Escapade Con

It's Thursday at 4am, must be time to get up. I probably should get used to it, since I will probably move my alarm back when I start school so I have time in the morning to study or do my classwork.

Yesterday was payday, so always a good day. Mostly, I took calls, as we were crazy busy. Like 20 calls holding in the queue busy. I'm looking forward to that being done in a couple of weeks. Not that I mind the calls that much, but it'll be nice to only make outbound calls. I love when patients call you back hours after I call them for a same/next day appt. I cannot hold it that long, my good bitch. That's why my message says "if you get this by _____, please call back, I can hold the appointment until then." Some days I love patients. I was perky as hell yesterday, and I have no idea why. I think I had a somewhat rude patient, and so I perked at them, and then I couldn't turn it off.

I asked J. a follow up question. Apparently, I can still do OT, which is lovely. That'll be $45/hr Every couple of weekends, which should be lovely. IT'll probably damn near pay for Hawaii next year, especially if they want us to work any holidays this year. I am 100% here to work Memorial, Fourth of July, Labor and MLK again if they need me. I love those extra 8 hours of PTO.

After work, we threw in some potatoes to bake, and I cooked up some steaks in the cast iron pan. I used another of my "hype" presents, some Aloha Smoke Spice from Kailua Seasoning Company. OMG, it was SO good. Lightly smoky, a little bit of chili, but not enough to bother even my whitest of palates. But overall, it was salty and delicious and brought out the flavor of the steak even more. I loved it. So far, Hawaii has not disappointed. I've got the macadamia nuts, which are excellent. I got the macadamia butter shortbread and the white chocolate coconut shortbread, and those have been amazing.

After dinner, we had game scheduled, but the electric had other intentions. It went out with an almighty bang right around 6:30pm, and came back on after 1am. No game for us. And another one to reschedule *bangs head*. I stayed up for a while, hoping it would come back on, but eventually the early morning caught up with me and I fell asleep with my phone on my chest.

We did have some storms, though not severe like the weather said they might be. And at one point a tornado warning that was cancelled almost as quickly as it occurred, so that was fun.

Thanks to the weather dropping from 80 degrees to 40 degrees today, Jess had a particularly bad migraine, and my head and neck were twinging too. I would have been fine to play, but Jess had already dropped out of the game for the night.

Today, we're having tomato soup and grilled cheese. The BIL brought over his homemade tomato soup, so we've gotta use that up.

I'm sure work will be busy again, as it has all week. We'll see what I end up doing most of the day. Maybe there will be another Cardiac slot that opens so I get a little bit of time off the phones.

I don't know when they're going to set up everything for me. I think there are a few things to download on my computer before I start the new job. I need access to the queue as well as the main inbox, and I'm sure a few other things. I, of course, am ready to go. Get me set up and let's light this thing.

They pushed the rollout for the new phone system back a little further. Our team is too big, so they're putting us in two groups. Whoo. They say that everything has to be wired for it. Wired headset, ethernet connection. That is going to be an enormous pain in the ass. I am litterally paralell with the box, but there's a 15 foot kitchen wall between it. So, I'm going to have to tack the cord up over the cabinets, or under them. It's really freaking annoying. I got myself a 50' cord, so it should make it easily, but ugh. It's switching from an actual system to VOIP, so I expect problems. Massive problems. They don't know if we're still going to get screen pop ups in Epic, which is a lifesaver when you have a patient with a heavy accent. If they put in their phone number and date of birth, we will get a pop up with their chart. Then all we have to do is verify name and address. It has saved my ass many times, and I'm cranky that we may lose it. They want us to cut down on our talk time, but they're taking away one of our time savers. It's just corporate bullshit. Someone had a meeting, and they decided it looked good and was cheaper, and so they're switching it.

Tonight, after I make dinner, I suppose I will relax, and maybe watch a little videos. I'm flip flopping between Alaska and Hawaii videos. First I'll do one on excursions in Alaska, or boat tours, and then I'll pop back to Hawaiian food trucks. (They have some tasty looking food trucks. I'm especially looking forward to having garlic shrimp.) I think at this point, I can pretty much figure out my way around the ship. I know what floor all the important stuff is on. Our suite and the Neptune lounge is on 7, the food is on 2, 3 and 9 and the pool is deck 9. Oh, and the thermal spa is also on deck 9. Those are the important things.

We have a weekend of games, one tomorrow, one Sat and one Sunday. I'm looking forward to all of them. Tomorrow is my goth disasters in Vecna: Eve of Ruin. Saturday is the game in the style of epic Greek myths in Odyssey of the Dragonlords. And Sunday, I'm a player for Prophecy of the Nine Omens. I'm looking forward to all of them, but I'll admit, I'm especially fond of playing my Bladesinging wizard, Irsu. We're finally getting to the levels that wizards do some serious damage, which is always fun. Also, he's just a lot of fun to play. Very impetuous, always can be counted on to do the stupid, brave thing, even though he has wizard hit points.

