AAAAaaaaarrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Ahhh... I feel better now.

It is one of those crazy busy days at work. The copiers are coming in. Mostly going smoothly. They arrived late. The analysts were here. IT was all ready. No copiers. The copiers won't print on the fax transmission sheets the number you dialed. It only prints the station ID for the receiving fax. Really, that is the only problem so far. Everyone seems to be able to hook up, print, fax, etc. Oh... we haven't quite figured out the scanning yet. There are several options. There is the one we want to do and the one that IT wants us to do. We are in negotiations.

On top of that, we have a fundraiser happening and tons of visitors. It is a crazy busy day.

I also decided today was a good day to start a 2 day juice fast. So far, not feeling hungry at all, but I planned my juices fairly well. I stocked up yesterday on a good combo of fruit, veggie and protein juices. I started out with a high protein one and then have been mixing every other 12ozs with a fruit/veggie and then protein again. Minor issue with itchiness from the soy in the protein one. Bolthouse and Naked are getting me through the day!

My stomach is making lots of funny noises. No hypoglycemia issues.

Ahh... The old copier company is here picking those up. Moving right along...

Burn Out

It has been harder and harder to get out of bed each morning. Today was really bad. My honey just called me on the phone to ask how I am doing. "Pleh," was my answer.

My desk is scattered with paper. I usually keep lots of paper on my desk, in three different piles. There is one pile currently and then everything else is just strewn about my desk. I am checking voicemails the next day. I'll handle the things as they come up but really my basic attitude right now is "I don't wanna!"

I've hit burn out. We've accomplished so much this past year. I haven't had a vacation in over a year. I've had time off -- for the flu, a day or two here and there -- but no vacation. I am completely unmotivated.

Mom is coming in mid-May so I'll have some time off then. End of May is the family fishing trip. June is the road trip to NJ to see Dad. Mid-May seems so far away. I know that I can't get away with 6 weeks of Pleh and no motivation.

I need some tips, some hints on how to push through burn out and make it to vacation time. Help me out here!

Life of the Absurd

Yesterday, I went to the bathroom... Yes, I know, too many of my stories start that way. As I was washing my hands, I noticed red ink-like splotches on the counter top. I wiped them down with soap and warm water and got up as much as I could. I then asked my maintenance tech to see if he could get them cleaned up. Our day porter was still here so he went in to scrub down the counter. He comes back and tells me that he rubbed it with water but it didn't work. He can't get the stains out. I told him to use one of the cleansers. I already tried soap and water. He asked which ones.

Well, because of different OSHA regs, I can't give him a cleanser to use. He has to be trained on the chemicals, have MSDS sheets on file, and his training recorded. He has to use a cleanser from his company. He didn't know how to use them he tells me. I told him to call his boss and find out which one to use then. I don't want permanent now-pink ink splotches on my bathroom counter tops. He does. Today, the splotches are gone. I don't think anything more of it.

Today his boss comes in. The day porter is going to be removed from our account and we'll have a new person in about two weeks.

Natue of the Beast

My job exposes me to the best and the brightest in Health, Safety, Security, and Environment. It also exposes me to the stupidest and the hypochondriaism (yes, that is probably a word I made up) in the work place.

For instance, the day we discovered asbestos tile. It was 2% asbestos containing material and 98% vinyl. The asbestos was fully contained in the vinyl. You'd have to pulvarize and snort the dust to be able to inhale the asbestos. It takes decades to feel the affects of any complications due to asbestos exposure. You are exposed to more asbestos walking down the city streets than you were when we found the tile. One woman had to go home because the asbestos made her lungs hurt that day. Um... yeah... no, it didn't. Dust and dirt from 30yr old carpet coming up? Probably. Asbestos? No.

Today, I got to follow up on an email where someone complained that the person near them used air duster to clean their keyboard and it made her lungs hurt. Really? The short answer is no, the air duster did not make your lungs hurt. The dust your neighbor blew around may have done that. But the air duster? Not unless you were huffing. In which case, you are fired for the illegal use of inhalants. It's against the rules.

