Rave: my brother doing brother stuff. He came over Saturday and basically did all the shit my husband would usually do. He helped me with a couple weeks worth of recycling, going grocery shopping and putting away groceries, and moving furniture and stuff around the house for me. Family... They sure know how to get under your skin like no other but they pull through when you need them.
Rant: First day dropping the baby at daycare. Was not expecting the waterworks from her mom. Rant: Humid AF in the northeast today.
Rant: My favorite uncle died last night, the only one on my dad's side. He never had an unkind word for anybody or about anybody. He loved life, he loved the blues, Eric Clapton, movies, and poured his whole self into every conversation. He (and my aunt) know every bit of trivia there is to know about movies and TV. I remember one time when he came to my parent's house when I was in college, I had recently gotten a new acoustic guitar. I showed it to him and he said "Wow, that's so nice" (it wasn't) and played him a song, and he said "That was really good." (It wasn't). I don't know why, but he always made me feel like a million bucks when I was with him. Over the years, we shared stories about music, certain each other had found a deep cut of some blues artist that the other didn't know about. I will miss him. This is for him, one of his favorite covers:
Rave: Last week was my first week at a new job. I'm now the Manager of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit that does arts education and social services that I've had my eye on for a long time. It's exactly the type of job I've been working toward for years and I'm so happy. I like the people I work with, and am really excited about everything I'll be doing. It's a big lifestyle adjustment, but I'm ready for it. About once an hour all week there was a moment to myself where I just thought, FINALLY. I've been working so hard for so long to get this and I'm pumped it happened. Rave: With the exception of a few months at a job that later downsized my role, for the eight years since I graduated I've only been working part time and freelancing. This is my first full-time and my first job with benefits, and I cannot begin to accurately describe how much of a fucking relief it is to not have to worry (so much) about money anymore. It's almost $10k more than the minimum I'd been putting on applications, which was already more than double my current steady salary. Even before my paychecks are kicking in, I already have this huge constant level of stress lifted and I feel so much better. Rave: A couple months ago, this small arts website that was familiar with me from my work at the gallery asked if I'd write a column for them where I interview emerging artists, and my first one was published this week too. It'll be fun to have that steady source of writing, and to stay connected to the fine arts world that way. Plus being asked to write something rather than the other way around still doesn't happen too often, so I got a kick out of that. Rave: And after a fucking year and a half I finally got a pitch accepted, so I have another piece coming out with my second Condé Nast magazine in I'm guessing the next week, maybe two. It was getting extremely frustrating, I don't think I've gone that long without getting a pitch accepted since I started freelancing when I was 20. I had one thing come out in January '17, which was accepted in December '16, and another thing in February '17 which came about because I had pitched them something else, they passed, but asked me to write something else instead, and then nothing since then. Of course, the thing that got accepted was this cute little essay idea that popped into my head once and then I dashed off a quick email later that day, while I have a digital stack of essays and queries that I was super passionate about,and thought about for months, and spent days writing the piece, and it took hours to carefully craft the pitch and figure out who to send it to and no one wants those. I have five ideas I'm pitching this week so maybe the trend will continue positively. Rave: The third show I co-curated at the gallery is opening this week and I'm so excited to see it hanging. I think it's a really good one. We also are close to finishing a proposal for the first show we're trying to have happen outside of the gallery, and I think that one's really strong and timely and could have a good chance of happening too. Rave: When I left the gallery, they gave me a painting by one of my favorite artists there as a gift, and I heard that another of my favorite artists sent one of his pieces to the gallery for me as a gift, which I'll be getting at the opening, so now all of a sudden I have a little art collection worth a couple grand. So everything's happening all at once, basically.
Rave: I just finished another round of 12 straight days of 12-17 hour days. Thank God I only have to do this every 6 months or so. Rant: As the senior person in my department, I'm going to have to confront my boss when I return to work. My department incentivized our job, and as always some asshole decided to exploit it. I don't know if my boss is stupid or simply so disconnected from reality to realize what's going on, but every single person in my office is aware of it and thus far the person exploiting the system has earned 5 figures in bonuses in just over 6 months. That's money out of all of our pockets. It basically boils down to either she is giving him cherry accounts or he is assigning them to himself while she turns a blind eye and neither is a good look for her.
Rave: I'm in my last semester of university and will graduate at the end of the year. This has been made a lot easier as half of the subjects I have left are my favoured discipline of economics with one 2nd-year excel-focused finance unit and a strategy-focused simulation. Rant: It's taken me 10 years to get here, and if I don't finish this semester I cannot graduate as after this year my first units are null and void. Rave: I'll definitely pass, I finally bought my own place and I can actually focus without my family bogging me down as much. Rant: Then I'll have to find a job with a haphazard academic record, without going into a sob story or overcompensating in my CV or cover letter.
