More friends!

 We have a couple of friends who periodically come to Oklahoma so that he can attend a conference.

They arrive today, and we will be meeting up with them for dinner this  year.

Last year, they came to our house, and we enjoyed cocktails, made dinner together, and played some card games.

Since I just had chemo on Thursday, and am tired, we are just going to let someone else cook for us this time, HAHA!

Before last year, it had been several years since they came through, so it's been nice to know we would see them two years in a row.

My treatment went just fine, but the steroid aftermath was ... sleepless.  I got the steroid in a drip this time, rather than the "push" that they've done the past couple of times.  NO idea if that makes a difference, but I slept for 2 hours on Thursday night, and about 4 hours on Friday night.

The sweating wasn't bad, though, for whatever that's worth.

Because I had been awake since midnight on Thursday night, I worked a half day on Friday, and just could not keep going, so I emailed a supervisor (mine was out of town), and clocked out.

Then, when I tried to put in my PTO request, it was rejected because we are in a time off black out that NO ONE TOLD US ABOUT.

SO, not only did Human Resources re-structure our time off from having sick time, and vacation time, in separate banks, but they ALSO TOOK AWAY 75% of our saved sick time hours (I had 300, and, as a cancer patient, that was a great comfort to me) when they converted, but now we are in a black out??

I am getting to hate this company more and more.

Anyway, they announced, and did that conversion from Sick/Vacation to a single PTO bank, with the 75% fewer hours available.... WHILE I WAS ON VACATION.

They also had a "town hall" meeting during that week, so that I was the only person on staff who DID NOT KNOW ABOUT IT at all until my vacation was over.

It was infuriating, and NO ONE on staff is happy about it.

I finally got to talk to a co-worker about it when I was in the office last week, and she said the reason they gave was that the paramedics (who are all in a separate "division" of the company) have always had it that way, and so now the office staff has to have it that way, too, so that everything is the same. 

In order to make it "as fair as possible to the paramedics" we LOST most of our hard-earned, and saved time off.

What if someone gets sick, or needs surgery?  We are shit out of luck if we didn't apply for the short term disability insurance the company offers, and NO, we can't go sign up for it now, because you can only do that during open enrollment, which was in November.

It's utter bullshit.

SO, I am really, REALLY hoping that we can afford for me to retire SOONER rather than later.

ANYWAY... in other news, we had another wind storm, but it wasn't as bad as the first one.  Since then, the weather has been pretty nice.

I did a lot of cooking yesterday, and had a visit with a friend.  Then, last night, I got in the hot tub after dinner, and fell into bed around 8:30.... I slept SO WELL, at last!

Today, nothing much is going on until we meet our friends for dinner, so that will be nice.

It's going to be cooler, and cloudy today, but that's okay. Screen doors and windows are open wide!

Have a good week!