schneefink | Entries tagged with work

Since the pandemic some important financial deadlines were pushed from September to December. It was definitely necessary at the time, since everyone was so busy with subsidies etc. that the September deadline was impossible, but I really hope that they'll change it back next year because having the busiest time of the year in December and especially between Christmas and New Year's is not fun. At least we have plenty of chocolate.

I got a fantastic Yuletide fic! Learning to Fly, Phoenotopia Awakening (gen, post-canon, 6k.) I'm especially honored that the author checked out the game because of my prompts. I'm not sure how well the story works without canon knowledge, you're definitely not going to get many of the jokes, but I'm still going to try and give a brief summary of what I think is necessary to understand it because it's a great fic and deserves more comments.

Spoiler for the entire PHOA game:

Most of the people of Gail's village were kidnapped by aliens. On her journey to find them again she meets Bart, a member of the Stellanites, humans who left Earth during the apocalypse a few centuries ago and joined the Galactic Federation. (Bart is still on his space ship, they can only talk through a golem head Gail found and carries around with her.) She also meets and frees Leo, a human prince who was kidnapped and probably tortured by alien mercenaries, and meets Lisa again, her best friend who avoided being kidnapped because she'd moved elsewhere. Bart warns them that the Astral Empire is planning to attack Earth and directs Gail to find a lost mythical weapon to defend the planet. Gail finds out that the "weapons" are actually genetically engineered super soldiers, called Phoenixes, that were put into hibernation after they played a part in the apocalypse, and also that Gail herself is a Phoenix. The first Phoenix the Stellanites manage to wake up is later called Zero by Bart, and he helps them defeat some alien mercenaries, called kobolds, that were also after the weapon. We find out that the Phoenixes help Earth repel the attack by the Astral Empire, but the Empire is still a threat, and Gail still plans to find her friends and family again.

I haven't had time to go through much of the collection yet, much less comment, but both fics for Steerswoman and Elemental Logic are great.

COVID-numbers in Austria are back to "very bad," what a surprise considering almost a third of the population is not fully vaccinated yet. Some stricter rules were introduced recently, people are encouraged to get booster shots after 6 months, and the mayor of Vienna has now said that there will be "2G" (genesen oder geimpft, recovered or vaccinated) rules in many places starting soon.

Several of my co-workers are not vaccinated. To be fair, two of them had COVID over half a year ago and recently had a test done that they still have antibodies and now don't understand why they should get vaccinated regardless. Another one has a chronic illness so I understood her initial hesitation half a year ago, but she refuses to even talk to her doctor about what they would advise. And it is so frustrating how they keep saying things that are just wrong. "It is everyone's personal decision that doesn't affect anyone else," that is not how it works. Or "a friend of a friend was fully vaccinated and still got COVID and had to go to the hospital, so clearly getting vaccinated doesn't really make a difference," uuugh. "These new restrictions are so outrageous, I'm amazed that there haven't been demonstrations," uh there have been many demonstrations how did you miss that. (That last one I don't really care about except to wonder where they get their news.) They keep reinforcing each other's views and I sometimes interrupt when it's something obviously wrong (and when they're speaking German) but I'm trying hard to hold back and be polite because I have to work with them every day. But. It is so frustrating. Arrrgh.
(I'm just glad there aren't any anti-vaxers in my family.)

Stressful day at work today. ( I'm responsible for financial aid applications and it often sucks. )

I passed both my exams this semester! One of them I expected, but the other, more important one not at all because I knew it would at best be close and I didn't want to get my hopes up, so I'm surprised and delighted and had ice cream and cookies to celebrate. Now there's only one major exam remaining! (And a few smaller ones.) I might be able to finish in only two more semesters after all? I so look forward to being done - classes are interesting, but coming home from the office and not having to do any studying (like right now because of the summer holidays) is so much more relaxing.

I currently work 30 hours/week: 6 hours each on five days (plus overtime.) On the one hand I'd planned to do more overtime than usual over the summer, so I can hopefully do fewer hours when classes start again; on the other hand I'm tempted to try out only going to the office for four days and having a three-day-weekend. I'd have to get used to longer work days and it'd be harder to do overtime, but a longer weekend would be nice...

