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I didn't get home last night until about 9:00, and then because it takes so fucking long for my computer to start up and then open its apps, it was nearly 9:30 before I could even start writing
my review of
Thor: Love and Thunder. It wasn't terrible but I also wasn't terribly impressed with it; it's a B-minus movie, which makes it a disappointment after
Thor: Ragnarok (ironically, the best of the Thor movies and the only one of them I never reviewed). This made me feel pretty okay with kind of whipping up that review more quickly than usual. And then it was still more than 800 words. I guess I can't help but to stay on brand.
Anyway, I saw the movie with Tracy. I likely won't see her now for another two weeks. We had plans to see
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris Thursday next week, but Shobhit wants to do a wine class that day at Total Wine & More. Shobhit doesn't often ask for me to set aside a day for plans with him on a specific date, so I had to reschedule the movie with Tracy. Trouble is, she is unavailable Friday next week, and also unavailable Wednesday the week after. In between those days, my trip to Denver is Saturday though Tuesday, so, the next movie with Tracy got postponed another full week. Oh well; it's fine.
We didn't have time to meet up before the movie last night, which was a 6 p.m. showtime. So, she drove direct from her new office in Everett. I walked straight from work to the Central Library, where I returned what
no doubt will be the best book I read this entire year, and picked up the book waiting for me, a novel—the sequel I only discovered yesterday was released last year, to the fantastic and hilarious
Hollow Kingdom, which was one of my favorite books
I read in 2019. I had been hankering for another novel to read, as my reading lists tend to be massively top-heavy with nonfiction. I don't actually think I'm wanting for an ability to feel empathy, but ever since I read that reading novels
makes people more empathetic, I've been kind of eager to work more novels into my reading material.
I mean, I don't know how much a series of novels narrated by a crow living in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland will fit into that context, but whatever. It's still a novel!
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— पांच हजार दो सौ छत्तीस —
So here's the latest in the PTO front at work: Shobhit, always looking for ways to game whatever system is in front of him, has basically figured out a way for me to have my cake and eat it too. I did cancel the vacation I had put in for late August / early September jus to burn through PTO, plus three of the five days I had previously scheduled to overlap with his birthday and Halloween, which freed up 8 days worth of PTO to cash out at the end of the year. But also, with us being reverted to previous policy through early 2023, I can cash out as much of my PTO balance at the end of the year as I want—and I had been budgeting for a balance of 120 hours at year-end. Shobhit started asking about whether I could cash all the rest of that out too, also keeping in mind that I
earn PTO on hours cashed out.
I did figure out this morning that I can't cash out to the point of zero-balance at the end of the year, though. I need a balance of roughly 40 hours so that I have a desired balance of at least 8 hours by the time we're done with the trip to Australia, which I currently have, admittedly liberally, estimated at necessitating 13 days' worth of PTO needed. This can get tinkered with once we actually book flights and are certain what days I will actually be away, but I'm thinking at least two extra days of PTO as a buffer after getting back, both to acclimate to jet lag and to give time for photos and travelogue emails, etc.
Shobhit is still trying to convince me to give up another 2-3 PTO days for cashing out, though, and I'm about to draw a line in the sand. The way I have things budgeted right now, I'm already going to get between $1300 and $1500 extra from cashing out, and I didn't want to pile on to the panicked last-chance cashing out this year to begin with. Shobhit is clearly still trying to find ways to squeeze every penny he can out of PCC, and I already feel like I'm pushing it with the plan already in place. Shobhit wants to discuss over the weekend, and when I already pushed back over text he responded with,
Let's talk calmly. An ostensibly mature approach, I suppose, but frankly I get tired of constantly giving in to his arguments for me to do things I don't really want to do. Sometimes I get to be the person to set a hard boundary.
Shobhit loves to say that he "always compromises," which is patently untrue. I'm not saying he
never compromises, because most of the time he actually does. But he really loves to act like I never compromise, which is a complete fiction. And the current projections I have for this PTO plan is itself actually massive compromise.
Shobhit has since followed up over email with "Let's talk at home. There are a couple of errors in your excel sheet." So, we'll see. I'm still not giving up more PTO days.
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[posted 12:25 pm]
