The Thessaliad Redux

Apparently, all the luck I haven't had lately? Has returned to me. With interest.

First of all ... okay, I've been temping for a good while now, and it's not good - not in this job market. I have been trying for permanent jobs in a desperate bid for job security. I didn't really expect the effort to pay off, but I had to try because all I was getting was temp jobs. But now, finally, the job hunt paid off and I start a shiny new permanent job on the 20th! It's still medical typing, but not in a hospital - basically the organisation was set up so that hospitals could outsource heavy radiology reporting backlogs and stuff that urgently needed doing despite no radiologists being on call in the hospital. There's also room for advancement in the role, from typist to quality assurance personnel. And, best of all, the job runs from 4pm to 11pm; sure, it sounds weird that I'm thrilled by this but the fact is that despite nearly 20 years in this country, my body h as never been happy on anything but Eastern Standard Time. Sometimes it even defaults to Pacific Standard Time. In this job, I'm working at the hours that suit me best and I get to avoid rush hour. I mean, seriously, DAMN. I couldn't have asked for a better job. And boom, it just kind of fell into my lap.

And then there's the shout-out I got on a Tumblr fandom appreciation blog. I mean, there are no words for the warm fuzzies that I got when I saw this turn up on my tagged posts. It's so nice to be appreciated. Even nicer that my fanfic got a mention in and amongst all the perfumery stuff. Dorky, I know, but hey.

On the whole, things are going pretty well, I think. How's everyone else?

I have some off time, huzzah! The fact that I'm awake at this hour is testament to my body clock being a dick and I will rectify that as soon as I've rectified lack of LJ posting. I've gone really dark on big-scale blogging, at least in part due to the fact that Tumblr ate my life awhile ago and hasn't given it back yet. I think a major difference is that I don't feel as bad about fan-rambling on Tumblr, because everyone else does it too, and I have been a little too depressed/aggravated/enraged about the final weeks of job to really discuss it much.

And then there was the migraine, which I am still getting over. Don't even ask.

But! I have new work starting soon, and all is well. And between job-raging and general distress over the ways of the world, I finished both Mass Effect games. It was in fits and starts, particularly the first one (I think my last post maaaaaaaaay have had some complaining about the fucking Mako and how I didn't so much ragequit as ragepause for a few days at a time) but steveb_uk was right about one thing; it's definitely worth playing both games through at least once. The Genesis DLC will serve anytime thereafter but if you're playing Mass Effect for the very first time, I've found out just how fun it is to play one of these things with minimal walkthroughs and no real spoilers.

( Cut for inevitable spoilers )

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the entirety of the USA must have heard me whooping for glee when I finished the game, wandered my Shepard back to the captain's cabin and checked my Achievements:

Achievement: No One Left Behind

This is the best you can do, y'see. There are multiple endings: your character dies in heroic sacrifice, your character survives but squad members die, and everybody lives! Clearly everybody lives! is superior but not everyone manages it, especially on their first go. It was pretty awesome.

So ... yeah, I had fun with that. Looking forward to ME3. A LOT.

And now I am going to go back to bed. I have that privilege. I will try to be better at actual journalling, now that I've got the ME fan-squee mostly out of my system. I'll save most of the fic for Tumblr. *g*

Another week, another new department. I swear, it's like they think that if they shift me around enough, I'm going to forget about wanting to get shot of this place.

The latest is that ... well, having moved to the new department, I had to go in and pick up some of my bits and bobs from the last department. Who in turn told me that there were some 'loose ends' to tie up. Said 'loose ends', by the way, involve printing out, photocopying, posting and filing every letter I've typed in that department. But I can't actually do it in that office, oooooooh no. No, that would be sensible. Instead, I am forced to use OtherDepartment resources to print and post all those letters, and then stay late when the office is empty to sit down and do the filing. So I don't get in anybody's way.

If I'm going to be in people's way, wouldn't it be easier for them to do it? Or at least the person for whom I have been covering for the past week and a half? Or something? Instead I'm being saddled with the work of two departments because ... I don't honestly know why. AND WOMAN FROM OTHERDEPARTMENT HAS JUST CALLED TO CHECK ON ME WTF. After an hour and a half goes by, you kind of get to thinking that maybe I'd have called them if I was having problems logging on to the system and signing things off, wouldn't you?

