01:00 - 06.09.06
penultimate
It was another very hot day today, dear diary. I will be so glad when it is possible to do more than just try to find coping mechanisms for that. I had planned to do a lot of walking this summer, but not in this heat.
I received a call from my youngest just after one in the pm. He said he was on his way home from work. Had one of those bad moments wondering why, before asking out loud what was wrong. Not sick nor let go - something that happens to temp workers frequently. It usually is when the worker is due for a wage increase or the benefits that they are entitled to being started. Cheaper to just turf them out and start with another disposable person is how a lot of employers think. Not this shop apparently. The shop he works in is a small unit, although it has world wide connections. He said one of the young men who had worked there since he was a teenager had been killed in one of the many long weekend accidents. He had just turned 25. Same age as number three son. Because the shop is so small all the staff who had been working there at the same time were very upset. My son said his supervisor's supervisor took it especially hard. They had wanted all the staff together on the first work day after his death (Sunday) to hear the news as a unit and not through the media. My youngest hadn't met the young man, because he had left the shop before he started. He felt very badly for the staff affected, but I don't think death holds much power for him yet.
We agreed we would meet at the grocery store, since it might be less busy in the early afternoon. Turned out that was a wrong assumption. It was quite busy, as a matter of fact. My youngest had reached there first and had already bought the cat's essentials and our dairy supplies. Got the the till not long after. The male in front of us seemed to be stalling as his order was put through. He kept asking the cashier about the security guards and the processes in place to protect against theft. I was feeling a bit edgy, but he finally went his way. There is always a reason for the direction a person's conversation takes, whether conscious or not. I didn't want to find out what reason that was on this particular day. The cashier is a long time employee, so we chatted about our children and family/work lives as my order was processed. I was still feeling a bit disconcerted about the last customer's behaviour and really wanted to just get out of there in case there was more to his queries than curiosity.
Back home the cats were ecstatic to have their "boy" back so early. They entered into some pretty entertaining antics to show their appreciation of his return. He wandered downstairs to work on homework with the troop in tow. I wrote an email to the museum I had visited last week to let them know how much we appreciated the tours we had been on and to praise the skill of our docent. Everybody needs to hear that they are appreciated once in a while. Got a call from my sister's sister in-law closer to suppertime. She wanted to let me know that the airline tickets she had been sent had been upgraded to first class. I guess the agency had decided that was a good way to apologize for the inconvenience and stress that had been caused by the first set going astray. She was thrilled, saying she had never travelled in luxury before. We talked a bit about family/work matters - both hers and mine. She had been looking at my astrology chart as well as following her own. The eclipse/full moon on Thursday lands on top of critical planets - although not the same ones for each of us. We are both finding it a bit stressful emotionally, because of "old business" stirred up for review as a result. A lot of mine goes back to dynamics in childhood that made me feel bad about myself. I am well aware some of those old tapes still play out unrecognized and unchallenged in my current circumstances and that repression of those feelings and beliefs about myself create unconscious self destructive behaviour. That feeling of being unworthy or resented. Repressed was how the sister-in-law read it. She is finding a lot of synchronicities opening some really exciting doors for her right now, but her fear is that soaring on those winds will result in a devastating crash down the road. How to stay balanced. Again old tapes playing of times past for her instead of seeing this as a new adventure opening up. The past has to be considered - those who forget history are bound to repeat it - but not be bound to it so tightly that ther is no moving forward on the spiral either. Balance is very difficult to achieve when everything is in flux.
I checked the Elections website today to see how my request for more hours to search for an office was moving along. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was hoping just once I wouldn't have to go through the circle game. Last time I reported the loss - in June - the response was I had to call head office for approval for more hours. Well guess what? This time I'm supposed to ask the local rep. I suppose I should just laugh off their inefficiencies and stupid game playing, but I'm the one who everyone will come down on if another election is called within the next couple of months. News stories have made it clear that there has been no improvement in the local vacancy rates and I don't expect that will change anytime soon. We were also supposed to have been provide with another assignment as of today, but even now there is nothing in the mail about it. I guess I just check again tomorrow. Shifting priorities or changing mandates might be the reason head office is waffling given the news lately. I haven't heard from my new tech either, so I am assuming he still hasn't been booked for training even though the sessions start in three weeks. Lucky we can all turn on a dime isn't it?
There were a lot of interesting technology stories today in various e-zines I receive. Telepathy isn't something I would expect as a topic, but there you are. This book that discusses what makes really good managers would be helpful to me. Maybe next time I see any income from the election work I can buy it. Next up was an article about the ways electronic data is stolen or sabotaged by staff. I've seen all these actions before, dear diary, as I've recorded in your electrons while working in the local industry here. What I was hoping to learn was what to do in my own election office with the security problems there. I have taken a couple of significant steps in dealing with the issue by involving outside resources. However,it is still what happens in the day to day actions of staff that will determine whether they can be stopped or not. I still wonder too if this article about smishing wasn't describing what happened with my elections cell phone last fall. There was certainly clear evidence of someone having tampered with it and there were transactions made on it while I was sitting with it turned off at my workstation. I don't know how to go about proving any of it, but at least I don't think I'm crazy anymore - at least with respect to what I observed during that time. The other bits that were interesting were the unknown parts of Robert Louis Stevenson's life. The best way to gain real insight into another country is to read their own newspapers you see. Or one can read Dave Barry's latest stories. Some of them left me gasping for air I was laughing so hard. Sometimes his upside down view of life is more accurate than most of us would like to admit. My youngest is just due back for his movie date - something about wicker cages - so I guess I'd better go see if his day ended better than it began. Good night dear diary.
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