Ash the Mighty

Or Third Shift.  Whatever.

Yes, yes, you heard correctly, I once again have found myself confined to the lightless realms of third shift.  What did I do to earn myself this punishment, you ask?  Nothing bad!  I swear!

In fact, I guess you could say in a way that I asked for it.  I applied to be a Lead for my department.  While I’ve held that position title before at GD, it was on the floor and was just a stepping stone on the road to being a Supervisor, in this department (where there are no actual Supervisors), it actually fills that role.

SO, I once again find myself in a situation wherein I am responsible for the productivity of others and am answering questions, etc.  It’s interesting, that’s for certain.  It is taking me a bit of time to get used to making decisions for others again (as opposed to only having to be answerable to myself, which was nice).

I will also tell you for free that I’m not adjusting as well to third shift again as I usually do.  At first I thought that it was just that I had spent so little time on First and I had been so burned out that I wasn’t truly RESTED, but now I’m concerned that there may be a health issue or something.  I’m actually manning up and facing my White Coat Syndrome and will be going to the doctor tomorrow morning after work to get some tests run so that I can establish what the hell (if anything) is wrong with me.  Wish me luck.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got.  Sorry it took so long to write and I do not at all promise to write more frequently, since nobody reads this anyway.

~A.

Yealp. That’s right. I, against all my better judgement, am on my final week as a light, darkness inhabiting, caffeine swilling, graveyard shift worker. Starting on Sunday I will be changing shifts from effectively Tuesday through Saturday, Late to Early; to Sunday through Thursday, Early to Mid.

This is not something I’m really cut out for generally, but let’s be honest here . . . it’s time. I’ve been on third shift for well over a year now THIS time around (I’ve even done it before), and while me being on this shift has happily not prevented me from advancing (twice now), I still feel like I’m not exactly under the nose of my bosses. I’m also not learning as much as I know I could be if I was in a busier shift.

Plus there’s the whole “no longer sleeping thing.” Yeah, it’s getting ugly. Just today I considered calling in late just to sleep some more, since I didn’t manage to get to sleep until ENTIRELY too late. This would of course have been bad, because we at least TRY to be responsible adults around here. By we of course I mean the Royal “we” because I have naturally gone THAT insane. Naturally.

At this point I’m just rambling, so I’ll say farewell. Wish me luck on my voyage with that acursed Day Star.

~A.

So you may have noticed that I was gone.

Oh. No? Not at all? Not even a little bit? Well that’s somewhat disappointing.

Well I’ve been gone for a while. Trust me on this. The reason? Well, the reasons have in fact been oh so many. One of the main ones is that I had found myself a really truly wonderful girlfriend who I enjoyed spending time with so much that I didn’t really feel like blogging all that much. Plus there’s the fact that her parents seemed to be a little on the overtly curious side in the “we’re going to stalk and/or hire a PI to investigate you” kind of way, and so not only did I not feel like blogging, the more observant among you may have noticed that my old blog was taken down.

But I’m back. Alas this is not because I have reached an accord with said lovely lady’s parents, but instead because she and I have parted company. Those of you who run across this blog are probably already aware of this, but it wasn’t exactly my idea and I’m utterly heartbroken by the fact . . . but to be honest at this point I really should be getting used to it. Just time to put up some walls again, up the cynicism levels once more, and spend some time bitching online!

So LOTS has actually changed in the few months since I wrote, and I can’t really get in to all of it. At least not in the first entry. But suffice to say that I’m alive, I’m still gainfully employed, though erratically scheduled, and I greatly look forward to irritating you all with my Idle Ramblings once again, in a whole new and fresh blog environment (yes, yes, for the record I am once again moving venues. I’m shifting away from LiveJournal, which I’ve not made good use of for years, and have just installed a version of WordPress on my server. Possibly a bit dangerous, but I was getting EVER so irritated with LJ, so we just all have to deal, don’t we?).

Hope you are all well and I look forward to hearing from you soon . . .

~A.