Also, I hate the departments where the secretaries work right next to actual clinic space. It's noisy, it reeks of disinfectant and it drives me bugnuts.

I need to get gone before I pull an Anders or something.

In other news, I am finally over the flu bug from hell, I hit level 85 on Warcrack and am now faced with a moderate case of the 'NOW whats?' - only 'moderate' because I am in the middle of three quest chains, I am determined to be able to afford my Expert Riding achievement, I have professions to level and I want to jack up my Rep with the various factions - and I need more weekend.

That is all, thank you.

That's it. Stick a fork in me; I'm done. MARINES, WE ARE LEAVING.

So today I was working away at my makeshift desk, minding my own business, when office manager walks up to me with the hangdog expression of an individual who is going to ask for something really, reeeeeeeeeeally inconvenient. And then tells me that there is a 'crisis' in another department and they need me there for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow too, but probably not next week. When they're still not sure they'll be able to find me a desk.

I am sending my CV to agencies now. Even if all they can find me are temp jobs, IT IS BETTER THAN HERE. I can't take this anymore.

So today, or at least this afternoon, I am at a computer that is running an outdated version of IE (so not even gimped Tumblr, woe) and getting condescended to by people who don't understand that I have been doing this shit for at least as long as they have and they don't have to talk to me like a newbie. I hate it here.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm using a transcription machine from the early 90s?

*headdesk* I want ooooooout.

I seem to use my 'facepalm' icon an awful lot these days...

Anyway, um. Christmas was fine - it was just me and my roast beast and a lot of sleep. I think I even managed to mostly shake this lurgy! There were even presents in the form of ilyena_sylph getting me paid time on Dreamwidth (thank you, sweets!), which was unexpected but awesome. I also crawled to level 83 on Warcrack (I really haven't been playing much) and archived my meagre offering of DA fic on AO3, as well as doing a bit of writing of same. (Yes, mitchy, your thiefy-fic is coming along, though I'm not entirely sure where it's going yet.) So many WIPs, so little time now that I'm back at work. But AO3 is very cool, and I am looking forward to posting more stuff there when I have more stuff to post.

Speaking of, though, what remains of this week seems determined to mess with me. The first part was getting there - not entirely sure how I missed it unless they didn't precisely announce the fact very well, but apparently the trains are running a Saturday service at the moment. Which I didn't know until I got onto the train platform and discovered that not only was the next train to where I needed to go running seven minutes later than usual because of the 'Saturday service' crap, but it was also running three minutes behind schedule on top of that. Hooray.

Then of course, my first tape of the day started off ... troublesome. Mostly because it started with a list of people to send the letter to and then launched into the text of the letter without so much as giving a hospital number or, y'know, a name of the patient. At least it gave the patient's age and gender, so it was a matter of digging through the pile of notes to find someone that matched the gender and age given and then double-checking the addressees to see if they matched up. Of course, it couldn't be the set of notes on the top of the pile, or the bottom of the pile. No, that would make sense. I swear if I have to play Guess Who with the rest of these letters, I am going to track down the registrar and make him eat them. Also his letter makes no sense.

I really ought to move downstairs, since apparently none of my colleagues are even in the office (well, as of a little after 9am, anyway, and usually someone's in by then) and there are spare desks down there. Someone dug a radio out of storage up here and so this current office arrangement doesn't even spare me from Heart 106.2 anymore. *whimper* They try to keep it quiet but the radio lives on the desk directly behind me, so if they keep it at a volume the whole office can hear, it's ... loud. Some of it's not so bad but what I do not need at this time of morning is "It's Raining Men". I don't give a damn if it's raining men, women or chimpanzees so long as they shut up and let me type. Anyway, the main reasons I don't are that a) there might actually be someone in there by now, b) there are the phones to consider and c) I do not want to have to haul the heavy stacks of notes I managed to lug up here back down again. Going up the stairs with them is fine, if tiring and painful, but going down ... well, my varifocals don't allow for the clearest of peripheral vision (my own fault for going for the cheap ones this time around) and it tends to mean that stairs are a bit of a trial. To clearly see the stairs, I have to look down, and it's hard to do that when there's a huge stack of notes in the way. So ... yeah, none of that.

