Feel the burn

My husband went out and bought the Wii Fit last night. I used it for almost an hour and a half - I love the step games and the hula hoop. The plan is to use it for at least half an hour each evening and track our progress. We're both doing this as a warm up to buying bikes and doing more high-impact and high intensity activities as summer approaches. Setting up the profile was actually pretty sobering - the board calibrates your BMI based on what you enter as your age and height, and then actually weighs you. Then, in what I like to call the "culmination of the shaming ceremony", the program calculates your fitness "age". Considering what my results were, its no wonder I feel like crap so much of the time...

Oh look. One of my office mates brought donuts.

A vicious nest of vipers

Last week I discovered one of my coworkers looking up the ancient story of Medusa on wiki. It turns out that it was referenced in an earlier conversation, and my office friend had no clue what Medusa even was. I proceeded to rattle off information about the gorgons (there were, depending on the source, three of them), and Greek mythology in general. I made the mistake of saying that the Edith Hamilton compilation of Greek, Roman and Norse mythology - that I had first begun to read in middle school and still have a battered copy of - was "like the bible of mythology". This made her a little offended seemed to offend her (thanks grammar police...) because she thinks that mythologies should not be compared to the bible. I explained that it was a figure of speech, and also explained that to the ancient Greeks this mythology was their religion. The pantheon of gods and goddesses represented different qualities, many of which are now attributed to the various manifestations of a single diety in modern Judeo-Christian beliefs. To the Greeks (and subsequently, the Romans, whose empirical aspirations had a vital part in the spread of the new western religion of Christianity that neatly co-opted bits of other belief systems as it went along), these tales of vengeful and lusty gods and questing heroes helped explain the phenomena that occurred in the natural world, and gave them a way to rationalize their cultural origins. It addressed the pentultimate question of "Why are we here?". Unless I'm mistaken, this is the basis and primary function of just about every religious belief system ever concocted by the collective minds of humanity since the dawn of time. Personally, I find the idea of a host of admittedly flawed gods twisting the universe to suit their whims more appealing than the possibility of a single god cloaked in the mantle of righteousness while conducting divine business in a decidedly contrary and deceitful fashion. At least you know what makes Zeus tick, and can take steps to prevent advances from giant amorous swans.

Since last week, I've been bothered by the nagging question of trying to remember the name of the hero of the Medusa story. I know he conquered her by looking at her reflection in his polished shield, and was able to escape the fate that met every other man who had ever laid eyes on her horrifying features (her stony gaze, if you will...). I just couldn't remember his name. It dawned on me last night while I was doing housework (some of my best thinking is done when my brain is on cruise control...), and I had to stop what I was doing and go online to make sure I was right. I was. Why can't I make a living from the utterly random and practically useless knowledge that my brain absorbs?

(It was Perseus, by the way!)

Sunday's Lio 'strip that I think I mentioned to M:

Emo pants and haircuts

I finally broke down and cut my hair, after a few months of trying to ignore the unruly mess and tie it back in a sad little ponytail in an effort to gorw it out enough to achieve a medium length style. I just couldn't take it any more. The end result is something with layers that resembles the haircuts that I see on certain teenage girls running around the mall. All I need are some chunky highlights in fuschia, eyeliner applied with a heavy hand, and a striped shirt paired with ridiculously tapered jeans in a cut that is as generally unflattering as it is uncomfortable.

My bangs look like this:

"It's a major award!"

I got an award certificate from the main branch's employee recognition program presented to me today. It was nice. Awkward...but nice. Of course, one of my friends nominated me but wanted it to be anonymous, so the fact that they gave me the nomination form along with my award I found kind of funny. She was not amused about that, though - she was trying to boost my "morale" (I really can't stand that damn word...), by making me think that one of the bosses might have nominated me. Of course, I would have eliminated the bosses from the list of possible suspects on the first round, and eventually narrowed it down to her, anyway.

A mid-week sigh of relief

Now that the all-consuming project that has taken up most of my time and consciouness over the last two weeks is completed I can breathe a little easier. I have time to work on the little things that I've been putting off, like fix my filing and tackle my learning library that has gotten out of hand.

The boss invited a couple of us lackeys out to lunch today. I'm curious as to what the will be discussed. I always find out the most interesting bits of news at these lunches.

