Little Update

I spent the past two nights hanging out in Greenville with fellow Aussies that smokedamage had met from working the doors. I finally met Tim and his brother Mark (who should just now be taking off on a plane to head back to Sydney). Last night I met their sister's boyfriend Duncan, although she was a bit too sick (perhaps from the shock of going from summer to winter seasons) to come out. The previous night I met Blake and played some good pool with his American girlfriend Lindsey. I also met an English guy named Nicholas who was asking me what I thought about having so many people from other countries in my midst.

I might be up for a small $1/hr raise at work. The executive has had a brilliant plan to put me solely in charge of money collections, bypassing the childcare director and for the most part having me report more directly to the exec. Luckily I really won't be doing anything different from what I'm already doing, but neither the childcare director nor myself have any plans on telling him this. She's all for paying me the extra money. However, I really need a $2 raise in order to try and stabilize my income with my bills. I did mention that to him. I also told him that the metro office wants to use the database that I created at all of the other branches in the city. Unfortunately since the database was created as part of my job while working for the YMCA I really have no rights to try and sell it to them since it technically already belongs to them. I think, though, that being the resident MSAccess guru which will be called upon to help get this all set up and maintained deserves the little extra boost in income. And I'd be willing to write up a complete instruction manual that the branches can use. Yes, it is just an Access database, but no one else at the YMCA knows how to figure out what the queries do or when to use them and each branch will need someone trained on general use of the thing.

Another possibility for adding a little extra income is that smokedamage is thinking of training me to take on croupier jobs like what he has just started doing. He thinks I should be able to get the hang of the boot, shuffling correctly, and counting chips pretty easily.

So while I was considering moving into the warehouse come January or February, I'm having mixed feelings about it. Although I'd be able to save a lot of money and try to start paying off the school loans faster, for some reason the whole idea of giving up my apartment is not sitting well with me.

I've officially enrolled in three classes to start in the spring. All math - game theory (based mostly on the work of John Nash), discrete math, and statistical inference. This of course adds to my money issues, but I'm sure it will all work out eventually. I will still be not getting paid, what the hell am I thinking helping to write up the results of the dyslexia testing which had been done this fall by the girls I trained. I could get out of it, and a part of me really does want to run away with a middle finger waving goodbye, but I'll stick with it simply for the fact that again I have a chance of getting my name on a publishable paper. We'll see.