So I finished that training that I was working on. Mostly. I actually ended up having to go home early on Friday ill (thanks a lot, sweetie. The girlie passed on a little post-nasal thing she had. What a giver!). I then turned around and went back in at 8:30 on Saturday night and have worked through the weekend doing 11 hours shifts with one hour lunches. Let me tell you, it is rough. Not like work in the hot sun doing labour kind of rough, but still. And of course the fact that the closest thing I’ve had to a break has been going home early with a head cold doesn’t really help.

That said however, it’s all over now! I’m off of work until technically the 26th of June 19th of June (not so much with the math), though I may come in and do a day of work on the 15th. As I mentioned, I’ll be making my bi-annual pilgrimage to our neighbours to the north(east) for to deliver one Jaguar, visit with the Meggan, and pay truly ridiculous amounts of money to huff and puff around the Colorado Renaissance Festival. This year, a variation on the theme is that my good friend Michael Turney will be coming along and we will be dressing up as Archie and Reggie. Colorado will truly never know what hit them. Especially since we won’t be participants and so we will no longer have to PRETEND to be rich and drunk. We’ll just have to pretend to be rich!

That’s just about me for this one. I’m going to post this before I fall over asleep on my keyboard and I just end up posting a long line of bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb’s

Take care of yourselves (and each other),
~Ash.

I have been schooled to the fact that it has been a revolting amount of time since I’ve updated this thing, and seeing as it is the only forum which even resembles a semi-permanent record of my thoughts and what’s going on in my life (twitter isn’t exactly permanent, and I’ve not even been updating that recently), I really should be a good boy and stop letting, oh, two and a half freaking months pass between posts!

So, Things That Have Happened . . .

. . . Well, during the intervening months and a bit I have continued to work in the same position at GD and only just recently got a promotion BACK to where I was originally hired on (though this time I should be getting a pay hike as the position is now technically higher). I’m in fact currently working the day shift in order to get trained in a refresher course for the gig before heading back to third shift power (which is just lovely).

I have also during the intervening time begun dating a truly amazing young woman who I cherish. You know how gun shy I can be about jinxing things so I’m not gonna name names, and as usual there is drama involved (honestly who would I be if there wasn’t at least some drama involved in my life, both love and otherwise), but for this girl, I would happily put up with any amount of troubles! ***and it should be pointed out that this post was full of typos until she came back and nagged me to fix them. Is it bad that I’m totally turned on by dating an ultra-literate?!?***

Other than that, the Ash really does just abide. I’m leaving next week for a couple of days in Colorado as per usual around this time of year. After that, it’s right back to work where I’m gonna try to not get fired or do something REALLY crazy like, you know, work.

Take care everyone,
~Ash.

P.S. She keeps threatening to bite me. Should I be worried? Ow. See?

Random Stuff in Passing . . .

Well, I’m still alive. Those that follow me in Twitter are probably more aware of this than they are comfortable with as I update that on a frighteningly regular basis. What can I say? It’s a lot easier to “blog” when you’re limited to 140 characters. My life has been rather insane recently, and while there’s been very little that has been truly momentous that has occurred, there’s certainly been enough to keep me busy . . .

FAIRE is “in season” which means that I’ve given over my weekends, such as they are (more on that in a moment) to dressing up in a variety of ever-escalatingly environmentally inappropriate clothing to entertain visitors to the Arizona Renaissance Festival. When I returned from grad school all that I really had from my old costumes was my much-worn kilt, which while warm, could be worn in such a way as to minimize the heat. Then came the velvet doublet. Then our new Entertainment Director decided my doublet needed sleeves. THEN I decided I wanted to try being a Musketeer. Do you KNOW what a Musketeer wears?!? THREE LAYERS OF BLACK VELVET!!! (Photos) In short, the heat has made me functionally retarded. But at least I’ve had company as my brain has been fried in the person of Michael, the giant ape standing there with me in those photos. He’s a very old friend, since pretty much my first year at Faire 15 or so years ago, and we happily split our time between wandering around complaining about these young whipper snappers who don’t do anything right and hitting on the female whipper snappers who don’t do anything right.

Hey, they’ve gotta learn the hard lessons somewhere. May as well be from us.