In medical news, I've often had low iron in the past, but turns out that now I'm actually anemic (and even lower on vitamin D than usual.) Which, weirdly, kinda feels like good news, because this was a routine test and I thought my energy level were at my normal, so this should mean that once those things are fixed I should feel even better, right? I look forward to it. And in the meantime, taking iron supplements is a great reason to drink orange juice every morning. (My physician also told me to go to bed earlier, let's see how long the resolution lasts this time.)

Pretty sure it's a rule that the most stressful times at work and uni always have to coincide. Fun. I'm massively behind on everything, online (comments and reviews etc) and offline, but it'll work out somehow.

I visited my grandparents & extended family for a few days, it was nice and we had luck with the weather and went hiking, and the timing was additionally lucky because with the rise in COVID-19 numbers right now I'm not sure I'd go.

We also had our first indoor choir practice again, following recommended safety guidelines: a big room, all chairs 2m apart and you have to wear a mask when you're not sitting down, and every 20 minutes there's a break with the windows open. I really enjoyed singing again, but at the same time I'm not sure if it's worth it. Choir singing has never been a high-risk hobby before.

I'm working more hours than usual, i.e. more than I'd like, but in general work has been less stressful than I feared, also because we got another deadline extension but also because I'm managing to be more relaxed about things: if I don't manage to make all of my deadlines, that's bad but also not only my fault because we just have too much to do, and of course I'm struggling to finish my list if I constantly get extra work assigned. Right now uni is also very important (so I should be doing more for that…) Still, it's difficult to leave earlier when I know how many extra hours my colleagues are putting in. Fortunately they're understanding (though every once in a while I worry if that's just to my face.)

Today had a weird moment when our cleaning lady asked me if I have a boyfriend (there's only two people in our office not in a relationship and the other is recently divorced, which comes with the side effect that some of my colleagues like to read my "love horoscope" to me), then if I ever had one, and then asked me if I'm a virgin. I was so baffled that it took me a moment to figure out how to mostly politely tell her that it's none of her business.

Aand now I'm just procrastinating again.

I have a word document where I store notes for posts to make and then never get around to making them. I delete most, but I did want to note that after years of discussing ever December that actually we could make cookies in other months too (apart from chocolate chip cookies, they're different), this year for mother's day we finally did that and made unicorn-shaped lemon balm cookies and dragon-shaped lemon&lavender cookies. Well, when I say "we", I mean DD made those two and I made chocolate chip cookies. All were great and we should do that more often.

This week I'm back to working at the office and it's such a relief. More work, but it's much easier to do, and I can go home afterwards and mostly shut my brain off. Fortunately public transport is still half empty. It does mean I have to start ironing my clothes again, which is annoying. I also decided to change my nail polish from Christmas-glittery to normal dark blue glittery because I never wore nail polish at the office before, but I forgot that every other woman at the office is wearing much fancier nail polish, so I look forward to trying out more options in the future.

I decided not to do a big exam in June but instead in October, because it's one I want to study properly for and I have very little confidence in my ability to do that right now, but October looks to be very busy at work… I'll just have to take care to study during the summer as well.

There was more but I'm busy listening to more "Skyjacks" episodes, I'm having such a good time. I'm at episode 18 right now and I enjoy the entire crew a lot, and Gable is the best.

I'm getting used to working from home and it's actually going better than expected: yes I keep getting distracted by things and it's very annoying to only have my laptop with its small screen which leads to my posture being bad and that I can't print things etc., but I have my own desk in a different room and I set an alarm to make sure I drink enough and I have cookies.
But today the internet was so slow that I was thrown out of the connection every few minutes, and even when it worked everything took three times as long as usual, and it was frustrating >.< Hopefully it'll be better tomorrow. I have quite a few hours to make up from last month.

DD and I went for a short walk today - we're very lucky to live in an area where we can easily do that, broad sidewalks and not many people around but there is a lot of green – and just being able to walk for a short while felt great, instead of sitting all the time. I'm sure it was good for my eyes too, I currently spend even more time than usual looking at a screen.

And tomorrow is market day! The "market" here is two stalls outdoors, so even better for distancing than the supermarket. DD would prefer not to go grocery shopping every week, and strictly speaking we don't need to, but I forgot to get eggs and of course we have to have eggs on Easter Sunday. So we'll go to the market and get eggs and fresh fruit and vegetables, I don't think I've ever looked forward to going to the market this much.

I painted my nails again: bright green - dark red - green - red - green on my left, and dark red - dark blue - light blue - dark blue - dark red on my right. I also convinced DD to do hers and she made herself claws, with blood running from the tips (and on the right side she painted them black underneath), looks great.

