i hate this place. HATE this place. not only are they still hawkwatching our internet use, but they're also demanding more and more that we do more finance-related work. i know it's audit related, but we have FINANCE people to do that job! they want us to go through all of our files to see if we've submitted invoices to be paid from one particular funding source in the past three months. if we have submitted invoices, they would be sitting IN THE FINANCE OFFICE in DC. go through the damn pile and do your own damn work! the scary thing is that they'll probably start asking us to do that for every single funding source. someone higher up needs to explain to our new finance powers-that-be how our grants process works. people don't always invoice on a regular schedule. they don't always report on time (in fact, they rarely report on time). the grants don't run on OUR fiscal year. so we can't close out our fiscal year thinking that their projects are all going to close on our one-year timeline! it's so unbelieveably unrealistic i want to scream.

i also found out today that i'm going to have to move offices once we hire a new project administrator and a new finance person. the new finance person is going to get my office so s/he's in an office alone, and i'll move into the old finance office... which i'll have to share! that's just bullshit. screwed. again again again. the possibility is that the new PA and lora will move into corey's old office for now, and i'll have my own office until the portland office closes... at which point we'll hire someone else who will move into my office. ugh. so annoyed. i need a job where i'm appreciated for once.... i feel like i'm beating my head against a wall.

also tried to put some feelers out about graduate work at sfsu... i got one response (of four) but she already has two grad students tentatively confirmed. however, she agreed to meet with me, but she indicated that a part-time enrollment would be very difficult. i find that hard to believe since a lot of people do masters programs on a part-time basis... but it's just another cog in the wheels of my messed up life. i looked a bit into programs at berkeley, but they're not as suitable as sfsu's conservation biology program. other than that, there aren't really any schools within reasonable distance that might have a good program. sjsu? uc santa cruz? sonoma state? csu monterey? all too damn far. AUGH.

thank god i'm going on vacation next week. maybe i won't come back.