I need more coffee, but I didn't think to pick up an extra jar so I'm running perilously low. I may have to borrow from a colleague until lunchtime. Which cannot come fast enough.

Oh, my colleagues are truly brilliant.

"Stick to the tapes, [Thess]!", they tell me. "It's too confusing when you type the digital dictation stuff, [Thess]! Leave us to do the digital dictation and you just handle the tapes, okay?"

Yes, this is a brilliant idea. However, said brilliant idea relies on them actually doing the digital dictation typing. Seriously, I go downstairs for piles of notes and notice, to my dismay, that while the tapes are more or less up to date, the digital dictation typing is backlogged up to 14th November. Oh, joy of joys. Now, admittedly, the backlogged dictation are from registrars and consultants whose dictation sucks like a Hoover product, but this is not a job where you can just let tasks that are difficult or annoying just sit there for over a month because you can't be bothered! I mean, I've seen one of the other floats working on digital dication dating to December, so why hasn't she touched these? Or ... y'know, any of the other secretaries who're supposed to be actually working here? And yet it's off-limits to me because they can apparently handle it and it's 'confusing' to have me take work off their hands. I don't understaaaaaand.

I have had to make an executive decision at this point, and said executive decision is, "Fuck this; I'm doing it anyway". If I take the notes upstairs with me, there's no way they're eventually going to get around to stuff they should be doing instead of working through this month and forgetting November ever happened. (And let's not talk about the lady I was temping for while she was on holiday, who hasn't touched any of her typing since I came back from holiday. I do not believe she still has her job. I'd feel more guilty about not trying to do something about her atrocious lack of anything resembling work on the backlog if I technically still worked for her department. I still feel bad, though.)

[Edit: There is apparently a way that they're going to get around to stuff they should be doing instead of working through this month and forgetting November ever happened. Phone call from colleague downstairs basically going, "I was just about to do those! Give them back!" "But ... I finished one clinic and I've got the other now..." "Give them back! I'll give you tapes! We have tapes! GIVE THEM BACK!" So I had to haul the ones I hadn't done yet back downstairs after booking the ones I had done back to file and get back upstairs with three clinics (on two tapes bundled with a stack of notes a foot and a half thick, which are VERY BLOODY HEAVY, I might add. I don't even know why it matters who does it so long as it gets done; why couldn't she have just picked up something else? I really do not get it but if that's what I get for trying to take initiative, fine. Whatever.]

Oh yeah, and these are the ones who want me to work over the bank holiday. There was actually a mass email sent out supporting the office managers' requests for people to give up their bank holidays and pitch in without a mention of pay, let alone overtime. They can go jump, really; they may not like my taking my mandated bank holidays but if I don't get those extra two days, I am never going to get over this lurgy that is still kicking my arse because it's the only shot I'm going to have at bedrest for awhile. Said mass email also said that Grand High Hospital Poo-Bah hopes that our 2012 is "an Olympic one!" .......Wut. WUT. The hospital is doing this "WE SUPPORT THE 2012 OLYMPICS" thing and it's driving me up the wall. I don't want to have an Olympic 2012. I just want to have one that sucks less than the last couple of years. Is that too much to hope for?

I really should stop letting them guilt me into not taking sick leave. After all, I think I may be the only person doing any real work at all around here. Huh; if these are the wages of virtue, maybe I ought to try following the example of my colleagues. Though with my luck, I'd be sacked if I did. So ... yeah, better not.

I'm still going to try for a nice holiday meal but I imagine that most of my Christmas is going to be spent in bed with chicken soup and DVDs, trying to get some semblance of health back in the four-day weekend my workplace is trying to guilt me into not taking. I am seriously beginning to dislike my life.

Though at least there's Warcrack to ease the pain (or vent the frustration, really). Finally saved up enough for Artisan Riding - only Master to go now - and soloed through Ragefire Chasm, mostly for the achievement. I'll probably do a couple of others at some point - anything I can solo through - but it's mostly for achievements and rep with Silvermoon. Except one, which I'll probably keep doing until it drops that Epic Mount. Though it's funny soloing low level dungeons at level 80-ish; one-shotting elites never gets old, even if they are sixty-odd levels below you. Anyway, it makes a change from Deepholm, Vashj'ir and Mount Hyjal. I'm nearly up to level 83 now and may actually hit level cap before this Mists of Pandaria thing comes out - I may only be crawling through the levels at a very slow pace by choice, but there's not even a release date on the new expansion yet. I ought to go to one of my alts at some point but I'd like to reach level cap just once.

