Is 2011 over yet?

Yeah, another fall off the planet moment. I blame work. No, really, I do. It’s still insane, as is most retail this time of year, and has been insane since the end of October. A few weeks ago, I managed to end up at the local urgent care from doing something messed up to my knee. a week of crutches later, plus pain killers, anti-inflammatories, and a trip to the orthopedic doc later, and I had a diagnosis of Pes Anserinus Bursitis – aka “your inner knee hurts a damned lot, so quit doing all that stuff for a while.” Well, there’s more to it, but that’s about what it ended up as. One week with the crutches, one week of being banned from stairs and ladders, and two weeks of physical therapy (I start my second week of therapy tomorrow). The therapy is helping, but I have a feeling that it’s not going to completely go away until I stop what I’m doing at work, which means getting a different job. Yeahhhh, fun times. :/

With everything that’s going on (Jared still looking for a new job, Mom having her own issues), it’s going to be a slim Christmas for us here. We’ve set a monetary limit on gifts for each of us this year for the first time in a really long time. If you’d asked me at the beginning of the year, with full knowledge of everything that would be coming out in the next 12 months, here’s what my list would have looked like:

1. Apple iPad 2, black, 16g, wi-fi only
2. Apple iPhone 4S, 16g for AT&T
3. Knit1 Oxford Gift Certificate (the local yarn shop in town that is awesome)
4. New cat tree for the kitties
5. Clothes, clothes, clothes!
6. Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition

I finally got around to making my list today, and for about 20 minutes only had one thing on the list: the gift certificate to Knit1 Oxford. It took me another 30 minutes to add on 4 books and a DVD set, and I still feel meh about adding them. Like I told my Mom when she was sighing at me, I -want- a lot of things, but they’re so improbable at this point, there’s no point in adding them to the list. What do I -want-? Everything on the first list, plus ethernet cables run through the old section of the house to get better wi-fi reception (old house walls made with chicken wire to hold the plaster = leaky Faraday cages). I also want a phone call from some place that I talked to back in October to say “let’s go on Round 2, you know, nm, let’s just have you start tomorrow, k?” I want no more stress from friends and family over money, cos they all have jobs that they love (or at least like) that they’re being appropriately recompensed for. I want time. Dammit, I want to be happy for more than 15 minutes out of a week, cos I’m tired of everyone around me having a crap existence right now.

Like I’ve said, it’s not the frostbite that gets you, it’s the frost-nibble, and dammit, I’ve been just about nibbled to death. :/

Bweh. Okay, off that. Something happy… Oh! So a good thing recently? I got to beta SWTOR, fell in love with the Sith Inquisitor like I thought I would, and before everything went to hell in a hand basket, paid for Jared and I’d Collector’s Editions in full. They asked me at the store “Why now?” My response: “We have the money now, and I’m terrified that if we waited til release day, it wouldn’t be there.” In hindsight, I was right and I rule. So come December 20th, Jared and I will have our CE keys and have been playing early access for 5 days and having a blast. Yey us. ^^; Hey, at least it’s something.

A long time ago…

So yeah, I get a new job, hit the ground running with it, then promptly fall off the blogging planet. Really, I do blame the job. Most of the time, when I get up in the morning, I’m still groggy and out of it, and have a very short time to get ready for work and out the door. When I get home, I’m immediately hitting the shower to get cleaned up, as most of my day involves me running up and down ladders or stairs, hauling mannequins or large artwork, usually with little air conditioning or hot lights overhead. After that, all I want to do is not move, while various body parts yell at me for taking the job. Then it’s an early bedtime and we start it all over again. /sigh

The job itself is somewhat physically demanding. It depends on what day it is and what needs to be done. Two weeks ago, not a whole heck of a lot other than putting up new pretty pictures in little frames. This past week? Lots of ladders, lots of hauling, lots of racing around with no where near enough time. When you add in the various office politics and personalities, things get… interesting. My stress levels kinda peaked out Friday and i had a complete meltdown at work. A couple of texts and a phone call to another store’s visual department manager later, and I was a lot calmer. I’d helped the other manager earlier in the week at their store, and he reassured me that I was not sucking, i was doing a good job, and to just do what I could do. It’s always nice when someone says “Damn, girl! I wish you were closer to our store, cos I’d steal you away in a heartbeat, cos you rock!”

