Car Fluids Spoil??

Yesterday I learned that motor oil goes bad if you don't use it after a certain point.  You know, maybe I should've known better, but I thought that motor oil, you know, never goes bad.

That may be why the big jug of oil Father used never seemed to work when I put it in my car.  The level on my dipstick never went up, and if I didn't put in more soon after I put in some, I felt enormous stress that I should.  It seems as though I never have an issue seeing the oil level in my engine go up after I use one of the newer quart bottles I have in the back of my car.

But I continue to look through the Internet for tips on using motor oil that's been lying around.  I've seen sites that say that you should dump motor oil if it's been open for year, others two years, still others five.  I was of the mind of giving the leftover oil in our garage to the county hazardous waste site, but some corners of the World Wide Web say I can still use it.  So, what's the correct answer?

And I did more research and discovered that the coolant I lug around in my car also expires.  Do I need to get rid of that, too??

Damn, this is getting confusing, and expensive.

Eating Out Of Order

By that I mean that, pretty much all my life, once I eat something I consider light or dessert, that's the last thing I'll eat that night.  I've just never thought I could, or at least should, eat anything else, and especially anything that would be polar opposite of that light snack or that dessert.  It just shouldn't be done -- else there would be chaos.

I have breached my rule the last two nights, and I feel bad about it.  Wednesday night, after suffering through a lethargic Loons Loss, I went home and ate several Girl Scout Cookies.  But I had to stay up to do the WMNSS.  While going through it, I felt my body telling me to go to bed immediately.  However, I had to stay awake to finish the survey, and I then developed this hunger for the deli meat I had in the fridge.  So, even though I ate dessert (the Girl Scout Cookies), I went into the fridge and and pulled out one piece of ham and one piece of roast beef and wolfed both down.  And they hit the spot, ngl.

Last/Thursday night, after a long and stressful night at work, I went home, downed a snack pack of Chex Mix, then made myself a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, which was the only thing I was planning to eat for the night (and I was going to chase it with what turns out to be the remaining amount of milk I have).  But dammit, I got hungry, and so I finally ripped into one of the two pizza Lunchables I bought from the discount store close by me.  It was time I tried these for the first time; when I was young I was obsessed with the original Lunchables, where I would stack the cracker, meat and cheese in different orders.  But pizza?  Never had it till just this past evening, and though I wouldn't say it was the best pizza I've ever had, I didn't mind it at all.  I just feel weird, and wrong, to eat pizza after I ate a PB&J, which I consider both a light snack and, in some frames of mind, dessert.  Can I break free from my wrong order-eating sins tonight/Friday night?

Unstable Next Two Weekends

As shitty as my homelife has been, it's gotten (relatively) better lately, if only because I gave in in order to keep the peace in the house.  But things will get more unsteady over the next two weekends, and I am trying to get ready for it.

Next weekend, as I have been told, ownership of the place I store my stuff officially changes.  I should go out there to see if I can speak with the new owners or managers, just to get the vibes of the new people coming in.  But based on what the caretakers who are moving out are telling me, I need to brace myself.  This was a mom-and-pop place, but the owners have sold out to a local chain.  The caretakers said that not only are rentals going month-to-month, but they are jacking up prices in order to "invest" in the property.  I have a contract that lasts another half a year, but after that, I have no idea what is going to happen.  And frankly, I am not 100% certain the new company will honor my contract.  If they break the deal, and they jack up prices of my rental unit, I will need to find a new place.  And while I have done my research and think I have found a new home for my stuff, both the uncertainty and the stress of moving my stuff is definitely something I am not looking forward to.  And I will need to do all this while hiding all of it from My Fucking Parents.

My sister comes home the next weekend.  It should be a joyous time, and I love my sis.  But the house already seems too crowded already, and I am woken up by noises from My Fucking Parents already, and I don't need the variable of a fourth person in the home.  Moreover, my sister might be here to assist My Mother as she begins the process of figuring out what she needs to do with her sciatica.  Worst case scenario: The screening yields a recommendation to get surgery, they have to wait weeks to get the surgery, there is at least six weeks for My Mother to rehabilitate from her surgery, and my sister is here the whole damn time.  I have no idea if it's possible to immediately go into surgery after a screening, but if not, there's a good chance My Fucking Parents will be here through the holidays and the New Year.  My sister too.  And goddamn, I need to be alone.

Trying to brace myself.  But it's so, so hard.

Closing Time On Overtime

Welp, it happened: The new person, the person recently hired for the same position as I, will finally leave data entry and be trained in ... The Third Department, the department I used to love but now despise, the one that regularly makes me stay late day after day after day.  It's the one I have vaguely said takes up the most time during my workweek, and beginning this week, my supervisor and boss are doing something about it by beginning to show her how to do that position's duties.

I have to admit that I am surprised that she is being trained in this so soon after she came on board.  When I got broken in, I was in data entry for a long time.  Then I got trained in filing, and that also took a long, long time.  I thought that was The Way Things Were.  I also know that we are very short-staffed, so it's all hands on deck to get the day's work done.  That's been how it has been since the New Year, so I didn't think they would have time to progress in this new person's training so quickly.  I thought how things have been were how it was going to be for maybe the next 12 months, maybe in the fall at the earliest.  But no, it's now.

So why the apparent change?  Maybe I am wrong about the workload and in fact they do have the time to train her in now.  Or, and this might the more plausible reason, The Third Department is so backed up every day that, once the absolutely fundamental position of keying has been mastered (at least as much as one can), my higher-ups shunted her to The Third Department with the quickness.

