my job’s gotten pretty interesting.  i’m liking it more and more, even though i’m also often completely stressed out by it.  my responsibilities have grown so much that i’ve got way too much to do and too little time, but luckily my boss wants to solve that problem by having me do more of the interesting fun stuff and less of the administrative and financial stuff – yay!  but the catch: i have to find someone who can juggle 8 million things at the same time, has some initiative, wants to work full time and doesn’t need a lot of money to replace me in those roles.  every time we think we’ve got that, the person decides that in fact they DON’T want to work full time.  they want to work 2 days a week, or 1.  and i end up having to start the hiring process (and worse: the training process) all over again.  it’s the problem with the pay we offer, which isn’t high.  we get people who don’t really need to work because their spouses make enough for both of them.

anyway, i’m back at it again.  today:  met with boss for 2 hour strategy argument (me:  need 5 days/week; her: well, maybe only 4?… etc.), now emailing and calling old applicants who dropped out because wanted more days/week than we last time round were hiring for.  ugh.  i’ve been here 3 years now, and have now had 3 temp assistants (hired as temp assistants) and 2 perm assistants who decided they wanted fewer days/week than the 3-4 they were hired at.  temp assistants don’t work because the time training them is wasted, and both of the perm assistants were fantastic and really disappointing when they changed their minds.  one is leaving the continent (although decision to leave us came with birth of 2nd daughter), and the other will be staying on with us in a different role, project-only.

it’s hard working here, i’ll admit:  gets pretty hectic and crazy, and our boss is really a micro-manager.  but it’s also really friendly, a tiny company, very like a little family, and it’s always easy to arrange time flexibly when necessary.  i hope i’m luckier this time round.  at least i’m now DAMN sure what the skill-set is now!

yep, more and more over the past year, this describes me.  my sense of humor has gone that way, too.  i tell  self-aggrandizing stories that involve how well i told someone off.  not good.

it doesn’t help that i’m too busy to think straight half the time.  i’m going to work on this.  matt and i have just found ourselves a free 2-3 days when we were planning on going to london.  i was really looking forward to the break – hang with friends, shop, just wander around… no real commitments.  but ok.  so we work on the roof terrace, perhaps, and just take it easy here.  i have to decide if i’m going to keep the days off as planned.  i guess we’ll discuss it this evening.  i’m super busy at work, but that isn’t likely to change, so since i planned this little break, maybe i should use it.  i put a bottle of rose in the fridge.  🙂

i also went for a thai yoga massage yesterday.  90 mins.  i had one once before, and loved it.  it wasn’t expensive. maybe combining that with the chinese massages i was trying to schedule every couple of weeks, and i could pull off routinely one massage a month?  it seriously helps.  all that tension in my neck, ahhhh…

today i finally had time to go back to the gym – first time in about a month.  i have been so busy that even my evenings are cram-packed.  no time for even 30 mins at the gym.  it felt good.  and all because our concert tonight was cancelled.  so…  i slept in.  went to the gym.  drank a smoothie.  dropped another batch of clothes off to sell at the consignment store.  bought a pinata.  read up on the situation in iceland.  made coffee.  washed the dishes.

and, good news:  while prepping the clothes for the consignment shop, discovered i can fit into some of my favorite pants again.  yay!  i guess all these juices and smoothies instead of meals 2x/day are doing what they’re supposed to. woo hoo! 

the past 2 weeks have seriously sucked.  week before last everything went wrong and last week we tried to fix everything.  we were not very successful.  the meeting with the city guys over a solution re: our windows didn’t go so well.  we’re still reeling from that.  they MIGHT let us start doing the back windows – a good thing – but we really need to do the front, and besides that, replacing the gutter should happen at the same time to save us the scaffolding expense.  work was hard and stressful and even some things there went wrong. 

yesterday i woke up feeling very stressed out at about 8:45, and jumped into the shower.  then i felt so lethargically unable to consider the first step in doing something that i fell asleep.  matt got up and put my motorcycle battery on the charger for me, which was sweet.  i woke up at 11:30 and we got to work on things.

first, i finally installed the new shower set – this is a silly problem that had been going on and on.  took me about half an hour to fix but i only just friday had FINALLY bought the appropriate things to fix it.  then i joined matt on the roof, where he was getting started on prepping the old floorboards of the terrace to be relaid.  i worked on oiling them while he experimented with ways to build the new fence.  then we ran out of oil, and he bicycled to praxis.  it should have been about 45 minutes before he was home again, but praxis didn’t have the stuff for some reason, so he had to go to gamma.  then our neighbor across the street dropped by and asked to borrow something which it turned out we didn’t have and invited us to drop by when matt got back.  matt eventually got back, so we dropped in over there, chatted a bit, then went and got turkish pizzas.  on the way back, we ran into our neighbor across the inside alley and chatted with her.  then we worked on the roof until about 6:15. 

jeffrey came over around 7 and we watched a pretty bad indie film that i’d gotten the screener for.  dick dropped in while we were watching it, and jeffrey left at about 9:30.  we made massaman curry and ate it, then watched robot chicken until i nearly fell asleep on the sofa, and dick went home. 

