Kitanzi's Colloquium

At the moment, airconditioning. Oh, boy, am I thankful for airconditioning. Local conditions are predicted to be at least 100 degrees by the thermometer and anywhere up to 110 including the heat index, likely breaking records. I am MASSIVELY grateful to be out of our old apartment, where the air conditioning kept breaking down over and over again. Our company's 10th anniversary celebrations at various locations are scheduled all this week, almost all of them outside, and are they being called on account of heat? Oh no... so, I am sitting here today and eating whatever I have stashed at my desk in preference to going out and driving 20 minutes for a very nice free picnic lunch. I suspect a lot of people are making that choice today.

It's all ACat's fault that this is stuck in my head, but today it feels all too right:
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is built into Helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees...

So today I'm wearing my Three Weird Sisters tshirt to work (we have dress down Fridays) and I'm fairly sure that the grins and approval are due to the assumption that it's just more proof that I'm a big ol' Harry Potter fan.

I actually attempted to explain to a few people that no, it's a local band, and they came FIRST - got lots of blank looks on that one, especially when I tried to explain what kind of music they do.

I just realized how long it's been since I posted, but I really am still alive.

Packing proceeds. I'm not sure where we stand as a fraction of the total, but I think we're doing pretty well, since we are moving 3 weekends from now. There are stacks of filled boxes, mostly in the bedroom. The main thing is not packing things we'll need still.

In fact, I planned to pack a whole lot more this weekend, but our airconditioning has been out. Maintenance keeps coming and fiddling with it, and it will be better for a while, but... he says we have a leak. I don't like the sound of that. No airconditioning in summer in Georgia is somewhat less than a joke - last I checked it was 95 degrees outside. Dunno what it is inside. We keep resolving to just open the windows and at least get some breeze, and then he comes and fiddles and it gets a little bit better for a little while. ACat's playing WoW, and I understand the game's addictive but the computer room's the hottest spot in the house. *shrug*

Against all sense, I am baking the birthday cake for ACat anyhow. Tomorrow, he catches up to me again, at least until next April. Sadly, tomorrow I have an 11 hour workday, so today I bake.

Work continues to be most aggravating, but the worst should be over after this week. I am splitting my time between two high profile, high priority projects for two mangers. They are not playing nicely together. I am not happy with what that means to me. Eh.... still beats the hell out of ADP, *and* it pays better! (Yes, that DOES help my mood! Hell, that fact's what's letting us move in the first place.)

Aphelion is having another flash fic contest - 9 good stories under 1000 words, read them and vote. You don't even have to register, though if you do you can get in on the fun with the next one! (One is mine. Won't tell you which one. It's not the best one.)
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/cgi-bin/lettercol/YaBB.cgi?num=1182481930

Now I go away again to melt quietly by a fan with a book. Come and visit, and we'll share the cake and ice cream.

Well, I have the new job and I really like it. I've always said I'd rather be busy than bored, and this has that in spades. On the other hand, I have no time to read LJ at work any more, and by the time I get home I'm tired and skimming through stuff. I've recently found out I've somehow been missing reading chunks of posts and not even realizing it - if I've missed commenting on something important, please no one take it personally. It's not so much that my pants are bankrupt, but they are certainly on a very fixed income which may not stretch quite far enough some times (to mangle a metaphor past all reason...)

I like to read in the break room while I’m eating lunch. It’s just my way of leaving the building for an hour, breaking up the day and making the time my own. Unfortunately, this seems to be a red flag for everyone and his monkey to ask what I’m reading, how many books a week I read, how fast do I read, what I like to read, and everything related that they can think of. This generally irritates me, but I have found two or three people here that I’m happy to have comment, because they actually like to read too, so it’s more of a conversation than “What’s that, ANOTHER new book?” One of them, interestingly enough, is the woman who does the cleaning. English clearly isn’t her first language, though I can’t tell what is – possibly Japanese. Anyhow, she asked me for a recommendation of a good mystery for her to read – “Something not too hard!” My first thought was Agatha Christie, but I don’t have any on hand, so today I brought in the first of Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Polifax books. I don’t know that it’s precisely a mystery, but I think she’ll like it, and I think it’s probably a good reading level for her.

I just went and found her changing out a trash bag in the break room, and gave it to her, and she lit up. She wanted to make sure I knew she wouldn’t be able to read it quickly, which is hardly a problem, but with all her thanks you’d think I’d given her a winning lottery ticket, not a loaned paperback. I love doing book swaps, because I love finding new books and passing on the good ones to other people. I think this is probably the most effusive thanks anyone’s ever given to me for it, but damn, I guess that made her day. I know it made mine.

Our department is moving to a new building over the weekend, about one exit down on the local highway. Today all the aisles are sprouting stacks of enormous bright orange packing crates like some uncontrolled fungus, files are everywhere and dust is flying. The only work actually getting done is cleaning and packing because no one can get at anything anyhow, so it's a very social sort of day. Over the weekend I have to actually find the new location in order to get there in the dark and half asleep on Monday, but if no one hears from me again, I probably fell headfirst into a crate and got packed....

Starting tomorrow, for about six weeks I will be working 7 am to 7 pm Monday through Friday, and 8-5 on Saturday. (Crisis at work, long story, no choice.) As may be obvious, that doesn't leave me a whole lot of time for other stuff, and I probably won't even try keeping up on LJ. Not that I've been terribly active lately anyways, but if anyone has anything they think I should see or would even really be sorry I missed, please have pity and point me at it!

Otherwise, see you all when I get back....

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want—good or bad—BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

Why not... however, I should also say I dunno how much LJ I will be reading in the next week or two, or if I'll be keeping up much at all. My surgery is rescheduled for a week from yesterday, and I'm doing about 2 hours overtime every night to try and cover the missed time - still temp, still no sick pay. As a result, by the time I get home I'm in a fair bit of pain and not really sitting at the computer much, and may or may not catch up in the morning. If I miss something you wanted me to know, please have pity and just tell me?

The job hunt still goes on, but I did get a one day gig yesterday through a temp agency as a product demonstrator for the opening weekend of the new Costco down the street.

I was officially designated a "breaker", to cover breaks at all the different stations so other people could get a bit of rest. It's been a long time since I've done face to face customer service rather than in a call center, and I'd forgotten it can be seriously a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong, eight hours standing on a concrete floor dishing up chicken salad on crackers or trailmix in a cup at top speed in a riotously busy store is exhausting and tedious. But the people... right up until the last hour when I started realizing how much pain I was in, I was actually having a lot of fun. I got lucky, I know. No parents yelling that I gave their kid food without permission, no kids whining and crying because their parents wouldn't buy whatever or someone's brother stole their bit. But there's fun in trading comments and grins with people who are in a good mood, being able to joke or quip with random people while handing them a little food with a smile. I absolutely wouldn't want to do it for a living, but for one day? Yeah, I had fun!

(Oh, and I met another Larissa. A very nice lady tried to talk to me at the cranberry juice table while I was there. Her english was pretty sketchy, and I didn't realize until her son explained that she didn't want to know what kind of juice it was, she was trying to tell me (in Russian, I believe) that we shared the same name. That was very unusual, and pretty cool!)

Tomorrow, I hopefully have a lead to followup on for a data entry job someone left me a phone message about Friday. Wish me luck!

Right, it's been months since I posted anything with actual content that wasn't about work. Time to make at least a token effort to catch up, because otherwise it gets harder and harder. At this point, all I can reasonably try for is a thumbnail of the summary of the outline of the highlights of the last couple months, but it's still gonna be long.

( Year end and England )
( Training and NJ! )
( And now... )