I've been back at work for a whole week and haven't had a chance to complain yet. That's so wrong. Since I got back, I've done month-end reporting (12 hours), six "special projects" taking from 15 minutes to 4-1/2 hours each. I've had to do two conference calls and have two more scheduled for today. One meeting. Two data projects for the new website, four hours total. What I have not really had time to do is my job. (Oh, I've had an hour now and then when no one wants anything or comes over to "discuss things", but that just allows me to glance at accounts and make notes for which ones need work done--it doesn't allow me to actually do the work.)
I did work over the weekend, Saturday I sat down to Gidget's stuff, where seven hours was barely enough to scratch the surface. Mostly I just, again, made notes about what needs to be done. I'm planning to work this coming weekend again to try and get some of it actually done.
Sunday morning, I was on to the account analysis for the Freethinker. Six hours and 95,000 lines of data later, I had what I hope was wanted. Recommendations. (Work with me, people. Let's all send hopes that I am not asked to manage this one. Senior Central, the Woofmen, and the BunnyHouse are as much or more than I have time for already. I can't be adding gawd to the mix. There is only one of me.)
The report reflecting what people actually typed into the Webstrainer window was interesting. I mean, aside from the bazillion irrelevant searches his too-generous campaign settings allow, there were quite a few searches for his actual book/foundation.
The word c-u-l-t came up quite a lot. Queries around jeebus's children came up with frequency. Also, a-l-i-e-n-s. I'm not really certain if this b/f postulates a-l-i-e-n intervention in jeebus's life or if it was the movie A-l-i-e-n R-e-s-u-r-r-e-c-t-i-o-n those people were searching for (r-e-s-u-r-r-e-c-t-i-o-n is a high-traffic word for the Freethinker). At one point I was almost tempted to go read the Freethinker's website, to see what, exactly, I was being asked to facilitate the marketing of, but then I realized that I didn't really care. I trust Bernie's assurance that the Freethinking isn't advocating violence of any kind against anyone. That's about as far as my interest in gawdliness goes.
On the Webstrainer forum I hang around, I answered someone's question yesterday and today they're demanding that someone else verify that what I said is correct. I feel dissed.
I'm rambling on about random, uninteresting things because of what I'm trying not to think about, but it's the main reason I logged on to complain today, so….
MadBoy is back. Yes, the beast has resurfaced. The good news is that he'd like to sell his corner of the Argonut Café and so we might someday be rid of him entirely. The bad news is that, in the interim, it did occur to him that his corner would be easier to sell if it was actually making some money, so he's decided he wants a new Webstrainer campaign--managed by me.
He's willing to commit to about 1/3 as much money as it would cost to be successful, is demanding that we block the highest-traffic sources of leads we have, and doesn't want calls or emails from people before nine or after five, Monday through Friday. I just do not get paid enough for this level of stupid.
Although, seriously, I was going to try to work up a head of steam about it all, but I don't find that I really care that much.
Yesterday was the Café's monthly all-staff meeting, wherein I announced that I'm seeing an inexplicable but frightening drop in the number of inbound leads so far this month. I've glanced through all of the accounts--there are no problems, and there's traffic. There just aren't any leads. I've been wigging out about it for the last week (in my spare time) but no one in the meeting seemed to care.
"You'll figure it out," CEOJason said. "You always do."
Whatever
And then later he had the brilliant idea that all of the 'Nuts spending enough money to be successful will be moved to outside management and the lame duck, whiny baby, and incompetent moron accounts can all stay with me. So, you know, the fact that I'm not really famous for giving myself a lot of pats on the back (I tend to assume that success is become of something/someone else's work and failure is my fault) is probably good because I'm likely to have many fewer opportunities in the future.
I've been back on the diet for the last week. I've lost 1-1/2 lbs but I've also lost my sense of humor and most of my patience. Today I visited the junk food machine on the first floor and bought two bags of chips. And I ate them both. Now I'm eating chocolate.
The world is starting to get brighter!
Now it's over a week in the past and I'm over it.
Short version. (I know, it looks long. Trust me, this is the short version.)
I arrived at the airport in Denver, double-checked my itinerary, and realized I'd been reading the landing time as my flight's departure time all day. (Not the first time I've done that.) Got on the flight with only a minor kerfluffle, made it to Ventura and then the hotel--realized that not only was I at the wrong hotel, I had no actual memory of ever knowing what hotel I was supposed to be at. In fact, standing there in the lobby of the M*rr**tt, I would have given even odds on my being in the wrong town.
Because M*rr**tt people rock the rockingest, the fabulously nice desk guy not only didn't mock me, he gave me a key to the hotel's business center so I could check the gathering's website and figure out where I was supposed to be. And then he called me a second cab to take me the mile or so down the road (no sidewalk, or I'd have just walked) to the place I should have been all along.
The weekend itself was uneventful, adventure-wise, with the tsunami from Chile's earthquake turning into a no-show, the food being plentiful, and my friends being fabulous, but my trip back was similarly adventurous.
A shuttle company I had not paid called me--they had my cell # and my flight info--to confirm my ride back to LAX. In spite of a moment of panic--clearly my brain is not to be trusted and the fact that I couldn't remember booking that shuttle wasn't proof I hadn't done it--I held firm to my printed itinerary and refused to compromise. The right shuttle--the one I'd already paid--showed up and did have me on the pick-up list.
I was peacefully watching the scenery whizz by the highway, double-checking my itinerary to confirm that I'd have a comfortable two hours to spare when I got to the airport, when my cell phone rang. Un*ted's automated system calling me to say my flight had canceled and they'd rebooked me on one three hours later.
Having no choice, I stayed on the shuttle heading to the airport. Once there, it turned out that the Un*ted terminal was under construction--a state of affairs that seems to have been going on for so long that they no longer felt it necessary to have informational signs redirecting travelers to the gates--but eventually I fought my way through to the goblin castle* of security, confirmed my 6:15 reservations, got put on standby for the 4:15 and 5:15 flights, and staggered to the nearest Starbucks.