But I am a good safety person and pulled the MSDS and the product info sheet. I defined "overexposure" and "workplace exposure" for them. No, you don't need a respirator mask to air dust your keyboard. No, you don't have any sort of overexposure risk from your neighbors cleaning their keyboards.

Oye.

And while I'm at it... Flush the damn toilets!

Experiments in Going Green

At work, I've been diligently working on the three Rs of reducing, reusing, and recycling. I've managed to eliminate all the Styrofoam cups, plates, and small bowls from the cafeteria. I've also gotten rid of the plastic utensils in favor of corn or sugar cane. I can't remember exactly, but I chose sugar cane over corn whenever possible. All I have left that is bad in the cafe is a big Styrofoam bowl. I cannot find a replacement for it yet. Everything else is recycleable or compostable.

Today, my tech tells me as we are digging through utenils that the cafe manager said, "Do not microwave the forks." No reason why. Now, we've been suspiscious of these utenisils. I mean, its organic material. How is it not melting in the hot coffee or hot soup? It is heat tempered somehow. But we've been given this challenge.

So we microwaved a spoon -- made of the same material as the forks we were told to not microwave. I'm the safety person. I have to test these things, right? Right!

It melted exactly where he'd touched it. Clearly further experimentation is called for though. I may need to know if the oils from his skin reacted with the spoon causing it to melt or if the spoon will melt without those oils.

Anyhow, time to eat my yogurt. Experiments will have to wait for another day.

Done, done, done!

Budget mess dealt with.

Training schedule figured out, announced, and already registered lots of people. In fact, three of the ten classes are completely full already.

Cleaned up the blood drip in the bathroom. I get a call, "There's blood all over the bathroom! Send up the hazmat kit! Someone got their blood all over everything! It's disgusting!" So, I grab the blood-borne pathogens clean up kit and head upstairs. Um... yeah... there was one drop of something bright red that had dried up in the corner of one of the stalls. It dried bright red. I don't think it was blood. It certainly wasn't all over. Anyhow, I cleaned it up since it was an unknown substance in a bathroom with the items from the bbp kit. *eye roll*

I've also dealt with the same woman over four phone calls about getting a green alternative to 409 and Windex. Four phone calls. I told her to call me next week. I'm very busy today. She called me back in two hours. Then two hours after that... and 30 minutes after that... Really? I said next week.

Anyhow, I'm done. My brain has officially turned to mush for the day.

In other non-work related news, I have been READING! Yes, I have! And I've even been reading grown-up books, not just kid books. Amazing! I know it! I have been reading Roebuck in the Thicket: An Anthology of Robert Cochrane Letters. It is interesting so far in that the arguments that pagans have now are essentially the same arguments that pagans had 70 years ago. "You aren't a real witch!" "No! You aren't a real witch!" Oh please. And, I think that some of them were even more pretentious than our current BNP and crazy pagans. The photo of Grey in the first chapter made me giggle. And he even decried paganism and witches as evil in public. Really, go look in the mirror in your little get up there.

Oh! Did you happen to read in the news today that the appeals court has said that the FDA rulings during the Bush Administration were clearly related to politics and not science. The FDA needs to get back to business and use SCIENCE to do its work again. Amazing.

Okay, I need to get a few more things done before I leave tonight.

Release!

Aha! I just needed to complain enough and get the frustration out enough to see the big picture solution. Rather than going line item by line item, I went with the big bucket. No utilities are in Budget A. They are all supposed to be coming out of Budget B. Move all utilities expenses to Budget B. I used more job specific language with my husband and ended up having to explain it like this:

There is a bucket of fruit in the garage. Rather than picking up each piece of fruit and trying to figure out where it came from, how it got there and where to put it, I just picked up the whole bucket of fruit and took it to the kitchen.

And now, I can hear the music playing again and enjoy it. I have even caught myself singing along! Much, much less stressed! Now, I'm off to conquer the training schedule for our new copiers.

In Need of Distraction

I am really about to lose it. Last month, at month end, I recruited someone to help me with some budget corrections. I spent two hours going over what to look for and how to get it moved. Everything was moved to the wrong spots. On top of those things being moved to the wrong spots, the finance person entered some of them wrong as well. I have no idea how to get it all fixed. I'm not even sure I know how to trace all of the wrong allocations that were done. Part of me wants to just throw my hands up in the air and say, "Monday is a new year" and let it all go.