RANT: Had to fire 2 guys today. For being FUCKING IDIOTS. We're talking being the kind of idiots where, when you hear what they did, you have to stop, do a "scuze me?", and ask to have it repeated.... because it's that fucking stupid. Brought them in to talk about it, and they both fully admitted to doing IT without any sense that what they'd done was beyond fucked up... so at that point, it was pretty well, "OK then... don't bother going back to your desks, we'll have security meet you at the front door with a box of your shit." What they did was basically post Production credentials that were connected, in a round about way, to about $100 million in funds, to a public "cut/paste code" site, in order to just "share stuff" between each other. MONTHS AND MONTHS of security training... "don't fall prey to these kinds of social engineering attacks..." "here's our internal secure data transfer systems for you to use"... and on and on... and they fucking pull this shit. Too fucking stupid to know they're stupid. I almost lost my professionalism. If I was actually in the room (as opposed to being video conferenced in from afar), I probably would have shoved them through a wall. I would kind of expect a co-op or intern to pull this shit (not that they'd be attached to this project in the first place), but WHAT THE FUCK YOU MORONS... this is your fucking profession, as in you're a fucking PROFESSIONAL, and have been doing this for years. RAVE:Deep and extensive forensic analysis performed over the past few days has shown that no cash was improperly transferred... nobody seemed to notice and take advantage of the transgression... so no harm, no foul (in theory), and we get the mother of all happy teachable moments... we should hire Bob fucking Ross to come in and do the post mortem. RAVE: I've already gone through the better part of a killer bottle of bourbon, and am feeling no pain.
Rant: I’m having a double mastectomy tomorrow. Rave: that’ll give me free time to internet again and stuff. Since I won’t be doing shit else.
Rave- DOL closed their investigation into my business with not a dime collected. Up next- shutting down the suit from the bitch that called the DOL on me in the first place.
Rave - you guys are wonderful and I’ve missed being able to post here frequently. Rant - my bewbs are gone. Rave - I’ll get new ones later and I got to keep my nipples. For those who asked - this is prophylactic and not due to a cancer diagnosis. My risk was just hellacious high and...not worth chancing imo. Thank you all for the well wishes - it means so much.
Rant: I’m about to snap and lose it with a number of people I work with. How the fuck this place employed a bunch of people with no clue on how the industry we work in actually works, is beyond me
Rave: Took two drains out yesterday. When he pulled the second one it felt like a fish flopping around and that was unfuckingpleasant. Otherwise - two drains left.
Rave: getting on a plane early in the AM to fly to be new home Rant: happy in part because I have had nonstop diarrhea since I got to my parents house Monday. I used to think it was something I was eating here but I have been eating food I bought myself during this stay. I think it is stress.
RANT: Hurt my back again. Wasn't even doing anything that stressed it. Literally walking through the shop and it started to tighten up until I could hardly walk. Seems to happen every few months now. Shit is getting old. Been going to physical therapy but obviously that didn't work. RAVE: I don't care if I'm in a wheelchair. I'm going to this on Saturday. 3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDZHH1GNf3o http://www.bigcatpokerrun.com/
Rave: Finally, after a month, I was able to schedule the pick up of my car to ship it here. It should be here in a week or so.
Rave: I had a job interview last week that went really well. I wound up reaching out to an old manager of mine who fast tracked my resume and got me an interview for a senior accountant role. The company has loads of potential. The pay has potential to be much better (base might stay the same or go down a bit, but my bonus will change from a flat $3k a year to 15% of my salary), and the benefits are already better (17 paid vacation days to start compared to 10 at my current job). My old manager (who talked to me after the interview) warned me ahead of time that it is a more high paced/hectic atmosphere. But I'm ready for that now. This place I'm at now is nice, but it's a dead end. I don't consider myself the most ambitious person, but I know if I want my career to go anywhere then I can't stay here. Rant: Playing the fucking waiting game. I'm practically clawing at the walls waiting to hear back. I've been at my current job almost three years and have probably been looking to get out for nearly two. It's time to leave this place and move on. It doesn't help that I have wrapped up all of my monthly deadlines last week and don't really have much else to do except feel my stomach do somersaults from anxiety.
Rave: New job prospect is moving along, although slowly, not as slowly as I'd expected ( at least not yet ). I should be training in a couple more weeks and then was told should be finished by Thanksgiving. Second part to that is, we've been doing okay financially without a second income other than working a few hours a week for someone I know. So for now I don't have to pick up a part time job while going through the above mentioned process. Which is good because it'd be difficult to find a place willing to work around my training schedule.
Rant: It turns out that my now former roommate is bipolar. She disappeared for a few weeks and I figured that something was up, and it turned out that she had issues with her medication that caused her to have an episode. I let her out of the lease so she could move back in with her mom, so now I need to find a new roommate. The timing also sucks because... Rave: I leave for my cruise on the 6th! I am flying to Lisbon and then sailing to Morocco, Ibiza, and Barcelona. This will be my first time outside of the United States. I am really excited but also a little nervous.
Rant: Infant sleep regression at 4 months. I am going to lose my mind. She was sleeping fine through the night. Now, combined with her first nasty cold, shes coughing or making noise every hour or so. Last night she woke up at 1:30. Then again at 2, then 2:30 and every half hour or 45 minutes and just at the point where I would fall back asleep each time. Eventually I got so frustrated I said fuck it and just stayed up. This has been going on for 4 days. As someone who kicked a bad bout with insomnia 6 months ago, this is an all too familiar exhaustive brutality. Add to the fact that my wife sleeps like God during the Holocaust, I am going to lose it.
Rave/Rant: Last week I had week long holiday with the family traveling and going to the zoo/etc with the kids it was great. This week and next week my boss is on holidays, so I went from a week of holidays to 2 weeks of doing double the work.