You'd think that with three to five hours of excess time on my hands I'd have at least gotten a meal, wouldn't you? I did buy a sandwich from one place but the bread turned out to be rather tough--not stale, just overly chewy, possibly as a result of having been kept in a cooler--so I wound up picking the meat and cheese out of the middle of it.
They got me on the 4:15, but it was close--I'd wandered away from the gate to call the R.C. and complain about it all and only coincidentally wandered back in time to hear them yelling at me to come and get a seat.
These adventures aren't the onset of early dementia. I feel it's necessary to keep repeating that. I think most of the problem is that I used to travel so much that I got rather careless about it. I mean, as long as you print out your itineraries and have a list of relevant phone numbers, you're good. There's no need to obsess over the cab situation in a strange town--when you get there, it will be what it is. I think I took that whole mentality just a bit too far this time.
But I had fun!
__________________
* Gratuitous Labyrinth reference.
Home! It's good to be home. As much as I love seeing my friends (and family), there's nothing quite as happy-making as sleeping in my own little bed (and knowing what city I'm in when I wake up in the morning).
The trip to Kansas went well, I think. I haven't been to a costume con in many, many years. While I did anticipate that an anime con would feature a lot of cosplay, I was somewhat surprised by the number and variety of costumes worn by attendees. Rapunzel and I were admiring the more creative costumes as we wandered from panel to panel. (After a while, I started feeling silly for not being in costume. I felt out of place!)
It takes very little snow to disrupt Kansas traffic so when a storm moved in on Saturday afternoon, Pippi and the L-i-K-S packed up my stuff and Rapunzel's and came down to the hotel where we all stayed over until Sunday. That was fun, because it meant we could keep attending panels until midnight.
Surprisingly enough, the weekend panels I enjoyed the most were the more generic ones--ones on the history of Toonami (and its affect on today's USofA anime fans), the star panel with voice actors, and the history and disappearance of OVAs. I didn't recognize "Toonami" when it appeared on the panel list but it turns out that I've seen at least a few episodes of all the most popular Toonami programs. Who knew?
The more specialized ones--chick gamers, etc.--turned out to be much less interesting. (There was nothing wrong with the topics, they were uninteresting because they had moderators who weren't quite sure how to lead a panel and who, in consequence, sat in front of the room and told endless and pointless personal anecdotes tangentially related to the subject matter.)
The two panels that Rapunzel was most excited about, the ones on dollfies, were both very good. I hadn't expected to be particularly interested in those, but the presenters really knew their material and there were a lot of different sizes and brands of dolls there to look at. Really, much cooler than I'd thought.
I spent, I am proud to say, very little money in the dealer's room. Mindful of the fact that I was experimenting with traveling "carry-on," I bought a couple of buttons, that's all.
Anyhow. I hope Rapunzel had fun. I think she did--she talked about going to the con again next year, so I think her first convention experience was fun for her.
In fact, it all went very well until I got home. Owing to a complicated variety of events, I was parked rather far from my usual outlying parking lot. I didn't anticipate this would be a problem--I've driven to and from that airport 30 times since it opened--so, after I'd scraped six inches of melted snow and ice off of my car, I hopped in, retraced my inbound route, found my road, and started happily, if tiredly, homeward.
Only.
It wasn't my road. I don't know what road it was.
I'm sure that at one point I drove under an overpass that was the road I needed, but there was no ramp, so I couldn't actually get to it.
Not a problem, I thought. After all, all roads lead to Rome, or something like that. It's Denver. All I needed was a reasonably major east-west road and I could get home.
I drove and I drove and I drove. No such roads appeared. In fact, since it was now long after sunset, the complete absence of any kind of city lights made it appear as though I was halfway to Wyoming. Eventually I came to an intersection large enough to warrant a stoplight. The crossroad was 140th street and I live at about -15, so I'd gone about 155 blocks too far north. But! It went west, so I took it.
And I drove and I drove and I drove. Having granted my wish for an east-west road, I guess the gods of asphalt decided to take the rest of the night off, so none of them heard my subsequent plea for a north-south artery.
I drove west for about six or seven years. Then, knowing I was too far north anyhow, I found a road that sort of promised to go north-south and took it a mile or so south--where it abruptly turned into a dead-end, forcing me to turn back east and eventually--wait for it--dumping me back out on 140th street.
I drove back on 140th for a while but it was feeling no more generous with north-south roads than it had been earlier. I found a Colorado highway and, under the assumption that it, at least, would not turn into a dead end, I took it, even though it seemed to be headed more east than south.
I drove on it for a while, pondering the fact that if you're in an unfamiliar part of a large city and you're accustomed to navigating by the mountains--invisible at night--you can't really be sure of your compass heading. (Also? Roads and highways in Denver are frequently labeled "north" or "west" but that doesn't mean the roads actually go "north" or "west." Sometimes a road labeled "west" will head dead-south or straight north for several miles.) Eventually I ran into--brace yourself--144th street. After 15 minutes of driving, I was four blocks farther from home and I no longer had the faintest clue where I was, east-west-north-south, in relation to any part of Denver I've ever seen before.
My options at this point were, (A) pull over and have a meltdown, (B) find a hotel and go to bed (not unrelated to (A)), or (C) call the R.C.
There's a reason she's the Resident Consultant. I found an intersection large enough to be labeled (in a suburb I've never even heard of before), pulled into a parking lot, called the R.C., and demanded that she Mapquest me and find out what freaking reality I was in.
Because she's good at that kind of thing, she talked me off the ledge, put up with my refusal to get back on the same highway that had been dumping me out on 140th street all night, and navigated me back to "my" part of town.
I am not suffering from early dementia! I think that needs to be stated, very clearly. I have a very bad sense of direction, I always have had, and I rely very heavily on being able to see the Front Range when I'm traveling around Denver.
