Crappy Customer Service

Check Out Guitar George, She Knows All The Chords

I disappear into tasks.  I am the person to whom you give your massive time-sink of a job that no one wants - I'll do the hell out of it.  Filing?  Yes please!  Alpha or numerical?

Do you want to spend your long weekend editing the ID tags of your *entire* music collection?  I just did.  (The weather was shitty, mind.)  And put those album covers on, no matter how obscure.

At work I am using spare parts of the day to categorize a massive vendor contact file.

I became the essential employee at The Sporting Company when I read every.  Last.  Catalog.  You need me to find something out?  I'll find out ten things, and learn another language so I can find an eleventh in another country.

No one else in my family is like this.  Where does it come from?

Suddenly Outdoors

As it turns out, one bus gets me from my doorstep to my place of work - and it costs about $300/month to park there.  So I've given up my shiny new car to my husband.  Now our sports car sits at home - we are trying to keep the kilometres low to get a good resale price when our lease is up.  Lancers tend to get snapped up by kids looking to rice them out.

I never really liked driving.  No scratch that, I never really liked driving in the city.  Still, giving up my car is hard *whine*.  I had no idea I was using my car as a giant purse until I had to carry everything I want to have during the day...on my freakin' back.  I got tired of carrying a bag with my lunch and books in addition to my purse, so I'm experimenting with one large bag and transferring my contents from my purse and back. 

I have to be quite strict about what to carry.  No more having nine types of lip gloss.  One book only.  Umbrella only on rainy days.  My inner Girl Guide says, What if you are caught unprepared?  But she also says, Pack light.

Yep

I did get that job.  I ask myself, why do I seek trouble?  My life is very calm in general, but occasionally I seem to really fuck things up for myself.  I have no one else to blame for it.  Clicking that jobs link was an act of id.

The last few weeks have been spiritually tough, and I should probably deal with that by writing more, but I don't want to be seen whining.  That is the ultimate sin to a Scottish Albertan, being steeped in Calvinism whether one likes it or not. 

I had to lie to go to the interview, and lie some more about my desire to stay with The Logistics Company.  I hate lying - I can do it, but I hate it so much that even a small lie keeps me awake at night.  My inclination, once I heard that I got the new job, was to simply not show up one day and vanish from the sight of my old/new job, which would be much easier in the short term.  I did face the music and quit to my boss's face after all.  She is a big scary intimidating woman so I was tied up in knots over that too.  I was terribly sorry about taking a job I was lukewarm about, and tried to do the whole thing as nicely and briefly as possible by just getting the hell out of there.

So this week I am restarting over again (yes I know that is grammar butchery - but it's apt).  This new job shit is highly overrated.  My new job pays more, has better benefits, a better commute and a cool new location...but I hate being the newbie.  Thus my stomach is still all screwed up in the mornings.

Let's Talk About Something Else

Here's the part where I mention that I have a real shot at that job.  And I'm still waiting to hear and it's making me crazy and I lay awake at night worrying about things that haven't happened yet.  I am on a very short list.

But I'm not going to talk about that anymore.  I'm going to mention a couple of good food experiences I've had in the last couple of weeks. 

Food is my comfort and salvation.  I was raised by the daughter of a caterer and prize-winning chef, who could have had her own restaurant.  I married someone who can cook.  I know it is all kinds of wrong but I just love food.  You can't make me hate it, even if it's making me fat. 

My first experience was the Italian Centre Shop on the Via Italia in downtown Edmonton.  Everyone had been there except me!  At least, everyone who is related to someone Italian in Edmonton.  But the purchase I enjoyed most was not Italian - they have a whole freakin' aisle of German, Belgian and Czech chocolate bars.  I had a blueberry flavoured chocolate bar, which was damn good.  Plus a truly epic, fatal deli.  You will die with a smile.

The second was Paradiso Pastries.  This bakery is associated with a halal butcher in my neighbourhood, and their specialty is baklava in every possible nut flavour.  They had a foot-high mound of jalebis, the crunchy sweet my husband is addicted to.   Rum baba, too.  I could live in there.