the deep moans round with many voices

I think I have enough emotional distance to talk about this now.

So.

On Monday morning, I received a call from the temp agency saying that my contract with the health garage had been terminated effective immediately. ( The agency supervisor did not know the reason for the termination... )

Things done today:

1. Dropped off book donation
2. Dropped off clothes donation
3. Emptied a bunch of stuff into compost
4. Took out trash
5. Watered plants
6. Continued to tidy junk in apartment
7. Scheduled civil service exam for next week (part of a LONG job application process)

(I really, really want the job in question. It sounds like easy work for which I am well-qualified, and it pays a good $10,000 more per year than I have ever earned in my life. Also, health insurance.)

Anyway, my parents should arrive at about 4-4:30pm, by which time I will be at work. Vicky and Aunt Cara will arrive separate at some point after that; Vicky will set up in my front room, and Aunt Cara will set up at her motel. They will all go together to the restaurant where we have a 7:45pm reservation. I will walk there after work and meet them.

Wednesday is for vineyard touring, and then my family does... something... while I'm at work for four hours. Thursday is Thanksgiving, obviously. (The health garage is duly closed and I have the day off.) And Friday Aunt Cara leaves early, while the rest of us may do a family breakfast before Mom, Dad, and Vicky hit the road and I head in to work early because some of the other front office staff took an extra vacation day and I was offered the option of covering for them. (Which neatly compensates for losing Thursday's hours/pay, so of course I said yes.)

Yay holidays?

(During the cleaning/tidying process, I have looked into boxes I'd forgotten I owned, and wow, there are some BIG decluttering opportunities waiting for me once I have my apartment to myself again. *rubs hands in anticipation*)

1. I think I'm doing pretty well in my tax course so far. I got 90% on the first quiz (would've been 100% but I counted dependents instead of exemptions and forgot you can exempt yourself, whoops) and 100% on the first graded review. I have also not had any problems with the software, aside from the known practice environment glitches, and have played around a little to see what making random changes in the case studies' givens will do. In a few cases this has gotten downright weird since I've been messing around with credits and deductions we haven't yet reached in the textbook, but hey, what's the point of a safe play-space if you're afraid to break stuff?

2. I have two prompt!ficlets left to write, and am willing to accept more prompts until October 1 if anyone is still interested. This round has been almost entirely Homestuck, Naruto, and Narnia, but I am more than happy to write in other fandoms if you have an idea you want to see.

3. I may be dogsitting Dottie from late October through the first week and a half of November. Watch this space.

4. My dentist called me today and said it's about the time I usually have an autumn appointment, and would I like to schedule one? I haven't been to the dentist since a year and a half ago, I think, because I've been unemployed and dentists are expensive. I am apparently prone to cavities, though, so I probably should go and even get X-rayed... but X-rays are even more expensive than a basic checkup and cleaning... *weighs options, reaches no conclusion, tables the issue until next week*

5. I will be picking up some extra hours at the health garage next week when another of the front office staff goes on vacation. Yay money!

In other health garage news, we were supposed to switch over to a new computer program today, but implementation was delayed because of various issues. This is not the first time implementation has been delayed; apparently the program in question was originally meant to go live this past spring. O_o

The switch will make part of my job simpler by rendering it irrelevant, but it will make other parts a lot more complicated, because among other issues, the new program does not have any way for the front office to access clients' financial information. Do they have a copay? Do they use a sliding fee scale? Do they owe us a back balance? Who knows! We sure won't! (We do have a kludgy workaround involving manually updated tables in Word documents, but that is a gigantic pain in the neck and I am not looking forward to it. I really hope that issue gets addressed and fixed before implementation actually happens.)

6. Yesterday was Porchfest. As always, Downstairs Neighbor S volunteered our house as one of the stages, so I got to listen to some nice jazz while I took a nap after church. Later in the afternoon I went to hear Boss Lady and her band play a few blocks down my street, and caught up with Sweetheart who was also there to listen.

Porchfest has been getting bigger every year, and this year my church got in on it! We moved Sundae Sunday (which celebrates the invention of the ice cream sundae -- in Ithaca, in 1892, by Unitarians! -- and is an annual church event) from the first day of fall services to the 27th and served ice cream sundaes to anyone who walked past. We also had three musical acts on the porch of the parish house. So that was fun. :D

Ha, a third NFE story edited! *collapses*

I do enjoy editing -- it's an interesting change of pace from writing and just reading for fun -- but it takes a lot of concentration to do properly. Judging the line between "I think this reads awkwardly and should be rephrased" and "you must write passage X this way instead" is particularly tricky. I tend to rewrite shorter passages while noting that these are only suggested rephrasings (and often explaining the reason I made the change), whereas with long and complicated things I'm more likely to leave a note to the effect of, "Hey, I had problem Y while reading passage X and I think making a change of type Z would help resolve the issue." (And then of course sometimes I do rewrite long and complicate things -- maybe even several paragraphs in a row -- though in those cases I always leave an accompanying explanatory note. These are not hard and fast rules.)

It's always easier to edit in person, where you can just verbally explain to the writer what the problem with passage X is and offer several suggestions for how to solve it. In writing, I find that I tend to offer only one suggested solution, because writing out three variations is way too time-consuming. (I learned that lesson in high school, when I edited a research paper for my ex-boyfriend and my edits ran six pages long for a three-page paper. He was still laughing about that years later. *headdesk*)

Tuesday evening I will edit my own fic, which is both easier and harder than editing someone else's. Easier because I don't have to worry about explaining myself (nor worry about hurting anyone's feelings), and harder because one main point of editing is to shine a light into the writer's blind spots, and you can't exactly see your own blind spots. You have to work them out by inference and extrapolation from other people's past feedback. Anyway, once I've done a preliminary pass-through, I'm going to send the story to Vicky, who can see my blind spots and who knows she doesn't need to be nice when pointing them out. Sisters are useful that way. :D

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In other news, I was offered four extra hours at the health garage on Thursday. I have accepted them. Yay work! Yay money!

In my experience, first days of new jobs are exhausting, even if one doesn't outwardly seem to do much. Paying attention and trying to learn a thousand things at once takes a lot of energy!

I think I have a good handle on, let's say, thirty percent of what I will be doing; a rough handle on another fifty percent; and as for the remaining twenty percent, I at least know enough to be aware of what I don't know and still need to learn. I wouldn't want to be left alone for another couple shifts, but the tasks themselves are straightforward (aside from, you know, the inherent messiness of dealing with humans) so they shouldn't take too long to get down. And there are a bunch of cheat sheets around the front office... actually, possibly more cheat sheets than is strictly helpful, because I'm not sure I remember where all of them are. *wry*

I also need to get a set of keys to the building. I must remember to ask about that tomorrow.