To trudge

When I first started my job, I parked in the second level of the parking ramp just outside the part of the building where I work. When my shift changed to start a couple of hours later, that lot tended to be filled, and I resorted to parking in the overflow lot just south of the building. That parking lot has been torn out to lay the foundation for a new satellite building to the headquarters, mirroring the existing satellite building across the street, which, coincidentally, is where I've been recently forced to park, picking up a shuttle van from the first floor of their parking ramp.

Today, however, I stood in the shuttle loading area as the ten minutes before the start of my scheduled shift ticked away with no sign of a van. I called my supervisor and assured her that I wasn't late (a defensible point being on company property), and that I would be walking the half mile or so to work. She assured me that she would look into the matter of the shuttles, but eventually, I found that it was easiest to just ask one of the drivers. He explained that the vans, as of this morning, only pick up at the front of the building, not at the parking ramp. The shuttle driver explained that it's a short walk to the new shuttle stop, through the building that my security badge does not allow me to enter, and that signs indicating this change were posted, inside the building, which my security badge will not allow me to enter.

I can assuredly walk around the outside of the building to get to the shuttle, but it's only slightly shorter than the half mile walk to my own building. If getting to work gets one step more difficult, I'm taking a short cut through the construction site next time, throwing myself down the pit and living like a king for the rest of my days off the settlement.

It was an invigorating stroll in the 2° morning air, though I can't imagine it did much for my already grotesque choking cough. One of the callers I spoke to today told me that I shouldn't be at work, a sentiment echoed by my nearest co-worker. She told me I'm going to make everyone else ill. I explained that when the company begins calculating my quarterly bonus on how often she calls in sick, I'll start concerning myself with epidemiology.

Until then, I am a plague rat with an average call handle time 7% below goal threshold.

It would be an easy segue to make fun of Discordianism.

I learned today that I share my birthday with the anniversary of the discover of Eris, the largest dwarf planet in the solar system. This is doubly coincidental, as I am, technically, the second largest dwarf planet in the solar system.

Today is my birthday. I have opted to stay home and continue my recuperation from my Crippling Illness during my Hellish Week of Mandatory Overtime. It's probably for the best, though, in the spirit of recuperation, I should probably cut this blog update short in favor of going to bed early.

But, for the record, Discordianism is also a funny religion.

If it kills me...

The noble cyanocrylate Jackson pine that had adorned my parents' living room has once again been crammed into a brightly hued body bag and shoved under the stairs for another 11-month long nap. I've always liked January. My birthday's in January, though that promises to be a non-event at best this year. It's also horrifically cold, which I enjoy, but that's not really it either. Mostly I like a new year. It's a fresh set of downs. I've always (or nearly always) been future-oriented. I'm a guy with not much going for him but potential. That's probably less and less true at the age of 30, but I'm told 30 is the new 20 by people too young by that math for their opinion to matter. In any case, I've knocked down two days of my two months of alternating toil and hibernation.

All in all, I'm in a good place. I managed to get through Christmas and New Years without major injury. I'm still a touch gimpy from my twisted ankle on Halloween and I can still feel some of the lump in my face from what was once a mighty black eye earned on Thanksgiving. Also, unlike the previous two holidays, I managed to not get broken up with through past couple weeks, though that was mostly by the severely efficient means of not having been dating at the time. Terms are more or less amicable, though Laura has put her assertion that she was "not going to wait around for me to deal with my Stevie situation" into fairly expedient action, Facebook status updates tell me. I met him last week. Nice enough guy, by the less than august standards of Guys Who Come After. Though his Facebook does list his religion as "Norse Pagan." That's troubling.

I'm hoping that's either intended as irony or that he's using "religion" as a synonym for "hobbie" or "thing I use to select tattoo designs," because the alternative is that he thinks we're going to some day drown in the blood of the Midgard serpent, or that it's a pretense intended to elicit toothy BJs from fat Wiccans at Summer Solstice bonfire parties behind their dads' cabins in Dakota County.

Trifles, in any case. Best of luck to them both.

In other news, some combination of my recent severe illness, winter beard, lack of grooming, my new default winter outfit, and crippling cynicism is really working for me, because the white trash girl at the gas station told me I looked nice today, and Sassy Black Lady at work agrees with her.

Tomorrow is both my birthday and my last scheduled 10-hour workday of the week. Snow is predicted for the morning commute.

Here's hoping all your dreams come true as mine have.

My New Years resolution is 1080p

I'm working something like 10 hours of overtime next week. Tomorrow is my supervisor's last day at the company, and he'll be spending his last day doing annual performance reviews. It seems to be like he got tricked into complicating his tax return, but I guess ultimately I'm pleased to get my review from a guy who has already learned to find me amusing rather than abrasive and contemptuous of company policy. Everything seems to be going well toward my plan to work from home. Notwithstanding, that is, the home.

Which brings me to the main part of my plan for 2011. Back in Minneapolis by March. As of Wednesday, I will be 30 years old and living in my parents' basement. It's an arbitrary milestone, but it's an unseemly one just the same. So, for the next two months, my plan is to spend as much time at home and at work as humanly possible (exceptions to be made for birthdays, etc.) If I send you a text inviting you out to a bar, tell me to go home until I can invite you over to my apartment.

Usually, I'm quite skilled at sleep-walking through a period of several weeks in order to reach a goal unreachable by any means other than persistence. The start of the new academic semester will make it easier to keep my head down and my expenses low. There's a lot of TV to be watched.

Seems like a good time to get a few more entries in on my various other abandoned blogs, too.

Wish me luck, and buy me a drink next Saturday.