More of same... piled higher and deeper

For better or worse, my existence continues. The loads weren't too bad today. I was in a lousy mental state for most of the day, as per usual (see below) but as usual the feeling has lifted somewhat. Actually I think it lifted a bit around the time we discovered yet another problem with the shitmobile. The vehicle was parked outside the building, its rear facing us with the garage door open, and ND noticed that a bolt was hanging lower than the others of its type. Inspection showed that it was actually one of the U-bolts that hold the rear axle housing to the leaf spring, and that it was actually broken. Following a couple of phone calls, the Human Sawmill got in the truck and drove it to a dealership in Orillia (the nearest place we could find that carried the part). In the course of the repair they discovered that at least one leaf of the spring itself was broken, but for the time being they've just replaced the bolt; one hopes that the bosses will see fit to replace the spring when we get back. I suppose I should feel guilty for being amused by the situation, but I don't. As far as I can see, the more things that go wrong with that thing the better- maybe they'll finally see fit to get rid of the damn thing. I'm not holding my breath, though.

And you've got to see this video:


Make sure you watch the whole thing- you'll be amazed at how it ends. Certainly not your typical nature video.

An improvement

You know how, when you're getting hit repeatedly in the head really hard, and then the assailant starts beating you a little less hard, how that feels so much better? Well this week is shaping up to be like that. We had a reasonable amount of material today, with the result that we were done by 5 PM. Furthermore, we got to sleep in- we didn't have to get up till 6 AM, rather than 5:15 like on the previous project.

There was bad news today, but it didn't affect me. The Human Sawmill and the Norfolk Dude park their cars in the church parking lot near the office (with permission; the company has an arrangement with the church). Well, it seems that this morning someone broke into ND's car, and started to have a go at HS's. Apparently nothing's actually been stolen; the CDs in ND's car were gone through but none were missing. I guess in a sense that's adding insult to injury- not only does he get his window broken, but his musical taste insulted as well.

Getting ready to return to hell...

Well, I don't know if too many people would consider Muskoka to be hell, but when most people go up there it's to enjoy themselves, not to spend twelve hours a day sorting garbage. Additionally, our contact with the regional government there told us "I hope you like bugs". Now I'm generally quite fine with insects, but I suspect that he was referring to the families Culicidae and Simuliidae, which tend to make one's work environment more unpleasant than it would otherwise be.

In a little while I'm headed off to CL and DL's place for breakfast, then to the NDP executive meeting this afternoon. I'll probably have to leave almost immediately afterwards.

My neighbour across the hall told me yesterday that his roommate has a Chinchilla, and that this week when the landlord was over fixing something, up on a step ladder, he came down and was startled to see this creature staring at him. He asked, "is that a mouse?" I guess, though, that if your landlord doesn't know what a mouse looks like it's a good thing.

A long week and a truncated weekend

The report was finished and mailed off, though not without Boss Sr having to call me on the company cell as I was getting ready for bed on Thursday night so I could email some additional details. The days were insanely long and tiring, and we didn't hit the road till almost 8 PM on Friday, with the result that it was nearly 2 AM this morning when I finally staggered into my apartment.

Furthermore, I have to leave for the next project Sunday evening at 5:30 PM for a 3 hour drive, and before that I have an NDP meeting. I am hanging out with Ms McD for a while this afternoon, and later with Ms P. Next week I'm helping the Ps move. But most of my weekends are like this, really. I need to do something to change my routine, that's clear.

The torment continues...

So now I find out that I have a bunch of stuff to fix with the Wellington County report. And it has to be done now, i.e. I probably shouldn't even be taking time out to post this, but I'm going mad, and unsure as to how I'm going to pull this off. At this point, I find it increasingly hard to give a shit, except that I have to make some pretense of fixing the problem. The difficulty lies in some inconsistent data we had (some from the county, and some from our own work), possibly combined with errors on my part in analyzing the data (but since I don't even remember what I did a couple of weeks ago, and my notes are back at the office, I really don't know if I did it right based on the data I'd used... just that the data I used isn't the data I should have used).

Fuck I hate my job.

Back in the dumpster

Yeah, I'm feeling lousy. And I really shouldn't. I'm really not doing that badly, all things considered. I have friends with serious health problems. Friends with serious money problems. I don't have either of those things (so far). And yet...

See, this seems to happen every time I'm working in the field. The first couple of days I feel like utter shit, thinking about my failures that led me to be a 37 year old waste auditor when if I'd played my cards right when I was younger I'd be a university professor by now. And now that opportunity is gone. That fact was made clear to me just under five years ago, when I mused about trying to get back into graduate school, this time in science (which is where I probably should have been all along, but I began grad studies in philosophy because my marks were better in that subject at that time). My dad pointed out that by the time I could get a PhD I'd be in my forties, and competing for jobs with people in their late twenties. And as a professor and sometime department chair, my dad is well aware of the fact that departments generally want to make a long term investment, and therefore prefer to hire people who are younger than me. Which means, in lay terms, that I've blown it. So what to do now?

At the time, my dad suggested that I should try teaching high school. I've definitely considered that, but am discouraged by the fact that the one person I know who actually does it thinks that my temperament is ill-suited to that job, and I daresay she's right. I don't cope with stress that well, so that option is probably out.

I enrolled in the environmental technology programme in the hope of being able to find a job that at least justifies my existence, which is more than can be said for most of the jobs I'd done before now. But frustratingly, I'm actually a lot less happy than I was in some of the utterly meaningless call centre jobs I did in the past. Maybe it's the particular job I'm in, but the previous job I had was even worse. And doing market research is a lot like collecting welfare- you get a cheque, but don't really accomplish anything to make the world better.

I'm still checking the job boards for something in the same field, but it's getting more and more discouraging, and I have to admit that I've been looking less of late. Hardly anyone I've applied to has so much as called me. Many times I've seriously considered another career change. The most likely escape route for me would be to go into adult education, which would be a lot less stressful than teaching high school. The main thing that worries me is that it would probably be a one way trip; if I were to quit working in the environmental field, go back to school to be an adult ed teacher, and not find a job (or hate it even more than this job) I'd probably have little chance of getting back into this field even at the menial level I'm at now. So my level of desperation would have to increase to push me to make such a change at this point.

But oh well, I'll probably feel a bit less lousy later in the week; it always happens as the weekend approaches. Unfortunately, I'm looking at yet another truncated weekend, since I'm likely to be sent out to Bracebridge on Sunday evening. And if things go really badly this week it's possible (though not probable) that we might not leave till Saturday, which would not please me at all.

Dog-et

As planned, I drove to Hamilton to pick up the photo equipment (haven't had a detailed look yet, though) and visited my grandma and my aunt in Burlington. On coming home I got a call from CL, who is house-sitting for a friend, and taking care of said friend's two insane dogs. This particular friend is a programmer or some similar sort of high tech guru, who has her own consulting company and is looking at being able to retire in five years or so (and she's only in her forties! I hate people like that). Needless to say, she has plenty of money to spend on things like a Nintendo Wii, which CL and I spent some time playing. I suck utterly at baseball and boxing, but am tolerably good at auto racing and bowling. What neither I nor CL noticed was that while we were playing the game, one of the dogs grabbed my shoes, dragged them out into the backyard, and hid them, doing significant damage in the process (they're still wearable, but barely). Fortunately we were able to find them. I don't know; in some cultures they seem to have a much better idea of what to do with these creatures than we do (we tend to get all squeamish because they're cute and furry and all that shit). Too bad, because otherwise I could have sold the offending creature to the local Pizza Pop factory and bought a new pair of shoes with the money. But such is life.