21:42 - 10.08.05
Felix, Felicity
Happy Wednesday dear diary. I'm not certain why but it feels as though all the stress making things took a holiday this evening. Could just be my state of mind I guess. Too tired to obssess. Yesterday, I spent the ride in to work talking with one neighbour and one co-worker. since they didn't know each other I took the position of conversational catalyst. Fortunately it wasn't too hard. We all live in the same area, have children about the same ages and are all fussing over things to do with housing. Talked about decorating and renovations, commiserated about work conditions since both of them are doing a lot of vacation coverage for their co-workers too. Finding common groud I guess. When we got to my stop, the neighbour and I got off after saying good bye to my old coworker. As we stepped onto the platform one of the co-workers I had at the place I had to leave made a point of coming over just to acknowledge me. At a guess, she must have spoken with the one partner I had during the first of the three assignments to that particular company - the one I was writing about when I first started posting to you. That coworker I bumped into at lunch a few days ago, who I filled in on the details of the working conditions this last time. It seemed that the coworker at the platform just wanted to let me know she understood and accepted my reasons for walking away. That made me feel really good because she is one of the people whose respect matters to me.
At work yesterday we were told we had to attend a workshop to learn about the new suite of software that is replacing what we currently use. Apparently it has been necessary because of the new computers that some of the staff are receiving - Dells. Knowing the most up to date software is always a bonus in this industry. At the workshop we were treated to ice cream and cookies and there were giveaways and door prizes just for showing up. Have I mentioned how much I like this company. The perfumed coworker nicked one of the giveaway gifts even though they weren't supposed to be taken. At the end of the session she said she had been justified in her decision since she hadn't won any of the door prizes. Right. This mornin even better news arrived in the form of an email from the one trainer. A list of courses we could take to gain more knowledge of the software. Being a consultant it is unusual to be included in such training so I asked my supervisor for approval. She said I could take anything I wanted. Alright!
This morning was definitely a Mercury retrograde thing. Ms Kitty dive bombed me at about 5 in the am. Apparently she was losing the game of tag with a couple of her children and felt I would be a great intervenor on her behalf. Worked for her, but then I couldn't go back to sleep, of course. Decided to take my time getting ready for work. You guessed it. I took so much time, I watched my early bus pull away from the stop as I arrived at the corner. Ditto for the train when we arrived at the station. The woman in front of me actually had her hands on the buttons pushing for the doors to open, when the train pulled away frm the platform. I was five minutes late, so I guess that wasn't too bad in the end.
The electrician who knew about Fred the ghost was back in this afternoon. Same issue. Apparently what spooked him last go round was when he tried to pull the cable through the panel so he could reconfigure the phone lines properly. The cables seemed to all be stuck so he and the in-house expert removed the panel covering them in the utility room. All those cables had been knotted together so that htey had to disentangle everything first. Lucky it wasn't the fiber optics though. Whatever he fixed then still wasn't functioning the way it should so he was baaaa-ck.
Lots of qustions for the second in command with respect to coding today. We have a telemeeting scheduled with one of our counterparts in Texas next week so I want to have all my ducks in a row so that I don't waste her time. I've decided I don't like working with tax records. Too many nuances and interpretations with very little in the way of descriptors. It would even hae helped if the packers had included which level of government the taxation was pertinent to and had used real words instead of whole pages of acronyms from the Income Tax Act. Like every other piece of legislation it has been amended quarterly and those acronyms and form numbers change regularly. Multiply those changes over a decade and it can get really miserable to interpret. One almost had to have a copy of each year's version of both the Act and the forms just to have a chance of figuring out what is really in that box. Bleagh. Then there is all the legal nuances that have to be understood in order to select the correct taxonomy. Some of the companys listed changed configuration and ownership - not to mention names - several times iin the past decade. Because most of the companies in this industry are built around "business units" it means sometimes one business unit incorporated asa a free standing entity under the umbrella of the parent company can be divested the rebought then resold several times. Unless one knows the year and sometimes even the month of the documents in addition to having an intimate knowledge of the corporate history of each of the companys included it is very difficult to know for certain what coding should be applied. Vendor or partner. Business unit or subsidiary. I actually love doing those puzzles but they take a lot of time. Add in that the public information about those transactions can be somewhat inaccurate or downright wrong and it becomes something of a turkey shoot.
At the end of the day a voicemail from the banker with a message that sounds quite hopeful about the loan. Something my supervisor said earlier this afternoon leads me to think that he must have called her to verify the information in my resume. Don't really care as long as I can get my roof and fence up to speed before the snow flies. Then when I got home a mesage from one sister. I had asked her if she would mind calling some of the pet stores about taking on some of the kittens. Up until today the answers had all been "no" but today there as a yes. At least it sounds as though the woman at the one store is receptive to discussing taking some. At this pint in time that is progress. Hope it works out. Anyway time to go switch out the loads of laundry and then read to the cats. It appears they love Harry Potter too, not a muscle moves or an ear twitches when the story is being told. Oh wait that cat and witches thing right? They're probably all just looking for the most up to date styles in wizard/cat relationships. Sure whatever. Befor you get too sniffy there dear diary remember that Solomon and St Francis thought nothing of conversing with them either. Some cats are better conversationalists than most humans at that.
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