Having a glass of wine.

Tonight as I get home I opened up a bottle of wine. My only bottle of red wine. Willakenzie Estate Pinot Noir. Specifically clone 114 grown on triple black slopes. Might as well drink it and enjoy it instead of letting it sit in my kitchen. I think it's the most I've paid for a bottle of red wine. Even though I bought it at 45% discount from Lindsey's dad.

Almost every day I say to myself "today would be a good day to go home and have a drink to take the edge off". Then I never do. But today is different. Today is my 1 year anniversary at work. I've made it a year and I don't think it was the easiest. But then again, I don't ever want it to get easy or I would be incredibly bored and would raise trouble somehow to keep myself occupied.

One person said to me today "it seems like you've been here longer than a year" and I reply "nope, just 1 year!" with a smile on my face and thinking to myself "of course it seems like more than a year...I work more eff-ing hours in a year than some people around here". But gosh, I would never say that out loud.

Last week I bought a small vase for 99 cents at Goodwill just for today. I walked down the street to the flower shop and bought a single stem to cut really short and put in my 3" tall bud vase. Ah, I say out loud in a cheesy voice. Look at the pretty flower I bought myself for my anniversary! Lori next to me knew I was going to buy a flower today. My 99 cent vase has been waiting in anticipation to be put to use. I think it's funny that I bought myself a flower and so does everybody else but I say "hey, I learned long time ago that if I want flowers I might as well go buy them myself!".

The truth is I don't buy flowers that often, I take them from public places like the rose bushes near the I-405 on ramp at the top of Davis street. They grow wild so they get kind of scrappy looking but who cares...they are roses and I can cut bunches of them.

Back to reminiscing about my year of work. Last year at this time work just began coverage for the majority of the teachers in the state. 96k medical & rx members, 120k dental members, etc, etc. In my first month of work I was responsible for putting the reporting together for this customer. Geez louis. I just started learning the data structure there. I did a lot of good guessing and verifying with one person near me. whew. Later on I would transfer these duties to someone else. This someone else told me once after some kind of mishap "I need training FIRST you know!" and I'm thinking to myself "training my ASS. Nobody around here gets fucking training! It's sink or swim! Figure it the fuck out! That's what we have to do!" I didn't say that but hopefully this person could see it in my glare. Whenever I feel this way I don't say these things, I say something along the lines of "I wish ___ would get a little hop in their step and take the initiative to ___". Which sounds oh so much more professional.

What else about hitting the one year mark... Oh! Now I earn 15 days a year of PPL (Personal Paid Leave). Ahem, that includes "sick" time off. So far I've only had to call in sick twice, which is a freakin' record for me. When I think about the level of time off I earn I dream that the gov't will be the one and only health care insurer and then I will have to be a federal employee again and earn both vacation and sick leave at the awesome levels that I had back in 2005.

Well, enough moaning and groaning from me. My glass of wine needs my undivided attention.