This morning I was excited because Wednesday is a running day, this afternoon I was looking forward to it, this evening I thought that nah, I don't wanna have to get up and go outside and go running >.< Then I listened to "Go the Distance" from Hercules a few times and went anyway. :)

I'm staying longer at the office currently because I left early the last two weeks to have more time to study, so even though exams are over I still don't feel like I have time for much. Especially reading, and also commenting - how did I find so much time for that? I should be writing too, exchange fic and D&D session summaries, and there's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff to do... (Yes I could cut some of my "browse social media" time but I need at least some of that for my brain to settle down. Finding funny TMA posts on Tumblr, and sharing them with DD, is an excellent distraction from random anxiety.)

And I'm still sheltered from most of the stress at the office because I only started a few months ago, but I'll probably begin feeling it soon. It's still very interesting! At the moment for every thing I learn I realize that there are three other things I don't know and feel like I should, but that's probably normal. At least there's always plenty of chocolate. (My first workplace always had free fruit, the second one had apples, this one now always has chocolate and other sweets. It changes by the day if I prefer the first or the current option.)

- The first two days of the new job were very interesting, which is promising. My coworkers are nice too.
Four days of office work in a row is more than I've done in months and it was tiring. Next week it'll be five, and also classes start so it'll be even worse! But I can do this. I'll have to go to bed earlier (at the new job I start at 8am) and become more efficient with the free time I do have, which is a good idea anyway.

- We sang in the mass today, it was nice, and then our choir leader told me that I should sing first soprano from now on. !!! Singing soprano did get easier every week, and I enjoy it, but I feel like I'm still adjusting. It's good to know that he thinks I can do it though, and I look forward to trying.

- We finally have proper fall weather. We had 25° on October 1st, which is just perverse. And now not even a week later I'm tempted to turn on the heating in my room.

- Yuletide nominations are open: I'm nominating "The Inheritance Trilogy" and "Echoes of the Fall", but I'm still undecided on the third one.

- Our D&D party adopted! 19 rats and a kid. ( This will not end well. )

Me two weeks ago: like a year ago when I had the same job, I'll be able to listen to a lot of podcasts during work, it'll be fun :)
Me now: listens to similar music all the time because anything else takes too much extra brainspace. I think I listened to Pentatonix' Daft Punk about a hundred times.
I'm usually very tired when I get home, even though I "only" work five hours, but if I remember correctly I'll get used to it in time before the next semester. I got used to getting up early quickly, which was annoying on the weekend when I thought that I can use the opportunity to stay up late and sleep in and then just woke up at the same time and was tired the whole day.
Still, it's a good feeling to work and earn money again. Fingers crossed it'll be fine with classes at the same time.

I'm kind of… unsettled, maybe, though that's not quite the right word, by what happened in Chemnitz. Feels like I shouldn't be surprised and that is already a pretty bad sign. And then I read national political news again and it makes me sick; international news are bad all the time but at least it feels further away. Idk how people who are in more danger than me cope with it. And then I try to not think about it for a while again, because I'm not strong enough (yet, hopefully) to do more, and I'm glad I still have that luxury, and I read about people fighting for good because that is always there too.

( Health stuff )

I'll get a job offer in the next few days: the company where I worked last year wants me back for a few months because they need more people for a new project. It'd be part-time and I could easily schedule it around my classes, and it's not particularly stressful work so that's good too. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that they're likely (I'll only get their actual offer probably on Monday) offering less money than I want and think I'm worth, so I'll have to decide if I take the job regardless. Con: less money than I would likely get elsewhere, a job where I don't learn anything new. Pro: I could start immediately instead of however long it takes me to find another job, job applications suck, it's a good test of how many hours I can easily work while taking classes, and I always do better when I have an external structure. So I'll probably take the job anyway, fingers crossed the money will be ok. (It'll be fine for what I need in any case, but nothing extra.)

This weekend there's a family reunion on my father's side of the family, which I have little contact with. I'm a bit apprehensive because I don't know who exactly will be there, but almost certainly my aunt H, who I used to like a lot and see semi-regularly until we had a weird fight over three years ago and we haven't spoken since, and I don't know what if anything she told the rest of the family. But it's just for two nights and the worst thing that can realistically happen is that it's awkward the whole time, and I can deal with that. And the food will be excellent.

