Last night...
...I had the weirdest dream-- and I woke up remembering almost all of it!
Well, anyway, it was Thanksgiving or some other holiday, and I was trying to go visit my mom and step-dad in Visalia, or some god-awful place in the Central Valley (they both hate it there, so that was really weird), and I'd gotten a ticket to leave out of O-town International at 9:30PM. For some reason, I lost my car, so I ended up trying to walk to the airport with a dress I was going to wear the next day. Ended up taking some nice shortcuts through gorgeous terrain, and ended up hitching a ride with some nice bikers who got me to the airport at 9:28. I tried to find the gate and the flight, only to find out they'd overbooked, and I'd have to go ride in the copilot's seat. The pilot was a lady from one of my districts, and she was trying to get the overloaded plane to take off.
She taxied down the runway, but it didn't work. She taxied down Hegenburger Blvd., which got us halfway lifted off. Then we did a little more taxiing into this one really gorgeous area of Oakland that only exists in my imagination. Half of us were offloaded from the plane, and got to check out EBMUD (East Bay Municipal Water District) headquarters, which was just lovely and totally spiffy. The plane still wouldn't work ;-)
End of dream LOL
Ag!
I can't believe it's 10PM-- only 9 1/2 hours until I have to make my oh-so-lovely presence seen at work. Ugh Ugh Ugh!
It's scary, really-- my mission today was to find an anti-war bumpersticker and a new Darwin fish to replace the one that was stolen off the back of my car (side note: magnets don't lose attractive power even if they are six years old). So, to Berzerkely I went. I also wanted to do a little browsing around Telegraph, and lose myself in the Poli Sci section at Cody's (ahhh heaven!). Well, I headed into this one import store, to face the owner dude (or worker? dunno) who "Can't get over your hair! You have a really exotic look!" Uh yeah. "That's a compliment-- you're very pretty." Uhm thanks. **runs out of store**
Well, it might have been ok if that were the only instance of that sort of comment. As I was heading out of Urban Outfitters (damn, I want a furry duvet cover!), some homeless dude yells after me, "You're very beautiful!" Oy godz!
Dunno if I can take any random homeless guy lust as crazed as I am right about now... Oh well. I'm obviously very stunning when I put on my padded flannel shirt thingie over jeans. **sigh**
Overdue...
I think what I hate most about my job is that I really can't help anyone. I get calls about shipping problems all the time, but I'm bound and constrained by the fact that I don't have any readily available information, I have no way to expedite anything, short of trying to call this one person at the subcontractor who has to take calls from 12 of us for 1200 districts or so. She can't do anything cuz she's too stymied by lack of inventory, inefficient communication at her company, lack of sufficient help, etc. So, I get calls, and complaints, and serve as nothing more than an emotional punching bag for these districts. I can't do jack crap to help them, and it kills me!
There's nothing worse than knowing there are problems and knowing that there's not a goddam thing in all hell that you can do to make things any better. And then to get yelled at about it all day. Damnation! Every district has problems. Every district has delivery crap going on. Every district doesn't have adequate time to get their materials out. Every district calls and screams. I call the contact at the subcontractors and get screamed at by her cuz she's so stressed out. I can't scream back. I can't tell people off. I can be a nervous wreck at times, and honestly, I'm bloody sick of it!
The good news is that I have a couple of days off this month, to take exams in Sacramento. I've got two excellent opportunities there, one entry level public policy position, and one entry level municipal planning position. And if I ever hear back from State Compensation Insurance Fund, I'm in rank #1, which means I'm first to get called for any open positions. All I can hope is that I do get called, and I do place well in these two Sacramento exams. I have one on the 22nd, and one on the 29th... I soooo want to go there...
I dunno-- there are opportunities, but waiting on them when this sort of shit is going on, is harder than I ever imagined it would be...