Okay, on that note, it's probably time to take my shower. I just didn't have the energy yesterday, so I put it off an extra day and now I feel grungy. Everyone have an amazing Thursday!

It's Wednesday! We're halfway there!

For no apparent reasoning, I woke up at 3:30 am and did not get back to sleep. My body, it is a wonderland. I'm currently drinking my coffee and trying to wake the rest of the way up. It's a challenge.

Yesterday was a pretty good day! I spent my morning taking calls and checking my email to see if my offer letter had arrived, but they seemed determined to make me wait. But finally at about 1:30pm, it landed in my inbox.

It's not as big of a raise as I was hoping, but it's not horrible. It's going to take me up to $30.15/hr or just over $62k a year. I immediately signed the offer letter, and so I will be staying right where I'm at, just with a new title and possibly tax bracket. I'm glad that I get to stay with Radiology. Learning new things might have been fun, but I like working from home. I may have to go in occasionally when we have new hires to greet them and get them their equipment and stuff, but that'll be once every few months.

I asked J for some specifics, but in all honesty, it sounds like it's still being defined. It'll be what I do now for the Cardiac slots, though that may morph from something reactive to something proactive. We have a queue for Cardiac orders, but right now, it's massively overgrown and unusable. There's talk of getting it cleaned up, so that I can work off that. Then, I'll be filling STAT spots, and when needed, I'll be backing up the other two leads answering questions and possibly taking escalation calls if needed. It sounds like it'll be interesting at the very least, and a chance for me to help shape what the job shall be.

It'll start on 3/22, so not very long to wait!

Not long after, my sister sent me her resume to proofread. Y'all, it was not good. It had a ton of unnecessary information, it was formatted like hell, and the statements were basically run on sentences starting with "I". It pained me. After work, I sat down and recreated it, using the appropriate buzzwords, and found an appealing template to stuff it all into. I'm not quite happy with it, but it's already worlds better than what it was, and it looks professional.

After that, we had celebratory Chinese food from NiHao. They have some of the best food in Baltimore. I always overbuy and have delicious leftovers for the next day or two. Standouts this week were the Peking duck eggrolls, the shrimp dumplings, and as always the scallion and egg fried rice. I also had the Mongolian beef, which was excellent, and regular fried pork dumplings (also very good.) Jess loves their Szechuan sweet chili popcorn chicken, and I will agree, it's very tasty. It has me looking forward to Chinatown in San Francisco next year.

After dinner, we took the dog out. The weather has been gorgeous the last two days. Unfortunately for Yoda, they're calling for storms today, so he'll be hiding under my desk while I work.

Oh, one exciting thing I forgot. I had to use a bit of vacation last week to take Yoda to the vet and to go to my interview, and when my manager was doing time cards, she sent me a message asking if I wanted her to use my OT instead of my PTO to pay my hours. So, I still have PTO left and I should be able to put in for another day off towards Alaska this week, and then next pay, I can do my other day. Then the vacation will be fully covered. I'd like to put in for the Monday after we get back, but if it fills before I can do so, I can just call out that day.

I'm debating on celebrating the promotion by getting myself a new phone. Mine is fine, though the battery runs down fairly quickly, but I'd like a better camera for Alaska. We had gotten a big camera for the trip, but I don't think I can fit it in the carryon luggage, unless I get an actual carryon suitcase and take my backpack as my personal item. Then again, that would be hella cheaper.

I will think on it.

Today, we shall have same old, same old. I've got some lovely steaks and some delicious smoked Hawaiian salt with a touch of chili, so I believe I'm going to put them together and make something tasty for dinner tonight. We also have potatoes, so it's going to be a good steakhouse dinner. Steak and loaded baked potatoes. I'm looking forward to it.

The BIL was over last night, so I gave him one of the steaks as well as some of the salt to try. The steaks came in packs of two, and they were enormous so we definitely didn't need the fourth. I tend to do that a lot. His mother is very picky about what she'll let him buy, so we're his hook up for non-chicken meat. When we have the crab feast, he gets the leftovers, and when I buy ribs, I'll buy him a rack. I remember too well what it was like to take care of Dad, and he's got that with his mother, though at the moment, she's still pretty mobile. So, we all try to do nice things for him to make it more bearable. His sisters help, but they don't live there, so most of it falls on him. I'm honestly shocked that they were able to work it so he could go to Alaska.

I'm watching our stuff on Alaska Air to see when we'll be able to order our in flight meals. From what I gather, it's usually around two weeks, but I keep checking back.

We're getting so close! I'm going to go into my emails and send confirmations to the limo services and verify that everything is good, just to be safe. Everything else, I think is good.

I'm really debating on the final night seafood boil. I've seen a lot of opinions on reddit and facebook of people saying it's not worth the cost. I'll bring it up next time BIL is over. Since we have the big Dungeness crab feast the day before, it may seem anticlimactic to get a half a snow crab leg and some shrimp and fish in a little pot. I don't know, I'll see what they think.

