Mortar for the meat castle.

I haven't been updating my blog as often as I'd intended this year. The original theory was that I would have a lot of downtime at work during which I could write blog posts, but I've since directed that spare time toward writing and maintaining the site blog on my company's peculiar in-house social networking site. The blog and discussion pages are already pretty popular, and it gives me a way to pass the time that's within the guidelines for internet usage in the employee handbook.

It's probably not the worst use of my time career-wise, considering the number of job postings for copy writers for the various intra-company publications.

I worked some overtime, I filed my taxes, and I apparently qualified for the fourth quarter bonus. This should make for a pretty flush February, all in all. I've started plans for the Tropical Depression Party on February 18th. I'm hoping that my various invitees' romantic relationships are either too old or too young to worry about the scheduling to interfering with Valentine's plans.

I keep meaning to call Clancy's in Linden Hills to check whether they sell whole suckling pigs. I'm sure someplace on East Lake Street could provide one as well, but if it's something that needs to be special ordered, I don't necessarily trust my grasp of Spanish to be able to express the request clearly.

I spent a lot of money this weekend catching up on bills and buying groceries. I spent $250 between Sam's Club and Aldi. Who wants to come over for dinner? For that matter, I still haven't tried out the awesome latching crock-pot with travel case that I got for Xmas. Who wants to invite me over? I can bring dinner.

Sweater-vest, Beardo, Pigseye, Mom Jeans, Bulky, and Eyebrow.

There are way too many new people at work for me to assign them all unflattering nicknames, much less learn their actual names. It occured to me yesterday that the drastic shift in the median age of my co-workers is probably at least partially responsible for the change to my schedule. The truckload of fresh-out-of-junior-college new reps on the phones has probably made the 10:30 - 7 shift a lot easier to staff. I decided that rather than suffer the undiluted indignity of the opening shift next week, I would just bite the bullet and sign up to work every hour the call center is open next week.

I realize that's the office staffing equivalent of cutting yourself to feel control over your life, but it'll be nice to not have to check my schedule. Combined with this week's overtime, that amounts to almost 3 weeks' pay on my next check and no rent to pay out of it. Current front-runners for immediate self-reward include the 1.5 horsepower meat grinder that Amazon.com keeps e-mailing me about, a second-hand chest freezer, and a new suit or two.

I turned 31 yesterday. Today, I will eat the weight of a newborn child in shiwarma to celebrate with my family, but after that, you should stop by the Bargain Basement Bar for a cocktail.

Is there any sight more nauseating than a sunrise over a cubicle wall?

I'll tell you, 6am is a colder, harsher hour when it's not your signal to go to bed. For reasons clear neither to me nor, apparently, to my immediately supervisor, the workforce management department has seen fit to slide my usual comfortable closing shift up to the bitter pitch black of the early morning. There appears to be abundant opportunity for overtime, and January is my traditional month for financial recovery and social hibernation, so I guess there’s a silver lining to this bone-chilling cloud of pre-dawn rime ice, but it was a roughshod and sudden death that my vacation died this morning.

The new year has also brought the first sign of legitimate winter, which, as it turns out also has an upside. The expired license tabs on the back of my car that would normally mar the dull and dapper semblances of responsible adulthood pending my next payday is neatly obscured by a bulwark of crunchy snow and ice. The truth is, I could afford to buy tabs this week if my work schedule allowed me to get to the Midtown DMV before Saturday. When I say “could afford”, I mean barely. I cleared the holiday season with my accounts pretty well tapped out, though I made it without ever having to think too hard about the costs of the gifts I bought. There’s an argument to be made that the luxury of ignoring your account balance is the real goalpost of financial stability. Worst case scenario, if an especially astute office peeks into the ice cave that holds my expired tabs, the deadline to pay the ticket is still beyond the next non-rent paying paycheck, which will be significantly bolstered by as yet untold hours of mandatory overtime. My dad taught me that the best use of money is to slay petty inconveniences like having to make a panicked rush to the DMV after work. Plus, there’s always the possibly apocryphal story about the “10-day grace period.”

I am unconcerned.

The year of living comfortably

One year ago, I had $5,000 in credit card debt and I lived in my parents' basement. I made $130 less per week than I make now. Today, my apartment is freshly cleaned (many thanks to Stevie for waking up 3 hours before me), the bar is still handsomely stocked post-New Years party and my ten day vacation ends in 14 hours.

My parents bought me a laptop for Xmas, which means that, for the first time since moving to this apartment, I can be on the internet and watching TV at the same time, which, it turns out, is integral to my creative process, so you, Dear Internet, will now be graced with pithy, rambling summations of my day at work three or four times a week, and occasional weekend demands that you come over and eat snacks and drink up my booze.

By the way, thanks again to everyone who came to the party. The guests ate every scrap of appetizer I put out, and dirtied every lowball in the house, but notwithstanding Stevie's now lifelong hatred of confetti, I couldn't have asked for a better party. We also maintain a perfect record of about six parties with no noise complaints from the neighbors. Number seven is tentatively scheduled for early February. Bring flip-flops.

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.