norsegirl

Today I decided to do a little experiment here at work. I decided to see how short a skirt one could wear and whether or not it would get you sent home. This morning I left my house wearing the shortest skirt I own in a lovely army-green camouflage print, over opaque tights and my big butt-kicking boots, with my favourite buckle-and-zipper goth jacket. The result of this experiment was a little unexpected...

I showed up late, as usual. Logged in 15 minutes late. Answered my first call. Part way through this call I got an e-mail saying my schedule had been changed. After the call I checked the e-mail... they recorded me as a "No call, no show"... um, I'm sitting right here. Providing remarkably good service for someone not here I might add.

I guess the solution to the short skirt was to pretend I wasn't here at all - heh. Or as one of my co-workers pointed out, it is camouflage print... maybe they didn't see me. LOL

A shame, it's a gorgeous day out and I was really hoping they'd send me home.

In other news, applied for a lab assistant position with the city, so I'm hoping that will result in something. Would like to get off the phones, and working in a lab again would be nice.

... are growing on my desk. Made myself a cup of herbal tea some time last week. No, I honestly don't remember what day. Anyway, neglected to throw out what I didn't drink. This morning I come in and find two distinct colonies of stuff growing in there. One variety is loose-floating green fuzzy blobs about the size of a grain of barley. The other is a whitish-clearish blob on the side of the glass with black pepper specks. What is interesting is that this stuff was of course not native to the tea, which means it comes from somewhere. The likely culprit is the air vent above my head. In a building only 7 or 8 months old, they already have molds and mildews growing away in their vents. Shocking eh?

That said, it's not like the glass was covered, so I guess one should expect some stuff to drop out of the vents.

In other news, someone I really liked and respected here quit this week. She was up for a management job and didn't get it around the same time I interviewed for the finance job I didn't get. I'm not sure she was given a good reason why she was passed over, so I imagine that is why she went elsewhere. Time I too saw the writing on the wall and got the hell outta here myself.

Didn't do any work on that this weekend though. Spent most of the weekend baking cakes and doing birthday stuff with the hubby. Anyway, back to answering phones. 24 people in line, longest hold time 17:59 - wheeee!

Watched a HORRIBLE movie last night. Alexander was showing on TV. I have never watched a bigger budget movie that was so boring, with acting so bad, and which looked like it had the budget of a particularly well funded high school production.

( Alexander sucks! )

In summary: even if it's on TV, avoid Alexander. It's not even terribly good as a movie to watch and loudly mock. Though with a large enough creative group I may be proven wrong.

In other news, my parents' visit was pleasant and went by way too quickly.

( Edmonton: Tourist Dream Destination! )I had my mid-afternoon interview at Bioware for a contract job testing games.

( interview at Bioware )If I get an offer I'll post more details and have a better basis upon which to make a decision.

Still haven't washed those pants. Starting to feel a bit like an oversized 5-year-old "you can wash them when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers and I'm not taking them off until they're stiff". I really should get to washing them on my day off tomorrow. On the bright side, a cool skirt arrived, so I've been rotating between the kick-ass pants and the skirt. And of course I was at an SCA event on the weekend so it's not like I wore real clothes Saturday. Sunday was PJ day as usual.

SCA event was pretty pleasant. I had to waste a lot of time doing crappy exchequer stuff, for which I still haven't quite completed the report. I forgot everyone's names of course. I had to get up at 4am and my brain was all kinds of not there. Feel like such a moron when I do that.

On the bright side, got to see and enjoy Wernar's very entertaining stepping down (he diced his crown away to his heir). Got to give the largesse I made to Gemma. Got to have a little visit with all my lovely LJ friends (Mona, Manyra (whose name was one of the many I embarassingly forgot that day), Pandorasbox (whose SCA name I have forgotten now of course. Starts with a Y I think)) and other non-lj-enabled buddies like Tammy (old friend of Fenrick's, many funny tales)and Kalira. Also got to spend a lot of time in the car with Fenrick, which was fabulous as usual. I really like road trips with Fenrick.

Anyway, have to run and do some crappy training here at work - sigh.

I still don't technically know why I didn't get the job, but now, knowing who did get the job, I have a pretty good idea. Some other guy in the tech support department had been "shadowing" there (in other words, getting unofficially trained for the position) for some time now. I, on the other hand, have been offered no opportunities to "shadow" anywhere. Despite assurances by Teena two months ago that she would consider it.

