Bringing the Drama

when i talk about work, i usually try to be as vague as possible for no other reason than to keep things as simple as possible. lately work has been stranger and stranger, but not without drama. remember when i got upset about that guy who sent out the ninja report before it should have been sent out? that same guy got to me again on tuesday. he basically told my manager that i was not helping him with some work he had to do for this Friday. problem is, he never told me he needed help or that there was a Friday meeting. he (from now on he’s White Shoes) had asked me if i was working on his part on Monday, but my priority had been for the past two weeks to work on something else that i had finished Tuesday. White Shoes knew this, i had told him multiple times, and he always seemed to be okay with it. it was not that i was ignoring his part, but that work had kind of been put on the backburner by people higher up than me, so it wasn’t like i was going off and doing my own work. anyway, so my manager calls me on Tuesday morning and tells me he’s been told i’m not helping WS with his work, and that he has a meeting on Friday he needs help getting information together. i told him i had no idea there was a Friday meeting, and what did WS need. my manager told me to go talk to WS (because he didn’t know either). i got off the phone not very happy, and walked over to WS’s desk to ask him what he needed. i think i woke him up, because he kind of roused and looked at me as if waking up from a desk slumber. his first reply to what he needed was as generic as going to a mall customer service desk and asking where the clothes were. i asked him more specifically what he would need for this Friday meeting. he couldn’t give me an answer! so i said they’re probably going to be looking for powerpoint charts, did he want that. he said that’d be fine.

i got back to my desk and told someone over IM that i was tired of him getting a free pass to be a dumbass. if he had a meeting Friday that he needed information from me for, that’s fine, but tell me instead of telling our manager that i’m not helping you. he totally sold me out for no apparent reason. it’s not as if we’re the same level and he needs to look better than me. he seems to have a Napoleonic complex where he wants to be in total control, so by holding back information from me, he kept control.

so today i was able to finish what WS was going to need, and then found out that the Friday meeting agenda was changed and he wouldn’t be talking his part. i did not find this out from him (OF COURSE) but by someone else. i went and confirmed it though and he didn’t even apologize for not keeping me in the loop. i don’t like working with him because of stuff like this. incidentally, the part i’m working on for him, i came up with pretty much everything. so not only do i have to work with him just to get my part of the story done, i’m also wanting to make sure he doesn’t screw up what i’ve already done.

and i’m not sure if this was because of the economy, but now 2 of the 8 total jobs i had applied for have been cancelled. i got an email about one of the Birmingham jobs i applied for that they are not going to fill the position. no other explanation than that. hopefully that won’t be happening with the other job apps i have left.

so i’m still going to the gym, and have had run-ins with CGG. this evening i was able to avoid him by the grace of God. he totally missed seeing me while i’m right out in the open doing some shoulder exercises. i have failed to tell you about what happened about a week and a half ago. i recounted this story at IHOP after the high school football game last week and will now document it for the internet.

on Fridays i get there earlier than the other two days i go because i’m either off work early or because i don’t have work. so it’s almost unavoidable to see CGG on Fridays. two Fridays ago, i had gone and pretty much almost finished my entire workout before having probably the creepiest yet. i had seen him walking around, but of course just kept to myself. i had finished my three sets and only had one burnout set to do. (incidentally, the burnout set idea was from when Matt the intern would workout with Andy, Chad, and I and it’s basically one set of one exercise with a lower weight, which you do until you ‘burnout’). i had gotten some water and i thought i had avoided CGG, but when i turn the corner to go back to the weight room, BAM, there he is. i had to shake his hand or something like a “hey, what’s up?” deal, and i THOUGHT that was all. i walk into the weight room, i had my hand on the bar and he comes up to me. the conversation went something like this:

CGG: “hey scott, what kind of engineer are you at [Company Awesome]?”
me: “mechanical”
CGG: “oh yeah? and you do drawing like on the computer?”
me: “yeah”
CGG: “cool, so could you draw stuff like gym equipment?”
me: “not really. most of what i do is airplane stuff”
[i thought at the time how i wanted to go "UNLESS IT IS GETTING LAUNCHED INTO SPACE, I CAN'T DRAW IT!", but i guess me being nice helped me hold my tongue]
CGG: “oh okay”
me: “couldn’t you draw it like on paper or something?”
CGG: “oh no, my brother owns the place (and i thought “i’ll never get him fired!”) and i’m an MD but i’ve been out of practice for 4 years (i thought “i can tell you why!”) and we can’t draw anything”
me: “well, i guess you could go to a sports therapist and see where they get drawings for stuff, i have no idea”
CGG: “oh, okay, well, have a good weekend”

