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sabrinageekSo what have I been up to?
Last week was my first full week at the new job. I worked 13 hours Monday. I worked something like 46 hours for the whole week. It's fast, I'm not sitting on my ass all day, I'm not sucking down soda all day, and other than getting my feet used to being on them all day, I like the job. If this pace keeps up, I should be losing weight in no time..
Officially, I am/will be in charge of shipping. I'm replacing a friend of mine who couldn't take the stress anymore. Other than that, things are going really well.
Rachel got a merit-based raise at her job of 8%. That translated out to 2k+ a year. She's thrilled, and I'm thrilled, because that will make up for my loss in "base" pay. (although the overtime makes up for that loss as well.) And given the nature of the job, I have found out that overtime is going to be pretty constant. The only question will be at the end of the week, when the managers are trying to minimize the amount of overtime they've already handed out. ;)
But yeah, Rachel's happy with her raise.. plus she still has her regular performance review/raise coming up in September.
Drama -- LaserQuest. I lost the love. I don't care anymore. I haven't been to practice in ages. This next weekend will be the regionals tournament, and I barely care enough to go. This will be my last tournament ever. I'm tired of the stupidity and immaturity of the kids and older people who have yet to become "adults" yet. I'm tired of trying to explain that I have a job, a house, a wife, and a mortgage to people. Those were important things to me. More important than LQ. So is my health. Taking an entire weekend to go to lock-ins and side tournies and staying up from 11pm to 7am to do so is taking its toll.
Drama -- Star Trek. I never thought I'd have to talk about drama in relation to Star Trek, but as I get older and more cynical and jaded, I realize that no matter what Roddenberry's ideals were, people are still people, and the important part of his philosophy was the -trying-. He never talked about succeeding. Just the effort to try. In the end, we're all still normal people, with normal people hangups and foibles. Recently, two characters (both female) wrote a love-scene that was voided, and because of this, people are in an uproar and resigning. The "appearance" is that the Fleet is biased against homosexuality. However, there are two things that "muddy" this situation, making it -not- a black & white issue. A) The fleet is PG-13 and always has been, and the fleet's policy has always been to "Fade to black" on love scenes. The emphasis of the fleet is to role play life in the Star Trek world, and that was its first priority. B) One of the resignees who wrote the love scene is notorious for doing so. She has 3 characters in the fleet, one of which is the XO of our ship, formerly the Asst. Medical Officer. Her character married the Chief Medical Officer, and for about 2 weeks, the only posts that came out between the two of them were essentially soft-core. I don't want to read it. Other people didn't either, and complaints were made to the proper people in the proper manner.
So, in this case.. I'm not sure what to think. I don't want to think that people in this day and age would still be biased against homosexuals. However, given that there's more to this story than just about one post being between two same-gender individuals, the added info that this person was continually writing soft-core love scenes between -all- of her characters, and that that was principally what she was doing, (very little role playing outside of the love scenes) and that she had been warned against doing so, seems to make this incident a straw-man. By making it between two same-gender individuals, the focus is on that, rather than being on the fact that it was a rules violation, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon against the "oppressive" leadership. However, the leader isn't helping himself any, because his posts have lacked the tact to say it was a rules violation based on graphic imagery and not because of anything homosexual.
What gets me is that the vast majority of these people are older than I am. Somehow, that worries me -- somehow, in my head, I could understand younger people being bigoted or ignorant, but in my own worldview logic, older people should be smarter and wiser and have learned tolerance by now. Sadly, I know this is not so from reading newspapers every day for the last 4 years and from being an observant people watcher. But still, when it's in the context of Star Trek, where the idea is to -TRY- to be better than you are, it's doubly disappointing.
It doesn't really matter, though. I'd been planning on resigning for my own reasons for the past couple of months -- the ship lost all of the crew that I worked really well with, I've been having trouble posting and working with the people on the ship, and simply put, the new job has severely limited my time online as well as making me lose interest. (I come home late, want to eat and go to bed.)