I don't dislike my job, but it's often boring. Fortunately during much of it I can listen to other stuff. During the first few months I listened to many many Critical Role episodes, but now I'm caught up, so I need something new. I've been trying a few different things.

- Political comedy. There are a few I enjoy watching/listening to, like Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, sometimes Trevor Noah. Is there something similar for European politics?, that could be fun.

- I tried other RPG videos or podcasts, but haven't been able to get into any. They all start pretty slow, so without recs from people whose taste I trust I'm unwilling to invest much time into it. (I heard good things about The Adventure Zone, but I'm not in the mood right now to listen to a men-only RPG.)

- Speaking of! Podcasts. I was looking for economics-focused podcasts and the vast majority of what I found was hosted by men. I found an article that said about 2/3rds of podcasts are hosted by men, that about fits what I saw and doesn't even take into account which topics the podcasts are about. DD and I wondered how much of that is because men are more used than women to people listening to whatever they say. I also still sometimes have to consciously train myself out of thinking that a woman's voice on the radio or on TV sounds "shrill" whenever she raises her voice and/or gets angry.
If anyone has recs for podcasts hosted by women, especially about economics and/or history, that would be welcome.

- I thought aboud podfic, but I usually get too frustrated by the fact that I know that I can read faster. Radio plays are different though. I was never that into WtNV, but I remembered that someone on DW (I forgot who) recced The Strange Case of Starship Iris. I liked it a lot, but unfortunately it only has 5 episodes and is currently on hiatus. Recs for radio plays would also be very welcome (but no horror, even though I think it's a genre that lends itself well to radio plays.)

- I also spent two days watching youtube videos about ancient battles. I now understand better why

dhampyresa is so fascinated by Hannibal and Scipio ^^ Unfortunately battle plans need to be watched and I rarely have time for that.

- I had the idea to listen to Russian language learning podcasts, I found out that there are a few. Unfortunately I realized that while podcasts are okay to remember words I already knew once (I used to speak Russian at B1+, but I'm severely out of practice), I can't learn new words from listening. If I don't see how they're spelled I forget them almost immediately, which is frustrating. Russian also takes more concentration to listen to, which I don't always have.

I also sometimes just listen to Disney soundtracks on a loop when I don't have much concentration to spare, or radio. (I never listened to Ö3 before, but 2-3 weeks ago I realized how little attention the constantly repeating pop songs require.) But that sometimes feels close to wasting time – which is ridiculous when I'm at work, but still. I could be learning things or listen to actual stories! Not the whole time though, I'll try to find a balance, and in the meantime I'll try out more stuff.

I wanted to make a post about how I was doing at my new job, and then I remembered that today at 5pm a guy from IT told us not to turn off our computers today because of an important update, and today at 6pm I left work and of course turned off my computer just like I always do. *facepalm* Great job, self. Have fun tomorrow morning.

Overall it's going well though. I think. It seems like every few days one of my bosses tells me of a silly mistake that I can't believe I made and reminds me not to do it again and it's very embarrassing. Fortunately triple redundancy is pretty much built into every step of the process, but still.

The people are nice though, I'm getting used to the hours, and I'm not bored yet. (I will eventually, but my contract only lasts until July anyway, and I'll start sending job applications again in May. Not looking forward to it.)

Last week was the first week of my new job. The job itself was fine: the people are nice, the work itself isn't the most exciting but not too boring (as I expected), and of course I'm still learning. (On Friday I had nothing to do the whole day because I finished all tasks early and had to wait for feedback, so for a while I felt like a bad employee before I reminded myself that it wasn't my "fault" I had nothing to do.)

But not only in the evenings, but also this weekend I had barely any energy left. I'm SO GLAD I don't live on my own. If left to my own devices I probably would have spent the entire weekend binge-watching Critical Role episodes (currently watching #66), but as it is on Saturday I at least met with my dad and LB for lunch and went for a walk, and I ate and had lunch with and started re-watching NiF with DD today. I'm convinced that it'll get better eventually though, hopefully soon. I knew there would be an adjustment period. Concentrating during eight hours of work and even waking up in the mornings actually went better than I feared, so that's good.

Last D&D session:( Kill the gods )

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/194220.html

The sky looked amazing today when I walked home. Bright summer blue on one side, intense sunset yellow on another, on another dark grey with red and purple hues and lightning bolts, and big pink and golden cloud towers almost above me. Beautiful.
Still no rain here, hopefully soon because the air is too humid.
ETA: Finally!