WTF? i could see where he was going with his questions. he was going to see if i could draw it for him, and there was no way ever that i would do that. i don’t get it. i was talking to a friend at dinner tonight, and he knows a guy who used to be a trainer at the gym i go to, who is now a trainer at a gym closer to my house. if the other gym is around the same price, i might be switching. i deal with enough ridiculous creepy stuff at work, like BO Guy’s trip to Colombia coming up in a couple of weeks (wait till i post about that!) that i would like to minimize the creepy/weird stuff as much as possible. i mean, yes, i am awesome, but at least my eye doctor only calls my cell phone for about a week after i go once a year. he doesn’t ask me about drawing new eye care equipment.

on Thursday before i left work, i had a good talk with my home shop manager. a quick rundown, so in the program where i do rotations in different departments, i’m still badged to the department i was hired in, which is called ‘home shop’. anyway, so the manager who’s my home shop manager now is different from the one i originally worked for, and IMO much better. the past month or so, i’ve gone to talk to her a few times about my job and my job prospects. it’s awesome to have someone at work who’s higher up than me to go talk to about some of the frustrations with my current job and have them listen. she’s able to give me some advice, and i feel better about the current state of things….up to a point anyway. i went and talked to her about my current job hunt and filled her in on my meet up with a guy in town from ATL. one of my friends in ATL told me about her old boss coming down to NOLA and arranged me to meet him. i went and talked to him Thursday AM for probably an hour. he gave me some advice on job searching, and about what he was working on. why does almost every other job i hear about seem cooler than mine?

back to the home shop manager, she told me about maybe why one of the jobs i bid for got turned down so quickly (because apparently the people in Denver aren’t very open to hiring non-Denver people). she also told me that i probably wouldn’t hear much until after the new year starts. yuck. this means i will probably have to start up taking grad school classes again. i’m not really excited about that. hopefully i’ll just find one class i can take which won’t cause me to lose my mind. i am DEFINITELY not going to schedule two classes ever again, one is bad enough.

after the months of watching the campaign go from inspiring to annoying to maddening in what seemed like 10 years, we finally got to vote last Tuesday. my parents usually work at the polling places for elections, so they voted early. my dad kept bugging me about voting early, but i kept telling him and other people who were telling me to vote early that i wanted to wait until election day. i liked the feeling of community with the rest of America. besides, my precinct is basically my neighborhood, and for every other election i’ve voted in there’s never been a line. not even in 2004. i get to vote at the local “used to be cool, but now it’s awful” mall, and i think my entire time voting in the Presidential primary a few months ago was 3 minutes and most of that was taken up by the people finding my name in the roster book.

i wore a red shirt to work on Tuesday. it was not random, i wore it for a reason. nobody said anything to me at work, but i knew, and that’s all that mattered really. the carpool was down to two on Tuesday, and yes, it has turned somewhat awkward. i’m making it through though. i had mentioned to thomas about maybe leaving early, so later in the afternoon he asked if i wanted to leave an hour early. i took him up on the offer, and we left early to go vote, anticipating long lines. our site manager (three or four levels ABOVE me) had encouraged us the day before in a meeting that voting was important and if we had to take off early to do it we should. work should never be an excuse for not voting, which i’m in agreement with.

anyway, so i show up at the mall to vote, and my precinct has the longest line. there were probably 40 or maybe 50 people in front of me. the other two precincts voting at the same place either had no one in line, or 5 people. i had read Kari’s Capra-esque election day experience earlier in the day on Tuesday and wanted the place i voted to have stickers. they didn’t even have to have the Presidential seal on them. while in line i talked with the people around me and was proud i had read and written down my decisions on the 7 state constitutional amendments on a post-it note. the people in front of me were busily reading a printed out webpage explaining what they were, the same one i had read earlier.

