Journal entries from March '98 through mid-April '98

April 19, 1998 (later)

I had an astute journal reader (OK, so it was my mom *grin*) point out to me that another advantage of my strange job was that I don't have to take it home at night, and thus all my mental energy is free for writing. Too true, Mom!

April 19, 1998

Ok, I admit it... I barely know HTML. I know enough to make my website look reasonably presentable, and I know how to put in links, and pictures, and I know how to center text... but that's about the extent of my HTML knowledge. And this is going to sound dorky too, but I hate HTML editors. I've tried a couple and they've either been totally useless, or they've been too complicated for me to figure out. I have this big horkin' book that a friend of mine lent me called Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML, and I'm about to try and take another stab at figuring some of the more esoteric stuff out. It's silly, I know. I'm a smart girl. I even have a piece of paper (rolled up in a drawer, but that's beside the point) that says I Are Smart. I've done programming before, and taught myself software and computers and stuff, so why shouldn't I be able to figure this stuff out?

Thing is, I'm bored silly with my website and want to change things around. Problem is I know pretty much what I want and how I want it to look and operate, but I don't know *how* to do it, and that means I'm going to have to suck it up and force myself to sit down with the damn manual and teach myself how to do all this stuff.

I think I have too much free time.

In other news, my roommate and I continue on the great exercise regime. I've lost about 6 pounds, and an inch off of my hips. I'm also feeling much less soft. My calves have lost their padding of cellulite, though plenty remains on other protions of my anatomy. There's a dress that hangs in my closet, taunting me with it's non-fitting-ness. It's a gorgeous little black sheath type dress, that I bought on sale for $27 marked down from $85. At the time I bought it I *almost* fit into it. About 5 pounds less and it would have been perfect. Well, I had to buy it, since it was really cute and such a great deal. But then I never did lose those 5 pounds, and then I managed to plop another 30 on top of them.

I seem to be rambling today.. tonight? It's 1am, and I got out of work early. Only 51 more days until my vacation/leave of absence begins.

Since I'm on a rambling streak I might as well go with the flow. I got to thinking about my wierd-ass job tonight. Actually, I need to back up just a trifle and mention that I've been on a journal-reading spree lately. Anyway, a pretty fair number of people who have a web presence have what I am calling goal-jobs. That is, they go to work, and work toward something. They have a goal. They have projects. They have deadlines. They have teams or concepts or quality-assurance seminars. They *do* something, and as they continue in their job the job changes, grows, adjusts.

Mine doesn't. Well, other than internal restructuring and management reorganization. But basically it's the same thing every night. Go to work, sign in, check to see what pit you're in, get coffee, watch the clock, watch the tv, go upstairs at exactly quarter til the hour, relive the previous shift's pit boss, try and figure out what rating cards belong to which players, check the money, check the dealers, check to see if any racks need filling, stand in middle of pit and pretend to watch 6 games, assign dealers to tables, deal with whining players, deal with whining dealers, deal with whining pit bosses... oh wait, that's me.

It's not a bad job as jobs go, though there are days when it drives me completely buggy. The pay is what does it though. It's easy to put up with the unending bullshit when the money is this good. Sick, ain't it? I used to work as a data analyst, using my degree. When I went to work in the casino I doubled my income. It's about 2.5 times my old income now.

OK, I think I'm done now.

I still want to change my website though.

Yes, Diana filed an extension for her taxes...LOL

This morning I went with my roommate and bought in-line skates. I then discovered that I am extremely uncoordinated. *grin* By the second time around the block we were both doing better and neither of us fell down (though there were some close calls.) But I felt like I was 6 years old again, trying to learn how to skate all over again! On the plus side, though, it certainly is a workout. (Probably more so since we're both so bad at it...LOL)

I'm not patient enough to be a writer...LOL

I made some changes today to my website. Nothing major, just some cleanup and tightening up here and there. I fixed up the gaming page, and added the "Scenes from a casino in the middle of the night" page. There will certainly be additions to the latter as time goes by!

