Life with the Two Crazy Dogs

DB and I talked about moving again this morning.  It all started with how much the state of Minnesota is giving away for welfare ($250K a week), and me looking for a different job out of my department, and the crappy weather that is the chill that goes right into his old bones.  He still wants to move to Texas because it’s warm there even today, in New Braunfels, it’s in the 80’s.  The temp today is around 60’s which was supposely be 75F.  The weather man is never right anyways. 

Both he and I talked about how flat the place is in Texas.  I asked is there any fun place to go coz in MN there are not much great places to go unless you love fishing and hunting.  How much can you shop at the Mall of America.  He said there are great places 30 minutes from San Antonio to live.  We then began our conversation about cars and how much taxes we have to pay in Minnesota.  State taxes sucks.  As it is our home and car insurance went up, what else is going to go up??  Salary??  I wish.  It sure feels like I’m paying state taxes to feed the folks who are on darn welfare.  DB said Texas is cheaper even though there are food and clothing taxes, it still is cheaper to live in Texas.  Even hiring a Mexican gardener is way cheaper than in MN. 

Yes, I have thought of changing jobs.  I’m begining to think my boss is a person who really knows how to take advantage of what she’s given and only think a lot of herself.  Maybe a change of career.  I don’t know. I’m getting really fed up of my boss.  Going on long vacation during the winter months will not exist in the near future for me.  Thanks to the boss.  So, that is why DB and I thought about leaving this state to another state and start all over again.

July 4 holiday is day after tomorrow, Friday.  Majority of the folks in the office are gone - vacationing somewhere up north in their cabins, and one lady I know drove from Wisconsin to Montana/Wyoming to the Yellowstone National Park. 

Today is quieter than  yesterday.  There were about 13 of us in the office yesterday, but today, there are only 7 of us.  It’s so quiet I can hear a pin drop.   I should enjoy it but I’m getting so bored.  The workload has gone down since I started working on the assignments for third quarter reporting a month ago.  Everything is done.  I’m waiting for two more weeks to run the final reports to complete the rest of the assignments.  For now, I’m blog hopping since last week.  Plus boss is on vacation from last Friday and the whole of this week.  I’m all by myself with the big boss, but big boss never talks to me  unless he needs something done - looking up employees’ data in the HRIS system, faxing, scanning or some mailing.

I cannot wait to get outta here right now, another 1 hour 10 minutes to go.  The best thing for tomorrow is there is early closing, 2 p.m. for all employees reporting to the corporate site (Connecticut) and that’s me, even though I’m located in MN.  So, instead of coming in at 6 a.m. I’m coming in at 8 a.m. and leave at 2 to utilize this nice benefit.  I can stay up later tonight, that’s if my eyes allow that, and wake up at 6 and still sneak in a walk with the boys.  

Once Thursday comes and goes, I will have 6 days off (Fri-Weds).  Doing anything exciting?  Probably go window shopping and watch fireworks from our backyard and hear the dogs bark their heads off.  I know I will spend a lot of time watching the movies we have recorded on the PVR.  They are rotting away, screaming to be deleted from the memory card.  I have to make the most of this month since I will be starting school again this fall. :(  I might persuade DB to drive to Vermillion River to let the boys do some swimming.  Will see what that man says.

April is also the time for annual reviews.  I almost forgot about it till last Thursday morning my boss told me she wanted to do my review in the am because she needs to take her mom for her colon cleanser treatment.   That should be fun…

Anyways, wow, I was telling myself, one year past by so quick.  How did i fair last year?  I have to say I really sucked.  I even said that on my self-review.  I was not into work especially the first 3/4’s of the year.  I was not motivated at all.  I was tired every day.  Being tired didn’t help me to be nice to my coworkers either.  I was pissed off at most of everything.  Bad of me and I felt so bad at myself for doing that.  I rated my own review as Met Minimum, and so did my boss but she actually changed it to Fully Achieved coz she knew I was not that type of worker to not meet her objectives. 

