August rant

Lately i've been overwhelmed with work. I mean seriously. There's only three people in my department and for the last few weeks one has either been sick, on vacation or on a job trip. Which means I have to come in my regular time AND cover for their shift too, which means about a 12 hour workday. That plus my second job is overwhelming at times.

 

I was forgetting that I too had to take some time for a Disaster Recovery seminar, from 5pm to 10pm for two weeks. That also threw a wrench in my work plans.

 

Then my family wants me to come home and not work, and not watch tv (at least not what I want). On weekends I always plan on catching up on stuff from my second job. But the wife and girls want me to go out with them and that's ok. However they also want me to go with them to visit a friend of my wife and her family. the women have lots to talk about, they have 3 kids and so my daughters have a great time playing with them. So the husband and I are left with talking about sports, weather and politics. Sometimes for 5 hours. Five hours that I could've rested at home or worked or something else rather than have someone try to entertain me. To top it off they don't get cellphone signal in their house and have no internet service so even if I take my laptop I can't work there.

 

Yesterday and today have been specially bad at work. One of my coworkers is on a business trip opening a new regional for our processing. No more people on our payroll to do that since all is done from here. This new regional is giving us trouble in our system, which means I have to do manually what usually is done automatically. My other coworker who helps me out leaves at 4pm religiously because he's got classes to attend. So I have the whole thing to run by myself until 9pm

 

The cherry on top was my boss was in a home accident yesterday and after a few stitches to his forehead had to go home to rest. I thought it was reasonable. He didn't come to work today either, I suppose he is still not feeling good. However that leaves holding everything together, the administrative stuff and the technical stuff. If the secretary hadn't return from sick leave last week I might have had to do the bill collection myself too!

 

So I got that off my chest. The two things I did wanted to write about were my financial plans for this week and a note I got from Targus.

 

So as you can remember from old posts way back in May or June, this month I'm going to get a loan from my company coop. I plan to get a large amount of cash to pay down a credit card. I will still have about 40 to 50k of debt on it but that should be much easier to pay faster. A small percentage of the money I get will go to new school uniforms, eye exams and glasses, shoes, tennis shoes, books, etc for the girls. Also some minor but important repairs for both cars and home improvements. At least the home improvements will be repaid by the landlord but I need to put the money up front. I hope to get the ball rolling on all this on monday.

 

A few days ago I wrote a letter to Targus. They make accesories for notebook computers. I wrote to congratulate them on their great products. I've had one of their backpacks for 5 years now and it's awesome. Today they wrote back and told me that I could upgrade to new backpack and other accessories at cost price thru their local distributor. They said that they had never received such an emotional letter before. So i'm going to check their "cost" prices soon and see if it's really worth it to get a new backpack for my notebook.

 

On the last days of July I won a month's membership to a country club here, and two hours of golf training. I haven't used them but they intrigue me. I hope I can make the time to at least get those hours under my belt.

 

Well the phones are ringing so i'm off. Bye.