Bit of Ivory

Don’t get me wrong. I like my job. I don’t love it, but I like it. Most of the time the people I deal with outside of the company are polite. My coworkers are all nice. And how much, really, can you complain about a job that lets you play around on the internet ALL DAY LONG if you want, or if you don’t, will let you knit or read or do whatever, as long as you can answer the phone? Not much.

But there are a few little irritations, the biggest of which is the lack of communication. Seriously, no one tells each other anything, and if there *is* a need-to-know list, I’m on the bottom of it. Understandable when it comes to stuff like programming and patient info and things like that, but usually? These are things I need to know. Oh, you’re expecting 3 people for a meeting come 3:00? Please tell me in advance instead of when they start arriving, because then I’ll know where to send them. Oh, you’re changing the stuff that gets sent out in our info packets? Well, since I’m the one who MAKES said packets AND sends them out, I should probably be informed that you’re taking out those two pages of staff info, instead of letting me send out the original packets for two weeks (and even then, I only found out about it because I had to print more and asked them if they wanted to update them).

Today was really irritating, though. First our maintenance guy asks if he got any faxes, and I say no, because, well, he hasn’t. So he gets on the phone with the person he expects the fax from, and she says that the fax line is getting intercepted by voicemail. Weird. So I tell the maintenance guy to call the IT guy, ’cause I certainly don’t know anything about any changes to the fax lines, and couldn’t do anything about it if I did. And then, about 5 minutes later, I get a call from someone saying that he’s having a hard time getting through– that it’s either asking for a mailbox extension or just hanging up on him. Okay, something must be up with the phone lines. Of course, the IT guy isn’t even here today. And then another call comes in, and it has caller ID info. I’ve never gotten caller ID before. Just “Caller ID Unknown.”

And then I get a call from a telecomm company, who needs to check the lines because they just switched our telecomm service over 10 minutes ago.

Gee, people. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the RECEPTIONIST, to whom ALL CALLS COME during business hours, should know that we’re switching telecomm companies, and there might be an interruption of service?

NAH.

But hey, I have caller ID now, so maybe I’ll be able to tell if it’s an employee calling and can skip my spiel.

I’ve decided that I need to update more. At first I thought of posting every single day, but then I realized that the main reason I haven’t been posting much lately is that my life has become incredibly boring. I figured you didn’t want to read about how I got up, went to work, went home, and failed to get stuff done on my thesis every day. So I decided that once a week is a much more reasonable goal, and much less annoying for my loyal flist. If I have anyone left.

I’ve been feeling kinda weird lately. I woke up on Monday morning with my ears plugged– you know, the pressure thing that you get on airplanes and such, or when you have a bad cold. Except neither of those things had occurred, and there was no pain involved, just pressure. So, I took the only decongestant we had on hand that didn’t also include cough suppressant and/or pain relievers, which happened to be Mucinex. Then I went to work. Stopped at my usual 7-11 for my usual hot chocolate, and got a Nature Valley Sweet & Salty bar (almond) to go along with it. Well, I don’t know if it was a reaction to the Mucinex, or a lack of eating enough breakfast to go with said Mucinex, or if it was just the pressure on my inner ear, but right at lunch time I suddenly got horribly dizzy. And weak. And the dizziness made me sick to my stomach. And I thought I’d better eat something, so I drove my dad’s Prius (which he’s been able to loan to me this week while he’s off work and Lizzy’s still in the shop) to the closest place to get food that I could think of, which happened to be a grocery store (that also has a dang good deli– their sub sandwiches are a thing of beauty and a joy forever). But I found that I was too dizzy to stand in line to have a sandwich made, and none of the pre-packaged deli stuff looked at all appealing, due to my nausea. So I did the only thing I could think of– I bought a bottle of Power-ade and sat down in the bistro to drink it, hoping that whatever they put in it to help athletes would help me.