Oh and three weeks ago, Jared tripped at work and broke his elbow. /facepalm He’d been hoping that the doc would tell him he could go back to work this past week, but alas, he’s still healing and must stay at home some more, since work can’t accommodate his one-armed self. At least he’s got workman’s comp. ^^;

In more pleasant news, our insanely crappy internet connection will soon be a thing of the past. I need to make a phone call tomorrow to set it up, but we’ll be having a proper high-speed connection soon. Looks like it’s going to be just in time for a couple of new games that I’ve been waiting on: Diablo 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. I loved, nay, adored Diablo 2. Still do. There’s just something satisfying about starting at one end of a map and working my way to the other side, leaving nothing alive in between. Everything that I see on D3 just makes me more and more excited for it.

And then there’s SWTOR. When they made the announcement for it, I looked at Jared, who is a massive Star Wars fan. He said we’d absolutely be playing it, and there was no contest: we’d be playing Sith. I sighed and started looking into what little bit of information they had and started preparing myself to play Sith (just know I’m going to be the world’s worst Sith). As more and more information starting coming to light, the more excited I started getting. At this point, I’m bouncing, eager to play, and looking forward to “seeing” friends online again. Hell, I even went and upgraded my pre-order to the Collector’s Edition. We’d started getting the old guild interested in playing, but just ended up merging those from the old guild with friends in a new guild. Everyone’s still in the “getting to know you” phase, but it looks like it’s going to work out well.

I’ve been plowing through as much information as I can, and pretty much have decided to start with a Sith Inquisitor as my first character. I’m most likely taking her through the healer tree, but the DPS caster version is also tempting. SPARKLEDEATH and all that. The second character I make will most likely be an Imperial Agent, so I can pewpew again.

At this point, I’m ready to just go to bed til SWTOR comes out. By that point, we should have a better internet connection as well and hopefully work won’t suck as hard anymore. Well, one can hope. ^^;

Hoo boy

Yesterday, I essentially finished the computer training they had for me. I say “essentially”, because I’m sure there’s some lurking around somewhere for me later, as well as the one file that’s still busted and another that came up as a broken link. The busted file, they’ve said that if it’s still not working by Thursday, they’ll have me try it in the store manager’s office, cos for some reason it seems to have a better chance of working in her office than at any of the other computers. The broken one was a “/shrug Not that important, so don’t worry about it.” Okay! No prob!

All in all, that was “18 hours” of training I finished yesterday. Well, the computer said it was 18 hours of training. I think it was closer to actually 15, but it has it’s cute little estimated times, so that’s what it goes by. I have to say, by the end of the training, my brain was fried. I’d been looking over PDFs that explain how each department in the store is supposed to be set up. Let’s just say they were highly detailed, which is good. However, I have no idea what part of all those directions is supposed to be on me, and which are supposed to be on the sales associates. And at the end of the day, if anyone had asked me how to set up any department, even the last one I’d just read over, I’d have just stared at them blankly. Brain fry for the win!

Today should be… hectic. There’s a guy coming in that’s fairly high on the food chain to check over the store and make sure certain things are correct. When it was announced at yesterday’s morning meeting, everyone either sighed or looked panicked. Apparently he normally comes during inventory, which is this coming Sunday, but he can’t make it this time, so he’s coming early. Cue vague panic. I spent my time at the training computer listening to everyone racing around trying to get the store ready for his visit and semi-wondering if my time would be better spent helping them. Then I remembered I know next to nothing about their real procedures just yet, so I’d only be in the way. Durp durp.

But once I finished with training, the store manager told me “Good job! And I even know what you’ll be doing tomorrow! You’ll be with me on the floor…” cue my panic “…helping with inventory prep and merchandising!” Oh, okay, panic can subside a bit then. Whew. It’s still prolly going to mean being around a Big Guy, and I’m really hoping this is more of a “Gah! Here! Help me get this set up for inventory! We do it like this /shows method” than anything resembling throwing me to the sharks. More and more, I can’t wait til I go to the other store for a few days next week to get “real” training, and thus a better idea of what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.

Oh and did I mention I still have no idea how many people are on the Visual team? There’s me, and a guy I’ve not been introduced to. The guy is apparently leaving for another job/store/relocating/something that’s not being fired. Other than us, I don’t know of anyone else, but that doesn’t mean anything. I can’t imagine doing it all by myself, but we’ll see.

First, I just have to get through today. /takes a breath, gives kitties one last headnoogie to annoy them and leaves for work