If that is indeed the case ... well, dammit, I'm torn.  I have spoken up from time to time about how inundated I am every day when I work The Third Department.  Every day I'm back there I am doing the work of 1 1/2 people.  Heck, that department should be like it was, when two people were working it.  It doesn't make any damn sense to at least have a second person help out at least part of the day every day.  And maybe this move is an acknowledgement that one person can't do that position alone.

But as I've said before, when I work there, as pissed off and as strung out as I get at the end of the workday, I keep grinding knowing I am getting beaucoup overtime.  And as much stress I am under, and as disruptive staying ten-plus hours have become to maintaining work-life balance, getting proper rest and getting ready for the next day, I keep looking at the fat paychecks I've been banking and I haven't said a peep since my initial inveighing over how overworked I've become in The Third Department.  So, training the new person to help out means there is less work for me back there.  And that means I will not be able to stay late, and stay late as often.  Thus, less money.  And maybe I'll be less stressed, and maybe I'll see that I'm happy that I will get to leave work at a decent hour.  But right now, right as I type this, I am saddened that these fat OT paychecks are coming to an end, probably as soon as this week.

Thanks For The Help, But ...

I was stuck in The Third Department since Wednesday.  But a funny thing happened Thursday and Friday: My co-worker, who was in The Fourth Department, asked if she could help.  I gladly took her up on her offer.  And she did very well, and I thanked her for helping me, because I am glad she took some of my work, and therefore I am genuinely thankful.

But her asking if I need help is is a bad thing.  Now, the reason it's a bad thing is not about alleviating the stress of my workload, even though it definitely did.  No, the reason this is a bad thing is because this makes me look bad.  We both take turns being the only person working The Fourth Department.  So, then, how is it that I routinely slog through getting the work done while she appears to have gone through it so fast that she is doing some of my work?  Is she cutting corners?  Is she not communicating with clients, or not documenting the correspondence with them?  (E-mails, I have learned, is time-consuming to make and to send.)

Or, is she able to get through the work fast and, more important, I get through the work slow?  Don't tell her, but I am secretly jealous, possibly to the point of annoyance, that it looks as though she is able to easily do the job while I struggle.  Now, I want to do the work the way I do it, and I will not change unless ordered to (and even then I may not).  But doing things my way illustrates a difference in approach to working The Fourth Department that is clearly laid out when it comes to our timesheets, specifically when each of us leave for the day.  I have put in ten hours per day in The Fourth Department with some regularity.  Not only has my co-worker not done so regularly, she may be getting out at eight hours, which I find fucking impossible to do.  And I know my boss has noticed that difference between the two of us.

So if she continues to ask, from her place in The Fourth Department, if I need help in The Third Department, that will remind me how quickly she gets done compared to me.  I can't help but think that, and it's a thought I would rather not have, especially when in the middle of doing the work that evidently takes me hours to do when she can do it in, like, seconds.  I wonder if I will pay for this contrast with my job.

Stayed till 7:30 at work yesterday/Wednesday.  I gave myself till 8; if I wasn't done with work by then, I would leave it because I needed to watch The Amazing Race.  Didn't need that much cushion, but it was close.

Because the season finale of TAR starts at 8 tonight, I will give myself till 7:30 before leaving everything and going.  I might have to use all of it, though; I am in The Third Department, and I got a glance at all the stuff my colleague left for me.  It's a lot.  Like, a lot.  Too much, actually.  I will be behind the 8-ball as soon as I sit down, and I don't know if I will get to the stuff that rolls in ... at all.

I'll be honest and say I was getting pretty anxious as I wound down my day.  But I insist that I have to do all the work before I leave.  If I don't, either I will have to stay extra the next day or, in this case, someone else will have to do the work I leave them, and that doesn't seem right, either.

Then again, I wonder how my boss is going to feel for me working 10 1/2 hours again.  Well, he's not here right now, but when he comes back from vacation, there might be hell to pay.  Well, might as well make hay while the sun's shining.

The Grueling Money Train Is Coming To An End

OK, so the big news coming out of work is that, against all odds (it wasn't looking good for a while), my boss was able to find and hire another person, a fourth person, to work the same position as me and the two others.  And this person starts tomorrow/Monday.

I don't exactly know how this is all going to shake out.  But this will be yet another huge adjustment period, and with all change, I hate it at first, and then I'll get used to it, and then, if I don't necessarily say I like it, I am certain I will forget why and how I hated it.  Don't know how long that process will last, but it always happens.

Right now, I am torn.  As I hugged the co-worker who decided to retire from The Third Department over the holidays before she left work for good, I told her that I don't know how I'm going to do this job.  I still don't.  Not only her expertise but her availability to sop up the vast majority of tasks at that position are sorely missed.  We have had to pick up the slack since, and only one of us is able to do it most days as the other two have to work at another department.  With one person doing the work of 1 1/2 people, the work piled up and, speaking only for myself, the stress level has gone off the charts.  Well, my stress level once did, but then I was just resigned to working ten-plus-hour days just to keep up.  There will be extensive training, and I don't even know if this new person is going to start in The Third Department.  But, eventually, all of that will be over.  My stress level should fall, and I should be able to get home at a decent time.

I have to admit, though, that once my stress turned into resignation, I was extremely, extremely happy to rack up the overtime.  I've been making a damn killing at work.  It's only fair if I am expected to do all this work by myself.  And all that will eventually be gone, too, and I am none too happy about that.  So, one hand giveth and the other taketh away.  What to do?

There Might Be Changes At Work Today

I was fortunate to decide to take the past two days off in one way: I missed the worst of the spring snowstorm and not needing to drive when it was sleeting.  I was fortunate in another way: I could sleep in.  (I slept for three hours Tuesday evening and almost 2 1/2 hours last/Wednesday evening; maybe that's a coincidence.)  And there's a third way, I guess: There was a big meeting between my boss, my supervisor, and the two people who hold the same position as I at work yesterday.

