“Inside The Terrordome”/”Night Walk”: ‘Adjusting’

Friday, 6/23, 2:15 AM

I am ‘adjusting’ to 2 things: full-time work and consolidating a 2nd blog back into “Enter The Cyborg”.

• I am wrapping up my 2nd week as a full-time employee, on the 23rd. I haven’t been full-time since I was the Signing Specialist (the 1st time) at Target, almost 8 years ago. It’s been a big adjustment, mainly on the non-work side. Since myself and Kyle both went to weekdays, we’ve been covering parts of the weekend 3rd shift, as our new employees come on board and get comfortable with the processes. As a result, I worked 44 hours last week (our “weeks” are Saturday-Friday) and 60 hours this week; a lot of overtime will be on my next pay check. Going from working 3-4 days a week/28-32 hours a week to 6 days a week/52+ hours a week has been a little rough but I should be fine, starting Monday. On the non-work side, I’ve had to almost completely change a few routines. I used to go walking in the mornings, mainly – now, I go in the late afternoons; ‘lunch’ is now focused on that 9-11 PM window, with ‘dinner’ happening when I get off from work. Falling asleep hasn’t been too challenging (I’m usually sleep by 8 AM) but sleeping past 2:00 has been, especially if I have to be somewhere before work that night. We are moving our podcast recordings to the weekends (Sundays, until the training at work ends; either day, afterwards), so that’s a big help to sleep and ‘free’ time; Trivia, when it happens, works perfectly, because I can leave there at 9:30 and just bus it down to work, around 10:10. I have to go back to shortened Friday Game Night visits, though. Other than that, it’s been an exhausting but good transition to full-time 3rd shift.
• Speaking of the job, the upcoming paycheck will put my net total for 2017 over the combined net for 2016 at 2 jobs, and for 2015 and 2016 at my original job.
• I am changing the category titles and descriptions for this blog, as I bring over some posts from “The Nexus”. This is a work in progress; it should take a few more days. I am making “The Nexus” a category: it will be a Game category – reviews, news, and thoughts for Board Games, PC Games, and Video Games. “Inside The Terrordome” will be a post of (normally) short bullet points about me and my life, plus other topics that don’t warrant a separate post. “Short Circuits” will remain a rant category, while “Night Walks” will stay a place for short posts made while I’m on break at work. “Entertaining The Cyborg” will become a Books, Music, and Movies reviews/news category, since I haven’t made too many Movie and Music posts. The rest of the categories probably won’t have specific names: posts about Health and Fitness will probably be combined into one category; “Comicdom Wrecks” posts will go with any other Podcasts posts; and I’ll put the Drum & Bugle Corps posts with Sports and Other Interests posts (title TBD). Most everything else, category-wise, will stay the same. This ‘adjustment’ is much easier on the body; the mind, not so much. 😉

Adjustments aside:

• I won my appeal for more Financial Aid. The short version: I had earned my max available college credits from my time at UofL, JCTC, and WKU; this made my ineligible for aid. However, they saw that most of my credits were earned from at UofL (’01-’07), and not at WKU, so I was awarded aid for the 2017-2018 year (I just accepted the award about 2 hours ago). I have to now find 2 open classes, since most of the ones that I need are closed.
• The War of the Foot has waxed and waned, since March. It got really bad in the left heel for a couple of months, but has died down to a ‘simmer’ the last 2 weeks. The right heel has actually been pretty decent, lately – that Plantar brace has definitely helped. The right ankle has been the ‘hot spot’; I am probably going to have to go get an X-ray on it soon. Something isn’t right with it.
• I am still hovering at about the same weight since March. Most of my pants are looser around the waist but I feel like my stomach is a little bigger. I have to get more consistent with gym time and diet – another part of 3rd Shift Adjustment.
• If you had asked me in 2016, at about this time, for a percentage of likelihood that I would have a car or an apartment within 3 months, I would have said:
  Car – 0%
  Apartment – 5%.
  If you had asked in January of this year:
  Car – 15%
  Apartment – 33%.
  As of today:
  Car – 50-60%
  Apartment – 85-90%. Knock on wood, I will have one of the two by Labor Day!