list of who does what in our office (dated last month) and I was all, that is SO outdated...

* We have had more personnel shifting--several managers got some kind of interim promotions when the 2nd in command was shifted to working on special projects for a year and now that she’s going back to that, everyone’s going back down the power ladder and seems totally confused.

* Every single day this week, I have been mostly unpleasantly surprised by something. I’ll summarize it as
(a) since “everyone else is so busy” most of my new team isn’t available At All to work on the quarterly huge project I was told they were all supposed to help me on, which is a problem since they’re barely getting trained on it and now aren’t doing any hands on. That’ll uh...be super fun later.
(b) I am being forced to take over a task that is supposed to be only done by managers (why?!) and will definitely prompt more people to yell at and argue at me and report me to higher ups. You would think that since this office hates how I speak to other people, they would know better. But uh...nope. So this doesn’t bode well. Both old and new managers are not worried, of course I am.
(c) Basically I will be running 2/3 of my duties entirely. Eek.
Though on the good news side, our computer system was down for almost all of Friday (that was the Friday surprise!), so I got a lot of book reviews written. Huzzah!

* My new job description has been submitted to HR, now it shall float in the ether indefinitely. I think it’s already gonna need updating again after this week’s additions.

* I gave New Boss a giant wish list of things that are broken in the computer system, and he has plans to try to get most of this fixed. Some things are under his control (“I can write a report to check that rather than making you proofread a paper list for days”), some others would involve forcing people who refuse to let anyone else in to let us in, though, so...who knows. But it’s nice to see someone actually wanting to get things improved AND he’s more likely to be listened to. I really like Old Boss, but it’s pretty clear that higher-ups listen to her about almost nothing at all, for whatever reason, and she almost always ends up getting nowhere when she has a conflict with people. New Boss is actually getting supported by higher-ups--I dunno if it’s because he’s a dude or a techie or just not in the public service unit that refuses anything, but that is a hopeful thing.

In other news, I got an astrology reading done and it promises an improvement by the end of the year. THANK FUCKING GOD, I COULD USE IT.

I went to the Aloha Festival last weekend and got my Hawaii on, and learned how to make those fabric flowers you see around. That was fun.

I am probably going to spend NaNoWriMo writing about presidents, because I have done a ton of reading about them (roughly up to #21, Chester Arthur) and taking notes on them for book reviews, and I might as well use that. Now that I’ve spent all day (and uh, yesterday) finishing up writing fiction book reviews and journal entries, all I’ve got left to write up are my sketch class entries and all the books I read about presidents. I had to stop reading after #21 because I was so behind in writing up reviews from the notes. And then what did I do the other day? Buy a book called “Worst. President. Ever.” I last left off around #9, so this is a problem. But at least I’m getting more of my docket cleared before I start more intense writing project time.

Though I did have a moment in writing group the other night where we were talking about NaNo and whether or not doing it does anyone any good, and I was all, I basically do it as a personal pissing contest because I never, ever think anything I do for it is any good. Except for one story I did for writing group this year that they actually liked, I usually think all my fiction is inadequate and not good enough. And I was all, “I don’t think I am ever going to think I am good enough to get published, really.” Sad but true.

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