It didn’t, particularly. At least, not at first. So I got back in the car and called my mom. I was feeling really ill by this point– like I’d just touched down after a ride-along in an F-16 during a Thunderbirds performance. I really needed to lay down, but I knew I could drive all the way home. We decided I’d try to make it back to work and see if Kim (who covers me for lunch) would be okay with covering the rest of the day. Then she and dad would come pick me up. Luckily, Kim managed to work it out, and I got home and collapsed on the sofa. A nap helped a little (although I think it was more the fact that I was laying down), and some Sudafed helped a bit more, and food helped, too. But I still wasn’t feeling a hundred percent, and I couldn’t be vertical without being a bit dizzy.

Yesterday I made it through work, but still spent almost the whole evening horizontal. The pressure was gone, but the dizziness was still there, a bit. And today, the pressure is back, and I can feel the dizziness coming on again. I took Sudafed this morning, but haven’t noticed an appreciable difference. I did eat more for breakfast, though (two pieces of multigrain toast and a banana in addition to my hot chocolate), so I hope I don’t have a complete repeat of Monday. If this keeps up, I may end up at Instacare after work.

So there’s a guy standing here at my desk filling out an application. Even if we were hiring right now, which we’re not really except for one particular job for which he’s definitely not qualified, he wouldn’t be getting hired at our place. First off, he just walked in and asked for an application. When I asked what job he was applying for, he said “any job.” Umm, yeah. And then he asked if we and the hospital across the street are the same. No. Way to be informed about the company you’re applying for, dude. And then, when I gave him the application, he stood at my desk instead of grabbing a magazine from the seating area to my left to use as a writing surface. And then he started to sing along to the music. I guess I should be impressed at his knowledge of Oldies, but I wasn’t. And then he talked about how he’s probably going to move away anyway, because there aren’t any jobs here. Except, of course, that Utah has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, to the point where there are many more jobs than available workers. I doubt the same is true in Massachusetts and North Carolina (although I can’t be fussed to look it up. I might be wrong). He just handed me the app. In the “position applied for” space, he put “warehouse.” Yeah. We’re a medical facility. And then he came back and asked for a card, which made it abundantly clear that he’s just walking up and down the street, filing applications in any place that will let him, so that he can qualify for unemployment.

I’m tempted to just throw this away. I don’t even know who to give it to, honestly.

It was snowing this morning, but as I don’t have any windows, I can’t tell if it still is. We’ve been getting a storm pretty much every other day ’round here, although the weather report this morning said that after another storm on Friday we should be getting a high pressure that’ll keep the storms at bay for a bit. It’s been kind of nice– I can’t remember how long it’s been since we’ve consistently had snow on the ground for several weeks at a time. Part of that is because it’s been so dang cold the snow won’t melt, but still– it’s more like the winters I remember from my childhood, rather than the drought-type winters we’ve had recently.

I wonder if I scrimp and save and don’t buy any new yarn this year (I really have quite a few projects waiting, with the yarn already purchased) if I could afford to go to England. I’ve wanted to go for ages, but I have a new inducement– David Tennant will be playing Hamlet this summer and fall with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The fact that Patrick Stewart will be playing Claudius is an additional temptation. I desperately want to compare David Tennant with Brian Vaughn. I wonder how he’ll stack up.

Well, my Lizzy got moved to The Other Body Shop today. They expect it to be finished in about 10 working days. Yayness!

So when my parents went to move it from Mark Miller to the Other Body Shop, they took my digital camera. Behold, the damage done to my car by an idiot who couldn’t be bothered to keep her eyes on the road.

Boy, that’s depressing. But she’ll be fixed! Dad said that the car didn’t drive any differently than it always has, so we have high hopes that the damage really is purely cosmetic. Crossing fingers!