PHOTOGRAPHY has continued to be a passion and is becoming a possible revenue stream/future profession. I try not to think along those lines too much however. Doing what you love as a job always seems to translate into learning to hate what you love, so I’m kinda holding back. That said, I’ve continued to develop BlackHole Photography.com and have added gigs and gigs of photos to it, including some of a celebrity who I’d say at least classifies as B List ranking (Chris Noth of Sex in the City/Law and Order [IMDB]). This weekend I’ll be helping to photograph my cousin Adam’s wedding, which will be all new and exciting.

WORK has been, well, work. In a moment of likely ill-conceived impetuousness, I agreed to go back to 3rd shift. The department needed it for all sorts of reasons, and I rather wanted some peace and quiet and to be on a shift that wouldn’t have me jerked around all the freaking time. This was about a month ago and it is indeed what I got. I still have not entirely adjusted to the schedule, but that is at least partially because of Faire. Hopefully once the season is over and things settle down a bit I’ll be able to really get used to things and get my life back into something resembling order, even if it is at the opposite end of everyone else’s order.

And finally, my LOVE LIFE has pretty much been chaos. I’m not going to say anything more than that because, well, my grans read this stuff. Hi Bama, hi Gigi! The rest of you pervs can use your imagination.

And that’s just about me. At least all I can think of. Hope you’re all well and I’ll try to talk to you soon . . .

Lovies,
~Ash.

Long(ish) Time

At least since I’ve made a proper blog post. I’ve been Twittering like a madman. It’s just entirely too easy to jot off a quick note about something I find amooozing and then boom, yer done. Alas, the lasting record of it is not there however. Which makes for a sad Ash. I do so like the last record. History geek coming out.

And SPEAKING of history geek, yes, the Arizona Renaissance Festival has once again taken over Arizona/my brain/my life. We just finished the second weekend and despite low turnout (this will be the year to go, folks!), it’s been a lot of fun. My costume has continued to grow and mutate. The blue doublet now has sleeves and I wear a very froufy white shirt along with my normal tights and my new Windwalker boots. In short, Lord Archibald “Archie” Agincourt, the Earl of Bath is even more of a fop than ever before. That said, I’ve only been Archie for two of the four days I’ve been out. The second day of the Faire, Michael and I went as the Musketeers Aramis and Porthos, respectively. While we didn’t have women exactly falling all over themselves to get to us, this may have been at least partly because there was no one there . . . the rain fell hard and fast that day and the air was cold. We were just fine however. Those black tabards with captain’s coats underneath — all in velvet — really do the job in keeping the heat in!

Then yesterday (was it two days ago now?) I was asked by our Entertainment Director to come out in my civvies (plain clothes) with Roxy to take photos of all the participants at the Faire (up to and including the Medieaval Baebes). I did so, and while it wasn’t nearly as much fun and easily just as exhausting, I still got quite a few decent pictures which I’ve already posted at BlackHole Photography in the AZ Rennies section. Enjoy, just don’t steal without giving credit. And REALLY don’t go making a profit on other people’s work/image. Not cool to me or them. There, that’s done. Moving on.

Last bit of news, really. I was in one of my boss’ office last week just talking and somehow the topic of my shift came up. Again. Then the topic of another rep’s shift came up. Turns out this rep, who I’ve known for a long while, has been really unhappy stuck on third shift and wants off. They asked me to take his spot as I get along with most people and I put up decent numbers. I thought about it for a while, but when it really comes down to it, while I’m not happy on third, this guy is actively unhappy there and if I can help him out, the least I could do is give the guy a reprieve . . .

So if you’re wondering why the weirdly rambling and very chatting posting, that’s why. It was my first day on third last night and I am . . . punchy, to say the least.

We do what we can.

~Ash.

Killing Time

Effing anything other than tidy my flat. I’ve got random remnants from unknown numbers of holidays scattered about the place, including gift bags, stocking stuffers that I don’t know what to do with, and of course the obligatory dirty clothes on the ground and clean clothes on elevated surfaces (that’s how you know they’re clean!).

