FML Still Waiting

It's now almost 6 weeks since I was asked to fill in for the job I am applying for. They are going to have 2nd interviews next week and it is between me and some young gal who looks all preppy and cheerful with her college degree still warm in the frame and finding it hard to get a job in her field so she will take this one.

Am I bitter?

I just keep coming in everyday, do the job they ask of me and try to keep a rosy outlook.

Don't wish me luck, what I need now is therapy.

The Story that never ends....

It has been 5 weeks since I stepped into the job of fill-in office manager while they decide on a replacement. They are having 2nd interviews next week, mid week. I guess I should feel grateful that I am still being considered but it just makes me sad.

I have been running the office, doing whatever I can to keep things going on as normal for over a month. I contribute a lot, help out where I can. I don't think it will be enough as I guess my boss is thinking that who ever she hires might want to promote up someday to one of the salaried positions of area manager. This is not something I want or am qualified for and they know this. The fact that no one has ever promoted up from this position doesn't enter into the decision, but oh well.

Wish me luck or maybe not.

Shell Shocked

My son Aaron came home from school today to find the front door open just a crack. He peered in and saw that our dining room window had been broken. He called 911 and called me at work. We had been robbed.

Aaron waited for the police to show and led them thru the house. No one was there but he could see that they had been thru some of the rooms. I called Rob who unfortunately being a cop himself could not leave work but I ran out of my temp job like a flash! I called Brianne who headed over to be with Aaron and texted Nicole to come straight home.

The police officer was dusting for prints when I got home and told me it was okay to look around to see what was missing. Aaron said they trashed my bedroom so I headed upstairs. Every drawer in the bedroom was emptied on the floor and I could see immediately that our large gun safe was gone as was one smaller safe from the closet. Curiously the smallest hand gun safe was just sitting there where they must have dropped it.

On further inspection we discovered that Rob's and my mp3 players were gone as was Nicole's ipod and camera. They took 2 broken cell phones and some foreign change that Aaron had. They took the wii but not the wii fit board, guess they got enough exercise carrying the gun safes which weighed a ton! I found all my jewelry (not that I had much) just tossed on the bedroom floor. I'm not sure what else might be missing.

The kids helped me clean up, there was glass from the window spread about 20 feet into the house. We found the rock they threw too.

There have been a lot of burglaries happening in the area lately. Is it the economy or maybe I just live in what I thought was a nice safe neighborhood, not a poor area, just comfortably middle class.

It could have been worse. Both my younger kids almost didn't go to school today as they are both nursing colds. I shudder to think what could have happened if they, especially Nicole, had been home. It could have been much worse.

Ironically I am taking my first grade Girl Scouts to tour the Police Station tonight. Some fun!

My Hiatus or why I can't walk and chew gum at the same time

Sorry Readers, its been 17 days since my last blog post. I don't blog when I am stressed and I've been a bit stressed.

I have been filling in at the local GS office for about a year and a half, working mostly the office managers job. Well, she retired suddenly and my boss asked me if I would fill in while they worked at finding a replacement. I told her I would and that I would be applying for the job myself. I think this threw her. She thought I wasn't looking for a full time job because that was what I had said 1 1/2 yrs ago. Well times have changed and I need to work. My long vacation of 6 1/2 yrs is over! My hubs took a cut in pay (as did everyone at the PD) so other officers would not be laid off. Yep, even essential services like police are feeling the pinch.

They posted the job on their website and on Craigslist. They got 150 responses! This is a nonprofit org, it doesn't pay a hella lot but people need jobs. My boss is now weeding thru the resumes and starting more weeding by conducting phone interviews. All this while I am doing the job that I have applied for, which is keeping the office functioning for the rest of the staff. I've been there 2 weeks now. I feel like this is a very long interview. That everything I do now will make or break me. I got to spend one day with the old gal to try and document everything she did so I can do it. Granted, I did do a lot of these tasks during her previous absences but just the things that had to get done. There was very little documentation from her or the main office on procedures and what was available was mostly poorly done. I am able to ask other regional office mgrs about what they do, but it looks like our gal was a bit lazy in her job and didn't keep up with a lot of the work so cleaning things up is job number one.

