Supervisor Spewing

Ignore if you are tired of me whining about work. I figure everyone is tired of it so I'm keeping it off the board.

So I'm hunting for a replacement for David (names are changed to protect the innocent from Google hunts). Ok, that's fine. He did give me a good exit interview. But it has come to a head that my cash manager is not happy. I have talked to her about her obvious unhappiness. But now several people have gone to the controller about how unhappy Becky is. She isn't doing her full job, someone is helping to carry her weight. When David used to do it, he did the job and carried someone else. Now she needs someone to bail her out and the job hasn't changed. She can't handle it and she is coming up on the end of her probation. So I have extended her probation to buy me more time to get at least one of the positions filled. But during our conversation, she won't tell me why she is so unhappy at work. Honestly I think she is just one of those people who is unhappy so often. She says others are unfriendly but she won't go talk to people and when people are near her talking, she won't participate or even make eye contact. She has gotten belligerient when asked to go to training or company/department meetings. She said she hasn't been well trained, but both David & I have worked with training her. Her examples basically came down to her not being willing to ask any questions so somehow that is our fault. Mostly everything is someone else's fault and not hers. I really can't see that she is salvagable which is sad because I hate going through this again.

I did get a raise today. My review wasn't a ringing success but I have really struggled as a supervisor a lot and I know it. With the changes coming up, I don't think I will be made Assistant Controller. I don't think I have the CFO's endorsement since he wouldn't approve my raise until he did the exit interview with David. I can't say I blame him. He keeps hearing that I'm abusive to people. All I can do is be so sugary nice and wait for my bad reputation to go away. I'm sure Becky will help. Not.

Random randomness

I have so many things I wish I could tackle. The things I think I can do on my own require money. The things that we have the parts for, I don't have the skillset to do. Example, the bathroom sink drips (almost pours). Now if it had water shutoff for the sink supply, I could turn off the water and see what I could do to put in the new gaskets. If I screwed it up, the water could stay off until J could look at it. But I would have to turn off water to the whole house and that is too big a gamble on my skills. We have ceiling fans and I would try to do it but again, I have never ever ever dealt with electricity and the fans are used, so there aren't instructions included.

I have decided on the pond that I will put in a liner over the preform so that I don't have to deal with why we keep having leaks. Actually I'm thinking about pulling out the preforms and going with a softer, more natural look. But I have to buy the liner, harvest more stones and I think I want to change up the filter housing to get a more natural looking waterfalls. All of that takes money.

You know how you have those movies that you watch every single time it comes on. I'm victim of one of those today. You've Got Mail is it today. I just love that movie. It is such a sweet movie.

I need to go clean my dining room. How much can I do in commercial breaks?

I need to find a project to sink my heart into.

Can you believe school will start back up in about 3 weeks? I need to go get school supplies and a few outfits. I don't believe in buying whole wardrobes for school starting. A couple of new things for each of them. New shoes is the big thing and goodness it will be expensive to put shoes on T.

He is becoming an adult right before my eyes. Oh believe me he stilll has child moments but still there are more and more adult moments. I can't believe he is about to be a teenager. Where has time gone?

And I'm very upset about turning 40. I know it shouldn't be a big deal. It is just a number and I'm as old as I feel and all that dribble. I was an adult and on my own when my mother turned 40. How can I be that old? I have friends I went to school with who are now grandparents. I'm barely old enough to have a teenager. I work with numbers all the time and they really don't mean much. But this number is really haunting me.

I like it when you see people break out of their shells and succeed. Robin Williams going into drama is a great example.

I'm afraid somehow I have upset a friend. Nothing specific comes to mind but I feel like she is avoiding me suddenly and I don't know how to bridge the gap without making her feel awkward. I'm so bad at handling things with people. Numbers are safer except for that damn number 40.

Just to be on the record

LaGuardia Airport sucks old wrinkled donkey dicks. Just in case you didn't know that, I thought I would share that with you.

Maine is such a cool place to visit. This is THE place to go eat for a good meal and an incredible view.







I really like going here. You can sit out at the picnic tables overlooking the waves crashing against the rocks below. On a foggy day the call from the lighthouse is just amazing!

http://www.lobstershack-twolights.com/index.htm

I'm still so tired from the trip. I feel like I just can't get enough sleep.

Hauntings??

Each evening T & I go to bed about the same time, around 11 or 11:30. This house is very quiet at night. You can hear the trains go through a few blocks away. Otherwise, there is no real noises in the house. Even the AC is very quiet.

So last night we went to bed. I heard a noise, sort of an animal cry noise. T was in my room wondering if I had heard it. Then a few minutes later we heard 3 knocking noises. Tap tap tap. Now this isn't the first time I have heard the three knocks. I have heard it earlier in the evenings. I thought before it was the dreaded neighbor child playing a prank by knocking and running off (the only term I know for this practice is a nasty degoratory term that I won't use). Every time I have heard it, no one has been at the door. So T & I go around the house and look and find nothing. We both go to bed. A few minutes later, a different noise. Again T is in my room so I offered to let him get into my bed.

Several times I thought I heard K coming into the room. I must have been imagining but once I was so sure that I set up and called her name.

This isn't the first weird things at night. There was one morning I was sure I had heard J come home early. I thought I had heard the back door opening & closing and then someone walking through the house.

I'm not ready to say the house is haunted. The first nights here I thought it might be. I can say I won't be surprised (well suprised in a different sense) if eventually I do see a ghost. I have felt regularly that we share this house with something. However, I think that whatever it is friendly and happy with us.

Meantime I will work on convincing T that the noises are from the house contracting at night while cooling off. That is J's explanation but he isn't hearing what we are hearing. I don't contraction noises are related to three knocks.

