My license came in the mail today. I’m officially a LSW!

I’m bitter because my boss pulled me aside at work and told me I needed to work on how I close calls with clients. BigCo has a standard closing we are all supposed to use and I use it…mmm..never. Calls are randomly monitored so the boss has started to pick up on this.

I don’t use their standard close because it sounds too customer service and doesn’t always fit in the flow of the call. I hate having to stumble over a line right before I hang up and ruin an otherwise clinically based conversation. Or sometimes the conversation isn’t at all clinical, the person just has a quick question and says thanks and it’s appropriate for me to say “you’re welcome, bye.”

My boss says that she wouldn’t want to see anything bad happen to me or have me face disciplinary action because of this. Oh and otherwise the calls she monitors are great!

So I’m a great clinically but my customer service skills can use work? Maybe because I’m not a customer service rep! No wonder I want a new job. I want to be a counselor and be expected to do…counseling. I understand many positions have multiple expectations but no other position I have been in has focused so much on an expectation unrelated to social service.

Edit: Filter is awesome, BOA is not.

Bank of America is replacing Filter in Wicker Park

OMG nice day! Too bad I spent most of it sleeping. My friend sleeping sickness is back, closely followed by obsessive anxiety. I need to address both but I’m hesitant to go the my primary doctor and demand drugs. I’m going to try acupuncture first and if my dirty hippie ways don’t work then I will resort to drugging myself into oblivion. No, there is no happy medium with me.

I’m adding things to my summer to-do list. Must keep myself busy. I got into a June motorcycle class. Hopefully that will help with some of my 2 wheel related anxiety. I still want to be a kickboxer or ninja of some sort. I signed up on Obama’s web site and I’m going to try to be politically aware. I’ve never been involved in politics before so I can’t really say where this will go.

Last year I read an article about Capture the Flag games played in Wicker Park. I emailed the organizer referenced in the article but haven’t heard a response so I don’t know if they still go on. If they do, I would be down with some flag capturing.

I would also like to find somewhere to wear my cowboy hat.

I also made pics on a previous entry “Going Places” public because the book has been given to it’s recipient.

On Metra (the classy public trans)

A young  guy sits down with a baby. He places the baby on the seat next to him, she pulls herself up on the back of the seat, wobbling and smiling.

Dad pulls out a bottle of champagne and looks at it and the wobbly baby. Dad pulls the cork and starts drinking out of the bottle. Baby reaches for the champagne and he hands her a bottle of water and goes back to chugging his champagne for the rest of the ride.

I had an interview today with a non-profit that works with delinquent adolescents. The agency is small, the building is run down and the director’s desk is cluttered. Everthing you expect from a social service agency.

The job sounds nice, doing individual and group counseling with kids and lots of extra training and supervision. I don’t think they will be able to pay me enough for my to leave my current position no matter how awful it is.

My current job is easy but frustrating. All of my clinical skills are ignored and my evaluations are heavily based on my “customer service” skills. Potential job would be frustrating due to high cancellation/no show rate.

Let’s see if I get called in for a 2nd interview before I start analyzing this job.

Tomorrow I get new contacts and be Irish (drunk) all day! Yay! And for the dago in me, Sunday I will go to the St. Joseph’s table at my parent’s church. Only box wine there. Bleh.

And here is my latest project!

What’s this? Ohh, Harry Potter. Well, whatever gets the kids to read.

Oh no you tricked me! It is a hollowed out book. How clever.

That’s some awesome cutting you did there. 650 pages with an exacto knife? Wow, I bet you really wish you got your thumb fixed after New Years. Probably hurt.

Why can’t I kep my stapler in your book? You’re mean.

The weather is getting nicer and the time changes tonight. I can feel winter quietly being nudged away. I walked to the eye doctor today and got my new glasses. I can see now! I wanted some colorful frames but nothing colorful seemed to fit the shape of my face. That’s what I get to going some place trendy, my body is never aware of the trends. So I got some nerdy black frames. They rock.

I did my taxes and decided at least some of the money has to go to a new body mod. Tattoo, piercing(s), microdermal..don’t know what yet.

Now I have to go find my flask or a colored water bottle so I can drink on the street during the parade tomorrow!

Sometimes my site logs are amusing. People stumble upon my blog through a lot of the same queries. To address some of them:

I already answered the question about why my furnace was making boom noises. I know I write a ton of rambling entries but the search feature works pretty well. Now go hit your furnace with a wrench!

You need to study for the LSW exam. At least review the style of questions on the test and types of questions asked. Those ethics questions were tricky for me.

Study guides are expensive but think about how much you spent on textbooks you never used. Maybe if you used them more, you wouldn’t need to study as much! Slacker.

Find study guides used, share them with friends or ask professors for sample questions they have. I don’t know about the LCSW exam, I haven’t taken it yet.

That short haircut I posted is adorable and if I wish the stylist didn’t fuck up my hair so bad when he tried to imitate it. Don’t let bald men cut your hair.

Jeremy Piven is one sexy fucking Jew. We all know this.

I never got any good answers about using NuvaRing to skip periods. I’ve stopped taking it since then for other reasons. Maybe if I go back on it I will research further.

There is no dog sex or hot older women here. Glad you searched through 10 pages of Google hits to find that out. Seriously, who doesn’t know how to find porn on the internet? You must be searching from one of those countries that shows up as “unknown”. I hope you have a big brother or HBO.

How did I almost forget about Shamrock shakes until now? You gross, green,what the fuck flavor are you supposed to be, indicators of springtime. Just going to McDonalds to get one gives me a stomach ache.

Maybe I forgot about them because I’m trying to eat less sugar. I’m doing a pretty sucky job of it at night but I’m good at work during my prime candy eating hours. Even with those tricky Girl Scouts pawning their delicious wares in my building. I haven’t had red meat in a while and I’m eating more overall healthy food. Can you tell someone else is cooking for me? :)

I’ve applied to some new jobs. It’s really nice actually having a job so I can be picky about where I apply to. If something is too far away or primarily involves small kids, I don’t bother. But I have been Google mapping suburban jobs to see if they are public trans accessible instead of looking past everything that doesn’t say Chicago. I will not apply for any job that requires driving. Commuting sucks and I don’t trust my car since my check engine light is on again. I’m convinced when I have it paid off in a few months it will spontaneously combust.

I will be at the South Side Irish parade this Sunday. If anyone else is going, let me know. We can ride the Western bus together. My coworkers want me to take a drunk bus from some bar out there but they had to pick the one that leaves at 9am. The parade doesn’t start until noon. I don’t think so. Anyway, I’m not a frat boy, I can’t drink at 9am. And the more they bug me daily about going on the damn bus, the less I want to go on their damn bus. I guess they’re used to people that cave under cajoling of friends. I’m more the type to just not show up if you bug me too much.