Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Crisis At Work

There's some kind of crisis going on at work this week. Apparently, a big-name client wants five major projects finished by the tenth of December, a full twenty days before the original deadline. My boss e-mailed me late last night and asked if I could help. Being the model employee that I am, of course I agreed. Also, as of right now, I am completely finished with all the work that's been assigned to me up to this point, with two exceptions. In their respective cases, I don't have access to the areas of the site that I need in order to write those scripts, so getting something new to work on might be nice.

I e-mailed my boss about the site access thing. She hasn't gotten back to me yet. She also hasn't gotten back to me about helping with the crisis, so I'm just assuming that she's probably busy and she'll answer my e-mails when she gets the chance. In the meantime, I'm sitting at the computer, refreshing my e-mail browser every five minutes or so, just in case this is one of those times that it says I don't have any new e-mails but I actually do. So far, that hasn't been the case. Actually, it was once, but it was an e-mail from Charlotte Russe advertising their boot sale.

I'm not worried about getting paid next period. I have something like fourteen scripts that are in the process of being produced, and twenty-three or so that are still waiting for editing. Giving the editors a chance to work through my backlog might not be a terrible idea. Unfortunately, all of the editors are working on this crisis.

I'm flattered that my boss e-mailed me and asked for my help. I mean, I do write quickly and I have the ability to churn out scripts like nobody's business. If I were my boss and I needed a project finished quickly, I'd probably ask me also. My current project has something like eleven other writers and myself. As a group, about two hundred and forty scripts have been written. Of those, about sixty have been written by me. That means that everyone else has written on average around sixteen scripts.

Part of it is probably that I don't exactly have another job. I have this one singular job as my whole livelihood. I know a couple of the other writers personally, and at least one has another job. It would be an easy way to make some money on the side, especially if you're not in school and you have enough time to write a script or two a day. Were I to get another job, I'd probably still do this because it's decent money and it's a nice gig.

I'm always worrying that I'm going to get fired, which I know is irrational, because I work really hard and I've never gotten in trouble. It just sort of seems like it's too good to be true. I work from home writing in my pajamas and I make enough money to cover most of our major expenses.

For me, it's working really well as a full-time job. Between my husband and I, we make enough that we can pay our bills and save a little and usually have a little money left over for fun things. I mean, we don't have huge expenses, typically, so we don't usually need a whole lot of money. If we had a mortgage or a heftier car payment, then we might be in trouble. But we don't, so it's okay. Our largest expenses are generally education-related, and we've managed okay with that so far.

I suspect that it might be because I pay tithing. Despite all of my personal issues with the Church, it seems like the Lord is obligated to bless me as long as I'm a full tithe payer, so I continue to pay it and Nate and I continue to have enough money to pay our rent and go grocery shopping.

Christmas was kind of a strain, but at least we were smart enough not to use our credit card to pay for everything. Generally, we only use our credit card if we're buying something a) we were going to buy anyway and b) we get rewards for. So usually when we go to restaurants or clothing shopping we use our credit card, but not a whole lot otherwise.

We did have to start limiting the number of times per week we could order in or go out to eat. It got kind of out of control for a while there. Now, we typically order in on Tuesday or Wednesday nights because we're tired and we don't feel like cooking, and then we go out to lunch on Fridays or Saturdays as a fun and exciting date. We've had to limit it to twice per week, and we try to make at least one of those fairly inexpensive (pizza or burgers, as opposed to a sit-down place).

There are a couple really good Italian restaurants that we like to frequent, and they are within a block of each other and, more importantly, like three blocks from our apartment. The first is Gloria's Little Italy, which has excellent food and dessert and a more formal atmosphere. It's more expensive, though, so we don't go there as often. Then there's La Dolce Vita. It's smaller, less expensive, and less formal. As far as I can tell, everyone working there is related to each other and they're all authentically Italian. The server we get every time we go is named Giuseppe, and his mom owns the place.

There is also an excellent authentic Chinese restaurant that we order from all the time. It's called the Lotus Garden, and it's owned and operated by a Chinese family. We have like eighteen of their menus in our kitchen right now. They deliver (in the phone book, their ad says "We Delivery!," which is either an amusing error or an excellent marketing move. No one is sure which), and every time they bring us our food, they bring us another menu. Their menus do have coupons in them, but they never take the coupons when we use them, so our stack of menus just keeps getting larger and larger.

We have yet to be able to find a really good pizza place. There's the Brick Oven, which is okay (and less than a block away), but it isn't AMAZING.

In Phoenix, I knew all the good pizza places. I knew exactly where to order from in any scenario. Say there are four of us, we have twenty dollars to spend, we want to go out, and our starting position is at my parents house. In that case, we go to Streets of New York Pizza. You get free garlic rolls and you can order by the slice. Also, they frequently have deals so you can get pizza and wings or pizza and salad for a really good deal.

If we have like no money at all, we order Barro's. It's not mind-blowing, but it's better than Domino's or Pizza Hut, and it's significantly less expensive.

If we've got a little bit more to spend but we still want to keep it close to home, we go to Rosatti's. Delicious deep-dish pizza that's like five inches thick.

If we've got a fair amount of money burning holes in our wallets and we're really hungry but don't mind waiting, the standard, of course, is Oregano's. Oregano's might be the best restaurant in the history of the world. You pretty much have to get an appetizer, a pizza, and a dessert. Not because they make you, but because it's delicious. Getting in on a Friday or Saturday night can take a while, because the place is always packed, but it has never not been worth the wait. Other establishments sell pizookies, but Oregano's has perfected it. Not getting a pizookie at Oregano's is not just a terrible mistake, it might be a crime against humanity. They are that good.

Unfortunately, Provo has none of these places. Usually, when we order pizza, we end up ordering from Papa John's. Eh. It's fine, but it's overpriced and the quality just isn't quite there. We've tried other pizza places. Usually they're either too far away to deliver to us or they're terrible. Really, really terrible. Like, really really bad. Really, very bad pizza. Some of the worst pizza I've ever had is right around the corner from me right at this very moment.

You'd think, being a college town and all, that Provo would have some really excellent pizza joints. It doesn't. I mean, the restaurant selection isn't awful, but if you don't feel like cooking and you don't want to leave the house and you don't want Chinese, you're in trouble.

I've spent about forty minutes writing this blog post. My boss still hasn't gotten back to me. I'm hoping she does soon, because Lord knows I could use something to do.

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