I think that sounds great dana! You never know where such a position might lead. And to have a better commute is calming itself. So happy for you!

Well done, Dani! Good for you!

What does Carrot think about it? :)

What Carruthers said.
I bet Carrot will love it.

Excellent news!

Sounds like a good move - exchange all those hours on the bus you didn't get paid for for some you do.
As to stressful job - just shuck it off as you leave for home each day. And start saving for your trip to Arran ... ;)

This sounds like a good step, congratulations!

Thanks guys:)

Congrats, Dr. Dana ;)

Blessed rain and a ride

Friend's daughter/son's friend on way home from hospital after 11 hour brain surgery Monday. :D This is making me happy. Everything else is pissing me the fuck off, but this is making me happy.

I'm happy to hear this good news too. . :-)

I went to an epee tourney in Freehold yesterday and beat the best Vet in the building. I also feel like that was rich levy letting me through a line of traffic to get out of a gas station.

Go, hillbiffy, go!!

PRAISE EVERYTHING THAT IS HOLY AND ALSO UNHOLY PRAISE WHATEVER WANTS PRAISING SHE HAS A JOB.


And a good one, too, from a resume perspective and also a job satisfaction perspective. Only part-time for now, but goddamn will we ever take it. This is seriously an unbelievable weight off our shoulders.

Nice! The grocery job?

An after-school group leader at my kids' school. It's not what you know...

W
T
G
!!!

Great!

What's making you happy today?
 

So far, I've found five (5) little green flakes in my Ramen noodles.

It's like I'm rich, or something.

:jig:

did you sneeze?

I’m not sure that ‘happy’ is quite the word, but I’ll press on, all the same.

We’re in the middle of a four year program to commemorate the 1914-18 War.
On the 1st of this month, the first day of the Battle of the Somme was marked by ceremonies in the UK and France.
July 1st 1916 was the bleakest day in the history of the British Army. Nineteen thousand soldiers died that day, most within the first thirty minutes after 0730 when they went ‘over the top’.

My Grandfather (Dad’s dad) served in WW1 and was wounded while in France as far as we were aware. I’ve never known anything about the circumstances surrounding the event and Dad said that he’d never spoken much about his experiences.
Having followed the Somme commemoration it prompted me to do some more research about grandad. Records of WW1 wounded were released into the public domain in 2013 but I was unaware of this.
A quick search turned up www.forces-war-records.co.uk so I paid up for a month’s subscription. It didn’t take too long to find Grandad’s hospital admission record for August 1917 which recorded:

Ailment: Gunshot wound V1, bullet.

(V1 - Gunshot wound of the abdomen. Simple flesh wound or contusion in the Army Wound Classification System).

The only treatment recorded is the administration of 500 units of anti-tetanus serum on 20/08/1917.

In his later years I visited Grandad in hospital and his pyjama jacket was undone revealing a savage looking scar on his abdomen. I have difficulty in squaring that sight with the Army category of ‘Simple flesh wound’.
Unfortunately, nowhere in that record does it mention where he was when wounded or the location of the field hospital. However he was a member of 91st Field Company Royal Engineers and a timeline of the Company’s service indicates that he was in Belgium near Ypres when wounded. His unit went to France in July 1915 and served there, including several battles in the Somme offensive, until mid 1917 before moving north to Flanders.
Repatriation soon followed and a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps was effected in the closing months of the war.

I’m pleased (perhaps happy) that I have been unable to unearth these details as I was able to fill in the missing spaces for Dad, who is now ninety-one.

That's very cool, Carruthers.

I tried to research Grandpadigr's military records a good while back (he died in '77). Unfortunately, a fire in the early 70s destroyed the entire floor of the gov't records repository where his Naval records were stored.

All his brother could tell us was that Grandpadigr was involved in the Battle for Saipan (as a gunner, we don't even know what kind of ship he was on) and at some point he received a Purple Heart.

Wish we knew more. A lot of those guys back then were forced to do things they didn't think they were even capable of, and just couldn't/wouldn't talk about it. And, now they 're leaving this world at an alarming rate, and we'll never know what they did when they were saving the world.

Hah! No, these flakes were all brand new, no used flakes in m'Ramen...:D

I believe the use of the term "Simple" in this context refers to the wound being entirely open (i.e. grazing wound), regardless of its size, rather than having an entrance; or, entrance and exit with cavitation.

Wounds that create cavities are much more difficult to prevent infection from setting in. Complications of infection give rise to secondary injury; so, those flesh wounds are labeled "Complex."

A complex flesh wound may not look like much, just a small entrance wound, until the its cavity is explored while a simple flesh wound with a large surface area may look gruesome.

Hope that helps.