So ... yeah, that'll be my holiday - bedrest, Warcrack and possibly writing Dragon Age fanfic. Too many plot nugs, too much sickness to actually do anything with many of them. Such is the way of things. Bleh.

Friday thank the gods...

I got through the vast majority of this week on coffee, vitamin C and OTC cold and flu meds, which didn't help a lot but at least muted the symptoms somewhat. I know by all rights I should go back and shake antibiotics out of someone but I really don't fancy spending forever in a waiting room only to be dismissed again. Besides, I can't really afford the time that'd take off work. So ... yeah, I'm more or less flat right now. I will probably spend a lot of the weekend asleep. This will be a good thing, provided I don't forget to do little things like grocery shopping.

On the other hand, maybe being as sick as I have been is a good thing from the point of view of getting through the job. I'm too worn out to focus too much on the stupid that is my job half the time. I don't entirely understand how it happens that people end up dictating on side 2 of a tape before they dictate on side 1. I'm never sure whether it's the secretaries just not rewinding properly (unlikely, as side 1 has invariably been wiped) or ... I don't know. All I know is that it's annoying and a little worrisome when I put a tape into side 1, hear nothing and have to wonder if I've wiped it by mistake or someone put the wrong tape in the envelope or what. It seems a small thing, but try telling busy consultants that they have to redictate their clinic. Hell, actually try nailing a registrar to the floor long enough to tell them anything.

Though the tape I started yesterday was a doozy. It at least started on side 1 but as I worked my way through the letters, I noted that the letters I was typing corresponded to none of the sets of notes that had turned up with the blasted tape. I checked the patient history for one of the patient letters I'd typed; their attendance record corresponded to the clinic listed on the envelope the tape came in. So when I finished the tape, I looked up the patient history of one of the patients I did have notes for. Turns out that there are two different clinics for slightly different specialities run by the consultant with the aid of the registrars on that particular day, and he'd put the wrong envelope with the wrong pile of notes. So now that I've typed the bloody thing, I have to go downstairs, try to find the pile of notes that match, file the letters I've typed and then type the letters that actually go with the set of notes on my desk. If that sounds complicated ... well, imagine how I feel.

(Oh, good, and one of my consultants got another new reg. Heavy accent, no particular grasp of English sentence structure. At least it looks like a short tape...)

The faux-Christmas Winterveil thing on Warcrack started last night, apparently. I'll have to check that out when I get home, if I have the energy. Mostly I haven't had the energy to do much of anything when I get in, beyond faff around on Tumblr. I'd like that to change. But then again, I have to get my main out of the underwater quest chain nightmare in which she is currently immersed (no pun intended) before I can celebrate much of anything over in Azeroth. I suppose I could just celebrate it on one of my alts; my Goblin Shaman's in Orgrimmar at the moment... But I'd really rather do this sort of thing on my main, so eh. Of course, I could just use it as an excuse to ditch the underwater quest chain altogether and hit Mount Hyjal instead, but that feels like giving up. Then again, I'm playing for fun, not aggravation. I don't need Warcrack to do pointless shit for money and experience; I just have to go to work.

So I'm hearing about the NDAA and SOPA, but I'm mostly hearing about it over Twitter and from a few American news sources. You'd think that news like this would make it over here, but the Metro, at least, has nothing on it. This kind of terrifies me, particularly when the articles I've managed to find on SOPA suggest that it's not the people or even the government who are going to decide this one, but the multimedia conglomerates. As for the NDAA ... that more than 'kinda' terrifies me. I remember being so thrilled that Obama got elected, and now there's this. It's like how I felt when Blair got in, but somehow worse. I just kind of wonder what it's going to take, y'know? We the people are being systematically removed from the decision-making process all over the place, systematically ignored and basically trodden on, like we're obstacles to get around rather than ... y'know, constituents, voters etc. I'm getting this 1984 feeling where the perfect representative image of the future is a boot stamping on a human face forever. We need to take the power back before we're no longer capable. If that means more riots ... well, so be it. At this point, I'd rather civil unrest and living in a riot zone than living the rest of my life with a jackboot on my neck.

