I think I have too many things to do.

As is too often the case I have one again neglected to post anything here for quite some time. Fail. The past few months have felt just insanely busy. Tis the season!

First and foremost work really really gets in the way of all of the things I really want to do. And to make matters worse my work doesn't stop at 40 hours a week. Every time we have a concert or special event there goes any "free time". The spring is definitely the worst. And just looking at the calendar May is the most ridiculous month. Between April 30 and May 25 the only non-work day is the 12th. Ouch. Although I do plan on taking a few other days off. Now if I could just get someone to do my job when I'm not in the office things would be rather more dandy.

So it whatever time is left to me I have all of the following things to do:

• House work: The cat is not pulling his weight around the house and I have to do it all. The little jerk.
• Yard work:  I think I had to start mowing a full month earlier with the weather so warm. And I've expanded my veggie garden. Here's hoping I keep more than just cucumbers alive this time.
• Friends: After years of being largely, but not entirely, anti-social it seems that I've recently managed to re-connect much more with some old friends. And I've even found new ones - whoa.
• Band: The music is kinda bad all too often, but I could never give up playing so i'm glad for the outlet.
• Video games: Bran got me hooked on World of Warcraft and now he's dragging me into Diablo as well. I try not to admit it but they can be fun. I just wish they took less time and or I could knit and play!
• Biking: Exercise is healthy and can even be fun, I should do more of it.
• Photography: My photos really are getting better I think. But as with all learning/improvement more time is always a sure way to better results.
• Reading: I really don't know how I did it but as a youth I would fly through books sometimes to the tune of multiple books in a week. I've been doing a bit more lately but sometimes it feels like I'm just slogging through them. And the library deadlines come up so quickly!
• Knitting/Crochet: Aside from the perpetual desire to be working on dozens of projects of my own I even have the opportunity right now to work on growing a bit of my own crafty business. Maybe I should learn lever knitting or whatever the supposed current fastest knitting method may be.
• Spinning: I am totally getting better at spinning. Latest discover is an awesome DKish single. Knit up so wonderfully.
• Other Crafts: My awesome sewing machine is practically begging me to use it more often. And wouldn't it be wonderful to work at sketching/doodling/zentangling. Oh and what about the sweatshirt that I've wanted to paint for myself for over a year.
• Relax: Eh, overrated!

3 out of 38

I've been rather absent from my newly renewed online presence here but my schedule has been somewhat ridiculous lately. And it’s not that I’m doing anything that I want to do. It’s all work.

I took some time to count today and determined that in a stretch of 38 days I have only 3 days that do not have work or work related events on them. The goal line is Thanksgiving. 24 days in I'm starting now to see the light at the end of the tunnel...maybe

The stretch started on Monday October 17th with a regular work week. I had that Saturday off, woohoo. And I was able to drive out for a friends party. Also woohoo, except it added to the lack of time at home. That Sunday it was only a few hours of work. But when the few hours are right in the middle of the day it's pretty darn lame.

After that it was another regular work week. Except this one was fairly busy owing to the concerts that weekend. Then the weekend hit. A normal work weekend is about 10:30-11ish on Saturday with a brief respite of an hour or two at home. And then 12-6ish on Sunday. However to add to the mess we were blasted with the crazy snow storm. Snow + Central PA residents = chaos to begin with. Add in the fact that it's only October and we have a couple thousand unhappy people. Of course it's my responsibility to deal with those people.

That weekend hurt. Literally I was all kinds of sore and worn down but so started the next week. Having survived (more or less) the weekend we realized we needed to look at the next event. And of course it was a doozy. My coworker and I had agreed to take on one project. However we didn't realize all of the extra bits that had been added to its responsibility (rightly or wrongly) plus some of the support that was supposed to be included fell through. That was fun. Tuesday through Friday were probably the most filled days that I've had in some time. Ouch.

Somewhere in that mess I agreed to a quasi-work related side gig that was pretty cool but also quite stressful and left me once again sore for a few days. But hey at least I got paid for that extra effort.

This past weekend was the big event. But first I had a day off on Saturday. That was pretty exciting, although worrying about Sunday's event unfortunately did leave some less than ideal thoughts lingering in my head. Sunday went quite well for the guests but was quite the mess administratively.

I cheated the system and took Monday off, allowing for a grand total of 4 days off in the stretch. It was a much needed day. I mostly crafted :-)

Yet to survive is the current work week. Saturday off. What should be an easy concert on Sunday but still a lost day for me. Then a full week stretch plus concert weekend. Tack on the few days before Turkey Day as the home stretch.

