Personal

Well, today ended up being something of an interesting day. I needed to get out of the house for a bit, so wandered into downtown to see a movie. Now, Westlake Plaza seems to be the focal point for most (all?) of the protests in Seattle, and it’s becoming somewhat second nature to swing by and see who’s protesting what each weekend.

Today, though, the protest was something that actually interests me! There’s been a lot of political struggle here in Seattle recently over the Teen Dance Ordinance (lots of background information can be found via this Google search). A local organization called the NorthWest Late Night Coalition was in the plaza today, holding a rally to gain support for their part in the battle to repeal the TDO, with an information booth, speakers, and DJ’s playing. It was pretty interesting, and I stopped by to watch for a while. I ended up chatting with two of the volunteers helping out (Dolly and Chloe, if I remember correctly) and let them know a bit about my history in Anchorage working with Gig’s and the Lost Abby.

Once I got home, I stopped by their website and signed up — mayhaps I’ll start getting involved in things down here! Would be very cool…here’s hoping!

Happy birthday to my little brother! Kinda scary to think that he turns 26 today — in some ways, scarier than me turning 29 yesterday. Yikes. Hey — he’s still my little brother, though. :D

Well, I’ve made it to 29. So…in another year…do I run? Or head for Sanctuary?

Happy May Day! Or perhaps Beltane would be more to your liking.

Either way, I’m sure you know the real reason today is so important.

Because it’s two days before my birthday, of course! :D

What did you think?

Okay, so…yeah. It’s been over a week since I paid any attention to my website. Sorry for being so lazy…there’s been a fair amount of crud going on, and, to be honest, I just wasn’t in the mood to bitch and moan about it until some more of it was resolved. It’s not exactly all resolved now, but now I’ve gotten to a point where it was bugging me more that my page was sitting untended for this long. So, I put two posts up before this one…and now it’s time for me to babble.

Yay? ;)

This, then, is the lowdown. I’d already mentioned that at the beginning of the month I’d lost my position at Andersen, and then about a week later I got a new position at Microsoft. All seemed well and good — unfortunately, as there always seem to be, there have been complications.

First major thing — it took three weeks after starting at the new job before I got a paycheck. Not a good thing. Second major thing — my payscale pretty much sucks — $9.74/hr. Put the two together, and I end up in some rather interesting financial binds. Rent is coming up, bills are late…ack. Pfft. Grrr. Things are starting to get back on track — I got that 3-week (though only 40 hours) paycheck, and now things should start coming in on time, plus I’ve gotten my first paycheck from helping out around the apartment building, and I got my security deposit refund from the old apartment, so I’m getting things back on track, it’s just made for a lot of stress.

I’m still pretty worried about the pay, though. This just isn’t enough for me to make it without a lot of difficulties and eventual restructuring if things don’t get better quickly. The work around the building is helping — I get $10/hr for that — but I can only put in a maximum of 20 hours a week for that. Still, it’s better than nothing.

The whole thing’s been worrying me, though. A year ago when I was still in Anchorage and working for GCI I was making $14.65/hr, plus $6.85/hr a few hours a week at Suncoast, and paying a third of all the rent and bills for a huge apartment in Turnagain. Now, sure, I escaped from Anchorage to live in Seattle — but now I’m making just a little more than half of what I was, and paying more than half of what I was. By going from Andersen to Microsoft, my income has dropped by about $300/month, while my expenses jumped by about $60-$80/month in bus fare to get back and forth to and from Redmond. Ouch. The entire thing’s got me a little paranoid that I might run out of money — and I’d hate to make it this close to a full year down here and then get so broke I have to head back to Anchorage.

That would suck. A lot. :( Hopefully it won’t get to that point, though.

There are some bright points. The extra money from helping out here at the apartment building is going to come in very handy. Also, the people at Todays know that $9.74/hr is well below what I’m worth, so they got the manager at my current posting to agree to a 30 day evaluation to see if we can bump my pay rate up. I’m not sure how easy that will be when it took 3 weeks to get my first paycheck worked out, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. However, it will have to be a pretty decent jump to make keeping the posting worthwhile…and though I like the place I’m at, am having fun with the work, and enjoy the people there, if it’s not paying my bills, I’m going to have to ask for something different.

Ah, well. Things are definitely tight, but I’m not broke yet. I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. Just keeping my fingers crossed until then.

In other news, life goes on fairly much as normal. Candice’s mom was down here for the weekend, so they were out doing mom/daughter things for a much of the weekend while I was working around the building. We did get the three of us together for lunch on Saturday and some wandering around the Pike Place Market, and for church on Sunday at a small Lutheran church that Candice has started going to (with me on occasion) close to downtown. The weekend was gorgeous, too — spring is certainly giving way to summer, and at the moment, we’ve got clear skies and no forecast of rain anytime soon. Sunshine everywhere, 70-some degree temperatures — definitely something I can deal with! :)

Basically, life goes on, pros and cons, ups and downs. I’m sure it’ll all work out eventually. It’s just not always fun when it’s in the process.

