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2002-06-24
10:28 a.m.
Rob and I went out to celebrate his twenty-first birthday yesterday. It's almost hard for me to believe he's finally turned twenty-one, considering how hard I had to try and remember that he wasn't. He's finally of age, though, and I think we had a nice time celebrating. I hope he feels the same.
We went out to the North End of Boston, where all the truly fine Italian restaurants are, and we ate at a place we had discovered at some point last summer. They have a wonderful house Burgundy wine that's only $12.50 a carafe, and their chicken exquisito is absolutely the most fabulous taste that has ever entered my mouth. So, dinner was wonderful, and then I decided that I needed to take him to a bar because it just doesn't seem right for someone to turn twenty-one and not go to a bar. Even knowing that he doesn't particularly care for going to bars, it seemed like the thing to do. We each had a black and tan, then we headed home.
Once at home, I pulled out the chocolate raspberry torte I had bought for his cake, and I gave him a card and his gift. Actually, his gift still hasn't really arrived, but I told him what it is. I bought him tickets to go see Weezer and Dashboard Confessional next month. It should be interesting.
Why don't these things ever happen on a Friday or Saturday night?
You know, it's amazing: so much has been going on lately, and yet I can't seem to think of much that's worth writing about. Perhaps it's because I'm busily engaged in writing my latest book, which is going to take a long, long time. I guess it may be time, though, to catch up on everything that's happened in the last month or so.
Obviously, Rob and I are back in Boston now. The trip here was excruciatingly stressful and not much fun at all. We were driving a twenty-four foot truck with a car towed behind it, and we ended up getting stuck in tight parking lots at several points along the way. Luckily, we managed our way out of all the tight spots, but it surely didn't help us at all as far as our collective sanity went. This, of course, is slight in comparison to the fact that I found out my older sister's best friend was killed in a car accident while I was on the road, and that, as you may imagine, brought up some pretty horrendous images and memories from sophomore year in high school when everything went to hell as the result of a similarly fatal car accident.
Rob and I didn't get much sleep during the three-day trek across a thousand miles of highway. We were far too stressed out to worry about anything like sleep. I still don't know if I've made up for all the sleep I lost during the trip.
The good news these days is that I actually seriously lucked out and landed the first job for which I interviewed. Not only that, but this particular job happens to be at one of the most highly respected world-renowned institutions of higher education.
Great.
Don't get me wrong; it is definitely good that I landed a full-time job after wasting my time, talent, and energy working in retail for the past nine months. That was about as far from what I wanted to do with my time that it literally made me feel sick to stand there and do my job. I was still good at what I did and my bosses all loved me, but I hated every minute of it. It was not a great idea for me to be in customer service of any type, but what could I do? I needed to make money somehow. For someone who has a problem with so much of the world's population, it's no small wonder that I found it difficult to tolerate serving them. So, it is REALLY great to finally be out of the world of retail. However, it's also difficult being back in the office environment after having taken such a long break from it.
Sitting here in an office again for the first time in ten months, it occurs to me that I've never in my life encountered an office job where I was actually kept busy. There's never enough to do. I would never complain about having free time, since I can occupy myself very well, thank you, but it does strike me as odd that it takes me about a fourth the time as it takes anyone else in the world to do simple office tasks.
My boss at my last office job was constantly amazed by how quickly I finished my work. I type fast, I think fast, and if people leave me alone, I can do everything in the office in half a day's time, so I'm left with the rest of my time devoted to trying not to feel guilty for doing something completely unrelated to work. I'm not just going to create busywork for myself. That would be dumb. Busywork is a waste of time. So I finish my work and move on to other things.
So what?
My boss at my last job apparently enjoys watching people do busywork. From what I understand, the girl I found to replace me spends all her time listening to him and doing things that really don't need to be done. But the ex-boss loves her and thinks the world of her office demeanor.
I hate them all.
I'm sorry, I just can't get over how much they screwed me with that job. The truth of the matter is I'm probably a lot better off now than I would have been back in that job, but I don't feel nearly as comfortable here. Maybe comfort will come with time, but I'd prefer to just do what was agreed upon from the beginning. Somehow I always forget that people don't think much of keeping their word.
And it's not even just the principle of the matter.
If I hadn't landed this job right when I did, I would've ended up with a veritable medical emergency in less than a month. In less than a month, my prescriptions run out, and if I didn't have new company benefits and health insurance, I would've landed right in the emergency room at the hospital. These drugs aren't something you can just quit. I know the commercial for Paxil says the drug is non-habit-forming, but they are capitalist whores who are so full of shit that they would say anything to sell their product.
They're lying.
What the people at my old job don't realize is that I specifically planned the prescriptions and doctors and all of that in accordance with the agreement we made late last summer. What gives them the right to tell me they no longer feel like keeping that agreement and don't care if I end up in the emergency room as a result of their negligent consciences? It's mean, it's deceitful, and it's WRONG.
I'm only slightly bitter, as you can tell.
It occurs to me now that one of the reasons I've been avoiding writing lately is because I had no idea what kind of subconscious response would unveil itself as I sat in front of the computer and typed my thoughts. I think I was somehow afraid that I'd offend these people who tried so damn hard to ruin my life. I'm afraid of offending them? What do I owe them? Maybe I was just worried that I'd say something wrong and my ex-boss would give me a bad recommendation for a new job. Well, I've landed a better job now, and disappointed with things or not, I'm doing just fine.
Fuck them all.
Jesus, as if things weren't already comprehensively out of whack, I just found out that my webhosting service experienced a major crash today that included their back-up disks. This means that I now have to go through and upload every single goddamn page of my website back onto an alternate server. I hate it when people's negligence creates problems for me. What can't everyone be as efficient and thorough as me? And of course, I could take care of all that while at work if I had my old job where everything was done on Macs, but my new job uses PCs, so I have to wait all day until I'm home to upload all several hundred pages onto the alternate server.
Sigh….
Oh, and while I'm in the mood to bitch, why is it that everyone has suddenly stopped speaking to me? I haven't been able to contact any of my friends from Boston since I arrived. You would think they'd be happy to see me, but I haven't heard from a single one of them. And talk about irritating, what the hell is up with the last person to post on my guestbook? No shit, it's disturbing that I'm fixated on dead killers. I never said that it wasn't disturbing. Keep your interpretation of my disturbing behavior to yourself, and we'll get along just fine. What did I do to offend you? If you're offended, get the fuck off my site. No one's forcing you to read my thoughts.
