Murphy's Law

Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.

See also: fuck my life. Seriously, just fuck my life.

Before I get into my latest cause of concern and stress, let me review all the wonderful contributors from this past week. I'll start with my family. Nurse Egg and I went to see them on Friday evening. The family tradition is to meet on Christmas Eve, eat dinner and cookies and whatever all night until we do the whole Santa spiel with presents passed out by the man himself, and disperse or possibly spend the night over if you've got the intestinal fortitude for it and things have already gone completely bat shit crazy. This year we decided to forego all that mess and come a day early, while things are still simmering in a passive-aggressive stew and preparations are still underway. It's absolutely brilliant, actually. We did make a small error in judgement by going completely sober with no alcoholic bracer. I regretted that about five minutes into the visit. The first thing my grandmother said to me was:

"I hope you've saved up some money to pay those land taxes, because I don't have any." Then she made that strange noise she makes that's a peculiar blend of a chuckle, a choke, and a cough. A choughckle? I don't know. It's aggravating and bizarre. It means she's trying to say something jokingly, but not because she isn't serious or actually trying to funny to anyone else but herself. It's the only tell the woman has.

She was referring to the yellow house, which I refer to as Tatterdemalion - still and always. The newest tenants of the property have been paying their rent - in full and on time, sometimes even early. At least, they had been doing that until this month. I'm really hoping the holiday madness got the better of them and that they will resume paying rent shortly. Hoping, but not very enthusiastically. Since my employment this year has been decidedly sporadic and short-lived, the rent from this property has made it possible to pay my own. This was meant to be a temporary fix, but that has really panned out yet. Moot point if they aren't going to continue paying their rent and I have to evict yet another lousy tenant. So, this surprise of my grandmother's wasn't exactly something I wanted to hear. It's actually the last thing I would ever want to hear. That was also the limit to what my grandmother said to me that evening. Oh, except for asking about work immediately after that comment which didn't put me in a very good position to bring up my sudden unemployment. Again. Again. Again. So, naturally my defenses went into overdrive and I told everyone how wonderful my job was and how much I absolutely loved it. I told my aunt the truth. Later. She was segregated from the rest of the household and completely out of ear shot of my grandmother. I really don't care if she tells her or not. I just don't. Whatever.

Tonight I spent the evening with my sister's extended family. That was made absolutely magical by the ample supply of merlot. Absolutely magical. I had a great time, even while listening to a story about weather conditions in Montana around this time but over sixty years ago. It was a magical evening. That probably makes me sound like an alcoholic. That's all. No rebuttal. Just making an observation.

My asshole friend is moving. I've been kind of helping him pack. By "helping" I do mean "watching". I would help, but it's like being on an episode of hoarders. He wants to sort through and categorize everything. It's nauseating and completely boring. Anyway, the big day is tomorrow so I figured I'd spend the night again and get an early morning start on all the lifting and backwards walking while doing an assisted carry of furniture and blah. That brings me to my newest source of stress and trouble. The check engine light in my Jeep is flashing, the engine is shaking, and the accelerator isn't doing much in the way of accelerating the vehicle. All of the mechanic forums I've consulted indicate this is indeed a serious mechanical problem which might result in an engine fire or possible explosion if not addressed immediately. So much for having a reliable vehicle to take me to my new job which I still hope to obtain sooner rather than later - especially since I'll now have to cover what might be an extensive repair bill. In the meantime, I might be able to persuade my local aunt into allowing me use of one of her two family vehicles while I come up with the funds for that repair bill. Hopefully, but I won't ask until I actually have an interview at least.

Of course this would happen. Of course all of this would happen. 2011 just isn't quite done with me yet.

Keeping your job is the new raise.

...but I wouldn't know. That happened a few hours ago. I've been submitting applications online all week since that delightful meeting on Wednesday when they basically promised to fire everyone in the room at some point between then and next Friday. I fill out several applications each day. Unsurprisingly, they all sound better than the job I had. One in particular seems promising. I spoke to the hiring manager and he's hoping to get someone in place by next week since the job will be vacated by the week after. That's my best hope at the moment, but I'm playing the numbers/odds by applying to... damn near every fucking thing I find.

I am sick of this game. Someone should seriously just pay me for being an awesome fucking person already. Seriously. Whatever.

I really don't feel like venting at the moment. This bullshit has been dragging on for well over a year now and I'm beyond the point of being able to even fake either surprise or bitter disappointment.

Christmas is in six days and I will definitely be unemployed for that - again, again, again - this year. Yay.

Oh, right. I forgot to cause a scene when they escorted me out of the building. I just wasn't into it. If I'm going to do something like that, I need to be able to fully commit to it and unleash every single one of my anger monkeys on it. It's not something that I care to half-ass. Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't make a spectacle of myself as promised. I'm sure I'll get another chance some day at some other completely horrible craphole.

We are vastly unprepared and sad.

"We are seriously considering firing everyone in this room."

That was yesterday - or Wednesday. On Monday, it was:

"We are not considering firing anyone in this room."