Well, things are changing. We’ve had a . . . management reshuffling . . . at work. My immediate boss is no longer with the company, and they’ve promoted a guy that I’ve known for a while, though not well, to take his place. It’s certainly an unexpected, though definitely not an unwelcome change. It means that we actually work a bit harder because, well, this new boss actually knows about tech and so is a bit more on the ball with things, but that’s OK. It also means that I’ve had my schedule shifted slightly to an hour earlier each day (so now I work 6am to 2:30pm), but I’m actually rather OK with that because it means I’ll miss a LOT of traffic on my way in to work. The only problem is that this new boss was unaware of the previous conversations I had had with the old boss about Faire coming up and my absolute need for a Monday through Friday schedule for the months of February and March. He’s aware now . . . let’s see if he does anything about it (as I was promised from my very first effing interview!!).

Other than that, life pretty much continues. I welcomed New Year with a whimper rather than a bang. I was so ill I ended up begging off all three of the NYE parties that I was invited to. I was awake for the ball drop, but only by dint of my alarm clock. I had fallen asleep in my nice and comfy new Tempur-Pedic bed (ahhhhh).

Faire also is coming up, which has me all sorts of excited. My doublet is currently with a gorgeous young woman named Liz who is working away at adding sleeves to it, per our new costume requirements. Things could be worse, I could be required to get an entirely new costume as some people were. Unfortunately, the third member of our party has decided that she’s too good for Faire this year, and so has dropped out. Yes, my sister Carrie will not be participating this year, so instead it will just be Michael and me. Eh, it’s all good. She kept being that irritating voice of . . . oh, what do you call that . . . oh yes, conscience. We don’t need those. Bah.

OK, enough time killed. Must away. Be well, everyone.

~A.

P.S. Pictures from Christmas posted under the Personal Galleries section of BlackHole Photography.com. And I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but I put Vegas pictures up there too.

Blargh.

I have PlagueFlu. I am a sniffly and coughy and just generally disgusting mess. I’ve been this way all weekend, and today I tried to go to work and was sent home by my boss’s boss (who I was supposed to have a 1 on 1 with today) because I sounded like the Spectre of Death out of some sort of bad horror film. Yes, I sound that terrifically awful.

So now 1 on 1 has been rescheduled and I am waiting for sheets to be done drying (I had put them in the washer before leaving for work) so I can go back to my lovely new bed. DID I MENTION NEW BED?!? Tempur-Pedic Classic (low end but still awesomely awesome), which takes a bit of getting used to but I’m already sleeping soooo much better than I have in years!

WHY WON’T THE STUPID SHEETS FINISH DRYING!?!?! I just wanna sleeeeeeeeeep . . . . . . . .

~A.

For those about to rock . . .

FIRE!!!

Last night I went to see one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen in my no-longer-quite-so-short life. AC/DC more than proved that even though they are well past what most would consider the age at which they should hang up their guitars and retire, they are still mother-fucking ROCKING. Something I have to admit I find amusing is that when this show was announced and the admittedly steep ticket price was revealed (a biscuit shy of a c-note a piece), I got no end of crap from almost everyone I knew for immediately buying tickets. Walking around today with my new AC/DC lanyard, I was stopped both in work and at the convenience store by both friends and random strangers asking about the show and lamenting the fact that they couldn’t get the tickets. The thing had sold out. How cool is that?

So this post is incredibly short and kinda random because said show of course let out rather late and was in downtown Phoenix. After I dropped off my date to the show and then got myself on home and in bed, it was nigh on one in the morning, and seeing as I have to have my carcass up at five in order to do battle with that beast called traffic in order to be at work on time, it is rather shocking that I’m even conscious at this point.

In unrelated news, I’ve got quite a few things coming up which will be a nice little fill to my time. My company’s holiday party is this weekend and it promises to be . . . an event. It certainly was last year. Last year the “mystery band” turned out to be the Gin Blossoms. This year, it is “two legendary rock bands” as well as a “famous comedian.” Who knows. I just hope I actually win something this time around. It would be a nice change for once. Then on Wednesday is my birthday and I’ll be celebrating it the following weekend by jetting up to Vegas for a few days. It’ll be nice to get away. No real plans. Just intoxication and gambling. More of the former as I am lacking a primary component for the latter.

And that’s about me for now. Take care everyone.

~Ash.