Making It Up As I Go Along #337

MONDAY...
— Quiet day. It’s my extra day off at work and I’d normally go in for a little overtime or banking some time... but today I’m just pretty tired so I stay home. I ended up sleeping around 9 hours last night... so that’s a little crazy.
— Go for a walk at Mer Bleue with Melissa, and get a few groceries.
— Get a call from work and I find out that I’ve been chosen as one of the people to move from AFIS to CPSIC in the near future. It will mean working a twelve hour shift, day and night, during the week and weekends. But it should also be quite interesting and comes with a pay raise... so I’m looking forward to it whenever it happens.
— 178 spam e-mails in one 24 hour period. It’s getting out of control.

TUESDAY...
— Another 190 spam e-mails today. Mercy!
— Work with Annick is fun enough. Pretty easy going and some laughs.

WEDNESDAY...
— Work alone tonight. It goes alright. Spent quite a bit of time early in the shift trying to figure out my move over to CPSIC. Should be fairly soon... and my trip home at Christmas is still okay... so it’s looking good.
— 185 spam e-mails today.

THURSDAY...
— Really tired and headaches today. It’s going around the office (again) with several people talking about sleeping all the time. So I stay home today to hope to sleep it off and get back to good.
— 185 spam e-mails again... but I shut down the computer early today, otherwise I’d probably have come up to 200.

FRIDAY...
— Improve today so I’m in to work. In fact, by the time supper comes around, I’m feeling pretty much my old self. Work with Annick until 7:30... then I’m alone for the night.
— Due to go to CPSIC Sept 22. It may be delayed a week or two from there but right now, that’s the date on the board.
— Down to 131 spam today... still though, 131!!!

SATURDAY...
— Quiet morning then out with Janice to the mall (a zoo)... we meet Cara Lea and head to Laura’s parents place for Laura’s birthday. Nice house in the country... with good food and lots of laughs.
— Spam continues to drop again... today it’s down to 92. Still a lot though.


Sleeping to CD Seas
Sundays are no longer Sundays. Not to me. Or at least they soon won’t be. Within the next month, I’ll be changing shifts at work. And my week will be turned upside down.

Right now, my Sundays have a particular pattern. I wake close to 9:30 and watch some CBC: Sunday. Come 10:00, I turn to the sports networks and check out what the sports reporters have to say about the last week of sport. 11:00 sees me switch to American politics for a while. It all depends on how much Wolf Blitzer I can endure as far as how much of it I’ll watch. Sometimes the worst journalist on the TV just can’t be tolerated, and I switch to a movie or begin my weekly writing. Usually, by 1:00 or 1:30, I am on the computer writing for the blog.

Work will change all this. I’m leaving AFIS and going to CPSIC (a 24 hour section in the same branch and dealing with more priority work). Perhaps CPSIC won’t work out for me and I’ll be back to AFIS within a few months. But I’m hopeful and confident that it’ll be good with me and I’ll spend the next few years there.

The problem with it is the changes in my week. With the change of a job, the seven day week I’ve known all my life will be replaced. The eight day week will be born. Two twelve hour days followed by two twelve hour nights and capped with four days off. I’ll be just as likely to be working on a Sunday morning as being off for it. The disruption of the routine makes me a little nostalgic for what I currently have. Pre-emptive nostalgia. My morning shows and Sunday writing ritual will have to be adjusted. The VCR will kick into gear... or a PVR will have to be purchased from Rogers, keeping my television recording current with the times.

The writing ritual will have to change as well. Currently, the plan is that when I switch to the 24 hour schedule, I’ll write my weekly update on my first of four days off. Although I may switch this thinking to the last day off before returning to the day shift. Either way, it’s about a month from happening. But the Sunday ritual for updating the blog is soon to end and the update will happen every 8 days instead of 7. Going from a Sunday to a Monday and onwards through the week.

On the plus side... four day weekends are soon here! Such a sentence would bring a high school bring celebrations with a high school student. It still sounds good but today, I think of how much of those four days I’ll have to spend trying to get back into a different sleeping pattern.

Sleep for the shift worker. We even had a presentation on it last year. Being told of ways we can more easily sleep in times our body isn’t used to it. CDs of white noise to drown out the rest of the world.

We were once told of the peace and quiet of sleep time. Now we’re looking at making a constant noise that we’ll get used to and ignore while sudden noises are kept in check by the swosh of the CD ocean or fake wind. A bubbling brook will urge me to the bathroom with great regularity, and destroy my sleep patterns on a whole new level.

Another suggestion is ear plugs. Fire alarms will try to warn you of impending doom but you’ll sleep through it until dreams turn to smokey visions... which fall away to a bright light that you’ll be urged to walk towards to spend the rest of eternity. Plus an ear plug will just irritate my ears. The weight of my head causing permanent indentations of plug in the ear.

Extra darkness will be my first attempt at increased sleeping abilities at 10:00 AM. A second set of curtains to keep my world in eternal darkness. I’ll wake each time unaware of where I am or when it is.

Changes are coming. We’ll see how my world unfurls.