Footprints on the Moon

Well, guys, my stint as a paper delivery person lasted one whole day. It was absolutely miserable! Not that I expected it to be fabulous and glamorous, but still. It was a lot of in and out of the car, and there’s an apartment complex on the route that required being up and down 3 flights of stairs. After dragging myself out of bed at 2 oclock in the morning!

In the end, the thing that made me decide that it wasn’t for me was the fact that I barely made it to work on time. The paper isn’t flexible, and if something were to come up and I would have to abandon the paper route to make it to work on time I would potentially be facing some fees and other liabilities due to breach of contract. Anything can happen… weather, car issues, just getting sick… I just don’t want to have to be stressed out every morning that I’m not going to make it to work on time because it took me too long to deliver papers. I like my current job, it’s my priority, and I can’t jeopardize that in the name of extra income.

So I called left a message with the paper (cause I’m not getting out of bed at 2 oclock in the morning just to call and say I’m not coming!) letting them know that I decided not to take the route due to the potential scheduling conflicts. So it’s back to the drawing board on a second job, since I won’t be making my millions with commercial real estate or paper delivery. I’m going to be looking for something in the evening hours. I’d rather find something that might lead to me sacrificing a little sleep on the front end and not have to worry about being late for work.

I just had to laugh today. We have a health and safety department where I work, and one of the things they focus on is ergonomics. They’ve trained people in pretty much every department to be ergonomic facilitators, I put in a bunch of work orders to have employees’ work surfaces moved up an inch, down two inches, move the keyboard trays, that sort of thing. They “yell” at me all the time for hyperextending my wrists while typing, and for leaning on the desk, or to the side while I’m reading things online. (If only they could see my posture when I’m at home, leaned back with one leg propped up on the edge of the desk!)
Why is that funny? Well, because today was work order day. I processed the work orders for the week. I also helped my friend Amy put together packets, and stuff packages for a study she’s doing. By the end of the day, I managed to give myself not one, not two, but THREE papercuts. And nicked my knuckle on the tape dispenser. Somehow, I don’t think posture correction is my biggest safety issue at work! And can someone explain to me why paper cuts manage to hurt so much? It’s just a tiny little cut, but it really stings– especially the one right on the pad of my finger. I can’t help but accidentally press on it!

Someone who used to work here just came in with “the Christmas dog”. She was actually just dropping another person off for work, and picking up a picture from someone else. Why bring your dog with you? Yeah, the dog was cute, but it really doesn’t belong in a place of business. And I just don’t like clothes on animals. It’s one thing when you have the little teeny dogs that need a sweater just to go outside to pee so they don’t freeze to death, but this dog was plenty big and furry enough to not need a Christmas sweater. Grumble, grumble.
Felt bad for the dog too… when she came in, she opened the door really hard right into his head! I could hear the thunk from my desk. Seriously though folks, if you’re not blind, leave the dog at home. Or, if people want to see your dog so badly, they can come out to your car and see it. Bah Humbug. LOL

Why do people get on the phone and mumble? Seriously. It’s still early on Monday morning, I’m going to need you to speak up and talk clearly! Some people make me wish my phone had subtitling capabilities. You want to call and ask about a job? That’s fine, but nobody’s going to hire you if they can’t even understand what you’re saying!
I’d also like to point out that what’s coming over the phone is usually not the only noise I’m hearing… don’t make me struggle to hear you over the conversation someone else is having 2 feet away, the “white noise” the company feels the need to pipe through the building, and heaven knows what else.

It’s 5:15 and I’m already getting sleepy. Normally, this would be annoying. Today however, this is a very good thing. I need to go to bed early, so being tired will definitely help with that. Why am I going to bed early on a Tuesday night?? (Which just so happens to be my favorite TV night, just for the record)
Tomorrow, I have to be AT work at FIVE AM! Normally, I get out of bed at 5:30. Tomorrow at 5:30, I will have been at work for half an hour already. Man, that’s painful just thinking about it! I already changed into pajamas, but I’m going to have to put clothes back on in a minute and run out to get gas in the car. My gas light came on on my way home from work, and I am definitely NOT leaving early enough to stop at the gas station in the morning!
I won’t have access to my computer for the extra two hours either… boo… I’ll be in the hallway being bored. I don’t think I can get away with a book either. Oh well, it’s just one day, I think I can survive!