Kinda makes me wonder why they even had interviews? I mean if you've got a guy you've been training for a few weeks - duh, no, you're not going to want to take someone else, unless he is woefully incompetent. So why have the waste of time of going through the motions of pretending it's a fair competition? If it's already a done deal, why interview others and even put out the hope of getting out of the Dell Hell that is the phones?

For a week or so, while I was up for the job, yeah, I was pretty positive. But now, having been passed over for a position that I think I am totally over-qualified for, I feel pretty crashingly depressed about working here. I feel as though I am stuck right here. Is that really good for morale? Why interview someone you already know, through no merit or flaw of their own, you are not going to hire? This leaves me with the idea that there's no real point in staying here. I mean, if I couldn't get the job I actually have some qualifications for, what hope do I have for advancement in the areas where I don't have any skills or experience? I'll stay here a while, just to pull a paycheque, but I'll be spending my days off job hunting and will likely take the first offer that comes my way. If I honestly felt I had a fair shot at that job they may have won some loyalty. But now, I feel like maybe I only got the interview as a feeble attempt to make me feel like I might have a real career. Like they were patronizing and humouring me. Heck, I wonder if my manager didn't tell them to interview me just to stop me from whining about having no opportunities.

We'll see what my manager has to say, but right now I'd really like to just go home and not have to think about this place. Uugh, 4 more hours of this hell today.

So the interview yesterday went okay. As usual I'm all stressing out about it, but nothing I can do about it now. For any who are curious I went with the skirt suit, a bright red shirt, and took Em and Mona's suggestions and combined them by shopping for holiday kitsch so I could have a festive brooch. People said I looked nice.

Anyway, he grilled me about my claimed "6 years of experience" because it was all summers and fridays, not a "real" job. Yeah, well, bite me. I came clean when asked for clarification, but still, he might have a bad impression and see that as dishonest that I put "6 years" on my cover letter. He also didn't seem to like that my experience was more broad and not concentrated on just accounts payable. Since when is knowing about all areas of the accounting a detriment?

I asked my last interviewer if she had any idea when I might expect to hear back. She responded that she was hoping to talk to HR this morning. She didn't give me any indication if it was going to be good or bad news though. I hate waiting, even if it is only a day or two. Not patient, not patient at all.

Yup, that's what I was. I hate interviews, I really do. In the end my sole goal was to stretch it out so at least I would get the full hour off the phones - sigh. I got along well enough with her, but I'm not sure I have the qualifications she was looking for. We spent most of the time chatting and trading stories. But I did a lot of dumb faux-pas kinds of things. Blathering, interrupting, too much gesturing, my usual social gaffes when I'm nervous really.

She's only interviewing 3 people for the position, so at least my chances are good, even if my interview was not. If I get a second interview the next one I have to do better. That's a big *if*.

Got the approval to apply for the internal posting for an Accounts Payable clerk. It's a temporary position, but it is a promotion and it would allow me to use all my education and previous experience. And it's off the phones with no more nasty headset - yay!

Anyway, wish me luck.

( Application cover-letter thingy behind the cut for my own use later )

So, here we are, it's not quite 6pm and pitch black outside. I feel like it's REALLY late, but of course it's not. It's been an unusually slow day here, so I've gotten a lot of opportunities to speak to my co-workers, which is kinda cool. That said, I am bored out of my skull and my wrist is just killing me.

I went out earlier this week and spent all kinds of money I didn't really need to spend. Have to stop going to the cool goth store and hitting the sale racks. For some reason $110 tops start looking reasonable when they were originally $140 *headesk*. Anyway, now that I have this really excellent wardrobe I'm looking for an excuse to wear it out somewhere. Thinking I need to make a trip to the local goth bar, New City. Tonight would be especially good as it is German Industrial night. But I'm really tired from this week, Coronet tourney is tomorrow, and I still have a boatload of things I need to get done for said tourney.

The to-do list:
- Put some tabs on my banner for hanging
- Complete the hand-sewn linen dress I've been working on all week (and which is probably why my wrists hurt)
- Warp and weave a piece of largesse
- Finish the SCA report for the 3rd quarter (none of which I have recorded yet)

In other news, the weather here sucks so bad that instead of posting the usual "calls in queue" stuff on the information monitors, they are posting road reports and the temperature (which is about -20 and then wind chill on top of that so it feels like -30 - whoopee).

So, do I brave the roads and windchill so I can experience a wild night at the club with thumping German techno? Or do I head home and work on some of my projects in hopes of getting at least a few done?