But that last point is a double-edged sword.  That meeting, although I was allowed to miss it, was important: It had to do with new policies and protocols streamlining what we needed to do in The Third Department.  This is the one kicking all our asses.  Ever since our co-worker retired around the holidays, the workload was heaped most only one person on most days.  Even though I don't have concrete evidence, it also feels as though there has been a slight uptick in work since the New Year, which only added to the workload.  As a result, we have been working our asses off, staying past our regular eight-hour shift (when possible) in order to do all the work that needs to be done.  Stress, suffice it to say, has ratcheted up as well.

Thus, this meeting.  It's a follow-up to another meeting we had maybe three weeks ago requesting feedback on how we felt Things Were Going On.  I told my higher-ups then my piece: That it's hell, and some of the tasks suck the life out of me, but I understand the work needs to get done, and if they're willing to put up with overtime, I'll put up with ten-hour days.  Now, I obviously don't know what was revealed in yesterday's meeting, but I am sure my supe and boss have an edict from those above them to tamp down OT, so they most likely announced tasks that can be streamlined, tasks that can be given to someone else, and tasks that can be put off till the next day (although needing to deal with them the next day only causes us to stay late that day because the new stuff is still coming in, but that's a given).  Those new plans might be implemented as soon as today/Thursday, when I am coming in to do The Third Department all by myself.

Honestly, I'm torn.  I certainly would like to not be stressed out.  But dammit, I love the money I'm making!  And maybe more important than that, I like the fact I'm not getting any guff from my boss or supervisor for staying late and doing my job.  That's what I'm there for, right -- to do my job, right?

Well, we'll see what happens.  I might hate the changes.  I might love them.  There's a chance they won't work and we'll be back to where we have been all year.  And in the meantime, there is this implication of finding another person and hiring her for the same position as us three.  The issue with alleviating work in The Third Department so that everybody can get out of work "on time" can be easily solved by just hiring someone, and that might already be happening for all I know, so all of this speculation will become reality.  Who knows?

May Have Crossed A (Time) Line I Shouldn''t Have Crossed At Work

This has never been spelled out as official or even common policy, but from what I have been told in the (way) past and from what I have been able to get away with, whenever there is work to be done that needs to be done but can't be done within your usual eight-hour work shift, you can stay up to two hours, or (duh) ten hours.  Because work in The Third Department has been kicking my ass ever since the holidays, I've done ten hours frequently.  Lately, the work hasn't been done within ten hours, so I've left it for the next day and, sometimes, for the person doing in position for me.

Regardless, for many, many years now, I have held that ten-hour overtime standard as sacrosanct, a sort of demilitarized zone.  Not that I've never crossed it; I think I have pulled in way more than ten hours on a couple occasions, although those were under extremely unforeseen circumstances, and I may have clocked out a minute after ten hours once or twice.  But it's pretty much a no-go, a line you don't you don't come back from.  Since the New Year, even if the work has been overwhelming, I have swallowed my pride, resigned myself that I couldn't accomplish all that I wanted to accomplish, and packed up and left at exactly ten hours.

Till yesterday/Friday.  There were tests I needed to prepare.  A lot of them, and that has been a major contributing factor to me staying late whenever I'm in The Third Department.  I have been trying my best to get through them quicker, but I have been making very little progress.  I remember that on Thursday, there was a test that had me so confused that I needed to talk to someone three times to figure out what to do.  I want to say that I spent at least 45 minutes on it, but it could have been an hour.  That was incredibly frustrating, and typical of my problems in trying to get through these tests.  Now add that lately there's been at least half a dozen of them every day I work in The Third Department and that they come in during the afternoon, and you can see how that pushes my day past eight hours.

That happened yesterday/Friday.  However, the tests that I prepared this time around actually were easy, at least easier compared to the ones I usually encounter.  I got through them faster than I usually do.  And that, to be honest, kind of gave me a rush.  It made me feel as though I finally "got it," that I in fact have "mastered" how to do them.

And then I remembered that I have all these other things that should be done before I leave for the day, and that I have, oh, less than an hour to do them.  I still felt good, however; those half dozen or so tests I thought would have consumed the rest of my ten hours, and there would have been a lot of hell to pay by my supervisor and boss for not getting to the other tasks they say should be done.  But I had time yesterday/Friday, and so I delved into that work ... and then my ten hours were getting close to being up, and I wasn't quite finished.  And then I saw a mistake that I needed to fax out again and, after deciding that fax could be done by my co-worker tomorrow, I changed my mind and thought it best I do it -- knowing that would probably push me past ten hours.

And it did.  I clocked out ten hours and ten minutes after work began.  Now, you may say what's the big deal, it's just ten minutes.  Like I have blog posted before, neither of my superiors have lately took me to task for staying an extra couple hours.  Heck, before she left work yesterday/Friday, my supervisor said I shouldn't go past ten hours.  However, I can see, from their vantage point, me staying an extra ten minutes is, to put it in a way, overtime creep.  I should tell you that on Monday, I overstayed my lunch break by ten minutes because I didn't set the alarm on my phone correctly and overslept.  The policy at that point is to stay as long as you overstayed your lunch break.  Well, I did that and worked ten hours total and still clocked out a few minutes later than that because I needed to tie up loose ends.  My supervisor and boss will know that I did that Monday, stayed a few minutes further than that yesterday/Friday, and start to question how long I am staying for OT, and why.

This all could change, and soon.  Next week everyone one of us are supposed to have a meeting about The Third Department, with a goal of getting enough of the work done each day so that no one is taking overtime.  I don't see how that is possible without a second person working in The Third Department at least half the day, but that is my boss' goal.  Maybe what I did this week is a sign to him that changes to this department can't come soon enough.  And maybe this will accelerate scrutiny of my work day and work processes.  Which would suck because, all the stress this job is putting me through aside, I do love making OT money.  I checked my bank account and saw that my latest paycheck is significantly bigger than the one before it.  Will this money train stop?

