So a little more then a month ago, I got back on the Pill. I just have some severe pain issues I’m dealing with, and as it’s been about 8 years since I’ve taken hormones, I’ve been hoping that some of the problems I had with it then would not be a problem now. Seems OK so far, and has helped with pain a bit, though not as much as I’ve been hoping admittedly, but in time hopefully that will improve. The only side effect I’ve really been noticing this time around is that whole “breast size increasing” thing. It got pretty drastic just before my period, then calmed down a bit, but I’m still at a point where I can’t wear some of my smaller bras, and I think it’s just going to stay like this. Losing weight isn’t an option – if I were meant to be any smaller, it would have happened back when I was dancing outside for 12-16 hours a week at Liberty. In any case, my BMI is quite normal and I eat my veggies and all that, so weight loss just to get into some bras seems a bit dumb. Thus, time to buy some new bras. Which is a pain, as I’m lucky to get bras as cheap as $40-$50 apiece because your standard American bra manufacturers don’t feel the need to manufacture bra sizes outside of the median range. British bras are much better with this, but they don’t exactly run cheap. So, time to scour the internet searching for deals.

One reason that I can get through some of the more unfortunate/stressful parts of being an enumerator is because I am currently obsessed with Babylon 5. We just started watching Season 4, and all I can think about all day is what’s gonna happen to all the poor Narns? And is the Captain OK? And why did Vir lose all that weight anyhow? Last Sunday we watched 9 episodes in a row, it was insane. I need to stretch this out more, because my mind is waay too absorbed in this TV show. I remember the crash I experienced after watching Seasons 1-3 of The Office in about a 3 day timespan, and I think the post Babylon 5 crash will be much worse then that. It’s an amazing show, though, and I wish more TV programs were written this thoughtfully.

Oh, and we’re supposed to get up to 4 inches of snow here tonight. In the middle of May. Yup, apparently Colorado springs are completely insane. Rumor has it that Richmond is sweating to death on and off in the 90s these days. I, uh, think I prefer the random snow. I really like how out here, even when it is really hot out, it’s not dripping. If anything, you have to keep drinking lots of water because of the dryness. “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” always seemed like a dumb phrase, but it seems to be true. Well, to an extent, as I’m sure anyone living in Southern Arizona or New Mexico or Texas in July might disagree with me.

The training lasted four days, and mostly consisted of learning how to fill out the mounds of forms that are a supplement to any federal job, plus sorting through the piles of confusion. We started off with one crew leader and two assistants. As of Day 2, one of the assistants was assigned somewhere else, and as of Day 5 the other was assigned somewhere else, and we are assigned a second Crew Leader. So two people in our training class get promoted to Crew Leader Assistant. And then, as of yesterday, our original Crew Leader leaves as well. Aside from the shifting of peoples, there also seems to be general disagreement on how to fill out various persnickety forms, as well as disagreement on how to accurately obtain the census data itself. The first several days, we operated under the idea that you tried to do it as to-the-letter as possible, down to the “Are you male or female?” question on the form. Then, a higher-up comes in to give us a chat, and essentially sweeps all of this away, suggesting that we guesstimate a range of things based on what see see looking inside someones door (assuming that the persona at the door is refusing answers, at least). Thus far, my strategy is to operate somewhere in the middle.

So I’ve been doing the actual door-to-door for about a week now. The job is a mixture of enjoyable, tedious, and “making me want to quit” awful. The last part, luckily, has been a minority of the time, thus far.

The Enjoyable: It’s been beautiful outside lately, and it’s kind of nice to have a job that gets me out in this spring weather. My first day working, I was in a neighborhood beside a foothill with a path, so I took the opportunity to hike up it during my lunch break. I saw several species of bird I’m not sure I’ve seen before, along with gorgeous views of the Front Range as well as an interesting perspective of the nearby Coors factory.

It’s also pleasant to talk to pleasant people. People have various reasons for not having mailed in their census forms, the more common being “I forgot” or “I didn’t get one” or “I didn’t know what to put for ______”. People are often apologetic about this, and happy that, since I’m at their door and filling out everything for them, it’s one less form they have to do. Though I have not run into the mythical person that offers cake and/or dinner, I have had several people ask if I wanted to come inside and sit down. Alas, the job forbids me from doing this, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless.

The Tedious: First off, we meet in some really strange places. It seems the classroom we were using is not available anymore, but we still need to have team meetings every day. Despite whatever stories about Census waste that are floating around say, there certainly isn’t money to spend on meeting spaces. So we’ve met twice in Denny’s. After realizing that a.) curious customers/wait-staff are not good to have around when you have work to do involving private information, and b.) we were occupying the majority of some poor waitress’s section, we’ve moved on to meeting in the lobby of a county building, and will continue to meet in that less the ideal space until a local college lets out and we can take up residence in their library.

Also tedious is the forms. So many forms! However, I get paid for filling out said forms, and the more I do the forms the easier they get, so this isn’t really a big deal.

The big tedious bit is finding some of these people. See, my job is to count the number of people in a given residence on April 1st. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. First, I’ve got to actually catch the people at home. If they’re not at home, I leave a slip of paper on their door with my number on it. Hardly anyone calls. I stop by at all different times of the day, but as I’m only allowed to go to doors until 7:00 pm, there’s gonna be some people I’ll just never catch in person. If that’s the case, I need to find a proxy – usually a neighbor or an apartment manager. It can be a bit of a pain to find these people too, and to convince them to answer questions. Which leads to…

The “Making Me Want To Quit” Awful: The Census is something that people are legally required to do. The information is mostly used to make sure communities get the money they need for schools, roads, etc.. Aside from that, it’s used for statistical purposes. The IRS will never see the information, nor will US Immigration Services. However, some people are fearful for their privacy. The minimal information I need to get is, well, pretty minimal – the number of people staying at a residence, their gender, and age. Anything beyond that is a bonus, and if people are uncomfortable giving any piece of information, they can just tell me so and I will skip that question.

