A change in year is not helping things at all. This has been one of the worst weeks ever.

Some of it is universal; I may not be the biggest Harry Potter fan, but I did adore Alan Rickman. By Grabthar's Hammer, this sucked. And Bowie. We got cable the same month MTV debuted, so I got my fill of Ashes to Ashes, Fashion, etc., loved the 80s version of Bowie, then went back & discovered that Ziggy Stardust is one of the best records, ever, full stop. Today just heard about Ted Marchibroda, the first ever coach of the Baltimore Ravens. Enough with the death already.

On a more personal level, I hurt my heel in the car accident & it's been getting worse every day. Last week we started using a new software system at work without training or practice, & the data supplied by our client conflicted with the previous set they sent us. I wound up standing at my supervisor's computer for hours at a time while we compared databases looking for the (many errors) sent by our client. That hurt my foot even more. It took us all day Monday to finish fixing the database & printing documents. When I got home, my paycheck was in the mailbox; I usually take it to work in my pocketbook & then to the bank at lunchtime. This will be important later. Monday night, CJ flipped out around 1am, and stayed that way, barking for hours. I finally got up, and after another hour figured out the problem - battery ran low on the smoke alarm. Meanwhile I was freezing & couldn't get back to sleep. Great.

Tuesday, I arrived at work to find out that all the documents we'd printed Friday & Monday - over 2500 of them - were wrong. We had to delete some data that we didn't want on the documents; turned out the new software decided to helpfully put it back when we printed. We had to reprint every one of them. Forget going to the bank - I didn't get lunch & almost didn't get a chance to go potty all day. Meanwhile my supervisor & the third member of our office were at each other's throats all day, & it became pretty clear I was not going home at 4 for the second day in a row. After 4, I kept working on documents while my supervisor went to ask the boss some questions. When he came back, he came back with the boss, the office manager & boxes. And started packing his stuff into them. I thought he had quit. Seems there was another issue altogether I didn't know about, & combined with software issues, there was blow up & he was fired. I'm a temp, who was brought on specifically to be his assistant, so I had to ask the office manager if I should come in on Wednesday. Meanwhile, We were still printing the documents, and as a result of the firing, all of the documents needed the supervisor's name crossed out and signed by someone else. Some other workers stayed late, but the whole mess wasn't finished until after 7:30, & I didn't get home until almost 8. (I called the neighbor & asked here to feed/out the dogs.) When I got home, it was 40 degrees in my bedroom - the wind was blowing straight in & the heater couldn't keep up. So I 'slept' Tuesday night on the couch. Didn't actually sleep much & was one hurting puppy in the morning.

So Wednesday was a continuing adventure in frantically trying to print documents & deliver them to various courts, which included broken hand carts, heavy boxes, metal detectors, nosy clerks & my own failure to poker face (the clerk correctly guessed from my body language & refusal to answer questions that things were a mess, & since we'd just filed over a 1000 documents with the name crossed out...well, we handed over a lot of evidence.) Managed to eat lunch but still no time for the bank. On my way home, I discovered that the keyfob to my new car wasn't working.

Thursday was worse; the third person in our office was now the boss, as it were, & she was pissy, surly & wanted someone to yell at. Guess who. Anyway, never stopped working the entire day, no food, no bank, barely made it to the potty & then only when I snuck out when she was smoking. I nearly quit Thursday. & I got in trouble with the higher ups, because my contract with the temp agency requires that I inform them of any 'change in status' so I called them Wednesday & told them what was going on. Between the temp agency & the loose-lipped clerk, a lot of people knew about the firing, & I started to think I was going to get fired because of that.

Friday wasn't quite as bad as Thursday, but not much better. It was worse for the 'new' boss, she almost quit yesterday. And again, no lunch & no chance to go to the bank. Every bit of me hurts like heck.

Then today, I was finally going to take the check to the bank. And...it's gone. Missing. I searched everywhere, but the check isn't in my pocketbook & it isn't anywhere else either. The only place I haven't been able to look is the drawer at work where I keep my pocketbook. I'm hoping beyond hope the check fell out of the pocketbook & into the drawer at some point during the week, but if it didn't, then I'm out a paycheck indefinitely. Haven't gotten this week's check either, so the money thing is is not good. Oh yeah, the keyfob is damaged & can't be fixed without an appointment at the car dealership. Joy.

2016, you are sucking.

I thought this afternoon's errands/shopping trip would take several hours. It took 90 minutes, if that.

