What a day

It was a much better day at work today. I think the shock of reality yesterday was just a bit much, and once I had a chance to cope, it worked out. Today's fun adventure, however, was going to the unemployment office. It was actually quite pleasant, much better than I imagined. I've gone to other government agencies and this by far was the most orderly and pleasant process I've had.

The good news: Because I have a job, I'm not required to look for work/prove I contacted so many potential employers per week. Certainly I think it's in my best interest to continue looking, but there's no quantity pressure. Also, if I'm doing the math right, my benefits will come out better than when I was having my wages garnished in the student loan fiasco but worse than they are now. In other words, I should be able to barely scrape by/be slightly behind rather than out on the street. Yay.

I also found out that technically I will not join the statistic of jobless claims. No, I belong to another category altogether--the underemployed. I told the lady I thought I had been underemployed for years. She took a look at my record and said no, I wasn't underemployed, just underpaid. Turns out her sister's a librarian. :) Take that, those who said my pay was on par!

Then I went to the downtown gym and worked out. Maybe I shouldn't have done that two days in a row--I can feel it now. But still, I think I needed it. Then I caught people up on the unemployment situation and finally headed home to find that my dog, whom I love, had been not-so-behaving and had broken into and devoured a cup of dried broccoli and cheddar soup and the cajun beans, but fortunately the Bombay curry was just nibbled on around the edges; no food was harmed in that one. Mind you, she had a full dish of her own food. Still, she has done stuff like that so rarely, I suppose I can't really get too upset.

All in all it wasn't so much a bad day as a tiring day. One good thing, though--tomorrow I have a teleconference/consortium meeting that I've had to adjust my hours for, so I don't have to be there until about noon and get out around 4:30. After that, I plan on doing the 'haunted honeymoon' adventure for the game. Wish me luck.