I decided to look good by taking on the half completed file audit of volunteer files. Turns out it hadn't been purged of old no-longer volunteering files for several years. This was due in part to the poorly written instructions from some VP in the main office that no one called them on to correct. Out of about 2400 files, about 800 were redundant. None of the other regional office mgrs can figure out how to get reports from the new database program (I figured it out and let them know what to do) so they just don't do stuff! Every regional office's files are a mess. I'm out to correct this at least for this office.

I've also taken the petty cash and put it on an excel spreadsheet in a shared folder so the rest of the staff can see what we have if they need it. It was keep on a paper ledger locked in the box.

I'm starting to catalog what we have in our lending library and equipment depot and creating a database to better track where our stuff is and to ensure we don't double reserve things.

I'm working damn hard because I want this job. Even tho my boss says that as a full time employee I would need to give up my volunteer role as a troop leader to both my troops due to conflict of interest. This was troublesome to me, but I can work around this by being an involved parent, a very involved parent!

My boss is getting married June 13th and taking a couple weeks off for her honeymoon. It's a small wedding so she is not too preoccupied but she needs to do all these interviews before then. Also, she was told by main office that we need to move our office by June 30th. She is in charge of finding a new larger space that we can afford. She had 3 good possibilities take she took her boss to last week. Her boss shot them all down. So not only does she have to hire a new office mgr, she has to find a new location. The move will occur while she is gone and while an other staff person is gone. This leaves 3 staff to do the move, one of which may be a brand new clueless office mgr (my hopes is that clueless person is me!)

So wish me luck. I'm just hoping that it doesn't turn out that someone else gets hired and I get asked to train them and to also stay on to help with the move. As upsetting as this thought makes me, I will probably do it. Doormat is my middle name.

This is why guys buy soap on a rope

This is an actual billboard located across the street from a local police station and jail.

More Keyword Search Results

Google Analytics tells me what words were searched that brought people to my blog.
Since January 1st there have been 223 different keywords used to reach me.
Between April 2nd to April 15th, there were 97 searches about Farm Town so many people are obsessing as I was. But it is the random others that I find interesting. Here is a sampling:

50th b-day voodoo doll
chances of teens getting tapeworm from cat
cheese fetish
Chris wants only sex
I pissed txt
three girls who ate a tapeworm
what is the green stuff bleeding from a cat
what is my cat’s real name
why is my life is so shitty
god help me in business
graphic of shit
holding hands in public + lesbians
how to make a metal slide slick
I ate my mom’s shit
I turn my head to the left and I see double
if cocaine ate away your brain what would you feel like
Khols dead cat
life can be shitty
my cat ate:
A magnet
Cocaine
Me
Wire
my cat only likes the left side of my head
my cosmo girls + bondage
my life is shit kids
my mom blows me pix
Norway capital of Sweden
to feel violated
nipple middle of chest

Now many of these are pretty obvious to me how they got to my blog but I truly don't remember blogging about having a nipple in the middle of my chest or even knowing anyone who has one. I even googled it but I didn't come up with my blog nor did google have a good picture of someone with a nipple middle of chest which I would have posted here for everyone.

I think Bill Murray should get some royalities from this company ripping off this from Caddy Shack

Spokane parks to detonate squirrels
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SPOKANE, Wash. -- The Finch Arboretum is being overrun by ground squirrels, and Spokane Parks and Recreation is bringing in some special artillery.

The agency is using a special machine called the Rodenator Pro to detonate some of the estimated 100 to 150 squirrels tearing up the grounds.

Shades of Carl Spackler, the gopher-hating groundskeeper from "Caddyshack."

The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels - but in a humane way, the agency said.

Spokanimal, which is the local animal shelter and Humane Society chapter, was caught by surprise by Monday's announcement.

