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Two very good things going on; I landed in the final round of interviews for a job at an events company which does not even involve a pay cut (!!!), and I'm going to see the Barenaked Ladies next week.  Super exciting.  I'll keep everyone posted, think good thoughts on my behalf, please.  I'd really like a new job; as much as I'm enjoying the temp office, there doesn't seem to be a permanant position open here, and I miss knowing I'll have a job to go to every day.

Today I delved back into the wild and (sometimes) wonderful world of temporary employment.  I'm working in the Investor Relations department at a small finance firm.  So far so good; most of the guys were out of the office for at least part of the day, and one did not come in at all, but I met most of the team and they seem like nice guys, low key considering.  I find it kind of amusing that I've heard Investor Relations described as the personable types (majority female) that let the nerdy money guys do what they do, but I'm working for 5 guys and only 1 woman.  It's a straight temp placement, so I'll be moving along in a couple of weeks and then we'll see how the next place is.

The last two weeks, I've been cleaning my apartment from top to bottom, and going on lots of interviews; mostly for placement agencies, but I went to a couple for actual jobs that so far haven't turned into anything.  We'll see.  I'm sure that my best chance of finding another job is temp-to-perm; I've found a couple of jobs that way, and with the economy being still kind of in the tank, it stands to reason that companies want to get a better idea of how you actually work before extending benefits, etc.  Luckily I am in a flexible field being an admin, so as long as I find the right fit I will get a job.  People always need assistants.  

The bad thing about searching now vs. my last job search is that the type of position I want, combining some assistant work with Office Operations type work, seems to be very scarce.  Also, last time I interviewed for a couple of straight Office Manager positions but I didn't feel I was ready for that.  Now I feel ready, but the jobs aren't there.  One of the recruiters said that the back-office people are being cut more often because those departments don't bring in money, and positions are being combined.  Which leads me into the realization that many OM positions have been folded into HR, and I don't actually want to work in HR.  Nor do I really want to work in straight facilities management, although some of those jobs still seem to be around.  

Pretty soon, I'm going to have to decide what I want to really do in terms of a corporate career; if I want to go the Executive Assistant route and scrap all of that Operations work I like doing so much, or move into a different industry so that I can keep on with the OM plan.  I've also been looking into doing the Event Planning career change I wanted to do 2 years ago, but those jobs are even more scarce than they were then, and the pay scale is different so it would be a step backwards.  I do understand that you often need to take a step back when you change careers, but that doesn't mean I'm eager to do it.  It all bears a lot more thinking over.

Seriously.  And I am wearing a tweed skirt and a wool sweater!  True, it was supposed to be 65 F outside today, but I think it is colder than that in here!

I switched over my closet to cooler-weather clothes yesterday.  It took about six hours to complete the transition, and the pile of clothes to give away to charity, offer to friends, and throw away covered my entire bed!  I had a serious power nap before dinner.

Went Christmas shopping on Saturday, and got some cute things for my niece, and a purse for my sister-in-law, but didn't find anything else for anyone else.  I also went to look at an apartment, which I wasn't that impressed by.  I'm going to look at another one Wednesday after work, so we'll see what that is like.

Not much going on at the office today, so I am goofing off a bit.

Bosslady, who just came back from a week-long vacation with her family, just found out her stepdaughter is positive for H1N1 (Swine Flu).  Welcome to a week of paranoia and fear until she finds out if she's sick. Also, she won't be able to come to work for the rest of the week, and we'll have to get the cleaning service to disinfect the entire office.

I've been ducking going to a meeting about planning a bigger meeting for 2 days, because I didn't feel prepared and I have a ton of other things to do.  They finally caught me on the phone today, and asked me to start all my research over again.  There are more hotel visits in my future, I have the nasty suspicion.

Then, bosslady has been wacky.  Which is par for the course, especially after she's been out for a few days, but...Seriously, she's wacky even above her normal level of wackiness.  And bossman is taking advantage of any excuse he can find to duck the office, so all of his bills are piling up.  Not to mention the research project he had me do, then waited 2 days to tell me his project was cancelled and I could stop researching now.

And, seriously, lets not even talk about umbrellas.

I'm going to stop and take some deep breaths right now.  Otherwise, I'll just upset myself.

It is unreal how much I have done today, with literally almost no interference or direction from either of my primary supervisors.  And my desks look like the drawers vomited all over the top of it, so I'd better go take care of that, pretty quick.

Happy New Year!  It's a little late, but I have been thinking of you all.

So, I went to DC for the New Year.  It was interesting; I made the decision so late, then had travel delays, and I'm pretty sure I screwed up several people's plans...Totally worth it, though.  There was dinner at a friend's house on Thursday, and game night on Friday, in addition to a very nice New Year's party, and an okay brunch the following morning.

Came home late Saturday to find that my parents were having family over Sunday.  It was nice yet strange to see my Dad's cousin and his wife.  Cousin looks so much like my Dad; more than my uncle does, so that's a little odd.  And, I haven't seen them in so long, they now are retired and have three grandchildren. I don't think any of their kids were even married the last time I saw them.

Came back to work yesterday and immediately had to jump into moving issues again.  This time, they're even letting me mess with the floor plans!  I know, I'm a little scared, too.  With my luck, I'll have people sitting in hallways or something.

So, guess who forgot to charge her laptop last night, and then had to sit on the train this morning twiddling her thumbs.  Yup, that was me.  I usually carry the laptop charger with me, so I can plug it in wherever I go, but I didn't have it this morning for some reason, so I couldn't charge on the train or plug it in under my desk when I got here.  Depending on the moving insanity today, I might run over to the Apple store and get another to keep in my desk.  I keep an extra cell charger here, no reason not to have one for the computer.

Bored, bored, bored...Boredboredboredbored.

*whines pitifully*

Also, the bosslady left early Mon w/ sickness, was out Tuesday, left early today.  Bossman left early Tuesday to head for Europe, out the rest of the week traveling to other offices.  Which means I am a target for more possible illness, and at the mercy of the rest of the company in trying to pick up some of the slack.

Also, there may be no Spuffy fic in the entire universe I have not already read.  Blah.  And my own is giving me a headache.

In a final bit of whining, today is one of those days when I hate being female.  Because, obviously the universe hates me.

Our copier has been jamming a lot (and not in the fun, reggae way, either) lately.  This causes two major problems for me.  One, I copy thousands of pages of phone bills every month, and the jams make the entire process longer and more ridiculous than it needs to be.  Two, the copier is right behind my desk, so if it jams for anyone else, there end up being people milling around behind me, checking out what's on my desk (which is often confidential) as they whine and try to fix the copier.  Then I get pressed into service as Junior Copier Repair Gal.

The copier service tech comes in twice a week to 'make sure the machine is operating optimally'.  Yeah, that's a massive fail.  So, I spend lots of time describing to this guy what has gone wrong with the machine since I last saw him, and learning how to fix it.

Today, when the repair guy stopped by, he told me he discussed some of our copier woes with another technician.  The response he got was "The copier isn't at it's best when it copies anything other than 8 1/2" by 11".  Tell her to stop copying so many off-sized pages."

Yeah, umm, why don't I just call the phone company and tell them they have to change their paper size because my copier doesn't like their little papers. I'll get right on that.