Thursday, May 26, 2005

I've been too busy

5/15 - Went to the ren fair with mom. We had a great time and got to see lots more shows. Mom loved her little July dragon.

5/16 - Very hectic day at work. I spent most of the time at my desk on the phone with my shoes kicked off under my desk cause my feet were so swollen from walking around the fair all day Sunday.

5/17 - Another hectic day at work and I gave in to the 63 square crochet along on The Wagon.

5/18-5/19 - I spend these two days printing, folding, stuffing and stamping 2100 letters for work to let everyone we insure know that the office was moving. My hands hurt so bad that I didn't manage to stitch or crochet

5/20 - I caught up on all the paperwork that had been put in the background so that I could send out all the letters from the previous two days.

5/21 - I went to the get-together at stitchingmom's house. I had debated whether I wanted to go or not cause I really wasn't in the best mood from a rough week at work but in the end I did go. I was very surprised when I showed up after 1pm to discover that only one other person was there. The gtg started at noon so I was expecting more people to be there by the time I dragged myself there. I was a little shocked. I stayed for a while thinking more people would show up. Pat left after a hour or so. I ended up not leaving until around 10pm. No one else ever showed up. I felt really bad for Cindy after seeing all the trouble she had gone through and how much food she had ready. I did get to know her a lot better though.

5/22 - I gave up and slept till noon which is something that I haven't done since college. I was just worn out. DH was a wonderful husband and did all the laundry on Saturday while I was at the gtg so I didn't have to worry about any of that. I also gave up and started crocheting a new afghan cause I loved the feel of the yarn so much.

5/23 - this was another very busy day at work. I cleaned out my coworkers desk since she's not coming back either. When I got home, I went back to the crocheting and managed to finish a whole skein of yarn into the afghan.

5/24 - This wasn't too bad of a day. I finished cleaning up and packing most of the front office at work. I only have a few supplies left at my desk and I need those things to make it through the rest of this week. When I got home, I proceeded to crochet again and made it through 3/4 of another skein of yarn.

5/25 - I had a very dull day at work. I somehow managed to injure myself in my sleep the night before. I was getting shooting pain through my right shoulder anytime I move my right arm or shoulder or twist at the waist so I didn't do a lot of moving around. We took Spike to the vet for a recheck cause he hurt his ear. I also managed to get another skien into my afghan which means that I'm 2/3 of the way done.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

You Did WHAT!!!!

I guess my month is going to continue to be a SAY WHAT!?! month. My brother just called me today and said that he "accidentally" got married back in January and just found out about it. To say I was flabergasted is putting it mildly. He says that he and Laura had planned to elope in January so they got there license and went before the judge but chickened out and didn't go through with the ceremony. The judge said that he had already signed the paperwork so he couldn't give it back to them and he would destroy it for them. They said okay and left. The judge's assistant took it and processed it like any good assistant would do before the judge had a chance to destroy it. Since bro is in the military, the state notified the military that he was married cause it changes his pay rate. Bro's supervisor called him in and asked why he hadn't put in for the pay rate back in January when he got married and bro replied with we didn't get married cause we changed our minds at the last minute. They have been living together all this time so they have decided to just go ahead and stay married now. This news left me wanted to scream, yell, rant and hit things. I have calmed down some but every time I think about it, I still want to slap him upside his head!

The week was full of data entry so there wasn't much else going on in my life other than the idiot that made the end of my Friday very annoying. The man came in last month to set his monthly pay account to auto withdraw from his account. I set everything up but for some reason it didn't withdraw on 4/20 like it was supposed to. The system sent him a bill instead. The man didn't open his bill so he didn't pay the bill so his insurance canceled on 5/12th. He was calling on 5/13th to tell me that he'd had an accident and I had to inform him that his insurance had canceled the day before. I then ended up listening to a 30 minute rant from him where he called me names and told me that it was my fault that his insurance canceled and that I had to make things right and cover his accident since all this was my fault and how did I expect him to go pay his insurance when he couldn't drive his car and why was I expecting him to drive without insurance... well, you get the idea of the half hour. I finally ended the conversation with the basic "it is not my responsiblity to open your mail or pay your insurance. I am not telling you drive without insurance. I'm telling you to pay your insurance. You can take a bus or a cab or ride with a friend or get to the office any other way you want to but your insurance will not be reinstated until you pay it.

