Bad news and its silver lining.

The bad news.  I got downsized on Thursday morning.  I've known that my job was not secure, but all the librarians in the new multihospital group figured we had a bit of time, and we were making our case for why they needed more than two or three librarians for 5 hospitals, three of them teaching.  But HR and the bean counters won the day.

From when HR showed up at my office to when I was being shivvied out the door was less than 10 minutes.  I had to make an appointment to come back later to clear my office out.  They wouldn't even let me sign out of the ILL module and forward on the requests I was working on.  Someone someplace else is going to be upset as these things sit in limbo for three working days.  The three other librarians who are being let go got 30 days notice and a severance package.  I'm getting a severance package too, but only two weeks pay in lieu of notice.  This is supposedly because the hospitals haven't completely merged yet, and I fall under different HR rules.  Which seems a bit odd, because the HR department has supposedly been consolidated.

However....

I am sad that I don't have a job, and so far I've only found two or three jobs within commuting distance to apply for, and the others would all require relocating, probably without the family until at least this coming summer.

I am ecstatic that I no longer work for that company.

I'd noticed recently that when I took off the lanyard with my badge at the end of the day, it was like getting rid of a 10 pound weight. I've been unhappy there for a while, although with the reorganization, it was looking like I might actually get to do more and be more than a glorified file clerk.  To add insult to injury, the day after I was let go, on the radio and in the paper, I find out that I was middle or upper management.  Since my job may have required an MLS, but was classified as administrative and clerical support staff, I'm a little confused.  Did I get promoted after I was fired?

More importantly, can I put this on my resumé?

I've come down with something, and it's supposed to snow again.

In spite of my best efforts, my family has proved that I did a good job teaching them to share.  I am sitting hiding in my office at work quickly going through the box of tissues on my desk.  Thankfully I have a new box out in the car.  If I stick it out much to lunch time, I'm sure I'll have to go out and get it.

And they are threatening us with another one to three inches of snow tonight.  My younger daughter's school may be closed again, since a lot of the streets in that town are only just starting to get plowed out today.

I slept very poorly last night.  My husband went to bed early, which should have told me he wasn't feeling great, since today is one of his days off.  I got up there, read for a few minutes, and as soon as I turned my light off he started snoring.  Even on his side.  Even after I poked him to get him to move.  And when he wasn't snoring, it was because he wasn't breathing.  After a few seconds he would start up again with a noise fit to wake the dead.  And I was neither dead, nor even asleep. I didn't get to sleep myself until well after 1am, woke up twice during the night, and had to get up at 6.

I'm debating heading home; I have around 4 weeks of vacation time.  But I have to schedule knee arthroscopy for later this year, and if it goes like last time, though it shouldn't, I'll be out for at least three weeks.  But the knee has started keeping me up or waking me up at night, and it's started buckling for no particular reason again, and it's about half again the size of the other knee.  The MRI from last week showed lots of arthritis, possible re-tearing of the medial meniscus (the one that was torn last time), definite tearing of the lateral meniscus, and a 2cm cyst under the patella.  I don't think conservative treatment will work very well on this.

And my new computer at work as decided that it has to have an HP pop-up every hour or so asking me if I would like the Software Update to check for updates now.  If it were my computer I'd do it, if only to get the damn thing to shut up.  But as it is, I have absolutely no admin rights on this thing, and MIS seems to think there is no way to tell it to go away.  Grrrr.

And I'm still running an outdated browser, although we are at least up to Windows 7 for the OS (only just replacing XP) and Office '07 from '03.  Not that I'm one to talk about Office.  My new laptop didn't come with Office or even Office starter with the ads.  So I've got Open Office, and for those times when you just need an MS product, I've installed my nice copy of '97.  It does what I need it to, and it's not like I'm sharing files so getting a newer version isn't a high financial priority.

I'm going to go back and continue hunting for obscure articles for my patrons, and hope that my nose survives the afternoon.

Venting

OK, life sucks right now.  I don’t see Congress getting off its collective asses and fixing anything tax wise, because the Democrats won’t help working people unless they are allowed to “stick it to the man”, and Republicans want to see some actual spending cuts put in place other than gutting the military, one of the few Constitutionally mandated roles of the federal Government. 

So, we’re looking at another $250 or more in federal taxes a month starting January 1^st.  Instead of telling me it won’t happen, do something about it! Don’t tell me to not worry about it.  Don’t tell me anything which can be interpreted as “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”  I haven’t been down sitting at Congresscritters offices because *I* have a job I have to go to.  It’s a sucky job, with management who seem to only be interested in cutting costs, no matter what it does to staff morale.  Heck, they’ve rewritten my job description to require only a Bachelor’s degree.  Which isn’t a professional degree in my line of work, but I’m sure it comes cheaper.  And that’s all they care about. 