@sexobon

Thanks for that clarification, I'm grateful to you.
It would never have occurred to me that there was a medical (surgical?) definition of the term!

Saw Mr Carr yesterday. Always a happy event.

Do not let the self-effacing persona he presents fool you. The man is all man and can undertake anything from riding horses (I picture him bare-backed and stripped to the waist) to charming mothers, to looking after pets, to surviving a zombie apocalypse.

I usually swoon over the larger men. Someone to bounce on. But there is much to be said about sinewy strength, honed from years of battling buddleia. And after all, the organ that matters can't be shown in polite society.

The brain. The brain, you mucky lot...

So yes. Happier today for seeing Carruthers yesterday. And talking to DanaC. And knowing I have a ticket to Castle Limey in a few weeks. I'm all Cellared-up.

The semblance of a blush has risen, unbidden, to my manly cheek.:blush:

Y'all are adorable.

A Sundae Sunday post!!!

new outrageously-expensive-for-me earrings. :D

They actually look this cool IRL!

Cool!

Those are great!

Real purty

I started my new job on Monday and so have just completed the first week of my five week classroom based training :)

I think I am going to like this job. I had no idea insurance was so interesting!

The chap training us is awesome. He's a natural teacher (as well as very knowledgeable about his subject).

The cpmpany seem to be really good employers - they certainly are willing to invest in their staff - 5 weeks classroom training (with half a day per week spent up on the floors, shadowing one of the claims handlers whilst they work) followed by 3 weeks in 'creche' which is taking calls and doing some of the claim handling work, but in a separate area, with masses of support and someone on hand at all times to step in if needed.

It's 35 hours a week - training is 9-5, once we go onto the floor we'll be working rota shifts between 8am and 8pm. You work in teams of about 8-10 people, so the whole team are on the same shift. Some saturdays (with day off in the week) I think they said it was something like 1 in 4 saturdays. But the way they work the shifts is one of those things that changes according to staffing levels and business need.

Open plan office, but ....I get my own desk!!!! Yey. No more hotdesking or sharing headsets :) This will be first time I'll have had my own desk in over a decade.

Lots of room for progression, or movement within the company if I end up staying and don't bugger off into an academic job (I'm still keeping an eye out, but they are few and far between if you aren't prepared to relocate to another part of the country, which I am not) and the pay is ok. Not great - but ok.

I get the impression the people working there work hard but have a laugh as well. Very telling that many of the people I've met there have been working there for decades.

The ethos seems to be that as long as the work gets done and we are doing our best then it is fine to have a laugh and a bit of chit chat because - as the manager of the Home section says 'you spend far too much of your life in work to not be enjoying it'

There's a metric fuckton of stuff to learn. My head is spinning with it all and we're still on the theoretical stuff. Which is waaaaay more interesting than I ever would have imagined.

Had our first shadowing session yesterday and the claims handler I listened in to was brilliant. In the two hours I spent shadowing her she took 5 calls - three were dead simple, and were instant declines or authorisations and a policy information request, 2 were much more involved, with her organising surveyors to look at stuff and asking all sorts of questions about the situation, all were completely different. Whilst she wasn't taking calls she was jumping onto the section tasks list and dealing with some of those - mainly redirecting emails to more appropriate specialist teams, but also requesting further investigation into a suspected attempt at fraud, and trying to figure out why a 3rd party was enquiring about an outstanding payment when the system showed a payment had been made.

So - it's not just sitting taking calls all day - though there will be days where that is the majority of the work (like when the floods were happening and they were inundated with insurance claims). Some days the phones are really quiet - might only take 6 or 7 calls in a day - other days you take lots of calls, but there's always something to busy yourself with if the calls are few and far between.

I'm also on a permanent contract for first time in a decade (with a six month probationary period) . Annualised hours - so they can ask you to do overtime (but not excessively so - there won't be expectations of doing back to back 12 hour shifts and they have to give at least 48 hours notice at a minimum, but they try for 72 hours or longer) and those are paid at overtime rates, depending whether they are within normal operating hours, or fall on a public holiday and you get the hours back later in the year. Usually, what happens, apparently, is that overtime happens quite a bit in winter, and those hours will usually be given to you in summer.

No doubt there will be corporate and bureaucratic nonsense aplenty, but the immediate level managers seem to mitigate a lot of that by being decent human beings. They all seem very down to earth, and so far the ones I've met all started at the bottom so know what the work is actually like. I can't speak for the higher level management, because they're up on high :P Two of the people in our training group are already long-standing employees who've chosen to move from motor insurance to home insurance - they seem happy and have both been with the company in one dept or another for over 20 years (one started 30 years ago, but took a 6 year break to bring up babies and then came back)

There's no such thing as job security these days, but this seems about as close to that as it gets as long as you don't take the piss or do something shady. So that's a plus.