At least "my domain" is pretty.

It is fully my plan to take off the day before Thanksgiving, but I may have to battle with my coworkers for the day. You see we're, mostly, all salaried so we work all of these extra days and don't get paid anything. Technically we get to take time off but no one does your work when you're not there so it's a pretty ineffective system, although I've gotten better at taking off anyway. I've actually tried to start an uprising in the office to push for the whole office to close on that Wednesday. But more importantly for the whole office to close between Christmas and New Years.

Ah the glamorous live of a non-profit arts administrative worker.

26 Days.

It started on October 25th. There were concerts on the 30th and the 31st (which nearly sold out). November 7th is a big special Gala event. And on the 13th and 14th there's another concert. Saturday November 20th will be the start of my next non-work weekend.

That means a stretch of 26 days with one day (tomorrow the 6th) free of work. Ouch.

Actually I took off last Tuesday to go house viewing. But the "day off" ended up being very tiring and somewhat stressful as house hunting tends to be for me. Plus I seriously do not recommend taking a random Tuesday off as it really throws off ones internal chronology.

Go figure one of my co-workers decided to have a house (well apartment) - warming party on the 6th. If anyone brings up work I may scream. Yea, that'll never happen, it'll certainly be talked about. I probably ought to just start crying now.

The week before the first concert was absolutely crazy. Stupid POPS concerts and people wanting to come and absolutely everyone has accessibility issues.

By the Thursday or Friday after a concert my brain always is pretty mush like. Today is no exception. Even my most basic of tasks was proving to be nearly impossible.

*sigh*

I am raised

So it turns out that my most favoritiest finance manager and most favoritest co-worker in the whole world got permission from Boss to tell me about my raise :-)

We now turn to the numbers which probably make most people want to gouge their eyes out. But I find playing with excel sheets to be absolutely awesome fun and this is my blog so here we go.....

I have been raised 3.812%. This is 1.544 percentage points higher than the average rate of inflation so far in 2010 (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/CurrentInflation.asp). But better yet word on the street is that there wasn't an across the board raise but rather I did better than some other people. They must like me :-)

My gross salary was $30825.00 and now I shall be earning $32000.05 which is an increase of $1175.05. Honestly that doesn't seem like a huge increase. But check this out....My previous take home pay each period was $922.68 with my own approximation of taxes the increase will have me at 1037.67. And so my best estimation of the increase in monthly net take-home pay is $229.99. Now given that $1175.05 divided by 12 does not come close to $229.99 you are probably confused. I was too for a bit.

Back at the end of December our Finance Manager (who I shall now call CFO to make my life easier) came in the office and started talking to me. She was a bit frazzled because she had been to our payroll company to pick up checks where she was informed that when a company is paying its employees bi-weekly (as we were paid) that every 11 years there would be a 27th pay period in the year and so 2009 or 2010 would be that year for us. However since this was coming out of the blue for this fiscal year (we run July1-June30) the amount we recieve each pay period had been caluclated by dividing our salary by 26. And so continuing to pay us regularly would cost an extra lot of money for that extra pay period. Many phone calls then happened to various board members. The final decision was made that we would move to a twice monthly pay system. Somehow it worked out that we would get the same amount each pay period but now we had less pay periods - which made up for the 'extra' pay we had received. It was ridiculously confusing but I puzzled it all together at the time and it did work out.

But anyways as a result of that transition even without a raise my pay would have gone up $76.89 each pay period ($153.78 monthly). So it would have already felt like I was getting more money. See I always budget monthly using 2 pay periods. In the old system this meant there would be 2 awesome months where I had extra awesome $. So when we changed it sucked to loose that but didn't impact my budgeting. The increase would have felt like a raise anyways so the real raise is kinda just more awesomeness.

Next up shall be budgeting!

PS: I could probably go on talking numbers for many more posts but I'll try to contain it and intermittently schedule it with more crafts :-)

Raise?

Sitting up front at my desk our Finance director (with whom I have a very good rapport) asked if I had talked to our boss yet. The question was rather out of the blue but quite intriguing.

See our fiscal year begins July 1 and so if we are to receive pay raises that is when they go into effect. Typically we have a performance review with the boss and he'll let us know whats what with regards to $ there. Traditionally he is behind the times and the pay raise ends up hitting my bank account before I am aware of what I'm newly earning. And so I have been somewhat nervously anticipating my review. Not that I think anyone has a problem with my performance, but still one never knows. Plus what if this year they're not doing raises?