I’ve got crappy dumb terminals which I have to help people with and every time they cause issues making folks lose 30 minutes or more of work, I’m told that there isn’t a problem, it was fixed years ago.  Well, guess what?  It ain’t fixed now!  But replacing those three Citrix terminals with desktop computers is too expensive.  That those damn terminals have probably cost a few grand in staff time this year alone doesn’t matter, those costs can’t really be quantified, and the cost of the boxes can. 

They’ve dropped my health insurance plan, you know the one I’ve had for years that the president promised that if I liked it I could keep it?  Well, thanks to the Democrats and their PPACA, passed through probably illegal procedural moves and without any bipartisan support, that plan has gone away.  My options were paying more which I don’t have because of the other tax increases for a Cadillac plan which a) does more than we need because we have Tricare Standard too, and b) will be taxed at 40% starting, I believe, in 2014, or getting a High Deductible Health Insurance plan with an HAS, except that I can’t do that because of the Tricare.  So now we’re stuck with less money to pay for the expenses which Tricare doesn’t cover.  Thanks folks.

Our NEW car is 10 years old, our other “new” car is 17.  I’m dropping cable TV in a few weeks because we can’t afford that.  I don’t know how we’re going to be able to pay for my daughters’ music lessons next semester.  I guess they’ll both have to give up something they love.  I need to get them both new pairs of glasses.  That will eat up all our non-assigned reserves for a few weeks.  This year I have bought myself ONE new skirt, two or three new tops, and some cheap underthings.  My husband hasn’t bought anything other than work clothes this year.  I’ve gotten the girls some new school clothes, but they need new shoes, and I can’t do that and get them glasses too, not within a few weeks of each other.

But everyone assures me that now that Obama has been re-elected, even though the Senate and House are still held by different parties, and Harry Reid still refuses to even discuss a budget, the economy will improve, and gas prices will go down, though Obama assures us that they were so low in 2008 because the economy sucked even worse(?) .  Electric prices are going to go up, but that’s OK, because somehow making electricity and oil cost more will help the economy and our bosses are all going to give us raises or something? 

Tell me how it’s going to get better.  Give me specifics.  I don’t want any more damn unicorn farts and skittles.  I want numbers.  I want to know how repeating things that failed spectacularly during the last four years is suddenly going to do what you wish it to now.  I want proof.  I want to know that I’m not going to have to give up my TV, and my phone, and keep the lights off, and the heat at 60 all winter.  I want assurances that none of us are going to lose our jobs as our employers try to keep their lights on and their doors open.  I want assurances that when it all goes south, as it almost assuredly will, you won’t look stunned, and WILL be able to help me out.  Because it’s your fault.  You didn’t listen, you didn’t think, you voted based on feelings. 

I WILL be saying “told you so” but it will give me only a little bit of schadenfreude, because I’ll be hurting worse than you.

It's been a long week.

It's been a long week.  Politics is what it is, and while I feel I need to follow it closely, because what is happening now is so crucial for all of us, at the same time, I'm sure that it is a significant (if not the most significant) stressor in my life right now.

The allergy testing is ongoing; I have another round of skin tests, this time food, on Thursday, and then a meeting with the doctor on the 2nd to discuss the whole shebang and what it means.  At least it would seem that cats are only a mild problem which is good since we have three.

The girls are having their usual health issues, elder's headaches are still there, so we're hanging on until her follow-up with neuro in a week and a half, to see if there are any meds we haven't tried yet.  Younger has a stress injury with her right foot which the fancy orthopedic support brace/boot thingy isn't helping, but she starts with PT this week, so hopefully something good will come of that so that she isn't as cranky as she has been lately.

At least nothing (that I know of ) is going on with the spousal unit.  I really can't deal with any more health issues on top of work.

Work...  I'm supposed to have someone coming in tomorrow morning to do some air quality testing.  Here's hoping they find something; you can't fix things until you know what the problem is.  I suspect that if we were to remove the carpet which had the most serious flooding, and replaced the windows so that they could be opened to air the place out on a regular basis, things would improve drastically. I'm not in a patient care building, so we're allowed to open windows, but these are the original, 50+ year old metal frames, and they are rusted shut.  Management had a great chance to upgrade things when they remodelled the space six years ago for my department, but they didn't want to spend the money.  Heck, I couldn't get them to replace the cracked window panes at that time - it took over three years!

I'm going to try to get to sleep soon, so that I'm working on more than 5 hours sleep tomorrow, though I've gotten 12 hours the last two nights.