Quality of life

Three weeks ago we lost my great aunt Juanita. Even at that time we were feeling that it wouldn't be long before her older sister Coy would be next. Well on the 4th of July Coy fell and broke her hip. I believe she has Alzheimers and now we suspect Parkinsons and then they say there is something up with her lungs.

Today I went to the hospital to see her. My aunt Barbara was there looking after Aunt Coy and said that Coy was begging to be released. It reinforced to me that I want to have quality of life not quantity. Coy's youngest sister Kathy has been burdened with caring with Juanita and Coy while my grandmother continues her self centered hermit existance.

I then got frustrated because my mother was making fun of my aunt Barbara's emails because they are full of misspellings and bad grammar. But while my aunt Barbara isn't my favorite person, I know that she hasn't had a life where spelling and grammar mattered, she worked in factories most of her life. They are skills that if you don't use, you lose. And it really bothers me that my mother uses this to feel superior considering my mother can't follow the simplest of current events and misprounces things constantly. But yet here was my aunt Barbara, sleeping at the hospital so that Kathy could get some rest and was at the hospital today so that Kathy and others could go to Juanita's memorial service.

Since I have been in a tear

I still cannot reconcile that Anthony Michael Hall in Dead Zone is the nerd from my teenage years.

I have always liked Mark Harmon but he has gotten way sexier with age. It is sort of like Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood. They were ok in their early careers but so damn sexy as older men. Unfortunately Harrison Ford is not doing as well.

Pysch looks like a fun show.

Matthew Broderick is still a kid. Except for the movie Glory, he can't shake that WarGames stereotype.

I'll add more as I think of them. This is what happens to a brain after a week of doing financials. It shuts down and goes into trivia mode.

Oh and it sucks when your daughter tells you on a Friday night that she thinks she saw worms in her poop.

Good Neighbors

Well so much for the boys next door. Colin today held a knife to C's throat and then told K later he would slice her for telling T&C it was time to come home. Yeah well that didn't go over well when I heard about it. So I marched across the street and talked to the mom and grandmother. Both were suitably unhappy and Colin tried to excuse himself by saying he wouldn't have hurt the kids. Yeah, I was impressed. NOT. I really don't like this boy even before this. He's a sullen bully. And yes this is the boys that T came home smelling like pot.

Ok back to more fun topics. So we were talking at work about how everyone likes the show House and how sexy Hugh Laurie. I was telling them how my friend Miss M didn't realize he had also been the father on Stuart Little. You would have thought I tried to shoot test missiles at the US. No one believed me until I showed them this link.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0491402/

No one, not a single person in my office had made the connection.

I guess I have watched too much BBC over the years. I like shows Blackadder and Jeeves & Wooster. From there I have noticed him in lots of his shows & movies where he showed up, despite the rumor I had once heard that he had died (soon after we started watching Jeeves & Wooster). But I was used to him in the slapstick type roles and despite his showing up in MI-5 it was a shock to see him in such a serious role, although you certainly see his humor showing up.

I must say, when I read he had audition for Rimmer in Red Dwarf, I just died. That would have been hilarious. The only thing that would have been better is if Lenny Henry had also been cast in there with Hugh Laurie.

I wish I could play Cupid

See M, I have this cousin, who is single, never been married and loves to fix up houses. He is the sweetest guy in the world. I would love to fix you up with him because he is just so cool. But I would have to first determine if he is gay. As much as I do know about him, I have always had a feeling he could be but has never come out (or maybe even accepted it if he is) of the closet. And I'm just not one to pry. But if I knew one way or the other, I could play matchmaker for him no matter which direction he likes.

Ouchie

Got our first full month electric bill - $350. This is when we really notice the extra square footage. Ouch ouch ouch


I forgot how much I loved Dharma & Greg. That show cracks me up so much and I do get to look at Thomas Gibson.

I promised chaos

So once again a blog post about everything!

Last night we started our 4th of July run. First on the list was the Redneck Run (night at the races). The locals live to race old beat up cars around in circles on a dirt track. One BIL has his stepson racing and another BIL sponsors a car. Both of them already have money issues, it seems incredible to me that this is a way to spend money. Obviously I'm not a Nascar fan. But I digress, they did fireworks and we took the twins (remember T works at the races) and watched the fireworks. Well T had fireworks left over from last year and the races owners let the kids fire off fireworks after the races. Well of course K&C wanted to participate. So we stayed. It was 2 am when we got home and then we all had to bathe because we were covered in dust.

Well I began waking up around 10 am but the rest of the family slept. Finally I just left the house at 11 am and went to the meat market, with slight detours through the collection of antique stores in the downtown of this 2,000 person town. In one of the shops I got talking with the lady running it about the candles and the soaps came up. She wants to sell my soaps. I didn't get a warm fuzzy feeling from her but it did give me a slight bug to start up the business again. Like I don't have enough in my life with the kids, the house, the job, the non-existent husband.

I spent the day draining the pond because most days the pond is down too low. We think we have a leak in the pond. The filter housing is certainly a big part of our problem, every couple of days the plug blows out or it is spewing water around the pond instead of into the pond. So in addition to draining the water out on purpose for once, I also scooped sludge out. I didn't get all of it because I need it to restart the biological ecostructure in the pond but I got so much out of it. It went into the compost heap and I hope that I got good stuff that way since I'm a little short of the manure I need in my compost heap.

Tonight I'm all over John Cusak, weird quirks aside. If I find a movie with Hugh Laurie, John Cusak and Thomas Gibson in it, I will need blood pressure medicine to watch it.