The general state of affairs

What follows is quite random. Don't be scared - this is actually how my mind normally works: like an ADD kid full of soda and pop rocks.

Lately I've been getting a lot of spam e-mails at work in German. I like to while away time attempting to translate the subject lines, using only my limited skills auf Deutsche, so that it's more of a challenge.

I've continued the informal book exchange I started at work, and as a result have managed to slowly whittle down the pile of books that I've judged as "non-keepers" that would normally be going off to charity. The downside is that I've given away a lot of books but not gotten that many back in return from the four different individuals that I've been practically throwing stacks of reading material at.

The rumor is circulating that in the midst of a hiring and wage freeze - and as the company is beginning to initiate layoffs in some cases, as well as having become so desperate as to have decreed a moritorium on all supply purchases - someone in our HR just very recently got a promotion and a 10% rate increase. This has raised a lot of eyebrows and a great deal of ire. Some are at a point of open revolt. I fully expect to see a horde of clerks and secretaries with torches and pitchforks storming the elevator in front of my office any day now.

I'm going to a painting convention with my mom on Saturday. But before that, I'll be attending the funeral of the long-time boyfriend of one of my aunts. I expect it to be a strange experience...I've been to several funerals over the course of my life, and they just haven't gotten any easier for me to deal with emotionally. I've been to the services of strangers, accquaintances and close family members, and I always melt down exactly the same. A lot of it is that I don't deal well with seeing other people in distress. Heck - my son gets a boo-boo or has his feelings hurt, and I run the risk of bawling right along with him.

Speaking of my son - he lost his first tooth on Wednesday. It had been loose for a couple of weeks now, and while he was eating lunch at school it more or less dislodged itself and was just kind of dangling. So after we got home, my husband just wiggled it right out. The tooth to cash exchange rate has become awfully inflated since I was little - it used to be a quarter. Now it's set at a dollar. And since my son loves pocket change more than paper currency, he asked if the tooth fairy could give him four quarters for his tooth, which she obliged. Should have seen the look of amazement on his face when he checked under his pillow the next morning...and he's very proud of his gappy new smile.


I'll be running around getting my husband's birthday gifts tonight (including the ingredients for a rum cake), and then feverishly trying to tidy the house.

Post Script: It's Monday. I have a new, fairly demanding and high-maintenance co-worker. I forsee challenges and much hilarity as the inevitable personality conflicts ensue. As for me...I have much work to attend to and time is most definitely not on my side, so my door will be closed a majority of the time.

The mildly disturbing and the just plain annoying

Pandora has not been working for days. I don't know what the issue is - be it my computer or the site itself - but the silence that has been the result kind of bothers me. I was told I could listen to music at a reasonable volume...

...and I like to keep it on the station that I programmed to play L7 and Liz Phair, at a noise level just out of the range of anyone not sitting in front of my speakers. That way, I can listen out for and revel in the barely-audible f-bombs. I'm such a rebel...

A friend of my husband has started her own work-from-home business on the side, and she constantly sends out bulletins and messages on MySpace advertising it. Which would be fine, if it wasn't home parties selling adult novelty items.

Can I have a:

And a little bit o':

I attended a meeting yesterday where you could cut the tension with a dull knife. Everyone is on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the systems we have to work with as well as the ambiguous nature of the directives we're given are causing countless headaches and a level of disgruntled I didn't previously think possible. I was told yesterday that we need to get shirts for a program that is happening tomorrow. Tomorrow! My boss did not provide information on how he thinks this is going to get done and has yet to make an appearance today. I have work to do on various projects of significantly more importance, so I'm choosing to let the person who initiated this program figure out how to make it happen. And if they don't like it - tough crap. I've had enough of sacrificing my deadlines and the integrity of my work because too often the people around me are not thinking, not planning, not being proactive, not taking initiative, and just skating through like just by showing up they deserve a frakking medal.

:sigh: Don't mind me. I'm just a little disgruntled.

you're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older

This was the year that marked my transition into "thirty-something" territory. I had thought about letting it pass quietly, like last year. I did get flowers from my parents, delivered to my office on Friday, which was a really nice surprise. And my desire to drag my husband out against his will to do something geeky won out over wanting to let the day go uncelebrated, so we made plans with M to go to the zoo on Saturday. It was a nice day, if a little on the sweltery side. We got to do and see pretty much everything. Then again...it isn't a very big zoo. (Pictures will follow at some point.) Then we went out to dinner, and had a very enjoyable time. That night I watched Pride and Prejudice (twice), and went all swoony over Matthew Macfadyen.

M's present to me this year was a zombie-fiction anthology, for those dark nights when I really want to stay awake in the midst of paranoid insomnia until daylight. I had bought myself a couple of books earlier in the week, and decided to start with Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters. I didn't find out until after I started into it that this is considered his weakest novel. It's also vapid, gratuitous, meandering and surprisingly dull for something so in-your-face and graphic - full of pandering shock-value and little else. All in all, I found not a lot to redeem the book, so I doubt I'll be going out of my way to read anything else by Palahniuk anytime soon. (The best line came early on, three pages into chapter one: "Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism." - that was the highlight and it all went sour from there.) I was reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy earlier this evening, but I quickly realized that it may get a little...sad. So I've switched over the Dean Koontz's most recent continuation of his Odd Thomas character's story, Odd Hours. Nice and light and mindless popular fiction. Just what I need.


