Fun times today. This morning had a good ol’ DJS5 breakfast sans Hassie wherein doings transpired and we all got fancy handshakes. Twice. Which isn’t a euphemism. Cream Boys kind of is though. Also, if you’re having breakfast at the Falafel Place here’s a tip: their salty breakfasts are better than their belgian waffles.

Then I bought tickets to go to LA in a couple of weeks to visit Kate. School is keeping her stuck there all summer without a visit back to Manitoba, I have four day weekends quite often, and visiting my friends in bizarre alien places is one of my favourite things to do (and if Major League Baseball happens to be played there, I ain’t complaining), so it seemed a natural fit. And it was cheaper than it would have been on Friday. Did the dollar do some massive fluctuations over the weekend? I’m really asking. I do not know.

Then off to work for safety orientation. It was all “lift with your legs,” “don’t lean off stepladders,” “tell people when you open trap doors behind them,” and “you can’t do an effective eyewash in a regular tap because it will be too cold for your eye over 20 minutes.” Plus there was a trunk monkey and horror stories of wading pool supervisors being set upon by feral 11-year-olds.

Of course paying much attention to that was kind of hard since Rick Walker announced the dreaded library staff restructuring via email this morning. Between now and October all of the part-time packages are getting reposted in a grand ol’ free-for-all. Nobody gets to keep their current packages of hours/days. Everybody then reapplies for the new restructured (ie fewer guaranteed hours) packages across the board. So there’s no way in fuck I’ll be getting 17-28.5 hours/week anymore. I’ve heard that Millennium jobs tend to get fewer applicants so I might be able to stay downtown, though I might be reassigned to a branch (ideally West End if I can’t be at Millennium).

But there’s also the little fact that not only am I basically the most recent LSA3 to start working at Millennium, I haven’t worked enough hours as an LSA3 to be guaranteed a position as a 3. In the reapplication process I still count as a page. So as I understand it, I could conceivably end up being busted back down to bookstacker. Unless I get up to 800 hours (or whatever the seniority number is) before the reposting happens, in which case I would have to get an LSA3 position, though it will undoubtedly be fewer hours than I get now. Bruce said he thinks they’ll need all the warm bodies they can get in the LSA3 positions so I probably don’t need to worry.

Regardless, I’m glad I bought my plane tickets for LA (and China) before I knew this would be happening, because I might not have gone on these trips if I’d felt like money was soon going to be tight. And not going these places would have been a goddamned shame, since these trips are my only things to look forward to this year before the slow march of winter tries to kill me again.

It’s good that the idea winter will return gives me more angst than this whole job-in-flux issue, isn’t it? I think it’s the proper perspective. I mean, this’ll work out fine; I’ll come out of this mess with a job and a bit less money but the snow will always return, vindictive and jealous of my petty victories in the frolicsome days.

I’m also kind of glad I haven’t plowed my saved money straight back into my mortgage so it’s still around if I have to go back to making $500/month. Not that that’s actually going to happen. But still. If I did have to go back to being a page, well, that’s a pretty good excuse for selling my condo and going somewhere else, right?