So. On Friday, Allstate finally got an adjuster out to see Lizzy. The results were not encouraging. They wanted to total her. The cost of the parts was more than they were willing to pay. But, they’d give us a lower figure if we wanted to get it fixed. About $4800 for totalling, about $3900 for just a settlement. We asked for time to think it over, and asked the body shop (at Mark Miller, the dealership we originally bought the car from) to do an estimate on how much it’d actually cost to get it repaired. If it was only a thousand or so more, Mom and Dad would consider doing it. After all, the main part of the car was undamaged, you know, the really important stuff like the engine. Anyway, it was a blow to hear that. I cried.

And then on Monday, Mark Miller called. Turns out that since Allstate decided the car was a total loss, the car would be declared a salvage car, and they wouldn’t even touch it. They said some places might take it on, but we were on our own. Crap. I cried some more.

Luckily, we had a bit of an ace in the hole. You see, before my mom and dad met, my mom had bought a brand-new Corolla. A ‘77. And then, in 1983, when I was just a wee thing, some lady who was driving with a kid ON HER LAP and wasn’t paying attention to, you know, driving, slammed into Alex (the Corolla– you see my family has a long history of naming our cars) while it was parked in front of our house. Smashed up the whole trunk, not just the side of it like happened to Lizzy. And, of course, the insurance wanted to total it. But mom and dad were incredibly poor at the time (dad still in school, mom not working, 4 kids age 4 and under), and couldn’t have bought a comparable car for the money they were offering. Plus, Alex was my mom’s car, her first car. She loved that car. So they did something rather drastic. They found a body shop that would cut the back of Alex off and weld the back of another car to it. And what do you know, it worked. Of course, from then on the trunk said it was a 5-speed when it was actually a 4-speed. But they drove that car for another 15 years before it got hit again (this time in a parking lot, by a car whose driver hadn’t put on his parking brake, who had then driven off. Luckily, a bystander had written down his license # and he had the cops show up at his door. And yes, all of our major car accidents have been entirely the other person’s fault) and we finally donated it to the Utah Kidney Foundation (and yes, Mom cried when he got towed away, and still has his key on her keyring).

So, prior experience had taught us that the impossible-to-fix was– not quite so impossible. And dad remembered the name of the body shop who’d fixed Alex– The Other Body Shop. So he called them up. And it was even the same guy, Randy, although of course he didn’t remember having fixed a car back in 1983. Randy listened to the story and said that he thought it’d probably be fixable, but that he’d have to look it over to be sure. He and dad made an appointment for today.

The end of my lunchbreak rolls around, and I get a call from dad. Randy thinks Lizzy is definitely fixable. He can’t be sure until he gets it apart, but he doesn’t think the frame is bent. Dad asks him for a full bid, including a full paint job (which we were going to do in the spring anyway– there were some worrisome rust spots on Lizzy’s roof where the paint had chipped away–and which probably would have cost us $1500). Randy says he’ll have one later today.

Half an hour later, the bid comes in. Fully restored, full paint job– $4500. He’s already found the necessary parts from a Corolla DX that had front-end damage. They can get here in 3-4 days. Work could start next week.

It would still mean that Lizzy is a salvage car, which means that we couldn’t sell it to anyone else, really. And we won’t be able to have comprehensive on her anymore, just collision, which means that if Lizzy gets hit again ever, she’s toast. OTOH, the rates would go down. And I fully plan on driving Lizzy into the ground, and sending her away to join Alex when there’s no hope for her.

So, yeah. Mom and Dad haven’t decided for sure yet, but it’s looking hopeful that I might get my Lizzy back after all. Despite all indicators to the contrary.

We got a call from Allstate, which is the other lady’s insurance company. They’ve accepted full liability for the accident, and will be sending an adjuster soon. Because of the high number of accidents in the Utah that day, it may take a bit. Lizzy is currently in the tow company’s yard, waiting to be moved to the repair shop of our choice, which can’t happen until Monday. Allstate is offering a rental car if I need it.

I’ve had a bit of neck pain– mostly stiffness– and a horrendous headache today, which might just be because I didn’t sleep well last night. I haven’t seen a doctor, but if I don’t feel better tomorrow, I probably will.

I miss my car.

