Windfall

It's been said that it's amazing how fast things can go from really good to really bad. I find it even more amazing how fast things can go from really bad to really good. Today was just that kind of day.

Work was the rather standard motions I've been doing lately. Absent-mindedly picked up the mail and walked in the door. I came home to learn that Colin had brought his DS to school and had it confiscated. Yeah, the DS that I took a second job to afford him for Christmas. The DS that he had broken 2 months later. On top of this, he's been losing out on recess time because he doesn't complete his work when he's supposed to. When I learned of this, and that he was trying to wiggle out of trouble by lying to me about it, D and I had a long chat with him about making better choices. Like it or not, he's growing up into a man, and the choices don't get easier...

I'm really trying to stay positive and encouraging with him: if I tell him he's becoming a man, but treat him like he's 4, he's going to act like he's 4. I'm trying not to resort to yelling and spanking, because he's simply too old for that. He's smart, so I'm going to talk to him that way. I started with the fact that he did an awesome job of getting up and out the door on time this morning. That was really cool: he got himself up with the alarm, made breakfast and let the dog out. When I asked if he had taken his meds, he answered quickly and truthfully: no. Then we began on how the choices he makes now really do shape him into the kind of choices he'll be making in the future. They don't get easier. He's grounded through the weekend, and when the time comes that I find enough time to get his DS back from school, it's no longer his. Not until he can prove he's making better choices. I ended with my firm belief that he is intelligent and encouraged him to use that intelligence to make better choices, instead of going along with what all the people around him are doing. I think it went well. We'll see.

After this, we had a talk about our days and what we were going to make for dinner as we started shredding through the mail. First up was a package. D had ordered a 2Gig memory card using the points she had accumulated from taking surveys. I do a similiar thing, but with reading junkmail advertisements. I'm saving up for the cruise for two. >.>; Next was my first expenses reimbursement check from my new job! Yay! Next was my first paycheck from my new job. Yaaaay! Last was a check from Countrywide: overpayment to escrow account to the tune of +$1100... O.O YAAAAAAY! Considering D just put in her paycheck, we were floored with the blessing. We decided to table the cheap chili dogs in favor of going to Tiago's to celebrate. I let the static know we were going to be out, which was good because MC couldn't make it tonight anyway. After a little bit of planning, we find we have enough with all that to knock out our two highest interest rate cards. That's nearly $200 a month that we won't be bleeding out, that we can put towards our long term goals. I've always wanted to adopt Colin, and if income and financial things stay at this level, by this time next year, I might be able to do that.

After we got home and put the kids to bed, D went upstairs to play FF8 and I logged in to do some campaigning. I got some really good fights in, and even some kill shots, but the counsel is STILL not happy with me. ; ; I've got to be getting close though, but I only have 10 days left. I also started the steaks we bought last weekend by preparing the marinade and setting them to soak overnight. Top sirloin, beer, twice-baked potatoes and corn: dinner tomorrow night is going to be a thing of beauty!

Backroads

So I found a way to get to my blog from the assignment. I'm still staying pretty busy, but it's nice to be able to do this when its slow. I felt a little like a n00b today - I was asking some pretty basic questions about things I already know (or should know). Things like manually setting an IP address on a HP Printer through the printer's webclient, or opening an application as an administrator while the user on the other end is still logged in as them. I'm not incompetent, just not altogether sure of how things are done around here. Luckily enough, the guys here seem patient enough, and I am fielding calls for them that they'd otherwise have to take. Win/win.

When I got home, D had a story for me. Turns out that when she got home, she let Colin go and play after asking if he was done with all his homework. He said he was, so we let him go play. A little while later, he came in quietly and tried to move his backpack upstairs to his room. Of course, she noticed this seemingly random act of cleanliness on behalf of the walking disaster area, so she asked what he was doing? He replied that he was just taking his backpack upstairs. He had no reply for what prompted him to do so, and the fact that one of his buddies was waiting for him outside was very suspicious. So she looked through his backpack and found his spelling homework missing. He's notoriously bad for getting that done: for all the reading he does, he sure does hate writing. He said he did it at school, but when she asked if his teacher would confirm that, he confessed that he had lied about his homework and wanted to get it done.

He's gotten into a REALLY bad habit of lying to get out of things he doesn't want to do, which just absolutely infuriates me. It makes me have to spend time I already don't have checking up on every little thing he does because I can't trust him. This time, though, he confessed that he had done wrong and was trying to make it right. That's the kind of man I'm trying to build in him, so I let him know I was very proud of him for coming clean and taking responsibility, and asked him not to lie anymore. He did his homework and was back out playing in no time.

I've talked with my wife several times about wanting to positive and encouraging, but I need him to do something to praise first. He's academically awesome, and we tell him so, but I think he's taking a cue from TV and the kids around him that lying and being rude to your parents is cool and funny. When he did the right thing today, I wanted to make sure I noticed he did right and that it was appreciated. It is a lot easier for me to send good things his way when he is in line like that.

