Out Of Office Reply...

I'll have use or lose leave (& a lot of it) for the very first time in my professional working career. 

It's about 100 or so hours (roughly 2 & a half weeks) of annual leave to burn, so I've been racking my brain trying to strategically pick the best days to stay home over the next 2 months. 

Now I know to plan/spread-out my annual leave, as best I can anyway, over the course of a year - that way I won't end up taking chunks of leave at the end of the year to avoid losing it. We're allowed to carry-over 240 hours of annual leave (pretty standard, I think), but clearly a staycation, at minimum, is now mandatory for me - noted.

In the past I've always made very good use (some supervisors might say too good use) of my accrued annual leave. Aside from taking a summer vacation, I took leave quite often during the other parts of the year & often times, for no reason at all. This year I used more 'slick' leave than usual, didn't take a vacation & now I earn more leave each pay period than I used to.

Granted, it's a good problem to have, especially for folks with kids & such, but not a super-huge benefit for me at the moment. I've taken additional leave for the obvious Thanksgiving & Christmas holidays, but the majority of days were selected arbitrarily. Looks like I'll have some extra me time, watching wonderful daytime television this fall, lol.

Governing By Crisis...

7:27a -- Washington (CNN) – “The country crashes into the debt ceiling at midnight, and there is no deal yet in Washington.”

It's now day 16 of this silly government shutdown & I'm finally pissed enough to blog about it. What on Earth is our Congress doing??? 

This is exactly why the 2 party system in this county needs to be addressed & revamped. Our elected Republican & Democratic officials are simply too driven by their respective party lines & NOT the very constituents who voted 'em into office. 

The constant bickering & hostage-taking by these politicians is tearing this country apart. Every 6 months there's a potential shutdown due to the ongoing congressional in-fighting & ironically, very few folk on the Hill would even be affected by any of the resolutions that have been sent forward for a vote, so this pisses me off that-much-more.

Everyone is busy posturing for political leverage, while the citizens of this country spiral deeper & deeper into a full-on panic. Yesterday's bright idea was a bill that promised enough funding for the government to operate until December or so, then we'd have to do this all over again.

Sure they'll tell you the idea is to reach another, more long term, agreement before reconvening in December, but this current state of the shutdown was never supposed to happen either, so I take very little solace in any future promises from this (or any) crop of politicians.

Municipalities all across this nation are hemorrhaging & no one from any party -- yes, including you Tea Party -- is doing a damn thing about it, if it doesn't clearly paint them as the hero for saving our country, that is. Everyone wants to wear the white hat, but no one wants to fall on their sword.

Help us lord…

Dear Metro: Is that how you feel?

Ok, really - what's the damn deal? So Friday Metro implemented the 2nd wave of fare increases in the past 6 months, and they did so in a pretty sneaky manner. They're calling it a Peak of the Peak-time Surcharge, wtf??? And the bastards couldn't even wait until 1st of the month to put the new fares into affect (as was previously announced). There was no surcharge for the 'peak of the peak-time' during the morning commute, but by Friday afternoon they had signage at each station indicating that the new fares were indeed in affect for the afternoon commute. Bitches!

Perhaps I wouldn't be so pissed about the constant fare hikes if the overall service & function of Metro was ever enhanced by the additional revenue - but Nope! Service has gone nowhere but down-hill since last year's train crash. At this point the shit is beyond ridiculous.

Lazy-ass station managers act as though your interrupting them whenever u experience a problem. Train drivers don't allow enough time for passengers to board ('in an effort to stay on schedule' - yeah, right). Not mention we're still waiting for Wifi in ALL stations as promised a year ago, escalator outages are a dime a dozen (you can forget about the convenience of an elevator anytime u actually need one) & many of the stations and train cars have no AC.

The dysfunctional organization has been on the constant decline despite the hikes and goo-gobs of federal funding they've received in addition to funds acquired locally. At this point, I'm convinced that the big wigs who run Metro simply don't give a damn.

If were cheaper to ride the train as opposed to driving to work many of these problems might remain a small after-thought as was the case to until this year. But with the constant increase in fares it's that's clearly no longer the case so there's alot more scrutiny being placed upon the level of service that Metro provides it's patrons & rightfully so!