I'm trying to get my mother's wedding & engagement rings appraised, since she has no further use for them & I'm in a bad way financially. (Used the last of my unemployment benefits today; I have $20 some cash left.) So far I've been told $1500, $300, & we only do that one day a month. Today I was told 'pay us $30 first'. If I *had* $30 I wouldn't be trying to sell the damn rings, people. Guess I better get over to the first store tomorrow.

Then I went job shopping in a shopping center. The new place is still under construction; manager says they haven't even begun thinking about hiring yet. Every other place in the shopping center - 5 of them - is a chain store requiring online job applications. I've filled out a bunch of those for a variety of businesses; I get an acknowledgement that I applied & never hear another word again. Has anyone ever gotten a job this way? Because they won't even acknowledge reading it. Maybe they just see I have a college degree & immediately trash my application. But in any event, I'm not sure it's worth the hour per application it takes to never hear from these places again.

Finally, I went grocery shopping (hence the last of the money). What I really wanted was on huge sale, but perishable, & I won't be home the next couple of days. So I just got what I had to get, plus ice cream, my one pleasure in life now. But in the meantime, what is a greater sign that the apocalypse is upon us - Star Wars-themed coffee creamer? Or Christmas flavors before Labor Day? Either way, I'm mortified.

Oh, and it's 95 degrees and humid. Yuck.

Last year, I barely managed to be at Balticon because of Mom issues. So I was promoted from volunteer to staff. Go figure. This year, I managed to rack up 30 hours on the job in the art show. Except, that's all I did. One pass of the dealer's room, two panels (one of which was in the art show room), never set foot in the west side of the hotel much less in the game room. Just art show and trooping back and forth between the show and the bathroom/registration desk for three days. The con debuted a new computer system which...didn't work as planned...and only one guy knew how to fix it. I swear, my primary job all weekend was to go to registration and drag said guy back to the art room.

Meanwhile, I have only two weeks of unemployment left and no prospects on the horizon, so my purchasing consisted of the con t-shirt (which is gorgeous, BTW) and two inexpensive prints. And breakfast from 7-11/Royal Farms each morning. That's it. A cheap, hard-working weekend. I did manage to trade 'trade secrets' with the Art GOH, Ruth Sanderson, regarding scratchboard, and I went to a sci-fi trivia competition, was teamed with someone I've never met at random, and we creamed everyone. She knew books & anime, I knew TV, movies & games, we rolled.

Next year - for them's haven't heard, it's Balticon 50(!), the GOH is George R.R. Martin and Balticon is headed to the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Baltimore, right on the Inner Harbor. And I'm the 'co-Art Show Director'. My co-director has already told me she prefers pre-con prep to the con itself, so I'm pretty much in charge of the art show. Meep.

Beats me how I've managed this, but after not winning anything at anything in some 20 years, I have now won two raffles in three months. Both were gift baskets of pet supplies, the first one a $50 basket of small animal items, most of which my rats appreciated, and the one today is a $100 basket of large dog supplies, which hopefully CJ will allow Mosely to enjoy. (The poor fellow was diagnosed this week with a partially torn ACL, so he needs the giant bed and fluffy toys.)

Now, not that I'm ungrateful or anything like that - both baskets are a help with my critters - but being as I'm over five months unemployed, couldn't I win the lottery instead? (Yes, I play one ticket per drawing.) Anything would be good.

So let's see...

1. Going nowhere, literally. The occasional walk and that's it. Falling off the eating wagon as well, but so far no weight change.

2. Maintenance mode. Nothing new in the cleaning but nothing already done is backsliding.

3. Keeping up with TV OK, and proceeding steadily with the movies. Finished A Storm of Swords and Under the Dome, and just started on back issues of the Atlantic. Getting better with the music, listening a couple hours a week to various music samplers. Also, Freebo is a good musical artist if you are a dog person, and the Lone Bellow are awesome.

4. Financially spending too much, but that happens with multiple birthdays, holidays, conventions and car insurance in the space of six weeks. The car's tuneup and new glasses will have to wait for a while, but I should be able to cover this.

5. Look at that. Still at the same job. Which is not to say I don't have a dozen job postings saved and some really strong leads for vet work if shit happens. The boss hasn't been too bad this month, although the supervisor isn't around much (gone again this week on short notice) and the junior attorneys are being a pain. Hanging on, anyway.

I didn't really( make resolutions this year, ) ore like self guidelines. And it would probably work better if I checked in on them monthly instead of waiting for December. That said...

1. The gym. I haven't been there. Not once. I have walked at every opportunity, but that's it. Renewing this plan, because I have absolutely got to.

2. Cleaning. Kinda haven't done much of that, either. Did clean up a section of my bedroom, and this weekend the computer room is getting cleaned, period. Guests for Superbowl and Mom's bridge upcoming, it's got to be cleaned.

