Ash the Mighty

Kauai’i!

Aloha!

Oh come on. You had to know I’d start with that. Well here we are, about half way through our little vacation, and we’re having a FANTASTIC time! It really has been amazing. The flight was just as miserable as anyone who is afraid to fly and has shoulders the size of Atlas could ask for, but that was over with relatively quickly and when we got here we rented two cars. I’m driving a (relatively) sporty red Grand Am, and my Dad is in a granny-car Impala. Surely the Gods are pleased with me. Not too pleased however because They then gave me Mom as a navigator. We tried to go to Duke’s for a quick drink which is in Lihue, the town which has the airport, and yet somehow we ended up in Kapa’a which is almost a third of the way around the island in the wrong direction. This is not as bad as it sounds however, as it turns out that the entire Island of Kaua’i is about 552 square miles. To put it in perspective, Metropolitan Phoenix only is 517 square miles.

Anyway. We figured it out eventually and drinkies were had. We then made it to the hotel which is pretty much at 12 noon on the clock which is Kaua’i. Monday was a beach day, so we went to Princeville Resort (which was once part of Club Med back in the day) and hung on their beach. Oceans that are warm enough to swim in are awesome when it’s been well over half a decade. We have all been a little anal about sunscreen so nobody got too badly burned, though Amy has an interesting pattern on her shoulder where Nate must’ve just kindof given it a swipe.

Then yesterday was an all effing day tour of the island. It was interesting and all but it was in a big van with about 15 people and it was just entirely too long. That said, I currently have, minus about 200 images that I’m going to stitch into a panoramic, about 125 photos that you can view here. Feel free to browse at your leisure. These are all just from me and Bessie. They’re not counting what Amy and Nate and Mom and Dad have taken with their cameras MUCH LESS what Alanta has taken with Bessie Sr. or her point and click! In short, we’re are the slide show people from hell!

Today we’re staying close to the hotel and doing the pool thing. I’m back at the room to do the photos and to check my email which I’ve been doing compulsively all week. The reason? Because I interviewed two weeks ago for a new gig at GD and I was supposed to hear this week . . . and I just did! Yep, you heard it here first folks. I just got a new job as a Server Support (Jr. Admin) with GD. Yay me! Now I should really go tell the fam . . .

Have a great one, guys!

~A.

One more day!

One more day of my PIP (don’t get me started, but definitely a “WOOT!”-worthy item).

One more day of work before a whole week of vacation (spent in Hawaii no less!!).

One more day until the iPhone 3G comes out (which I will be [hopefully] getting!).

And finally (and most silly) . . . One more day until HellBoy II comes out! I’m probably one of about 15 people who saw the first one, but I thought it was freakin’ awesome (and Ron Pearlman is the most kick-ass gay man ever) so bring on more of the Big Red.

That is all.

~A.

I can’t catch a break.

I made it home OK from CO, but as was noted on my most recent post I managed to get myself pretty badly burned right before coming home. In addition to that lovely physical ailment, I’ve also found myself suffering from migraines with distressing frequency recently. A few months ago Doc Grainger put me on a wonderous drug called Topamax, which is great for reducing the frequency and intensity of migraines but is pretty awful with the side effects (which are legion and can be upsetting including tingling/numbing in extremities, a predilection for making snap decisions, and a tendency for most people to suffer from short and long term memory . . . reshuffling. Not quite loss, but it takes a LONG time to remember stuff).

So this morning I woke up to go to work with a pretty bad one but I thought I would be able to get through it. I then sat up and almost vomited. Literally. I went to get up to go to the bathroom and I think I might have lost conciousness. I was awake and then next thing I knew it was almost an hour later and I was kinda half on/half off my bed (and my side was cramped). Needless to say I called in sick despite having NO sick time available whatsoever. Sometimes is just doesn’t matter! Losing an hour of time has got to be one of the more distressing things to have happen, period. And this is coming from someone who has had a whole HOST of distressing things happen in the last few months!

Happily I’ve got an appointment with ol’ Doc Grainger already scheduled for this Friday (the dude is HARD to get in to see if you’ve not already scheduled an appointment), and I managed to last through the day mostly with the use of a dark room and a cool wash cloth on my forehead (sadly the leftover perk didn’t help at all. Stupid stubborn bitch of a migraine). The sad bit is I REALLY would like to get my butt into work. No one ever looks forward to going back to work after a nice vacation, but I really would like to get back to earning that bonus! Maybe I can convince the Doc that I need something stronger (preferably something that doesn’t make me quit my job this time, however . . .)

~A.

Hi ho, hi ho.

So after almost three full weeks of being off work, I’m finally headed back in. It would be nice to know what exactly was wrong with me, but the doc himself isn’t entirely certain so I’ll just have to adopt the same confident tone that he had and rattle off a suitably long series of medical words. Hey, if it works for doctors, lawyers, politicians, and archaeologists then it can work for me!

I AM pretty nervous about going in though. I’m a bit terrified of hitting the floor and then, well, hitting the floor. That I won’t be able to make it through a full ten hours of talking non-stop. Because lets face it, I’ve reached the point where I can (usually) carry on a normal conversation, but how many conversations do YOU have that last that long? And sure, there are pauses while on the phone, but you’d all be VERY surprised at how those don’t seem to add up to much when all you really want to do is have a moment to cough up a lung!