So, what changed in those 48 hours in between each meeting? We actually got more comfortable with our new jobs. We had one full day actually doing our new jobs. We probably improved by an absurd degree from just getting some hands on experience. It was incredibly awkward and horrible, but it was slowly getting better. At least, until...

"We are seriously considering firing everyone in this room. Anyone who wants to spare themselves the embarrassment of being escorted from the building next Friday when we make that determination should quietly bow out now and not come back. You're wasting our time and yours. Feel free to run directly to employee relations and tell them everything I'm saying, but - if I was blind, deaf, and dumb I know I could still outperform every single one of you."

Holymotherfuckingassholesonuvabitchdickhead... Shit.

I'm going to be unemployed for Christmas. Again.

Our first day that we were supposed to be on the phones, our entire class was pulled after only an hour. I didn't realize that and kept taking calls. I joined them probably half an hour later. It became painfully obvious to the support staff that none of us had any real idea what the hell we were doing. We didn't know how to navigate the various systems - there are over 30 systems that we can access and utilize for various reasons through the course of our attempts to troubleshoot whatever device the caller is trying to operate. It would seem that the last six weeks of training had not been very effective. Either every one in the class had been in a 42 day coma or ... Well, it didn't take the group more than a second to throw the trainer under the bus. I'm not saying she doesn't deserve it, because after six weeks of listening to her explain very rare (And often entirely theoretical situations. Situations she even referred to as probably not something we'd ever have to deal with and might only see once in the course of our careers, if at all.) and listening to fabulously humorous (but entirely pointless anecdotes that may or may not even had anything to do with the actual job but more often lead to this weird personal flashback universe where we drowned in boredom and nostalgia) and not being allowed to test any of the knowledge we were supposed gaining (for fear that our training environment might somehow impact the real world environment and cause serious havoc to any number of systems or users) and basically just watching slide shows about corporate policies, she did deserve that blame. We were not taught how to do our jobs. We were basically a six week case study on how long 20 people can sit in a room and not fall asleep or kill each other after eight hours of repeat captivity every day. Honestly, I'm not an idiot. I might have some problems with common sense occasionally or with over-analyzing things, but I'm not an idiot. In fact, learning is probably the one thing I'm exceptionally good at. Not to say I'm not exceptionally good at anything else, but I am the best at acquiring, comprehending, retaining, and utilizing new information. I'm like a dorky sponge in that way. So, if I am unable to learn something... I honestly don't know that rest of that sentence. It's never actually happened before. The only reason for me not to have learned something is if I never tried. That's the only explanation. It's like my attempts to learn other languages. I get side tracked. I forget about it. I don't actually try, so I don't learn. I was in a room for six weeks being bombarded with information. It's impossible that I didn't learn anything. I definitely did learn things, just not the right things. I can explain how the technology works. I just don't know how to use my tools to correct technology that is misbehaving.

Imagine this:

I spent six weeks watching someone draw stick figures on the board to explain the different markets of people who might call in and use very old school Nickolodeon references to explain how networks relay information.

Yes, it is entirely the instructors fault. We completely understood what was being explained, but we had no way to realize nothing beneficial to us or our future employment was being addressed. Anyway, they took that first day and gave us a crash 6 hour course on how to use one of our network systems. We didn't go back on to the phones and actual take calls until Tuesday. First thing Wednesday, we had that delightful meeting.

So... I filled out some more employment applications today. I could be fired at any moment, but most likely by next Friday at the latest. I'll keep going back until either my identification badge is deactivated or they escort me out. I'd very much prefer the former of those two options, because if it's the latter - I can't promise I'll go quietly. They may actually have to physically remove me rather than just escort me from the building. I don't owe them an ounce of grace.

Bastards.

"You are the master of every situation."

You have absolutely no idea, fortune cookie. Not a clue. But I sincerely applaud the effort, in any case. Very convincing.

I'd be absolutely exhausted all the time if that were true - and by absolutely exhausted, I mean far more absolutely exhausted than I already am as it is.

Anyway, it's just a silly fortune cookie. Eat it, read it, be slightly amused, and then move along.

I'm very disappointed that I didn't even get an interview for the employee coordinator position I applied for. I attribute this to my lack of the prerequisite education and accompanying degree. The posting said that work experience might be substituted for actual education. Might be is no gaurantee. Obviously. I'm not surprised, but I am very disappointed. Which means I'm still very much in training for tier II tech support. Friday was the last day in the classroom - which we celebrated by having a potluck lunch. The dessert salad was a smashing success, by the way. I used chocolate fudge pudding instead of vanilla, but I did not add the grapes. There's already enough different textures and flavors going on in there. Anyway, Monday will be our first day on the phones actually taking support calls. We will be monitored closely for the final two weeks of our training while we get some actual hands-on experience. The best part of this final stage is no longer having to wake up at 0500 every weekday. Schedules will be strictly afternoons from this point on. Hurray for that. We lost six people from our original training group throughout the six weeks of classroom time. There's something really beautiful about how perfectly those numbers align. Of course, if you consider that five people didn't even show up to the first day and were therefore not included in any of my figures, you find the actual percentage of drop outs is even more pathetic. Oh well. Anyway, I glimpsed an internal email I probably shouldn't have and my new friend with the tattoos is not coming back to work. Ever. Didn't think it was really my place to pass on the information to my new friend with the tattoos. He really wants his job back. Unfortunately for him, it's not going to happen. I'd rather not be the messenger that starts that trainwreck into motion.

