I love overtime…

Like I said many times before and I’ll say it again: I’ve never met an overtime that I didn’t like. I love to work extra hours, especially when they’re booked for the right reasons. Blame my Dad if you want to find someone to point a finger at for this intense work ethic, but I can’t stand giving up a chance to earn a little extra dough for the family and our many expenses. The things I want to get and do with my family are not cheap, and sometimes I gotta do a little extra time to get that stuff done. The result might be some late hours, but I think that’s a small price to pay to get the stuff for the people that I love. Nuff said, right?

Well, there are some people who don’t like the hours I’m clocking. Leah isn’t too happy with the fact that I’m doing extra hours. She thinks that since she’s working full time and making money too, that I don’t need to the extra hours anymore. In a way she is correct. Her money has made things easier on us and helped a great deal. I’m not doing OT to keep us afloat now, but to do some cool things that we couldn’t do before when we were not afloat. I’ve started to make plans for vacation time that I plan to use this summer, where I want to take Ethan and Jonathan on a trip to visit the Grandparents in Nashville. Some of those plans includes a small trip to Chatanooga to visit the life sized Thomas the Train. I’m also trying to save some coin for Leah to make a trip home and also to finance a possible trip to New York for July/August. So I’ve got a lot of stuff to save up for.

One thing that I’m going to put a bit of the new few cheques into is a credit card for me to use for online purchases and other things. Unlike the other cards that build debt that you have to pay back, this one is pay as you go, which means you can’t spend anything on it until you put money into it first. This will let me buy things online and during emergencies without digging into debt at the same time. So I’m going to get the card this weekend, and every two weeks dump a small portion of the cheque in. It would be nice to have this saved up so that if Leah needs to make any emergency trips home for personal family reasons, I’ll have the coin on the card to make the book any flights she might need. It will be cool to have this card to make Ebay purchases and WOW subscription payments, but I want to save money for the serious reasons as well. Is a nice place to save money for travel as well. To separate it so I can save it up is a good thing for future trips planned for the summer.

One thing I’m making plans for the summer is to attend a few sporting events. One team I’m gonna check out a few times this year is the Blue Jays. I’ve got a friend coming in from the island to visit in May so we’re going to catch a night game against the evil Red Sox. I also plan to take Leah to an afternoon game, and while I’d like to take Ethan to his first game, I might wait until next summer when he’s 4. He might on all concerned. Another team I am going to go out of my way to support is the new expansion Major League Soccer (MLS) team starting this season in Toronto. The FC start this summer, and I plant to attend at least one game, possibly more if I can. I was tempted to try to catch the Galaxy to see Beckham play, but that game is going to sell out too fast so I might try to catch one of the better teams, like New England. The city also build a new stadium for the FC, and not only is it in a great part of town (where old exhibition used to be) but now there is a new outdoor venue for concerts and that will draw more acts to Toronto over the summer. It’s nice to have a new outdoor venue that isn’t Molson Park in Barrie.

There are going to be a ton of cool shows coming over this summer and while I would love to see them all, I know it’s not feesable. But I’ll have to pick my battles. As much as I would love to see Billy Joel at ACC, seeing Rod Stewart at Copps might be more affordable and better location wise to pull off. It’s a matter of picking the right shows instead of trying to see them all. First thing is first, I have a Meat Loaf concert to check out with my brothers and a Nelly Furtado show to check out with Leah. Funny thing is Leah stated that it’s unfair for me to go to both shows. Forget the fact that I paid for all the tickets, I guess I can understand how things look from her side. As much as I would love to bail on checking out Nelly, it was her Valentine’s Day gift, and I’ve got other plans made for that show to make it a special evening. All this stuff requires a little extra coin, hence the reason why I’m book extra hours. And it’s not like I’m running up to the TL desk and begging for more hours. If they come to me and ask me to do time, I accept it. If they never approach me, I go home when originally booked. I’m not looking for the extra time, but if it comes looking for me, I won’t turn them down. I think that’s a fair policy. For example today is rather slow. Chances are I’m not going to get asked, so I’ll go home as normal. Oh well, it happens.

But I like working the extra time for another reason: gives the bosses something to judge me on. Not only am I in the top five of the company for the quantity of calls taken (which is impressive alone since I’ve been here less then three months) but I’m in the top five for OT clocked. This kind of dedication and hard work never goes unnoticed and will be looked at positively when higher positions become available. So for me Overtime is a win, win, win situation for me. So how could I say no to that?

Peter