today we woke up around 10.  matt made popovers and we ate them on the roof, then went and tried to start our motorcycles.  mine didn’t start.  i had lots of "help" from biker neighbors, while matt went for a little ride.  now i’m recharging my battery to try again later.  matt and i worked again on the roof for a while, then matt left for the airport.  i took a LONG shower and have been messing around online for a while.

actually, later may be now.  i think my battery is charged enough to try again.  if it doesn’t work, i’ll try again tomorrow.  woo hoo!  springtime is here!  i’m exhausted.  if the bike doesn’t work, i might head over to my chinese lady for a massage.  we’ll see.

on saturday, the awesome  had a birthday party.  at the party, i met a girl who has a VERY firm handshake… i nearly fell over from the pain.  probably she just got a weird angle or something, because that’s just not normal.  i was rubbing my hand throughout the rest of the evening and trying not to shake people’s hands.  yesterday, i could barely work by the end of the day because my hand hurt so much when using the mouse and typing.  no, it doesn’t hurt in my wrist; it hurts when my pinky is extended in any direction.

today i’m wearing one of my boxing wraps on my right hand to try to prevent myself from moving my pinky.  it’s hard to type and i’ve moved the mouse to my left hand, which is awkward… even though i changed its settings to mirror the normal.  anyway… if it doesn’t go away with care in the next couple of days, i’ll have to go see my doctor.  never fun.

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housing:  last week a major torrent of water was streaming into our living room from a leak in the front of the house.  i called a repairman recommended by my boss’s husband (who is very picky), but his earliest availability was this week.  he came this morning.  it turns out that a small gutter that runs through the front inside of our house is so old that it’s worn through.  it will need to be fully replaced, as the metal is worn through in many places.  however, it can’t be replaced without access to scaffolding.  we will eventually be having scaffolding anyway to do the windows, but we have no idea when, because of long other story.  in the meantime, he patched what he could.  he won’t charge yet, because he’s not sure his patching job will hold up. 

he pointed out that if THAT gutter was worn through and needed replacing, probably the ones that lead into it (also inside the front side of the house) are at that point as well.  this becomes a major project.  next week he will come back with the appropriate person to evaluate and make a bid for the work. 

also, he had a look at the roof work done by kees and was highly critical.  noted some potential problem areas we should keep an eye on, but said they should hold for a while, and that they can be changed pretty easily later when we actually need to. 

—–

now i should get back to work.  much to do.  prepping the big MIPtv insanity.

i wonder if this will affect those of us who are already here… i will have to read the article better.

The Netherlands Wants Immigrants

and also synthetic chris
courtesy of zarathoestra who sent the link!

i’ve just, amazingly, had my first BATH since late december (not to say i haven’t showered, but a bath… mmm…).  a small cosmetic surgery on my left knee gone awry meant open wound and bandaging.  still does, but it has developed a new fresh skin finally and seemed ok for bathing.  wow that felt great.  and now i’m up to putting down my thoughts on the burlesque party matt and i attended in berlin.

La Fete Fatale

does anyone want to come to this debate with me?  It’s Friday afternoon and you have to sign up, but it’s free.  The website to sign up is: http://www.amsterdambrightcity.nl/zuidas/nl/community/programma/2,1,492/

and here’s the info below the cut:

Live Radio Debate and Launch Casual Friday

HOWL – yes, an illustration of ginsberg’s poem.  very well done.  it combined court scenes, a reading scene, and live and animated illustrations of the lines of the poem.  it was funny and beautiful and perfectly done.  i loved every second of it.

DUOLUO TIANSHI (fallen angels) – wong kar wei.  need i say anything more?  it was an older (1995) film.  it was less action than portrait of several young people in broken lives that occasionally crossed paths.  again, loved it.

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP – a documentary about a failed documentary about street artists, including banksy.  it was BRILLIANT!  if i had only seen this one movie the whole festival i would have left happy.  🙂

SAWAKO DECIDES – a story about losers who accept that they are losers and go on with their lives.  i thought it was really existential.  they didn’t take control of their lives to make them better, per se… they just took control by accepting that they were losers.  it was funny and not touching.  maybe it was touching.  it had a good sense of humor.  afterwards, there was a q&a with the director, during which everyone asked dumb questions like, "in japan, is it such a bad thing to have left your family?"  uh… yes.  anyway, i don’t think this movie will probably get very much acclaim or go anywhere, but i enjoyed it immensely.

so, 4 for 4.  yay!

today we’re seeing 2 more:  Besuoro and Mine Vaganti.  more about them later.

yesterday i had a 5 hour session regarding on how to be a really independent indie producer.  it was fascinating.  many of the things i learned could be applied to bands or entrepreneurs.  i’ll put details up when i get around to writing that one up for my boss.  but i’m thinking i got more out of it for my own purposes than she’ll get out of it for ours.  it was a fantastic presentation!

today:  besides movies, explore!

oh, and i haven’t mentioned the cool places we’ve hung out at… later, later… so much to tell, so little time!  berlin is awesome!