So. Three Things for Friday

[nwhiker]

1. Lost my job on Monday. I'm so pissed off. I knew this was going to happen, as more and more of my projects were given to St Elena to do, even as she never did anything with them beyond have me buy all the necessary reagents, since her health doesn't ever permit her to do even the 10 hours per week she was supposed to be in the lab. I think she wants to work half time, she only had quarter time, and her half is going to be less than my 2/3 and her quarter. The post doc, who is on a visa, is absolutely panicking. Considering that we've been picking up Elena's work for the past several months he doesn't think she is capable of doing mine and her own, and that puts his research in major jeopardy. Anyhow. The situation in the lab has been bad for a while; I could tell he was gearing up to fire me -sorry lay me off- and I've spent too much time crying in the bathroom after egregious slights from him. I doubt I'll ever get another science job, not at my age, not in this environment, so I'll probably look to pick up anything, Amazon or whatever, just to finish up my social security quarters. I never noticed that my three years working in grad school fell under some public sector thing and I wasn't paying in. I counted my quarters in the pre-easy-to-access-the-data-online days and there they were. Only they weren't. My mistake in not checking again. Anyhow. I'll be fine, but I'm pretty devastated at all this. I'm also majorly sad at losing my Husky Pass for transit, since we don't interoperate and now most trips would cost me at least $12. Right after we get a local bus, WAH. Sigh. Transit should be free, damnit.

2. Did The Trail of 10 Waterfalls in Oregon yesterday with dh, my sister and BIL. We "camped" in a cabin at the state park. LOL, my sister found it primitive, compared to her luxe RV, and dh and I were constantly "OMG, this is majorly cushy!" Hike was officially 7.8 miles and 800 ft elevation. We took all the side trails and Strava had us at about 10 miles and 1450 elevation, which felt more like it, tbh. It was really nice.

3. I'm absolutely terrified and angry and devastated at how quickly this country has deteriorated. I'm not sure we'll ever be back to even our sorry pre-Trump version of democracy. If there are even elections in 2026 and 2028, I no longer expect them to be fair. In addition, attempting to reverse course would require any Democrat that might be elected be willing to play Trump's playbook, using executive orders, ignoring the law (and SCOTUS will not support a Dem president doing the things they let Trump do), and I'm not 100% sure any Dem has it in them to do that, at least from the way it looks now. It also seem like they are on track to replace much of the top military with MAGAt loyalists (especially after the stony reaction to Trump and Pete's speeches the other day) and that would further destabilize the country, as those loyalists will no doubt not refuse orders to shoot at American citizens, something Bondi is implying they are planning on doing. Oh wait. Only to 'antifa'. The problem is.... as far as I can tell, 'antifa' is all of us on the other side.

Comments

[camelsamba]

I'm sorry about the job. Even if you weren't happy with the situation, it can be devastating to have someone else make the decision.

(For what it's worth, at UM if you get RIFfed you are then first priority to hire for any job where you meet minimum qualifications. At least that was still true back when I got RIFfed in the mid 2010s. I don't remember if I was told this by an admin when doing all the separation paperwork, or if I knew because I'd been on hiring committees where it came up. PS they didn't take my ID aka bus pass away either :^)