New apartments, turtle tanks and work

I showed up promptly for my 1:30 meeting this afternoon … only to find it was cancelled and no one remembered to tell me. Again. I’m trying hard to be aggravated, but all it really means is that I can take a lunch break with impunity today.

I finally made it to the gym yesterday afternoon; the past two weeks of 11 or 12-hour days have not been conducive to going to working out. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind taking my frustrations out on the treadmill, but I need some energy left over to do that, and there simply hasn’t been much energy to spare these past days. Anyhow, I digress. Afternoons are a far better time for me to exercise than evenings. I was easily able to jack the work load on the bike up by 50%, and I had the tread mill up to 4.3 mph for most of my half hour (anything faster than 4.4 requires me to jog, and my right leg is simply not up to jogging). I still had energy left over to do some leg strengthening stuff (emphasis on the quads) afterwards, so I feel rather pleased with myself today. I just need work to stay reasonable for a while, so I have energy left over at the end of the day to manage a couple of appearances at the gym in the evenings this week.

I forgot to mention that The Prof emptied and cleaned the turtle’s tank for me on Friday night/Saturday morning while I was in bed. He earned a mouthful of tank water for his efforts (setting up the siphon can be a bitch) but seems to have suffered no ill effects from it. I’m really hoping that there will be an good place to set the tank near a window in the new apartment, so I can siphon straight to the outside.

We put in our application for the new apartment on Friday. If all goes well 9 and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t) the new lease will start July 17th. That gives us two weekends worth of window of opportunity to hire a mover and get the big stuff shifted. And I *am* determined to hire a mover. I’ve had a few offers from people to help us move, but I honestly don’t want to be the on one end of the king-sized mattress trying to maneuver it down the staircase, nor do I want to be the one to have to hoist the new sofa over my head because that’s the only way to get it past the railings. As MWUFFLTHB said over the weekend, “I make a good living doing what I do well. It makes sense to pay someone so that they can make a good living to do what they do well.”

I hope to hear from the apartment’s management by mid-week. The place we’re at now got back to me inside of three days. After that, I can start to plan in earnest.

Work just gets weirder and weirder. My anniversary at the company was March 3. This means that, as of today, I am officially two months and three days overdue on my review. I was taking it in stride, because reviews around here are traditionally late, always retroactive and usually generous. I learned this morning though that I’m not to get a review this year. I will get a “partial” salary increase, possibly as soon as the next paycheck. And, of course, it will be retroactive to March 3. But I won’t get a review, and my full increase, until my NEXT anniversary date, in ten months time. It has something to do with changing review procedures for management here at the company.

I’m apparently caught in a period between when the old procedures for reviews were stopped, and the new procedures for reviews were implemented. No, this makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. But the bottom line is that I won’t get my full raise for a full year, when I get my next review and my next raise.

My suspicious mind wonders if this is supposed to be some sort of money saving ploy, where a cash flow crunch is eased by finding ways to delay granting annual raises to management. I don’t know if it is prudent to complain about it or not. I do know that the profit sharing amounts will be released tomorrow. In order to qualify, I need to be actively employed here as of the end of June. And I’m a little less than two years away from being vested. If I’m not even getting my full raise until next year, though, then it is going to have to be one heck of a profit sharing year to make up for the salary loss. After all, it isn’t as if the company is going to be paying me interest on my delayed raise. I’m trying not to be miffed until I get more information about this, but I fear I’m a bit disgruntled at the moment.

The Professor and I played our first round of miniature golf for the season yesterday afternoon. I won by two stroke. Dumb luck, but I’ll take it. It will probably be my last win of the season. We’re hoping to get away next weekend – just for an overnight trip. It ought to be possible to line up one of the Sisters to look in on the cats Saturday evening though. I’m thinking of maybe heading upstate, if I can come up with some place that has good hiking trails and a nice quiet place to stay. I need the break, and the Prof is nearly done this semester, so it’s a good time to grab some time for ourselves.