Today was my annual review at work. It went well and I got a raise, but for some reason I get ridiculously nervous before these things. Fear of losing my job I think. People keep telling me that I shouldn’t be worried about that, but I look at all the responsibilities I have now and the thought of being unemployed just scares me to death. It’s a crappy pessimistic attitude, and I’m quite aware of that. If I were just supporting myself, I wouldn’t be so worried. But because I’m taking care of my father, my emotions are so strongly attached to anything that has to do with me being the supporter.

I guess to try and put it into perspective, here is a guy who for 40 years has worked a blue-collar job, had so many people screw him over financially (especially my mother), all because he’s just a nice guy. That’s all. I feel the need to protect him because -he- feels like he’s let me down as a father because he’s on disability, couldn’t afford to send me to school, and now has to ask me for an allowance.

I can only imagine how he feels. I’m certain he feels blessed to have a daughter so determined to take care of him, but at the same time I know he feels ashamed at himself. If he didn’t have me he wouldn’t have anything. He wouldn’t have his animals, he wouldn’t have anyone relying on him, he’d just be the third wheel.

My passion is to make sure that my father never feels stupid, unneeded, alone, scared, or abandoned. And I’d cut off my right arm to make sure he never did.

I actually got into this conversation with someone not too long ago when I told them I’d never put my father in a nursing home. Even if I had to stay home and take care of him while my “supposed” future husband worked. They argued that it would be too much for me and would burn me out, drive me nuts whatever. But I honestly don’t think it would. I don’t think I would personally allow myself to have a choice.

I just respect this man above all else, even myself. If I had to put my roles as a person in order (as in, spiritual leader, co-worker, daughter, pagan, woman, mother, sister, etc), daughter would be at the top of that list always. The world is a better place because -he- is in it.

So. When someone asks me……why do you upset yourself so much and worry about losing your job so much, that’s why. All of that is what rushes through my brain anytime it’s brought up. It’s not all the time, I don’t really think about it because I’m always focusing on the task at hand. I just want my dad to feel secure and to be proud of me.

Another thing I want to work on is diversifying my “skillset” as far as my job is concerned. Expanding into jquery, javascript, php, and a few other things. I think if I felt more comfortable with those that I’d feel more comfortable at my job.

In other news, work had their annual jamboree tonight, and my father went with me. I think he was tickled to see me up there playing and singing music with folks on a microphone. My fingers are blistered but I had a really good time. Another thing I want to do is to learn to read music. I still never have and I can’t keep putting it off as something I’m gonna do eventually.

My boss told me that if I ever do a duet with someone that he absolutely wants to be up there playing with us. I thought that was kinda cool. He said I should start playing music around locally, just for fun. But not to expect to make a lot of money doing it. I don’t really want to make a lot of money doing it, nor do I want to be on some big record label. I just want to play my own music, and have people that enjoy listening to it.

When I’m up there singing and my eyes are closed (usually to remember the words) I ignore everything around me and all the people listening in. It’s a pretty magical feeling to shut out the world and just enjoy the music. That’s what I’d like to do.

Is having to go to work everyday.

I wake up and everything is beautiful outside. I’m listening to our turkeys and guineas and bumble bees. I can smell the lilacs and lilies and grass. I can see that wood needs to be split, the garden needs tending, and the pile of scrap wood over there that needs to be put together to make new things.

And I have to get in the car and drive to work to sit in an office all day long where my co-workers constantly have the blinds drawn to block the sunlight and the trees.

These are the types of things I do when bored at work.

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This past weekend hosted an event called the Addy Awards. I don’t know much about these rewards, except that we always enter in a bunch of sites into them every year. I believe they are like the grammy’s for advertising, and in our line of business, more specifically with websites. (I tried looking up stuff on their website but ironically it’s not done very well and 2008 winners aren’t listed yet).

Anyway, we only had one site win this year, but it was a site I put together (note: I didn’t design it, just coded/maintained it). Not only did it win a GOLD Addy for best Website, but it won one of 5 JUDGES awards, out of like 330 entries or something. To quote one of the videos talking about the site: “The CSS was perfect” (CSS being my main job at the company).

Talk about fucking awesome. It felt really good to have everyone congratulating me (and me making wise-cracks about it all week). Honestly coders are pretty much always behind the curtains and rarely recognized for their work I’ve noticed. So while trying to be humble about it, I’m still pretty much ecstatic about the whole thing.

