So what have I been up to lately?

I haven't been on here much lately for several reasons. It all started July 2nd when one of my best friends growing up was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. I was kind of depressed for a while after that, especially since he was in town two weeks earlier and I didn't get time to see him. It's still hard to believe he's gone. The funeral was one of the hardest things I've had to go through in life so far. R.I.P. Chris....

Moving on, things were starting to look up a month or two later. I spent a week at the beach, had some fun in my car, then I sold my thunderbird in Sept. Well I thought I did anyway.....Turns out personal checks are worthless pieces of paper. I spent the next couple weeks in daze, angry at myself for accepting the check, angry at the police for doing almost nothing to get my car or money back, and even more angry at the worthless bastard that stole my car. I finally got the car back around Thanksgiving after two months of stress. They still haven't caught the guy, and they probably aren't even trying to at this point.

On top of all this, work picked up to ridiculous levels right after we had a guy quit. They're changing around the office positions, and the girls doing dispatch now don't do a very good job at it. There were times I would start the day with say 15 service calls, I'd get 2 or 3 done in the morning, then when I got back in the office I would have about 17 calls AFTER closing the 3 I just finished. For a while it seemed like I was working my ass off and still couldn't get caught up. Finally the week before Christmas I got caught up enough to take a week vacation. My mileage check for that one week was around $129 (.45 or .48 per mile)...One of my coworkers got $0 for that same week....So basically I got all my work done before vacation and he got just about nothing done.... This pissed me off a little, then I found out he now has almost 30 service calls to do and he's starting to flip out saying "that's way more than I can handle!". As long as I don't end up doing half his work, I'm happy.

So it's mid-December, work's crazy, I'm in the process of buying a house, I need to pay $1100 up front for insurance for said house, plus I need to go Christmas shopping. Good times. I made it through, but I slept til after 1pm on my first full day off.


So, as of Dec. 31 I'm officially a homeowner. Or maybe it'll be official in 30 years.. Either way, I'll be moved out on my own in a few days. Work is back down a reasonable level and the holiday stress is over so thing's are starting to look good again. I'm really hopeful that 2008 will be a much better year than 2007, and it's off to a good start so far.