Who knows where this journey is going to end up that I’ve started myself down. Maybe if I can survive until after July then I can try and get my old job back. That would be pretty sweet! I just can’t exactly say “Hey, can I be a sup? Yeah, I’ll be gone for 12 days over the next two months, but that won’t be a problem will it? Oh, it will? Well tough, let me be a sup anyway.”

Babbling. Gotta get ready. Meh.

~Ash.

File this under “Huh”

Note to self: even when you work for the Interwebz, with some people you really DO just have to call them. Email just doesn’t work.

Good to know.

~Ash.

Hrmmm.

Does it strike ANYONE else as strange that my place of employment just tried to add me as a friend in facebook? I get that GD is constantly growing and that’s a huge part of why it’s gone from last place to first place in pretty much every market it competes in in record time, but isn’t one supposed to make at least a passing effort to keep the work and personal lives separate?

I think I’ll sit on that invite for a while. Or maybe make a new profile that they can invite me to (or else, god forbid, make a new profile that I have to invite everyone else to now).

In other news, THE SHAKESPEARE MARATHON STARTS IN 2 HOURS!!!! For those not in the know, go here. Be there or be a four-sided polygon with only right angles!! (I read too much Terry Pratchett)

~A.

I’m back.

Thaz right, I’m back. Good ol’ LiveJournal tells me that it’s been “over 21 weeks” (ie; 6 months) since I’ve made an entry. Nice! Well, during that time I was a Supervisor for GoDaddy, and seeing as my good friend Ashley had previously been fired as a sup for blogging, I decided it really wasn’t a good idea! Now however, I have initiated ALL SORTS of life changes and so no longer have to worry about such things!

First and foremost, I should really point out the much more important thing that Alanta and I broke up after about 2 years of dating. Things have been mostly cordial between the two of us and we’re both doing our absolute best to remain friends, though it is of course an ongoing effort. She’s an AMAZING woman, but we are looking for different things in life (the honest truth is that I don’t have the slightest damned clue what I’M looking for in life and should drag anyone along with me through the morass) and so decided things should really go the way they are.

And THEN, as if that weren’t enough, it turns out that Alanta was a huge source of support for me for dealing with the stresses of work, and so I ended up stepping down from being a supervisor. It actually can be a REALLY fun job and I really enjoyed the people I worked with, but I was just tired all the time, I had built up TONS of vacation time which you can never really use (because you’ve ALWAYS got a team to run) and I just wasn’t being as good a sup as I knew I could be, so I bailed. Now I find myself as a rep and, to be honest, BOOORRREEEEDDDDDD. After being a sup and having a different set of challenges every day, being a rep is one of the most boring jobs EVER. It’s the same stuff each and every day. If I have to create one more new account for someone I might actually scream.

So that’s what’s going on. Recently I’ve been hanging out with all sorts of new folks that are making life interesting. Some I’ve recently met, some I’ve known for a while but not hung out with a lot. Alex and Allie and Lokie and Mandy and Mandi, etc.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ALSO! Check out the SSC Shakespeare-athon!! It’s this weekend at the Tempe Marketplace District Stage. I’ll be performing small parts in Hamlet, Othello, and the Scottish Play all in a row starting at 5pm on Friday and then on Sunday at 9am I’ll be in Love’s Labour’s Lost! Alanta will be in Two Noble Kinsmen on Sunday afternoon at 2 and Amy (my lil sis) will be in Antony and Cleopatra on Monday night at 5! Come and see us all!

Stay chill everyone!!
~A.

OK, first off, yes, (mostly) moved in to the new flat with only minor difficulties. And these were of the nature of medical problems (second round of kidney stones) and lack of items I thought I still owned . . . but don’t. Which sucks.

So I’ve spent more money than I had planned. Which is not as much of an issue as it could have been for two reasons. One, my parent/grandmothers are helping me out muy a lot (for instance, Gigi bought me blinds/curtains for the entire flat, the cost of which made me pee a little in terror at the thought of paying for them myself). The other, I got word that the promotion (HOLY CRAP!) that I had been working towards for the better part of a year had finally happened.

So yes, I am now a Supervisor for GD. This comes with an eventual pay raise (they put new sups on a kind of probationary period at first) and a whole hell of a lot more stress, but I really can’t complain because it’s pretty much all I’ve been working on for months and months at this point. And if it makes a difference, the team they gave me is one of my old ones that I was a Floor Lead for, so at least I already know the team and they know me!

Not much else going. As I’ve not written a while, I’ll say that (obviously, from the comments left) Alanta and I are still dating and doing well. Snotface and Husband of Snotface are both doing fabulously as well and have each gotten promotions/new jobs themselves. Mom is working her ass off for SSC as usual and also as usual is on the perpetual edge of a nervous breakdown. Dad . . . well, Dad is the same. He works, he plays golf, he watches the DBacks . . . he’s just Dad.

To be honest I don’t really know how pretty much everyone else is doing because I don’t really get to talk or see them very often. Between working 3rd shift, buying the flat, moving IN to the flat, and generally being exhausted all the time, I’ve not been left with much social time (sorry!).

I hope everyone truly is doing OK!

Cheers,

~Ash.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

(*pant pant pant breathe*)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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So I have to always be putting up stuff related to Thermopylae, Sparta, and 300 in general.

So now for your viewing pleasure:

Funny, eh?

And in other news, I’ve applied for a supervisory position at GD. It’s not for the general floor but instead for a new department that we’re starting up that actually makes custom websites for the customers. I have NO IDEA if I have much of a chance, but here’s hoping nonetheless!

Slainte,

~Ash.

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