The nones and ides of April

I’m still a part-time employee but as of today I am working full-time hours.  I do not receive any of the benefits that a full-time employee does, even though I have taken the desk of the full-time employee I’ve replaced and I perform the functions of said replaced employee.  My boss jimmied this solution from the aether, since our human resources guy has instituted a hiring freeze and we just fired a man.  My boss literally told me that this arrangement is illegal.  I don’t care to say anything–full-time hours is full-time money, and I’m not used to having vacation days or health insurance anyway.

So now I work 40 hours a week and am going to be paid for 36 of them, since I have "mandatory" one-hour lunch breaks that I do not take.  Noon to ten, Monday through Thursday, which keeps my Fridays and weekends free.  This is enough of a reward.  It beats the factory.

Every third call I get today is "did you hear about that worm thing that is going to start up tomorrow and eat all the computers and did you know that it is bad and on all the computers and is my files safe and my MSN and what is a UBS drive and is my files safe and what"

Great, you watched 60 Minutes, the Show With No Actual Value.  Kramer finds this out in the Junior Mint episode (re-ran last evening, and I would like to think the person who made that decision knows exactly what I’m thinking, even though they don’t).

T-minus ten days or less until I hear about Japan.  In the same timespan: Nintendo DSi is released, I attend a drunken party for a friend who will be carting us around in a limo, the new Final Fantasy XI update comes out, Jimmy Eat World’s new album becomes available, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is available for purchase on XBox Live Arcade, and I adapt to a noon to ten schedule.  It is a timespan more eventful than the handful of months preceding it, even if only because of a variety of media.

I have begun to feel a slightly rekindled interest in my novel, brought to 120+ pages as a thesis project but left to stagnate since receiving my Master’s in August.  It is an invigorating feeling that I am not quite sure I’m ready to embrace, because I remember that road, and I recall the way its gravel cut my feet.