Working For the Man (Woman?)
Been a while since I’ve updated.
News: Bought the tablet. It is beautiful. A full post on it will come later. Maybe. I promise nothing. ;) Because I’m lazy and forgetful in equal parts.
Big News: I have a full time summer job/internship! It’s with the Army Corps of Engineers working out of their regulatory branch. In human terms, I’m interning under their archaeologist who works on permits that might impact historic and culturally significant places.
So far I have:
· Had to fill out a truly astonishing amount of paperwork. Truly. Astonishing. They have my fingerprints on file in at least three locations. It’s borderline terrifying.
· Completed vast sets of mandatory training, including a 3.5 hour PowerPoint session and corresponding exam on defensive driving. Seriously?
· Read through several regulation books and am slowly gleaning an understanding of what the Corps does… very slowly. Hint: there’s lots of paperwork ;)
o Get a permit request for construction of some sort (mine, levee, power lines etc)
o Figure out if anything historical or archaeological is going to get trashed, get the details, notify the right people, do the right paperwork
o Try and mitigate or keep the trashing from happening with yet more paperwork and people (and estimate a time of 6 months to 5 years to process, loaded more on the shorter end of things than the long)
· Visited a mining site up north, floundered about the woods with a gps I don’t know how to work and a compass that points to wherever the nearest iron deposit is (usually not north), met the tribal historic preservation officer for the project along with some other cool people, and saw moose tracks and poop! :D Woo! (managed not to step in the poo or see the moose, but I did see a coyote and a number of deer!)
· Got an army email address as well as a Corps email address, have a work phone, a swipe card to let me access the building, and a CAC card which lets me access the servers. It has my fingerprints too. They don’t mess around here. XD
Dude. I’m working for the man. And the man pays well.
Bad news of all this is I have very little free time anymore. I work a normal full time shift and suddenly I understand why regular folks are so tired all the time. It’s hard to be an adult! And I only work 40 hours a week compared to the many more of most folks. Yeiks. I leave the house at 6:40 and return at 5:00. M-F. Not horrible as far as real jobs go, actually. Unfortunately, that leaves little time for friends, little time for drawing, little time for much of anything, really. Welcome to the real world, I suppose. XD It’s a bit of an eye opener and a good one.
But yeah. I suppose that’s the extent of my news for the moment.
I’m off to quickly finish up my leveragexchange fic and send that in before the tomorrow deadline. :D