23:57 - 16.05.05
Roadrunner
Well I managed a whole day at work today. Progress. My supervisor had just returned from her conference, so she was trying to settle back in to the work routine as well. She seemed more concerned about my health and the possible election call than about the time I've missed. That was comforting. Some of the other staff were more worried that I might still be infectious and that's understandable too. A third of the records staff are contract,like me. That means we only get paid for the hours we are present at the job site. None of them can afford to lose time any more than me. The agency had dropped of my cheque on Friday, so I had sometihing in the bank account again. It's going to take a while to recover financially from the unpaid sick time but at least I had enough to manage on to this point. There were a lot of years in the past decade where that wasn't so.
The morning seemed long and my lungs hurt a lot, but I just ignored it. At this point, I think most of the discomfort comes from the fact I haven't really eaten much the past couple of weeks, so the body is feeling very fragile. This too shall pass. At lunch I popped over to the bank, then bought some Vietnamese salad rolls. Not very smart when money is so tight, but I had nothing in the house to bring for a meal. I needed something that would sit in my tummy and sustain me through the rest of the day. On the way in I stopped to chat with my supervisor a bit more and told her about a case involving intellectual property and IBM that highlights the reason the project I've been assigned needs to happen. I can't even guess how many boxes would be necessary to hold 900,000 sheets of paper (who actually counted them) or how much paying 400 staff for 4700+ hours, just to sift through all their files to find those pieces of paper, would cost but I bet it's a lot more than this company will be paying me to deal with their 20,000+ boxes of data.
When I arrived back at my desk, one of the other women sharing my work area was visiting with her brother. He and his wife just had their first baby and he was sharing the details. I popped my headphones on and started checking out different news sources, partly to give them some privacy, but also to see what was going on with the federal government. I had just found a story that stated that there would only be one more non-confidence vote opportunity - that is scheduled for this Thursday - rather than what has been threatened by the one opposition party for the past two months. Their original assertion was that they would keep harrying parliament until they forced one non-confidence motion through so that the minority government would fall. The story today quoted the opposition leader as saying that if the budget vote passed, then their party would cease their disruptive behaviour until the fall session of Parliament. I was just heaving a sigh of relief when the screen on my cell phone flashed. The caller was Elections Canada in Ottawa. Froze for a second, then took the call. The woman on the other end identified herself and then asked me to verify who I was. Then the pregnant pause. I waited thinking of the story I'd just read and saying some bad words to myself. Finally the other woman spoke and said that head office was just making certain all lines of communication were clear. Oi. At least by Thursday, if all parties stick to their commitments, we will know one way or another what our schedule will be for the next three months. Right now that seems like an infinite stretch of time. On a more positive note this story about Kuwaiti women being given the right to vote was good news.
In the news Mother Nature was PMSing again in the north of Canada and Alaska. This story of a muskox baby was frustrating and this one about polar bears was sad. This one about tropical bird sightings was just really curious. Then there are the dangers faced by humans floods and fire. Too bad one can't be used to cancel out the other. The last story was out of Winnipeg where wrestling with one's conscience takes on a whole new meaning. Of course Calgary is where the current WWF got it's start when I was still very small, so it's nothing new to us. I still remember watching the original Mr Hart hamming it up with a whole cast of bizarre and colourful characters. Kind of like watching the Roadrunner/Wiley Coyote cartoons in the flesh I think. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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