Been awful busy so no time to write. Working at Dell is okay. The money isn't comparable to what I was making in accounting, but I also don't want to kill myself every time I think of going to work, so I think it's worth the trade-off. Fitting in pretty well here, making friends and also doing a pretty good job at what I do, especially for someone with no real computer background to speak of. Pretty sure I don't want to stay as a front-line worker on the phones, but not really sure where I want to move to. Happy with Dell though and would like to stay here if I could. Nice working somewhere that people seem to show up relatively happy and enjoy their job and workplace.

Had an odd moment at work yesterday though... normally when I go to one of my superiors for help with stuff I'm used to standing there a moment waiting for them to finish something up before they can give me a moment. This is cool, I'm okay with waiting. So yesterday I go to one of the guys, I have his attention, and while I'm explaining my problem, he turns back to his work. I stop and say something to the effect of "oh, if you need to finish something up I can wait" and he replies with "I'm just focusing on my work because otherwise I'll be ogling you. By the way, you have cat hair on you". "Beagle actually" I reply. This kinda took me back though, I hadn't really ever thought of myself as ogle-able. I guess working in a place with maybe less than 25% female population (I think I'm being too generous) and a large geek male population sorta puts me out with the front-runners. Kinda nice, but also kinda odd, especially seeing as how I consider myself a little fat and dumpy at the moment. Though, looking around, especially on the front-lines with answering phones and tech support, I guess I am relatively high in the female attractiveness line-up here. Still, odd, very odd.

In SCA news looks like I'm a consort now. Last week Fenrick called and asked if he could fight for me in Coronet this November. I have to say, I feel really good about this. I really like Fenrick. I'm reasonably sure that his fighting is honourable (I've never seen or heard anything that would cause me to question it), he's squired to a knight I greatly respect (Vik), and I think that working with him on the throne would be good. Fenrick was also my veteran in the Lost Vikings, and I have always enjoyed that relationship with him as well. We're both prone to doing the occasional stupid thing out of the list-field (things of the "open mouth, insert foot" variety), but with each other and with Inga and Vik's guidance I'm sure we could pull off a reasonably incident-free reign. I also feel like I've finally been involved enough in the SCA and learned enough to do a reasonable job on the thrones. Of course, that also means I need to get my exchequer duckies in a row and find/train a potential replacement. *sarcasm*Yay, that'll be fun.*/sarcasm*

In SCA project news, been working away at embroidery to embellish Fenrick's bog coat. It turned out really nice, he seems to like it, and the embroidery is just making it better. So far I've put a nice, big, Lost Viking knot on the back between his shoulders, and I'm about 1/3 of the way through embroidering some knot-work for his wrists. Think I'll stop there, with it being nice and classy and interesting but without being fussy or obnoxious. I'm doing the embroidery as separate appliques so if we ever have to replace the coat I can maybe salvage the embroidery. It also allows me to work on it while he can still wear the coat, which is good.

Next project I think will be a new apron dress for me and perhaps a new tunic as well. Though with winter coming maybe I should prioritize my own bog coat. Want to do a little more research and make it accurately though, since I'm not likely to be able to afford the wool to do this more than once. And I would like this kind of life-time piece to be reasonably accurate.

Haven't done any beads in ages. Not since I re-organized the studio actually. Problem is I kinda half-finished the re-organization. Got all the bookshelves moved and re-stocked, but didn't quite finish with the closet, so right now there are closet organizers and closet contents all over the place. Maybe I should get motivated and finish that this weekend so I can get to the torch again.

So what have I been doing with my weekends? Honestly, mostly wasting them. The weather was lovely this weekend and I wasted most of it playing computer games. Unfortunately, by the time I finally got sick of the computer and started thinking about taking the dogs for a walk, the dogs were in no shape to walk. While I was distracted with the computer, Anna was off doing unsupervised doggie things, like eating a pound of candy corn I left sitting out in the living room. She slunk into the room and announced the stupidity of this choice by throwing up orange goo everywhere. We spent the rest of the evening cleaning up Anna barf as it took a few attempts to clear the system. She spent most of the evening hiding in her cage or under my sewing desk and looking absolutely miserable. Sometimes she'd roll over for a submissive tummy rub and whine when you touched her belly. She didn't even get up when we fed Lizzy dinner. By the next evening of course she was fine, had probably forgotten about the whole incident, and was likely to re-offend. I guess we just need these occasional reminders to put stuff away eh?