View from the hill

I had an interview yesterday, although I'm too shellshocked (I should call it "jobshocked") to make any predictions or dare to have any hopes. I think it went well, but it was a preliminary kind of interview. We'll see what, if anything, comes of it. I'm thinking since I'll be out of town the second week in August, I'm figuring it'll have gone well, and I'll get a call from the place when I'm out of town. That'd be tops! I'm busy trying to figure out Bizarroworld's Byzantine voicemail system, so I can have that working for me when I'm out of town, like letting me check messages, if any, remotely.

Ideally, I won't have to -- the sods have about two weeks to contact me, so if anything good is coming my way (e.g., more interview hoops to jump through), I should hear by then.

Musical interlude (bad sound, but great video)...

Dude, I'm screwed!

Tsarina dropped the bomb on me yesterday, though in a weirdly indirect manner, owing to miscommunication. Anyway, instead of doing the job of two people, I'll be doing the job of three people, once Splints leaves Bizarroworld. They keep ratcheting it up, seeing how much I can take until I break. Hopefully I can get something lined up before I have to do too much of this; Splints leaves in early August, so the heat is on. But the list of infamy grows...

1. Passed over for a managerial promotion
2. Junior person made my boss
3. My position is to be eventually eliminated
4. I'm given more work than I can possibly do
5. Another effective demotion is imminent as I take on the additional workload, since the junior person I'll be working with will think of it more like I'm working for her
   

I think there are some things I'm forgetting in this, some other insults to what pride I have left. Man, I wish I could jump back into time and tell them to blow it out their ass when they offered me my current position. I remember telling Folding Chair when it was offered to me, "You know, this will be like a qualitative demotion." and she said "Oh, I do not think anybody will see it that way." But in practice, that is exactly how it turned out. Fool that I was in 2002, I thought my hard work would be rewarded. In my next job, I think, just to mix things up a little, I will try to be as nearly useless as possible, so I can run the company in a few years.

I'm still ironclad until the hammer falls, but I really don't know how I'm going to do this.

My older son

You know, B1? He's a Dwarf. That is, he has a Dwarvish way about him (which is ironic, since he's very tall for his age, and skinny). Case in point...

1. He loves bridges, fences, any kind of construction
2. He loves cranes, bulldozers, and steamrollers
   
3. He loves mountains, caves, and volcanoes
4. He loves the scraping sound a shovel makes
5. He loves diamonds
6. He loves seeing paved roads
7. He once commented (when seeing some woods while on a hike): "They need to cut all these trees down and build a road."
   
8. He's very stubborn
9. He likes things to be Just So
10. He has a long memory
11. He loves building things

I'm sure there are more examples I'm forgetting, but Spousette and I are always amused by his Dwarvish ways. B2 has shown a fairly Dwarvish affinity for rocks lately -- he loves playing near rocks, checking them out. But we'll see if he's Dwarvish, or, perhaps, Gnomish. He's a scrapper, that's for sure.

As more examples occur, I'll try to remember to add them.

Ride on

Great morning for biking -- sunny, lovely churning lake, puffy white clouds, cool air (and a nice feisty tailwind, for once, which zipped me to work quickly).

I finished my week's iTunes project, getting nearly everything back up on my work system that I'd lost, and then some. I'm now at 4,618 tunes. So much better. I kind of hate iTunes; it's kind of a psychotic jukebox. I don't know why it does what it does sometimes, but I know I'm not going to update it again, because it'll just dump all those songs I've worked to add, because they're .mp4s or .aacs or whatever.

I've got a pile of work to get through today, will try to get it all done, be John J. Workenheimer today.

Stormy Weathers

The sky looks pink this morning; it's all very overcast, but with the sun coming up (somewhere), it's making it look pink, almost periwinkle, or something.

Wow, was that ever a load of stormage last night. It was like a strobelight (or strobe light? Hmm) outside our window, and yet, I managed to sleep. I think I can sleep through almost anything.

3-D is out all week; I'm so glad for that. I hate his George Costanzian presence. His very existence offends me.