The real issue for me is that there's nowhere for me to go, really. I live here, where the coalition government seems to be hell-bent on making life untenable (between the cuts, the threats of NHS privatisation, the stripping of our right to peaceful protest and the systematic destruction of the economy) for everyone but the top 1%. There's the US, with NDAA and SOPA threatening to make a serious mockery of 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'. I could go home to Canada, but that whole thing where Muslim women have to remove their niqab at their swearing-in ceremonies just makes me want to throw things (and reminds me too much of my mother saying that all head and face coverings of that type should be banned because 'there could be a criminal under there!' - I weep for a certain generation of my countrymen). Sickening breaches of civil liberties are everywhere, and there really does not seem to be anywhere to go to just live free, or at least governed by people with the people's best interests at heart.

Can I hand back my membership to the human race? I ... could be a gnome. (Gnooooooooooome...)

I want to put a sign up in this wretched cubicle of mine. I want it to say "PUT A HAND ON ME AND DRAW BACK A STUMP".

Look, it's relatively simple - I don't like people touching me unless I know them really well. I can tolerate it when I have no choice - crowded trains, lifts, incidental brushes when handing over money and taking change while shopping (though even that I'll avoid where I can) - but I don't like it. While I don't assume everyone feels the same way, I generally won't initiate contact with people I don't know well because it's better to not risk them being like me in their antipathy to being touched by near-strangers.

My office apparently has other ideas. If they want my attention so badly, I wish they'd ask. Verbally. Y'know, say "Excuse me?" I know I am generally in the middle of typing a letter when someone wants my attention, but they could at least wait until there's a lull in my typing if they're that worried about not being heard. Tapping me on the shoulder when I am in the middle of typing something just gets me on edge. I do not like it. I partly do not like it because it means that there is someone in my blind spot, deep in my personal space. I partly do not like it because I am fucking busy and would prefer to have people at least wait for a lull instead of stopping me mid-word. But I mostly do not like it because someone I do not know and/or may not actually like is laying hands on me. Maybe I'm oversensitive, but ... this is my body we're talking about and I should at least have some say in who or what comes in contact with it. I just don't like people I don't know well touching me when I don't know it's coming. I want the option to say 'no', even to something as relatively harmless as a touch on the shoulder. (And it generally will be 'no'; I just don't like it.)

Besides, everyone in my office knows that I am plaguemonkey at the moment. I shouldn't think they'd want to be touching me when I might pass on my cold/flu/viral infection/strep throat/whatever the hell it is I have that the doctors didn't care all that much about. And yet...

Maybe I'm just less patient about it today than I would ordinarily be because, despite getting to bed early last night, I am still exhausted, dragged out, aching and miserable right now. Even minor annoyances feel pretty major to me right now. I should be in bed, I know this, but that's not an option. If I'm lucky, I can get home early, but ... probably not. So I'll keep on truckin' and hope I don't fall asleep at my desk. Which seriously feels like an option right now. With my luck, though, I won't have anything but the weekends until the Christmas bank holidays.

Man, I hope they appreciate me...

I am all alone in the office this afternoon. Everyone has gone home early, or had the day off, or worked from home or something. I don't know what the girls downstairs are doing, but it's peaceful, just me. And at least someone gave me the key code for the office door up here, so if I have to leave the office, I don't have to worry about leaving the door open. Apparently, we don't do that when the office is empty. Which makes a certain amount of good sense. (It still doesn't justify the fact that the other float still forgets to lock down her computer before she leaves her desk despite my having shown her how, mind you. I'm going to have to remind her. I think I'll maintain a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy there; I've told her, and she gets two reminders before I report her.)

I wonder if anyone would mind if I borrowed someone else's desk for the next couple of hours. See, there's one minor problem with my current office space; it faces a window. A west-facing window. And the blinds are missing a few slats so it does not block out the sun. Everyone knows I'm pretty prone to migraines, right? Well, imagine how it feels to spend from about 2pm 'til sundown getting comprehensively blinded by the sun shining right in my face with no hope of blocking it out. Right now I'm managing by adjusting how I sit so that the slats that are actually in the blinds are blocking the sun from my direct line of sight (mostly) but that's just doing in my left shoulder. I'd shift my computer but there's no actual room to do so, because 'my' desk is actually storage space for I don't know what-all rubbish from the IT department. Gods almighty, I hate this place sometimes.

