Mutual Weirdness
Just the randomness that is my life.
4/20/2017
The pain to end all painWhat is the worst pain you have ever endured?
Everyone has different levels of pain they can endure. But I think there is one thing that will make a person cringe no matter how stout they are. Kidney Stone. Yup, a kidney stone. A nearly microscopic piece of calcium (normally) that forms in the kidney and then proceeds to force its way out of the body. This small thing, the size of a grain of sand, can bring even the toughest of tough guys to a fetal position in the ER. And that is where I spent my Easter Sunday morning. The ER. Everything started on Good Friday though. Not so good for me. I was already planning to be off in the afternoon but ended up missing the entire day because I woke up with some odd pressure that encompassed my entire abdomen. By 10am I was in immense pain that thankfully only lasted maybe 30 minutes though a sharp achy pain took its place for the rest of the day. I was miserable but managing. Good thing too as my family had decided to have our Easter celebration on Friday evening due to work schedules. The pain was minimal enough that I was able to enjoy dinner and a beer hunt. Saturday was nearly a normal day for me. Only had the smallest of aches for a short time that day. I thought whatever had caused my pain was gone. I was wrong. I woke up around 3am Sunday morning in intense pain that subsided just enough after a bit for me to fall asleep. It came back around 7am and that is when I called for a ride to the ER. Hubby still can't drive (another story I've been meaning to tell) so I called and woke my mom up. Thankfully the ER had no wait time and I was seen right away. I was given some morphine and an IV which made the wait for a CT scan less miserable. The results came back showing a 3mm kidney stone. Small enough to pass on its own, so I was discharged and sent home with a prescription for some painkillers to wait. I was there about 3 hours in total. Now if only my story ended there. See, I sometimes have a bad reaction to Oxycodone which is what was prescribed. So Monday morning I go to work, I have some pain so I take my meds, which include an anti-nausea pill. So much for that. By 10am I was feeling so nauseous that I was laying on the floor. A coworker agreed to drive me home right about the time I lost my breakfast into the trashcan. I made it home and crawled into bed where I stayed for most of the rest of the day. So that was my weekend. Terrible mostly.
4/5/2017
Sorry I've been away...I've sadly been neglecting this blog just as I've neglected every other blog I've ever started. I keep meaning to post something more but have yet to do so. I'll try to get something more meaningful posted soon. Just don't hate me if it takes a few weeks.
7/25/2016
I am a Pokemon Go StatisticMy husband and I have been playing Pokemon Go for about 2 weeks now. But on the 13th I managed to join the number of players who have injured themselves while playing and I am completely embarrassed by the entire ordeal. So of course I have to share what happened. When I first started playing I couldn't understand how people were getting into trouble while playing. The game is designed so that you don't have to be constantly looking at your phone to play. If you enter the range of a pet, the phone will vibrate. If you are in range of a Pokestop it will play a sound. And catching a pet for the most part requires that you stand still. The loading screen for the game even tells you to make sure you are paying attention to what is going on around you. My husband and I were out for a walk catching Pokemon. I was just a couple tenths of a kilometer short of hatching an egg. We were at our apartment complex and heading back to our building, crossing the street. I wasn't even looking at my phone which is the worst part. I was simply chatting with my husband and focused on the side walk we were heading towards across the way. And that's when it happened. A Wild Parking Curb jumped out in front of me and knocked me to the ground! Actually I just didn't see the stupid thing as I was looking out ahead of me rather than at my feet. My foot hit it and down I went. I hit hard on my left knee, the only thing saving it from being scraped up was the leggings I was wearing. My right elbow was also scraped up. I sat on the ground wailing in pain while my poor husband tried to make sure I was alright. He wanted to help me up right away but I just cried in pain and told him to go get the car even though we were less than a block from home. He started to walk away and I realized he had my phone with him and I started to feel sick and called him back. I cried and told him not to leave me.
After a few moments the pain subsided enough that I felt like I could stand and that is when I realized that I had done something to my left arm. There were no scrapes or cuts but I couldn't put any pressure on my palm or my wrist through to my elbow would scream in pain. I managed to limp home and put some ice on my leg and arm and hope that I didn't break anything. The next day I went to the doctor to have them x-ray my arm. My doctor couldn't tell that anything was broken that day and wanted to wait for the radiologist report before making a decision on what to do. But she had a nurse put me in a splint to be on the safe side. The splint only lasted about 5 days before I decided to boycott it. With temps reaching 100F all week long the thing was hot and itchy and just held all my sweat against my arm. I also couldn't hardly do my job at work. So off it came. I finally got a call from my doctor this morning to let me know the results of the radiology report which is that nothing is broken. The nurse also said there was no mention of it maybe being sprained either so I guess I'm fine. She said I can continue to wear the splint for comfort but that I don't have too, which is good because I'm not going to. I do still have muscle pain in my arm so I figure if it is still hurting this bad by the end of the week I'll make an appointment to go back in to make sure I didn't damage the muscle. So there you have it, the story about how I became a Pokemon Go statistic.