The shake-ups continue at my place of employment, but this time it was upper management that got "restructured." The Table Games manager and one of the Shift managers got the ax, and everyone else got shuffled around. This is somewhat good for me, though. I don't get my old job back, but I will get more scheduled floor time. Plus, my new boss told me that there's a very good chance I'll be able to get my old job back after I come back from my leave of absence. Here I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I'd be starting out at the bottom again. Things be looking up!

I went to Slidell to visit my folks today. I had lunch with my dad, and then we went to a local manufactured housing display and wandered around their showlots. Boy, trailers sure have improved a lot in the last few years! Some of these places were incredible!

After that my mother and I went down to the travel agent and I bought my tickets for this summer's traveling! Yay! I'm flying to Seattle on June 16th (a week early so I can spend time with my brother), then leaving Seattle and flying to Baltimore August 3rd. I'm actually leaving at 11pm August 3rd and arriving in Baltimore 8:45 the next morning. Eeep! Flying all night long! (Though there is a three hour time change.) Then of course after Worldcon I fly back to New Orleans. Whew! And it ended up costing me much less than I thought it would. I expected it to be pretty expensive since I'm making a big circle instead of round-trips. While I was at the travel agent I also priced out airfares to England. They're pretty steep right now for the time that I want to go, so the agent recommended that I wait a few weeks and see if any specials show up. I think that's the plan since I don't feel like spending $800 for airfare.

I also finally got my passport pictures back. I think they turned out suitably heinous for this sort of thing.

My roommate and I have both decided that we really want to lose some weight, so we've started working out together; running, walking, lifting weights, etc. It's actually working out well so far. We've been able to motivate each other to get our lard-butts off the couch and out the door. It's also nice to know that this time the working out and weight loss is simply for our own self-esteem--not to please any one else. We both want to lose about 20 pounds, so you may be seeing workout/weight loss updates on this page. *grin*

First off, major congratulations to Kurt Roth for the overwhelming success of his radio play, Herd Mentality, performed by the MST3K cast!

Did some cleanup and archival since this page was getting a bit long. I'm also long overdue to catch up on my journal entries. Today I have a rant and a rave.

The rant comes from something that happened at work tonight. As those of you who have been following this journal know, I was recently "downsized." I didn't lose my job entirely, but I did take a demotion and a pay cut. Well, when I got to work tonight I found out that everyone in the place had just received a bonus "since business has been good." Needless to say I was mildly livid. Yes, getting the bonus was nice, and I'm happy for everyone else at the company who got the extra money, but at the same time it was a bit of a slap in the face. If the *expletive deleted* company is doing so *expletive deleted* well, then why can't I have my old *expletive deleted* job back?!

The *only* consolation was that I received the bonus for my previous position. (Yes, higher management gets bigger bonuses.) But it would *still* take 5 of these bonuses to equal the pay cut I had to take.

Okay, rant over. *grin*

But then, after I received my s/l/a/p bonus, something really cool happened. I was sitting down in the breakroom, reading my latest copy of F&SF, when a maintenance guy walked by (a good ole boy, but very nice and sweet--always asks me how my dad is doing) and asked me, in a "making conversation" tone of voice what I was reading. So I turned the magazine over and showed him the front, and much to my surprise his eyes lit up. "You like science fiction?!" he asked. Next thing I know we're sitting and chatting about Bradbury, Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, and a zillion other classics and soon-to-be classics. I never in a million years would have pegged this guy as an SF/F reader, and it turns out he grew up on it just the way I did! He expressed regret that he didn't have as much time to read as he used to, what with extra duties at work at all, and then when I offered to bring in my back issues of Asimovs and F&SF (since it's easier to squeeze in time to read short stories) his eyes lit up again! It was really incredbly heartening to a) find someone who "understands" the appeal of SF/F and b)find out that a "regular joe" loves this type of fiction. I do not think the death knell has sounded for SF/F just yet.