Vacations, Sick Time, Recharge

As I pass through the end of February I realize that I haven’t requested any time off. Everyone here was supposed to request time off between the 12th of February and the 1st of March. From the 1st to the 4th of March there would be a “freeze period” where no one could request vacation and bids would be processed (in order of seniority). After the 4th it is a “free for all” type of deal where you can request any sort of vacation you’d like.

This whole time I’ve been shopping for a place to get married. A place to have a reception. Somewhere inexpensive enough that I could still enjoy my honeymoon…which by the way will be driving down to San Diego and back up through Las Vegas. Thank god for air conditioning in my car! And I hope my car can make it. Should be a nice little jaunt down the coast (especially with the late summer weather) and I expect San Diego and Vegas to be as great as they always have been. This is why I am freaking out about vacation...we haven't planned this wedding yet.

The reason I am talking about vacation…is because I am dying to request some. I realized on the way home late one night the weekend before last, that this is the first time, ever, in the history of my life, that I worked on President’s day. Seem odd? I don’t think so. Most of my life has been dedicated to school. When I started working, I worked for financial institutions that recognized stupid holidays like that, and I was able to take the holiday, free and clear while getting paid my normal wages. Not true with this insurance company.

In realizing this, I freaked out…and have freaked out even more knowing that we are almost a quarter in to this new year…and I haven’t had a 3 day weekend…since Christmas? And even then…people all around me were getting 2 weeks off…people in school, people that work for Boeing…it has been rough. I am worried about the dreaded “burn out”. And it’s not so much my job as it is the traffic. Wasting 2 hours of my life every day in a car for a job that I could do from my boxers at home…is very frustrating. I would even work an extra hour every day if I could stay at home, answer calls on my cell phone and get on ICQ and send/receive emails. But, it probably won’t happen. In fact, they plan on moving us downtown. To the U-district. Microsoft bought our campus, so we should be out of here in 34 months…33 in 2 days. Should be interesting. Supposedly MSFT will be adding 1,500 new employees to work on this campus. Maybe I won’t have to leave and I can get a job with MSFT? I hope so. I hope they have some career fair for this campus. I’d definitely want to show up for that. But…I don’t want to be a programmer. I don’t want to work 70 hours a week (unless it’s worth it financially). Michelle was telling me on Friday night that I should go get a teaching degree. How awesome would it be to have that 3 months off every summer? The 3 weeks at Christmas and New Years? The weeks here and there for spring break and mid-winter break? And snow days! HAH!

But what kind of self-made millionaire would I be then? Am I not cut out to be rich? Growing up I always thought I would be. No matter how I would get there…I always knew I would be “rich”. In 2nd grade when everyone was asked what they’d like to be I said “rich”. My parents would roll their eyes when at SEVEN YEARS OLD I was telling them about how I was going to be driving a convertible Ferrari…”just you wait and see” I said to them. At the time, I had very little understanding of money…bills…life…but still, it was my dream, and for some reason I honestly think a feasible dream. It’s going to take a lot longer than I thought…as I sat there in college and drooled over all the 24 year old “on-paper” multi millionaires in Silicon Valley…suddenly thinking to myself…Oh my gosh…is it going to happen for me too? And we all know what happened to those kids…I’m pretty sure about 1% made it out of there with their money.

Hmmm, that was quite a boring piece of writing. Maybe because I am boring right now. Let’s try to make it interesting. Things I am freaking out about: Having 90% of my paycheck go to a combined account. All my life I’ve had the ability to take all the cash in my account and do whatever I want with it. And of course, all of my life, I’ve never done that. There’s definitely been times that I’ve splurged, but I’ve never been flat broke. From the first $250 I deposited on my 13th birthday in to my savings account from the money I had leftover from my birthday…all the way up until now. I’m going to keep a few grand separate from our joint account…but the rest…and I mean a lot of the rest…is going to the joint account. For some reason I am more scared about this then I was about getting engaged…getting married…buying a house. Can you tell I’m financially minded? Maybe…is this all I really care about in this world?