The site that won the award is: Epic Theatre Ensemble (but honestly the CSS isn’t all that great since I was in a time crunch to put it together. But I’m going to be cleaning it up. Or maybe I’ve reached the point where I’m being too anal).

And if you want to check out the video, you can: Download

They said I could order copies of the awards if I wanted, since the awards we got are to be kept at work, but they are $60 each. I decided I could live with just having a digital picture of them

Today is Blog Action Day, and many popular blogs from around the world are taking the day today to post about environmental issues.

For my topic, I decided to talk about ways my workplace has adjusted to be more environmentally friendly, and how I think it could improve.

Ways my office is environmentally conscious:
- We use silverware
- We keep ceramic cups and mugs for employees to use
- We recently moved to a restored old building (instead of building new)
- We use an energy efficient refrigerator
- We did away with purchasing big jugs of bottled water and now use a brita water filter for tap water
- We recycle soda cans
- We are a web development company so we don’t use as much paper as other companies. Our timesheets are electronic, we communicate via AIM and email, our schedules are all electronic
- Our cleaning crew collects cans to donate the money from them to charity

Things my office still needs to improve:
- They still use paper towels
- They still use paper plates
- They use those little plastic straws for coffee
- They do use a notepad on occasion, but it’s rare I’m not sure how well I can count it
- They do print out quality copies of pages to review and send to clients, which can build up as far as paper usage. However these are on a wax printer, so I think that’s more environmentally friendly.
- They should use more eco-friendly cleaning products
- They order out a lot instead of bringing their own food in reusable containers

Things I’m not sure about:
- I don’t know if they use recycled paper, but they should
- I don’t know if they used recycled ink cartridges, but they should

To relieve tension at work, we have nerf wars throughout the day. I don’t have a nerf gun of my own yet, but have been using a co-workers at his discretion that I use it to shoot another co-worker over and over.

I have been nicknamed Calamity Jane.

Co-worker (3:57:40 PM): Just want you to know
Co-worker (3:57:52 PM): That if the office was attacked by zombies
Co-worker (3:58:08 PM): And we had to despirately search for weapons
Co-worker (3:58:19 PM): I’d nominate you for the first big gun we find
Me (3:58:30 PM): ha ha what?
Me (3:58:36 PM): My gun?
Co-worker (3:58:50 PM): ha yea
Co-worker (3:59:06 PM): or whatever we come across in the post-apocolyptic version of Frederick
Me (3:59:06 PM): My gun isn’t very powerful tho
Co-worker (3:59:24 PM): if it can take out a zombie, it’s good enough
Me (4:00:01 PM): I’m trying to decide if this is a compliment or a secret way of saying that my gun is going to be stolen
Co-worker (4:00:20 PM): LOL
Co-worker (4:00:23 PM): compliment
Co-worker (4:00:29 PM): to your pwning ability
Me (4:00:52 PM): ha ha, well don’t tell Robinson. He likes to underestimate me. Which is when I shoot him in the eye.
Co-worker (4:01:02 PM): hahaha
Co-worker (4:01:07 PM): okay
Co-worker (4:01:10 PM): it’s dl

I don’t know what the general consensus at work, but for the most part, I’m grateful that everyone there seems to not care, or it doesn’t bother them that I’m pagan. On co-worker and I even joke about what situations call for what animal sacrifices (a joke mind you, I don’t do that, well, we do go hunting and kill rabbits for eating, but dammit don’t argue with me on logistics). Such as two goats, a pig, and an anteater for a good day.

There are a few that I don’t talk to as much that I worry about, but as a whole I think they are pretty cool.

On another note, my boss and our accountant pulled me aside before the move because they were concerned about my knee in the new building. I had been using the elevator at work because of my torn ligament from February, but the new building was all stairs, and I was working on the second floor. My boss even made a comment to let her know anything they needed to do, if we needed to get some medical work done, buy some braces whatever. Because they really cared about me and adore me.

-That- made me feel good, to actually have bosses like that is wonderful. So far the stairs seem okay, so I’m going to try a couple weeks of just being careful. My knee has been getting better over time and that MSM vitamin has done wonders. I may take some Chondroitin later on, but I think the knee is always going to be somewhat sore. I don’t know how well ligaments recover, but in your knee where there’s always movement, it can’t be easy.