Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
I’ve been unemployed since January 6th. I’m one of those creative people which generally is a good thing, but it does have it’s downside. I always have something to do. I have no less than ten projects going at one time; whether it be painting, working on transferring or formatting my pictures, looking for a job, writing articles or posts and of course the every day things like cleaning. Cleaning by the way is as written, my last priority. Essentially being unemployed and always having something to do presents a problem. I enjoy being unemployed which obviously is something that my mortgage, electric and phone companies won’t accept to kindly.
The other unfortunate thing about having so much on my plate is that I find myself extremely contemplative. It difficult at times to decide what to do first. Of course, the job search should be a priority yet I find that I do that halfheartedly. I need a job to help pay the bills. I feel extremely guilty that Mike is the sole provider and that he is working as hard as he is to make ends meet. It’s that guilt that keeps me looking for a job, yet when I find a potential position I apply without enthusiasm.
The other downside to working is that it will hinder the sale of this house that we desperately want to sell. I need to fix things up and maintain it and be available to show it. And, why get a job if we’re leaving?
I am a believer. I know somewhere online I will find my niche and draw the income that we need to survive. As I continue my search, I contemplate!
Posted in A Day In My Life | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Well, we woke up Sunday looking forward to another day of relaxing. The plan was to totally “veg” on the couch, watch TV and movies and order in, my favorite meal, pizza. Mike had been pretty sick with a miserable cold for a week and a half so we figured relaxation would be the best thing for him. What is it that is said about the “best laid plans?”
I awoke around 8:00 a.m., quietly got out of bed and came downstairs to put up a pot of coffee. I turned on my laptop and proceeded to do whatever it is that we all do trying to keep up with the incessant emails and such. Having gone quickly through the emails I decided to start painting. Nine months ago we bought a portable school building to be used as a game room (another story) and the building has fourteen florescent lights. I am painting the fourteen lenses to look like stained glass. The reason that this is relevant to my story is that I put a light behind it as I am painting. As I was setting myself up with everything within my reach the AC / heating unit shut down with quite a bang. This was odd but I paid it no mind.
Ready to go, I hit the switch on the light which didn’t go on. Figuring it was the light bulb, I put a new bulb in. Again, it didn’t work so I tried one more bulb. Nothing. The next steps I took were to check the outlet, change the extension cord and run around the house like a madwoman trying to turn things on. Mind you all I really needed to do was to look at the microwave and observe the absence of the clock readout. Establishing now that the downstairs was without power, I ran upstairs to check there. Still no power which finally lead to my first of many calls to FPL (Florida Power & Light).
Upon calling FPL and doing the multi-button response system, I was informed that they were aware of the problem and a technician would be out to assess the problem. Just to make things clear, there were no storms, no hurricanes, no winds and the temperature outside hovered in the mid 30′s, a record low. With the temperature in the house dropping rapidly and no means of warming up, we waited. About one hour later I went through the routine and again called FPL to see if there were any updates. I received good news. A technician would be out and would fix the problem and we would have power back on around 2:30 in the afternoon. We bundled up and patiently waited and by 3 o’clock I was back on the phone. The new time was set to be 5:45, but miraculously the house lit up at 4:00. This was perfect, just in time for the temperatures to really drop with the evening coming. We ordered our pizza!
Well, obviously I wouldn’t be writing if it were all that simple. At 6:00 we would have sworn there was a poltergeist the way lights and appliance were going on and off and flickering and then we were in the dark again. The new information was that 137 people were out of electricity because of a problem with a main line and the latest update for repair was to be at 10:45. At this point we were getting envious of some of our neighbors as we listened to the sound of the incessant hum of their generators. Not much else that we could do other than cuddle and wait.
Mike decided he’d best be under the covers in order to avoid a further chill so he went to bed. I sat with my son, Scott under a blanket, by candlelight anticipating some indication that we would actually get warm nights sleep. By 11:30 p.m., I called again. FPL would have the problem resolved by the end of the day, “tomorrow“. Monday. I do understand that some things take time. I don’t understand how much money we have to keep feeding FPL in order for them to actually come up with a method of prevention or a viable solution to a power outage when the temperatures get cold. So frustrating, so cold, so uncomfortable through the night.
Monday morning we woke to mid 30′s temperatures again. Mike was going to work and for the first time ever, he looked forward to it as he would have heat in his vehicle. I, being currently out of work needed a plan of which I had none. In addition, having originally fended off catching Mike’s cold, now I was sick. My plan was to go to my sister-in-laws until evening to keep warm. What was it I said about the best laid plans? Mary, who normally doesn’t go into work, needed to go in Monday. I picked up my first of many cups of coffee for the day and headed home.
It seemed useless to keep calling FPL, but I made one token call only to receive the same info…the end of the day! I bundled myself and busied myself at one point realizing that it was warmer in the garage than in the house. I took 3 trips to the gas station to buy hot cups of coffee and took my time doing so as the heat in the car was amazingly comforting. As I straightened up in the garage, I listened to the neighbors complaining and when a FPL truck finally showed up around 2:30 I thought somebody would crucify the guys. At 4:00 the power was on.
It had been a long cold one and my phone hadn’t stopped ringing with concerns and offers. I let Mike know we were good to go and I returned all other phone calls, reassuring everyone that the drama was over. I turned on the heat, fired up my laptop, made myself a cup of tea and put my feet up to relax.
Still sitting in the same position at 7:00 I started noticing on my computer screen the reflection of the fluorescent light behind me; it was flickering. This occurred for a while on and off so I figured “better safe than sorry” and I called FPL this time pushing the buttons to eventually reach a live person. I explained that the lights were flickering, but we still had power and the response was that she would have a technician come back and assess the situation. No sooner did I hang up the phone when half the house went dark. It was at that moment that Mike walked in from work rolling his eyes as he came to the realization that we were still at the mercy of FPL.