You probably think that's all pretty weird. Wait until you hear the story of my second trip.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:33 PM | Comments (4)I've been having a little trouble getting excited about my upcoming trips. Travel--especially winter travel--can be such a hassle any more. But now that my first trip is tomorrow and now that the R.C. has fulfilled her primary function in life (making my life run more smoothly), I'm very excited!
I ran mad this morning and frittered away $3.50 on a celebratory latte on the way to work.
Considering that they don't live that far away (the next state), I don't really see the L-i-K-S, Rapunzel, and Pippi that often. While it might have been fun to plan a longer trip--really spend some time with them--I'm always mindful of Ben Franklin's warning that "Fish and visitors stink after three days" and I planned a three-day trip.
(Also? Even without Franklin's words of warning, I've always thought that if I'm able to leave a place with the people I leave behind wishing, even just a little, that I could have stayed longer, I probably left just in time.)
I think I've successfully squelched Bernie on the idea that I should do some work "in your free time" on the trip. As I pointed out to him, a three-day trip doesn't come loaded with "free time."
Anyhow. I'm off work on Tuesday next week, after I get back, and I'm planning on doing some free-lance work then. Wednesday I'm back in the office and then Thursday afternoon, I'm off to California.
In the meantime, I've been working with focus and dedication all week, but now, at 1:30 in the afternoon, I'm abruptly over it and ready to start vacationing! (Yes, even with the knowledge that it's going to snow.)
I mean, I don't really know or care from Mardi Gras, but I have got to jolly myself back into a better mood.
Yesterday's chores: bank (cash for my trip) and pharmacy (prescription refill). Today, I will potentially go to both the grocery store (almost out of coffee), and apartment management office (to refill my laundry card) on my way home. (Possibly I was a little too laid back and relaxed over the weekend--there seem to be a lot of things I didn't get done.)
Had a conference call with Bernie and Freethinker, the potential new client, Monday afternoon. In a complete reversal of what I expected to see, the Freethinker's website looked great (visually--layout--I didn't read anything during the meeting) and the ads I saw in his Webstrainer campaign looked, really, very good. Generally these things, especially good ads, are where DIY advertisers fail. It was nice to see a campaign where someone did it right.
Everything else was appalling, so, no surprises there. I mean, the guy did seem to have a vague idea of the potential of it all, but without defined goals (Bernie asked three times during the call and got three conflicting answers) and without some structure he isn't going to be able to tap into the potential.
I won't go on and on. I'll just say that if you open your account page and it's covered with red warning messages? Telling everyone how well you're doing it is--less convincing.
The Freethinker was pretty vague throughout the entire call, so I'm not sure if Bernie strong-armed him into agreeing to have someone evaluate his campaign or if it was his idea, but that's not my problem. I don't mind earning two or three hundred bucks for reviewing what he's got and making some suggestions. That's all I'm committed to right now.
Because I'm a moron, I just now realized that my 8:30am flight on Friday means I should be on the road and headed toward the airport by 6:30, at the latest. Since it's my vacation, there's snow forecast, and I'm not at my best before dawn under any circumstances, I'm almost thinking I should book a shuttle or something--get someone else to drive, somehow.
On the other hand, shuttle companies are insane any more. They refuse to pick you up any later than 4 hours before your flight. The odds of me getting out of bed, pulling myself together, and being downstairs, luggage in hand, at 4:00am are surprisingly small. Maybe I'll be wasteful and spend $50 on a cab. (Maybe I'll stop being such a baby and just drive myself--the stupid airport is only 30 minutes away.)
Today's excitement includes the stupid 'Nut Newsletter. We're on draft #6 right now. I only read one sentence (I'm getting very good at coding without reading) but it was ugly enough that I was unable to resist sending TeamChaos an email asking (after the fifth draft) if they were seriously going to leave it in the newsletter. NewBoss Anais emailed back and offered to let me rewrite it, but I refuse to take the first step down that slippery slope. I'm just going to decide to be Over it. Over it, over it, over it.
You'd be proud of me. They've been requesting additional bolding dropped in here and there, huge chunks of text in italics, more white space so titles can 'float' unconnected with the accompanying stories, and other random weirdness and I haven't said a single mean thing.
Over it, over it, over it.
Wow.
I've never really suffered from hormone-induced psychosis but I sort of wish I had. At least I'd have something to blame that last post on.
I blame my weekend. I spent a lot of the time thinking thoughts either creative or intelligent or both. I think there was a bit of cognitive dissonance--even culture shock--around finding myself trapped in a situation where habit, training, and good manners were trying to force me to pretend to be enjoying the sensation of my brain cells withering and dying before their time.
I had to go apologize to Tyro, who was enthusiastically discussing her favorites among such shows when I went into the lunch room. She should be able to eat lunch without having my prejudices shoved down her throat and certainly she was entitled to be allowed to express her opinions without me dissing her.
I really did have a nice weekend. A bit of laundry and housekeeping. A little knitting and a little boat-building* and a little reading and some time spent playing on the DS--very laid-back. Restful.
I worked for three or four hours Saturday morning but not much more than 30 minutes Sunday morning--had a bit of a headache.
The R.C. and I went to a shopping mall Saturday afternoon. I can't remember the last time I did that. I didn't really buy much--just the moisturizer I went for, but I very nearly bought a lot of other things, which means I was very well entertained. I got to get out, wander around for a few hours (inside, out of the cold, even biting wind), play "fashion cop," and window shop some interesting stores. Both an inexpensive and amusing afternoon.
Saturday evening, I read a book and spent some time viewing, reviewing, marking, and contemplating a catalog.
I have no idea how I got on the mailing list, but I got the most fabulous course catalog in the mail last week. The Great Courses. Although there are a least a dozen courses in the catalog (and more on-line) that life won't be worth living without, I'm going to start with one or two--apparently there's a sale on right now and if I order before March 4, I can get a couple of classes for $80 or less.
