also, state of RL

And in updating this blog, I forgot to say anything about the details with the new job, and all. I've already said before how 2012 had been, pretty much, a terrible suckful year. Between losing my business and main source of income, losing my home, losing my *good* computer, and having to take a minimum wage job, again, in retail hell, the first couple months saw me living in a basement apartment, where the gas fireplace that sold me on the room, did not work, and once I moved in, I found out the house I moved to was in a constant state of foreclosure, and it had serious mice problems I was not aware of. But still once I had internet, I was ok with tough it out, since at least the space was about the size of a good sized studio apartment. Then my retail job started playing games with my hours, as expected after the holidays, and my other job at what I've come to lovingly call 'mcPrints', started in on me. This was the job that was actually starting to give me the hours, if not the pay, I needed to make ends meet, and I honestly enjoyed at least half of what I was doing, but then they had a genius idea to buy into a consulting firm's copy+paste plan, toss millions at them, to get a 'new program' they could push on all of us that worked there, that for the most part, if your position required you actually, you know, do stuff like mine did (working in the print center trying to put together an encyclopedia in an hour or less most of the time), it pretty much interfered with the job. Then, not happy enough with that, the overlords decided to push management to hire more people, while taking away hours from the store, so I got to see my hours suddenly trickle away little by little until nothing was left. I just got a letter today informing me I was elligable for benefits now, when I haven't worked there in months, I have the feeling they still haven't officially fired me despite me talking to the manager. Meanwhile as an aside, I did have the unfortunate oppertunity while working there of meeting the district manager, who didn't seem to fully grasp the concept of being colorblind and did not like that my shirt was the wrong shade of blue. During this time, the landlord got back with the ex of 20+ years, who decides the basement was not to be an appartment, and i get moved into a tiny guestroom less than a third the size, with an apartment's worth of stuff. Currently I have a foot clearance between my bed and my desk, everything else is stacked along the walls as my living situation gets worse. Landlord and ex-ex flip flop on just letting the bank forclose on the house, manage to chase away all other tenants but me (as I had nowhere to go), and get into a nice tiff where I got to hear the sounds at 4 am of an idiot going through smashing everything they could. Landlord did get me a breif job filing for his company, ideally it was supposed to become a permanent position, but bossman didn't cooperate and once the filing system was finally set up, that was it. Then the company my brother works for finally found their main HR person had only been letting her friends and family through the hiring process. I had applied a year ago before the disaster that cost me my home, jumped through all the general employment hoops, and was met with a no-thanks. usually I do all the hoops, I get hired. It turned out she was passing people over in favor of friends and relatives. My brother contacted me to let me know she was caught and canned, and now was the time to try again. I went, did the whole song and dance, and have been offered a job. Paid training starts monday. Things are looking up, this is a company that handles health insurance for the state, so it's relatively stable, as long as there's still a state, they'll still be around. It's the call center, basically looking up people's information when they call, answering questions, that sort of thing. but it's a normal schedual, at least during the paid training. Weekdays only, even if asked to work in the evening, it will never be past 8PM, and pays just under $20 an hour. I start monday, my first paycheck will be on the 13th for around 800, and I'll be able to afford a real apartment again. Already started looking, since nothing's really available until the end of october anyway.