All three of us are here in our 10×12 foot office this morning. And one of my officemates starts playing music. I don’t really care, she has pretty good taste in music. But then I hear my other officemate say to her, “Hey, do you have your headphonese plugged into the mic jack?” And I look over and for the past ten minutes she thought she was listening to her music through the headphones.

To me, that is ridiculously funny. Mostly because we ALL do it.

I hate my job more than a person should. Granted I am not shoveling cow dung or anything remotely disgusting, but I am still none the less repulsed every time I have to go into work. I went in today….on a Saturday…. to run some data, make some graphs, and finish up a presentation. When confronted once again with the moral dilemma of displaying “non-trustworthy” data, I have been told once again to “not stress out about it, make it quick and dirty, it doesn’t need to be perfect, these are just estimates.” Ok, for any other line of work I might buy that, but I think it has slipped everyone’s mind that reliable DATA is the reason people contract with us. They expect real numbers, they expect real results, they are not paying 100+ dollars an hour FOR FREAKIN ESTIMATES and a “quick and dirty process”!

I am at a loss. I don’t think I have produced anything real in the past year. I am so burned out that I don’t really know where to turn. I hate when I have to fudge numbers, or in the words of my employer, “massage the data”. I HATE MY JOB! I am not stressed out about if the work will get done, I am stressed out about how the work is getting done. UN-FREAKIN-ETHICAL. When did I become a morally upstanding citizen?

I had my job interview today. It went really well, at least in my opinion. For those that know me, you all know that I enjoy playing the question game. This is why I like going on interviews. It is a more “grown-up” politically correct version of the question game. I always come up with the best answers. They have two more interviews and then they will let me know either way by the end of the week. What is really weird about it is that I bowl her team on Wednesday. Not only will I see her, but I have to bowl against her. When I told my dad this he said, ” You better take one for the team.”

Also, on a side note…..I have been absent minded. Not just forgetful, but downright absentminded. Today before I left work I was supposed to send the database guru the database. AND I FORGOT. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal. But he is running data for me….FOR TOMORROW. So I had to run back over to work at nine freakin thirty at night to send over the database! Nobody’s fault but my own. In my defense, I am a little overwhelmed at the moment with job prospects, family life, and PMS.

I talked to my life coach about being absentminded and she has a theory. And because she has a theory and she shared it with me, I will share it with you……..When you work for the type of person I work for (one who is always just putting out fires) then you will tend to forgot things. She said that there are studies that prove this. I just hope I don’t carry this over to whatever my new job is.

Here is to not having it be weird at bowling on wednesday and to not forgetting anything for the rest of the week, oh and to hopefully getting the job!

Cheers or Cheerios…..whatever.

You end up staying home on Friday to actually get something done.

Yesterday I washed dishes for 3 hours, had a good, but horrifically sad therapy session, got pulled over for speeding (where I seriously started hyperventilating in the car because I was already crying before he pulled me over and holy crap he probably hasn’t seen someone freaking out as much as I was.. no ticket… such a girl thing, but in my defense I wasn’t crying simply because he pulled me over), and moved gas cylinders around for 2 hours.

I came home, totally freaked out at 5-ish. Proceeded to tell Sheesha about my day, laid down for five minutes then went back into work to try and fix a piece of equipment that I had been working on all day and hadn’t gotten working yet. I said to myself, “Self - you are going to go into school and fix that instrument. And if you can’t fix it, you are going to call your boss and he is going to help you.” And that is exactly what happened. Then I came home and felt much much better.

So today, today I am just going to stay home, work on my dissertation, do my laundry, pick up my prescription, drop off my keys from my part time job that I quit a while ago, and then drive out to Santa Rosa. And maybe play some Sims. I deserve it. I worked late every day this week, except Wednesday, when I hung out with Api.