Sunday, while I was amusing part of my brain with the stuff already mentioned, most of my thoughts were contrasting and comparing the sale courses in the print catalog.
This is how it went:
The first title that caught my eye was an in-depth course on world mythology. I have something of a passion for mythology, but I've done a lot of reading already, on my own, on that topic. (Hour-long pause while I review what I know, think I remember, and/or my opinions about what I read.) From translated texts to high school classes and Joseph Campbell through "mythology in the movies--I've read a lot on this topic. Still. A formal course is always interesting and takes you unexpected places.
But! Physics--even metaphysics! Granted that I know almost nothing about mathematics and would drool on you if you tried to talk to me in calculus-speak, I understand the parts of the concepts that can be put into words and there's an endless fascination to them. (Hour-long pause while I mentally review Hawkings' popular works, think about Godel, Escher, and Bach, that briefly popular and probably little-read tome of brain-damaging exercises, remember some online references I used to look at, and some private musings I had about How It All Works.) It's possible that my aging brain is no longer up to the kind of concentrated, linear thought that physics requires, even on a casual basis.
Reading! Writing! Words are not yet too difficult for me. My remaining stock of 25+books on reading and writing are just a fraction of the sizable library I once possessed. (Hour-long pause while I revisit books about how to write, books about how to read, books about grammar, books about plot construction, essays on the impetus for writing and/or essays on how to read for the maximum return.) There are a number of reading and writing courses in the catalog, the most tempting of which are around reading.
Economics. I'm not informed. (Hour-long pause while I debate whether I took a single micro- or macro-economics course in college. Can't remember, but nothing that did much more than introduce me to terminology until I got to Krugman's books, of which I read two or three.) I haven't studied this. Why not? Anyhow, all I've read so far consists of "not much" and maybe I'm not particularly interested, but how can I resist a course on critical decision making?
Philosophy! History! Weeps at the wealth of things she will never know.
I don't know where to start. A reading class, for sure. But what else? Philosophy or history? Mythology? A sweeping exploration of Western Civ? A more focused study of Egypt? I can't decide!
Some are only available on DVD, but I have the laptop so that's not a problem. Some can also be had on CD, so I'd need to buy a little player but I understand those aren't expensive these days. I'm more interested in topic--I'll take whatever media they suggest.
Okay, everyone. Vote!
Anyhow. I spent a lot of Sunday mentally reviewing Things I Have Learned, or Things I'm Starting To Learn and I wasn't in the right place, mentally, for a lunchroom conversation about television shows that expose people's weaknesses for entertainment. I had an entirely ugly flashback to books I've read that describe how, a couple of hundred years ago, people paid money to be able to tour asylums and laugh at the crazy people from a safe distance. The only difference between that and so-called "reality" television is that today we can laugh at the crazy people without leaving our living rooms or smelling anything too real.
Oh, dear.
Not over the crabby yet, I guess.
____________________
* Following up last weeks' "So, You Want To Build A Three-masted Schooner?" post, in the remote event than anyone cares, I got two pieces together! In fact, with the help of my old friends, Elmer and the Bulldog Clip, I got two pieces together solidly enough to let me attach another four pieces! Right now, it's all sitting on my table, clamped and drying. Right, wrong, or disastrous, I have a foundation upon which I can build a boat!
I may and/or may not have time to get back to it one evening this week before I leave town. If not, It will be there on March 7 (the next scheduled Lazy Sunday At Home on my calendar).
Posted by AnneZook at 12:25 PM | Comments (4)Suppose you didn't, but the stupid fire alarm went off every four or five days anyhow? Getting bored with that game.
Minor wig-out this morning. Could be because I forgot to eat breakfast, could be (as I am beginning to suspect) that when they lowered the prescription on my thyroid meds last fall, they lowered it too far.
Common sense tells me to go in and get myself re-checked, but since I'm going to be more-or-less continuously out of town for the next two weeks (starting this Friday), I'm going to muddle through.
This is me. Suddenly crabby.
I honestly can't figure out what this stupid insurance plan does cover. Not tests relating to the thyroid which, although a "pre-existing condition" was covered by my last plan and should have been grandfathered for this one. Not "wellness" or "diagnostic" visits or testing--I have to pay for the visit to the doctor's office and anything they order just to make sure my innards are all still functioning properly. I think there's some kind of prescription drug coverage, but my meds are actually cheaper if I pay for them myself-- I get 90-day refills, which gives me three months for the same cost I'd have to pay each month if I used the prescription benefit.
I guess if they don't pay for conditions I have, maybe they'd pay for anything I developed while they had me covered, even though they won't pay for the tests to find out that I have it.
I find myself peculiarly unwilling to test that theory.
Today, impromptu pizza lunch for the half-dozen employees in the building. It was interrupted halfway through by the afore-complained-about fire alarm, which saved my coworkers hearing the rest of my rant about the stupidity of so-called "reality" television. Apparently, as I was unwillingly forced to learn, there are now shows exploiting a variety of mental disorders as well as shows that purport to do a public service by entrapping pedophiles or offer second-hand thrills by following various types of law-enforcement agents around the country. Of the six people in the room, four confessed themselves "addicted" to at least a handful of such shows.
I hate having to sit and make polite while people flaunt their shallowness and stupidity. (Pedophiles, while criminal under our current laws and absolutely needing to be separated from their potential victims are not "so stupid, to get caught." Psycho-sexual disorders are mental illnesses.)
(Also? It's not at all relevant, appropriate, or intelligent to criticize a female law enforcement agent's personal appearance as she's tracking a murderer cross-county. There is television, and then there is reality. The blurring of the line between the two frightens me.)
At moments like this, it's comforting for me to realize that I'll likely be dead long before this country actually implodes from sheet stupidity.
Crabby, crabby, crabby.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:14 PM | Comments (2)This morning, as I struggled to untangle myself from my bed, I realized I was arising from a dream where I'd been sitting at a computer, doing some Webstrainer research.