Here's hoping the coming week doesn't feel as long as this past one has.

Shouldn't the folks who have to use office equipment be asked what they actually need first?

The copier I had in my department for years and years was still working well, but the organization decided that we needed to own all our own copiers, and have 3-in-1s.  

Sounds great.

Problem is, I'm a library.  I have to copy odd sized journals and big heavy books.  A Dell scanner with an 8.5x11 piece of glass just isn't going to work.  Especially when the glass is at about shoulder level, because that's where the copier stand puts it.  In trying it out, so that I had some facts to back up my complaint to management I injured my wrist/thumb, ending up on light duty for nearly two months with lots of PT/OT and then a cortisone shot. (And trust, me getting shot in the joint between the wrist and the first bone leading to the thumb is not fun.)

In the meantime, it was found that actually quite a few departments who had been given these new fancy machines needed bigger scanning beds, so the rentals which hadn't been sent back were kept and shuffled to those who needed them.  

I went from a nice little IR 3530, which was the perfect hight to an IR C4080i; the glass is three or four inches higher, meaning that the only way I can scan bound items is to stand on my tip-toes.  It takes absolutely forever to warm up, because it does color, which is nice, but not at all necessary, and it takes up a lot more floor space.  I am also beginning to suspect that the weird way I have to stand to make copies is a major contributer to the return of the plantar fasciitis pain.  It's bad enough that people ask what's wrong as I limp through the halls.

Translation: I hate it.

I don't use it a lot, but I had to copy some stuff yesterday and it worked just fine.  Today, after scanning a 10 page article and hitting print, after printing two pages, it happily informed me that I needed to replace the toner cartridge.  Which of course I don't have, since I didn't get a spare with it.  And unlike most copiers, this gives you no wiggle room.  When it says you need to replace the toner, there is NO. MORE. TONER.  At all.  So I've just spent several minutes standing uncomfortably on my toes, and lost all of it.  To e-mail this I'm going to have to scan it a page at a time into my office scanner attached to the computer which takes a lot longer.  And I'm going to have to wait a week or so to get the new toner in.  Grrrr.  I ordered one of each color cartridge and two black, since one is going directly into the machine the instant I get it.  And of course I can't find out who else in the hospital has one of these models, if anyone, because no one can use the "everyone" e-mail list anymore.

Of course, if they had just talked to me before getting the Dell, they would have found out that I needed the larger glass, and we would have done it right the first time, instead of simply replacing the printer with a much more expensive one since we don't use it for copying.  Grrrrr.

More not the news

We didn't get the shrubbery finished by a long shot yesterday, but we did get a fair bit of the dirt fill in.  My comment to the husband? "If anything can get to the piggies through that dirt, wire, and those rocks, I don't want to meet it without a shotgun."

The bushes are still in their pots, but hopefully we can get the rest of the dirt pile moved into the frame by this weekend to plant them.  I had also used some of the fence posts from the section of privacy fence we had taken down (because it was so badly installed, that parts of it were falling over), and propped up the remaining fence, one prop against the posts on either side of the shrubbery.  I'll get some hardward and bolt them in place later, and get a panel of trellis to affix to the front on so that it's somewhat more decorative from the street.  The post that's at the middle of the back wall of the shrubbery got a very large pointy rock driven in next to the post on the leaning side so that it's staying pretty much straight too.  Of  course to do that I had to move the neighbors' sun tent thingy, which they had staked down so close to the leaning fence that I couldn't push the posts upright.  No-one was home at the time.  I wonder if/when they'll notice.

So I'm back at work, with an AWOL brain, which is sad, because I've got to get one of my docs a bibliography on brain death and hypothermia, and I'm just not having any ability to put something coherent together for him....

Ouch.

I guess it's proof that I'm getting older even if I don't feel it.

Every few years I have to completely rearrange the back journal shelving at work (360 or so shelves) because of changes in subscriptions, running out of room for the stuff we still get, having too much space after stuff we've discontinued, etc., etc., etc.

I was shifting a handful of journals (six or eight shelf inches) as a bunch from a bottom shelf in one stack to the fourth of six shelves in the next column and twisted just wrong.  I know I have muscles and connective tissue from my waist down over my hip joint and into my thigh.  It's just that the waist area of the IT band stuff doesn't usually seize up.  So know I'm sitting at my desk, trying to stretch it out, which is hard because I have very loose joints and can't bend far enough to stretch already too long connective tissue, and trying not to breath too hard.

Hopefully it will ease off soon, so I can get some lunch without squeaking with every step.  Work will not be happy if I break myself again just doing my job.  I was on "light duty" for a wrist injury for two months, ending less than two months ago.

Growing old sucks, but it does beat the alternative.