First full week of work down! I file good! People are pretty tolerant of my stupid mistakes especially after I explain I’m not an admin assistant. My boss didn’t notice all those envelopes I fucked up in the trash. It’s been a really long time since I had to use a typewriter but she’s right, it is better to type the addresses than subject people to my serial killer printing. And the fiscal year begins in July not June? Ya, totally knew that. Now give me that FY 07 binder back. I need to uh..look at something.

There are no social work interns at the agency so I’m going to look into doing clinical supervision outside of the agency rather than do one on one supervision and actually have to put effort into obtaining my clinical license. I won’t even be using it once I get it. I would just rather get it before I forget everything I slept through in grad school.

I fell asleep at my first big meeting at the agency. A nice AA kicked me and woke me up before (I hope) anyone noticed. I haven’t been sleeping much at night. The new piercing and new job are partially to blame for that. And I think my body knows that I have drugs in the cabinet that I refuse to take. Maybe when my new health insurance kicks in which is in 3 months. Ugh, please don’t die in that time, body. COBRA is expensive.

I’m going to try more dirty hippie sleep remedies within the next couples months. I’ve stopped going to acupuncture and now I’m thinking of something a bit more interactive like a yoga class.

I was talking about dancing last night and I think I need to do that more often. I miss going out, drinking cosmos like juice, dancing until I’m a sweaty mess, forgetting how to read, eating pancakes and waking up with bruises.

What everyone doesn’t dance like that?

About microdermals
The site is in French but it’s has good pics of the jewelry and the girl at the bottom has the same piercing I got.

I went to the piercers at The Alley last week and asked about microdermal placement. I think I already wrote about that part, they need to be on a flat surface like sternum. So I came back today with my roommate and Scott B. (there are 2 Scotts) pierced me good!
He was so nice and professional. I don’t have any other piercers to compare him to but he explained the process and was willing to take his time more than my tattoo artists were.
I picked out a small white opal and went over the process and aftercare while Scott sterilized everything. He marked the spot on my chest, I gave him the OK and laid down while he prepared. I remembered my deep abdominal breathing to calm myself (thanks acupuncturist!)

He grabbed the marked area of skin and when I gave the OK, pressed the dermal punch in, pause, twist. That part didn’t hurt very much. My roommate said there was some blood when he twisted. I wish we were allowed to take pics so I could have seen what it looked like. After he removed the punch, he wiped the area and put the base or foot of the jewelry in. That part hurt more and there was an audible pop when the foot pushed through. Then he screwed the opal on and ta-da all done!

So just like with my tattoo, I was being a wussy and almost backed out. And just like my tattoo, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I expected/feared. I have a Tegaderm bandage over it because I went to a party tonight and didn’t want it to get dirty. It’s a little bloody around the edge of the jewelry but I will do as told and leave it alone and let it be ugly for a week or so. Scott said I can change out the opal after it heals which I might do because right now it seems to be sticking out a lot. That may change when it heals.
Pretty pretty, shiny shiny!

My first day at the new job was awesome. I was there for 2 hours. My boss got stuck out of town so I filled out some paperwork, was shown around my new office and left.

Today we did a little more. I figured out where stuff was in my office and on the mess of an agency wide share drive. I share my office with an intern a couple days a week until December. I haven’t met intern yet.

I did random office tasks, argued with the postage machine and felt generally overwhelmed by the new position. My previous job had very set tasks, goals and was monitored closely. New job is very autonomous, the position is new, the boss is busy and I’m a little lost. The administrative part of my job has been filled by temps for the past year so the other staff members are used to dealing with the new kid.

The storm forced everyone into the basement for the last part of the day. There are lots of fallen tree limbs around my house but surprisingly I saw no car or house damage. We win nature!

My mom screamed at my voicemail this morning and informed me that I was caught by a red light camera and have a ticket waiting for me at my parent’s house. My dad cosigned on the car with me so his name is also on the ticket, which was the reason she was yelling. I run a lot of red lights and was afraid to tell her there may be more tickets coming.

My first day got moved back until Wednesday so I’ve been slacking. It’s kind of nice. I got my hair cut all cute and short. It’s back to where I can scrunch it and make it into messy curly “sex hair” as my friend calls it. I was going to get pierced today but the internet confirmed my suspicion that women feel more pain while they’re ragging so I am putting off piercing until end of the week. I am concerned about the pain of piercing but I was also concerned about the pain of tattooing and that ended up being manageable. I’m hoping this is the same situation. Even if it isn’t, piercing is a brief pain not a half hour of someone dragging a needle across your back.

Last day! I’m a shark! Suck my cock!