I think my coworker was annoyed with me this morning because I was talking about my bills with him and I told him that I try my best to spend money on things I find “relevant”. He then poignantly asked me (as the uber-gamer-nerd/I spent $2400 on my gaming system and I was at a gaming convention last week and I read sci-fi books on my breaks) what I thought was relevant. I could only seriously come up with two things: My bills (for the house and transportation) and food. I hate having clothes. If someone could say, ok…Monday through Friday, here are your five outfits. Wear them until they rip, fall apart, or get burned and you’ll be good to go. Here are your Saturday and Sunday clothes. If someone could say that to me, that would just be great. And for everyone’s knowledge, I do have two pairs of jeans still from early high school (8 years old) that have just ripped due to the fabric being so thin. I have had Michelle sow them up and on our latest “painting extravaganza” the arse ripped out of them once again, thus requiring another patch. I also still have my D.A.R.E. shirt from my “6th grade graduation” that I wear regularly…both as a joke and at the same time as a point of my utter cheapness to buy new clothes.

I am also taking pills. 4 pills in the morning, 4 at night. They are for my ulcer. I hate them. They make my mouth taste like crap because they are antibiotics. The pill popping will stop in 3 days. It has been a crappy 14 days of taking pills.

Patty Liu comes home from China in about 2 weeks. I am stoked. Hopefully I can run in to her at some party or something. She is my 2nd favorite asian girl (non-dateable) after Tien, a girl from the business school. Who definitely was dateable but I think WAY out of my league (as many women who I admire are). It is a rare occasion to find an Asian girl with my sort of mentality…laid back, NOT obsessed with brands and what kind of car I drive, overall laid back and obviously proud of their heritage. Going to UW really helped my mentality with different races, although it definitely skewed them horribly towards a few in particular…we won’t delve in to that here.
5 minutes left to my shift and I think I’ve bored myself enough with this. I promise I’ll include more exciting writing in the next post. Maybe a burglar will break in to my house and we will have a fist fight? That would be a pretty awesome story. Until then…

So Much Happens

I was actually going to write a really poignant and meaningful post, since I've got so much time to write, but actually I'd just really like to write what I really think instead of using some sort of crappy front to stand on my soapbox to tell everyone else how to live their lives. With that said, here we go:

We moved in to the new house. There are a few things wrong with it, but other than that, it's gorgeous. I am in love with it, and it definitely will be hard moving. Having a garage is the most insane thing ever, after parking my car outside for almost a year. Not having to scrape the ice off of the thing makes my life so much easier in the mornings.

The moon at 4 in the morning on a clear windy night in the middle of February makes me stand still and watch. I am afraid of people breaking into my new house so I walk around late at night with hammer in hand (best weapon available) and check every corner and closet. I haven't found anyone...yet.

Our power went out this morning. That sucked. Luckily the power kind of went out at work too so I wasn't "late". According to when the power came back on, I was "on time".

I hated myself last night, for always being that cynic. The guy that laughs at people that cry when they lose their dog. Cry when they stand in the backyard with their parents burying their pet's remains in a wood case. For the first time I experienced a pet I love pass. About 20% of my crying was me hating myself for thinking so lowly of people for being so crazy and weak about their pets. It is a part of the family. And just writing this right now makes me teary eyed. Watching Michelle last night was so heartbreaking for me. She's not a whole person right now and definitely this weekend will be so rough on her. This is why I have always loved dogs: Unconditional love. The good ones will love you no matter what. And they can always sense what you are feeling and know how to make you feel better. I think about the many days that Michelle was out shopping, or even working while I was going to school, so I dog sat Sammy, her black and tan Chihuahua while she was gone. Sure, she shit on the floor and pissed sometimes, and definitely I got angry with her, but I also remember the times where her and I would be watching "A Different World" midday and I would be petting her. Suddenly I'd stop and she'd lick my hand and come crawling in to my lap. I remember the mornings where she'd sleep with us, and of course every morning she'd climb my mountain of a comforter covered body and just stare at me until I woke up. The moment I said, "Sammy, do you need to go outside?" she was already raring to jump off the bed. I knew the dog for 2 and a half years. I probably only loved it for about 2 years. And much of that, she was in pain, her eyesight and hearing was going, along with her legs. But still, she knew when I was there, and I was always very calm and felt better when I was around her. We had to put her down last night. Her heart had enlarged and blood was getting in to her lungs. I cried for about half an hour. Michelle cried all night.

