Things I overheard while talking to myself

No one has cashed my missing check, so it most likely got lost in the mail.  I prefer that more benign (but still irritating) explanation to the idea that the same asshole who vandalized one of the mailboxes downstairs took it. The staffing people said to wait one more day since they have sometimes had checks mailed Thursday show up Tuesday, and to call them tomorrow if there's still no sign of it tomorrow.

I also got a direct deposit form that I'll fax over while at work so this doesn't happen again. I don't need to have this sort of stress if I can avoid it.

Apparently Saturday is when the weirdoes come out in regards to who calls my call center. While there are some legitimate emergencies (like one woman who kept insisting that I didn't need to page anyone even though she was in labor) there are also some confused people. Like one guy who ranted for five minutes about how the company we answer phones for had delivered a pool table to him and didn't assemble it... even though they're a delivery company, not an assembly place. Or something. My trainer took over that one about halfway through and I admit to zoning out in confusion.

Also ironically it looks like I'll actually be waking up earlier on Saturdays than during the rest of the week, given the schedule. It turns out the way they schedule you is that they look at the window of time you said you'd be available and then put you in where they need it. Mine's more or less consistent, and next week is mostly 12 to 8's. And I get Friday off, because it just worked out that way. So I do in fact have something like a weekend, it's just Friday and Sunday. Eh. I'll make it work.

And tomorrow I'm seeing The Avengers with some friends after church. Today I need to do laundry and get some other things for the week.

I continue to be impressed at how much I'm both enjoying this new job and at how good I am at it. I was not expecting either of those things, but whaddhya know, that's how it's worked out. They gave me a brief evaluation of the last few days and told me some things I need to work on (most of which I already knew about) but they said overall I'm doing very well.

They've been having me be plugged in with various other people so they can listen to what I'm doing and help me out if I need it. Eventually I'll be on my own, but I do like feeling like I'm not completely on my own, and as I've said my last job basically threw me in feet first and told me to figure it out on my own. The guy today was very nice and we eventually got talking about nerdy stuff between calls. Near the end of the day we also had a few instances where he told me to do something and I then said what he just told me out loud to the caller, which I called an "I, [state your name]" error. Oh well. I can tell that I definitely like being in a faster-paced environment than my old job, it goes a lot quicker and I feel more challenged mentally.

It also means that, ironically, these days I'm probably using my higher pitched professional voice than my regular, talking to someone normally voice. I was explaining to the guy I was working with today that there is a difference, since even if it's not obvious to someone listening speaking with that voice just feels different. I know I sit up straighter, for one, and it's yet another area where the radio work unexpectedly comes in handy. I was even told in my evaluation that my projection and enunciation are very good, and that's why.

I'm also trying to get back into going to the gym, so I'm breaking myself back into that. I can definitely tell that I was a bit out of practice, but that'll go away once I get used to it again.

The irony that I had to call DUA to clear up why my last week of UI benefits hadn't processed yet when it's actually the last week I'll have to claim benefits for (hopefully) quite some time is not lost on me. They basically just had to know the circumstances of the last temp job I had and were holding the money until then. Hopefully it'll process tonight, which is good because until around next Friday I'm basically broke.

I think I'm getting the hang of the basic calls, and the guy I was training with eventually managed to wean me off using "okay" since that's not an approved word or something like that. 

Glad I installed that pedometer app on my phone, since it can help shed light on why I'm both so damn exhausted and why I've lost about 10 pounds since moving to Boston. For instance, I walked close to 3 miles today. Damn. I know I'm a bad judge of relative distance, but that surprised me. Also explains why when I got home I lay down for a minute and then proceeded to fall asleep for a few hours.