Pressure At Work --> Eating (Out Of Order) At Home

So I just ate a slice of turkey and colby jack cheese even though I ate a cookie and part of a brownie a couple hours before then.  I have a rule whereby if I have dessert, I eat no other food that night.  Dessert is the last thing you eat, so you don't eat anything else after that, right?

Well, I did, partly because I realized I bought more food than I can finish before my parents come home, and partly because work is still stressing me the fuck out.  I am absolutely convinced now that The Third Department is a two-person department, and firing one and letting the other retire without filling her position full-time has become a mistake because I worked back there, by myself, for another ten hours yesterday/Thursday and, once again, I still did not get everything done.  In fact, I think I left more work (for myself; I'm there again today/Friday) than I have ever before.  It's a combination of heavy work that came in late and one particular test that I swear took 45 minutes and talking to four other people, one of them three times, to finally figure out.  Tedious problems like that take time, and frankly, I don't have a lot working in The Third Department to spare.

What makes this day worse is I kind of told my boss about the workload I was facing.  He was about to leave, and as he normally does, he asks all of us how we're doing.  My thinking was there was no hiding or sugarcoating all the work that was still coming in.  I think he knows this and is at least tolerant about this; otherwise, he would be on my case for working overtime so often.  The problem this time around is that he asked me, semi-point blank, "How late (do you think you're staying)?"  I hesitated; part of me was really frustrated throughout the whole day (seriously, one comment that I decided to take wrong and I would have exploded -- that's how bad my day turned out to be) and wanted to let him know that, the other part wanted to keep my head down because my cover would have been blown, in a way, and then I would lose all the OT holding in all this frustration is for.  Luckily (?), my co-worker immediately asked him a question and he gave her his attention, and once he answered her, he left for the day.

I am afraid, then, that he will remember that he asked me how long I was staying yesterday/Thursday when he reviews my timesheet.  He then might start to impose time restrictions for me to prevent me from taking any more overtime.  That day is coming anyway, but like I said, I am holding my temper in just because of all the OT I'm racking up, so I want to do (or not do) all I can to not jeopardize the gravy train before I have to get off.  At the very least I am going to receive more scrutiny from my supervisor -- I will come in in the morning and she'll say, "Do this and I'll do that," and I don't how I will feel from such a direct order.  Maybe I'll be relieved to finally have some direction.  Or, maybe this is the start of being reined in to just eight hours of work per day.

So that's what awaits me today/Friday.  At least I will face it with a full stomach, even though I ate stuff after dessert

Work Sucks Right Now, In So Many Ways

Before I rant and feel sorry for myself, I want to say that I am grateful for the overtime I'm getting.  The money is worth the grief.

Well, at least I say that now.  While I was working yesterday/Friday, it sure as fuck didn't feel that way.  The Third Department is utter fucking chaos now.  It didn't help that all the work that got stuck down South Wednesday finally reached us.  The work that came for me ... I don't know if I have ever left so much work for my co-worker, who is doing The Third Department today/Saturday.  I apologized to her before I left work.  I stayed an extra two hours, like I usually do.  I could've stayed till nine o'clock and not gotten everything done.  Seriously.

There are so many things to keep apprised up in that particular position that I am constantly bombarded with things that crop up which I need to immediately address.  Toward the end of my day (which, because it ran so long, became my night), I saw something that essentially became a "STAT" thing that I had to drop everything to do, and I know I let out a "Fuck!" that I meant as a whisper but was probably loud enough for everybody in the room to hear.  It was that frustrating a day.

It didn't help that I screwed up, which I did right before I saw this "STAT" thing I just had to do.  I basically signed off on, like, a dozen reports that I should not have signed off on.  And so I had to go through each report and fix my mistake.  I had a shit ton to do already, and I didn't need to make it harder on myself by fucking up like I did.  But I realized that I made this mistake because I was not doing these reports every day, and that makes me susceptible to forgetting a process of, say, doing a report.  I see now how hard it is to step into work someone else started.  I can't just apply my training at any point in a particular process.  If I didn't start it, I am likely to screw it up.  And in a job where I hop from position to position, that will mess me up, man.

Aside, and I need to make this vague because, frankly, this may blow up into a shitshow: I may have made a mistake, but I sure as fuck don't like her tone.  There were so many other ways to tell me via e-mail to stop.  And by the way, the mistake started with the person not writing down the date.  What condescending bullshit.  And if she decides to take it up with my supervisor or boss, man, I could be in deep trouble.

With all my venting here, I'm going back to work today/Saturday to help out.  They're still behind, so much so that they might bring in people for Monday.  But goddammit, I'd rather this have happened last weekend, or next weekend.  'Cause this weekend was the only Saturday over at least the next month where I could watch EPL downtown, something I haven't done yet this season.  The combination of Matches kicking off at 9 this/Saturday morning doesn't involve any team that would take over the pub I want to go to, and I can't say that for any day until at least April.  But then this opportunity of working ten hours again has to come up this fucking Saturday.  I could decide to work a full day, but I have decided not to.  One, I really was looking forward to watching soccer, and work like this won't change my mind.  Also, I have pulled ten hours several days over the past few weeks, and I was so stressed after leaving work last/Friday night that I am trying to take time for myself.  I'll watch soccer, then go into work for an abbreviated day.  And if that means passing up some money, so be it.  I'm making plenty this time period.

With all that said, this incident from this e-mail may blow up.  There is a non-zero change that I won't have a job by the time today/Saturday ends.  Just a head's-up.