But then I'm stubborn. And will dig through this for the next two days, making myself more stressed and angry, and then I'll give up... because I'll be out of time. Now that I understand the depth and breadth of the issue, I think I'm going to step away for some lunch so I can regroup and then delve deeply into the numbers.

The Dichotomy of the Work Day

I'm listening to MPR while watching a huge multimillion dollar contract go out to bid. MPR has a veterinian on discussing animal related issues, including a new bill coming up for a vote in MN that will allow for family pets can come to shelters with women & children fleeing an abusive relationship.

Meanwhile, the bidding on the contract started out slowly. Each vendor submitted their opening bid. Over $2M separated the high and low opening bids. About halfway through, the bidding got more competitive. Only about $300K separate the bids now. The lowest opening bid is still the lowest bid.

After this is done, I am on a conference call for deploying new copiers in our office. Next stop is budget. I need to do some corrections. This is the last fiscal month of the fiscal year so it is now or never. Never isn't really acceptable.

Three minutes left on the bidding... And trying to train the cat by using a squirt bottle is a bad plan. You are just teaching them to not do the behavior when you are around.

I think we've also plotted out our vacations for the summer. The boy has a weeklong trip every month of the summer, starting with the family fishing trip. It's been a fairly productive and interesting day.

First Post

Aha! New blog! Now, if I can just figure out how to create an RSS feed from here to my LJ, it will be all good. My friends who have felt deprived from my lack of posting and posting ability should be happier!

Today has been interesting, to say the least. We all slept in a little longer than I'd anticipated but we were all tired. My honey is feeling better though. Got to work and my brain was definitely still at home. I was thinking of the things I want to get done at home, things to do with and for the kids, planning participation in school events and stuff to fill up summer vacation with for the boy. I did not want to be at work. Not that work was bad, just that I wanted to be at home more.

These days, that seems to happen a lot. I think I'm at that point where if I could have the choice, I'd be a stay at home mom for a while. I feel like my home is undone. There is so much work to be done there. I have it in my head that if I could just stay home for a few weeks, I could get it all done and then it would just be maintenance. I know that after a while, I'd get bored and want to go back to work though. I barely made it through 6 weeks of maternity leave with my sanity in tact.

I had my Weight Watchers meeting this morning. I was worried about what the scale would say as I'd eaten my way through two whole days this week. Luckily, I'd done a pretty good job of sticking to low point alternatives to my junk foods. The scale went down nearly a pound. This is a huge difference from it going up and up and up over the winter months.

Just as I was gathering up my stuff and getting ready to head to actual work at my desk again, we had a First Responders call. Typically, they leave me a little unnerved. I feel very responsible for every single person in the building. There have only been a couple of times where I felt worried or emotional with the calls. Today was one of them. The person was crying from the pain they were in. The safety person in me is relieved that it was not an injury, but an illness. However, it is really hard to see someone in that much pain without being able to do anything to fix it. Thankfully the ambulance and police arrived very quickly and took them off to the ER.

Then it was a mad dash to my HSSE (health, safety, security, environment) call. This caused me to miss my normal lunch. Sometimes those calls are really helpful and informative. Sometimes they are not. The call itself was not so informative today but I got lots of leads on where to find some info I've been looking for. Next month's call sounds like it is going to be pretty good.

And now I am here.

A friend was asking for ideas of things to do to not feel so isolated here in MN at the end of winter. There are a million and one things to do for FREE in the Twin Cities. It makes me crazy that I can list about a dozen off the top of my head and yet, I've only taken advantage of a few of them with my family. I think that I am going to make it a goal to take the family to at least one cool, free thing each month. It will get us out of the house, probably be educational, and definitely get us all some exercise. We have got tons of museums, parks, zoos, libraries, etc that all have free family things to do. The zoo is the only thing that we've taken advantage of though. Well some of the parks too but not enough.

I think that is all for now... I know that there is more swirling around in my brain, but I should try to get some actual work done today too.