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01:08 - 18.11.05
Chillin
The day started out not too badly. I had decided, after the last cheque boondoggle, that I needed to take action to protect my most important mail. The store that I had my eye on for picking up coffee before catching the bus also doubles as a post office. I left home a bit early hoping that I could rent a P.O. box at the same time I incorporated the coffee run into my morning routine. First barrier was that the Post Office part didn't open until 7 am. The bus I now catch to the warehouse arrives between 7:05 and 7:15 am - with no predictability beyond that. Thought I'd gamble on it being late and picked up coffee and pens for work while I waited. The lady who ran the office was early, so she gave me the paperwork to fill out while I waited for the official opening time. She went and got her own coffee in the interim. The young clerk helping her did the data entry and I was out the door by 7:10. Not too bad, but too late to catch the new regular bus to go south. The next bus along arrivd five minutes later and was nearly empty by rush hour standards. Mmmmmm luxury transportation.

There has been sustained and deliberate damage to the bus shelters in this area lately, resulting in large piles of shattered glass greeting travellers who are at the stops first thing in the morning. The pile that appeared yesterday had been swept up and out of the way the day before, but that didn't stop a couple of teenage girls from deciding that the best place for it would be scattered all over the road in front of the shelter. They were taking about how exciting it would be to "watch tires pop, and vehicles skid". They seemed totally oblivious to the likelihood of a serious accident caused by their desire for some excitement at someone else's expense. Sometimes just standing as a witness to what someone else is doing is enough to stop the continuation of a behaviour or it provokes an attack on you, if all that is going on is a need for a fight. I stepped from beside the shelter to where I was in direct line of sight with them. The one girl hadn't really been involved. She stopped even trying to appear interested immediately. The other one was very annoyed with me. She tried a couple of more times to shift more glass on to the roadway, but I made it clear that I was watching her actions deliberately. She knew that I could identify her if she caused harm to anyone or damage to property. Her response, once we got on our shared bus, was to try to be verbally insulting. Doesn't work though if the person who is the target (me) appears to be sleeping, does it? She turned her attention to one of the other adults, trying to provoke a fight with one of the men. Her parting shot to me was, as she saw my eyes flicker as the two left the bus, was to give a rendition of "Shakin'All Over" complete with hip movements as she left the bus. I guess that was a reference to trembling with fear, but I'm not certain whether that meant me or her. Whatever.

Work was very productive today. Still had to wear my coat for an hour or two but, again, whatever. The information I was assessing was so fascinating that I really wasn't paying attention to anything else. I noticed though, during the times that it got really cold, that the group of women who work at a station not far from me would disappear into the administrative area or the stacks. Maybe it is the company's practice to shut off the heat when their tasks take them elsewhere. Dont know. The one older gentleman who seems to be watching staff behaviour has always been quite pleasant to me in the mornings. We've had discussions about our favorite types of numeric puzzles, because that is what he does while he monitors staff time spent in the coffee room. Yesterday he was out behind my work area first thing in the morning sweeping up the debris from the work the day before. As I walked up to him he looked at the floor and said in an undertone, "I hate my job, this job". At the time I laughed and offered to sweep up around my own area but he just continued on. Today he was standing just outside my work area off and on all day. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it felt as though he had been told to watch for any flaws in my behaviour. That is irritating, but I have no control over what other people choose to do, do I. At one point it was as though I could feel a meeting going on between the staff from the warehouse and some people from the company I am assigned to right now. It also felt as though there was some intense discussion about whether I had been at fault and incited or co-operated somehow with the behaviour shown a couple of weeks ago. Pulled out my photo of the Dalai Lama and concentrated on the virtue of non-attachment. You know, choosing your behaviour based on your own understanding of ethics and "right mind", rather than worrying about other people's projections or actions. It is amazing how much that helped. Before: all this worry in my mind looking for a place to focus. After:stillness. That was very peaceful.