Speaking of friends, I just spent the weekend with my lifelong asshole friend. Most of the weekend, anyway. I came home for lunch on Saturday while he was at work and took the dog along with me for a playdate with his giant horse dog. Nurse Egg's little alligator definitely held his own. In fact, I think he greatly surprised the much larger dog. Here are a few candid shots of that.



I assure you - despite how it might appear otherwise from the photos - that the larger dog was not harmed in anyway during the playdate. They didn't wear each other out like I had hoped either. They went non-stop for nearly 2.5 hours before these photos were taken and another ten hours after that. Nurse Egg's dog has been in coma mode since returning home very late last night/early this morning. It finally, finally caught up with him and he has yet to fully recover. He definitely enjoyed himself. So did I, as a matter of fact. The weekend was surprisingly drama-free which is becoming exceptionally rare regarding my lifelong asshole friend. Felt like the times from before. Before what exactly I'd rather not consider. Just before. Another life, feels like, sometimes.

Anyway, it's Sunday night and I'm doing laundry. Very exciting. I don't even have to be at work until tomorrow afternoon so I've got practically an entire day to fill until then. Definitely liking that better than the previous break of dawn scheduling. I'll never be a fan of anything that happens that early in the morning.

After months of trudging through every available piece of real estate within the very small radius we could actual allow ourselves to live inside, Nurse Egg and I might have found the perfect property. If it's true, it'll be just in time to make our end of lease date in the beginning of February. I'll hold off on sharing the details/photos until we're more sure about everything. We've been here before, sort of. This seems a lot more promising and certain, but just to be safe... we'll see how things go in the next few weeks. I definitely like this property more than any of the others, I'll say that much. Also, it doesn't have any of the deal breakers or structural problems any of the others sadly featured. But, again, we'll see and I'll share the details/photos with you just as soon as I can.

Home at the end of the world.

Next week is my final week of tech support training. We'll finally be out of the classroom! Very, very exciting! To celebrate, we're having a potluck. This, of course, means I get to experiment with some new dishes. I decided to use this weekend to test a few recipes I found online to see how well I like them and help me decide which, if any, I'll be remaking for the potluck. I chose two recipes: candy bar apple salad and mini taco meatballs. Candy bar apple salad is a dessert salad with chopped up apples and Snickers bars in it. Mini taco meatballs are basically exactly like regular meatballs but with taco seasoning baked into them. First I chopped some Braeburn apples. This is the longest step involved in any of the recipes I tried today. Took forever. The recipe didn't specify a type of apple, so after reading all the descriptions of the types offered at my local grocer - and basically giving up on understanding the difference between any of them - I just chose Braeburn at random. I think it was all about the two-tone for me, actually. I just like how they look. Normally, I prefer green apples, but these two-toned apples won me over. Then I chopped some Snickers bars - regular and almond varieties. The almond variety of Snickers are slightly more difficult to chop up than the normal variety. Side note: there's something terribly gratifying about chopping things to little bits with a butcher knife. Speaking of which, I couldn't stop the theme song from Dexter from playing in a continuous loop while I was chop-chop-chopping along. Fun times. With all my chopping complete, I mixed up the vanilla pudding and let it set for a couple minutes. Then I threw it all together in a bowl with some whipped topping. Very easy stuff. This is the result. It was much better after being refrigerated for a few hours. When I made it, everything was room temperature except for the whipped topping having just purchased everything at the grocer and whipping it together immediately upon arriving back at home. Everything being the same temperature and being chilled really made the difference in the flavor. I will absolutely be making this for the potluck at work, with a minor change. I think using either chocolate or chocolate fudge pudding will make a serious difference. The vanilla pudding is kind of blah. It was very blah when I first made it, but it got a little better after some time in the refrigerator. Colder is better. This recipe yields a lot more than I anticipated. Luckily, it's quite good, so it's not even a problem. Except maybe calorie wise. These are mini taco meatballs prepared and ready to go into the oven. This recipe actually took a lot less time than the other. For this recipe I just had to mash all the ingredients (beef, salt, pepper, eggs, taco seasoning) together in a bowl and roll out the meatballs. Even with cook time, it still took a lot less time to make the meatballs than the salad. It's all about that chopping. On an unrelated note, look at how tiny and sad that mini taco meatball in the exact middle is. I guess this means the recipe is really only meant to yield about 30 tiny taco meatballs, but I managed about 30.3 of them. While I was at the grocer, there was a woman there offering samples of a new buffalo ranch dressing. I definitely got some of that. Two bottles, actually. I also found some chipotle and spicy ranchero sauces. The mini taco meatballs alone are like a tiny taco flavored party in your mouth, but with these accompanying dipping sauces and some tortilla chips... ¡Muy delicioso! This recipe does require a great deal of meat to produce a decent number of meatballs, so I doubt I'll be making these for the potluck.