Post and run

I gotta make this quick. IT may be monitoring, or I may get cut short. This is more of a work rant/vent anyway.

Recently, they have really come down on our internet usage, and blocked a butt load of sites, Facebook and Blogger included (and I have discovered this brief reprieve in the block). Apparently, this order came down from the head of our company. I think its stupid, and quite unfair.

According to the employee handbook, we are supposed to get a 15 min break every 4 hours, and an hour for lunch. On average, each smoker in the building takes about 2 hours worth of breaks everyday because of all the smoke breaks they have to take. They have talked about being more strict with this, but of course it has yet to happen. There are only about a handful of people (out of about 100) that smoke, but they must smoke a pack a day because every time I go outside or look out the window there is someone out there. I am willing to bet $100 that if I were to look out the window someone would be out there smoking now.

Anyway, my point is that they are taking away the non-smokers break. Facebook and Blogger is the way I take my one-15 min allotted break every morning and afternoon.

I understand that there are those that will stay on Facebook All.Day.Long, and its those people that have ruined it for everyone else. What really annoys me is that a few of the smokers are the ones that stay on Facebook day in and day out. (I'm not generalizing here or placing unfounded blame, I have seen 2 specific smokers on Facebook quite often.)

My department's boss has complained about this (go boss!) and he will agree that it isn't fair. He says not only are they not giving us raises (or COL increases) for the 3rd year in a row, but now they are taking away employee privileges. Pretty soon we aren't going to be allowed to laugh, and the women are going to be required to wear skirts and hose. Obviously thats sarcasm. His point was that in the time of low employee morale, it is really stupid for them to take away so much from the employees, and its not just limited to the internet.

Gotta love double standards.

I feel like a slacker

...but really I'm not. I've just been super busy at work and neglected the blog.

Since the September floods, things have been pretty crazy at work. Up until December the craziness had been limited to the water and sewer projects. But now that those are mostly done, stormwater projects are starting to pick up, and that's where I come in.

Let me back up. There was roughly 150 roads (a lot of those were major roads) that were washed out or damaged and had to be closed due to the September 21 flooding. With those roads, water mains and sewer mains were also washed out. Also, when the road washed out, the culvert that used to carry the stormwater also washed out. The City and County has taken care of some roads where water and sewer wasn't involved, but the majority of them are on us. (For those who don't know, I am a project engineer at the Water and Sewer Authority in the county where I live. The company controls and maintains all the water, sewer, and stormwater systems for the City and County. We are a private company and completely separate from the City and County.)

As a result of all the washouts, the company is spending a butt-load of money fixing everything. Because the County was declared a disaster area, anything that was damaged or destroyed in the flood is eligible for FEMA reimbursement. That's where I come in...

As work, more specifically stormwater work, is completed, I get the work order and description of work done. I have to then open a Project Worksheet developed by FEMA and enter in all the information such as Description of Damage, Scope of Work, Location Map, FEMA/FIRM map (shows floodplain), and before and after pictures. Its not too difficult, but it is a lot of work. So I have been swamped with that. I have really been trying to stay ahead of the game and trying to turn in more than my daily minimum, because essentially, this is money, and FEMA has a cut off date that we have to get as many turned into them as we can before that cut-off.

Kudos to you if you have stuck around this far into the post.

As far as running goes, I and chugging along with my Half-Marathon training. I'm actually running .5-1 mile (sometimes 2 miles) over my daily minimum. In fact, tomorrow, Jon and I are meeting a couple of my co-workers in the morning, one of which is running the ING Half as well, for a 6-7 mile run. Even though a warm front (if you can call 50* warm) has come in, it will still be a little chilly for my tastes come Saturday morning, but I figure if we commit, we will definitely get out there. There's no motivation like knowing someone is waiting on you.

I have also signed us up for a 6k (3.7 miles) for April 18. It is a "Live Earth Run for Water" race sponsored by DOW and it starts and ends in front of the World of Coke in downtown Atlanta. A group of about 8 of us from work are running/walking in it as a type of PR for the company, since we are the drinking water supplier for the County and all. But we aren't running as a "team" because the boss didn't want to draw a lot of attention to us. Go figure. But we are getting free technical T's (that have WSA on the back) that the boss is buying for us. So that will be kinda cool to get a free running shirt.

There is also a 5k on Tybee Island that I want to do on February 6. Being that its the weekend of my Birthday (Feb. 8), I'm thinking I might be able to get a weekend trip to Savannah out of it too. (There is also a Half Marathon that day as well, for those interested.) Don't know if that will happen yet, though.

Ok, enough procrastinating, I gotta get some FEMA stuff done...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Yes, I know I'm 4 days behind. I have been busy. Needless to say, after a 10 day stay-cation I am back and work and have a little more time to write here.

