I emailed myself work things on Friday with the intentions of doing some work this weekend since I did nothing on Friday. I didn’t do any work this weekend.

Instead I was an awesome pirate ninja. I went to a party where I was the only girl with no T&A showing. Oh well, wasn’t a picking up men night, was a get fucking drunk and dance night.

My work crush from last year moved back East earlier this month and I didn’t even realize it. Maybe I will make that spreadsheet.  I like making lists.

Also, fuck you cat for running away and hiding in the dirtiest part of the building then growling when you have to be bathed.

I went to the Haunted Sanitarium this weekend. Supposedly it used to be a children’s sanitarium but I can’t find much info on it beyond that claim. It was well put together and spooky. So spooky that I injure people!

I’m looking forward to Halloween-ness next weekend and Post Secret reading this week. I’ve never sent in a secret but I love the site. LOL Secretz isn’t bad either. :)

I got SPSS at work and now I’m ruined! I have to learn how to use this stupid program and relearn stats quicklike. I tried using it to enter the data from my current survey project but I kept getting caught up on little things. I got frustrated and decided to just enter my numbers in the Excel workbook from last year. Then I noticed that the numbers didn’t make sense in there. On a scale, if 4 =very much, 3 =somewhat, 1 cannot =don’t know/does not apply, and 0 cannot = “missing answer”. So the Excel workbook they used last year and possibly the year before that is inaccurate. I stopped entering data, debated on going back to SPSS and doing things the right way and then said fuck it and decided to be lazy. These numbers are barely referenced and will be mentioned briefly in one report. As far as I can tell, they’re not even used beyond saying “Look, we did a survey!”

I also have a brief proposal due soon. I figured it would be easy because it’s so short but I have no idea where to start. I have a vague topic and little guidance. I’m supposed to be able to work this way, to like working this way but I’m just panicking.

I keep falling back to “I’m just a social worker”, keep telling myself that I am not equipped to handle this job. The whole idea of spending the rest of my career in admin land kind of scares me. I could always go back to direct service but it would probably mean a pay cut since I have little experience. Not that I want to leave my job but I’m always thinking into the future, planning and what-if’ing.

I haven’t been feeling quite myself lately. My friend group is changing, partially due to changes I am actively making, people I am no longer seeking out. I feel very busy but I’m not sure with what. I haven’t been eating very well, I keep snacking on left over birthday things and even my body knows that chips taste so good but I cannot eat them without getting sick. My sleep still sucks, maybe I need to start acupuncture again. I feel like I have so much energy but at the wrong times or directed toward the wrong things. It’s a nice change from feeling tired all of the time but kind of unfocused and useless right now.

Also, Halloween! Going to a haunted house this weekend!

Behold! The most awesome cake in the world. No, I did not make it,Sweet Mandy B’s made it.

Not only was it a volcano, it had dinosaurs on it, said Happy Gabillionth Birthday and was about 50/50 chocolate to cake ratio .
My 2nd favorite thing would be the jungle juice I made.

With all of this fun liquor:

Other good things: my awesome cheap haircut from Big Hair, everyone that celebrated with me, 70’s astronaut porn, robots and feeling pretty good the next day.

I will never be a rock star.

So the work I took home with me last week that made me feel so grown up? It got cut down to one page of meaningless, random, untitled stats because the CEO thinks that is what our target audience wants. I knew this wouldn’t be anything like the full report that comes out later but a little communication would have been nice before I did the work.

So tomorrow when I go over my goals for the year with my boss, I think I will include something about improving communication in the department.

I decorated my office for Halloween today and talked with the intern. He’s from Nigeria, moved here in 2001. He told me about Nigerian superstitions and that he dressed as a banana last year for Halloween because he eats a lot of bananas. I hope he comes to work dressed up this year.

On the sidebar of my site is a link to one of my favorite blogs, ModBlog. It’s where I first started to see microdermals and I first saw my now favorite tattoo artist,Trevor Collis on BMEzine(the main site to ModBlog).
I know better than to get into OMG internet drama but recently there’s been some legal/personal fights on BMEzine/ModBlog that have led to Shannon, the owner/operator of the sites, being locked out of the admin side of his sites.
There are other people running the site for now but ModBlog is not being updated, BMEzine galleries aren’t updated and the IAM community was down for days.
I don’t know who is right or wrong in this battle because I don’t know the details of the battle but if you’re going to go through the trouble of taking away admin rights, shouldn’t you at least maintain the community? Keep things updated? It makes the lockout seem very spiteful even if that wasn’t it’s intention.
For now, ModBlog has moved to Body Two so I can still get my fix of topless girls with tattoos and stretched parts.

Clean, clean, clean and everything is still covered in cat hair. How does my friend have 7 pets and her apartment is clean and there’s 1 animal in my apartment and the place is furball central? I’ve been home most of the morning, sweating and mopping so I’ve had lots of time to dwell on the furballs and smelly litterbox. I’m selling the cat to Gypsies when my roommate isn’t looking.

And about the sweating-I really don’t mind that part. This weather is awesome for October and I can pretend this makes up for not going to the gym. It’s just the mess that bothers me, for some reason I have a low tolerance for it lately.

My first semi-research related task! Make numbers pretty. It seems like it would be an easy task, my boss showed me nice program outcome grids with goals, benchmarks, results all clearly labeled.

Then I started to get the actual data. I got one that was done exactly how it was supposed to be. This is now my favorite department. There are 4 departments and you know what you have to do when you have more than one of something. (Make them fight!)

The next department could not grasp the concept of “this is what I did last year” vs “this is what I will do next year” and put everything on one grid marked 2008 and gave me narratives. Now there is reading involved? Hate this. It took me a while to figure out but eventually confirmed that the grid they gave me was referring to last year even though it said 2008. I know, numbers r hrd.

The data just went down from there. The last thing i was given was handwritten and given to me at 4:00 the day my numbers were due. I suppose I should be happy I didn’t get anything in crayon. Since I got everything so late and half-assed, I had to take work home with me which made me feel very adult but mad that the people I’m working with are so unorganized.

My boss looks to me to magically make coworkers respond to deadlines when they never have before. My first few weeks I panicked when people did not return my calls and things were not handed in on time. Then I learned that coworkers do that because there are never any consequences. One night when there was lots of drama going on, I suggested consequences rather than hounding people for answers. My boss agreed but I think she just explained to the person dodging questions how their inefficiency was making other people’s jobs difficult or impossible to do. And these aren’t low level staff I’m talking about, these are clinical supervisors, directors of departments.

So I’m not sure how I am supposed to magically change the culture of an organization. Especially in my position. I’m a gatekeeper because my boss is one of the top people at the agency but I’m not in a position of power. The majority of what I do is very independent from the rest of the agency.

I wrote in the last post about my dog Zoe getting hurt. She needed to be sedated for xrays so she had her neck xrays today. Nothing broken or dislocated. It looks like the fight aggravated her already present arthritis in her neck. We knew she has mild arthritis in her hips, it’s something common with her breed. She is on steroids and pain meds for the next couple weeks. Then the doctor was talking about MRI, operations- things I doubt my parents will do. I don’t blame them, she is 11 years old, in good condition now but who knows how well she can handle multiple sedations and surgeries. If she can live well by just taking an anti-inflammatory then we will do that.

And the owners of the dog hit by a car emailed me, they have been reunited with their dog and are very happy and grateful.