Job Frets

Meh. On the one hand, this job has work for me through the end of the summer, they say. On the other hand, I'm taking home less than $300 a week, which means rent takes over two weeks' worth of paychecks, and my bills take up a full week's worth, plus about half of what's left over from the third week. I'd end up with about $150 a month, if that, for transportation, eating anywhere other than at the house, my $100 a month allergy medicine, etc. So I'm already in the red, and I'm working full time. It's not that I mind making very little money, it's just that at that much money, I can't even afford health care once I've worked enough to qualify for it. I can't afford much of anything, and it's not as though I have very expensive tastes. If this job was paying 12.50-15 an hour I'd be deliriously happy, basically.

But I don't know what my options are. I don't know if I can ask to be making more money at this job. I know I'm using skills that are worth more than $10 an hour--they're having me use HTML and XML, I'm working with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. I've never worked for a temp agency before, so I don't know how anything works. Meh. I really like working here. I don't mind the work, there's enough variety that I've at least got something more interesting to look forward to after the boring stuff (which is pretty much one of my main criterias for a job). I like the people I work with, and the people that I haven't worked with but associate with, so it's all good. Except that I'm going to go into debt at this pay rate, and my credit cards are already fussed about my balances. Meh.

Maybe I could sell something fancy. If only I had something fancy written.

(no subject)

Meh. Well, I spent 5-7 nearly crying, but not quite, and I think that the headache I had the whole end of the day was a result of not-crying. And then from 7-8, I pretty much cried the whole time. Called my brother, he told me I should be making more money. Called my mom, she nearly fainted when I told her how little money I was making. Everyone says, "talk to the temp agency, tell them you need to make more money." But I worry. because at least 37 hours a week at $10 beats being paid more but not working/getting fewer hours. And I'm *horrible* about asking for more money. I think it's the quaker/simple life side of me. I mean, I'm not making minimum wage or anything, so part of me thinks that I really shouldn't fuss, that I should be able to live on this money, and that asking for more is greedy. I really need an agent to go and complain for me. I can't offer 15%, but I have a nice 1957 wheat ear penny for anyone who gets my salary up over $13/hour. And I keep backing off the idea of talking to people about it because I'm pretty sure I'll just start crying because it upsets me that much. As it was, I did nearly burst into tears at work a couple of times, including once in the room full of boys, which probably would have terrified them.

I still feel wretched, and I managed to cry enough that I'm a little queasy and not hungry, which I will regret tomorrow when I'm feeling loggy and bleh. I did eat lunch, at least. I'll probably get something for breakfast too. And hopefully tomorrow I'll manage to not cry at all.

Work is still a mixture of dull--going through those *stupid* excel tables trying to make the XML validate. Currently, I blame the validator--and fun--the Spanish webpages for the CD ROM are done, so Joe gave me a German book. Whee! Though I expect I'll be grumping tomorrow when I have to figure out how to get the random characters to show up properly. If I fix the excel tables, I'll get to play with the webpages. And next week, I'll learn (or rather 'learn' as I expect it's just a matter of being told where to go, not so much what to do) how to fix the literally hundreds of broken links that turned up with my linkbot work (whee! Linkbot. I had a broken link on my webpage. It was tragic. Luckily, I fixed it.)

( my address )

Friday I'm off to Wiscon. Whee! And I have a room to stay in, thank god. At the very least, I will not be sleeping in the hallways. Joe was teasing me about going to a sf convention. Well, first it was about going to Wisconsin, but once I mentioned the convention, I figured I might as well go for broke. So I insisted he refer to it as a feminist SF convention everytime he mentioned it. Which were plenty. :)

Oh, and the room of cute boys? This office that has 4 people, three of them guys with names that start with J--Joe, Jason, and John. And then my other supervisor, Jes. And her superviser, Joanne. And the other guy who I dealt with today, Justin. And there's an Irish guy who works on something that I've been working on, but nothing that I've worked with him yet named Jack. It's a bit scary. I'm thinking I need to change my name. But I'm very pleased because at least one of the cute boys has an ear pierced *and* a little sparkly stud in his nose. I was always disappointed in DC because everyone was so...normal looking. There weren't even any visible tatoos in our company (I did know of some non-visible ones, but they were secret, for some reason. Probably because he wasn't the rockstar.)
But whee! nose piercing. :) I'm so easily amused at this hour.

Hmm. I still don't know the cute tea boy's name. I know asking him shouldn't be such a big deal, really. but it will be, as I am pathetic. I don't think he works tomorrow. And then wiscon whoohoo! and then back in town, and tea on tuesday. Perhaps I can work myself up to asking it by then. We did discuss the weather again today. But hey, he started the conversation.

Oh, and I realized today that this is the first place I've lived that people have accents. I mean, that natives have accents, cause lots of people in DC have accents, just none of them a DC accent. Cause there really isn't one. Perhaps slightly southern, but not really. And Michigan sounded vaguely canadian, which I adopted, but again, only a little, and only sometimes. And PA has no accent at all, since we're inthe middle, away from the warsh areas.

I'm about halfway through "Fool's War," by Sarah Zettel, and much as I loved her fantasy, I'm thinking the SF is even better. She's got a strange spaceship setup--similar to the basic model, but with enough unique elements to need explanation, completely with a turkish muslim female engineer, and several different random strange people (a Freer, a Fool, and some less odd people) all seem perfectly understandable with these amazingly deft info dumps. I need to sort out books for the trips, finalize my clothing choices, and pack a notebook so I can write my story for Say...have you heard this one, which will be fabulous if I write it, and will make them laugh and get me a personal rejection. Stupid plots. we hates them.

and it's now bed time, since I started writing this nearly an hour ago. Love you all. Ask andrea how her trip went, and make her explain where I'm going.