i waited in line about 40 minutes until i got to the table where three people were in charge of finding your name on the roster and then writing it down. the guy who actually had the book was probably in his 50s. the two people on either side of him probably were in their 80s. the guy at the right side of the table was a little old man who only moved his head to hear the name being called out, then he would turn back to his sheet and write the name in cursive. the lady on the left side of the table couldn’t hear very well, so the guy in the middle turned to tell her the name. once they finished, i went to a booth. voting took me maybe 1 minute. i had the big races and the amendments, and already having my post-it note with FOR and AGAINST on it, i was good to go rather quickly. i checked my votes to make sure i didn’t hit any incorrect buttons, then hit ‘CAST VOTE’ making sure my choice for President did not change or anything. there was a rumor some of the machines were changing the President vote, but i think that was probably user error or something. i came out of the machine, and went to leave. there was no one handing out stickers! however, i did get to for the President for the 4th time in my life, on the big election day, with the rest of America, and that is the most important thing. i just wish i could have gotten a sticker!

so the morning after the awesome Halloween party, i went and ran in a 5k. it was the fall edition of the Crescent City Classic, and the people who would be able to run it in under 25 minutes would get a timing chip for the spring 10k. i’ve been running at least 4 miles multiple times a week for the last couple, so i figured i might have a shot at the 25 minute mark. i got to City Park without much time to spare, and was walking up to the start area as the race started. there weren’t very many other people running, and for some reason once those people started, they started taking all the start area stuff down! i didn’t even know where the start line was! some guy suggested i just run to catch up with the group, so that’s what i did. i passed a big group of walkers, and by about the first half mile, i was out running my own pace without having to jump the curb and avoid a big group of slower people. i had no idea my pace, i was too concentrated on keeping up a fast one. when i entered the stadium for the finish, i saw the clock was past 25 minutes, and i finished in 27:22. my ipod told me i only ran 2.89 miles, so i didn’t even run the full 5k according to it. i know i didn’t start that far ahead of wherever the start was, so i suspect the ipod was off. they had you write down your time, and then turn it in, so theoretically i could have written down a sub 25 minute time, but i decided to be truthful (stupid morals!). they had beer and jambalaya available, but it was 9 in the morning, and i had just run 3 miles, so i went with a banana and some gatorade. i got my race shirt, and headed home.

i basically watched football and rested during the day, because i was going to the Hornets’ home opener with my dad that night. welcome to another year of basketball pictures from the upper deck! (below: LeBron surveying the court)

the game was great, and it was good to be going to a game again. it’s felt like forever since the infamous game 7. it was fun sitting in the crowd, making jokes about players, complaining home team players didn’t at least act like they were taking a charge, and high fiving strangers. the game was a lot closer than last year’s Cavs game, which made it more interesting. i’m going again on Wednesday and then next week to the Lakers game. i can’t wait! i didn’t renew my season tickets because of the high possibility i’d be moving, but man, i sure was kicking myself for not renewing. i’m still thinking about it, especially after my cousin said he’d buy my remaining tickets if i moved.

[shoulder update: i went for my 2nd appointment at the orthopedist on Wednesday and he recommended another month of PT. i had talked it over with the PT i had been seeing, and decided i would ask for an MRI if he did not recommend it first. i asked him about getting an MRI done now, because of the job possibilities (nothing yet, but i don't want the shoulder thing hanging out there if i don't have to) and a limit on PT visits in a year. he understood, and i have an MRI scheduled for next week.]

ever since i started going to PT for my shoulder, i’ve been going to the gym three times a week to lift weights and stuff. the PT place is at the gym, so i figured i had no excuse to not go lift weights afterward because IT IS RIGHT THERE! anyway, i am able to do everything that doesn’t involve lifting something over my head or machines where my arm is lifted. one of the first times i started going, this gym employee kind of startled me because i was reading something on a bulletin board, and this guy walks right by me and goes “hey” as i’m turning around. he kind of sideled up to me because i had no idea he was going to be right there. we had this awkward “i didn’t mean to scare you/oh don’t worry, it’s okay” conversation. now though, every time since that i’ve seen him, he makes sure to say hey. it’s kind of creepy. when i go to the gym, i just want to work out, i don’t want to have awkward head nods or conversations.

