Week in Review

Last Monday night, I rode my bike home from work and decided, at the last minute, that it would be a good idea to stop in at McDonald's and buy a chocolate milkshake.

In hindsight, it wasn't such a good idea.

Tuesday night I rode all the way home, but once I arrived, I thought it would be a good idea to go to Freddie's and buy a chocolate milkshake.

Wednesday night I also bought a chocolate milkshake from Freddie's.

Thursday night, I stopped at McDonald's and bought a chocolate milkshake.

Friday night I did not have a milkshake, but I did eat some ice cream.

Saturday night I did not have a milkshake and I did not have any ice cream.

Sunday night I had some fried ice cream.

Tonight I bought another chocolate milkshake at Freddie's.

Apparently, I'm menopausal.

Or maybe it's just warm out and ice cream brings a small sense of relief to these old bones.

I think I'll stop drinking chocolate milkshakes for a while. I've had enough.



My roommates went camping at Starved Rock for a few days, so I have the place all to myself...for the most part. My roommates used to just be Bob and Rhom and Greg and Maxine, but our friend Lauren moved in a couple days ago and will be staying here for a few months, so I'm not really by myself. Maxine is still here as well, as she's a cat and kind of prefers to just hang out in the apartment relaxing and eating and drinking and pooping in the litter box and climbing on things and wandering around and, of course, napping whenever she wants. When she first arrived, I couldn't even pet her for more than about two seconds before she'd bite and claw at my hand. Yesterday when I came home from work, she was on the couch rolled over on her back and she let me pet her belly for a good 20 full pets before she started putting her paws around my hand, which used to mean she was about to attack, but now she just sort of does that and I ease up on the petting and then we sing a happy song about lilacs and tape measures and then we agree to go our separate ways for a while. That was a very long sentence. Point is, I'm pretty good with cats.



I was on Facebook a little while ago, as I wanted to find out what time a yoga class was going to start on Wednesday. As I was looking for that information, I noticed that there was a feature called "Today in the Past", which shows you some of your old status updates from years past on this date. Mine weren't all that interesting (something about indecision and another with Judas Priest lyrics), but I clicked on show more posts like this, and apparently, one year ago today, I was at the Portage Park swimming pool frolicking in the water with my sister and brother and my nieces. Just wrote about that in a blog not too long ago. Those were the days...fun in the sun.

Now the only sun I get is riding my bike to and from work. I put in another seven days of work this past week. 12 hour days on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tomorrow, I'll ask to see if we'll be working this coming weekend. I have a feeling the answer will be yes, but I'll ask anyway, just in case that's not the answer. I really don't know what I'll do if I don't have to work. Not that there's not plenty to do, I just haven't had to think about what to do on a weekend in so long, that it's a somewhat foreign concept at this point. I mean I did have last weekend off, as I went to Pitchfork, but that was planned many months ago and it consumed all of my weekend. To actually have nothing to do on a weekend seems to be the most glorious thing I can imagine at this point.

I'm not going to get my hopes up.

And that's my week in review. Chocolate milkshakes and work. I live a very simple life these days.

Have yourself a fine week my friends!

Stupid Holiday!

I happened upon a sign on the wall at work about a week ago and immediately thought that I liked the design, but I didn't actually pay much attention to the sign, as it's not unusual for prints to be temporarily put up on walls at work. Sometimes they want to test if they will adhere. Sometimes they just want to get a sense of what it looks like. Sometimes they probably have some other reason that I don't really know about.

However, later on that day, I went to the bathroom and saw the same sign on the door. I realized it was probably something I was supposed to read, so I did. Underneath the Uncle Sam graphic was a lot of text that told me we had this Friday, the 3rd of July, off from work. We were all wished a happy 4th of July.

I was disappointed.

This would be the first time in my life I was disappointed by getting a day off from work.

Hopefully it's not the last time.

As of today, I've worked 24 days in a row. I was kind of hoping to get that up into the 40's, or, at the least, the high 30's. My hopes were completely dashed by what would normally be a welcome sign of happiness.

I don't quite understand my desire to work so much these days. That's not quite right, I understand some of it, but not all of it.

The easy answer is the money. Time and a half is a good thing. Double time on Sundays is even better. Much larger paychecks are a great thing. Quickly vanishing debt is also a great thing. Might as well accept all this overtime while it's available, right?

The other answer is that I enjoy working for this company. I've only worked here for six months and I still feel as if I need to prove myself to them. Actually, I think I've probably already done more than enough to prove myself over these past six months, but busting my ass to help them get this project finished in time certainly can't hurt. As my friend recently told me, establishing credibility is a good thing. I've already done that, but I'm going to make damn sure they get the message.

One of the owners has an office right around the corner from where I normally work when I'm doing what they hired me to do. He called out my name last week and I thought he needed help with something. I was busy so I couldn't walk around the corner to see what he needed right away, but a few moments later he walked over to where I was and told me that he really appreciated all the work I was doing for the company and that he wanted to make sure I knew that it hadn't gone unnoticed. I thanked him and said I was glad to help out. It's nice to be thanked and appreciated. Feels good. Makes you want to help out even more.

Thanking others and letting them know I appreciate them is something I'm working on. Seems like I'm working on just about everything regarding myself these days, but better late than never I guess. Hopefully some of it actually sticks.

Insert smiley face emoticon right here.

Anyway, back on course...1000 points of light....

That same owner also told me a couple of days later after I had asked him if he wanted me to stay late to work on a project, that he was giving me carte blanche to work whatever overtime I thought was necessary to get the work finished on time. He told me that he trusted me and that I had a good head on my shoulders. He's probably right. We have to fill out overtime slips for each day that we work over eight hours and part of that form requires writing down who approved the overtime. Now I can just write down, "I approved this overtime beyotch!"

I probably won't do that. I'll just put down the owners name, drop the form in the slot and head home.

So lots of work. Lots of helping out. Lots of being tired. Lots of not having time for much else. What little bit of social life I had has completely disappeared from my expectations. I'm okay with that. Only one more month to go for this project. So far summer has been rainy and kind of cold, so working this much isn't such a bad thing. I don't feel like I'm missing out on all that much. What does bother me is getting home and being too exhausted to do all the things I was doing for the last few months before June came around. Blogging frequently is one of those things. This makes me sad a bit. Well, not really sad, but kind of annoyed that I don't have as much time to sit down and write out as much nonsense as I had been doing. Guess I just have to do more to find the time.

In the meantime, I'll get to bed so I can get up in the morning and bike to work for day number 25.

It's good to like your job.