I have been stitching though. I finished February Gemstone Dragon and July Gemstone Dragon from dragon dreams and now I need to sew them into little "purses" to go with my ren fair costume. The Feb is for me and the July for my mom. We'll be heading to the ren fair tomorrow 5/14. It'll be just me and mom. We haven't really spent much time together in a while so we're gonna spend the whole day together. It should be nice.

I promise to try to update more. I just haven't felt like getting on the computer at all during the week cause I'm doing all that data entry and it's sapping my energy really bad so that I don't want to do anything when I get home.

Hope everyone is doing okay. I'm off to catch up on blogs now.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Thank God Friday is over!

Normally I love Fridays. Today was aweful though. Boss's sister has taken upon herself to decide that since the agent that boss is going to be sharing an office with is paperless (no paper back up files) that we need to go through all the files and enter everthing into the computer. The boss said he was going to hire people to do that after he moved but his witch sister has decided that we should do it before he moves so he won't have to move the files and why should he hire people to do it after when he has me for the next three weeks.

I hate data entry. Granted, I'm good at it and I type fast and have a very good visual memory so I don't have to keep looking at things as I type. I can glance at a ss# or driver's lic # and remember it long enough to type it in. But I hate doing it. This is boring, tedious, mindless work.

I have an online class that I'm in the middle of that I would like to finish but Noooooo, boss has decided that sister is right and data needs to be entered now while he's got me working instead of hiring a temp. We have 2100 customers some of whom have been with this agent since he opened his office in 1971. This is a lot of data. I worked all day today and only made it through the letter G in the alphabet. *yawn*

I'm also supposed to address, fold, and stamp 2100 letters to mail to our insured's to let them know that the agent is moving. Yeah, this will be a fun 3 weeks. NOT!!

The most aggravating thing about all this is that I have been asking for 6.5 years if we should be doing this as well so we wouldn't have to stop and pull a file to look something up but the boss kept telling me no. I could have had all this done by now by just doing an hour or so a day instead of a straight 8 hours of this junk till it's done.

This too will pass. I will survive.

Sorry to have turned in to such a complainer during the last few blogs.

I'm gonna spend this weekend relaxing at home and buy some new books to read. I'm working on Baroque now but don't have much done. This a very small cross stitch though so I should finish it this weekend.

I'm looking forward to next weekend too cause Mom and I are going to go the Ren fair. I don't know if we are going on Sat or Sun yet though. It depends on what day mom has off and Sam's club hasn't let her know yet.

I'm also feeling much better healthwise. As much as I hated that surgery, it has improved my immune system. I've not been getting sick as often and I'm not staying sick for as long. Case in point, last night I was running a temp and feeling nauseous but tonight I'm fine.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Say What?

That pretty much sums up my week.

I went to work on Monday as usual and the boss sat down and gave me the unpleasant news that he was moving his office to Woodstock at the end of this month. He offered to let me continue working for him but I would now have to work 8:30am to 5pm M-F (an extra half hour a day) and I'd have to start coming in on Saturday from 8:30 to 1pm (I have sat off now) because the agent that he is combining offices with works these hours. He also let me know that I'd have to work at the same pay rate. I looked at him and said "So I would have to work an extra 7 hours a week and drive an hour and half to work every day with no extra money". He said yes. SAY WHAT! I said no. This left me without a job after 5/31/05. To top it off after 6.5 years, he's only giving me 1 wk of pay as a severance package. SAY WHAT!