This is mostly just me being silly — I wanted to grab a chance to make a post to my blog from within the Microsoft domain. ;)

I’ll get back and put some actual content up soon, I promise.

Well, here’s some early morning excitement. Apparently the apartment building next door to me is on fire. Sirens got my attention, and I just counted 6 fire engines, 2 Fire Dept. blazers, a FD van, and an ambulance all around here right now. Only one engine is down by the building, and I can’t see any flames, so I guess things aren’t too bad, though they are running hoses into the building. I’m trying to snap some pics, if they come out at all decently I’ll get them up.

(3:11) Another van just showed up…along with a news crew.

(3:15) Looks like things must be getting under control…some of the firemen are packing up, the newsperson is wandering away, and some of the generators have been shut down. There’s still hoses running into the building, though.

(3:56) Well, things seem to have calmed down. Maybe I’ll get to sleep again now.

Well, after a whole week and a half of being unemployed, I start work again tomorrow! I’ll be working at the Xerox printshop on the Microsoft campus, the same place that I worked two days at last Friday and Saturday. I guess they liked me!

As I mentioned a few days ago, Today’s was able to put me in a short 2 day post. The printshop is on the Microsoft campus out in Redmond, so it’s a bit of a commute, but a little research with the Seattle Metro Trip Planner and I had my bus schedule down pat. I left my apartment at about 12:30, walked up a few blocks, and caught a bus out to the bus depot in Redmond.

At that point, things got a little dicey. One of the downsides to the trip planner is that when you need to walk somewhere to your next stop, it gives you the directions ‘WALK 0.2 MILES NORTH’ or some such. Thing is, silly me, I’d forgotten my compass (of course, I don’t actually have a compass, but hey…), and in my attempt to find my next bus stop, I walked the wrong way. I didn’t know this, however, until I got on the bus and started watching the street signs — and realized that the numbers were counting the wrong direction!

Oops.

The driver let me hop off, I walked back to the bus depot, and started walking the correct direction…and suddenly realized that I could see one of the buildings I’d been told to look for! Apparently all that second bus would have done was take me across the bridge over the highway, which I was in the midst of doing already. Well, cool enough — from there on, it was a fairly short walk to the building I was looking for, and I made it on time.

As soon as I walked in, I was pretty sure that this would be a print shop that would be fun to work in. The room is huge, and it’s got tons of cool toys to play with! One side of the room is the bindery area (cutting, binding, packing, etc.). The other side of the room had me practically drooling…(and yes, the following will mean very little to anyone who hasn’t worked in printshops before)…one DocuTech 135, five Docutech 6180‘s (all with BookletMaker extentions), one DigiPath workstation, one DocuColor 2060, plus four smaller color machines that I didn’t catch the model numbers for, and an oversize color printer. Yikes! Very cool. :D

I didn’t get to play with any of the big toys while I was there, though — I’d been called in to help out in the bindery area with a couple big jobs that they had in. Apparently I was a hit, though — when I first told Karen, the evening shift supervisor, that I had quite a few years of prior printshop experience, she was thrilled to get someone that she wouldn’t have to train. Then, throughout the night, I kept surprising her when I was done with something and looking for more to do. Saturday there was a different shift supervisor coming off the afternoon shift, but two hours after I’d gotten there, she’d declared that they were keeping me, and by the end of the night, Karen was slipping a note under the boss’s (boss’?) door to see what they could do to hire me on, as they’ve got one person leaving at the end of this week.

Yesterday I passed this all on to Terri and Sally at Today’s, and they said they’d be sure to get ahold of the powers that be at Xerox and see what they had to say about the weekend. This morning, then, I get a call from Terri, who tells me that I should show up at the printshop tomorrow at 2pm, ready to go! I guess I made the right impressions with the right people, as I’m now confirmed for a long-term posting (so now, rather than working for Today’s for Xerox for Andersen, I’ll be working for Today’s for Xerox for Microsoft…funny how this all works).

There are a couple caveats to the situation, of course.

It looks like I’ll be working Monday to Friday, 2pm-10:30pm. On the one hand, this is great, as I tend to enjoy evening schedules, and I’ll still have my weekends free — however, the bus jaunt is only really simple on the way out, by the time I’m coming back into town I’m well past peak bus time, and will be getting back home at around 1am each day. Candice has said that she’ll be able to give me rides some of the time, though, which should help out.

The biggest downside is that the starting pay rate is a whole whopping $9.74/hr. However, this also goes to show some of why I really like going through Today’s — as they were setting this all up, they did mention to Xerox that with the experience I have, I should be worth more than that, and managed to confirm a performance review after 30 days to see about getting the pay scale bumped up closer to what I’d like to be getting! I’ve gotta say, I’m am nothing but thrilled with the service I’ve gotten going through Today’s.

So that’s the big news. Pretty cool, I’d say. The next month might be a bit tight on funds, since my pay rate just dropped by $2/hr, and because of that I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to make the trip up this summer to see James and Stacy get married, but at least I have income again, and it’s not completely out of the question. Just gotta cross my fingers and see what happens!