7/11/2016
Pokemon Go!Pokemon Go is the latest craze in mobile apps. Having never been a fan of Pokemon I wasn't planning on downloading it but alas I was sucked in. It helps that the app is free. My husband downloaded the app this morning and by lunch time he was bragging about how many he had caught already. I couldn't let that stand and started the download. There is a quick tutorial that allows you to catch your first Pokemon. I had a cute little Bulbasaur sitting on my desk at work and caught it with ease. And yes I was slacking off and shouldn't have been playing with it at work. But the longer I waited the farther ahead of me my husband would get. I managed to get my second one while checking the mail at work. Now lately I have been trying to be more active. I bought a new Fitbit and have been active in the challenges my friends and family start. I've given myself a goal of 10,000 steps a day which if I work at it I can finish before I leave work. I have a goal of 1,000 steps each hour. I hit my 10,000 today while walking around the building after work checking in at the Pokestops and looking for more little critters to catch. But that just wasn't enough. After dinner the hubby and I put on our walking shoes and went hunting some more! There is a nice little pond about a block away from our apartment that had a Pokestop at it. There were a lot of people young and old out walking, and most of them were stopping here and there to check their phone for something to catch. We were done and ready to head home about the time a large group teens came through. One lap around the pond is about 3/4 of a mile so that along with the walk from our front door it equals about a mile. I have now ended my day with over 14,000 steps and a bunch of funny looking little animals logged into my phone. I'm oddly hooked already. I gotta catch 'em all! I took a couple of quick pictures of the interface just to show it off a little bit. I don't know how long this will hold my attention. But for now, it has a pretty good hold on it. And if nothing else, I'm getting in a fair amount of exercise.
5/17/2016
Elephants!My local zoo has recently built a new elephant habitat which has now been populated with 6 new elephants bringing their total up to 7. The exhibit isn't open to the public until the end of the month but at the end of last week the members got a sneak peak. I just happen to be a member. So here are a few wonderful pictures!
4/25/2016
That's Not Helpful.I work in a courthouse. My desk is in the hallway on the third floor so that I can assist people who get lost in the building. This actually happens a lot. There are actually 3 courthouse on this same intersection. The County Courthouse (where I work), the Historic County Courthouse (where we have some offices and Small Claims Court) and City Hall where they hold their own court for the tickets they write. The court rooms in the other two buildings all happen to be on the 3rd floor while in my building we have no courtrooms on the third floor, they start on the 4th floor and go up to the 10th.
I've realized over the past couple of years why I need to be in the hallway to help people. Because nobody else is helpful, or if they try to be, they don't know enough to actually be helpful. I've had so many people show up on my floor and when I tell them they need to be in a different building, they tell me that the people down stairs (information desk and security) told them it was on the third floor. Well, it is, but in a different building. All of this happens on a daily basis. But what just happened this morning blew my mind. A young lady exits the elevator on my floor and I ask if I can help her. She lets me know that she has been to every floor already, has no idea where she needs to be and that she is late for her court date. I ask if I can look at her paper work which she gladly hands me. A quick look tells me that she needs to be across the street at City Hall. I apologize and inform her of where she needs to be. What she tells me next is what left me stunned. She said that she went to the 9th floor first and a lady there looked at her paper work and informed her that she had no idea where she needs to be and that she'll need to just check every floor. So the poor lady had wondered to every floor, asking if she was in the right place and everyone just kept sending her away even after looking at the paperwork that said Municipal Court and had the address for City Hall written on it plain as day. 5 seconds of looking was all it took me to determine she was in the wrong building, but the lazy asses at the courts couldn't be bothered to let her know and just sent her wondering around until she ended up late. That is just horrible. It's terrible customer service and just flat out rude. Stuff like this is what makes people hate government workers.
4/22/2016
No, I don't know who calledOne of the major functions of my job is that of reception, mainly, answering the phone. Between the two offices that I do this for, there are 26 people (including myself) that the call could be for. On top of the actual calls I get for the offices, I get numerous wrong calls throughout the day of people who called the wrong number. When I am unable to answer the phone for some reason my supervisor as well as the interns act as my back up.
