road trip

i'm going to a wedding this weekend - in penticton. i'm driving there - by myself. someone shoot me. i hate driving to the grocery store, let alone driving halfway across the province! i am seriously considering bailing on this trip but my friend would have a fit. i would never hear the end of it. why didn't i just hitch a ride with someone??? HOLY F - i don't want to drive. and, of course, it would be faster for me to take the coquihalla but i'm so damn cheap that i don't want to spend the $20 round-trip toll. but if i took the hope-princeton, i'd tack on at least 30 minutes onto an already too long of a drive. and, it's 11pm and i'm not sleeping yet. i haven't even finished packing (trust me, it's a big thing, even for a weekend that i'll pretty much be spending in shorts and a tank top). this sucks.

putting out

good vibes, that is :)

my boss is on holidays from august 3 - 10th. one of the other vancouver lawyers is also on holidays during this time. this leaves me with the VP for six days. we don't want this - i'd be too stressed, i'd never get a break and i'd probably end up work 60 hours. so, say it with me:

"waterloooooo"

i figure if i think positively and anticipate being sent there for the week, the positive energy will make it happen. as well, i figure if things are meant to happen with my cute lawyer at head office (which quite obviously, they're not but i live in hope), then i will get sent to head office next week.

"waterloooooo"

in the alternative, he could get sent here and we could hang out at my basement office for the week... ooh, the scenarios that are running through my head right now...

"waterloooooo"

i believe in the power of positive thinking!

new opportunity

so i didn't end up getting yelled at by the VP. she was definitely cranky because she was sick but her sister had also come with me to work with her on an agreement and i was left to my own devices. dodged that bullet. but i've decided that for the remainder of my time at my job, i'm going to need to care more. this is my problem: i don't care about my work. it's unusual for me because my reputation at work is everything, particularly in such a small community as the legal one. but since i work with people who aren't in the private sector, my reputation doesn't mean as much as if i were working at an actual law firm. but i need to care - i'm ashamed of some of the work i've been producing and that's no good. i'm turning over the new leaf, three months after the fact.

speaking of new leaf, a friend of mine at my old work e-mailed me a secondment opportunity that she thought i'd be interested in. i have a feeling she has much more confidence in my abilities than i do, judging by the job requirement sheet that was attached to her forwarded e-mail. initially, i briefly glanced over the "Core Competencies" section of the requirements sheet and was immediately intimidated - i didn't feel like i possessed anything they were looking for. i had some of the "Additonal Qualifications" but i figured if i couldn't hack the "Core" then I might as well not even try.

she sent it to me earlier this week and it was only yesterday that i decided i would take a good look at it. while i'm still not sure exactly what the position entails nor what this particular facet of the organization does (much like when i started with the Crown), the idea sounds interesting. i don't think it would involve anything particularly "legal" in nature, which is a bit of a turn-off, but it's only a one-year secondment and it could prove to be a very eye-opening experience. i've decided that, despite the fact that i don't feel i'm at all qualified for it, i'm going to apply for the position. after all, you can't get something you don't try for, right? the only downside is that the position is at headquarters in victoria. i guess it doesn't really matter as it seems that all of my friends are moving away for work and school or they live elsewhere anyway. i guess i figured that if i was going to move somewhere to work, that i'd go big - across the country, to the states or to another continent. not just across the pond :) but that's me counting the proverbial chickens - and my chickens get counting more than most people's, i think.

oh, the anticipation!

you know what's worse than getting yelled at? knowing you're going to get yelled at in advance and having to wait for it. i made a boo-boo at work - i was using a USB drive to work on files that one of the lawyers, who was borrowing a computer, was working on. i saved the work to the USB drive (which isn't mine) but failed to save it to my own computer nor did i save it to the shared file on the network. and guess which files were urgently needed by the VP on monday? i thought about saving all the files on that drive to my computer "just in case" and i would sort it out later but ended up not doing it. in hindsight... anyway, on monday, they were on a frantic search and discovered my error. i was supposed to go by the VP's house to pick it up on monday but was told to "swing by and pick it up when she's back home on thursday" (read: you're in trouble). if that wasn't bad enough, they phoned me again today to ask for another file that i hadn't saved to the network, nor to my computer (which led me to believe I hadn't worked on it until the lawyer said otherwise - I still don't remember working on it). it was on the USB drive, though. it's not enough to get me fired but it's enough to get an earful. crap.