I Now Hate The Third Department

I once said that this more a two-person job than a one-person job.  And sure, maybe there would be too much downtime if two people were doing this full-time.  But it sure as hell didn't feel like it last/Friday night.  There is usually some work left over to be done the next day.  But because I was snowed under a crush of work Thursday, there was so much, well, shit that I left for yesterday that by the time I got through all that bullshit, there was too much new bullshit that came yesterday that I didn't even start on.

I hate that feeling of lack of accomplishment.  In particular, I hate that I have left so, so much work for my co-worker, who is coming in to do The Third Department today/Saturday.  When we said our goodbyes yesterday/Friday, I told her that I was going to do my best to cut down on the stuff I am handing off to her.  Honestly, by the time I had to leave, I was unable to take anything off her plate.  If anything, I probably added more shit on to her plate.  I am thinking of all the work she has to do, and she must think that I did nothing, that I in fact lied to her when I said I am doing my best to cut down on the work I would give her.  I feel like a damn heel that I even mentioned that I would try.

I hate that department now.  I really do!  I remember loving the ease and the cozy work atmosphere back there.  But now that one person has to do all that crap, and considering there (at least I think) has been a big uptick in workload, I cannot fathom how my boss or his boss or any higher-ups in the company thinks one person can do all that needs to be done in only eight hours.  It can't be done.  And if my boss or any higher-ups say it can, I might blow my top and dare them to fire me, because that is goddamn well impossible.

Now, I have to have some perspective.  I have been reeling in the overtime ever since my co-worker retired around the holiday.  And unlike up to Easter, my boss hasn't been yelling at my about why I've been staying late, which I have been doing a lot of, and he has not really made a big stink over that.  (Saying that, he might question why I pulled ten hours last/Friday night.  One huge task that I dreaded doing I was specifically told by him I did not have to do, which probably makes him believe that I could leave after eight hours with everything under control.  It sure as hell wasn't, but I think he thinks it should have been, which means that he will shoot me an e-mail asking me why I stayed late.)  I get the feeling that my boss, as well as my supervisor, understands that everybody is overworked and doing the best we can.  If this is how it's going to be, and if he understands why I am staying late to get work done -- and partly as an aside, all the departments within the company have at least been asked to do OT within the past couple weeks ... man, I really don't know why the hell work has come flooding in like this -- I'll accept it ... and the overtime pay.  Nevertheless, this is no longer an easy job.  It has become very, very stressful, and so it is completely unlike the job this was when I began working it.

I Hate Everything Right Now

Really mad, can't lie, and I feel helpless to do anything about it.  Nothing that's affecting me personally -- at least not yet -- but cursed me for having empathy and giving a good goddamn about the concept of democracy.

He's really doing it.  He's ending every single department that would hold him and other ne'er-do-wells accountable.  He is firing everybody that has a government job, left and right.  He's going to install ass-kissers that'll do what he wants in service of his ultimate goal: To loot American taxpayers dry of their money.  And the fucking goddamn Republicans will let it happen because 1) he believes he is their god-king who 2) will help fulfill their fantasies of remaking this country with white males standing supreme overall.  And he's doing it, up through now and these motherfucking Friday night surprises.

I am beyond angry.  And there is nothing I can do about it, even though I am pissed off right now.  And I know it's going to get worse, so even if I try to relax or take my mind off of this, I know that I'll have to hear some more bullshit coming from him, and probably something worse.

I fucking hate everything right now.

Stress Eating ... Stress Sleeping?

One of things I've noticed about myself since the holiday season, the new work that has come in from this now-shuttered lab, and the departure of my co-worker, as a ripple effect of all the long hours I have to pull to get the work done, is how awful I feel after I get home.  Sure, it's a relief, but often, I have grabbed a bag of chips or peanuts and I have just eaten, and eaten, and eaten.  And that's before I take the leftovers I want to eat out of the refrigerator that serves as my "proper" dinner.  I am not in the best shape right now because I have neither the time nor the energy to exercise lately, and I feel I am getting fat, no doubt.

Moreover, my sleeping patterns have taken a hit.  I haven't stuck to my four hours of sleep per night with a lot of frequency lately.  Partly that is due to not being able to sleep in my car during lunch at work because it's been so darn cold the past couple nights.  That results in me being really, really sleepy, but earlier in the night.  Partly it's also due to being able to sleep in during the weekends since my season of organizing Game watches and working Vikings Games is over.  I am able to catch up on my sleep, which means I can stay up later ... but that also means I get sleepy at other times of the day.  These things clash, but with the added stress of ten-hour days at work, my body seems to be crashing.  I say this because Tuesday night, my body told me to go to bed at 10:30 and I woke up, refreshed, at 4:30.  And I was able to stay alert at work all day, even with failing to fall asleep in the car for lunch.  I wish I could do more of that ... well, maybe go to bed at 10:30 and wake up just before my alarm clock goes off.

Work Was A Fucking Asshole

I was in The Third Department yesterday/Monday.  There's usually only a skeleton crew on Mondays, but because there is now no one full-time in The Third Department, all the work that has to be done on that day falls on one person, and yesterday, that one person was me.

And actually, I thought I was doing fine.  There is a certain task where a lot of forms need to be looked over and processed, each one of those takes time.  Those types of forms usually are the reason The Third Department now sucks (IMHO), but I didn't have any to worry about.  I have been told that as soon as these come in, they're STAT essentially -- you throw everything you're doing off to the side and you do those immediately.  That doesn't take into account all the other stuff that needs to be done, stuff that I always have to shunt to the side when these forms come in that still need to be done before I leave for the day.

