heroin is so passe

i swear, i must have ADD or ADHD or something. I got up at 4am to upgrade a customers bandwidth and thought to myself “Self! You have about 3 hours to work on email/website before you need to get ready to go to the therapists. Use that time wisely grasshoppa!” I responded back “Your right, I’ve been so busy lately that i haven’t had a chance to get caught up on the website or do email or anything”.
So I had these grandiose plans to do an entry this morning and god damnit, I WILL! I can type fast (80wpm) and hopefully I can get this done before I jet out of here before we er I go to the shrinks.
So news news news first:
Paul and I went to the couple therapist a few weeks back and that went okay. I came out of it sounding like a bitch on wheels and he sounded like a monster. I suppose that’s normal for couple therapy. I’ve never been with another person before, so this should be interesting. I think he and I are both afraid of the outcome because we’ve both been pretty passe about going back. But I’m determined to keep my end of the bargain and make us go to get our issues resolved for I am NOT marrying him or committing any further till I feel comfortable doing so. Our fighting has toned down quite a bit but to me, the issues don’t feel so resolved. I still have a lot on my mind but since we are at the point where the arguments become almost moot and I feel like we are spinning our wheels. He IS trying to make things better and I feel so am I, but we’ll see. We have another appointment tomorrow morning.
Work has been driving me nuts — and I asked for it since I was bored so I can’t complain. I’m in the process of re-writing some of our documentation for procedures since some of it is sorely out of date and it was pissing me off. I’ve also started a new project which requires me to carry a pager — starting November 1st I will be the “after-hours scheduled on-call person”. What this means, in short, is that if a customer wants to do a cut over or dns change or whatever after hours, the engineer asks his backup, if the backup declines, than he asks the group. If no one picks it up, I will. I am hoping to do this to defer the cost of my dsl (hahahah — fuckers won’t get me my t1 😮 ) and to help out cos I like doing that kind of stuff. I will be enforcing this like a sunofabitch because we have few engineers who will tell a customer “oh, just call in and someone will do this for you after hours” and this totally pisses me off to no end because it creates false expectations and we have strict after hours procedures since our install department is only open until 7pm EST. So yah, I’ll be doing that. For being on-call (sorta) they usually will install a t1 as “incentive” however since WCOM is being cheap fuckers, this is not happening in my case AND i have dsl (1.5down/384up). BUT! I don’t have static ips, I can’t do my own dns and I can’t get the business dsl from Verizon as they don’t offer static ips ANYWAY (and I’m ohh so close to the CO 😮 ). UUNet does NOT partner with Verizon so basically I carry a pager and they pay for existing dsl line and I can VPN to our network if I so choose.
Also, there was talking of finally giving me a raise in status to level 3 engineer — which means jack to you but it means a new pay for me. BUT since the damn hiring freeze, I’m not getting it and probably won’t get it till when the hiring freeze is over. fuckers.
School is also kicking my ass. I was slacking on the reading assignments for it and I was five weeks behind. But I started hitting the books right after I got home and have caught myself up. I have a paper due this weekend which I will be working on tonight or this weekend (he’s giving us a three day lap to turn it in). I’m taking ONE class right now, but I’m also taking a mid-semester class that starts this week and I’ve already started reading for that class — have to so I won’t fall so far behind.
All of my school work thus far is on-line via UMUC which offers online degrees in various subjects INCLUDING English — hot damn. I might finally get my BA/BS (they keep switching it at UMUC) at one point in my life.
My brother Jeff is trying out for the Grand Rapids Hoops a CBA/IBL professional basketball team this week. There are currently 10 spots open and I’m really confident that he’ll make it. You can read all about the Hoops on their website and cheer my brother on. Plus the mofo will finally start paying me back for all the freaking money I loaned him in the last few years.
November is gonna keep me really busy as I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month. In short, the contest is to write a novel (50k words or more) from 11/1/2001 till 11/30/2001. I can see this is already going to take up the bulk of my time and I’m really excited as the very very very few times I’ve tried my hand at writing fiction, I’ve basically, well, sucked. But I’ve been sitting here drawing out plots and story lines and fleshing out the characters. The point is about quantity not quality but hey, i know this is not going to be the ‘Great American Novel’ that I wanted but fuck, it’ll be under my belt.
Because of this, you can watch my progress at NanNoNuts, which is a blog a few of us are using for support/etc during the writing process. I don’t know, honestly, how much time I’ll have to devote to the journal during the month of November, so at least you’ve been warned 🙂 I want to do more chronicling of what I’ll be doing during that time period, but we will see.
Lets see, what else. I’ll be heading back to MI in November for a few days to spend with my mom in Port Huron. I found out that the house I grew up in is for sale — don’t know the price but my mom said if saw the house I’d cry. We got the house in the late 1950’s and sold it in 1985 when we moved from Port Huron to Grand Rapids. One day I’ll write about it and I’ll include pictures of then and now. I’m afraid as my aunt Roberta said that the house is in total ruin. ugh.
It’s 7am and I gotta jet.
love you,
Lisa