I was so close

Or... just when you think you've made ends meet, somebody moves the ends

I thought I had everything finished. I've been working till 8:00 every night this week trying to get all next week's work finished before I leave on vacation. We've put together an entire package for school districts looking for ways to spend their stimulus money, and I had to create all the landing pages for the campaigns. But my boss, whom I love to death, has changed the books on the pages about 4 times. Every time I finish the pages, she changes the books. If it was a simple listing, it would be no big deal, but there's a lot of coding behind each one in order to make it available to place in your shopping cart. Ugh. And we're talking about over a hundred books here. Grrr......

So these two things exemplify exactly how I feel right now. The little video we shot at the pet store. It was so cute, but if you can see there's this one little mouse stuck on the wheel going for a ride while the others keep running. And the song... well, it's just an awesome song :)

Monday Reckoning

It's still Monday here in California, even if it says Tuesday on the blog :)

I forgot all about this. I've been so busy at work - put in an 11 hour day today. And I'm trying to get ready for Passover, which begins tomorrow night, and I'm trying to prepare all my stuff for a weeklong cruise with my mom (leaving next Friday), so sorry if I haven't been commenting at your blogs or posting anything lately. Just life...

Anywho... Monday reckoning is here. Down 1 lb.

TMI???

So, it's annual review time at work, and we always have to do these dumb self-evaluations/self-reflections along with providing a list of our annual accomplishments, etc. (Don't you hate those?) The company has already announced that in an effort to reduce costs in 2009, merit increases will be limited to 3%. Thankfully, I have a terrific relationship with my boss. You all know that I work anywhere between 55-70 hours a week, depending on the project work being done at the time. I've been at this company for 10 years. I know they consider me to be a valuable employee. I'm not worried about losing my job over anything I may write. But still, it's not a good time for anyone to be stirring the pot. So here's how I answered the last question on the "self-evaluation" (bearing in mind this was number 8... sheesh, enough already):

Question: Is there anything else you would like to share about yourself professionally related to 2008? If so, what?

Answer: This is as honest and self-reflective as I can be. I love the work that I do, and I enjoy the people I work with. But I feel overextended. I cannot possibly accomplish everything that my job requires in an 8 hour day, and I cannot continue to lead a healthy life and keep a healthy family life working the number of hours that I do. I'm concerned that the quality of my work may begin to suffer, or that simply by the nature of my work ethic and gratitude for having a job in this economy, that I will allow my family life to suffer. I remain hopeful that our company will consider some sort of flex scheduling or ability to work from home occasionally that may allow employees like me to juggle a demanding job with home life in order to feel less stressed, less overextended, less unable to cope. Because that is how I feel most days.

TMI to give to your boss at review time?

I Just Have To Say...

That if I ever meet this doctor who I am transcribing for on my Saturday of mandatory overtime I am going to pull her hair really, really hard and tell her she's a very, very bad dictator! Very bad!

I've gotta laugh because grrrrr otherwise I'd cry.

Miss you guys!

Google Chrome Makes Its Debut

For those of you who don't know what I do for a living, I'm a tech geek. I write code all day long. I write web pages. I analyze shit. I look at web analytics all day. I write reports about all the crap I do. And I'm on the internet (unfortunately, not playing most of the time). 

I heart those Google guys. They always seem to come up with something one step ahead of the next guy. Witness GoogleChrome. What do I love? It's blazin' fast. It's easy to use. It's tabbed, but better than IE 7 or Firefox. And it's Open Source, which may not mean anything to you, but to a code geek, it's like manna from heaven. You can use anything they've written, and not have to ask permission. People steal code all the time, but it's not usually the right thing to do. Google has said - hey, it's the internet - we're the best. Take what you want from Google Chrome and share it with the world. Um, well...... OK.

If you are looking for an easy to use browser, look no further. It will import all your bookmarks, saved passwords, etc, no problem, too.  Give it a try.

It's brand new, of course, and I may change my mind... I'll let you know if I do.

It's Done, It's Done!!!

Holy crap, I thought it would never be done. The web site rewrite I've been working on for the last... 8, no, 9 months? It's in production! And without too many major glitches (those that we had necessitated a 2nd release, but no rollback, thank the good lord). I think I can cut my hours down from about 70 to about 60. Maybe even 50 if I get really daring and dangerous. W0ot!! Yippee Skippy, and any other silly expression you can think of, LOL!!

Lord have mercy. Let's celebrate! I'll extend the contest. You now have until this Saturday at midnight to comment either here or on the original post about your favorite Olympic event, and I'll throw in Jane Grave's 2 latest as well as the Hoyts.

Side note: Can you tell that Bob's latest comment to me was "Get all these books the hell out of here!" (and I don't believe hell was the actual word used, LOL) end side note

second side note: JB and Anne - your stuff went in the mail TODAY! see superlatives above :) end second side note

The complete and utter day from hell

My company publishes and sells books into the K-12 market - to schools, teachers, etc. for inservicing, professional development, etc. Needless to say, with budget cuts all across the country in school districts, business is not altogether booming.

A couple months ago, our much beloved president resigned (although it was never said, general consensus is that it was over philosophical differences with corporate). A couple weeks ago, our (also beloved) editorial VP resigned (likely for the same reasons).

Today, a mandatory meeting was held as soon as we got into the office. Everyone approached with fear and trepidation. You know that when you see the CEO, the VP of HR, and the company's legal counsel all heading toward the meeting room, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Our corporate CEO announced layoffs (the first in company corporate history not associated with a decision to outsource a particular job, etc). We were told to go back to our desks and (paraphrasing here) wait for the call to go to "the room" to meet with HR.

Bottom line is close to 25% of our staff was laid off. I was incredible fortunate to be keeping my job today, but I'll tell you that that ol' feeling of job security I've had for the last 9 1/2 years? Gone. It also means I definitely won't be getting that new hire or help that I was so looking forward to. Guess those 60 hour work weeks won't be ending any time soon.

My heart goes out to my colleagues, and my friends who lost their jobs today. I will miss them, and I hope that they will be able to find work soon, and make ends meet for their families. It's a tough ecomomy out there.

Workin' for the Weekend

Seriously, I wonder if it's normal to think EVERY DAY about quitting one's current job.

Because in all honesty, I contemplate it daily. And a number of times each day.

See, I don't like my day job. I have it to pay the bills. There's nothing I particularly love about it. I originally took it because it was closer to home. Really, that's the only reason why. You all didn't know me in my past job, but I drove 2 hours every day through Boston traffic, and it killed me. So I took this job, lower pay, less work, because it was much closer to home, and I didn't have to get on the highway at all.

But, I've been here for a year and a half and I'm BORED TO TEARS. My skills aren't utilized. It was like the position was defined by the last person who had it, who was not very good with computers, didn't have a lot of people skills, and didn't get grammar. And despite my many, many attempts, they have not upped the work at all, have not thought it important to challenge me one iota. I'm bored, plain and simple, and feel unappreciated.

Plus, it's CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY busy from November-Feb 1st, and then it DIES.

There's. Nothing. To. Do.

In some ways it's a blessing, because I have Whiskey Creek stuff to plan, editing to do, writing to do, and I get paid for it. But honestly, I'd rather just not get paid and sit at home where it's comfortable and I could get other things done, too.

This is just painful.

My only ray of sunshine is that I only have this for another 4 months, just until baby comes. Then I'm hitting up the maternity leave then LEAVING. Due to finances, I will still have to have a part time job, but it won't be here, and it won't be full time.

Sorry to rant on you all. The boredom has gotten to me. :-P