I finished up all my cases like a nice employee, my coworkers fed me chocolate twice and my supervisor did not even say goodbye to me. Employees usually send out goodbye emails to the department when they leave. Being a snotty bitch, I had to send out a sarcastic one. The trick is to send out something that isn’t so offensive that a supervisor will retract the email and send it out late enough that a supervisor won’t come by to talk to me about it. So 10 minutes before 5, I send out a goodbye letter template and don’t fill in the fields. So it says “dear (name), I leaving (company)…”

As soon as it comes out, I walk to a coworkers desk and I can here the cube dwellers talking about it. It went right over some of their heads but most people understood where I was going with it. We get about 1 goodbye email a week at this place, turnover is high and morale among the easily replaceable cogs is low.

Today my friend forwarded me an email that my former supervisor sent out in response to my email. She said that my email was open to interpretation but she wanted to her team to know that they were valued. Valued how I wonder? With the low pay or with the job that is marketed as clinical but isn’t?

After work I got drunk at Roscoe’s, convinced coworkers I would not abandon them just because I’m changing jobs and watched karaoke.

My new job contacted me, I won’t be starting until Wednesday now. More time to be laaazy! Tomorrow I get my hair chopped all super cute Victoria Beckham-like.

Today I went for my sleep study consult. Minor respiratory issues, not enough to say I have sleep apnea. And the neurologist made it sound like he couldn’t diagnose night terrors because no one has ever seen me have one. I didn’t have them as a kid, just was a sleep walker/talker. I don’t have them when I am sleeping with someone and my roommate has never heard me screaming. He pointed out since no one has heard me scream, I may not actually be screaming. I just think I am. So he gave me the vague “parasomnias” label, gave me a script and the psychologist at the clinic suggested counseling. Pretty much what I was expecting but as I’ve said before, it’s nice to be able to rule out medical problems.

I have a smiley face lookin up at me from my hand. The door person at Halsted Market Days was very careful to draw a big smile on it.

I went to The Alley and talked to the piercer, I’m pretty sure it was Scott, about microdermals. The jewelry is tiny which makes me feel much better about the possible painfulness of the piercing. I’ve watched videos of the piercing but didn’t wrap my head around the method completely until seeing the metal in person. He said I couldn’t do the piercing on my breast because of the risk of it getting snagged on something. He said that they come out fairly easily, a little too easily if they aren’t in a flat spot. Sternum is a much better location. I think I’m OK with that. If I get a sternum piercing, I can get a chain that ends right above the piercing and pretend it’s a pendant!

Saturday I worked at my dad’s store, nothing exciting there just lots of weird suburbanites and bad TV at my parents. I’m so damn amused with VH1 and MTV when I’m at my parents. It’s good I’m not alone there much.

And Sweet Jesus 3 more days left at work! whee!

Transitioning to new job land is kind of fun. I made a sock puppet for my coworker and today she gave a clinical presentation on PTSD with the puppet. It was fun and educational!

I’m going to have a big gay happy hour in Boystown on my last day and my coworkers are taking me out for chocolate fondue! I don’t get anymore cases since I’m leaving so next week will be a lot of me calling people and saying “Hi, I’m leaving. Talk to my boss from now on.”

Roommate has been gone for a few days. It’s kind of peaceful being alone except at night when the anxiety kicks in. For some reason, my head believes that my skinny little roommate can ward off bad guys. Maybe she’s more a good luck charm than a bodyguard.

I moved my sleep study meeting to next week. For the next week, my homework is to try to go to bed earlier. I hope I didn’t do a sleep study just to get stellar advice like that. I would rather them offer me drugs than tell me “try to get 8 hours and everything will be OK!”

I’m trying to figure out the online dating protocol. Every site now has a feature where you can see who views you. If they look OK you, of course, view their profile, too. Then there are “hot lists” people can add you to which pretty much does nothing except saves your profile on a separate page for them and notifies the other person that they have been “hot listed.” Personals sites really like to make verbs out of nouns. So do I “hot list” the person back if I’m interested? Or just go ahead and send them a message? Is this the equivalent of making eye contact vs making the first move if I weren’t a geek and met people in real life? Because I will make eye contact in bars but I rarely go up and start conversations with strangers. Which maybe is why I’m single…hmmm.

I will have to give this more thought.

Time for bed. 8 hours!

My 1 year anniversary at BigCo was this week.  A day after my 1 year anniversary, I put in my 2 week notice.

I finally got the research job!

I did not want to post until I was absolutely sure but I got an email asking what day I want to start. Looks like that is as sure I will get.  It reminds me of when I got into grad school. I got an email from the uni saying  “welcome to the MSW listserv” before I got a formal acceptance letter.

I put in my 2 weeks, my boss got angry since I was promoted so recently but I can’t really feel bad. This company sucks and treats the majority of it’s employees poorly.

I interned at the agency I am going to during grad school. I know the staff and they were excited to see me when I interviewed.  Notice I say agency and not company/corporation. No more corporate whoring for me, I’m going back to non-profit land.

I have a few days off between jobs and I would like to do something fun even though I have no money. Maybe St. Louis for a tattoo? Tennessee to visit my cousin I haven’t seen in years?  My coworker just went to Wisconsin Dells and it actually made me miss family vacations. If I had someone just as dorky as me with time off work, I would so go there.