numb

i'm not feeling much about anything lately. work's ok, although i'm still determined to leave after my 6-month stint (and since i think i'm going to get yelled at on thursday, i'd like to leave as of today!). love life is non-existent but i'm feeling fine about that. family life is still a bit rocky, although it shouldn't be anymore but it's better than it was a week ago. no, nothing's going on in my life right now. perhaps that's why i'm feeling a bit down. i worked three 12-hour days last week so perhaps i'm still tired. i spent all of sunday reading the new harry potter book so perhaps that relaxed feeling has carried into the week. i don't know what it is. i feel blah today. did i feel like that yesterday? have i felt like that all this week? hard to tell. i had a grand time on saturday night. i went to my grandma's house for her birthday party and i was laughing it up with some of my cousins, which is not something i get to do often anymore. but did i feel blah that day too? i'm no longer aware of how i feel day-to-day...bad sign. :) i need to get back to the gym or some regular form of physical activity - perhaps that will give me the pick-me-up i need.

i wish it was october 28th.

write-off

when do you write off a member of your family? it's a question i've been asking myself for a couple of weeks now and i'm stuck between 21st century, north american sensibilities and good, ol' fashioned family values. on the one hand, family is everything - when your friends and acquaintances have faded away, all you have left is your family. on the other hand, is maintaining a relationship with a family member (just for the sake of having the relationship and alleviating some guilt) worth risking your mental health and all-around happiness? what if this person has written you off first - do you become the "bigger person" and continue to maintain a thread of the former relationship to keep up appearances or do you respect their feelings and become part of their history? what if you don't even care? a lot of questions that i don't have any answers for. no clue.

waterloo de-brief

on paper, i work for a really great company. visiting head office last week was eye-opening, but not all in a good way. the company itself is one of the best to work for in Canada - they seem to really value their employees and reward them with lots of little perks (free Star Wars preview, logo clothing, free exclusive concerts - the rolling stones for their 20th anniversary, great physical working environment, picnics and golf tournaments and can you say "expense it?"). if i could move the legal department to vancouver, i'd stay with this company indefinitely. or would i? the one thing i learned about the "legal assistants" in waterloo is that they are really glorified secretaries (no disrespect intended) / personal assistants. i mean, i know it's hot out and you're the VP but really, couldn't you walk to the other building? it's across the street! and doing the nails of my lawyer is way beyond where I draw the line. maybe i just have a really self-important view of what a paralegal is but in staying with this company for a long period, i don't think i'll ever realize my vision of what a paralegal is. i might be able to make it more than what it is now but in reality, they'll never move the legal department here and that's pretty much what will determine whether i actually stay or whether i go.

the lawyers were awesome - and two of them were really cute :) (although, one I work with directly and another...well, I thought he was showing some interest until, as i was leaving the building on my last day, I saw him chatting up some bottle-blonde princess in the parking lot. then i realized i wasn't his type!). the support staff was mostly good but you could sense that some of them didn't really like that i was there - nor did they appreciate the circumstances which brought me there (i.e. the VP's favouritism). doesn't matter - i had fun, despite the 12 hour days - of doing nothing. i was begging for work on the monday - so much so that rumour got around and one of the lawyers whom i don't really work with asked me if i wanted to do some filing - i jumped at the chance. but, i'm glad i got to meet everyone.

waterloo itself is...um...boring. because of the 12 hours days, i never did get to shop at the outlet mall, which was probably a good thing. i didn't get to go to the african lion safari but that's ok - really, lions in Waterloo? i did get to catch the tail end of the multi-cultural fest on the sunday but it was wrapping up, literally, as we walked into the park. there area lot of parks in waterloo. and a lot of brick houses (the Commodores' song runs through my head everytime i think about the houses there). the seagram's distillery was turned into loft housing - gorgeous. one of the lawyers told me that he looked into buying one when he moved there a couple of years back. the lofts were about 1400 sq ft., in a decent area of town and cost about $216,000. my jaw dropped. you can get a loft that's about half that size in gastown (!!!) for the same price. apparently, they're not selling well as for the same price, you can buy a house. i'd buy the loft :)

i seriously considered moving to waterloo after my six month stint so i could work with everyone at head office - seriously. and then, the tuesday thunderstorm hit and i was longing to be back on the west coast. they all laughed at me, cowering in my cubicle. "this is nothing - we had a tornado touchdown last week." excuse me - when is the next flight out of kansas??? and i don't know how many people expressed how lucky i was to be living in the most beautiful city in canada and how many people told me that the food was way better in vancouver than toronto.

so, my decision for the week is that i'll wait out my six months, go back to my job with the crown after that and try to get into the DOJ while i work my old job. gimme my pension!