One of those relatively important tasks is making calls for forms that still have outstanding information.  God, I hate this part of the job.  Besides the calling and (sometimes) the rudeness you face, it's the overall accumulation of time this takes out of you.  It's not a fast job, and yet we are expected to call any for any outstanding information for forms that have been sitting around a few days.  The fastest I have gone through these is two hours.  That's usually not on a Monday, because on Mondays, because there's been a weekend that's gone by, I have to call for two days' worth of outstanding forms.  Once I get done, I feel like a little part of me died.

But, on this day, I still don't see these stat forms I thought I would need to jump on.  That gave me a lot of time for me to call.  I was slowed down by the occasional person who said they don't have a fax number, but can you e-mail your request so that I can the information back to you, and those take up so much damn time.  Still, I was going through the second day by the time I had to take my lunch, and I felt that if there were no forms coming in -- and they usually don't so late into the afternoon, around the time I take my lunch -- I would have time to finish my calls.

But god fucking dammit, I came back from the car and saw that there were forms.  Lots of them.  Like eleven.  I have never worked on so many before.  And all those needed to be done before the end of the day.  It took me 3 1/2 hours to do them all -- and I think I went through each in record time -- and that pushed me past 6 o'clock.  And I was so fucking stressed out because I simply didn't have the time to finish up all the calls I wanted to make before my self-imposed out time of 6:30.  I kind of think it's bullshit that such important work, and a lot of it, came so fucking late in the day.  I had absolutely no time to do anything else except the very, very important stuff that had to go out before I left.  And so I will be greeted with so much shit I need to do when I get back in the morning.

And I might take shit from my higher-ups when I get in in the morning and see all the work that piled up.  You see, yesterday morning I got an e-mail from my boss asking me why I stayed so late on Friday.  I was in The Fourth, not Third, Department Friday, and that was its own version of hell.  There was so much work that I had the foresight around noon to tell my supervisor that the work was piling up.  She stepped in and did a lot.  But, and I swear, there was still a lot left.  Once all the forms that came in on Friday went out, I had a lot of answers that came back that allowed testing to begin, and I did all of that.  By the time I was done, it was past 6.  I am certain that my boss knows that my supervisor helped with the new work and is thus wondering why I would have to stay past 6 on Friday.

And that's what pisses me off.  I take my breaks and I occasionally stop to sip my coffee because I have to, but I am absolutely 100% honest when I saw I fucking bust my ass at work.  I've had to because people are leaving and no one but me is doing their jobs now.  I do the best I can, I work as fast as I can, but I'm not going to half-ass my job, and so if it takes me staying past what I should, I will.  I did it Friday, I did it yesterday/Monday, I probably will do it today/Tuesday, and until the work doesn't demand it -- or if they fucking get somebody to help out -- I'll continue to stay after.  Dammit, these jobs can't be handled over eight hours by just one person.  If they think that it should ... well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Maybe they need to hire someone else.

In the meantime, I'll do my job and I'll rack up the sweet overtime.  Shit.

Work Has Been Really Much Lately

So since my co-worker retired, we have had to fill in for her.  We have, or at least I have, realized I need to refresh my memory on how to do things, and there are new things I either haven't done in ages, haven't done at all even though I was trained to do it, or have not been taught how to do.  On top of that, there has been primarily only one person assigned to The Third Department every day, and the work is not manageable enough for only person to do all day.  Well, it can.  I've done it a few days a week this past work week.  It's just that I have had to stay an extra hour, or two.

I used to call The Third Department my favorite department because it was a difference in both task and environment from the first two positions I got trained in.  But with no one who's been at the job for years to lean on anymore, we are fending for ourselves, and even though I guess I am getting by, it's been overwhelming, particularly this week.  I cannot call this department my favorite anymore.

Yesterday/Friday was an indication of how bonkers it gets.  We get our shipment of forms every morning flown in from the South.  As usually happens once in January, a snowstorm down south prevents the shipment for that day.  That happened yesterday/Friday: A flight was cancelled, and we got a third of the forms we were supposed to get.  That meant that all the people out in data entry (My Main Department, although I think I might have to change that designation because I work in the back a little more often nowadays) got done very early.  (They might have to make up for it, by the way; the shipment that got delayed might come as early as today/Saturday, in which case they will have two days' worth of work to do over the course of one day.  I am on call in case that delayed shipment comes in, and yes, I might be doing data entry for several hours this afternoon if need be.)  But, and maybe I should have realized this earlier than I did, the work they get does not come from the same sources from which I get work in The Third Department.  While all the keyers left, I got flooded with things I needed to do -- so much so that I stayed an extra 1:45 minutes yesterday/Friday.  That was on top of the extra 1:15 or so Thursday.

Work so far in 2025 has been so stressful, and has me so strung out, that after work both Thursday and yesterday/Friday, once I came home, I eventually got really groggy and conked off to take naps deep in the evening -- about 90 minutes Thursday night, maybe a half-hour just this past evening.  I wanted to stay up to listen to both College Football Playoff Semifinals on SiriusXM, but I just couldn't.  I fell asleep to both Games and woke up after they both got done, even though I may have woken up just long enough to listen to Drew Allar throwing that Game-losing Interception for Penn St. and Jack Sawyer's scoop-and-score for Ohio St. to seal their Win before I fell back asleep.  Or maybe not.  I don't remember the last time work has physically beaten me into unconsciousness.

