In which DoHP's wall of text crits you for over 9000!

So, this is going to be about three months, maybe more of thought dump.

Fist things first. Work. Uggg. Last year's flu season never really went away. July and August saw a little bit a reprieve, but it's been back in full force since school started. Apparently if you put kids around other kids, all of whom were healthy to begin with, you get a group of sick kids.

And since school started, that means that 1/3 of our staff now has school to deal with along with work and that makes scheduling a nightmare (not that I have to do it) and results in the flexible people working weird hours. I have two things I could do on Tuesday nights that would be fun and I would consider having a life outside of work. Both of them would start at 7. I have been scheduled 12-9 on Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. I do get weekends off though. That's good right?

I think that corporate managers need to come work in the pharmacy some days. Since the beginning of the month we've had a series of bad days that keep getting worse. Too many patients and phone calls, and not enough staff to handle it. Everybody wants their medications NOW, no matter when they got the prescription. My nightmares feature the phrases "How much and how long?" and "One pharmacy call. TWO! pharmacy calls!"

We have a little clinic-y thing in our store that is giving flu shots, and they ran out the other day. I lost track at about 30 each day on the number of calls we recieved asking, when we'd get flu shots in and other bits and pieces of information about the flu shots. Now the clinic can't answer their own calls, because there's only one person there and answering the phone would detract from them being able to see patients. Wouldn't the extra calls also detract from the pharmacy being able to serve patients too?

My chain has always been the wierd one around here and kept all the pseudoephedrine behind the front store counter with the cigarettes. That takes a tremendous load off the pharmacy. As of now, it's back in the pharmacy. I'm wondering when we'll get the time to move it, the space to put it (my pharmacy is tiny, we really have no space for anything else), and the time to sell it during the day.

I'm supossed to be the kinda-manager of the techs at my store. I already act as such. I pester people when stuff needs to get done, I do returns, I help out in sticky customer issues, I do the conference calls, etc. I've even done the class to make it official. Only thing is, it isn't yet. Because the trainer for my area hasn't gotten me in the computer as having taken the class yet. And she forgot to put some of the pre-req things in that I did, and I had to do them over again once I showed up on the "bad people who haven't done their required training" list. This made me rather mad. So, I'm still not offically the tech manager. I'm doing everything that the position requires, but I'm not getting paid properly for it.

Second, everything else. Better than work. At least a little.

I just had to put new front tires on my car. Did I mention my car? I don't remember if I did or not, but it's a long story, and if I didn't I'll tell it later. But it's not the mini-van anymore. The car runs, the radio works, it gets good gas mileage, I'm happy with it.

The last full week in September, my mom, my sister and I all went to my granny's house in VA for a week. This was the week of all the flooding in Atlanta. My community avoided most of the flooding and damage from that. Which I am thankful for.

But Virginia was fun. I saw my cousin's baby (who is HUGE. 9 weeks and 15lbs), spent time with my grandparents, and just was generally not at work. My grandparents are doing well. I don't really have much else to say about it.

My knitting keeps growing on me. Not like, "Oh I didn't this whatever before, but now it's kinda grown on me." But like my vest fit me before I washed it, now it fits my mom, who is several sizes larger than me. So, the lesson I learned here, knitted garments don't go in the washing machine even if the yarn band says they can. I was going through my yarn the other day, and realized I have a strange obsession with purple yarn. And the purple-green color combination. I think I'm going to start trying color work, which has scared me for the longest time.

I'm not going to bore you with WoW stuff. Except that some people think I have happy dungeon/questy fun time all wrong. I'm good at ignoring them. I have more to say if y'all want to hear, but I don't know if you do.

Now right before I went to VA, I was trying to update my iTunes so I could get it to work with my iPod (still dosen't, but eh.) and it was downloading and taking it's dear sweet time, so I turned off my monitor with the intention of going to bed and dealing with it in the morning. Then it starts making a noise. Like it's trying to yodel a cat. I turn the monitor back on and it's green. I force it to shut off, and try to turn it back on. The fans turn on, but it dosen't start up. I give up, and go to bed because it is late at this point. The next morning, I try again. Still the fans turn on, but nothing else. I try starting it with the vista cd in the drive, still nothing. This is my desktop that's being a booger, so there's no technical support to go with it. I look up the hours of the local computer repair shop and get ready to take it in. They can look at it while I'm out of town. I load the computer up in the car, and take it over there, and their website had the wrong hours and they were closed. I take it back home, and decided to deal with it when I got back. My laptop was working fine.

When I get back, my dad has also gotten back from a trip. And we decide to look at it some more, thinking it might be the video card that's gone bad, and of course we have at least one spare. We have a whole closet full of computer parts, old computers and other electronics, and the boxes that go with them. So I take it down to the basement (where the closet is), and we open the case and make sure everything is connected, but nothing seemed to be disconnected. So I plug it in, connect a monitor, and turn it on. It starts like a charm. It's that thing, where you take it to the computer guy and it works.

So, that's what's up with me.
~DoHP