Unfortunately, some people do not seem aware of any of the information in the preceding paragraph. I had a person who called me, yelling about privacy violations and the illegality of what I was doing and how this is harassment. She insulted me, left me feeling quite harassed, and I dealt with it by crying in my car for the next 20 minutes and then drowning my misery in Burger King. I was seriously ready to quit after this. Yesterday someone slammed a door in my face – not nearly as bad as getting yelled at, but it still stung.

Maybe part of the problem is me – the last “customer service” style job I’ve held was Food Lion, and I didn’t interact with customers much beyond “How thin do you want your ham sliced?” Since then, the only customers I’ve had to deal with are web design clients – sometimes a pain in their own way but generally with problems that I have some power of fixing. With this job, though, there are people that are angry because they perceive me as the Government trying to invade their space. They want to vent their anger, and I’m a nice soft target. And while logically I can understand that it’s the badge I wear that they’re angry at, it still hurts to be treated this way.

It’s a definite minority at least – most people are at least compliant, even if not totally friendly. But, it still stresses me out and I have to fight off thoughts of “What am I doing wrong to make them so angry and why can’t I fix it?” Things like this simply reaffirm that I’m designed to work better with computers then with people.

The team I work with is really nice, though, and my various leaders are supportive. If nothing else, the job pays well, is flexible, and will be over in about 2 months or so anyway.

We’ve been watching Babylon 5, which I am totally obsessed with. Interesting plots that totally carry over from episode to episode, hooray!

I finished reading “Characters and Viewpoint” by Orson Scott Card, which is an amazing book to read if you want to write good fiction, as well as get a better understand of human psychology and perspective.

We got on a bike path this weekend and tried to ride all the way out to Golden. Alas, we didn’t make it. I was stubborn about biking and, despite the fact that it was the first day in over a week that called for rain, I insisted we had to go. Meaning that we got drenched and had to turn around at some point. Oops!

I start the Census job in a week. This is good, as despite the fact that I have a gazillion personal projects to work on, I have a hard time getting motivated when faced with an expanse of free time. I am super productive when I have something else important that needs to get done, however! So, hopefully returning to a 40 hour workweek will help me organize my other time more efficiently.

I wish I could figure out what GS level a Census enumerator is. As this is a temporary position, I’ll be looking for a job to take on once I’m done with the Census. Having a govt. job can make it easier to get another govt. job, and if I already knew my GS level, that would be pretty useful. I’ll assume it’s either a.) something I’ll learn once I start the position, or that b.) as this is a temporary position, maybe GS levels don’t apply for it.

Drew’s job is doing well, he’s about to shift from temp status to being a part of the company – no pay raise, unfortunately, but he’ll be eligible for benefits and such.

And, that’s about all that’s been going on lately here. Oh, I did add a new fishie to my collection, as fishies are very important.

I think I might go ahead and convert the Salami Day website to Drupal. I was originally using it as my CakePHP learning experience, but since not getting the job that I originally tried to learn CakePHP to impress, I feel like Drupal is just a better direction to go in, for now at least. That was an unfortunate job experience, anyhow. It’s really crappy when you go to an interview, find out that there’s something they really want you to know that they never bothered to tell your recruiter about, or bothered to mention in the telephone interview you’ve already had with them. Then, when you mention you’ve been thinking about learning it and can pick it up in the next week, they give a dismissive comment, as if they don’t believe you. Pretty much my entire design/development career has consisted of “Hey, I need to learn this program to do this thing. Guess I better do it.” I mean, that’s how you learn, right? Mind you, I didn’t have any sort of fabulous grasp on CakePHP, but after a week I’d rebuilt Salami Day and had a decent enough understanding of it’s structure. The job looked pretty nice, too. Oh well. Considering how many applicants they might have had who actually *knew* CakePHP, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t get it. Nonetheless, I wish I could just jump up and down and flap my arms and scream that I’m a hard worker and love deadlines, and have them listen and fall in love with me and give me a bucket of dollars. If only!

In other news, I’m getting sick of ham + salad. We did Christmas with Drew’s aunt Pam, and as she was fortunate enough to get invited to a friend’s timeshare in Hawaii for the remainder of the holiday break, we got to take home all the food that Drew’s cousin Travis wasn’t going to eat. So, we have this gargantuan bag of salad, along with a nice pile of ham. Thus, ham salad! Goes great with Ken’s Steak House honey mustard dressing! Also, mmm, Christmas latkes. They went fast. We also have a metric ton of chocolate. Pacing issues with that, of course. Also, a post Christmas present – me finding a workout machine for free on Craigslist! It’s some sort of step resistance machine, nothing too fancy, but it’s free, and that’s the important part.

We leave for Nashville in two days. Drew’s family reunion and all that stuff. I get my sewing machine back, which shall be glorious. My butt will also get numb and fall off from the driving. Less glorious.

Also! On the 6th, I go in to take an application to become a Census worker. Could be fun! I have been spending waay too much time playing Oasis, which is this fabulous “Civilization meets Minesweeper” type game, which came out a few years back and I’m playing on my computer and is really cheap through the Amazon game downloads section. Andrew has been similarly productive, in that he just finished reading all of Dragonball. Which is a godawful quantity of manga.

Hmm, about time for another infamous ham salad. Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!