work stories

i've been playing minesweeper and listening to education week talks. minesweeper of all things. i'm probably going to see the little numbers and flags when i close my eyes tonight. one of the talks was by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel about the new testament in relation to dan brown's the da vinci code. it was good, i really liked it.

yesterday after work we had yoga. it's all part of our new wellness program at work. we have a half an hour walk after lunch and we have yoga on wednesday evenings. that's our attempt at wellness. when i got there the boardroom was already transformed. the long tables were folded up, the lights were low, the only light being provided by a lamp at the front. the floor was covered with yoga mats and a relaxation-type cd was playing. i quickly found a place beside lisa in the back. there were around 16 people and their mats and it was crowded.

i was worried that i was going to feel self-conscious. i should have known better. one thing i love about my work is that i almost never feel self-conscious. i mostly feel free to be whatever me i am. that's unusual in a work place and i know it's a blessing. first we lay on the our backs with our hands on our lower abdominals breathing. blair gave lisa and i a case of the giggles by his extra loud and enthusiastic breathing techniques. blair had a hard time with the quiet part of yoga in general. he was oft heard to exclaim to himself throughout the evening. i think he was excited. bruce was also excited but obviously not a first time yoga practioner. before we even began he was on his back doing leg lifts and getting limber and 'in the zone' one could say. ken was beside lisa and she said she was suffering from breathing in his aura d'cigarettes but all i could smell was the chemicals of my mat the many times my nose and forehead were pressed into it during the child pose.

carmen's daughter carston was our instructor. she kept it basic and beginner level and i really enjoyed myself. i was challenged but not overwhelmed. one of the first things we did was mom's cow/cat pose. we did the downwards dog too. i have some questions about it. i'm waiting to discuss these things with the ever elusive fatima. i don't know the names of any of the others that we did but i liked a side bendy one where you look up at your arm over your head. i liked all of them actually. i liked standing in the mountian? pose with my shoulders up and back. i liked the way it opened up my chest as carston pointed out. i mostly forgot to breathe while doing something new, but i suppose that's normal. sometimes i reminded myself to breathe but couldn't imagine how i possibly could breathe.

after yoga i felt great. alive. it was a good way to feel after a day such that i had. wednesday began at six oh clock when the guy at one of the temporary employment sites i'm over called to say he was sick. i got ready as quickly as i could, which involved a lot because i was taking my bike and all the gear riding a bike entails, plus my yoga outfit to work. i got there at seven thirty and it's really best to be there at six thirty or at least seven. but i did my best to make the site look presentable (it's an early morning janitorial placement) and got to the clubhouse just before eight thirty, when i ususally begin. it was shortly there after that gloria called obviously very ill. gloria works at another temporary employment (TE) site that i'm over. this job is at the foodbank. we make a nutritous meal and give samples to the people coming in. anyways, we're also short staffed and lisa and i were doing interviews in the afternoon to solve the short staffing problem. ach no.

the other placement manager, as we're called, was sick too. so i did some sweet talking negotiating with robin who'd given gloria some support over christmas when both mireya and i were away. she agreed very kindly to relieve me after ten thirty. she had her own TE stuff to do later that afternoon on the site that me and her share (i have 3 sites. most people have 2 but i'm lucky). so to make a long story short i went through the alley to the foodbank and whipped up some couscous, which i discovered is really a pasta. i thought it was a grain all this time. no it's not, it's a pasta. i was just setting up to hand out the samples when robin arrived, i did some dishes and left her. i arrived back in time to help with lunch, and luckily because lisa m, was heading off to what kaz once called the indian factory until i explained to him that this particular phrasing sounds like a factory that makes indians. this is not what it is. amongst other things they make samosas. it's a new TE site and lisa was getting trained. kaz was in the thrift store and that left me and lisa to orchestrate crazy lunch time and clean up and be done by one when our first interview started. to top it all off wednesday is a day we never have a dishwasher. usually we all take turns dishwashing but with fewer people around your turn comes up a lot faster than it used to. it was my turn yesterday. but we were so few of staff and members in the whole clubhouse that day (except of course at exactly lunch time when people pour in, eat and pour out no matter what the day), so i also was helping bruce serve the special onto plates. our special was quesadillas with nachos and salsa that day. i'm an expert at the quesadilla slicing and serving. not really professional by any means but mildly competent and not intimidated by the process blah blah blah. anyways so me and bruce teamed up and then when demand for specials died down i dashed over to the dish pit. i was charged with the kind of energy that comes when you require it. the kind that comes when everything is go go go and you don't have time to be tired or to complain. lisa seemed to have the same energy. we're a good team. we went gangbusters and i actually put the last load through the industrial dishwasher before one oh clock. took off my apron, covered up the wet blotches on my shirt with my discarded black hoodie, slathered on some hand cream, grabbed wendel and went up what we call the secret stairs.

in the board room was the hiring committee. me lisa, wendel and lin. members and staff interview all aplicants and then we talk about it and everyone has input into who we hire and so on. i really like being part of the hiring committee. i was on the committee when we hired tanya too. anyways, lisa went over our first applicant of the day's resume and we all went over what questions we were going to ask (there's a list of questions. they're the exact same as when i had my interview). lisa who was losing her voice decided not to ask any questions but the last ones having to do with having a car, working the social, first aid and so on. the first girl was likeable. she amused me and i often had an inward chuckle as i wrote down my notes. she went off in tangents and was really expressive and waved her arms around a lot. the secone girl was likable too. but she was hard to understand and had some trouble understanding us. the last was a lady. she was not a quick thinker and started every answer with an "um..." and a pause. i was super sleepy by the time that interview was over.