Now, a part of the general weariness I have leaving work is that this lab closing continues to flood the company with work I have had to deal with in The Fourth Department, which is also not a picnic.  That is supposed to subside at some point this month.  The work in The Third Department will not.  The workload that has been will continue to be.  The big problem, and I don't know if my supervisor or boss sees this, is that The Third Department is not a one-person job.  It may not be a two-person job -- I still wonder whether my co-worker back there was simply laid off over the summer in a cost-cutting move -- but it sure as hell is not a one-person job.  I should add that yesterday/Friday, the person holding down The Fourth Department helped me with an important task I should have gotten to well before the mid-afternoon but simply couldn't.  Without her coming to rescue me like an angel from on high, I would not have been able to finish all the work I absolutely had to do before I had to leave ten hours after I bleepin' started work.  She said that she was busy with work too, and she was surprised she put in a full day when many other departments scrammed after only a half-day.  I'm still shocked she still had time t help me.  And if she can get through her day of work in that position faster than I can ... well, my higher-ups might have questions as to why she can get done faster with her stuff faster than I can.

And, well, that's my saving grace in all this.  I might be inundated with all this work, but the company wants the work to get done, so I am racking up the overtime.  Yeah, I don't know if I have mentioned this, but my boss has not bitched at me about OT since around Easter.  I think my co-worker getting let go (or fired) has resulted in a paucity of workers to do all the work that has to be done.  Maybe others can do their job at 40 hours a week, but I can't, I haven't, and I haven't heard any crap for it.  Maybe I will hear more blowback now that the holidays are over and overtime is priced at time-and-a-half and not time.  (By the way, that might change now that That Fucking Guy will be installed as President again.  I think he and Republicans are proposing a change that allows companies to spread overtime thresholds over a whole month instead of a week.  Stupid damn MAGAts).

My boss is going to have a meeting late in the month about how The Third Department is working out now that there is no one full-time back there.  I don't want to lose work per se, but I really don't want to be overworked and abandoned back there, so I am going to tell him that it's too much for one person.  That might bring about meaningful change ... or it might bring about me losing my job.  Who knows?

Pissed Off And Freaked Out Over The First Snowstorm Of The Season

There have been worse ones, but this one is forecast to be bad -- goddamn, maybe half a foot -- and this has sapped my mental energy since last night.  Last night it was going to be a nuisance, only 2-4 inches.  Fucking thing got amped up, apparently, and I am scared as fuck about it.

It is mainly falling over the course of my workday.  It'll start overnight, be at its heaviest just as I start work, and it might be ending by the time I get home.  So, driving is the first and the worst of my anxieties.  We've had dustings here and there, but this is the first fucking snowstorm of the season, and no one in the world is worse at driving than Minnesotans after the first snowstorm of the season, and I include myself in that.  I'm scared that I'll get stuck somewhere, or I'll drive myself onto oncoming traffic.

But there is so much fucking more to worry about.  That I have to go into the lab and pull out packages that might be leaking piss today gives me even less to look forward to on a day where I'm scared I'm not going to even make it into work.  I don't know if I can use the snowblower if I have to use it because I don't have a backup battery in my garage door opener.  I obviously have power, and I guess I could open it with it plugged in, but I don't know if I'm supposed to, and if I am afraid to, I can't open the garage door, which means I can't use the snowblower which sits in my garage.  Oh, Father bought a handheld snowblower, one of those things that looks like a metal detector but it's supposed to throw snow like a snowblower, except not.  He wants me to try it, and I might have no choice but to try it, but I just looked online at how it works, and I'm not sure if I can do it, and besides, if we're getting the amount of snow I'm afraid we'll get, using this thing to clear my driveway is like using a thimble to dump water out of my canoe.  Oh, and I don't know where the battery charger for this thing is, so I don't even know if I have the juice for it.

I'm scared that the city will dam up the end of my driveway so I can't drive up it.  I hate that I might have to park on the street, walk in the snow up to my house, potentially open my door manually and possibly decapitate myself if it falls on me, or run into the garage through the basement to get my shovel to start shovelling half a foot of goddamn snow, and even more at the end of my driveway.  Motherfuck, I don't need this shit now, goddammit. ...

Thought My Car Was Breaking Down, But Then ...

So I had to change the battery in my car key fob Friday.  Got into my car in the morning, saw the "BATT" warning on the dash, and decided to risk driving to work, Rosedale (although I didn't go; it was crazy on Black Friday), the bank and the gas station.  (No problem; the warning came on each time, but the car started just fine.)  Switched out the flat, circular battery, and I thought all was well.

Well, not quite -- and in more ways than one.  I had to go to my alma mater's Game-watching event even though I had to bug out at Halftime to go back home and take my parents to the airport.  When I was parking my car at the lot close to the bar, my dashboard suddenly flashed a "NO KEY" sign.  I was kind of freaking out, but I switched fobs, and the one I got went through its last battery really quickly, so I think it's not good.

I thought that was the reason for that warning, so I wasn't really worried when I finally decided to leave.  But when I tried to open the door, I didn't hear anything.  I had to literally take it apart for it to finally work.  So, I concluded that the fob was so bad that I had to now use the one I switched out, and use it from now on.

But that didn't work, either.  As I started the car in the driveway, the damn "NO KEY" warning flashed again.  I turned off the car and tried to start it again, but it wouldn't work.  I ran back inside the house to switch the fobs back (I concluded I should do this, but I didn't) and there was no sign.  But after I dropped off my parents at the terminal, I tried using the fob to lock the doors at both Jimmy John's and the Mall Of America, but it wouldn't respond.  I could do the thing where I could open the door if I grabbed the handle, but I couldn't do anything if I wasn't close.  When I got the OK by Mother to leave because they boarded their plane (which was delayed by 80 minutes), I just pulled the fob apart.  I hit the button, and the doors opened, and the car started just fine.