So when she asked this I perked up. I told her that I had not but I'd been anticipating it to come up sometime. However as he was scheduled to not be in the office that day already owing to vacation it seemed like it would be a bit before it happened. Well from the hints she dropped things could be very happy. She said that I'd be able to buy spinning wheels and bake many many peach pies. (Can you tell that I like to share my life happenings with her?)

Now I am ridiculously anxious to see what I'll be getting. She's quite the character so I have no idea if I'm actually getting like a substantial raise or if she's just making a big deal out of something mediocre. But then I don't even know how I'd qualify substantial vs. mediocre really. I always just budget for where I'm at now.

Alas, unless I convince her to spill the beans (dunno if that's proper or not) I won't find out until the next pay period. The $ will hit my bank account on the 15th (direct deposit) but I should find out on the 14th which is when pay stubs are normally passed out.

I don't know if I can wait that long. I'm already envisioning how I might want to budget the extra $. And despite my best efforts I do believe that I may just have to open up my budget worksheet now and play with the numbers.

Another one bites the dust

So I found out that one of my co-workers has given his notice. While there are many great things that I enjoy the ridiculous staff-turnover is not one of the better aspects of working for a small non-profit arts organization.

We currently have 7 full timers and 3 part timers who work here in the office (there are some other staff people that aren't in the office regularly so I'm not counting them). And once he leaves of that staff I, with my 3 years of employment, will be the 2nd longest term employee. Which is particularly humorous considering I am the youngest, by about 10 years, person here most of the other staff having a good 20 or 30 years on me.

Kinda makes ya wonder about workin here.....

Beautiful

Back in January a co-worker and I attended the state farm show. It's right down the road from the office and going with someone who will actually sit and watch the whole sheep-to-shawl contest with me was awesome. My co-worker had gone before both in previous years and previously that week and had taken notice of some Alpaca yarn.

Now she is quite familiar with my spinning and knitting stories as I have been known to more-or-less have office show and tell days :-) So she wanted to know if I'd be able to make her a scarf from the skein of alpaca yarn (the stuff was expensive $28!). At 200 yards it was close but I figured I ought to be able to do it using a lacy pattern and some larger needles.

Sure enough about two weeks later I presented to her the finished scarf. It's a bit on the short side but makes up for it by being stretchy, thick, warm, and o-so-soft.

Just last week she put together an outfit with the scarf. Being a quite stylish lady I was absolutely in love with what she wore. It was a white cabled sweater with a deep purple pencil skirt. The scarf was around her heck and fixed together with a broach. the colors all worked together perfectly and it was stunning.

I'm quite sure that I'm biased having knit the scarf. But it was just the most awesome feeling to see her and be able to say "I made that!".

Open my closet.

So I am currently displaced. I have no home. It’s de-friggin-lightful.

On Saturday when I was packing my suitcase I put together 5 outfits for work. It’s a slightly tricky kind of year because it’s just now starting to get cold. But even knowing it wasn’t a very smart idea I went and put together mostly a selection of not so terribly warm outfits.

Inevitably one of the many many many downfalls of women’s fashion is that it does not work particularly well in conjunction with staying warm. As someone who is always cold, this stinks.

When I was packing I also did not realize that I’d left my fall-appropriate jacket at home at my parents house. Ouch. And so on Sunday I went back into my temporary storage facility (old neighbor’s garage) and pulled out another sweater and fleece.

This morning it was on the chilly side so I went with a nice layered (all-be-it ¾ length sleeved) outfit. I’m slightly concerned it’ll just get colder in the week and then I’ll wish I’d waited, but so it goes. Then I also put on my fleece as a jacket type thing.

When I arrived at work it was, as always, cold. So I just left the fleece on. And of course turned on my space heater.

Around 10:30 I went to the bathroom and realized the fleece was still on. So returning to my desk I removed the layer. Life was much more sad.

It’s amazing how much more comfy work would be if I could wear absolutely whatever I wanted.


“If they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits.”

Relief and deathly fear.

Yesterday in the comments of one of the blogs I read (Indexed) I found this gem:

"Is there a word for the mixture of smugness, relief and deathly fear of losing jobs that those of us who got into employment in 2007 feel?"

Oh heavens too true.