Christmas was good. We spent Christmas Eve with Jon's parents, then got up bright and early Christmas morning to drive to my parent's house 2 hours south of us. We ate too much - which is the norm with us - we exchanged gifts, and visited. We even managed to run ~7 miles on Saturday (12/26/09) to try to put a dent in all those calories we consumed.

Sunday we drove home and that started our week of work. After spending close to $500 in pre-hung doors and trim, we realized how much of an undertaking finishing the basement would be. Pre-hung doors are of the devil. We started trying to hang a door on the storage room Sunday night. After 2 hours of fighting with it, we completely disassembled it. Once is was all up, we saw that it looked like crap. So we went to bed and decided to tackle it first thing in the morning.

Door - 1; Us - 0

Monday morning we got the stupid thing down, and using our knowledge from the first attempt, got it up by noon. Total time hanging one door - about 7 hours.

Thankfully, we had a steep learning curve with this. The second door took about 2 hours (only because we had to cut off the bottom and chip out some of the toe board that was hanging over so the door would fit right). The third door took about 30 min, and the fourth door about an hour. Thank God my dad helped us hang the french doors on the bedroom last year, I think I would have thrown it out the window.

Pretty much the rest of the week was spent measuring, cutting, nailing, painting, and caulking trim. And we still don't have it all done, but we are sooo close. We are pretty positive that we will be 100% done with all the trim work by the end of January. I can't wait for that. Then I can start decorating and moving in furniture!

In other news, I signed us up for the Atlanta ING Half Marathon.

::cue my deer in headlights look::

I really am excited. We had talked about doing the Callaway Gardens Half Marathon on January 31, but with zero running last week, missing my 8 mile run, and the fact that we really want to have the basement done by the end of January (not to mention that its a freaking icebox outside - hello 28* high!), we decided that we were putting too much on our plates. We will be much better prepared come March 21, and it will be slightly warmer. So, let our training, err, re-training (?) commence.

Any of you have exciting 2010 plans?

Its here!

Woo hoo! They delivered the floors today! And might I say, they are probably the best at sticking to their schedule and promised time than anyone I've ever dealt with. Seriously. Yesterday, they told us they would be at our house sometime between 12 and 2. I groaned at that, because, while I knew they would be there at least by 2, that is still a 3 hour window. And so commenced trying to figure out our schedules.

Jon was approved to tele-work, but at the last minute yesterday (read: as he was walking out the door), his boss told him there was a meeting at 8:30 that he had to go to. So then I had to plan to take an early lunch that would last 1.5 hrs (of course, I am not opposed to this.) Thankfully, Jon's meeting was done by 10:30 and he took the rest of the day off. I still left at 11:30, because I hadn't brought my lunch and I hate buying fast food. I was home by 12:05 (thanks flood for wiping out roads and making my usual 15 min commute 30+ minutes), and around 12:20 they were pulling up with our floors. Talk about punctuality!

It took all of 10 minutes to unload the flooring, and then we were left admiring and daydreaming about our soon to be new floor!

And, yes, I was back at work around 1:15...

Blah

I haven't' felt too inspired to write. I'm stressed and aggravated over work, as usual. We are going to the mountains in less than 2 weeks, and I'm stressing over everything we have to get done.

Here's my list, since all I have at this point is a mental one:

• Buy trailer hitch so we can attach bike rack to it - DONE
• Install trailer hitch (or rather, help Jon install it ;-) ) - DONE
• Install window deflectors (something I've been meaning to do for close to 2 months) - waiting until we get back because the windows have to stay shut for 72 hours. I don't want to NOT be able to open my windows...
• Get both cats all their yearly shots - DONE
• Make reservation for boarding both cats - DONE
• Call boarding place to make sure we get the right shots and get prices - DONE (we will get the quote for cost of boarding when we visit the place on Saturday.)
• Go tour boarding place to make sure we want to leave our furbabies with them - DONE
• Go shopping to get trip necessities - DONE
• Buy bike locks for Jon and me, as well as a mini tire inflator to hook to my bike at Target - DONE
• Fill windshield washer reservoir - DONE
• Make appointment to get Jon's truck tuned and windshield replaced while we are gone - DONE (at least I think thats what this scribbled note in front of me means...)
• Take Jon's truck to the dealership, which is a 60 mile round trip - DONE
• Call and make appointment for a quote on the installation of the drop ceiling in the basement - DONE
• Check oil and tires - DONE
• Clean the outside of my car - DONE
• Clean the inside of my car - DONE
• Empty camera card and charge batteries - DONE
• Get caught up at work and get all the plans out that are piling up in my chair - DONE

I can't think of anything else right now off the top of my head. All I know is that I am really feeling frazzled and that I've left everything to the last minute. It all started last Monday when they called me in on my Monday off, and was compounded by all the extra hours I had to work last week. I was supposed to work this coming Monday (my next day off) to make up for one day during the week I would be gone, but I'm seriously considering taking it off and dealing with using more PTO. I need a break, or something.

