Work & Hunting Season

I'll start with the more enjoyable things if I can remember them.  The day Howard and Marilynne left, we had gotten tickets for "fusion of senses".  It was a sit down wine and food tasting.  They served 4 different types of wine intermingled with about 5 different local restaurant meal samples.  It was amazing!    It was a lot of food, but I guess spread out over a few hours, even I was able to eat everything!  Plus, it wasn't all meat either!  It was a great night out after everything that had happened.  The next morning we went to the walk-in clinic in town.  It's a very sporadic clinic which only seems to be open on occasional days.  Jeremy wanted to check on his ear and a mark on his stomach and I wanted to have my hip looked at.  It's still bothering me and I was hoping the Dr would at least refer me to a sport doctor or something, but instead all she said was to go back to the chiropractor for A.R.T.  umm... I don't see how this will do much since it's been 9 months, I have to think it's something a bit more severe.  I guess I'm still back at square 1.  We also loaded up one more truck of stuff for the dump.  I think that should be it for the summer, I hope.  We also got out fishing Saturday evening.  Didn't have a lot of luck, but we did run into a bear swimming(and got poured on, on our way back in)!  Sunday, I met Marnie and we went to the blueberry farm east of Pembroke.  They were having a fall festival type of thing.  I had a good time chatting with her, dog free, for an afternoon.  We also went out for a late lunch.  Meanwhile, Jeremy started looking at the civic to see if there were anythings to "patch" up.  He buffed out the headlights and worked on covering up some scraps and chips on it.  He also managed to get his hunting license, but didn't get out that weekend.

We did get out this past weekend.  Saturday, we got the canoe out and hit the stream by Mud Lake.  We weren't sure what the water level was going to be like since the river is really low right now.  We shortly found out.  We didn't get too far before the water had dried up too much to even attempt to paddle on.  Even the little bit we did do, had lots of beaver dams and branches to navigate over.  Jeremy did get two ducks in the short time and of course Hayde was happy to retrieve them.  We then decided to drive back up a little bit and put in west of Mud Lake.  We flushed a few ducks while we were scouting the launch area out and Hayde got to retrieve one more duck.  We then got the canoe in, but it was really windy and we didn't have any other luck so we turned around and headed home. 

Sunday, we headed out Barron Canyon Rd and took some of the smaller paths way back into the woods looking for grouse.  We drove quite a ways in then stopped and hiked a bit, then drove down another path for a bit, then got out again and walked a bit.  Nothing!  On our way back, when we weren't too far from the jeep, Hayde had gone into the woods a little ways and seemed to be a bit birdie.  She finally flushed a grouse, but it's still fairly thick and we didn't get to see it.  At least she got to flush one in those several hours we were out.  We then headed back, but decided to check out one more spot before calling it a day.  Hayde sure was pooped.

Meanwhile, I'll talk a little bit about work since that's been literally a big headache.  I've had a chronic headache now for about 3 weeks or more.  I've been having so many issues with an individual in one of my groups.  He's our section head so thinks he's in charge of everything, but yet has very little concept of how to do any of the work he's supposed to do.  Since I'm over seeing all the financial aspects, a lot of this gets dumped into my lap.  Unfortunately, my manager is extremely overloaded with work and shouldn't have to babysit this individual, yet really needs to, but is never in the office to do so.  I've talked to my manager countless times, only to have him sometimes talk to this other person and minutes later the person is back at my desk doing and saying exactly what he's not supposed to be.  It's made it extremely frustrating for me.  We're 6 months into our fiscal year, I have no information about the work we're supposed to be doing this year(granted our time for outdoor work is quickly coming to an end), and I have no one around to give me any guidance on what's supposed to be happening and I continuously find myself having to be the one to stand up to this other individual to challenge him on doing the correct thing, which he refuses to do.  I'm to the point where he disgusts me so much I can't look at him and his voice makes my stomach churn.  I even felt sick to my stomach one day last week and thought my lunch was going to come up all afternoon.  This isn't the work environment I want to be in!  So, last Friday I ended up going to site just to get away.  I got persuaded to talk to the other manager in our division and he called my manager and Monday, they both, along with our divisional manager discussed this and I am being relieved of having to work with this particular individual (and his side kick, my other co-worker).  I'm focusing most of my attention now on the other group I work with and will be doing limited work for this group for the time being.  Hopefully at some point soon, my manager will be pulling this individual off his current duties and re-assigning him to something else where he can't destroy things like he has now(once my manager figures out what that may be).  It's a well known fact that this individual is a problem maker such that no other group is willing to take him on.  He has all the grounds to get rid of him in a normal world, but unfortunately, in the government, unionized world we are in, it's nearly impossible to get rid of anyone.  So, I'm still planning on checking the internal postings, but am hopeful things will get better in the short term.  I just know until he's actually gone, he's just going to keep destroying everything he touches and continue to intervene with people and things he shouldn't and I really hope he doesn't make it impossible for anyone else to do their work.  So, on that note, I'll leave you with a much happier picture!