Nearly every call that comes in gets transferred somewhere. When a call is transferred, the caller ID on the phone I'm transferring to will show the number the call came in on which is normally the main office number (I have a separate number for people to call to get me directly). Now on to the reason for this post. In the law office there are 2 lawyers who, upon coming back to their desk after being away, will look, see they have a missed call, look at the caller ID, see it came from the main line and immediately call me to ask me who called for them if no voice mail was left. Sometimes I can remember who called, but most of the time I can't. Normally they are asking me about a call that came in over an hour before while I've had numerous calls, emails and people walking up to my desk since then. And sometimes, as with what just happened, I wasn't even the one who answered the call. Yet somehow I'm still supposed to know who called. On rare occasion I can go back through my received calls and placed calls lists and match up time stamps, but this does no good if they block their name on caller ID. It just frustrates me because these two people tend to get annoyed with me if I can't remember who called for them. I'd just like to gripe and say "Look, they didn't leave a voice mail so it must not have been that important or they'll call back. So quit bothering me." But of course I can't say anything like that. And thus is the life of the receptionist.
4/11/2016
Louisiana VacationOver spring break in March, my husband and I drove down to Louisiana to visit his family. It was a 10 hour drive to his parents house which we did all in one go over night arriving at their house around 6:3o Saturday Morning. This was our first visit in about 7 years.
That Saturday happened to be my birthday and the next day was one of hubby's aunt's birthday so we all went out to dinner that evening. The little place we went to had all you can eat catfish. I didn't think to take a group picture of all of us, but I did remember to take a picture of the fish.
3/24/2016
The Art ProjectNot everyone has great computer skills. The Assistant Manager where I work is one of them and as the office admin it is my job to help him out.
He brings to me what I like to call "Art Projects", documents that have been cut apart, taped back together in another order with hand writing all over them. I then have to turn these into proper documents. Sometimes he would have the original that he took apart electronically to save me some time, but not always. Yesterday he brought me the mother of all art projects. Normally I can finish one he brings me in under an hour, this is a 3 day project. It is a hand drawn organizational chart that I have to try and create electronically with no org chart software. But it isn't just one org chart, its 9 org charts. Well, really there are about 5 as half of them are variations of one another so I'm able to copy and paste then make the small changes. The first was the worst as it was the entire chart and took me 4 hours to complete. The second was a variation of the first and only took about 15 minutes as I just had to change a few lines. The rest are ones that are just looking at individual parts of the first, so not as much information but each one still has a variation to create. Over all, by 4pm yesterday I had made it through 4 of the 9 pages he'd handed to me. By that point I had to stop and do some other work that had to be done by the end of the day. After I wake up a bit this morning, I'll be right back to working on them again. It isn't hard work, I just don't have quite the right tools for the job so it makes it tedious.
2/19/2016
The Shake UpI've decided to do some posting about work here. I was experimenting posting about it in another place, but it hasn't worked out so well. I may eventually move some of those posts over to here, not sure yet.
So there have been some rather big changes going on at work for me lately. About a month ago now our Director of Communications and Community Initiatives was asked to resign. Her position has been eliminated. She had been here for 30 years. It was quite a shock to everyone, most of all her I'm sure. And we had to keep quiet about it for weeks. Everyone in our office knew she was gone, but we were not allowed to talk about it until an official announcement was made. That didn't happen for 3 weeks when finally the media figured it out and published a story. Though because we were not allowed to talk about it, of course everyone knew. Her email was shut off almost immediately so anyone trying to email her would get a bounce back. If that doesn't tell you somethings up, nothing will. On the heels of this change, I found out that the new manager has decided to reorganize pretty much the entire way departments are set up. He wants fewer direct reports and wants to change who is under who. The second big change that has actually been made is that he has created a Deputy County Manager position and a Public Information Officer position. I found out last week that my boss was to be the Interim PIO effective immediately while one of the interns was being moved into her position as Interim and is my new boss. But once again we couldn't tell anyone until an official announcement was made. Luckily this one didn't take as long and everyone found out on Wednesday when the Board officially approved the new positions. The last 2 days have been a flurry of scrambling to update phones, business cards and clean out an office for the PIO to move into. We had been using it as storage and it was determined that she couldn't just move into the office vacated by the lady who left. They didn't want anyone to think that the PIO was taking over the old position and to show that this is a brand new position with a new focus. They may seem similar, but they are different. And the icing on the cake? My new boss is pregnant and will have to go on maternity leave come September. So that is my life at work right now. Just trying to deal with these changes and brace for the ones yet to come. |