Band Changes

The link for the band will stay up for a little while more, even if I am no longer really with the band. They decided to go for a male singer in addition to Janice, to add more variety to their songlist. I was fairly unnecessary anyway, so I'm only going to sing with the band as a "guest appearance" at the block party in July. Should still be fun. Since the change, I miss going to band practice, but it's kind of a relief because I was anxious about what my role with the band was really going to be. So here's wishing them well in the future.

Work is going ok... on Friday a guy called me needing a ticket for a plane that was leaving in 20 minutes... that was stressful. I have no idea if the guy actually caught the flight or not, but he had a ticket issued before it left. My confidence in answering calls is slowly coming along, but I can easily be frustrated by what I still don't know. I try to stay calm, though, because I really annoy myself when I freak out about things.

The good thing about working till 7:30 is that the phones REALLY slow down, and plus I'm getting paid a shift differential of 10% for the time I work after 6:00. It's not much, but hey... it's more! :)

Vacation 2005

Today was an exciting day--I got all my vacation and personal days until the end of this year scheduled. I got a whole week in October off. So if anyone wants to take a trip in October, let me know. :) I was also able to snag a few random Fridays and I have Halloween off too, so we gotta find fun things to do. 'Cept now I'll miss out on whatever Halloween party will be thrown at work. Oh well. Right now I don't care.

Work, come home, sleep, get up and work again... so far that's what the 11:00-7:30 shift feels like. Today a guy at work asked me what made me get into travel, and I said without a moment's thought: "sheer craziness." After I explained a better answer, he said that I should be in leisure travel. I said maybe someday. I want to take a cruise. I want to see more of Europe. I want to do fun things, at least more fun than working in a call center. As a friend told me, this job is a stepping stone to that. I just have to stay focused on that fact and view all of this as temporary.

The Late Shift

Things at work are slowly, slowly getting better... I had a great morning today. All the calls I took before going to lunch were great. I was able to help them and I even did a whole exchange by myself (it wasn't that complicated though.. they could be a lot worse). Then, after lunch, at about 1:30, a guy called in with two tickets to exchange and it was a huge mess. I can't begin to tell you. It took the rest of my shift and even then some. I stayed more than an hour overtime just to straighten everything out. It was a nightmare. But now it's over. I can only hope I don't get anything like that again for a while...

Next week, I start working 11-7:30. How did I get stuck with such a lousy shift?? Well they had a list of schedules that they wanted us to take, and we all (by "we" I mean the new people in the training class) bid on our preferences. Seniority was decided first by whether or not you ever worked for this company in the past (which two of them did) and then by the last four digits of your social security number. And guess what: mine begins with a 9. I was at the smack bottom of the seniority pile. So that's how I got the lousy shift. So I'll have to find productive ways to use those mornings, to at least somewhat make up for the loss of my evenings and being able to go to happy hours and all that...

In other news, my sister and I are giving serious thought to getting another dog. With me not going to work until 11, and her getting off at 5, that's a smaller window of time to leave a little dog at home, so it would be a good puppy-training time. And we both miss having a little dog around. So we're thinking about it... more on that later if anything comes of it.