7 posts tagged “work”

Whoa, sorry about the lapse.  Things have been awfully busy.  Work demands had me living in soCal for most of November and a big chunk of December and led to my resigning effective mid-January.  I've since begun consulting again, and that's going well.  Debt pay-off is also going very well - overall debt is down to $93k (from a max of $105k), and I've paid off 3 credit cards (two that were incredibly high interest, the third had a low balance).  The average interest rate on my debt is approximately 18%, and the balance is dropping steadily every month.

Being self-employed means having to find my own health insurance, which wasn't too onerous.  I do still need to talk to a CPA to make sure I've set everything up correctly, but I've found a few on-line resources that have been helpful.  Since I don't have inventory or employees, the business and accounting structure is straightforward.  I have to work on rounding up the necessary self-discipline to actually work at paying work instead of playing Scrabulous all day long, but I'm fairly motivated by the stacks of bills.

I'm also participating a group cooking blog:  Is That...Pie?  We just started last month; come take a look.

One last note before I disappear for another 4 months - one of our cats now has diabetes.  Not fun, but hopefully manageable with a change to high protein food.

That's all I'm working right now - unfortunately, it's the night half of the day, from 6 pm until 6 am.  It's kicking my butt, let me tell you.  The hotel is also having technical difficulties with its hot water at my end of the building, which for some reason is making the night shift even worse.  Yesterday, I got 5 hours of sleep before the maintenance people banged on my door.  I couldn't get back to sleep after that, and I decided to do my laundry this morning so I am forcing myself to stay up for another hour.  Then into the shower and into bed.

Possibly the worst aspect of this is it ends on Sunday morning, 2 hours before I need to go to the airport to catch my flight home.  And I may not be back down here after that.  So 6 days of nights and how long do you bet it takes me to get my sleep/wake stuff back to normal?

Because my new job is a lot more than just the programming I anticipated, I needed to bring my own tools down to the jobsite.  Specifically, screwdrivers large and small, for opening up instrument covers and panels and messing about with wiring.  Wire cutters and strippers are also nice to have on hand.  I didn't want to bring the tools we have for the house, because things still need doing there, so for fun I ordered a set of pink and dark blue handled tools from Ladies Tool Zone.  The guys I'm working with cracked up when they saw them today.  And no one will walk off with them by mistake :)

I'm also sick.  I caught a cold the second day I was on the jobsite, 6 weeks ago.  It progressed like a normal cold and seem to run its course.  But got stuck in my chest.  I've been coughing, uncontrollably at times, for far too long.

My first excuse was my health insurance didn't kick in until 11/1.  Then, things got incredibly busy at the site and I felt guilty taking time away.  But then Thursday morning I woke up at 4 am and lay there in bed, feeling my lungs bubble with fluid every time I exhaled.  That terrified me.

Went to an urgent care where I'd taken a co-worker a few weeks before when he'd run out of pain meds for his back.  They were like "oh yeah, you look familiar - you were coughing when you came in here before".  And, it's true.  They tried to get me to roll up my sleeve for a flu shot on that visit.

So I breathed and was listened to.  BP normal, weight as high as ever (plus, do NOT get weighed in your work clothes with the steel toed boots and heavyweight dickies and all that.  Very disheartening.)  Diagnosis:  bronchitis aggravated by asthma.  I'm now equipped with a stylish purple inhalable steroid/bronchodilator device, codeine cough syrup (what a blessing), and a course of antibiotics that leave an incredibly bad taste in my mouth for 5 - 6 hours.

But I'm on the mend, thanks very much!

We went on 12 hour shifts yesterday - I'm on from 6ish am to 7ish pm.  Things ran fairly well and progress was measurable.  Until 2:11 pm today when two transformers in the gen set blew.  The night shift crew showed up per the plan, but the gen set is not to be revived without a technology infusion.  The word went out:  "8 am tomorrow morning".

What a relief.  No more 12 hours for awhile, and an extra hour of sleep from our normal 7 to 5:30 schedule even.  I've been here 6 weeks, with a 5 day break (during which we moved) and a 3 day break (including a day of travel, when my father-in-law died) and 2 Sundays off down here where I was able to meet up with friends.  Add to that the stress of this being a new job, and not what I was initially told would be my schedule (2 weeks here, 2 weeks home).

But life's good right now!  Not 'til 8 am tomorrow!! 

Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls, which I love beyond reason, have more calories and fat than a regular size Fat Boy Cookies 'n Cream ice cream sandwich.  Just two of those li'l curly cakes with the waxy chocolate-like coating and creamy white whatever-it-is are 260 calories (12 g delicious fat).  The Fat Boy, just 240 (a mere 10 g of that fat).

Still, now that the weather's cooled off some down here in the land of sun and smog, they are my post-long-day junk food of choice.

Yesterday was a good day at the jobsite, lots of excitement, things worked as they should (some a little too well).  So of course we expected the same today.

Expectations are the problem, I think.  If we hadn't had any, we would have been better off.  Because nothing happened today.  Except, the insulators drove a truck over the surveyor's transept, smashing the legs and breaking the lens, when he had only two things left to site out.  Then, some tripping breaker led to an even bigger problem (not mine, fortunately).

There was no jello on the lunch truck today.  I had a double cheeseburger (pickles only) instead of my current favorite two carne asada tacos and opted for some of those gooey chocolate cupcakes instead.

The guy who is the construction site manager, a total and complete Texan, is outta here in a few days.  The man's a prince in my book though - he set aside one of the 4 portalets for the two women on site (me being one and a terrific New Mexican by way of Arkansas welder/fitter being the other), and locked it so the guys couldn't use it without asking him where the key was.  You have no idea what a difference this makes.