My interests are changing -- the things I've been into and doing for the past few years are being taken away from me, and that hurts a bit. But I have new interests to make up for it, as well. The Firefly/Serenity Browncoat fan scene. Possibly going back to SCA. The Commodore 64/Retro gaming scene. (I have an expo to run in September!) But it is strange.. things that have been constant for years are now suddenly changing or gone. My classic Dodge Challenger was sold because of the realization that we'd had it for almost 12 years now, and that I was probably never going to manage to get it legal and drive it -- it's just that low on my priorities list. I'm selling my Cop Car. I'm going to be selling my regular car. I'm going to get my van fixed (Dad gave me the 92 after it was stolen/recovered) and drive it for when I need to haul stuff/people, and I'm going to be a used cavalier as my "commuter" because I want a small, reliable, simple, gas efficient car.
Other than that, life goes on, and life is good. I'm happy, Rachel's happy, and we love each other so very much. We have our house, and our loan is our only significant debt. Rachel doesn't carry credit card balances, and I'm being better about not carrying much on mine. ($100-200 is much more manageable than trying to pay off thousands.) Our house is good, my kitty is good, we're budgeting our grocery costs well.. and so on. So we're happy.
But life does change and move on. I accept that and am ready to face what changes may lie ahead. And if nothing else, I think this job change was good for me to shake me out of my stagnancy and to remind me that it's a little scary, but not so scary as to be paralyzed by fear.
Last week was my first full week at the new job. I worked 13 hours Monday. I worked something like 46 hours for the whole week. It's fast, I'm not sitting on my ass all day, I'm not sucking down soda all day, and other than getting my feet used to being on them all day, I like the job. If this pace keeps up, I should be losing weight in no time..
Officially, I am/will be in charge of shipping. I'm replacing a friend of mine who couldn't take the stress anymore. Other than that, things are going really well.
Rachel got a merit-based raise at her job of 8%. That translated out to 2k+ a year. She's thrilled, and I'm thrilled, because that will make up for my loss in "base" pay. (although the overtime makes up for that loss as well.) And given the nature of the job, I have found out that overtime is going to be pretty constant. The only question will be at the end of the week, when the managers are trying to minimize the amount of overtime they've already handed out. ;)
But yeah, Rachel's happy with her raise.. plus she still has her regular performance review/raise coming up in September.
Drama -- LaserQuest. I lost the love. I don't care anymore. I haven't been to practice in ages. This next weekend will be the regionals tournament, and I barely care enough to go. This will be my last tournament ever. I'm tired of the stupidity and immaturity of the kids and older people who have yet to become "adults" yet. I'm tired of trying to explain that I have a job, a house, a wife, and a mortgage to people. Those were important things to me. More important than LQ. So is my health. Taking an entire weekend to go to lock-ins and side tournies and staying up from 11pm to 7am to do so is taking its toll.
Drama -- Star Trek. I never thought I'd have to talk about drama in relation to Star Trek, but as I get older and more cynical and jaded, I realize that no matter what Roddenberry's ideals were, people are still people, and the important part of his philosophy was the -trying-. He never talked about succeeding. Just the effort to try. In the end, we're all still normal people, with normal people hangups and foibles. Recently, two characters (both female) wrote a love-scene that was voided, and because of this, people are in an uproar and resigning. The "appearance" is that the Fleet is biased against homosexuality. However, there are two things that "muddy" this situation, making it -not- a black & white issue. A) The fleet is PG-13 and always has been, and the fleet's policy has always been to "Fade to black" on love scenes. The emphasis of the fleet is to role play life in the Star Trek world, and that was its first priority. B) One of the resignees who wrote the love scene is notorious for doing so. She has 3 characters in the fleet, one of which is the XO of our ship, formerly the Asst. Medical Officer. Her character married the Chief Medical Officer, and for about 2 weeks, the only posts that came out between the two of them were essentially soft-core. I don't want to read it. Other people didn't either, and complaints were made to the proper people in the proper manner.