My husband's birthday is this weekend, and he'll join me in the ranks of the no-longer-in our-twenties. The plan is to have my husband's family over on Sunday for gift-giving and preparation of charred consumables. And alcohol. And cake.

Next week is my son's last in kindergarten. We think we'll take him to play putt-putt golf when school lets out on the last day, which is something he's been trying to talk us into for about a year. It's what we promised him if he mastered the 2nd grade sight-word (what we used to call "vocabulary") list, so it seems like the best time. The following week he starts summer camp (where the fees jump to almost double), and we have plans to go see Wall-e at the end of June and a family reunion to look forward to in July.

Backwarditude

For whatever reason, the filter at work has now blocked CNN's website. But MySpace, Facebook, Blogger and Fark are all loading with no problem. A couple weeks ago my boss was frustrated because he was trying to find a new dentist, and the directory site for our insurance was blocked by IT.

My office is freezing - again - and when that happens I find it very hard to concentrate and do work. Of course, that is exacerbated by the fact that there is hardly anyone here today, and days like this make it all too easy to ignore my "to-do" list. I should have brought a book...

Indecision, married with a lack of vision.

The week just keeps getting better and better. After deliberating for far too long, the insitution finally announced the details of the second wave of budget cuts, and over 400 positions will be lost - meaning about 70 people will actually lose their jobs. They've shifted over some personnel to other areas that had vacancies, in order to consolidate some functions and eliminate salary lines that apparently were considered extranious. Some of that was done on this branch a little bit prematurely, since we've have some resignations. We've also been told not to order office supplies from any other vendor but the one run by the company. The office supply budgets amount to insignificant spending compared to salaries, and minimal revenue for the company when you factor in the cost of procuring those supplies to sell back to the departments at markup. And when the holiday break comes around, we'll be closed for a week. Which is great - except that the days not considered "holiday/floating holiday" by the president of the institution will have to be covered by personal vacation time. Which is...bad. Madam president of course made a point of announcing that she asked the board not to approve a salary increase for her this year, like the 16% one she got last year, while the rest of the staff hasn't even had a cost of living bump in several years. She's too generous.


The good news is, I got my evaluation and it was overall a positive one. The criticisms were constructive, and I agreed with them (networking is not something I'm good at, but would help me immensely, and I need to learn to delegate, even if it means watching something go down in flames due to ineptitude). It was also revealed that "someone" had told my boss when he came on last year that I would be his biggest "problem" (he said he found the opposite to be true). I know who that "someone" is, and they caused more problems than they solved before their uncerimonious departure, and they may find it in their best interest to not ever allow their considerable shadow to darken my door again. I appreciated the encouragement and positive affirmations said in my favor, even if the meeting was very brief, and I appreciate the effort to have me shifted over to the other administrative area for my benefit. I do think there's probably an ulterior motive, but if it ends up being a win-win for everyone involved, then I won't concern myself with it. I'm just glad to have that process done and over with.

I got a china cabinet from a friend at work, and it's great. It's an older piece of furniture - just a year older than I am - but it fits in well enough with the rest of the living room pieces and I can display my glassware and collectibles that have been stored in the attic for almost ten years. The night my husband and I picked up the base we spent hours gossiping with my coworker. We picked up the actual cabinet peice last night and in the quest to reclaim my depression glass from the depths of my attic I also rediscovered a box of hockey collectibles, and I'll be going through my rather large card collection to see if e-bay offers a chance to make some extra coin. If I remember correctly, I had a Gretzky card that was worth about $50 back in the late 90s. I won't sell my signed pucks - those will go in my son's room if they're still in decent condition.

I have no bosses today. One is sick and the other is out of town for a wedding in the midwest. So my motivation is...well, all I'll say is you have as much luck locating that as you do of finding a singing leprechaun riding a unicorn having tea with Bigfoot. I spent part of the morning sort of playing hookey by browsing in the bookstore a couple blocks over from my office, where I bought myself some books as a birthday present to myself (a signed, first-edition hardcover by Douglas Preston that was half off (!!); Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk; The Road by Cormac McCarthy). Once I've worked my way through these, I'll be reading The Ruins and attempting to begin Terry Pratchett's Discworld series from the beginning. I'm really looking forward to my birthday this year. There are plans to celebrate it by doing something fun with some of my most loved people on the actual day (Saturday), and that is a perfect storm of awesome.

My husband met with my son's kindergarten teacher today. She said she has been very pleased by his progress, and that he is one of her best students. According to her, he excels academically, reading on probably a fourth-grade level and doing exceedingly well in math as well (she's sending the third grade word list home with him over the summer, but we're pretty sure he can already read all of the words and use them in context in a sentence). She suggested that we request a specific teacher for next year who will be able to offer him a little more challenge, and then see how he adjusts, but she recommended him for the gifted program. His exposure to the older kids in his after school program has also helped his social and emotional development. We'll think about it over the summer and see whether or not the gifted program is in his best interests - we don't want to push him too hard too early. He is only six.