Hello world, I’m still alive! (Did you miss me?)

Work has been pretty alright lately. Well, it was until things start to go wrong and then it’s a bit of a headache to fix… I somehow became in charge of a task (it’s to do with printing), which I don’t mind, as it’s pretty mindless sometimes and easy to do. Then comes people losing the paperwork that I print out for them, and asking for reprints (constantly, at least once per day). So I went and confiscated all the paperwork from the production department and it’s now all neatly arranged in boxes in my boss’ office.  So it’s stressful, and people always leave it until about 15 minutes before I’m supposed to be done work to inform me that they’ve lost stuff and need it reprinted (they don’t have access to the only printer that can do some of the stuff, they also don’t get access to some programs…). Hello, overtime. It keeps me busy, for the most part, and I’ve been just going-going-going lately, when it comes to work. I hope it slows down soon (and even if it doesn’t, my last day is coming up very soon).

I am sort of ready for the start of school. Tuition has been paid (ouch), I bought more printer paper, some pens, a new Staedtler eraser, lined paper, a handful of coiled notebooks and duo-tangs (they were $0.09 each! – before tax). In terms of supplies, I still need to get textbooks (some of my classes still don’t list books, one of them has confirmed that there is no textbook assigned to the class – thank you, Introductory Oceanography! – one of them also lists four ‘required’ textbooks) – I’m waiting until I actually go to the classes to see if I need the textbook(s), if there are actually textbooks assigned, if older editions are okay and (drumroll) if there are textbooks in the reserved sections of the library. Poor student is poor, and poor student prefers to spend money on other things besides textbooks. I also need 3 lab manuals, but those are generally inexpensive (cheapest one I’ve bought so far was $5, most expensive was huge, high quality printing, binding and paper, at ~$70) and I won’t be able to get it until labs actually start (not during first week). I’m sure I’ll figure out new things that I need to get my hands on (off the top of my head right now, I know I need new scalpel blades and I’ll probably want to get a new calculator, or just new batteries). Oh, and I already bought a box of blue powder-free nitrile gloves for labs ($10 for 100 pairs, versus $1/pair in lab).

In other news, I got a new-to-me bed! I went from a double to a queen, someone in my family got a new bed, so I got their older one (which is a lot newer than my old bed, so I’ll take it) It’s so big, and makes me feel really small, heh.

So… What is new in your world? I’ve done some development on my new domains – haven’t gotten them up and running yet though! And I’ve got some other small projects and things that I want to get done before school starts up again – I have 3 more (full) terms left before I graduate (and apply and hopefully get accepted into a new program!).

So today was Monday, of course, which meant that it was the beginning of my work week (as I’m sure it was for a lot of you as well). I got to work and my boss was already there and he’d been there since 5am, which I personally think is a little absurd (considering he worked from home on Sunday until midnight). I have a workaholic for a boss, but after I told him this, he said that he wasn’t (go figure). Work was busy today… People came back from vacation, a certain government-authorized agency doesn’t like the company too much at the moment due to the recent ‘surprise visit’ and I spent a few hours sorting through all the paperwork that was on my boss’ desk because he was tired of not being able to see the fake wood. Good fun, isn’t it?

I also registered two new domains today, through my registrar of choice: namecheap.com. Both of them are .com’s and I’ll be revealing what the name are when I get the sites ready and up (hoping to do so before I get back to school in a couple of weeks). I’ve tried two other domain registrars before, but one was full of ads all over the place and the other was just a confusing interface to use (and this is coming from me!). I think websites, unless otherwise noted, should be easy to navigate and easy to use – this also goes for personal blogs where the navigation is just roman numerals like I. II. III. IV. V. <- this tells me nothing about what the links are for. </vent about bad navigation word choices> Anyways, what I was going to say is that it’s a great registrar and I highly recommend Namecheap, mostly for the ease of using their website and how quick it is (also, as a major plus, there’s promotional codes essentially every single month for new domain names and transfers, which I happily used today to get a little discount on my new acquisitions!).

Oh, the kicker for today is that I got a message from a girl who was my ‘BFF’ back in grades 6 and 7. We stopped being friends over a boy (juvenile, I realize that – but we were 11-12 and totally thought we knew everything). As it turns out, she’s attending the same school as me and only realized this when she added someone on Facebook and it turns out we’re mutual friends, so she added me to decide to catch up. And the weird thing is, I swear nothing’s really changed about her. She still plays the piano, she still goes to church every week, she still sings in a choir. But then again, I suppose some things haven’t really changed about me either since I was 11 and 12 years old – I’m still clumsy, I still blog, I still roleplaying. I kind of expected things to change, but I guess deep down inside, there’s always something that does stay the same. It’s interesting, to be honest, talking to someone who knew me when I was that age – but at the same time it’s a little unnerving because she would know all the crap I pulled back then, what kind of a person I was and it’s not the same person that I am now.

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Work has been… busy, for lack of a better term. There’s a lot of people on holidays this week, including someone who handles a lot of the work that’s been put onto my boss this week – which in turn puts more work and responsibilities onto me. I’ve somehow ended up taking out a task that belongs to someone else (who is not on vacation this week), I’m not sure why. Oh, even better, I got handle a huge pile of paperwork this morning and got to sort it all (fun stuff). None of it was in order, and oh, could I get it done in an hour? (I finished sorting the pile in ~40 minutes, but that’s not the point.)

Stress from other people that goes to my boss ultimately goes to me. Because I am essentially the only office-working underling that he’s got. I say that in a positive manner, of course – I don’t mind the underling title. He realized today how many more days I have left at work (11 more work days, my last day is on September 3rd and then I have a long weekend and then it’s back to school) and he just looked incredibly shocked, with wide eyes (despite the fact that I know he put it into his company cellphone and onto his computer’s calendar) and went “Really? Already? You know, I could get them to hire you on full time!”.

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