After we put the baby to bed, DeAnn and I decided to try to make Dynamis - Xarcabard tonight. She'd been away from FFXI for a few weeks since the drama over our static really started hitting. Now that things have cooled off a little, she's slowly coming around to do things that are fun. I've said it before and I know I'll say it again: if it's not fun, it's not worth playing. She likes dynamis and events and such, just doesn't like them to take over all her ingame time and life. We got on about 15 minutes before we were scheduled to go in, and we had to cancel because we didn't have enough people for an initial pull, much less a Dynamis Lord kill. Several of our PLDs have either left or are taking a break from the game.

This sparked conversation on reasons why our shell needed to change. We simply need more like-minded and casual people. We have never been, are not, and likely never will be a hardcore endgame shell. The forces in our shell trying to make it that way need to knock it off, because they are only frustrating themselves and their shellies. There aren't enough people to do all the things scheduled, the talk about people needing to step up or get out is only stressing people out and pushing our numbers down. Completely counterproductive.

And I just wasn't in the mood for it. Keri and I switched over to our lolCats social pearl and hit up some really nice campaign battles. SE must have recently changed the frequency of battles or something, because for the most part, it's no longer feasible to sit in one spot and camp battles. Sometimes its a good hour between battles. Instead, its better experience to sit in town and wait for the troop movement notices and go where they are going. Despite my best efforts, though, I still couldn't get the counsel to at least let me keep my current medal, and I only have 12 days left... X.x!

Static is scheduled for tomorrow night. If we have another night like last time, we might scrape 65 out of it. :) I had run the idea by the gang to schedule a (BC/KS/IS)NM sometime soon. I needs the monies baaaad... Might schedule it for next week Thursday, or perhaps Saturday. I will have to check the schedule and pick the day with the least impact and best chance for drops.

Procrastination: HR Paperwork's Best Friend

Breaking away from the typical chrono-linear blogging style (mostly because there was very little of note from what I've been doing the past few days) to vent about one of the things that really gets to me about a new job.

To start out, this has nothing to do with any company in particular. I'm going on record and saying that I am very happy with the employer I've found, and I have been happy with several previous employers. I've been in and out of MANY employment situations, and they all have this in common. No matter how bad or how good the company, this is a universal nuisance that I'm ranting on. There's nothing quite as confusing, quite as annoying and quite as prone to mistakes with serious repercussion as new hire paperwork.

"FYI: When getting a new job, just bite the bullet and do the paperwork as soon as you humanly can." It's easy to say don't procrastinate on it. It's much harder to actually follow through with said advice, sacrifice several hours of your life and risk your already tenuous grasp on sanity and sit down to decipher and fill out the forms. Life gets going, then the weekend hits and you want to relax, and before your feet even go up on the recliner its time to start working again. Somewhere in the kids and the housework and the workweek, this falls by the wayside and is easily forgotten. That is, of course, until you get an email saying that you have two more days to fill this out or you'll have to wait until next enrollment. O.O!

I realize this is rationalization on my part for my procrastination. Fancy for excuse. But for flip sake, do they HAVE to make the forms so complex? After static (which was great, BTW, only one hairy point and we were able to recover just fine and was bummed I had to cut it short) D and I spent waaay too much time deciphering what the forms were actually asking for, finding supplementary information and searching for letters of continued coverage. That last part was especially grueling, seeing as withing the last 12 months, we have had not one, not two, but four insurance carriers covering our family at different levels. In order not to get completely screwed over by the insurance companies, we had to hunt down letters of continued coverage from each of these carriers, for each of our family members, and send these in as well.

And we STILL didn't completely fill out the form. I'm expecting a few emails from our poor HR lady tomorrow morning, who'll have to sift through that mess of attachments I sent her way. She's been really patient with me so far, so I hope the craziness of my employment history doesn't make her disown me. :P

Tomorrow is Dynamis - Xarcabard. We've been doing DL kills regularly now, which is a big improvement over where we were a few months back. Gonna see if I can make it. If not, it'll probably be due to early evenings being crazy at the Cope household.

Movie night: Amelie

It was my first Monday at the new assignment, and it was ye typical helpdesk Monday. People forgot their passwords and things just magically stop working over the weekend. The only difference is that I was completely new to their environment, and I was not given access to several of the things many callers were having a problem with. My phone also rings when I'm already on the line with someone else. It all worked out OK, but at one point my phone did not stop ringing for nearly 20 minutes. x.X; The drive there and home wasn't too bad either. I'm going in the opposite direction of most people most of the time: people are heading toward San Antonio in the morning and away after work and I'm just the opposite of that.