This must cease! I refuse to work in my sleep!
Also, I demand to know why my bed is never as welcoming at night as it is when the alarm goes off in the morning. Last night I accidentally sat up until midnight (reading) and it still took me over an hour to convince my brain and body to knock off for the day.
The day started with a latte from the Sekrit Starbucks I now know is a mere four blocks from my office. Hooray for milk-drenched espresso!
Then a 75-minute conference call where, much against my will, I found myself--wait for it--explaining a Webstrainer search results page to an audience of otherwise reasonably intelligent people. It seems that I've been vastly overestimating everyone's understanding of how and why ads show up when you search for things.
Talked to Bernie today and heard myself agreeing to take on two more accounts. Before you shout at me, one of them was the one we had the conference call on a week or two ago, so I'd already half-promised that one.
The other will be--hmmm. How can I put this that won't 'out' the client's name or attract sp*mbots but that will nevertheless amuse me?
Well (she said delicately), I'm not religious (although I'm not inclined to care if others are), so I don't precisely pay attention to the latest developments in the field. Imagine my surprise when Bernie explained that an otherwise extremely successful business person of his acquaintance is apparently starting--well, I don't know. So far it's some books and a website or two, but I suspect he has delusions of secthood.
Apparently there's a (and now I have to be extremely delicate) sort of a crossroads where concepts introduced in a certain late-60s SF television show (spawning three sequels and half a dozen movies and earning its place in the mythology of the planet) meet the major spiritual denomination of most of this country. (Hah! I defy any sp*mbots to untangle that!) At that crossroads, exists the place where our potential client, hereinafter referred to as the Freethinker, visualizes a new set of beliefs.
Hoping that's enough to disguise the subject from random searches, I have to admit that there's a certain amusement value in the idea of running a Webstrainer campaign for the guy. I don't like strangeness, but I know Bernie's pretty New Age and so any client of his is likely to be Very Left. I am not, in short, in danger of finding myself selling the Inquisitional beliefs of any denomination, organization, or movement.
Bernie was a bit hesitant to ask me to take this one on. Seems he had to ask three developers to do the coding before he found one willing to be associated with the project. Subject to my reviewing the material and making a better-informed decision, I assured him that, Inquisitions, purges, and demon-hunts ruled out, I have no particular prejudices. Peace, love, and understanding--I can deal with those, regardless of the wrapper.
While I had him on the phone, I took the opportunity to point out that my original project (which I may and/or may not have named but have now decided to rechristen BunnyHouse) is gorgeous, is lovely, is running like a sweet dream but is producing nothing in the way of actual sales inquiries.
Proving that I'm sometimes unjust to him and that he is, actually, listening when I talk, he responded that it's the client's fault for not spending the $$ the project needs, we sent at least one highly qualified lead and the sales person never bothered to follow-up on it, and that it's not my fault the market is still in the middle of a huge meltdown.
I'm feeling very much in charity with Bernie at the moment. I think I'll send him a bill this evening.
Those of you who know me reasonably well (which includes everyone who reads this blog), know that I'm prone to occasional, pointless wigouts. I'm thinking of having one today. Try not to take it too seriously--in a previous life, I may have been a drama queen.
A whole slew of Gidget's campaigns need work--the idiot client revamped their website, which we knew about, but they swore that no URLS would change, which turned out to be a big, fat lie since all the URLs changed. For the last few days, I've been grabbing an hour here and there wherever I can find one, to get their ads redirected before Webstrainer notices that we're bouncing ad traffic around. I'm going to take an actual "lunch" break today, drive home, and try to get the last few reloaded.
The campaign I've been working on for Bernie is humming along like a well-oiled machine. Stats look good, search queries are relevant, ads are all performing well. (One of the best-performing has a typo, but I'm afraid to fix it because I don't want to rock the boat.) The campaign just isn't producing any actual leads for Bernie's client. My wits, they are at an end for what the problem is. I know zilch--maybe double-zilch about real estate. Webstrainer likes the ads and shows them. When people see the ads, they click on them. I've decided that my responsibility ends there.
I sat in on a call a week or so ago--I think I told you this--with another potential client for Bernie. He sent me an email yesterday saying he has yet another potential client who wants online advertising--maybe two more.
His idea, of course, is that I should quit my full-time work and focus on maximizing my free-lance work, but since his idea is also that he can grow his company to a substantial size by signing up clients and free-lancing out whatever actual work needs to be done, he would feel that way, wouldn't he?
It's not that I've gone off the idea of The Gidget Co, because I most emphatically have not, but the whole Bernie deal is a separate issue and I have to wonder just how much I want to put my future in his hands, you know?
I've barely done any work on the 'Nut campaigns this week--not for lack of interest but because I need to wait a few days to evaluate ads and the rest of the campaigns are performing well enough to sort of worry me. (I'm not well-equipped to deal with success.)
I have to get on a plane next week and then again the week after that. Flying is such a hassle any more. I'm very excited about both trips, but the actual travel part is going to be a drag.
I'm stressing. For no particular reason, but I am. Feeling pressured.
That's probably why I started writing again. I originally started when I was massively stressed--I used it as an escape from work problems and pressure I was getting from the people in my life. It worries me--just a little--that I'm back to that level of stress for the first time in 10 years, when I'm working at what is arguably the lowest-stress job I have ever had.
I tell myself that maybe I just don't have the stress tolerance levels I had twenty years ago, but that's hardly a cheerful thought.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:10 AM | Comments (2)It's ten degrees below cold outside. Normally I don't complain that much about cold temps, not unless they dip into negative numbers, but after last fall's sub-zero stretch, we had a long interlude of mild, sunny weather. I think spring fever set in early for me this year--I wasn't ready for winter to come back.
Not that I'm really complaining. It could be worse--I could be on the East Coast shoveling out from under two or three feet of white stuff and waiting on the next foot to arrive.