3. Media. Kept up with the TV, but didn't make much headway on the backlog. Kept up with the movies and saw A Clockwork Orange, Raging Bull, M, Midnight Cowboy, Forrest Gump, plus downloaded the films that are public domain. TCM will get me a long way on the plan in February, or would if I wasn't going to be home most weekends in February. The goal for music was one recording per work day, did more like half that. Note to self, maybe a variety of artists instead of a dozen by one artists would help on that. Books - DIdn't expect to get through more than one a month, considering I'm on the A Song of Ice & Fire series. Almost finished A Clash of Kings, a week early. So, acceptable but could be better.

4. Wow. Things are looking up. 1.5 car payments left now. When Mom & I were at the bank last week, the banker kept pestering me to get a credit card, which she assured was fee-free. I finally said yes, and she gave me a card - with a $10K limit. !!! The one I have is, uh, a lot less than that. Then she sent me a copy of my credit score, which I haven't seen in years. It's...about 200 points higher than I expected. Add the new card and the paid off card and yikes, I'll have a credit score to brag about. Never thought that would happen. Meanwhile, I've already done my taxes, and I'm getting a fair amount back. I thought I'd owe the State, but I'm getting some back there, too. In the mail tomorrow. So optimistic in this area.

5. So far, the year has not been particularly good or bad. My health sucks, but Mom's health seems to have levelled off. The money situation is better, but work is dicey still, with very little for me to do and money problems there. Not great, but not disastrous.

Back at the end of February...

The weight of the dentist bill is heavy. My gut, which hasn't been doing well to start with, really didn't take this new batch of stress well and I was up half the night partly because of that and partly because CJ couldn't find a comfortable position and whimpered nonstop. Finally I got up and went to check the election results. At 2am. Amazingly, while I'm still totally stressed, just reading the results seemed to reduce the piano on my back from full-size to baby grand. Aside from way too much gambling, my state is fine, and my friends can get married. The country, meanwhile, will still be run by a pragmatic centrist, and half the government will be willing to play ball with him. In short, my personal situation sucks, but my country's situation couldn't have turned out much better.

CJ, however, did not behave well at work today (I was able to take her because she was supposed to be 'under observation') so back to the crate for her. And no monitoring. Because Mom just. won't. do. it. I hope CJ doesn't injure herself further. Eesh.

CJ saw the vet today. The vet says her broken tooth has exposed pulp and signs of infection, so he's sending her to the doggie dentist. Exam, x-rays, bloodwork, consultation, anaesthesia, pain meds and if I'm lucky, just a tooth extraction. The dentist wants to do a root canal just because it's the canine tooth, but I don't think there's enough tooth left to bother. But in any event, I'm looking at hundred of dollars, the same month as car insurance and Christmas shopping. Great.

CJ's new, expensive, 'doggie Alcatraz' crate arrived yesterday. Took me (with 'help' from Mom, who doesn't know the difference between a bolt and a nut now) almost 2 hours to haul it upstairs (it weighs around 50-60 pounds), clean it and put it together. Except for the latches, which seem a little weak, this sucker is solid. Half-inch posts and 3/4 inch frame, stainless steel. Bust out of this one, dog. And the latches, while the weak point, there's two of them and of my own accord I decided to install them going in opposite directions, in further deterrence. I hope. I mean, I'd like to think I'm smarter than my dog...anyway, other than some whimpers, she survived the night in there. My hands and back are killing me, but I think I've finally gotten one item of stress off my plate.

And then I'll get the credit card bill for this. Eesh.

Mom decided to drive me further nuts by losing her credit card; after many calls and attempts to determine just what she's done this week, the card turned out to be at the Japanese restaurant we went to Sunday. She insisted on going to get it herself. I gave her a copy of their menu and a map to the restaurant and told her a half dozen times, including less than an hour before she went, that her card was at the Japanese restaurant. She went looking for it at Applebee's. I got it on my way to gaming, and boy did I need the gaming by then.

Then today she changed her mind, both about me handling her paperwork and about working with the dogs. She refused to get the training items the trainer recommended (specifically a gate and a Thunder Shirt for CJ) and doesn't want to move forward with the training. I can't afford to pay for it myself, esp with the iffyness of my job, so if she won't pay it won't happen. And she doesn't want me paying the bills for her or keeping track of the bills. Plus plenty of stuff about how I never told her any of these things, when of course I told her at least once a day for several days in a row, but of course I must be making things up to confuse her.

And oh yeah, had a general doctor's appointment yesterday - my weight is up and my cholesterol is WAY up. Just great.