This morning she cried and broke my heart...because she said, "When no one else was there, Sammy always was". And that's what loving dogs is all about. Their schedule is always clear for us. All they know how to do love. And that's what so painful about knowing she's gone now. I can't do the same thing that Sammy does for Michelle. I will try my best, but I've got to work, and I've got a schedule too on top of work. I have to stop writing about this...

The power went out while I was showering this morning. That was interesting. Today I am working a 13 hour shift. And I've got 20 minutes left of it. I found that if I added 4 hours of OT per week (like I'm doing today) then I can bump my salary up to $43K (not including bonus). Is 4 hours per week worth that to me? I don't know.

My computer is also not working properly. I hate it. It's all my fault for not plugging it in while I was moving to make sure it was up and running. What a waste. If I have to dump this thing I'm going to be really angry.

Anyway, I'm going to finish here. My coworkers are starting to talk to me. You were very much loved Sammy, and everyone misses you.

Early Morning Thoughts

Working overtime is awesome. In essence, I could almost double my salary just by working an extra 3 hours per day. Then again I would be working 11 hour or 12 hours shifts everyday…and I’m not sure that would be so much fun. Now, if I had the ability to sleep on the job I would totally do it. I’m pretty sure everyone would pick up OT if they knew they could sleep though.

I woke up this morning at 5:05, and my alarm went off right as I was starting to dream. I reached out to my alarm and switched it off and rolled over. Somehow when I do this, no matter what time it is, I always just lay there for 2-3 minutes and jump right out of bed. I’ve never been one to wake up to the alarm, roll over, and fall right back asleep. I definitely have had those nights where I forget to set my alarm and then don’t wake up at all. Something always tells me that I’ve got to get up though, so usually I still wake up within 20-30 minutes of when I was supposed to get up.

When I come in before 7 to work it’s really nice because all the lights are off. My cubicle becomes a little cave, and if it didn’t have these little plastic windows right next to my wall, or if I wasn’t next to the hall, I’d be trying to rest my eyes a little bit. Looking at a computer screen for 12 hours a day is definitely not going to be good on my eyes in the long run. Isn’t looking at LCDs supposedly better for your eyes though? Something about refresh rates…here I go talking about a topic I really no have idea about. Maybe I can do some research.

Well, the house is done. The house is, but the landscaping is not. Crap! So we are moving in to a house surrounded by mud. I only have a few gripes about the house and they are the following: 1) Our driveway is too small, people are not going to have the ability to parallel park in our driveway, and if I screw up backing out at all, BAM I’m in the grass. 2) There’s a house in my backyard. We thought we were going to have a huge backyard…nope. Turns out they’ve built a house there. Then again, it’s been there for the past 4 months…they’re hopefully going to build a fence and we wanted to put up some TALL bamboo to block them out. 3) You can see power lines from most of our upstairs windows, we are also almost exactly a mile away from an electrical sub station. Then again, they built houses within only 50 yards of the freaking thing. Good luck to all of us and not getting cancer. I hope it doesn’t affect the value of our home…and if cancer cases start popping up, it definitely will, but at least we might be able to sue the builders (or someone) like Erin Brockovich. :p 4) We have a gargantuan wall that runs throughout the house. I have no idea what we’re going to do with that wall.

Other than that though, I love this place. It’s going to be nice to have so much space…and have it nice and quiet at night and in the mornings. Living with my parents the past few months has been pretty tough because I’ve had to be so quiet at night before I go to bed, and I always wake up early any time anyone in my house woke up and was getting ready for the day.

Plans for the day: Shop around for cable and internet connection. I’m wondering if we’re going to be cool and go VOIP or be cheap and just use our cell phones. Go to our new gym tonight and hopefully survive pilates. I’m also going to make my reservations for Vegas. Flight, hotel and vacation requests.

I am hungry, but I am an hour and a half away from a break. What a boring blog post.