Pain and Suffering

So it's been a hectic last few days. This will be a bit of a recap of the last days of life in The Cubes of yore, the events of the weekend (a rare glimpse into my off hours), and the rising sun of life at the hospital.

My last day at work was incredibly boring. There was of course the obligatory goodbye's from coworkers. I had the longest conversation I've ever had with Serialkiller and hopefully the last. I annoyed me that he talked about how it had been a pleasure when we never really interacted. I understand being nice, but I'd have rather he just left without saying anything. Stonehenge mouth got a bit emotional when I left. He didn't cry or anything, but he said at least a half dozen times how much he really, REALLY appreciated all the help and understanding and, my favorite, compassion that I showed him while I was there. If they only knew. The day was cut in half when my boss, The JC, told me to go home 4 hours early...so I did. And that was it.

The weekend was a bizarre mix of pain, torture, and 80's music. Saturday I got free tickets to a local radio station even where they were having an 80's themed "second chance" prom. It was funny considering I never went to my first prom. It was sad that my second chance was with my sister. Sunday was like a re-enactment of the Bataan Death March. I went with my family on a kayaking trip that was supposed to be an early morning paddle lasting about three hours. Instead we got a late start, and the three hour tour turned into eight hours. On top of that, the temperatures spiked over 100, and we ran out of water about an hour before we finished. The problem was the lack of rain in the area that made the river very low meaning that we never got to go more than a 1/4 of a mile without having to get out and portage around sand bars, dry spots, and formerly submerged debris. In reality, it was more likely that we had to get out every hundred feet or so, with very few long stretches. In the end we were dehydrated, severely sunburned, and absolutely exhausted. Which made for a a great first day on the job the next day.

The next day being orientation it was a good thing there wasn't much needed of me. I had gone on that 8-hour kayaking trip on only two hours of sleep so I was still operating on a deficit come Monday, along with the shock of having to wake up at dawn, fatigue, and painful sunburn. The last two days have been an overload of safety policies, benefits packages, inundation in the mission and ministry of a Catholic run hospital, and staring at this one nurse's superb ass. I met with my fellow support coworkers that were being hired at the same time (a total of 12 coming in at once) and was forced to take a Blackberry home with me, which compromises my personal aversion to always being connected to my job. Having a work connected Blackberry was something me and Sith Lord used to make fun of Serialkiller for doing, thus turning us into minor hypocrites. The only difference is our Blackberry's are company provided and mandatory, whereas Serialkiller bought his Blackberry and broke company security policy to have it connected to the company server.

Tomorrow is our first day of actually being in our department and getting a sample of our job, so hopefully more fun will surface. The only nickname I came up with during training was Mr. Rogers, who will be in my department and is so calm, quiet, and mild mannered that he too is probably a mass murderer. We'll see.