Back to the real world

I've been planning on updating for over a week now and just haven't gotten around to it. I started the job at IBM last week. I came in on Monday morning for orientation and stuff and then my regular night shift started Wednesday night. So I've been here for what amounts to almost 2 weeks (since I don't work Sunday Monday or Tuesday. (I say "here" because It's really slow at the moment so I'm totally updating at work.) Incidentally, it feels weird typing with vinyl gloves on. What I do here (when I'm not updating livejournal) is run the robots that polish the chip wafers. It's not actually that bad, the 12 hours don't really feel like 12 hours because I usually stay relatively busy and we also get 2 one hour breaks so really we're only working 10 hours and I take the breaks on the second have of the shift so I end up working 6 hours, taking a break, working another 2 hours, taking a break, and working the last 2 hours and going home. So the last 6 hours go by pretty quickly because of all the breaks. The only thing that sucks is it totally screws with my sleep schedule. For example, I worked Wednesday night and went to sleep Thursday morning, but when Jenn came home for lunch I woke up and didn't feel tired any more so I ended up getting up at 2. Then I went back to work Thursday night, and by 11 I wanted to die. So today I woke up when Jenn came for lunch and then I went back to sleep and ended up sleeping 'till 5, when Jenn came home from work. And so here I am right back at it. I'll have to sleep tomorrow and then go to work again, and then Sunday afternoon we're doing a late lunch with Jenn's parents and then going over to see her extended family because it's her grandmother's birthday (I think that's what she said anyway). I've already met some of the family because I was over there for Christmas Eve, but more people will be there this time and I'm worried that I'm going to be dead tired because I will have worked for 12 hours and then slept for about 5 and it might not be pretty.

I feel a little bad working nights also because it means Jenn has to sleep alone. That probably sounds a little weird, and she keeps saying essentially that it's time for her to grow up and be more self-sufficient, but up until now I've never had anyone sleeping with me on a consistent basis, as in, every night. Now that I have I've gotten used to it and I don't really want to give it up either. I say I feel bad for her sleeping alone but I think it's definitely easier on me because I sleep during the day and I wake up when she goes on lunch and then when she comes home. I think if it was her working the night shift I wouldn't be too pleased about it; it's nice having someone there.

On another note I don't feel like I see any of my friends anymore, with a few exceptions of course. I see Rachel Smith a lot because she's a mutual friend of Jenn and I (she's actually the one who introduced us originally something like 4 years ago), and I see Andy because we still do pubquiz and stuff like that. But other than that I only see Ben because I live with him, I only see Katy when she's visiting Ben, and I haven't seen most of my other close friends for literally months. I would like to apologize to some of those people and tell them that now that I'm working and know when my days off are I'm going to make more of an effort to see you all. I really do feel bad about it, especially since I specifically told at least one of you that I would not abandon you just because I got a girlfriend. Aside from occasional chats online I feel like I've done just that.

I also feel bad because my work schedule won't allow me to play D&D with the group I usually play with at the time we usually play it. We had been doing it (when we did it at all) on Friday nights because that seemed to work the best for everybody. But now I work every single Friday night, so that's out for me. I'm hoping everyone else has an occasional Saturday night when they're not doing anything. I know that also sounds strange but I play with friends from camp who are a little younger than I am (as in still in high school) so it's not like they're going and getting ridiculously drunk on Saturday nights. But we'll have to wait and see.

This entry is turning out to be a lot longer than I had planned it, but that's ok, sometimes I just need to let it out I guess.

I got an email from Olivia the other day, and I've got to say it was really nice to receive. For once I replied promptly. I'm hoping to get a response soon so we can plan to get together, because it's really been too long since I've seen her. She still has to meet Jenn and I have yet to meet her boyfriend Tom even though I've been over to visit at least twice since they started dating.

I also finally stopped being lazy and emailed my sister; I've had this long email sitting in my inbox for over a month and just haven't bothered to respond. I guess I'm just neglecting everybody. Well this really is getting to be too long now, and I really don't have anything else to say, so I guess that's enough. Hope everyone has a good rest of the night (it's 3:30 am incidentally, I'm working for another 3 1/2 hours and then I get to sleep. Sweet sweet sleep...