News stories that have recently caught my eye:

• Vanderbilt museum is considering selling a 38 foot tall (approximately life-size) T-Rex replica that was originally made for promoting the movie version of 'Jurassic Park'in the 90s. They should call me if they've got a velociraptor they need to offload...
• Actual Discovery article headline:'Male Whales Prefer Enormous Females'...feel free to smirk and titter amongst yourselves.
• Tom Hanks has been asked to switch on the LHC as part of a promotion for his crappy new movie based on the sequel to the crap-fest that was 'The DaVinci Code', because the plot of the second book/movie somehow involves antimatter stolen from CERN. I'm sure that Hanks and Opie will take an interesting idea for a plot (even as ridiculous as Dan Brown is able to twist it and junk up the science) and make it the most dull sequence of improbable events ever captured on celluloid.
  
  
  

Uncle Sam is a greedy, thieving bastard

Because my husband worked a part time job last year, we lost roughly $600 from our tax return. The only reason we're getting anything back at all is because of the child credit and having paid for child care before and after school all last year. I'm seriously contemplating having more children. Hey - it workes for other people. Heck, that lady with the 14 kids must see some kind of financial windfall every tax season, right?

My new job has officially lost its luster. I've been working on this incredibly frustrating project for a couple of weeks now, and today while attempting to wrap it up and be done with it I had to ask the manager overseeing it a couple of questions - and I was promptly lectured (rudely, in a tone of voice I very much did not appreciate) about how that was the department's money, so I had better be careful with it. Gee, thanks. Here I was, thinking that it was "play" money. I was all set to run out and buy me a pony. I hate people who are jerks because they can be. And my boss is giving me more and more work that's at a level that I'm not sure I'm prepared for. I'm having to make phone calls to ask questions no one wants asked and deal with people who make a great deal more than I do and have fancy titles to go with their salaries, but who don't seem to understand much or seem capable of what I'm being asked to do. I keep wondering why half these people work here, and what idiot agreed to pay them ungodly sums to know so little. Which leads me to wondering why I work here...

To whom it may concern

The weekend was too short, and went by much too quickly. I'm tired. And cranky. And over it.

I'm working without a position description. For over a month and a half I've been doing work that is on the position description of the other person in my department (that I still don't even officially work for). The boss seems to have three people trying to arrange details for one training event this week. I keep having to remind my old department that I don't work for them any more. I have a project that is due, that I need data from a supervisor to complete, and I called twice last week, emailed last week and again today, gave an original deadline of Friday, then gave another deadline for this afternoon...funny - something tells me I'm not going to get the info I need and I'm going to have to pull the numbers out of my wazoo in order to finish the project. And when the budget is not what that supervisor wants, who takes the blame? Do they think I do this for my health? Did I mention I'm tired. Because I am.

A big ol' HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout to M, though. How was lunch? By the way, you should never feel unloved - I saw all those birthday wishes on your fb! You know a crazy lot of people.

Should I be writing this down?

A little game I like to call Aweseome/Not Awesome

• The prospect of the upcoming weekend: Awesome
• The frustrating project I've been working on all week and the possibility of missed deadlines: Not Awesome
• Two hours of training tomorrow: Not Awesome
• Hearing my new boss heap praise on my work ethic: Awesome
• Hearing my boss say the budget contstraints prevent her from compensating me for my work ethic: Not Awesome
• The upcoming Strawberry Festival: Awesome
• Taking M to her first Ren Fair: Awesome
• Seeing Seal in concert with my parents in April: Awesome
• The grey, foggy, depression inducing weather: Not Awesome
• Being surrounded by sick people at work who refuse to keep their germs at home where they belong: Not Awesome

What if this weren't a hypothetical question?

After picking up my pooch from the vet clinic and getting her all settled at home, I came to work to find myself greeted by nine missed calls. Nine. In four hours. All from the same person. Why? For what purpose does one call and call and call...and not bother to leave a voicemail? Then I logged into my email and discovered a message with the following subject line (and this is verbatim, caps lock and extraneous punctuation have actually not been dramatized for effect, for once): WHERE ARE YOU???

Dear coworker: You are neither my boss nor my spouse. Do not ever - and I mean ever in the completely literal sense - treat me as if I have to justify my existence or my whereabouts to you. Ever. Because I will go rogue badger and extract your kidneys out through your trachea.

Not to mention that the manager of IT just called to follow up on a project that was assigned to me that I had to relegate to back burner status because of several other priority assignments that I was given. He's probably tracking my keystrokes as I type this, so just FYI - I just did the project and sent it on its merry little way via the web-space. Happy now?