I tried not to panic. I'm the type of person that loves to stay busy and I have lots of wonderful people skills. I have my Georgia state insurance license and 6.5 years experience in an insurance office where I did everything that needed to be done. I've been in customer service in one form or another since I was 15.

Tuesday, I typed up my resume and sent it out to 3 people. Wednesday, I sent it out to 2 more people.
At this point, I was starting to worry. No one had called me back after seeing my resume. What if I couldn't find a job right away? What if I had to take a pay cut? Can we survive right now without my income (this one is a big NO)?

Today, I called two headhunters and sent them my resume. They said that the didn't think they had anything that would fit my qualifications but they would call back and let me know tomorrow. *big sigh* I decided I'd go back to calling insurance agents. As a lark, I called one of my bosses friends. I didn't really think that he was looking since the boss had said that he would call the other agents that he knew and see if they were hiring. After a 2 minute phone conversation, I learned that he had just hired someone but he wanted to come and interview with me anyway and asked if it was okay to come to my job today and do the interview. I told him that would be fine. I thought about calling a couple of other people but I thought I'd wait and see how the interview went first. BBF(boss's business friend) got there at 4:30 and we started the interview. In less than 15 minutes, I was offered a job at the same pay rate with extras. The deal is that I'm guaranteed a base pay every year (which is what I'm making now) plus I get a bonus for every new policy I solicit (this means that if you come in to write an auto policy and I talk you into getting a renters too I get a bonus for the renters). I also get a bonus for every health or life policy I write whether I solicit it or the customer asks for it. The job is near about 3 miles past DH's job so I'd have to drop him off and then head to work and pick him up on the way home instead of being dropped off and picked up. After talking about bonuses, he also told me that the lowest christmas bonus he'd ever given was $300 (gee, the biggest I've ever gotten is $200 and that was the year I gave the boss a cross stitch that cost me $250 to frame!).

While talking, I also learned that BBF had asked SB(stupid boss) last week if he knew of any experienced people that were looking for a job and SB didn't say anything about me! SAY WHAT! Because of this, BBF hired a new girl. He did offer me this job but if I take it (It is very strongly looking like I will) he'll have to go out and buy a new desk and phone and computer for me cause he'll be making room for me to work for him. I guess I have impressed him. I also learned that his office manager D knows me and asked for BBF to hire me as soon as she heard my name. I've apparently taken some CE classes with her and helped her out at some point over the last 6 years.

The interview lasted from 4:30pm to 7pm tonight with both of us asking a lot of questions to make sure that I would fit in with the other 5 girls in his office and that I would be happy there. I told him that I would let him know next week. I do want to see what the headhunters come up with tomorrow just to see if I can get a job with more pay and less upset people but I think that I'll be taking the job. This is a nice man and if I've helped his office manager at the class, it means that I like her too even if I can't remember her right off. Plus I won't have to learn anything new, I'd just be doing the same thing at a new office with more people around so I won't have to do everything that gets done anymore. I won't be able to read the boards at work anymore if I do this cause he does require that I stay busy either helping current customers or looking for new ones.

Well, I've run off for quite a while now but that'll catch everyone up to where I am. Oh, I also finished Deepest Love.
Have a good night everyone.

Monday, May 02, 2005

stupid firewall

Sorry to have dropped off for a while. Work put up a new firewall that stops me from accessing blogger or any of the blogs on blogger while at work. Argh. I now have to make time at home to write in the blog and read the blogs and I also have to find something else to keep me busy while waiting for the endless boring hours of work to be over.

Not much going on really. Our sunburns are now faded and the peeling is almost over (Thank God). I realized that I didn't get cleaning instructions on the outfit that I bought from the ren fair and now have no idea how to clean my dress and corset without ruining it. DOH!

Deepest Love is all stitched and I'll be working on and hopefully finishing the beading tonight (woohoo!)

I picked up a book on learning how to knit and one on learning how to crochet and I'm going to attempt to teach myself. I even picked up the 63 square afghan pattern. Maybe I'll actually do it.

Hope everyone is well. *HUGS*