Mike being a service technician is knowledgeable in a vast amount of technical situations and took it upon himself to check our electric lines coming into the house. His meter read 115 volts and considering it should have read 220 volts we obviously still had a problem. One “leg” was not working coming into the house and thankfully it was FPL’s responsibility and not ours. I made yet another phone call thinking it best to give the technician a heads up as to what he was dealing with. Upon calling I was finally connected to a person to whom I could explain the situation. I informed her that half of our electric had gone out and that we were only receiving limited voltage. Her rude response caught me totally off guard as she replied, “you should be happy that you have some power working, there are still people that don’t have any.” Not the right thing to say to a paying customer who has been without electricity for two days in record low temperatures. I simply hung up.
About one hour later a nice gentleman came to investigate our problem and Mike told him our current situation. He acknowledged the problem and told us that someone would be back before 12:30 p.m. to do the repair. We called again an hour after he left to make sure that the order was in and were told that the electric lines would be repaired by the end of the next day, Tuesday. Frustrated, tired and cold we retired for the second night in a row in mid 30 degree temperatures.
At 3:30 in the morning, Scott was knocking on our door. FPL was at the house; they hooked up a temporary power supply and would be back by the end of the day to do the repair. As long as we had heat and power we could wait. We were however only using one thing at a time that pulled 220 volts. When I turned on the stove, I turned off the heat and when I turned on the dryer, I turned off the stove and so on.
Well, about 8:15 p.m. Tuesday night, just as American Idol had started, the doorbell rang. So silly me I commented to Mike that I didn’t want them to work on it and shut down the power at that time. Yes, we enjoy American Idol because sadly enough watching people make fools of themselves is just about the only thing on TV that you can laugh about and laughter is good. Anyway, Mike answered the door to find the same nice gentleman that had come the night before. He was inquiring as to whether we had power. I guess my husband loves me because he told the man that we were fine and that we had no complaints because he didn’t want them working on the power. Now I ask you, if you had this huge power supply on the side of your house that the electric was running off of and you really weren’t sure if it was sufficient enough to maintain the essentials in your house, would you consider everything fine?
Now it’s Wednesday evening and I have no changes to report. We still have power and with it heat and no sign at all today of FPL. My assumption: American Idol starts again tonight at 8 o’clock. Wanna bet the doorbell rings at 8:15?
I’ll keep you informed.
Posted in Naming Names | 3 Comments »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
In most cases when a person is terminated they are either angry, upset or both. In my case, I don’t think that I could be more thankful. As crazy as that sounds, with the state of the economy and unemployment being what it is, anyone that has read my previous posts “Working for the Insane,” will surely understand.
Although, it was a pretty stupid thing to do on my part, I do believe that everything happens for a reason. What ultimately led to my termination was that I inadvertently left my personal email open when I left the office on Wednesday. Funny thing is that every day I completely close the internet for security and safety purposes. On this day I had been working on something very time consuming on the company website and since my boss was so conscience of my utilization of time I left the site open so that she would see what I was working on. Unbeknownst to me when I left, there was another tab open….my personal email.
Well, consequently and without my permission or the legal right to read through my emails she did. Emails being a personal thing often contain your thoughts and feelings, right? I’m no different than everyone else and my emails expressed much of my distaste for her and her mistreatment of those she dealt with. In other words, she had plenty of eye opening information to peruse.
Keeping in mind that I had no idea of my blunder on my way into work Thursday morning, I arrived at her house to find her oiling her door locks, which she had instructed me to do the day before. As I approached she asked me for the house key which I handed to her assuming that she was going to test the locks. She then looked at me and said, “you are being terminated.” Hmm, nice set up, very unexpected. I asked her if she was going to tell me why and she responded that she would email me. I said, “OK, thank you” and walked away. There have been very few instances in my life when I actually felt a weight being lifted off my shoulders, but this was one of them.
Still at that moment not fully understanding why I had been terminated, I called one of the girls I work with. She informed me that she had gotten an urgent early morning phone call that she need to be at the office for a personal discussion. This is when it dawned on me that she had read my emails and that moment was the only moment that I regretted my indiscretion. Involving a friend as unintentional as it was just isn’t a good thing.
On my way home I called Mike who congratulated me. I’m pretty sure he was at the end of his rope with my complaining everyday about my dealings with her. Throughout the day, everyone I spoke to also congratulated me. I’m pretty sure that this is a completely different response than most people get. I’m blessed to have people that care about me enough to be more concerned with my well-being than my net worth.
An couple hours after returning home I received an email with a list of reasons that I was terminated. This fabrication I found almost comical as nothing on the list was a viable enough excuse to terminate me for until she read my personal emails. In addition, the majority of the items referred to the emails themselves.
As a result, I’m in search of a job in a horrendous job market. As were previously just making ends meet with Mike’s salary and my measly one I can’t waste any time. So, if anyone out there in “Blogland” would like to hire a very well rounded person who could really use the income, you know where I am. To all others trying to stay afloat, tell us how you’re doing so we can wish you luck in any and all endeavors.
In the meantime, chin up, somethins’ gotta give, doesn’t it?
Posted in Do Unto Others | 2 Comments »
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
A must see video if you believe in America. Born Again American
Quoted from the website Born Again American
“Add Your Voice
“. . . I am my country’s keeper.” Are you inspired to recommit yourself to being an active, involved and thoughtful citizen—a Born Again American? Join almost 5 million Americans who have already watched our video, almost 200,000 who signed our Pledge and thousands more who contributed lyrics, personal pledges and messages. As our Pledge says, You Matter.“
Posted in This is What I Think | 2 Comments »
