Enjablog

I’ve been reading Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison, a memoir about a guy with Asperger’s. I’m loving it and am recognizing a lot of similar quirks that I have. Relating to that, today’s Agnes just seemed so appropriate:

I am severely displeased with HR at work. Aside from the fact that they have lost two sets of my tuition reimbursement forms twice now and I’m on my third semester of classes without any reimbursing whatsoever, I was told last week that I’m not allowed to cancel my parking space until next year. Well, our HR director made it clear to me that I can change my parking allocation during open enrollment, which is at the end of November. It just won’t go into effect until January. Oh, thanks. That makes so much difference to me.

I read through our benefits package and it’s decided on a case by case basis. For the most part, you’re supposed to wait until open enrollment. But if you’re on travel, move, no longer have a car, or some other circumstance out of the ordinary, they will consider it. Except that that wasn’t even an option our HR director gave me. She just said I had to either show proof of address change or I wait.

Anyway, I have now gotten around that. I’m not sure if this is allowed or not, but I put my parking spot up on Craigslist and a girl a couple blocks away wanted to try driving in for a couple months instead of taking VRE. So, that will give me a couple months to try metroing. Which started today. It worked out pretty well. I got disoriented at the Pentagon and missed my transfer, so it was about 15 minutes longer than expected, but otherwise it would’ve been around 45 minutes. Not bad considering when I drive, it takes me about 40 minutes to get to work some days. The trip home was even better. It only took about 30 minutes once the bus showed up. 40 minutes including waiting, but I think I’ll start to get the timing better once I ride regularly. And I also get an extra hour+ to read every day!

But the main reason I’m doing this? Since I’m taking Fridays off, I’ll be out of town, and there are holidays in November and December, I’ll be saving about $100 over the next two months. Closer to $175 if you count gas. That’s a good chunk of Christmas money without much effort. And I’m being friendlier to the environment. :)

Got home and checked on Spike (cactus cuttings from NewGirl) today. He look pretty calloused on the end, so it was time to plant him! I looked up how to plant cactus cuttings and did what it said. But it also says not to water after October 1st. I’m not sure what to do about that. I’m planning to water in 3 weeks for the initial planting, but I guess I’ll wait after that to water again instead of watering again in 2-4 weeks like it says. But… how long is the not watering good for? Sure, not after October 1st, but does that mean until the end of the calendar year? The end of winter? When the groundhog says so?