outsdr | Weekly update

I have to write a column today but I'm having a major low point and while I have the subject, the words just won't come together so I'm going to do a weekly update in hopes of getting a flow going.

I went to be last night at 6:30 pm. I woke up at 9:30 and stared at the ceiling for two hours debating whether I should get a drink of water because I was thirsty and my mouth was so dry. The water was at my desk, right beside he bed, but it took me two hours to decide that yes, I needed a drink of water. I managed to make the decision on whether I should also visit the bathroom or not before I got back into bed, because who knows how long I would have laid there otherwise.

On Monday I was called in to interview for a pre-press position at a small print shop. The position was offered to me at the end of the interview. Low pay, and part-time work ($10 an hour at maybe 30 hours a week) I took it anyway because I was tired of passing up work and waiting for something better to come along, and I'd rather be doing something than nothing and have some sort of income than none.

I started Tuesday. The job is simple, and much like work I was doing 15 years ago. When I got home at the end of the day, there was an email waiting for me from Kemtah, asking me to interview for the position I had been waiting for all along.

Of course.

They wanted me to interview Wednesday. I wrote back saying I could not, but I could Thursday morning. Wednesday I went into the new job, worked the day with no problems, and got home to a new email from Kemtah saying that Thursday morning was fine.

I'd been trying to make the best of the print shop work, but to be honest, I was bored out of my mind. They definitely got their money's worth out of me; so far in addition to doing all the work I needed to do, I'd also repaired the connections to the network printer that was preventing the production machine from printing (their solution had been to email everything that needed printing to the computer the printer was attached to!) I also cleaned up a bunch of improper file associations, removed a seriously high amount of malware, and repaired one computer that wasn't working at all.

Thursday morning's interview went very well, and by Thursday after noon I had a preliminary offer, enouugh of one that I decided to go in early on Friday to tell the print boss that my last day would be September 2.

The Kemtah job is full time, with benefits, and pays $15 an hour. Not as much as I was hoping for, but sufficient.

Friday morning I went in early to the prtint shop and explained to the boss what was going on. He took it well, and asked how much I would be making there. At that point, I didn't know yet, so I said $18 an hour ... and he asked me if I would stay if he matched it!

That caught me off guard.

I told him I appreciated the offer, but that I would also be getting benefits and full time hours. He asked if I was going to work that day, and I said yes, and I'd work until the 3rd if he wanted me to.

In other news, Andy has been playing a game called Saints Row 4 that he's been raving over, about how much fun it is, and that it has cooperative play, which is somehting he and I enjoy a lot. So Friday night I spent the $70 and bought the game. Saturday morning I started playing a little and .... it wasn't fun. I fought with for an hour or so before giving up.

A little later Andy asked me what I thought of it and I told him it wasn't fun. He started a co-op game for us to play, and that turned out to be even less fun, because only one person could do anything at a time during a lot of the game! The more I played it, the more I hated it, until finally, at 6 pm, I gave up.

And that's when I shut down my computer because I didn't want to be awake any more, and I went to bed.

ETA: First draft of column is written. I don't like it very much. I swore I was going to clean my car this weekend, so I guess I should go and do that now.