England Number…. oh, never mind

Every time I get the urge to make another England Entry, OD is either insanely slow or completely down. And now even the periodic saving thing is taking forever, so despite intending to do one tonight, I am going to wait till tomorrow to make an England Entry. Providing it works tomorrow. I thought I’d be doing SO much better making England Entries this time, but between OD’s problems and work… issues… I keep not doing it. 

Now the periodic saving thing is doing the twirly saving maneuver every, oh, five seconds, yet the green "saved!" checkmark never appears at all. That seems like a bad sign.   

I think by now everyone has heard of Prosebox — I am on there too, same name, and so far I am very impressed. You can make separate "books" – the same concept as chapters here, but much easier to see and work with – and it is FAST. There’s no WYSIWYG so far, but the formatting is very easy. There are a lot of OD people there – the guy who started it is ; Simple Minds and he is working on it non-stop and making nearly daily improvements. I intend to stick with OD till the bitter end (which has been forecast direly for pretty much the entire 12 years I’ve been here) but as I saw another diarist put it, I think of it as having duel citizenship. I’m duplicating the rare entries I make here over there too. I looooove OD, I’ve been here forEVER and I would be beyond distraught if it does finally go up in a ball of flames (or just vanish, the much more likely scenario I suppose) but I guess everything ends. Prosebox does look very promising, though. It’s certainly less annoying. So far. 

Big changes at work. I have a new boss – my former one took a new job at the University in a brand new department where he will be directing international programs. It’s exactly what he loves. My new boss is actually an interim, and I’m kind of afraid he won’t take it permanently. I like him a lot, and had worked with him quite a bit in my old College of Ed job because he supervised student teachers. So, YAY! I like him a lot!! BOO!!! He will probably not keep the job!!! He thought he’d have a year to decide but turns out they are already wanting to post the position, which means he’d have to apply now if he wants it. And his background is teaching Theatre, which is what he loves and isn’t at all the higher admin sort of thing this is. Not really the career path he was mapping out, I think. 

BUT, oh, well – we have him for a year anyhow. Time enough to worry about the next one later.

And, sadly, Miss Artsy is leaving. She’s got a new job. She’ll be working at Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham’s outfit. Miss Artsy is a very devout Christian, but she is also very tolerant and very open-minded and accepting of everyone’s beliefs, and quite liberal in her political views and votes Democrat and loves Obama. I am afraid she is not going to find Samaritan’s Purse to be liberal and openminded and tolerant of everyone else’s beliefs. I could be wrong, of course, but I would think that, being Franklin Graham’s outfit, it would be pretty right-wing and intolerant. I’m afraid she’s not going to fit in there as well as she’s expecting to. From what I hear they are also pretty controlling. For one thing, men and women can’t be alone in the same car. Like, if a man and a woman needed to go down to Charlotte for some work-related activity, they could not share a car. Because, that might lead to….. SIN!!!! Since obviously men and women can’t control themselves if left alone around each other. I find that pretty insulting. And probably very inconvenient. And quite paranoid.

Baker B worked there for a few weeks years ago, when we moved back up here and he signed up with a temp agency. They posted him over there, doing data entry. At the time I think there were about fifty people at Samaritan’s Purse – now it’s way over 600. He HATED it. He found it creepy and oppressive, and everyone prayed all the time. He was very happy to get on at the college. But Baker B is not at all religious, and Miss Artsy is very religious. So she won’t mind that. She’s also making a LOT more money there, which kind of shocked us all. She’s doing admin work, scheduling and budgets and stuff. It does illustrate just how underpaid we are, sadly. 

Anyhow, I really hate to see her go, although she’s been unhappy for a long time and has also gotten increasingly careless in her work which in our job is BAD. Like, potentially major disaster bad.  

We’ve also been without Mr. Organized for a MONTH now. Maybe more than that – I’ve lost count. It seems like years. It’s for a very sad reason — his partner’s mother collapsed and was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. She lives in California, and they flew out there immediately. The doctor didn’t think she’d live more than a few days, but she hung on for two weeks. Then they stayed another week to sort everything out – J’s mom didn’t have a will. J wanted to bring some of her things back here so they rented a Uhaul, and drove home with detours since J wanted to visit his grandparents in Arizona. So they’ve been gone a loooong time. I’ve been happily tracking them on FB and they FINALLY got home a few hours ago, to my delight – and theirs too, I’m sure. 

But that has meant we’ve been seriously understaffed for a month, and often there’s just been two of us since Aggravation Receptionist and Miss Artsy both had vacation scheduled during that time. It’s summer and not as busy, but it’s resulted in pretty much NO downtime. And now with Miss Artsy leaving, we’ll continue to be seriously understaffed (it will take AGES to replace her; I know how it always works) but at least Mr. Organized will be back before she goes. So that worked out well. 

OMG, I have yammered on till 11:00 and I DO have to get up in the morning. Obviously I needed a Real World break in my England Entries. I’m still pining for England, too, which is making it harder to deal with the Real World. But deal with it I must, and if I’m going to even partially deal with it tomorrow I better go to bed, like, NOW. 

Let’s see if this even saves after all that work….