Our last round didn't dump more than six inches on us. (Six inches is sort of borderline--less than that and we don't bother to notice it. More and we start telling war stories.)
But, and this is where the ouch comes in, it's been warm and then it snowed and got very cold very quickly and in a careless moment I stepped out of a door and over what I thought was a puddle of melted snow but that turned out to be a six-foot long sheet of glassy ice.
sniffle I banged my knee. sniffle
Okay, not so much "banged" since it was more of a slo-mo sinking toward the pavement than an outright slip-and-crash, but it smarted for several minutes. And I got my pants dirty.
Yes, you heard that right. The biggest trauma in my life at the moment is that I had to do a load of laundry last night.
Also, I am fat. Not only did I not get that last two pounds lost, but I put two pounds back on and now I have to take all of them off. (I might have more of a head of steam up about it if I wasn't casting an eye back over the last two or three weeks and seeing a lot of pizza, Mexican food, and pasta in my days. I know I can't eat like that every day. Why I do it sometimes, I don't know.)
I am pondering having a new Theory Of Dieting. I might write a book, rip off a million pudgy but hopeful people, and retire laughing. I have a title. It's called, Eat Something. It's all about eating real food (no sugar "substitutes" or imitation this or that) but learning to exercise portion control (something I still struggle with myself, but mostly only when I eat prepared food or frozen items that are packaged as "single serving" but have enough calories to make two full meals).
I had a fairly comprehensive outline worked out, but now it's boring me and I don't care any more.
No apologies for the obscure Frasier reference. I love that show.
I forgot to tell you that, the Argonut Café having an Actual Name that's tangentially related to, well, Argonauting, I find boat references sort of funny.
So, when wandering through a craft store a week ago, I spotted an incredibly inexpensive balsa-or-wood (the material is somewhere between those two) model of a sailing ship that you were allowed to assemble and finish yourself, I forked over the six bucks (yes, that's what it cost) and took my new toy home with me.
This weekend, I finally had a couple of hours to sit down, unwrap it, lay the pieces out, and--I know you're expecting my next words to be "assemble it" or even "start assembling it, but they aren't going to be--stare at it in bewilderment.
All of the pieces are there, no problem. There's a picture--unvarnished and unpainted for better reference--of the finished product. I just--can't tell which piece is which or what goes where.
Instructions: "Punch the pieces out from the balsa/wood board they're cut into. Attach to same number (1 to 1, 2 to 2, 3 to 3, etc.) using the picture and diagrams below as reference."
That's all very nice. Simple and clear, right? When I disassemble the pieces, there are handy slots for attaching, so that all seems good. But.
The pieces don't have numbers, not on them. The numbers are on the diagram and you're supposed to figure out (guess?) which piece they apply to. Many of the pieces are very similar in shape with only slight but (I suspect) rather important differences in length or width. It's impossible to tell from the diagram or picture if these two identical pieces are A1 and the two slightly larger pieces are B1, or vice-versa. the diagram isn't that precise.
Thirty minutes into the project, I thought to stop and Ponder Boatness. This led me to the revelation that the assorted pieces needed to be assembled on the framework of the keel (something mentioned nowhere in the instructions but which, in hindsight, I should have assumed from the beginning). You can't just hook "1" to "1" (assuming you figured out which two pieces each had a slot the designer thought of as "1") because you can't just push two pieces of wood together and shout stay! It's not a puppy.
So, I found the keel, found the pieces with slots "1" and "1" (or reasonable facsimiles thereof), placed each (facsimile) "1" on one side of the keel, let them go, and watched them drop to the floor. Not a puppy. Didn't stay.
There are no tabs--none of that Tab A and Slot B stuff. Yes, slots everywhere, but no tabs to push into them. The instructions mention gluing as an option if you want a permanent piece, but not just for assembly.
Another thirty minutes, and now I'm thinking that probably, when they told us to punch the pieces out from the board they were stamp-cut into? They didn't actually intend for us to separate mirror images from each other, even though those were stamp/cut in the same way other pieces were. Because, you see, if you didn't separate the mirror image pieces, then "1" and "1" are already hooked together! Voila!!
Granted, that would have been a better thought before I detached everything, but that was what the instructions said to do and, okay, the pieces wouldn't actually be attached to the keel, so you couldn't actually make a boat but I felt encouraged by this line of thought, even without having solved the problem of which pair of mirror-images had the designer's imaginary "1" on them and which had the "2", etc.)
It took only a few minutes to pick a handful of little strips of balsa-or-wood out of the trash with the idea that these discards might have been intended to do double-duty as pegs to keep "1" and "1" in contact while YES! if you pegged the mirror-image pieces together, then separated them a fraction of an inch, the middle part of the peg would just about fit into a heretofore unexplained slot in the keel and holding the two pieces against it!
That was the theory. It worked, too, except that the (probably makeshift) pegs are a trifle too wide for the slot and tend to break rather than slide in and except that the mirror-image pieces are a little too heavy to be held into place by 1/4" of balsa-or-wood sitting loosely in a 1/2" slot.
It looked right when I was holding the first piece, but when I let it go, it was not a puppy again.
Still. I'm not discouraged. I might have spent 90 minutes on the project and not actually have gotten two pieces attached, but I will try again. I don't think I have ever made a model before, of any kind. It is verrrry interesting.
I mean, you wonder what line of work is actually available to a sociopath in today's modern society, don't you? And then you try to assemble something and you look at the wholly inadequate and frequently outright dishonest instructions, and you know.
So, NewBoss Anais and I showed up at the office at the same time last Friday, only to find out that the fire alarm was going off again. Instead of herding together in the front of the building with the other lost souls, we took off for Starbucks* and a quick latte run. They finally let us in the building around 8:30.
Note to R.C. - You see? Beyond the pleasure of an unanticipated latte, there was no particular value in me having shown up "on time" on Friday.
Then there was one of those obligatory, "it's so-and-so's birthday this week so everyone is going out to lunch on Friday" gatherings that ate up another 90 minutes of my day.
