Gack!

What would James Bond do?

OK - so not to harp on the eyeball issue, but it's irritating the living crap out of me. It's getting WORSE. I don't know how long to wait before I cave in & go see the eyeball doctor (excuse me - the vitreoretinal surgeon). The thing is - as I've been told time & again, along with every piece of information I've read - they are just going to send me home & tell me to wait it out. Suck it up you big baby! You'll be fine! Quit your whining and grow up.

Growl.

I've done NOTHING for school for 3 days. Oh, wait. I did read my Crim Law. Aside from that. nothing. And it's 3:30 on Sunday. I just have zero desire to do anything right now. I'm getting so excited about quitting work. I dread having to go to St. Louis this week. I really don't want to go. I want to stay home & maybe have those days off to work on my paper. I really think that it is work along with all the other stressors that I've added over the past month that contributed to my eyeball issue. I keep reminding myself that I'm going to be leaving really shortly - at the end of this week is a payday and after that I only have ONE pay-period left at Farmers Insurance Group. Then I'm DONE.

So many people ask me how I can just up & leave my job, then take off around the world. I want to ask them how can you NOT? Given this opportunity, would you shy away and not do it? I'm always going to have student loan debt - whether I do this or not. I'm certain that clerking for the United Nations won't exactly HURT my resume - presumably it might even help a wee bit. How could you NOT take the chance that you mind find what it is that you're looking for out there - if you were in my shoes, you know you would. I've earned it. This is mine. Maybe I'll be tired, or lonely, or scared. But it's all overshadowed by the wonder, the excitement, the experience. What else is there? To have lived and tried, or to die and never go?

You can't make me!

Since I'm a BIG WHINY BABY - I am not going to have the angiogram done today. This is why:
1) It is being done ONLY to confirm the diagnosis, not actually to diagnose. They are "90% certain" that my condition is CSR.
2) There is no subsequent treatment even after they confirm the diagnosis. The treatment is "wait and watch." In rare cases they seal the leak with a laser, but that is in severe cases & they prefer "wait and watch" first to see if it dissapates on it's own first.
3) I'm having a panic attack over it. They have to dilate my eye & that inevitably makes me pass out which then makes me sick (thank you vasovagal). I can't handle that stress this close to having surgery. Don't try to reason with me - it's like trying to reason with someone who is afraid of flying by telling them it is safer than driving - they don't care.

I am so at the end of my work rope. Yesterday sucked & today is not much better...and oh, it's 8:12 AM?? Just being here makes me crabby. My basic job function makes me crabby. The instant I leave the office, it's all hunky dory - weekends are great, everyone's happy. Then I come back to the office and ROAR!!! It's that I'm tired, I'm stressed, finals are coming, I still really haven't had time to regroup after surgery (witness: Stress Blister in Eyeball), and I'm really sick of dealing with office politics. REALLY sick of it. I DON'T WANT TO BE "NICE!!"

Speaking of nice, I've decided that nice is bunk. One may be cordial, well mannered, kind, friendly, empathetic - you name it. But nice is what people tell you to be when you're being straight with them or short with them - it's what little girls & women are told to be, it's what little boys are told to be when they are hitting people. But nice isn't an expression of a genuine emotion or sincere showing of so-called niceness. It is done contrary to one's actual feelings at the time. As in "I hate her, but I'm being nice" or "He's driving me crazy, but I'm trying really hard to be nice to him." It's not genuine. So why are Minnesotans so PROUD of "Minnesota Nice"? It isn't even REAL. Grrrrr.

Excuse me, but I'm having a moment here...

Sometimes, when I am bored at work & surfing the internet, I run across stuff like this:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=458218

I get overwhelmed and elated when I think that I am actually going to see all these things with my own eyes - not just someone else's pictures. (This happens to be photos of the district I'll be living in in Vienna - in one of the pictures you actually see a road sign for the street I'll be living on) There really is no substitute. It's like trying to explain to someone what chocolate tastes like who has never had chocolate (doesn't taste like chicken.) You can give them an IDEA based on their subjective knowledge, but it's not the same until you try it. It's the most amazing feeling.