Work is over! Wednesday was my last day. Thursday and Friday I could practically feel my brain going down a few levels. Overall it was a good experience: the colleagues were nice, about half of the work was very interesting, I learned stuff, and I earned money. But I'm also glad that it's over.

Yesterday two friends and I spent about five hours customizing a "Munchkin" set as a birthday present for LK, with Doctor Who-themed cards among others. I hope he likes it! The birthday party is tomorrow. I was planning to make muffins today, but we don't have the ingredients so I'll have to see how much time I have tomorrow.
(After making the present I felt like a good friend for about an hour, until I remembered how I wished that ER had made less friends in the US because I'm jealous of the time she spends with them. >.<)

My parents came home from their two weeks of vacation, it was nice to see them again. I picked them up at the airport- by car, at night, no problems :) Though I'm glad I persuaded LB to come with me, otherwise it would have been very boring.

I want the hockey season to start again. I miss this stupid sport. Ugh.
(At least PK Subban got a good contract! Good for him and the Habs.)

I met L. again! The girl I went dancing with. (Sometimes I worry that in a few months I won't remember who's behind the initials, but I don't want to use full names because I'm worried my RL friends will find this blog. Not that they couldn't figure out most of the people anyway...) After a bit of confusion I now have her phone number :) We met for ice cream. This probably-wanting-to-date-someone thing is complicated, and I often feel awkward, but I'm pretty sure that's normal.

I have two weeks of vacation coming up! First a week at Attersee with friends from the debating society: the plan is quite chaotic so far, I don't know when or how I'll get there or what we'll do there etc., but I think it'll be fun.
And then choir week! I'm really looking forward to it: I couldn't go last summer, and I really missed it. It's going to be exhausting, I'm a bit afraid of that because I don't know how well I'll cope, but I think it's going to be fine.
The timing of this is a bit unfortunate, I have things to do in Vienna and after working a job I now think I'd be able to make good progress on my thesis, but I hope that'll keep until I get back. (For about a week, then I'll visit my grandparents. Summers are short.)

I should also be finishing my marvel_bang story... I'll probably have to try writing longhand again, let's see how that goes.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/90970.html

Through a friend of my father (because it´s nearly impossible any other way) I got a good summer job and the past two weeks I´ve been working. A real job! I´ll get paid money for it! :D

The downside first: It takes me nearly two hours to get there. One way. Which means I get up at 5:20 am and come home between 7 and 8 pm, completely exhausted and also melting. I´m so glad it´s only for one month. And I´m really really glad Austrian trains have working air conditioning.

The good things: It´s interesting! Very much so. I´m working in the Accounting department of an investment bank, and only one year ago I wouldn´t have understood anything. But now, after one year of university, I understand things! I ~~sometimes~~ often know what people are talking about, and it´s fascinating. I could tell you so many crazy and funny stories about things I heard that happened in the bank and the bills I´ve booked if I hadn´t signed that confidentiality agreement. It´s a whole different mindset. And I got infected, too: the first day I came home and said "I spent sixty thousand euros today;" my record for the day is 159 thousand, though that included lots of assets someone else did (there are always two people going over one accounting entry, but in those assets I wasn´t involved. Thankfully - that was one long and complicated posting!)

The people there are nice, too. There´s one guy who occasionally spends lunch break explaining his new economic theory to me (it´s really quite interesting, but I think it´s illusional to think it could ever be implemented in reality.) There´s a girl who looks like 17 and is 29, who gave me a box of chocolate for lending her my accounting textbooks; a woman who always wears clothes in one colour and her friend with the colourful necklaces who apparently know everyone in the bank; and rumours say the head of Audit came to work last week in shorts and flip flops. Office dress code means I have to wear skirts again, which I like. (Mostly, as in when it´s not half five in the morning and I have to pick a matched blouse.)

I´m only a tiny bit worried because the woman mostly in charge of giving me work took her holiday and I really hope I won´t be sitting around doing nothing, but I think there´ll be enough to do. Another upside is that I have less time to spend online (though I do ruin the progress at the weekends); in August I´ll have to go three weeks without internet access. It´ll be hard, but I can do it! (I can use the time to study for the stupid accounting and management control exam I failed very narrowly... I´m sure my practical experience will at least be motivational.)