fast forward to today…..i walk up to get my keychain scanned by one of the people at the desk and there’s the guy! and as the girl behind the desk starts to walk over, he goes “no, i got this one” (creepy). apparently he thinks he’s my friend. so he scans my keychain which pulls up my info and he says “have a good workout scott”. i hate that! they used to have the scanner where you could scan the keychain yourself, but they changed it a few months ago, and now you have to have one of the employees scan it. so sometimes they use your name which bugs me because i don’t know their name, but they are telling me to have a good workout. anyway, so i go change clothes and start doing PT on my shoulder (i’ve stopped going to actual PT until i get MRI results) and Creepy Gym Guy comes up to me. he says “looks like you’re rehabbing your shoulder, what’d you do to it?” so i had to tell him how i didn’t know, and it might be a torn labrum or an impinged muscle, they don’t know, i won’t know until i get an MRI, etc. nothing i wanted to talk about with someone i didn’t know, i just wanted to pull the handle on this machine down 25 times and move on. so then he starts saying how he messed up his shoulder and he had to do rehab and how he missed playing golf, then he asked me if i played golf. i was wishing the guy would leave me alone. i get it, i get that he wants to be friendly, but i don’t want to talk to him. he asked me where i played golf, and i told him the course out by my house, but only cause it’s the cheapest. he said he knows a guy that lives out there, and if i know him. (there’s like 500 people in that neighborhood, i don’t know anyone) i told him i didn’t, so he says “oh, he’s probably 10 years older than you, what are you like 28?” i answered “yeah, something like that.” after that exchange i guess he had to go wash some towels or something.

this was not the only awkward conversation i had of the day….when i got to work this morning, i noticed BO Guy was already there. he usually gets there about 8:00 am with his rolling briefcase. i acknowledged him by saying “hey, you’re here early”. uh oh. then i had to have a 10 minute conversation where i learned when he lived in California, he would wake up at 4 am, start the broiler (not sure what was on the broiler), go run 2 and a quarter miles, then come home, flip the broiler, then take a shower. he would leave his house by 6:30 to get to work by 6:50. the whole time i was going “dude, i didn’t want to get into all of this.” so weird.

with the main project where i work eventually ending, the mother company set up an internal job fair to place people so they wouldn’t have to get laid off. i’m not technically on that project anymore, but i am looking for a new job, so i printed off some resumes and went after work yesterday. i was kind of nervous before, because i wasn’t really sure what i wanted to do or where i wanted to go. the job fair had EVERY unit of the company and every location, which made it about 15 or 20 different sets of people to talk to. i ended up talking to the people closely related to the 3 jobs i’ve already applied to, as well as people involved in the jobs i’d like to do. i’m not really sure straight engineering is my bag anymore, so i’m looking for a change in location and job function. the people last night sounded like they could help me accomplish both. i was very encouraged leaving to go home, because the people sounded legit in their “send me your resume and we’ll get this ball rolling” thing. it’s not something i have not heard before, but last night they sounded like they meant it. one guy was even ready to give me his cell phone number if he had any questions, but i declined. work numbers are fine with me unless you’re the CEO of the company. i’m going to email my resume off to the people i met last night today and we’ll see what happens. it sounded like i’ll have options, so i hope they all come through.

speaking of my resume, i was a little self conscious about it because it’s been the same basic format for years. i have my jobs listed then bullet points listing highlights. i saw one guy’s resume on one of the tables while i was talking to someone and it had his name and address at the top, then his job listing was like one big long paragraph! seeing that made me feel a little better about my resume.

i got home about 7:40 and decided not to go to small group that started at 7:30. instead, i kept on my pace towards the half marathon and ran 4 miles. it’s been getting cooler here, so running last night was fantastic. i even felt good after the first mile….(it’s always the hardest i think). i have to run 6 miles on Saturday which i’m not looking forward to, but i’m going to try.

so i got home tonight and went running along my usual route. of course i took the trusty nano along, using the nike+, but i failed to click on the playlist with my running songs. i ended up shuffling ALL of the songs on the iPod. my luck continued as the songs shuffled into my ears were slow songs. initially i thought it would suck, but it got me thinking about my pace. i kept a much more even pace tonight than i have the past two weeks, and actually had a better time. maybe running to A Fine Frenzy and slower Ryan Adams isn’t such a big deal after all. i don’t plan on trying it next time, but i guess if i notice a difference, i’ll go with the slower songs again.