While I was just walking around the Megamall, my mind was racing with what could be going on.  There were two commonalities between the two fobs I tried to use.  One commonality was the battery, which I kept switching between the fobs.  The other was, well, the car.  There is the possibility that the car was going haywire.  And that thought terrified me all night.  Meanwhile, I also was afraid that somehow, both fobs just failed at the same time, and I had to buy a new one.  Last week, I tried starting the car, but it wouldn't.  At the time I thought it was because the fob was in the same pocket as my phone, but with what happened Friday and yesterday, a pattern was emerging that the fob (or fobs) wasn't (or weren't) working.  I got more evidence for that theory when I got home, tried to close the doors using the button, and it once again wouldn't work.  And then I accidentally set off the car alarm.  I was able to open the door and start the car (to stop the alarm) with the battery in the fob, but only if I put the fob right up to the ignition button.

Now I'm freaking out.  But I had only final play before I had to take drastic measures in order to prepare for the Vikings Game and my (abbreviated) work week.  I decided to use the other disc battery we had.  This is an Energizer battery, and it was a package I bought.  When I took it out of its blister, I immediately saw a difference, and probably the difference: This battery was thicker, way thicker, than the battery I was trying to use.  That's when I realized they're not the same kind of battery.  The one I first used came from a package Father bought.  It's not a company I'm familiar with, and I also had a fleeting thought that a bad battery was the cause for all of this.  But it turns out, or at least I hope to Buddha that this is the reason, that the first battery was too thin to reach all the contacts inside the fobs, and that's why the car couldn't detect the fob inside the car.  I popped the Energizer battery in its place, and I could open and close the doors to the car from the front door just fine.

All that anxiety, stress and worry, and it was because of the wrong type of battery.  I'm sure everything's fine now, but my body is still reeling from the trauma, dammit.

Democracy Has Died; We Are A Broken Nation

So after I blog posted my previous blog post I got a push notification from my phone that Wisconsin went to That Fucking Guy.  That he won, as soon (remember that Biden took Pennsylvania and thus the presidency four days later, on Saturday) as he did overnight, makes me suspicious, frankly.  Hey, it all depends on the conspiracy theories that are true.  Fifteen million votes fewer for Harris than for Biden?  Did they all not vote for her?

I cannot believe that this fucking asshole, who was convicted of 30+ felonies, who is a rapist, who broke the law to steal the presidency back in 2016, and who is a stupid asshole who can't even get through a speech without going into a demented fugue state, "won" again.  Don't even believe he won fair and square here, either.  There were bomb threats in polling places in Georgia and Pennsylvania; they were traced to, duh-duh-duh, Russia.  That Fucking Guy had meetings with Netanyahu; I will totally believe he made a deal with Trump to not agree to a ceasefire in Gaza just to make Biden look bad.  And from 2016, the Original Sin of foreign election interference and conspiracy, the people who were brainwashed into voting for him then voted for him again.  That's still foreign election interference in my mind.

But the overriding takeaway from this election is that this country simply is not willing to make a woman its president, especially one of color.  It is not a surprise that America remains deeply sexist and racist, but the ramifications of those deep-seated prejudices on such an important event, when the other choice is that piece of shit, is still shocking, and sad.  Harris is immensely qualified, smart, diplomatic, and doesn't dance like a bobblehead for 30 minutes.  But Trump's a white guy, so he has to win.

We can't forgot the media apparatus surrounding Republicans.  There is a behemoth of a cable station, several radio networks, and now goddamn podcasts all supporting that gutless cult of a party.  It's scary to think that Joe Rogan (who has daughters, by the way) may have played kingmaker.  The guy from Fear Factor played kingmaker?

With that being said, commenters who are doing post-mortems unanimously believe Biden would have done worse.  I will not agree.  If America is so sexist and racist and selfish and hypocritical that it would reject an accomplished Senator such as Kamala Harris for a guy in his eighties who gave a blowjob to a microphone, isn't there a possibility that pushing out a White guy, Joe Biden, for Harris was a mistake?  Hey, this move backfired on us.  Maybe Biden should have stayed.  I think he could have won.

I need to end this or else I'll start throwing things.

I Don't Know When To Go Out/Don't Know When To Stay In

Adding to my anxiety as my sister and brother-in-law come back home for a week and a half is that for every workday this week, I spent some time out.  With this headache coming tomorrow/Saturday morning (and I mean that in the nicest way), I could have used an evening just to myself, at home.  But I was out instead -- sometimes because I wanted to (I hit this bar in the outskirts of downtown Minneapolis Monday because it had a Halloween theme; I was going to see the Opening Round of The Big Ten Women's Soccer Tournament yesterday/Thursday), sometimes because I had to (had to go to our bar Tuesday to make sure we could watch the Game this Saturday; and I had to stash my shit because My Fucking Father threw it in the recycling bin on Wednesday).  Goddamn, I was so busy.

Today/Friday was going to be my nothing day.  But then *****y texted Wednesday that she was hosting a party, and considering all the stress I had from My Fucking Father making decisions on stuff that wasn't his and from my sister and brother-in-law coming tomorrow/Saturday, I thought a little sexual healing would be good for me.  But then yesterday's/Thursday's snow came.  It sure was no Halloween Blizzard, but it was a lot more than the trace that was forecast to fall in our area.  Because of that, the Matches that were supposed to be played yesterday/Thursday are instead going to be played today/Friday.  And because I love being an in-person neutral for big tournaments like this -- and because I don't know if I can get my money back -- instead of getting my pee-pee yanked, I'll be braving the cold of sitting at the Robbie Stadium bleachers.  And I'll be tired as hell once I get home ... after I have a late dinner and gas up my car.  My sis and bro-in-law come in at 6 in the morning Saturday.

But hey, the headlight bulbs finally came, and in time.  Maybe we won't need a rental car this weekend after all.  Unfortunately, the long line of what-ifs regarding this stupid decision to have dinner in St. Paul around the time the Wild Game starts remains.