Wow, it’s been a long time since I last wrote. I could make excuses like I’ve been busy and writing intimidates me, but what does it really matter? It’s not like this is some school assignment I’m late turning in! Anyway, on with the catching up.
One of the big things that happened is I found a big house to rent. Actually, it’s huge, 3,800 square feet with a two-car garage and almost two acres of yard. I’m renting it from my new friends, who I’ll talk about later. The super awesome thing about it is, since they’re animal lovers too, they’re letting me have Pepper and put in a doggy door for her! So, I’ve spent the last month or so moving in and unpacking and getting ready for Pepper to arrive. She will (hopefully) be here next Friday! I’m so excited to have my baby girl with me again! It will be interesting to see how she and the cats get along. I also hope to get her back into training, and then maybe she can go to therapy with me! J
Another thing that’s been keeping me busy is Robotics. I’ve started helping out with the local high school robotics team. They call me a mentor, but mostly I just hang out ‘cause I’m not very good at robotics. The kids are great, it’s nice to see them excited about science and engineering and everything. Reminds me of when I was on the Robotics team at my high school. The main mentor and brain power behind the team is also my new landlord. One day I was whining about how horrible my apartment was and how much I missed Pepper and he said he had a house for rent if I wanted it. Long story short, I’m now renting his house. I’m also helping renovate it, so that will keep me busy after Robotics is over.
More than just a new place to live, my new landlord and his wife have made me feel like part of the family. His wife is a hair stylist and is helping me do crazy fun things with my hair. He also has a motorcycle he doesn’t use that he said I can ride whenever I want! How freaking lucky can a girl get?! He’s a great mentor for the kids, being a machinist and owning a machine shop. I like to putz around his shop cleaning and organizing. One day I spent several hours sorting drill bits; it sooths my OCD.
It’s a good thing I have new friends and things to keep me busy because work has been trying my patience. First, when the NRC was coming to visit, one of my coworkers informed me that my desk space was “unprofessional” and that I needed to clean it up. Apparently people don’t like my construction toys and sparkly things. I thought she was being ridiculous so I left everything how it was. Until somebody else came and told me the same thing. So I packed up most of the more frivolous stuff, just leaving my pictures and some colorful things. And then somebody came and told me that the little one’s homecoming picture was “offensive” and that I needed to take it down. At that point I called HR and she said that no matter what it is, if somebody thinks it’s offensive you have to take it down. So I stripped my cube of everything personal (except my reference books) and tried not to cry where anybody could see me. I even switched to a totally plain coffee mug that nobody could possibly call offensive. What is the world coming to when you can’t even have family pictures up in your cube?! I was really upset for a while, but I’ve pretty much gotten over it. I now have a bunch of pictures up at the house and it makes me happy there.
I’ve also been butting heads with people at work a lot more. I got in a big argument with one of the design guys and my group lead about what category a certain item belonged in and who’s scope it was. The way it was worded, I’m not qualified to do it. I argued that per the procedure, it belonged to a different group. The design guy claimed that in the calcs it defined it as being in my scope. So I said it either had to be redefined everywhere else, or it had to go to the other group. I went to my group lead for some backup, and he told me to just do it as-is ‘cause the design guy said so! I was so freaking angry that he would tell me to do something that violated the procedure just ‘cause he didn’t want to confront the design guy! This wasn’t the first time he’s failed to back me up, but it was by far the worst. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. So I gathered up paperwork to back up my story and went to our manager. I was so upset I was shaking the whole time, and almost started crying again, but I managed to get my point across. For the rest of the day I hid at my desk with headphones on listening to heavy metal and avoiding my lead. Later our manager came back to me and said they had decided to redefine the scope so that I would be qualified to do it. That seems really fishy to me, and I said so, but I’ll do it anyway because he has authority to do that sort of thing.
What else has happened? Oh yes, one of my group-mates got fired, supposedly for collecting the living allowance when he wasn’t qualified for it. Unfortunately he and my lead were buddies, so my lead is now super grumpy. We got two new people in my group and I’m trying to make sure they get their training done as fast as possible so they don’t have to go through the training purgatory that I went through for over two months.
Well I’m sure I’m forgetting half the stuff that happened in the last couple of months, but I can’t think of it right now. I’m going to try to update more often, but no promises!