Yeah, we did have a hour plus talk in her office.  I actually feel so much better after the meeting with her.  She even gave me a small raise which I totally didn’t expect it.  I even asked her why she gave me the raise becoz I feel I don’t deserve it.  She said I did do very well with all the projects I was given and they were done exceptionally well.

This year and the years to come, I have told her I will set a day in a week to meet with her for weekly updates and to go through the details of an Affirmative Action plan. 

That’s the time of the year again.  All employees received an email last month to remind them of the deadline when we need to complete and submit our self-evaluation to our managers.  January 11 is the deadline.  Boss came over yesterday and told me to get my self eval out soon.  To be honest, I totally forgot about this self eval crap.  I had to go through a year’s worth of stuff and put them down if I achieved my objectives or not.  Actually I copied and pasted them. 

One thing good about this performance system is it allows the employee to log their daily performance (if they want to) and whatever it’s on the log can be copied and pasted to the self-evaluation/mid-year check-in sections.  Also, I can review who are the stakeholders reviewing my performance, and mid-year review, too, from current to pass years.  Employees definitely cannot run away from this system.  It tracks the employee’s every single clicks, and if there is no action done within the specified timeframe, an email will be sent to the employee to act on the action.  

What I’m looking forward is the increment, and that is even if there is any.  Who knows, I might think I achieved my objectives, but my boss said I didn’t.  No meeting goals, no increment.   I will have to wait till April 11 to sit down with my boss for the review. 

I just found out  while I was filling out my online time card that my vacation and sick time balances were all f’ed up big time.  It showed that I owe the company vacation and sick times which is so damn wrong.  By right I should have 5.25 hours left for sick and 16 hours left for vacation, which the 16 hours will be forfeited come 2008, however, my coworker is going to find out for me since I’m in Corporate, employees with Corporate might not be able to carry the remaining hours over.  But again, the company is changing its vacation/sick/personal time policy to PTO (Personal Time Off), and if I’m not mistaken any remaining vacation from 2007 will be carried over automatically to 2008.

Just hope my coworker will get it fix for me this week.  Tell y’all, outsourcing to an incompetent group of HR folks screws up the employees’ lives.  This is not the first time they got my vacation all screwed up.  There are so much more that they messed up: tuition reimbursement, timecards, bonuses, vacation and sick times.  Cross my fingers and lets hope this will be fixed this week.  Idiots!

New Year’s eve, I’m at work and I think this is the first time I’m working on a New Year’s eve.  There’s only four poor souls in the office.  When I came in at 6 am, there was only Kris and she was on a conference call already.  Then Karen came in.  Today is her last day with the company.  She will be officially retired at the end of business day today.  She gave me a box of ginseng coffee which her Filipino DIL gave her.  I’m having a sachet right now.  Not bad.  There’s added sugar in it, but diluted it so it’s not so sweet.

Been here for 2 hours and I’m now chatting with Stef on Yahoo!  Yeah, when I get to work I leave both my Yahoo and Gmail accounts up to check my incoming emails.  I will probably work on the Excel spreadsheets when I’m out of posts to write. 

I was going to post up the pictures of the cross stitch works done by my sis, but too lazy last night.  Hopefully will get the pictures out tonight, or tomorrow morning. 

For now, it’s time to crank out some money.

Wha-ta-heh, the boss is here.  Actually every one in my department came in today.  My boss had the morning off and came in at noon, came in with her hubby and FIL for lunch and tour the campus.  Good thing I have only 45 minutes to go and then three days off.  Will meet with Forrest’s (Simmie’s BF) sister to collect the vacumm cleaner and shampoer at 5 today.  She will drive up to my area instead of me driving to Lakeville to  meet her.  Very nice of her.  For now, I have to act busy, pull up the Excel spreadsheet of reports and pretend I’m working on it.

I’m back to work on this Thursday, but it’s just for today.  It’s not as quiet as I thought it would be.  One of my co-worker, Ms. E, is here which I thought she’s off this entire week.  Been here for two hours and I have not done a thing.  There are a few prescription claims I have to submit, almost $600+ money right there.  Maybe I can get my pair of Clarks I want so bad.  Yeah, not that easy.   What will I do for the rest of the day?  Probably write paid posts and act busy.