I think that interview went pretty well today. I very much overestimated how much time it would take on purpose since I'd never been to that area, so I just kind of fucked around and got some coffee before I went in. It's a call center that has several of the medical places in the area as its customers, and despite my apprehension about phones I know it's much easier for me to switch to "on" mode when I'm getting a call rather than making it. They also explained that while they're not a 911 line they do get cases that are pretty serious, so being able to work under pressure is a must. At one of my last interviews I actually said that I think I work better under a bit of pressure than not, since I know my own mind and that I can get distracted if there's not something keeping me focused. I was also cracked up by the informational movie they showed which was very, very 90s. The computers in particular were hilariously out of date, and when I asked about that they explained that the new computers actually make things slower in some ways since when it was just a DOS system you didn't have to deal with different windows or tabs and all that. I also asked if doctors still use pagers like in the video since it's been years since I've seen someone with a pager, and they explained that almost all of them do since other types of frequencies aren't as reliable, and hospitals use a special frequency. Learn something new every day! Hopefully we'll know by the end of the week if they're interested in me, and if they are I'll start a 2-3 week training course. This is temp-to-hire, so at the very least it'll hold me over if it works out.

Also one of the smoke detectors on another floor has been doing the "I have a low battery so I'm going to chirp every 30 seconds" thing all afternoon, and the people in that apartment are either not home or too dumb to know how to change it (hint: it involves a ladder or a chair and a fresh battery). Since this is the same apartment building where someone set off the building wide fire alarm last week and then booked it, both are distinct possibilities. And yes, I'm the type of person who will be kept awake by sounds like that. At my parents' house I sometimes get woken out of a dead sleep by things like the furnace turning on. It might be lessened if I close my window, since for now it's opened a crack, but I hope they fix that.

Whoot! The one catch is that I have to go up to Malden, but it's a pretty quick hop up there. And the thing is that I actually have thought about moving up there since the costs of living are less than the city, plus I'm pretty sure an ancestor of mine lived there unless I'm completely misremembering the story (which is entirely possible).

This is very welcome news, since minus recruiting firms this is the first callback I've gotten. A little validation is always nice.

Despite all this stress about losing my job, they honestly are trying to help me as much as they can. I told my boss a while ago what the official date I stopped being a student was (the 23rd) and figured I'd stop around the 20th, but today she told me that I might as well continue on until the end of the month to "finish up" what I've been working on, and the way she said it had a definite wink implied. By my calculations that'll get me around $200 more than I would have otherwise, not to mention more time I find something, even if it's only a week.

Either way, I'll take what I can get, and I do appreciate it.

And I more or less did nothing to celebrate it today, but am trying to put something together for the weekend. It barely even registered that my birthday was this week until about Sunday.

The unfortunate part about being an adult is I had a lot of other stuff to do, including study for a Japanese test, work, and go to class. It was okay though, I talked to some of my friends for a bit after class, my parents called to wish me a happy birthday, I made macaroni and cheese, my all time favorite food, and am now making cookies. Not bad.

I also got myself some comics, bought myself a book and took advantage of a sale to get a t-shirt I wanted. I realize that one reason it's hard to shop for people as they get older is that if they want something they can get it for themselves. I did get Supergods from mom and dad got me an N7 hoodie that should show up any day, as well as a check from my great aunt. My grandma's also sending something.

So yeah. *shrug* No big deal, it was okay.

I managed to make my boss laugh this week when I remarked that with all these stock market shenanigans that some of our developers spook easier than horses. She's a horse person herself so she appreciated the reference.

Besides database gnomes this week was interesting because of all this stuff, and I actually had one guy leave me a message to the effect of "Remember how a few months ago we said we'd be going forward? Yeeaaahh... We'll get back to you on that." Repeat that conversation about 12 times and that was essentially my week. Oy.

Luckily it seems to be stabilizing, but it was real interesting being in the thick of that since we're pretty close to State Street, the big financial center. During the worst of it I was down there at one point and brokers were just standing on the sidewalk looking forlorn. Not to mention that I get out of work at 5 and the markets close at 4 so I'd always know if it had gone badly because people in my  building would be talking about it, and at my gym there are TVs showing the news so I'd catch news of it there.

The irony is that my personal finances are in better shape than they've been for a while, though on a significantly smaller scale than all of this. There's still not much and I could pretty easily fuck it up or have it get fucked up by outside forces, but I have at least a little squirreled away at the moment. I also realize that one sign I've become and adult is that my nightmares have less to do with getting chased by monsters so much as realizing that I owe someone $6000 with no way to pay them back. And yes that was a real nightmare I had not too long ago.