Back at my day job. I’ll try not to go berserk until I leave in a couple of months for my knee surgery, when they’re expecting me to be gone. Maybe oddly, it helps to know that this isn’t my real place in the world; that I’m not stuck here.

Unfortunately, I walked into the center of why this has turned into such a crappy situation: There is toner in my desk printer, but my computer died at the beginning of October. There’s a computer here at the so-called receptionist’s desk–but the laser printer has run out of toner, which I ordered like a good little bunny before my two-week hiatus. No word yet. I don’t (much) mind doing the bulk of the web stuff at home, but sheeped if I’m going to do the copying there too.

There is some vaguely theoretical chunk of money floating around that’s supposed to fix all this. It came from our grantor at the end of the fiscal year, but it’s been floating around Big Faceless Hospital for months. Nobody knows where it is. You’d think we were the government or something.

The temporary answer is to schlep over my desktop printer, but that’s heavy and cabley and might make me cry. Sigh.

On the bright side, I touched base with my personal trainer this morning (the only bennie to this job is that it has a gym, and the gym guy likes me enough to train me for free). And the peers were glad to see me. Social service jobs rarely have a lack of love–just a lack of money.

And I can’t fundraise, because fiscally we’re Big Faceless Hospital, and people would laugh in my non-501 (c)(3) face. Nope, when it comes down to it, it ain’t the thefts, or even the triggering smell of urine. It’s the feeling of being in the wilderness with a dull Bowie knife.