OT/OOC

This is turning into more of a blog about my pets than anything else. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's a very circular shift in my thinking. I don't like whinging in public and my work, my research, and politics appear on other blogs. This is for the rest of me.

I talked to Jazz about what we ought to do for our 10 year aniversary. He wanted to do something like go to the Keys like we did for our honeymoon, or maybe take a cruise. But there is no way in hell we could afford that. With the current way taxes are increasing, gas prices going up, grocery costs going up, etc, we can barely stay solvent as it is, and my paycheck is no where near large enough for much of anything but to keep treading water. It's not like we are living on minimum wage either. I've tried to cut back on the budget, but damn it's hard to find things to cut! The way prices are rising, it's as if we have taken a 25% pay cut.

Thanks to Tyson, we are more interested in dog rescue. It's something we tried to help with while we were at the shelter. Whenever a dog came in that looked purebred, we called the rescue groups (we also called Canine Companions, and they take dogs for companion animal training for handicapped folks). It felt good to let them take animals because they guaranteed happy endings for all of the dogs they took. The gist of it is that we will likely agree to foster basset hounds, which are lovely couch potatoes. And we'll probably try to adopt one for our aniversary. Because, I can afford a dog. Over the life of the dog, sure, I'll probably spend more than I would for going on a cruise. But it won't feel like it, and all of the happy memories will last much longer.

I've been switched to QA for another week at work. I expected, my boss expected, and certainly the pay check expected me to be off QA after one week. But I'm looking at week 3. That's 1/3 the normal lines I do. That really hurts the paycheck. And it hurts the ego. I thought I was much better than that. My ego may be getting in the way of learning to improve. This account wants 100% to 99% accuracy, and my 97% isn't good enough. So... I got to keep improving. I am trying to learn more. I am improving. I can do this. Because if I don't I gotta look for another job, and criminy, I don't want to even *think* about being unemployed. My friend has offered to get me into her current company, but she's doing voice-recognition editing, at half the line rate. I think that's criminal. VR isn't good enough yet. We still have to correct more than half the report, and it's just as fast to type it from scratch as it is to edit that much of the report. Really, it is a glorified sweatshop, because we are paid piecemeal - by the line. But what else can I do from my own home for money? I'm not writing enough to make that viable, obviously, or I'd be writing more here. My health issues do not permit any sort of office or selling job- I'm far too allergic to perfumes. So I concentrate on studying to improve my transcription skills. I have no idea what else I can do.  ¶ 9:15 AM