And there was another obligatory get-together in the conference room at 4:00, the reason for which I never quite grasped but inferred was related to something that happened about a month ago. We all had a glass of champagne, including me!
Not one of my more productive days, Friday, but not at all my fault.
The weekend was fun. Not wildly eventful, but fun. A trip to the Container Store where I finally broke down and bought one of the bookcases I've been coveting for the last two years. I also picked up some planet-killing stackable plastic drawers to organize some stuff in the closet. Tab: $220.00. Winces.
The drawers were just the kind of thing. Everything I needed to have fit in them did fit and it freed up a lot of space in the bottom half of the closet since I was able to remove a fairly massive but un-functional chest. (Unimportant except to me, since what I was working toward was enough vertical space for things like my pants to be able to hang without creasing.)
I disassembled and discarded** the last two black plastic bookcases in my bedroom. As I had hoped, the single wood bookcase held all of those books and has room for more. It's very exciting--I swear the room looks twice as big. Just replacing black with white lightened the entire room up--the black color had a lot of "weight" to it. And it's so tidy! The plastic bookcases wasted a lot of space both above the books on each shelf and in front of them. It's much more compact now.
And then it started to snow.
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* This was a good thing. I didn't know that Starbucks was there - it's almost within walking distance!
** Not in the trash. First floor lobby with a "free to a good home" label on them. As usual, someone wanted them and they were gone in an hour.
I like arriving in the office in the morning, opening my email, and finding some nitwit shouting at me because I haven't "fixed" something I told him was out of my control.
Yeah. I like that.
Next to that, I like opening the next email on the page and finding that someone else who doesn't understand the problem has promised that I'll "fix" it today.
Yeah, I really like that.
That was how last Friday started. Fortunately it got better after that, but I seem to be having a little trouble getting over it.
Today started off with me pouring soup on the kitchen floor when I tried to pack my lunch. I had to stop and mop up, which made me 20 minutes late to work.
I'd feel guiltier about that if it wasn't for the fact that I wasn't the last one in, not by a long ways. This place is pretty casual about that sort of thing. Whoever is covering the reception phones is supposed to be in by 8 or before but the rest of us straggle in as the mood takes us. Since I don't consider punctuality a particularly interesting or worthwhile 'virtue' I like to work places where there's a lot of -ish to that 8 am start time. I'm reasonably capable of arriving at the office around 8-ish.
This irritates the heck out of the R.C. She feels that if the official start time to a work day is 8:00, then you should be at your desk, computer booted up and bright smile pasted on your face by at least 7:55. Me, I say that if you look back two weeks ago on Tuesday and you can't remember who came in "on time" and who was either five minutes late or five minutes early? Then it's not really important, is it?
Today we also had a little fire drill here at the office. Not exactly a drill, since the alarm sounding was neither planned nor expected by any of us, but nevertheless it went off and we trooped cheerfully outside to soak in some sunshine. Ten or fifteen minutes later we were still enjoying the sunshine because the firemen hadn't arrived.
Someone called the building management company (I don't know why they didn't call the firemen, so don't ask) who apparently contacted the fire department to tell them there might and/or might not be an actual fire and that we'd all appreciate it if they could fit us into their apparently busy schedules.
Obviously, since I have the time to blog about soup on the floor, there was no fire. I don't know what triggered the alarm. They didn't show up because no one invited them to the party.Turns out that some essential connection between our alarm system and the fire house wasn't working and the firemen didn't know we'd been alarmed.
To do them credit, once they got here, they cleared the building for us all to get back to work in about five minutes, but still. Most of them weren't even very cute, which has to be against some kind of fireman regulation, don't you think?
Bernie called yesterday and I promised to take a look at a potential campaign for a potential new client. He gave me a chance to bail out--to say I didn't have time. I didn't take it. Temporary insanity or something, I don't know.
Anyhow. With luck, he won't close the deal--this one is in a completely different industry than the last one and these stand-alone campaigns are a lot harder to make successful than my other ones are.
The words, "please" and "thank you" are rarely out of place. Even, or maybe especially, in online communications.
Treat others with a little respect and they will usually return the favor.
That is all.
Killer insomnia last night. The last time I checked the clock, it was 2:45.
Couldn't have been physical - I cleaned out yesterday, sorting papers and books, organizing and throwing out (two giant leaf bags!), doing some cleaning and three loads of laundry, all of which took several hours.
Hmmm., I'll admit that while I felt pleasantly tired yesterday evening, I didn't feel precisely worn out. Maybe I was getting less physical exercise than I thought? Still. My bed felt comfy and my pillow felt snuggly. I just couldn't sleep. My brain & body just didn't feel sleepy.*
Possibly it was my diet - I experimented with new recipes yesterday and ate a weird assortment of things all day. While they were all quite delicious, it's more than possible that I overdid it--either on sheer quantity or on variety of ingredients.
Or, it could have been the fact that I slept in on Sunday morning--until 9:15! I can't remember the last time I slept in that late….
To put it all into perspective, of course, I should mention that I contacted DiamondGirl about doing some freelance stuff for me--some of the Gidget work that I don't like and don't want to mess with--and she told me that she's been fighting H1N1 since mid-December. Shudder. She's been sick for a month already and in spite of sounding like she should be in a hospital bed when we talked today, she swore that she's light-years better than she was a couple of weeks ago.
So, what else?
Well, the weekend was fun--I had a shopping spree on Saturday, the likes of which I haven't had in quite a long time. I got a new clock-radio, two $4 t-shirts, a new humidifier, new mascara, and some chocolate. (Okay, put like that, it doesn't sound quite so extravagant, but I swear it felt like an indulgence.) I did the aforementioned tidying, sorting, and cleaning on Sunday, a task that always leaves me feeling satisfied and a bit less claustrophobic in what is, after all, a reasonably spacious apartment for two people
Part of what I sorted out for donation is, yes, more books. Had to be done--they're the only thing I have left in significant bulk.