The job, I think will be fun, interesting, varied, occasionally frustrating, occasionally uplifting and with a good sense of camaraderie.

What? Are you counting high school, or something?:eyebrow:

You've told on yourself a little bit, there, Dana. You might be older than I thought you were.;)

You didn't share a desk in high school?

LUXURY!

Pssh. The best we could afford was low school. Damn near scraped the ground with our faces, it was so low.

Our new house has appliances, beds and cable/internet. No living room furniture for another month, but fuck that. It's time to finish this move.

Dana, it sounds wonderful. Very happy for you.

Me too Dana. Good Job!

Congrats Dr. D!

Thanks youse guys :)


Oh Grav, you say the nicest things :P

This first week has floored me - I was so tired last night - but also wired. Partly this is because my body clock is set to working one day on and one day off - suddenly I'm going in every day! And partly because there is such a lot to learn - it's very intensive. My head is spinning - I can't believe how much we've covered in this first week.

When I started on Monday I thought wow, five weeks, that's a long time to be in training. By Friday I was thinking wow, how the hell are we going to cover all this stuff in just five weeks :P

This is my first proper full-time job in a decade. The last time I worked regular full-time hours was when I was a literacy tutor 2004-2006. I've had times of doing a lot of stuff - like when I was juggling full-time university and council work, but I wasn't full-time out of my house, I was working from home a lot, and on my own schedule. Even when I was doing my PhD and teaching, I was only away from home for a portion of the week - with periods of business and periods of slack. Then working part-time jobs, or home-based jobs.

That said, I've reduced my travel burden from around 13 hours a week across 3 days to around 7 hours a week across 5 days. So that takes some of the sting out of it :)

New job for Dana, new house for Syc, visit from Sundae on the horizon. All good! All making me happy!


Sent by thought transference

Good stuff folks! keep it coming.

Headed over to Victory Brew Pub for dinner and a flight with the woman and her parents.
Good food + good people = good times.

flight?

A flight is a grouping of something similar (e.g. flight of stairs, flight of geese). Borrowed from the world of wine tasting where wines of the same type are sampled, without elaboration it just means several drinks.

Going by the name of the place, probably beer.

Ah-ha...Thanks sexobon.

Exactly! Thank you, sexo. The flight is 5 different beers. I've always been into wine tastings, but living on the east coast of the US makes it VERY expensive to taste quality. I've been getting into beer tasting more over the last few months. This particular establishment offers a variety of micro brews which cover a broad spectrum from the watered down crap like Bud or Coors to the darkest of dark toasted or chocolate or coffee beers.
:yum: :yum: :drool: :jig:

I am flat out exhausted from fencing yesterday. I was on my game in the NY open tourney I got crushed at last year. I managed to come in at 21/64 which would have meant a rating upgrade except somebody dropped out before the de. I had nothing left for the Vet event right after. The guys who only fenced the Vet mostly did better. But a great day of fencing and I dropped the overall winner at the train station on my way out of Poughkeepsie so I made nice connection.

Since we moved Tango over here Sunday night, she has been upstairs mostly...either hiding in one of the alcoves on Michelle's dresser or laying on the small set of steps that lead to our bedroom. She's been exploring the house, but those two spots have been her safe spots.

Today, we noticed that her food bowl was empty for the first time since Sunday. And when I came up here tonight, she didn't follow me. She was hanging out in her cat condo. She's getting comfortable here...we are too.

(Of course, just as I finish typing this, she starts calling for us. She'll be fine though.)

Did I mention that the Mrs and I bought a house last month?

When I joined Cellar 15 years ago (!), I was a 25-year-old punk that had just moved to Philadelphia. Buying a house, getting married and having kids were all 3 big no's for me.

And so here I am now...I turn 41 soon, I live in suburban Kansas City (me...a suburbanite...that wasn't supposed to happen either), I'm happily married (for the second and last time), I have a 13-year-old son (though not related by blood, I love him as if he were my own flesh and blood) and I own a house. Well, WE own a house...an old farmhouse (complete with a barn!) that has survived the suburbanization of Johnson County, Kansas.

And it feels damn good.

:)

Day 1 of vacation.

On the first day of my summer vacation, I woke up. Then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore.

On a bench? Or didja lean against the wall with one foot propped behind ya, and a cigarette behind your ear, like the tough kids?

Hang in there...3 more days.

I was referring to jim's vacation...me, vacation? Hahahhahahahahaaaa...say that again that's funny.

And then, it's from Sister Mary Elephant. You didn't know? For shame!

Derp. Didn't make the connection.:redface: