Lazy Day and a Minor Rant (You've Been Warned)

I could have gone to the beach today. I could have gone out drinking with the rest of the teachers tonight. I could have stayed over with a goofy kid that would have wanted to play his Playstation 3 and tried to compete with me. I could have done all sorts of stuff but instead, I chose to stay home today. I have a meeting tomorrow and my boss thought it would be fun if we all got together, it is unfortunate though that that can only mean one thing, drinking. It's fun to do and Lord knows, I have done my share but it isn't easy on the wallet and I don't care to hang out with most of my coworkers. I am just getting sick of almost all of them. Not to mention, last time we had this kind of outing my boss got a huge hangover and slept through part of the meeting we were having.

So today I have stayed home, playing video games, watching Sopranos(evil addicting show), and drank Dr. Pepper. The convenience store next to my apartment finally started carrying Dr. P, I thought I was going to freak out. In exactly two weeks, I will be on a train back up to Tokyo and will be picking Ben up from the airport two weeks from tomorrow. I am getting excited for him to come, we will have a blast.

The only downside to his visit is the way Peppy Kids Club is dealing with my work schedule while he is here. My boss is forcing me to call in sick for three days because he is too lazy and lacks the foresight to look for coverage while I am gone. Instead, he is going to let me call in and look bad, and then let corporate deal with who will go where in my absence. I don't even care about the money part and I honestly don't even care about calling in, I am more concerned by the fact that this is something that is totally avoidable but my boss lacks ambition to work out. If I get a call from head office and they try to get whiny about my sick calls, they will be hearing a few things from me about their timeliness in handling time off requests and middle management. Since I am taking days off, they are making me work on the next three Mondays, days I usually have off. Next Monday, I am going to a school four hours away and won't get home until after 11pm all because they are insistent I work to make up my time, I would be fine with just not getting paid but no, I get to ride seven hours of trains for two hours of classes and the person that usually teaches that class gets the day off. It is not because some one is sick, it is because they are essentially punishing me. It is half tempting to call in that day too.

I understand that I work for a company and I should not get a million days off just because I ask, but I do expect the company to not take a month and a half to get back to me on my request and in the meanwhile, to have my boss tell me to go ahead and make hotel reservations because the request was sure to get granted. If they were a little bit speedier, then the whole mess could have been averted. What would be super sweet would be if corporate calls me up after all of this and tells me that I have jeopardized my bonus and then I will just quit on them and go home. The bonus is the only reason I am still here at this point anyway.

Oh well, after Ben comes and goes then it is smooth sailing until April. I will keep my head down, keep the money coming in, and save as much as I possibly can. I think once I get back into my grind, everything is going to go very quickly. That is my hope anyway.

In completely different news, a group has found a way to unlock the iPhone so it will work on any carrier, not just AT&T. You basically run the software and pop in the SIM card of your choice and you are good to go. If I wanted to, I could order an iPhone right now, unlock it when the software is made available to the public, and use the iPhone in Japan if it were not for the fact that Japan is 3G and the iPhone is not. But at least I know, when I come home I can find a cheap cell plan and then use the iPhone on it. That is something to look forward to.