I had emailed the two supervisors around 9 am, letting them know I needed to leave the worksite earlier than normal, because Elections Canada has decided that some tasks have new urgency attached to them with all the fire and smoke in parliament these days. From being told that the workability of their computer assigned to me wasn't an issue, even though they insisted that getting in the tasks assigned was, it was changed to "We want it fixed immediately." I had been talking with the tech from the company with the local service contract, negotiating a time for her to come to my home. I had told Elections Canada that with the number of cats in the house, the amount of chaos caused by tearing up the inside and filling it with building material, the several boxes of personal documents sitting in the front room waiting for my youngest to shred and the fact that I hadn't been able to properly clean up for two months while trying to juggle the day work and the Elections Canada assignments, that there was no way I wanted a stranger to have to cope with what was in my home. I wanted just to pack up either the whole unit or just the hard drive and send it off to the depot at my own expense. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it was and the insistence that it be done, and now, peaked last night with that one memo. I consented to that young woman coming by my house today, but it had to be in the sequence of my schedule not ECs. Didn't quite work out that way and so I was asking for permission to leave about 45 minutes early so I could meet the tech at my house. I will not have her there in my absence. Fine. Don't know how that was taken by the two, but the second in command gave her consent when she called around noon. I had left a voicemail telling her about some strange stuff I found in a couple of boxes. I wanted to verify that the procedure I was using to document things was acceptable, because it lengthened the time on task for a single file. I didn't get the response I wanted, but I did get the one I expected. Not my call I guess, but that is why she called me. She said she and our supervisor had been in a meeting since 8:30 am and had just returned to the workplace. Hmmm. Wonder where they had been - the warehouse? I know "paranoia strikes deep".

Called a cab around 2:30. He arrived as I requested at 3 pm. Got home within half an hour, instead of the usual bus time of nearly an hour and a half. The cost of the cab was my own expense and it was steep of course. However, I didn't want to take even the time I had away from the day job given that an election call might finish off the contract prematurely any way. Remember it was set to end on December 31 originally and nothing more has been said about that. Given the events of the past couple of weeks, I don't believe it will be extended although, as the agency representative pointed out yesterday, I was being paid by the company to protect their best interests and not those of their supervisory staff. That may be so, but they are still the ones that make the hiring decisions. In that one Friday meeting the supervisor had said very clearly that "if I didn't do it the way I was told by her and the second in command then they would get someone else who would". Sounded like a threat to me, especially when it was linked to who I could or could not talk with, even given written instructions by senior staff here, let alone Texas. That being said, I don't want to add any more reasons to the list for why I am not going to be allowed to complete the project. Maybe that is just paranoia speaking and I am misreading the situation. Don't know. Between the chaos at work in my day job, the stress from the election work, the upheaval with the renovations, the trouble with the neighbours and the mess in the living room I thought I was finally going to check into one of those nice padded rooms last week.

When I arrived home, another twist on that theme as my cell phone rang while I was paying the cabbie. Missed the call. It was the tech who was supposed to come by to fix that urgent hardware problem. She had called the Elections Canada staff for some instructions she had to have before she could complete her work on my PC. They said they would get back to her yesterday. She was calling to say that even though she had called them several more times today that they would not answer her questions so that she had to cancel our appointment. Great. Out of pocket for the cab fare, lost wages into the bargain and another notch on the gun barrel if the two supervisors choose to go that route where my contract is concerned. Decided to change sand into a pearl, and rousted my son out of his reverie du jour. Since I was still in work mode, with some energy left at the end of the work day - a very rare phenomenon - I decided I was going to make as much headway as I could on the one factor I had any control over in the whole sorry affair - that being the messy house. Good choice, since it was discovered that the cats had decided that a couple of the boxes of paper waiting to be shredded would make great litter boxes. No wonder we couldn't get rid of that lovely scent of theirs. It's gone now - I think. Any way I'm tired now and the morning comes soon. Good night dear diary.

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