I’m trying so hard not to cry. It’s not working very well.

My parents were really nice to me this morning. You see, we had a big snowstorm through the night. My dad took today off, and my sister wasn’t working until this afternoon, so I was the only one that was going to have to dig out in the morning. Mom decided it would be nice if we pulled the van out of the garage and put my car in instead. And they did! I didn’t have to clear off a single bit of snow from Lizzy this morning. The commute was okay, if a bit slow, and I made it to work. Where we were all in a festive kind of a mood, and where I kept getting presents from coworkers and suppliers and stuff like that. And we decided we all wanted to order in, so I ate lunch at my desk and then left to do a bit of last minute shopping. And to deposit my paycheck.

And all was good. I was almost back to work, blasting “Song for Ten” on endless repeat on my iPod, and I stopped at a light. The line was longer than usual, I admit. And I had to stop just a bit shorter than I like– short enough that my iPod slipped off the passenger seat and on to the floor. I bent down to pick it up. . .

and got rear-ended. Apparently the lady in the Honda Pilot wasn’t paying attention– she said she was looking down for just a moment– and couldn’t stop in time. She did try to swerve to miss me, but didn’t quite succeed– her right headlight collided with Lizzy’s left taillight. Smashing up the trunk in the process. The impact wasn’t enough to deploy the airbags, but it sure did a number on my poor car.

I feel okay. A bit of a headache, and a bruise on my leg where it slammed into the dashboard. I’m much more injured in spirit. This is the first time I’ve been in an accident. Well, okay, I’ve been rear-ended before, but it was at low speed with no damage. And I accidentally scraped Lizzy along my brother’s bumper in the driveway. This was different. Police were called. And even though it wasn’t at all my fault, I feel horrible.

Especially because of my car. Lizzy’s pretty old, you see– a 1997 Toyota Corolla. My parents bought her for me to commute in the summer after my freshman year of college, which was 1999. She was in great shape then, and she was still in great shape, except for a bit of paint damage (from the above-mentioned scraping and various other things like flying rocks on freeways). I love that car. I’ve driven her for 8 years. I drove her to the Shakespearean Festival three times, and to Lumos. Other people drove her every once in a while–my brother and I shared her for a couple of years in college, until he bought his own car, and Mom takes her when she doesn’t want to drive the van, but she’s really my car. I named her. I planned to buy her, as soon as my credit cards were paid off. I was going to get her oil changed next weekend, and fill up her tires. I’ve gotten awfully attached to that hunk of metal.

And now I’m mortally afraid that the lady’s insurance will want to total her.

Yeah. Really not doing so well with the not crying thing.

Not in a ughIthinkI’mGoingToThrowUp kind of a way, but in a sick feeling in my soul kind of a way.

I lost my hat.

Not just any hat. My Irish Hiking Coronet hat. A hat made with expensive yarn, a hat that caused me a lot of trouble to make. I finished it in September, but have only been able to wear it for two weeks. I took pictures of it on Saturday. And then– I went to dinner last night, and lost it. I checked with the restaurant and with the store we stopped by before that (to buy the Pirates DVD), but no dice.

It’s all I can do not to break down in tears. The first time I splurge on expensive imported-from-Italy-superwash-merino wool, and I LOST IT. IT’S GONE FOREVER.

I hope whoever picked it up without turning it in gets good use out of it. But now all I have left of my beautiful hat is two crummy pictures.

This is closer to the real color.

:((

I mean, I always knew that music affects you, but this has been such a dramatic change, I’m really quite amazed.

So, on Nov. 1, KOSY started playing Christmas music, right? Well, my boss went to change the station, but rather than changing it straight to KODJ (the oldies station) as we’d discussed, she went to KSFI instead, which is a near-clone of KOSY. It wasn’t as dramatic a change as I’d hoped, but while they played a lot of the same songs, they also played several that KOSY never did, and they didn’t seem to repeat artists and songs as much as KOSY did. I was satisfied.