Oh, and get this. I worked 16.5 hours of overtime last week, including Sunday morning. They probably aren't going to pay us overtime, or compensate us with extra PTO. Oh the joys of being a salaried employee!

As an update to the flood. We didn't have water for 3.5 days. By the time our water came back on (6PM Wednesday evening), I was a pro at washing my hair with 2 gallon jugs of water. Jon bought a camp shower so we were a little cleaner than we would have been had we just been doing a spit bath, but you can only get so clean with the watering can-esque shower head on that thing. There was 157 road washed out in the county, and we are still basically marooned at our house. There is only one route open into town for the ENTIRE south county. Yeah, the little 2 lane road of Hwy 5 can't handle interstate traffic volumes. Needless to say, my typical 15 minute commute to work now takes me 50 minutes. Splendid.

It is resolved

I know you were waiting on pins and needles to find out the fate of our family vacation. ;-) Just kidding, I know my life isn't that exciting, and you aren't that bored either.

So, boss approved my time off. I am very happy he did, so is Jonathan. I even told the boss thank you after having avoided him since the fiasco on Tuesday, having only spoken to him when absolutely necessary. The fact still remains, however, there is a disturbing trend of favorites and double standards here. I don't think that it has to do with "male camaraderie" and female discrimination. I'm not a feminist, I don't even consider those things and I view myself as an equal to all my co-workers (I'm not naive, I see how contractors consider me and I hear them ask the exact question to one of my male co-workers - so, I know it happens.) Simply that there are obvious favorites here and everyone sees it except the parties involved. Sadly, it will probably never change.

What.The.Crap (a work vent)

I usually try to stay away from posting much about work. Mostly because I don't have a whole lot of positive things to say about it. Also, because I'm scared of someone (IT) searching my computer and seeing something I have written and somehow that being used against me. But I can't help it this time. This time, if it comes out, it will be for the better. Maybe... I say that now. Actually, this is more something I wish I could say to my boss, but I can't.

As you may (or may not) know, Jon and I are going to the mountains with his family in October. We did this last year as well, and this is a trip that Jonathan really really looks forward to. Back when we were planning with his parents, I specifically told them that it needs to be either the week of the 4th or the week of the 18th, because I have to work on the 12th and I really can't get it off because it will leave my department very short staffed (I have every other Monday off, the 12th is not one of them.) They agreed, said ok, we can work with that. Well, SIL swoops in and tells them that BIL has already put in for his days off at work and he asked for the week of the 12th off. BIL's job is very strict when it comes to time off. Every December 31, they have to submit all vacation days for the ENTIRE COMING YEAR. Seems a little crazy to me, but thats how it is. So, he can't get out of going to work on that day.

So, MIL and FIL book the cabin for Oct. 11-15. Being the easy-going, non-confrontational, walk-all-over-me type that I am, I told them, "Well, it may be an issue and I may have to twist a few arms, but I'm sure I can get that day off." After all, Bro and Sis in law absolutely can't go the week before or after now because of his schedule. And now, its looking like we may not get there until late Monday night, and Jon is none too pleased about this.

Now for my vent. My co-worker, we'll call him Bob, just took all of last week off. Not only did he take a day off that left us very short staffed, but he substituted 2 days so he could take less time off (he has every other Friday off, he will be working two of his off days in exchange for 2 days he took for vacation. Follow me?) Forget substituting days, I just plain out asked for the entire week off. My boss' reply, "You couldn't go the week before or after on your day off?" Obviously, no. I briefly told him about the "sore subject" that I have with my SIL over the week we are going and that I tried all that I could to go a different week.

Then you know what he said?
"Well, if you can't grow a backbone with them, then I will have to grow one for you and not let you off." He then said he would have to think about it and get back to me. I don't think he will tell me anything until at least the end of the week.

What do you say to that? Golden boy (Bob) takes a whole week and leaves us very short staffed. Whereas, the week I am wanting off, everyone in the department will be here and it won't be short staffed, even on that Monday.

One of my biggest complaints is that Bob can do no wrong. He takes extra days off, leaves work an hour early, leaves us short staffed, but he never gets one thing said to him. I ask and I get lectured and drug through the mud. Sometimes I really get sick of double standard. Oh, and don't even get me started on the "Do as I say, not as I do," hypocrisy that goes on.

Added at 4:05: I'm still livid. I mean, REALLY livid.