so then we went back down and tried to complete the tasks of the day before yoga started. so you see yoga was refreshing on a day like that. after yoga was over i changed into my biking outfit, strapped my backpack on my bike and rode home. it's not a bad ride at all. the major hill is the bridge and that is not too much of a hardship. my seat keeps sinking. i stopped once to raise it when i found my knees hitting my chest and today to and from work i had to stop and raise it. this bugs. it takes me twenty minutes. i didn't know this last night though because when i got home i met the man who had the one eyed cat. the cat that used to go for walks with him without a leash. he was just openeing the back door and i rode up behind him. he turned and said my lights were incredible. i think incredible is one of his favourite adjectives because he said it quite a few times during our ensuing converstation. he said riding my bike was an icredible idea. i usually see him arriving home from a night shift on his bike when i am driving off in the morning. he told me excitedly about a program in london where they will have bikes all over the city and you can borrow them and drop them off at other stations etc. he walked me over to the side door explaining that it was easier to manuver your bike in that way, opened the doors for me and stood chatting with me in his animated almost innocent manner while i turned off my lights unstrapped my bike and so on. i learned that he is from the ukraine and his wife is from russia (i had thought they both were from russia) and that he speaks five languages. he speaks russian, ukrainian, german, polish and he said, "i suffer with english.". as far as i could make out he is a german polish interpreter and a journalist and he said he talks to the police all the time but they can only talk for something like fifteen seconds. he beamed at me as he told me this. and he proudly showed me his satellite radio strapped on to his belt. this, he said helped him with his english since he doesn't have many conversation partners. he told me his new cat is wonderful and so nice. but she needs a leash unlike his one eyed cat who died after being hit by two cars and during her seventh pregnancy. i like him. i like knowing people in our building. we parted ways at the door to my floor as he headed up to his. i stuck my head back out the door and called "my name's laura, by the way." "nikolas." he told me. "nice to meet you." i said.

this morning i rode to fitness world and had a shower, got ready and went to work. this morning we were supposed to have out last interview but he was a no show. (gloria was sick again, this time i got una to cover for me. she in turn got garry to half it with her). he was our one chance at a guy. poor kaz. so instead we all went up to the board room and discussed the five that we had interviewed decided on a first, second and third. lisa, who has an ear infection in each ear, and was fast losing her voice, informed me that i was calling the references and calling to offer the jobs and all that. i was frankly excited to do it, although i didn't much know what i was doing, not having done anything like it before. so we came up with some questions for the references and i looked some up on the internet and then i took all the papers with me into the library (it's quiet there) and made the calls. at first all the none of references were in. that led to me calling them all and leaving messages. by the time one called me back lisa had arrived in the library to tell me something and see how i was doing. she told me to call our number one and offer her the job. so i did. and she accpeted. we always worry that once people know the wage that they won't want the job. that's always the tense part of it. so i kind of held my breath after she asked, but she was still interested, so yippee. the only negative is that she has to give her work a week's notice which means another week of what i've come to term in my head 'emergency mode', especially since kaz is on vacation starting now, leaving only three of us, one for the thrift store and two for the kitchen which does not leave much room for people getting called away to TE sites and housing emergencies and sickness and other such things that always come up. oh well. it's just five days.

when i came back to the kitchen i couldn't help grinning like a cheshire cat. i felt an unexplained giddiness. everybody looked at me expectantly. "she said yes!" i told them. i felt like cheering. silly, i know. i then had to call one applicant to tell her that she didn't get it, but luckily i could leave a message. meanwhile the lady who had made me sleepy called and said she didn't want the job, not that she was being offered it, but it was mutual i guess. and two more of the references called me back, and then in the middle of that i got paged and i thought it was a reference but no it was someone calling me for a reference! it was for a volunteer thing elena is applying for. i was so flustered and while i was trying to talk to her lisa came to me in a panic wondering in the girl that we offered the job had a car or not. i'm afraid i sounded like a total flake. she aske me how i knew elena and i said "she's my friend. she's a friend of my friend. she's my sister's friend. no! she's my friend's sister!" i seriously said all of those things in rapid fire. gosh. i sounded like i was some liar who couldn't get her story straight. but i explained to the lady how we were in the middle of hiring someone and that i was expecting a reference to call me back to be a reference, so hopefully i didn't damage elena's chances. so anyways it was cool for me to be a part of the hiring process. i really hope she works out. there's so much that you can't tell from an interview. so much that is only told in working side by side with someone.

wednesday was baking day. but since i had interviews, i told carmen that we could do it thursday. well today i was called in to my third TE site and so had to cancel again. good thing carmen is a good sport. my new plan is to make cup cakes tomorrow night. i'm doing the social tomorrow so we're going to make cupcakes and maybe do some beading. we're going to have bbq chicken and roasted potatoes too and california mix veggies with some melted cheese on it maybe. that's my plan.

it turned out that TE only took half an hour. so i had time to go shopping for tomorrow. i got back just in time to put away my grocieries and make a nag list of reminders for my other site. i know i've been blah blahing about work a lot--i hope you're not bored out of your tree, but i just needed to share the the extremities of my recent days.

i'm going to bed. i'm in the middle of some bethany visit posts that i started before this one, so look for them. they'll probably show up after this one. i plan on completing them tomorrow.