Nobody tells me anything.

So, I've had a couple of extremely disorienting experiences in the last ten hours or so.

Number one: I got to work, signed in, and saw two of my coworkers who are also third shift folk. So I went home.

... I know, I need to explain that one a little. The third shift is sufficiently boring (or at least, it's supposed to be sufficiently boring) that only two lab assistants are assigned to it; it used to be just the one, but a couple of years ago we took over phlebotomy, so now we have an overnight "processing" person and an overnight phleb. And when I walked in, I saw our person who only does processing, and one of our people who only phlebs. Didn't leave a heck of a lot of jobs for me to do, so I checked the schedule, and sure enough, I'd been taken off of Sunday nights. Everyone from second shift who was getting ready to head home suggested I head off to the bar. I opted to rent a movie instead.

Which brings us to disorienting experience Number two: I woke up. I didn't have much clear memory of getting ready to get some sleep; it just sorta happened. So I woke up, and checked the clock, and it said 8:00. Now, when I checked the schedule last night, I knew it said I had to work tonight. Also, I keep my shades drawn to prevent light sneaking in while I sleep. So I jumped out of bed, and started cursing and running around, trying to get ready for work, when I happened to take a peek outside, and saw that, although the light matched my recent memories of waking up at 8:00, the shadows all didn't.

See, I've now woken up so many times at 8 PM that I'd forgotten about the possibility of an 8 in the morning, as well. (Okay, not forgotten, but I'd just woken up; my brain hadn't yet shifted out of second.) So now I have the whole day to deal with, but I do get a chance to watch the movie I rented last night.

Also, after I'd calmed down a little, I started reflecting on time management, and have come up with some good solutions, I think. Starting with this blog entry, I'm going to write to my blog as I like, but since internet requires a special trip into the world they call "outside", I write them in a text editor and, when I get within range of a network, I copy and paste. And most of my online activity includes reading comics, so I can try to make a program that will act like an RSS feed; just go to various websites and pull out the latest strip. My brother did something like that a couple of years back; a little tweaking, and I can get a half-hour's worth of browsing done in thirty seconds. (I read a damn lot of comics.) Which then leaves me time to have a little more flexible fun online, and take some stuff home with me to peruse at a leisurely pace.

None of which, of course, offsets the fact that I have just been (effectively) handed a 20% pay cut. I checked next Sunday on the schedule; it would seem I'm down to four days of work from five per week. It would've been nice of someone to tell me or something.