Until I came to work on Monday, only to discover– TA DA! KSFI has switched to Christmas, too! GAH. Although they weren’t as annoying as KOSY’s Christmas– they stuck mostly to old-school stuff like Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole and Andy Williams and the Carpenters. So I didn’t have to hear any rendition of “Last Christmas, I Gave You My Heart” before Alyson got in, realized that yes, they were playing the Ringalingalinga Ding Dong Ding version of “Sleigh Ride,” and we’d better change the station again. So she did, and this time she went straight to KODJ.

Oh my heck, you guys. What a difference! There’s still some overlap– KOSY was big on 70s soft rock, and KODJ plays it too (they call themselves a Super Hits station, which means they play 60s and 70s music rather than their original format of 50s and 60s), but in a much greater variety. So while I hear Neil Diamond several times a day, it’s a much wider range of his songs (”Forever in Blue Jeans”! “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show”!). KODJ knows that ABBA and Frankie Valli and the Beach Boys had more than one hit– shocking! And they mix up the stuff I’ve heard a lot of lately with stuff I haven’t heard in ages– “Happy Together” by the Turtles and “Hooked on a Feeling” by B.J. Thomas and “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees and “The Mighty Quinn” by Manfred Mann and the original Supremes version of “Can’t Hurry Love” instead of the mediocre Phil Collins remake, and– it’s fantastic, people, it really is. It’s all I can do not to sing out loud when “Sherry” comes on, and I walked into work yesterday filled with glee when I realized that I wouldn’t have to hear “Before He Cheats” or “How to Save a Life” or “Chasing Cars” or any Celine Dion. At all! Not until January, at least! Although my boss has gotten such good comments on the station, that I have a sneaking suspicion she might leave it here, even after KOSY abandons the Christmas Overload format.

I’m sure I’ll get sick of it eventually, but right now I’m so giddy about the music, it makes the day go faster and leaves me SO much less cranky at the end of the day. So I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

Okay, here’s pictures. Now, keep in mind that I wasn’t really planning on dressing up at all. And then I got a fabulous idea on Friday night. A few trips to thrift stores and costume stores later, and I was set. So what did I go as?

Yup. That’s me, Tracy Turnblad. I figured, hey, I haven’t lost the weight I wanted to, so why not use it to my advantage?

I think I did pretty well for my time limitations, don’t you?

Well, enough of me. Look at my cute nephew and niece!

Thomas as Peter Pan. He also had a little yellow puffball with wings that was his Tinkerbell, but he wouldn’t keep a hold of it.

Thomas and Anna together, with Anna in her BYU Cheerleading outfit. Aren’t they the cutest things?

Yup, it’s begun. I’ve only been listening to it for an hour, and I’m already sick of it.

I really need my boss to come in so she can switch it to the oldies station.

I dressed up for Halloween this year. I was too tired to upload any pics last night, but when I get home, I’ll do so. ‘Cause I really want ya’ll to see my awesome costume.

Going to the eye doctor this afternoon. Maybe he can actually find a solution to my dry, red, itchy eye problem (now with icky film that sticks to my contacts and makes it impossible to see!). I really hope, though, that the solution isn’t going back to glasses full time. I haven’t worn glasses since I was twelve.

Have I mentioned that I’m going to be an aunt again? My SiL is expecting in March. And. . . it’s another girl! Right now the frontrunner for the name is Katherine, to be called Kate. I think Anna and Kate are adorable together.

In the meantime, Thomas turns one next week. Where has the time gone? He was Peter Pan for Halloween. So cute! Anna was a BYU cheerleader. Also cute! I can’t stand how adorable my niece and nephew are, really. Especially now that Anna has started saying my name– I’m “Emmy.” Makes me melt every time.

Dude, this music is just reminding me how behind I am on my Christmas knitting. Eek! I’d better stop typing and start knitting. Now if only I could figure out where the extra stitch is coming from on the border for the silk scarf I’m knitting for my aunt. . .