Unforseen and inopportune emergencies

So here we are, again reminded of the old saw "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". I just returned from dropping the dog off at the vet for surgery. We had to take her to the emergency vet clinic yesterday because I'd discovered she had a swollen ear on Saturday. It turns out that she developed an aural hematoma, which is a collection of blood in the ear flap, due to trauma. According to the vet at the emergency clinic and the vet at the animal hospital, ear hematomas are pretty common in dogs, especially the floppy-eared breeds, and can result from either the dog scratching at the ear, or vigorously shaking its head, due to any number of things. In this case, my dog has had chronic ear infections, and shakes her head a lot. It just so happened that this weekend she may have shaken her head a little too violently, and caused injury to the blood vessels in her ear. The hematoma required surgery, and the vet is also going to treat her ear infections, wich are not only affecting the outer ear, but now the middle ear as well. She also suggested that the infections may be a result of a possible allergy, and said we should try altering her diet to see if that might help a little - otherwise she seems to be in excellent health and great spirits. She'll be in surgery today, then recovery this afternoon. I'll take a half day off work tomorrow and pick her up in the morning.

Two vet trips...

Two minor surgeries...

Four prescriptions...

And almost a thousand dollars later

It pays to be prepared

...for any eventual scenario. For example - today while rummaging around in my desk, I came to the realization that if for any reason I should have to take refuge in my office building (say, in the event I am stuck in here during the zombie armageddon) that I have amassed a stockpile of saltines and single-serve coffee creamers that would sustain me for approximately 1.5 days before I'd have to fight the staff of the CEOs office for their Coke and left over orange juice (weapon of choice: letter opener sharpened to a sleek razor's edge and attached bayonette-style to the front of an HR golf umbrella, secured with the picture hanging wire I keep in my desk). Of course, considering that the building two blocks down used to be a military barracks and is encased in a modified Farraday cage (not to mention the subfloor being built like a bunker), I certainly would be making every attempt to be there instead. I'd have to gather the rest of the household from their various points around town, of course. That exact plan of escape is a little more risky, and is in need of a bit of fine-tuning, since the calculated casualty ratio so far seems to be running very high.

These are the things I think about while having to spend all day running reports. This project is boring and monotonous, and when it's done, I get to teach the person making double my salary how to read the reports I've spent two days researching and printing out. I've used a ream of paper, which equals a couple of old-growth trees, I think. So to hell with the ideal of the "paperless" office, and who cares about some damn owls, I suppose.

The end is nigh

Take heed people! Budgetpocalypse Naught Nine is upon ye. Or would it be upon thee...?

Anyway. There have been crazy budget related meetings all over the place the last two days, we've been issued a travel and expenses freeze for "nonessentials" (because, you know - that worked so well six months ago), and managers are throwing worst case scenarios all over the place, which is freaking out the staff. My husband is convinced that either he or I - or both of us, even - will be on the chopping block before the summer. Here's where we are, for those keeping score: last year the organization "gave back" just over 10% of base operating funds. This year they returned 4%. Sometime between next month and next calendar year, we are expecting to return additional operating funds - anywhere from 5% to 15%. So, overall, we're looking at a possible total reduction of 20 to 30 percent over a three year period, most of which came from vacant positions or by eliminating positions and shifting personnel. The palpable levels of stress and anxiety have ratcheted up to almost unbearable extremes. Today while the new budget assistant and I were waiting for our manager to end a phone call so that we could meet with her, the Governor's assistant in his regional office here (which he very rarely even uses except for "photo op" trips) shooed us away rather sternly, because she thought we were talking too loudly outside of the office of one of the Governor's aides while she was "conducting business" in her office, which we were sitting right outside of. Because that's where the only available chairs were! And were were speaking at a *reasonable volume*. Then, very shortly afterward, the budget assistant decided that she needed some paper, so she grabbed a couple of reams from the storage room in the CEO's offices with the intention of replacing them once we'd bought our own supply, and the boss's assistant saw us walk out the door with the paper and proceeded to bitch us out about that. By the way, this new coworker, who I thought was kind of quiet and would keep to herself, has turned out to be kind of bossy and agressive. I'm now being referred to as "woman". As in "Hey woman, are you coming to this meeting or what?". I do this with my friends, in a playful & teasing way. The way this woman says it...I dunno. Forced comraderie is not my style, at any rate. I don't know if I can take much more of this...

Update: this new coworker is already starting to rub certain people the wrong way (I've heard this from no less than three different people in the last couple of days), and she's only been here for two weeks. This does not bode well.

"This is one time when television fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather."

The Steelers won the Superbowl!!
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And Pennsylvania's most famous fat rodent predicted another six more weeks of winter.

"According to German superstition, if a hibernating animal casts a shadow on Feb. 2 - the Christian holiday of Candlemas - winter will last another six weeks. If no shadow was seen, legend said spring would come early."