Today I'm trying really, really hard not to strangle people. I'm beyond fed up. Perhaps in order to save my poor stress blister belabored eyeball I'm going to have to move to a mountain hut, drink green tea and do yoga all day. Far from the maddening crowds. Otherwise, people at my office just routinely stress me out. I think I'm WAY too formal to be working at Farmers. It's not them, it is most certainly me - but that doesn't change that today I want to strangle people. So I'm trying to keep to myself. But the very idea that I actually only am coming to work for another 17 days (handed in my letter of resignation, effective April 30th, yesterday) is somewhat calming.

Mailed in my visa application to the Austrian Consulate in Chicago today. SO paranoid about mailing my passport anywhere, but it must be done. Hopefully they're all "sweet! Come spend all your American money & support our Austrian economy all you like for 6 months." Trust me, happy Austrian Consulate peeps - I HAVE to finish law school...I am certainly returning to the states after my stint in your fair country (for all that I think I AM going to fall in love with it) because my student loan debt says "you must finish law school and be a laywer."

Greetings from scenic Kansas City, MO!!!

I am here in scenic KC/MO for work. I've seen the Plaza shopping area & the inside of my hotel. Which I highly recommend by the way. Should you ever find yourself here, the Embassy Suites on 43rd is VERY nice. Their beds are SO comfy & their breakfast ROCKS. The meeting rooms seem really small, but we have a bazillion people crammed in them. But overall, I'm really impressed with them. Their cleaning staff is more respectful of my stuff than I am - I came back to my room to find all my toiletries prettily displayed on a white towel, all neat. I seem to remember leaving them in a jumble when I got ready this morning. So...kudos to the Embassy Suites KC/MO. Nice work! My only whiny-ness is I had to pay for my wireless internet. If coffee shops can give it to me gratis, one would think that an establishment like this would offer it as a service. Hurumph.

I'm a bit miserable having to be here...but at least I'm off claims for the week. So much of it is tailored to supervisors or CR's - none of it is specifically tailored to coordinators. Furthermore, knowing that I'm leaving makes it hard for me to be all "yeah team!" In fact, I think that they are treating us like junior high kids. Well...I guess if some of the people ACT like that, what can you expect. And the food is free, I'm not really spending any MONEY, plus I get overtime for the whacked meetings at night I have to go to. So that helps. Considering I spent $800 in Seattle last week (ugh), that's VERY good.

Ethical questions

I feel sometimes like my company places me in ethical quandaries. I'm a fiduciary agent for my company & I am responsible for making payments to our vendors on their behalf. However, I feel like they sometimes place arbitrary restrictions on those payments. For example, with our water mitigation program, each vendor must obtain pre-authorization for any work exceeding $2000. Often they'll get the authority, then require one extra day of work or need to add demo. This is emergency work, so it is not unusual to have these additional services occur on a weekend & they aren't able to contact me for authority. So the company wants me to not pay the vendor for the amount over the original authority. These are mutable, changeable chimeras of jobs - they aren't stagnant. Sometimes you can't always predict what is going to happen. I am of the opinion that if the new invoice is not grotesquely different (as in they are trying to abuse the system) and if the additional work is well supported by their final documentation they should be paid. We should not use our contract as a clobber to save $300. It is unethical. The authority request serves its purpose in theory, but in application there should be a degree of flexibility. If we fail to pay the extra $300, then is it really well supported? Am I really abiding by the company's motto of "paying what we owe"? I owe the vendor another $300 - it's valid. But you encourage me NOT to pay it because of a circumstance around which the vendor had little control. They are faced with the choice of not getting the job done right or not getting paid for the work that they are doing - what is in the customer's best interest?

I don't agree. I take a strong ethical objection to my being encouraged to withhold funds that are owed. I take objection to the fact that my files are "scored down" because of it. I believe that it is only right that we pay what is incurred if it is justified. I'm sure that someone here would tell me that I'm wrong, that I need to remember what the contract says. Yes - but there is such a thing as an abuse of power, and I have never actually been permitted to read the contract. We receive contract Cliffs Notes from Home Office. From our leader out there who can't spell and writes like a 6th grader. Great. Like I put a great deal of store in that information & the accuracy therein. If your grammar is THAT poor, I question your ability to logically interpret a contract. Perhaps I'm too erudite for this job, but that is the truth.