when i went to upload my run, i started a training program for a half marathon. according to the schedule, i should be able to run it by Christmas. i guess we’ll see about that.

work was okay today i guess. i was having a conversation with a couple of co-workers at my desk when BO guy randomly rolled his chair over to offer us some walnuts he had in a big ziploc bag. just another day at the office!

today there was no carpool, so it was just me in the car on the way to work. i FINALLY broke out my FM transmitter for my Nano to use in the car. i’ve been struggling with the radio lately, even the classic rock radio, because it seems they play the same 50 or so songs. (a lot of AC/DC for some reason). yesterday i uploaded a lot of songs to my iPod and almost filled it, so i have about 600 songs. anyway, on the way to work this morning, i had the songs on shuffle and Yellow came on. in the serene morning on the bridge, it felt like the perfect song for that moment. i remembered the show i went to in Houston hearing Yellow and how everyone collectively smiled, how Yellow was the first Coldplay song i had ever heard, how at that concert i felt a part of something bigger than just me, blah blah blah.

(why oh why was Viva La Vida so bad?!? i really wanted to like it!)

after this past weekend’s college football games i don’t know what to believe anymore. i remember back in my Catechism days, we had a retreat and we played this game called Backpack Mess Up. it was something where everyone would be categorized as something normally found in a backpack. then the person leading the game would call out items and those people would have to move around. then if the person said backpack mess up, everyone had to move around. come to think of it the game wasn’t that much fun, and it doesn’t really make any sense as i described it. so this weekend in college football felt like backpack mess up. four top 10 teams lost, including UF on a blocked XP (wtf?). Clemson blew an easily winnable game that defies logic. everything i thought i knew was turned upside down. except LSU won, and that was the one thing all weekend that made sense.

the Saints game on Sunday made me feel great. it felt like 2006 again. hopefully it’s a sign of things to come for the season and not an aberration. welcome back Deuce!

so an update on my shoulder….i started going to PT on Monday and the PT assigned to my case examined me and took her time, a little more than the orthopedist did. she doesn’t think i have a torn labrum, but rather an impinged muscle. specifically, she thinks it’s possible the supraspinatus muscle could be impinged. she said it could have happened when i had a small irritation, then gotten painful when i did something like boxing. (we had a fight night [with gloves and mouthpieces], and explaining that was a bit awkward. “were you punching a bag?” “no, i was punching a person”. i suspect that night i could have really hurt it, because i was swinging hard (and missing mostly) but i don’t specifically remember feeling anything other than soreness). she gave me rehab exercises to do at home and so far i think they have helped a lot. on Wednesday i had my first real PT session, and she had me use weight machines and free weights to work my shoulder. then she massaged all the muscles around to get blood flow going. it was a little painful, but it felt great after. i need to do my rehab exercises before i go to bed tonight actually. i have my next appointment tomorrow right before lunch and don’t want to disappoint! the good thing about the impinged muscle is obviously it probably will not involve surgery, just some PT. i’m still in line to go back to the orthopedist the first full week of October, so hopefully i’ll have a definitive answer of a diagnosis one way or the other after that.

last weekend, i moved any and all hurricane debris out to the edge of the street to be picked up. this included the branches that fell during Gustav AND the branches and fence pieces that fell during Katrina that i always thought i would burn in my firepit that i never got around to. the parish came and picked up the stuff yesterday, so my yard looks much better, and i don’t have a pile of old wood in my backyard anymore.

today at work was another episode out of a tv show. the BO guy sits behind me by about 10 feet now, and normally it’s fine. he sometimes is on the phone a lot, but lately it’s been okay. today though he called IT…..ON SPEAKERPHONE. he was on the phone for at least an hour on speakerphone, and at one point had two IT people on the phone with him, so it was like a 3 person teleconference. i think it was something about his password, but i wasn’t sure. we don’t have a complicated operation going on to login to the computer. you log on to the computer with one password, then log on to the network with a different password. this simple concept is lost on the older people at our office sometimes, most recently today. i’m definitely getting tired of the circus that’s been going on lately. things are in the works though like resumes being sent out, so we’ll see what happens soon.