I kind of can't believe it's Thursday already. The week has managed to drag and pass quickly at the same time, some kind of temporal warp or something.

My project for the week has been reloading the lost music on my iTunes (I'd bitched about that before, elsewhere, so no need to rehash it -- suffice to say my work iTunes lost about 1,500 songs, maybe more). So, I've been busy bringing files to work in bundles; I've added about 700 since Monday, and after today, should have about 900 restored. By the time I'm done, I should have around 5,000 or more songs on at work. Yes, you can see where my priorities are on the job!

I've made good social inroads with Crabcakes, one of the production people (the other Em, the one who wasn't Snausage, Homegrrl) -- she's the one nice and/or decent person in that group. I always think it's useful know one production person, since they get scoop more often than we do. She's commented about how crazy Bizarroworld is, how nobody talks, how much that sucks. I feel her pain; everybody goes through that reaction when they join the madhouse.

I'm perennially amused that the Raj gave us luggage tags with the Bizarroworld logo on it as some kind of bonus. It's like "Hmmm, are we...uh...going someplace?" Yeah, out the f*cking door!

So, I'm about 3/4 of the way through the fantasy novel, copy editing it. I hope the fucking editors who eventually (hopefully) get this book appreciate all the front-end editing I've done on it. I'm sure some BVHD asshats will scoff at it, like "Ahuh, well, this section's a little weak, we need more plu perfect tense!" but I edited the bejeezus out of this book. After the edits are done, I'm going through it ONE LAST GODDAMNED TIME to add sparkle, as I put it -- a final coat of sparkle and then varnish. The sparkle will be just adding to description and such, where needed.

The glow is gone, the sky is cloudy-blue again. I guess that rosy glow was the sun rising behind the clouds. Neat.

Anyway, it'll be fully and finally done; once we're back from the trip to California, then the pimp-a-palooza begins, with me crafting the all-important query letter, and trying to get somebody to take this book. I can see it now: "It's like Beowulf meets A Game of Thrones!"

Goodness

I’ve decided on a whim that today is “use Edwardian script Tuesday.” This is a test to see if it will translate into Blogger. It would certainly be funny if it did. Damn, it worked when I pasted it, then ignored it and deleted it. Damnation!

I'm kind of bored with blogging. Took a couple of years, but look where I am, eh? Several dead blogs, one in stasis, and this one on life support. Sigh. I feel like if I got a new job, I'd have all kinds of amusing bits to report, but since I'm still stuck in Bizarroworld, I've covered that to death, yes?

You know what I'm up to -- parenting, husbanding, writing, working, eating, exercising, listening to music, reading, watching trash television. Behold the boundaries of my world! Hahah! Living the dream, living the dream!

I guess when I'm back from visiting my folks in Santa Barbara (second week in August), I'll have new stuff to report (assuming I survive the trip). Stay tuned?

Toenail RIP

Lost the rest of that pesky toenail yesterday; snagged it on a box, hurt like hell, and I clipped it to the nubbins, peroxided it and added some Neosporin to it and a band-aid. It's much better now. Stupid nail! My toestub count since 7/12 stands at 3.

Weekend went way too quickly, but we went to a fun party yesterday. A luau (sic) for one of Spousette's friends, who's moving to Hawaii for a year for an academic program. Cool stuff! We may visit her next year, if save up for it (and, ideally, I'll have another job by then, yes? Sheesh).

Anyway, it was fun. The boys enjoyed themselves greatly. B2 is shaping up to be a party animal, but that's something I already knew. I did a few shots of some kickass tequila, using a tiki shotglass necklace that I'd been given. Nice!

What else? I drove in to work today, because it's supposedly gonna storm this afternoon, and I had to get home in good time because Spousette's got a doctor's appointment, the final follow-up on her lasik eye surgery, which went without incident, and turned out to be a great thing for her, no muss, no fuss. I'd never do it, though. No way!

Looks like 3-D might be out this week. That'd be great, if so. I thought I'd overheard him saying he'll be out this week, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. So far, though, so good.