A Sort of Up To Date Post

February 22, 2009 - August 29, 2009

Oohhh, I haven't written in a million years. And no idea why I'm writing now. Well, okay, I do, since my new little mini doesn't hook into the net at Grandpa Cooper's house in Fresno, nothing else to do but write on this thing. So, I guess I'll catch this thing up and upload it later when I have internet connection. So anything after February 22, is being written between Oct. 26-29th, minus the Burning Man stuff, that's much later. Although there are a few single posts I was apparently working on between the time, they get their own date.

There's so much going on. Well, not in terms of daily stuff, that's general routine, work, come home, sleep, get up, work some more. Yes, I said work.

I got a job as a relief counselor at Baker Places, working so far for Jo Ruffin, San Jose Place, Ferguson, Acceptance Place, pretty much most of the houses except Robertson and Baker Street House. Working relief pretty much sucks. Days (really early mornings) and swings (home late and no life) at really sucky pay. Plus struggling to get 40 hours a week can be difficult but fortunately I got lucky and got lots of stuff ahead of time, including a couple of temp hires which was nice to have a set schedule and temp hires pay pretty nice, the regular rate plus a few cents more for no benefit compensation. So those were nice. But after I came off those temps, in preparation for Burning Man 2009, it was a struggle again to make sure I got 40 hours a week, especially since my unemployment benefits had pretty much run out.

Swings were killing me, I was tired of the stress of needing the 40 hours and an opening came up at Robertson, which I'd never worked at but had the schedule I wanted (well, 7am really sucks but you get off at 3pm and can have a life, never mind having to go to bed early, well and running groups. And just still working in this field...). It sucks that the odd thing about this agency, since it has substance abuse, mental health and dual diagnosis houses that I'm better at the mental health houses, due to my background and experience, than the more substance abuse oriented house but I'm more "unconsciously" stressed out at the mental health houses. But I figured I needed to get something permanent, to finish paying off debt, start saving up, etc. Maybe I could transfer to a different house at some point.

So I went to the interview, a couple of days before heading out to Burning Man, after the HR person taking forever to get back to me after putting in my resume. Baker Places is kind of crazy that way. I don't think I did so well at it and I'm not sure that the workers there really liked me. Ah well. Plus who knows about Egypt in April.

Oh, we're going to Egypt in April. We made a "mistake" on our taxes, and the money we set aside for breaking into my IRA early to pay off debt (this was an extremely good thing, understand) but we figured out we'd have to pay a steep penalty in taxes for withdrawing early, so set aside what we thought would be needed to pay the taxes and penalty a year later. But it turned out we only had to pay half that and suddenly the thought to go to Egypt became a reality. This was mid-March, right before I got hired for relief at Baker Places and after some research, decided on April 2010. So Egypt!!!

Another thing I've recently gotten into is the Facebook phenomemnon. I got into it after getting a totally random "friend request" from someone I knew probably a million years ago right after Marty and I were having a talk about Facebook after he got a random request from someone he knew a million years ago. It's a rather obsessive thing, at least at first but wore off after a while, especially the games but then I got pretty obsessive again, sucking up massive chunks of time just to plant virtual crops and make virtual food. Very silly. Plus, the massive amounts of quiz results or applications being posted and clogging up the "news feed" thus that you can't see actual information on statuses or interesting personal information, such as questions one can answer about one's self (I love those things).

And I'm heading off to Burning Man this year, after having some doubts if I was going to go or not (which I'm extremely glad that I ended up going since it was the best year I've ever had). Then William bought two tickets and since he didn't come last year, I felt I had to go this year since he was going. Hmm, chaperoning another virgin. This year's theme is Evolution and Avalon Village is definitely going through an evolution, deciding to break up as a Village since they were going to relegate the villages to the outer 2:00 and 10:00 areas with the rave camps. We requested to be located near each other which turned out very well, getting a very close location (B and 7:30) all together. We will be right next to Quixote's Cabaret to serve Vietnamese Iced Coffee. I think all the Avalon camps are all next to each other. I'm not coordinator of VICC this year and Pretty stepped into the role so VICC will go forth onto the Playa this year. I'm going out with William, caravaning with Gieve and Lisa and cool little walkie-talkies.

All in all, a bit of a stressful few months. Well, a lot stressful since I seem to go in that direction rather than depression these days. I wish I could relax. I've been doing some interesting work around the parasympathtic nervous system, well, mine to be exact, and how does one start "fixing" it. Gods know that I need to be able to do some repair work because I'm so damn anxious all the time, it's so wretchedly awful.