When we were visiting with my friend from 911, I was talking about the cruise, and it kind of hit me how wild this experience is going to be as far as our accommodations. I've mentioned that we have the Pinnacle Suite, which is their version of an owners suite. It's basically a little floating condo. But the perks were the selling point. Because we're considered VIP, we'll have an escort onto the boat, and then they'll take us to meet our concierge. They take your picture for biometric purposes, but ours will also be sent to the crew, along with our names, so that they can greet us by name. That's just fucking wild. Like we're some kind of rock star.

When the new job starts, I think I'm going to go in and change my deposits, and add more money to the one account that I use for the trip. It won't add up before Alaska, but it'll damn sure be good for Hawaii.

Okay, time for me to hop off and grab a nice shower, and be ready for the day. Everyone have a wonderful Wednesday!

We survived Monday! It actually wasn't that bad! It went relatively quickly, I got a few people in for appointments. Had one really obnoxious one who asked me like five times if I'd done it correctly. I flipped off the screen a lot with them, and took a little five minute break when I hung up. That's pretty rare, but she was on my last nerve.

I also got some more news about the promotion. So A. had said that she had never got the application, so she went back to HR and was like, wtf? And it turned out that the job I applied for initally had me shortlisted for the job, and it paused my application. So they figured that out, and A got the application, and has sent it over to Talent to write up my offer letter. I teased her about not needing an interview, and she said "1. Who has time for that. 2. Why would I bother? The job was literally created for you." So that made me feel good.

I did have a blip in the morning, where Jess was a little sad about all the games that were ending and that I'm only doing a game a day on the weekend from here on out because of school. I felt like they were giving me pushback, and was a little bit upset about it. And in retrospect, it wasn't even about Jess. One of my players took it upon themselves to nudge to schedule some of the games that are in limbo. But they did it with somewhat passive agressive-feeling sad faces in a bunch of my campaigns. And at the time, I was like Okay, lets schedule. But it really bothered me. I'm not a fucking D&D vending machine. This shit takes actual time and effort to prep, and there's only so much time. This isn't like a Goshapan machine. You put in an emoji, and the D&D falls out. So I could have responded better to Jess. We settled down and talked it out during lunch and we're all good. I'm just going to need to be better about laying down boundaries while I'm in school. Or alternately, just boundaries, full stop.

Sadly when my sister got home, she brought news that they're firing her employee, effective on the 27th. They don't feel like she needs an extra person, since they took the records away and sent it to NY. My sister is devastated. She adores the employee, and she feels like her company is being a bunch of liars. They had assured everyone that the shakeup was done, and then two weeks later, shut down more sites, and now they laid off her employee.

She's started applying to other companies, but probably won't start until after our cruise in May. She's looking at fully remote and hybrid jobs, or jobs that are much closer to home, since she currently has a 45min-60min commute on the shitty Baltimore Beltway. Work from home could be a challenge for all of us, but we'll figure it out.

Today will surely be another busy day. Hopefully we'll get some cancellations, so I can get in more patients, but we'll see what the day brings. It would be nice if it brought an offer letter. I don't know how long that normally takes. I know when I got this job, I applied and got an offer letter the very next day, so I have hopes for soon. I also have hopes for a decent pay bump. Ideally in the $3-$4 range. I don't know how Hopkins works promotions. I know at IKEA, your pay bump was limited a percentage of your salary, and it wasn't much, like ten percent every level you jumped.

Had I gotten any of the team lead jobs I applied for, it would have been a double jump, so I probably would have gotten a decent bump, but otherwise, it was like $2.

It's not like I even need it to live off of. It just would be nice. Though if my sister takes a lower paying job, it would be helpful. I mean, she'll have less gas money and less frequent oil changes, which will save some money, but still. It's not like the company paid that well anyway. I make more managing only myself than she makes managing a multiple sites, and like 8 people, which is fucked up.

Tonight, I shall make some pork tenderloin and try out this hawaiian sea salt blend I got. It's got 3 kinds of salt--one of which is smoked--and some mild chili. It tasted really good when I sampled it, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it tastes on meat.

As per my usual, I'm sitting here with a shortbread, nibbling on that. I may have to order again from them. There were a bunch of other flavors that looked really tasty. And I'll probably get more of the white chocolate coconut macadamia. Or the butter macadamia. That is also really tasty and excellent with coffee.

The macademia nuts are slowly being eaten. I need to get Jess another bag of the chilli, so they won't feel bad about eating the rest of the bag. They really liked them.

I'm mostly a fan of the plain sea salt ones. Though the lilikoi ones as well. It's a sweet and tart Hawaiian flavor from the yellow passionfruit. They're really quite tasty.

Okay, time to do some more orientation. I'm hoping to have it done by the weekend. Hopefully, today or tomorrow, I get my offer letter to sign, and it'll be good. Everyone have a terrific Tuesday!!