When I got home, D and the kids decided to just eat snacks and wait for me to decide on what to do for dinner. Which is great if I would have been able to start dinner an hour earlier. But as it was, I was really hungry and nothing had been started. I scrambled to get some burgers on the grill and some corn and beans heated up for dinner. I was pretty annoyed at having been slapped with that as soon as I walked in the door, but I was fine after a little bit of food.

After we got Clara to bed, D and I sat down and watched Amelie. It's a quirky romantic comedy from France about a girl who lead a rather bizarre childhood and continues to be a little on the reclusive side. Then one day, she discovers how good it feels to help people and starts building relationships by helping people using large elaborate schemes. It culminates with her finding someone just as odd and reclusive as she is, and strategizes how to best win him over. It's not the average, cookie-cutter romantic comedy, which is probably why I actually like it. I wasn't sure about D, but she said she enjoyed it too.

Blogging is getting harder and harder lately. I can't blog at work anymore - the computers are locked down for my account, and I don't get home until 6pm, when chaos tends to seize my life until I go to sleep. By that time, I hardly remember what I did that morning, let alone the day before. I'll try to keep up, but I apologize in advance if my posts are seeming to get shorter and less detailed. I'll pick back up better when I'm done on assignment.

Static Tuesday night. More of the rats. We were killing a lot faster last time, so I hope we can get some pretty decent experience this time around.

Weekend Intelligence: Tequila!

I've come to the realization that the busier or more hectic the workweek, the more enjoyable I'm hell-bent to make my weekend. New job, new contract at said job, and all the new newness of said contract and job is definitely refreshing, but also a bit hectic. But if I work hard, I can play hard, right? ^^ So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Friday was the first day at the assignment. Pretty standard calls: printers not printing, passwords not working. They have a few proprietary systems that I won't be trained on, so I did a lot of message taking as well. The kids had the day off because it was Battle of the Flowers Day, so D took the day off as well so she could be home with them. I don't get the whole celebration of Fiesta, but its a big deal around here, so I just roll with it. She decided to take the kids up to New Braunfels to ride the train and play at Landa Park, and meet me up for lunch. We hit McD's - it was nice to see them in the middle of the day.

The drive home wasn't too bad. I'm guessing that most people were down on the riverwalk for the craziness. Not wanting to completely dodge the Fiesta bug, D and I decided to study our rich local culture and buy margarita fixings: strawberry margarita mix and a bottle of cheap tequila. >:D We goofed around the rest of the evening, just kinda relaxing.

Saturday, we picked up some donuts for breakfast and set about some light tasks. Colin was set to do his laundry and the dishes, D was on clean up duty for the kitchen and I was attacking the forest that is the backyard. I cut a pretty nice swath out of the thicket before I hit something with the mower. It made a big poof of dust; I thought it was an anthill again, since we had trouble with them last year. But when I turned off the electric mower, the humming didn't stop. Before I could do much of anything, a cloud of hornets began swarming around me and the mower. Yeah, time to go inside now... >.>;

Not surprisingly, I didn't do much else in the way of yardwork for the rest of the weekend. I did get around to doing some laundry, but not much else. We had some things that couldn't wait for our typical Walmart run, so we also got those taken care of. While at Walmart, D and I got a haircut and I decided to treat her to a pedicure. She had wanted one for a while, but it falls into that "nice, but not a necessity" category that made it never happen. Well, since we have $350 of money that we should have had all along but didn't (read: Tax Return), we figured it was ok. Colin spent the night over at a friend's house, so we gamed a bit and learned more about Fiesta from home.

We got a somewhat early start on Sunday: went to the 11:30 service about a half hour late >.<; It was still awesome, though. Knocked out the Walmart run on the way home. We bought steaks for next Friday.

In Game:

I'm quickly finding my interest in playing waning. I go through these phases where I really like playing, and do so whenever I can, followed by periods where I'm just not in the mood most of the time. I'm in the latter phase at the moment, and really just looking for something I can do socially and still do high-level engame stuff. This used to be what Soulfire speciallized in, but they are moving further and further from this, leaving me to wonder "What now?" Well, turns out that a long-time friend (and former SF member), Hripthe, is a member of a social shell that may help me answer that. Keri and I both requested pearls.

I only played on Friday long enough to do the 18 man avatar battles I promised I would. They're pretty fierce and fun battles. Keri and I were online and campaigning on Saturday, when Emmaline asked if either of us wanted to help her and Eiael do 4-2. I helped while Keri did some campaign for a bit, then logged to go play FF8. Sunday was the most I played all weekend, and that was Dynamis - Bastok. 3 hours of turtle-bashing. We almost ran out of time several times, but overall we did really well. We set a new SF record for coin drops, and raked in several needed relic gear. I got the Monster Jackcoat, bringing my BST to 3/5.

Monday will start the first of three full weeks on assignment. I'm looking forward to it and just having fun with it. Also planning on getting D on the dance pad and perhaps watching the copy of Amelie that just arrived in the mail.