Keep the nite-lite on

I decided to post the "Birdhouse in Your Soul" video by TMBG, because I need a little emotional lift. The song is a little band-aid for my abrased psyche. I got my review this week. I went into it expecting to be disappointed, but I wasn't prepared for what I got smacked with. My general work "exceeds expectations". My first reaction was "Well - duh. It's easy to exceed something that one does not have...". But apparently, my "people skills" and communication need work, and I'm not much of a team player. This really kind of pissed me off, to be honest. I can accept that I'm not necessarily what the boss was calling "approachable" at times, and I've been kind of stressed out lately, so maybe it's showing. But, WTF?! All I do all day, every day of the work week at my totally effing thankless job is make life easier for everyone else around me while they make it harder for me. I support the operation of the whole freaking unit! How is that not being a team player - just because I don't participate in the warm-fuzzy non-work related activities? Maybe I don't want to know these people as anything other than co-workers? Seriously. I'm practically invisible until someone has a problem (the majority of which these people should be able to resolve on their own), and then it's all "Oh, just go bother Maus. I know she's under deadline pressure and has multiple projects that we haven't even attempted to help with (not that we'd know what we're doing and would probably screw up anyway), but I'm sure she'd be more than happy to just drop what she's doing right now and tell you how to order business cards." Basically, to me, it all came down to personality, not capability. But, this boss leaves in a couple of weeks, so I'll take what was constructive and make adjustments where I can, and hope the new boss can see the value in the role that I play.



Now's the time for some random, unverifiable factoids, fresh from the internet, to add some much needed brevity (YOU KNOW YOU LOVE IT!):

If humans ceased to exist 97 percent of domesticated animals would become extinct within two years.

The average worker in the US with a windows-based PC on his or her desk will have 4.7 applications running at any given time.

32 percent of all web content is password protected.

If trends continue, by 2017, a single computer hard drive will be able to hold all the data contained on all of the hard drives currently in existence today.

The FBI has files on 1.27 million living Americans. The CIA has files on 1565 FBI agents.

Every Republican president since Eisenhower has pronounced "nuclear" as "noo-kyoo-ler".

(all factoids courtesy of Gullible.info)

And a lolcat or two would be a nice touch...

Annnnd...

(You can of course find more lolcats @ icanhascheezburger.com)

I finished HP book five, M! I shed a little tear for Snuffles. I have a theory about the prophecy - maybe I'll share it with you when I see you next week. Did you see the last episode of The Office? Foregone conclusion, that's what I'm saying. And what's up with Scrubs? I hate where that storyline is going (Zach Braff hosts SNL in...eight minutes). The last episode of Lost is on this week, too. And that'll be it for my shows for the summer. I guess it means I'll just have more time to go to the gym.

News of the word.

Now that M is working elsewhere and I can't regail her with the mundane news of my every day like I used to, I'll be posting even more rambling pointlessness on my blog. Because I know how much all (three) of you love it. For starters, I had a decent weekend. I'm almost completely over my cold, since the remnants seem to have passed on to my poor unfortunate husband. My son is getting better, although he still has a bad cough at night. We spent Mother's Day morning waiting fourty-five minutes for breakfast (only for the waitress to initially give us the wrong order and forget my son's whipped cream for his pancakes), and then spent the afternoon with my husband's family. His younger brother - who I have mentioned before is kind of...well, for lack of a better word, an idiot - has apparently started to sell meat door to door from a truck to supplement his income. Meat. From a truck.


Because of the weather change happening right now (it's hot enough outside to be a little unpleasant for long periods of time, but not hot enough to make the water in my pool warm enough to swim in), every day my dog sheds enough fur to make a small version of herself. I brushed her out last night and managed to groom half a 13 gallon garbage cans worth of fur off of her in about fifteen minutes. And she was still shedding. I stopped brushing because I got a hand cramp.

We're supposed to get some rain (finally), but the wildfire smoke is supposed to follow a cold front south by the end of the week. I'm almost finished with HP book number five - about a quarter left to go. I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish the series.

(This is SO ME!)

It's all about Me (meaning you).

This post is dedicated to M, as this is her last day with us. In homage to her, here are some of my fondest memories (taking it old-school, yearbook style - cause that's how we do...): zombie squirrels; twinkie corpses; Attack of the hibiscus; girl-dates; MySpace; birthday hats; "Profane!"; "There's a ___ in me ___..."; Almost dieing in a tragic golf-cart accident; Ok Go (squared); Planning trips that never happen; Jazz hands!!; "Quaiiiiddd"(that's all me); "I am your daughter..."; Thairific Sushified lunches; Snakes. On a mother-effing plane; "Vat wazz zat noize?"; The joys (and sorrows) of blogging; IoA and Snow Patrol; Finally having 'Arry Potterrr in common.


The image above was taken this morning from the Business building across the harbor - that's not fog. On a clear day you'd be able to see my building. The new co-worker is insisting on wearing a particle filter mask. In the office. With the interior door closed. She looks like a blonde Michael Jackon with that thing covering her face. There was soot all over my car this afternoon when I went to get M's cake...I'm strangely in the mood for some Smokey's Real Pit Bar-B-Que.

Where there's fire...

...There's smoke. According to the news, there are over 200 separate wildfires burning over 20,000 acres of land here in the Too-Much-Sunshine State. Add to that wildfires that Georgia has been battling for weeks. A lovely smokey pall is currently enveloping the county and every time I walk outside it feels like I'm inhaling barbeque fumes.


I took yesterday off, even though I have more work than I even want to think about right now and I really couldn't afford to lose the eight hours. My son woke up with a fever of 101 degrees, so he had to stay home from school. Of course, half way through the day he wanted to jump around and tell me he was "much better". Today he has a slight cough and the sniffles, but is otherwise fine. I spent most of yesterday reading HP book four. I only have a couple chapters to go - then it's on to book number five.

Spent a nice relaxing weekend across the bridge with my parents and my sister. She had a dance recital on Saturday, so I went to watch that and then we all went out to dinner at the Sand Bar and watched the sun set. I went to the Red Barn with my mom on Sunday and bought some new decor for my office. My new theme is touristy "tacky-chic" - a beachy feel with lots of loud, gaudy colors. Maybe it'll liven up my mood a little.

Something I learned over the weekend:
"Porthos" is not only the name of the dog in my sisters SIMS game (as well as the name of a dog in the Scott Bakula pre-Star Trek original series show "Enterprise", and the name of playwright James M. Barrie's dog, upon whom the Nana of Peter Pan was based), it was originally the name of one of the Musketeers in the stories by Dumas (the other two Musketeers were Aramis and Athos).

May Day

May is here.
My birthday fast approaches.
There will be much rejoicing.
And cake.
And maybe drinking and dancing.



Yesterday when I got home from work I got to hear a rather unsettling story. Apparently while my husband was sitting in the office of my son's preschool talking to one of the administrators, one of the other parents decided to pick up my son while they were picking up their child from the same class and drop him off at the office. Now, I know that this person had good intentions. And really, that's the only thing that kept my husband calm during this incident. The school could have faced possibly losing their license - if we were the kind of people to make it an issue. Because the teachers minding his class weren't paying enough attention to see my son leaving with someone other than his parents. SOS!