"You're kidding," Director Gail Mackie said when she learned the news. "That borders on cruelty."

Mackie said she would investigate the practice.

The parks department is warning area residents that it plans to blast squirrels all week, and to not be alarmed by noises that sound like gun shots. Parks officials said police have already been called to the arboretum by people who heard the explosions.

Timing is crucial. Parks officials said they want to detonate their prey before the animals start reproducing.

Parks officials said ground squirrels have been a minor problem for years, but their population is, well, exploding.

The squirrels dig tunnels and holes that people can trip on or fall into, the agency said. They eat new tree roots, can spread disease and are spreading to neighboring yards.

Gas bombs were tried in the past, but were not effective, the agency said.

Enter the Rodenator, a product whose workings have been captured on numerous YouTube videos. The company is based in Midvale, Idaho, and promises on its Web site that its product is effective against the "saber-toothed gopher."

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunnytrail

It's Easter this weekend and that means I have to dig out the baskets and the egg coloring supplying and we can all pretend that the Easter Bunny is coming to our house.

My kids are 13, 18 and 27 but they still like to color eggs. It becomes a competition on who can make the most interesting eggs. There is a lot of dipping and over dyeing until the perfect egg is to be had. I will boil a couple dozen eggs for this adventure. The mess is colossal but they seem to have fun, right?

On Easter morning, I will have laid out 2 baskets for the younger kids (sorry, Brianne, you and Marcus can get your own baskets, you don't live here). They will each get a chocolate bunny, some jelly beans or other egg shaped candies and Reese's Peanut Butter cups of some form. I have to carefully count out each candy so no one gets more than the other. Fair is fair, right? Of course what usually happens is that no one eats their candy, they just leave it laying around and I have to eat it just to get it out of the house.

Then we have the annual egg hunt in the back yard. Rob and I will hide the eggs while Nik and Aaron get ready. This is a competition that is cut throat. It's very important to them on who is the winner. There is no prize. Just the joy of gloating and calling their sibling a LOSER! Me?, I just want them to find all the eggs as I don't want to discover one sometime in July. Then we eat a few for breakfast, although the kids decide which eggs get to be cracked as they don't want their "special" ones touched. Gee, now we get to have eggs rot in the fridge instead. Except I will make egg salad on Monday after they go back to school.

After our egg hunt we will head to my godmother's house for an early dinner, drinking, and another egg hunt. Lots of little kids, mass chaos but unlike our early morning hunt, less blood. Then it's off to my in-laws for another dinner but no egg hunt (thank god).

I love the holidays with the family.

Get your deck ready for nice weather

I'm very fortunate at my house. I have a big deck in my back yard. You can have all kinds of fun with a big deck. I think back about the parties we have had on this deck. My husband Rob is very proud of his big deck. As he should be, not everyone has as nice a deck as we do. He keeps his deck nice and clean. A man who takes care of his deck is a good man indeed!

I was thinking it was the Winter of our discontent. And it too shall pass....Spring has sprung.

I never thought that spring would happen this year. We have had more snowy mornings in the past few months that I can ever remember living here in the wet side of Washington State. I don't do winter very well, face it, I'm a wimp around snow and ice. I think it's pretty and all, but what I don't like is that it is slippery as hell and I don't like to fall. Well, the falling isn't really the problem it's the landing. You'd think that all my padding would protect me, but all that fat does is make nice big colorful bruises. So woo hoo! It's now Spring!

Then I realize, everything is budding, the birds are singing and I am sneezing and wheezing. I can't breathe, my nose is either stuffy or dripping. I wake up each day and have to trowel out the corners of my eyes which are weeping from the pollen. I spent an hour in the garden today and that was all I could take. I'm going to pop a pill, suck on my inhaler and take a nap. I'll dream about how lovely my garden will be when the garden gnomes come and finish the weeding for me.

BTW, the Korean ladies outside the H-Mart gave me a packet of tissues with bible verses on them. Now God will bless me every time I blow my nose.