I had to laugh today… Janette’s been training me on a new task that I’m going to be taking over for her. It got me remembering when she was training me to take over the position that I’m in now. She was very thorough, down to discussing the plants in the lobby. I soon discovered there was a good reason for this– we have a lot of plants in here. One of the trees was real, the other was one of those silk trees. Apparently when she first started, she spent about three months watering one of our fake plants before discovering that it was in fact made out of plastic. That gave me a good chuckle. It was the most alive fake-plant I’ve ever seen!

I’m getting ready to pull my hair out. I’ve been getting a phone call from the same person, over and over again. This is, in and of itself, not unusual. It’s actually been a repeat problem all this week, from different people. The difference today is that it is one person calling from a commercial collection agency, and they are looking for an employee that no longer works here. And hasn’t for YEARS. And it doesn’t matter how many times I tell them that this employee no longer works here, this chick keeps. calling. back. And it’s not even like it’s someone else from the same company. No it’s the SAME PERSON! Honey, I’m not lying to you. He doesn’t work here anymore. Please stop calling me.

Hmm… apparently I need to write an Open Letter to all outside callers/visitors as well. LOL

I’ll have to get a picture for you because I’ve been slacking on that, but I now have new uniforms for work. I had been hoping that the business casual attire would hold out indefinitely, but it was not meant to be. I am now wearing a white shirt, black pants, black blazer and a cross-over tie. It’s classy, let me tell you. I feel so overdressed though… like I should be offering a business opportunity to everyone I meet. Or pointing out the exits because the tie makes me feel like a flight attendant. Maybe I should dig out my black skirt, and wear that with some panty hose and black pumps. Then I’d *really* look like a flight attendant! If I think about it when I get home, I’ll snap a picture. Or one day next week. I’m just waiting for everyone to get used to the new look so I can quit feeling self-conscious and on display.

I’m in serious need of a Microsoft Word expert! I have a project at work, and I have to make mailing labels. Easy enough to do in Word, but I have all of this information already in a spreadsheet! I have figured out how to merge this information to a label sheet *IF* I were using a traditional mailing address format. I, however, am using simply first name, last name, and a mail code. I can get the labels to pull the name, but not the mail code. I will type out all the labels if I have to, but something tells me that someone, somewhere knows how this can be done. If you need more information to help, please let me know, and I’ll explain more.
I really don’t want to have to type out the labels because Word doesn’t seem to be capable of reorganizing the labels (say, if I need to add 3 or 4 employees to the list) at a later date and time. You either add them at the end, or you start over to have your order right. Boo… am I making this too difficult? It’s possible… Word and I have arguments sometimes.

It just occurred to me that I never posted about the birthday present for my boss. I took pictures and everything!! Unfortunately, you still don’t get those as they are on my computer at home, and not uploaded on the internet anywhere (though I would’ve SWORN they were before I went looking for them!) Gary only likes orange candy, and he expresses his displeasure every time I let a piece of orange candy slip through to the general candy bowl. So I got the idea in my head to get him a large variety of orange candy– pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I will admit that about halfway through the project, I started to wish I’d gone for golf equipment instead, but in the end I came up with a pretty large bowl filled with more candy than he can eat in a year.
I’ll see what I can remember… in the bowl was:

A chocolate orange
Mini chocolate oranges
Orange slices
Citrus Mint Orbit gum
Orange TicTacs
Orange Starburst
Orange Now n Laters
Orangeheads
Orange/Chocolate Pastilles (from the world foods aisle)
Orange Lifesavers
Orange Mint Lifesavers
Orange Cremesavers

It seems to me that there was something else in there, but I can’t think of anything else. I’ll add a picture here when I get home if I think of it!

Top of the Bowl

Just so you can have some idea of what size the bowl is.