In other news, I participated in the Secret Swooper deal for the swooping_is_bad LJ community; basically it's Secret Santa for DA fanworks, or Yuletide with a specific fandom. I wrote a piece of Anders-centric fic that I'm actually fairly proud of (I may post it later, but I want to wait until the person I'm Secret Swooping for sees it; it's their present) and I got the loveliest bit of fanart. But of course, my working on this kind of thing shows how much of a dork I can sometimes actually be, because as per usual with this kind of thing, I planned so many bits and pieces of fanwork (a fanmix, a couple of pieces of fic that are half-written already, stuff like that) and then just hit on this idea and bashed it out in an hour and a half and posted that rather than agonise over it anymore. So this whole thing actually just generated way more fan-stuff than just the one gift-piece. Is that what these things are supposed to do? I've never done anything like this before, so the fact that I accomplished it at all is pretty stunning. Maybe I'll actually try Yuletide next year.

Or maybe someone should hit me in the face with a shovel before I fic again.

Aaaaaaaanyway. Yes, I'm goofing off. I'm alone in the office, I've worked my arse off all week and the weekend's coming up in not very long at all. I think I'm entitled to a little bit of goofing. I still do more work than the girls downstairs. This weekend is going to be more or less chores, too - grocery shopping, laundry, stuff like that. I may buy a tiny artificial Christmas tree if I can clean off enough shelf space to put the sodding thing, and there are at least a couple of Christmas gifts I should likely pick up, though I imagine most will be purchased online. (Not that there are that many to begin with.) So ... busy busy. You know how it goes.

Right. Now to Google gingerbread recipes. Also, type letters.

I facepalm at the workplace once again...

So I'm still in my miserable little cubicle up on the management floor, with my current department - and all relevant notes - two floors down from me. Given that the doctors in this particular department refuse to actually check their letters on the system, we have to print them out, complete with file copies. When they're checked and signed, we send them out and file them. And, because I am way the hell up at the top of the building, generally I type and print a whole bunch of letters and then drop them off downstairs, file copies and all. They have the notes, they have the envelopes, the outgoing post box is down there, this seems sensible.

But no. They sent my colleague upstairs with a big stack of checked and signed letters, telling me to send them out and put the file copies in the notes. So ... I have to go downstairs, collect envelopes, do the filing, go back upstairs, put the letters in envelopes, and then go ... back downstairs to put the letters in the post box. Does this make sense to anybody else, given that the letters were in the right office to start with? I think my colleagues are just f'ing lazy because the logistics of this are insane.

Speaking of colleagues, the fellow keyboard-monkey up here (the one who never locked her machine when she left her desk; I brought it up with her and it turns out that she couldn't figure out how. I haven't been paying much attention so I don't know if she's forgotten or what) is really starting to irritate me now. Look, some of the consultants are dumb as rocks, okay? They can't seem to figure out how to set up a letter so that it attaches to the right clinic, or the right patient, or automatically sets up a mail merge to the appropriate GP. But if you have a hospital number, finding out a GP address is really easy. So what you have to do is pull up the letter, fill in the GP details from EPR, and then print that letter.

I've seen some of the bullshit she's printing off. Some of them are distinctly lacking in GP address. I know she knows how to use EPR. I know she knows how to track down a GP address. But she doesn't and she isn't and this is moronic.

Also, they haven't revoked my access to the department I was working at a few weeks back, when I was holiday cover for someone? And from what I can see, she hasn't touched a letter since she got back. It shouldn't surprise me, because the phone calls I was getting that week led me to believe that she didn't book appointments, pass on messages or do her job much, either, but I still have to wonder how anything gets done around here. Sometimes I feel like the only person who actually works here. No wonder I'm constantly sick and stressed and aggravated.

It's only Tuesday and I already need this week to be over. I want to go home ... but I'll have to settle for coffee.

[Edit: My colleague still doesn't lock her computer on leaving her desk, the girls downstairs have thrown all the filing at me - not just the letters I've typed but random stuff as well - and this damn thing won't cross-post. Argh.]