So, in this case.. I'm not sure what to think. I don't want to think that people in this day and age would still be biased against homosexuals. However, given that there's more to this story than just about one post being between two same-gender individuals, the added info that this person was continually writing soft-core love scenes between -all- of her characters, and that that was principally what she was doing, (very little role playing outside of the love scenes) and that she had been warned against doing so, seems to make this incident a straw-man. By making it between two same-gender individuals, the focus is on that, rather than being on the fact that it was a rules violation, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon against the "oppressive" leadership. However, the leader isn't helping himself any, because his posts have lacked the tact to say it was a rules violation based on graphic imagery and not because of anything homosexual.
What gets me is that the vast majority of these people are older than I am. Somehow, that worries me -- somehow, in my head, I could understand younger people being bigoted or ignorant, but in my own worldview logic, older people should be smarter and wiser and have learned tolerance by now. Sadly, I know this is not so from reading newspapers every day for the last 4 years and from being an observant people watcher. But still, when it's in the context of Star Trek, where the idea is to -TRY- to be better than you are, it's doubly disappointing.
It doesn't really matter, though. I'd been planning on resigning for my own reasons for the past couple of months -- the ship lost all of the crew that I worked really well with, I've been having trouble posting and working with the people on the ship, and simply put, the new job has severely limited my time online as well as making me lose interest. (I come home late, want to eat and go to bed.)
My interests are changing -- the things I've been into and doing for the past few years are being taken away from me, and that hurts a bit. But I have new interests to make up for it, as well. The Firefly/Serenity Browncoat fan scene. Possibly going back to SCA. The Commodore 64/Retro gaming scene. (I have an expo to run in September!) But it is strange.. things that have been constant for years are now suddenly changing or gone. My classic Dodge Challenger was sold because of the realization that we'd had it for almost 12 years now, and that I was probably never going to manage to get it legal and drive it -- it's just that low on my priorities list. I'm selling my Cop Car. I'm going to be selling my regular car. I'm going to get my van fixed (Dad gave me the 92 after it was stolen/recovered) and drive it for when I need to haul stuff/people, and I'm going to be a used cavalier as my "commuter" because I want a small, reliable, simple, gas efficient car.
Other than that, life goes on, and life is good. I'm happy, Rachel's happy, and we love each other so very much. We have our house, and our loan is our only significant debt. Rachel doesn't carry credit card balances, and I'm being better about not carrying much on mine. ($100-200 is much more manageable than trying to pay off thousands.) Our house is good, my kitty is good, we're budgeting our grocery costs well.. and so on. So we're happy.
But life does change and move on. I accept that and am ready to face what changes may lie ahead. And if nothing else, I think this job change was good for me to shake me out of my stagnancy and to remind me that it's a little scary, but not so scary as to be paralyzed by fear.
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Date: 2005-06-20 07:09 pm (UTC)And yay for the overtime - but with overtime and fast-paced life, please remember to take care to get enough sleep and good food, and stay hydrated. (You know, I recently realized that I say these things to people a lot. When I was little, it sounded like annoying motherly advice. Now that I do 7-day-a-week job and full-tilt stress for a living, it just sounds like survival advice to me).
If you're on your feet all day, especially with hard floors, drop the money and invest in a really good pair of shoes. In shipping, if you need steel toes, I know Red Wings are highly praised by many airport workers. Otherwise, check out what the nurses are wearing - that's a profession that lives walking on their feet all day and night. If they fit perfectly, that's all you need - if they don't, get good inserts to go with. Good boots should never need to be broken in, they should be comfy from the start.
On drama - I think the best line I heard was one boy shouting at another in a club, "Just because it's ok to be gay doesn't mean it's ok to be an asshole!"
Unfortunately, people who like drama attract like minds, and they reinforce each other. The best that we can do is nip it in the bud, or walk away if it's grown to full flower of fire, and come back after they've exhausted that place and topic to ashes. They may grow older, but they do not learn or grow as people.
Fortunately, the 5% of any group that is composed of assholes is usually on 5%. So if you ignore those screaming their self-righteous self-importance, there are interesting people out there to share interests, old and new alike.
On interests changing - it is funny how much they do, and how rare it is to actually notice it. I'm glad we all stay on the B-town list, as it's one of the few constants. Otherwise, I'm a very different person than I was three years ago, and two years before that. May we all find happiness!