What I should have cleaned out but didn't were all of the sketching and drawing supplies. With me, every new hobby used to be a pretext for shopping and I have an assortment of pens, pencils, paper, and tools that would do credit to a professional artist. If I'm not going to use them, I really should donate them, but that's a step I haven't brought myself to take yet.
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* I feel sleepy enough now to make up for it. I'd ask NewBoss Anais for permission to go home and take a nap but I have this terrifying suspicion that napping this afternoon would lead to another sleepless night.
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P.S. That was at 11:00 this morning. Now it's 1:30. I just ate lunch and decided that the abundance of jalapeno peppers might have been the reason for the insomnia. That was hot.
I don’t even remember how long it’s been since I blogged. (It's not because my newest game in the Series That Ate 2009 has been sucking down my brain. I swear!)
I’m guessing it was before my stupidworkcomputer conked out on me. It was never the same after the Great Virus Infestation of ’09* and I finally went to our pseudo-IT guy this week and demanded that something be done to fix it and he told me to pick a computer from the ones sitting around unused and swap out the boxes for myself.
Sometimes I fantasize about being the R.C.--she's never worked at a place that didn't have a full IT staff and no one has ever told her to "do it yourself" when she's had a computer problem.
It's possible that the pseudo-IT guy was irritated with me because he had to deal with the Great Virus Infestation, but if it weren't for viruses and whatnot, many IT people would lack employment.* *
Anyhow. I swapped out my box for the one Gidget used to use and I've been dancing between the two of them all week because I didn't have email access on the swapped box until today. Not that I actually mind not having constant access to my email. I only remember to look at it every couple of hours even when it's sitting open on my desktop.
My point is that now I'm stuck with Wnidwos 2007, a fate I've successfully avoided for the last two years. Sigh. I'm waving good-bye to the thoroughly tested and rock-stable Windows XP and staring with loathing at the idiocy of poorly constructed "ribbons" replacing my familiar, compact, and easy-to-use menu bars. * * *
This week it was numbers, numbers, numbers all week long. Not that it isn't always, but more than that. End of month numbers. End of year numbers. 2008 vs 2009 comparative statistics. My head is spinning from all the numbers--most of them don't make sense to me any more. Long, statistical story short - written leads are up a bit from last year, calls are down a bit from last year, making it all a wash--and the 'Nuts both in and outside the Home Café are whining about how revenue has nosedived.
I'm bewildered--we lost half a dozen or more (low-performance) locations but leads are up at our most productive locations. Unfortunately, I'm probably the only person here who makes a concerted and organized attempt to track ROI, so no one knows where the money went. In the end, I've decided to decide that it must all have something to do with the part of our business model that has nothing to do with me. An SEP is the best kind of P.
NewBoss Anais visited my quiet little corner of the Café earlier today. She wanted to talk about a bonus program. They'd like to bonus me on results that improve over last year.
I wasn't sure what to say.
I do think that before they start talking bonus money, they might reinstate the 15% pay cut they gave me last year, don't you? I mean, at this moment my salary is easily 25-40% below the market value for what I do (not including the industry and specific company knowledge I have) so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to get my paycheck back to where it was when they hired me.* * * * I'm not even expecting them to adjust for inflation.
In the end, I told her that no matter what metric they selected, I would be able to juggle the numbers to "prove" that I'd earned a bonus and that I preferred not to be put in that position.* * * * * Then I reminded her that, in my job, at least 50% of what I do is significantly affected by forces outside my control, making "success" rather hard to attain.
Also, I hate that kind of thing. The perception that I could do my job better if I only bothered to, that irritates me.
I suspect I have a weird attitude toward money.
Also, I'm pissy about CEOJason's little speech during our last all-company meeting. He congratulated everyone on getting all the necessary work done in 2009, even though he'd cut the staff by 50%. He said these results proved that the Café had been over-staffed. No one spoke up (although I badly wanted to) to point out that his simultaneous decision to eliminate twenty time-sapping, money-sucking special projects had been a significant factor in the ability of the remaining employees to get through the necessary work.
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* Did I blog that? It happened right before Christmas. Sadly this catastrophic event was triggered by my own stupidity in goofing off at the office—surfing around and reading books online on a site that turned out to be infected.
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* * But I maintain that it's not my fault that they weren't running a decent virus program on the stupid network. I ran a full system scan with their software and it swore my computer wasn't infected--the dialogue box clearly said so, as nearly as I could tell in the middle of a deluge of browser windows popping open to share bad pr0n images.
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* * * I don't care if you can minimize the stupid ribbon. Minimized, it doesn't have any functionality at all. Maximized, it eats 10%-15% of your screen space with distracting and useless graphics. I do not approve of software companies joining the conspiracy against text.
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* * * * It was okay to underpay me when they hired me because I had no clue what I was doing. It was not okay not to deliver on the pay raise I should have received after I trained myself and produced a 40% increase in leads that first year, it was not particularly okay for them to force through a 15% pay cut last year, and it's certainly not okay for them to act, today, as though my current base salary is an acceptable rate of pay for what I bring to the table.
This 'do more with less' trend, of course, is a thing that has pissed me off since it was invented by Reagan and his cadre of criminal cronies. It is not okay. I am not a labor unit and I decline to be downsized, outsourced, or reimagined as a less-valuable asset. There is a limit, beyond which I will refuse to continue doing the work of two or three people for the salary of 2/3 of a person. It's becoming a matter of principle and, for someone who values a quiet life as much as I do, it's becoming surprisingly important to me that I actually speak out against being treated this way--not by the Argonut Café in particular, but on behalf of every worker in this country who has been tricked into accepting this as the natural way of things.
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* * * * * Naturally I would never juggle the numbers that way, but the bottom line is that accepting their proposition would put me in the position, every single day, of putting the welfare of a company that would dump me in a heartbeat ahead of my own welfare.
This goes along with the discussion just above--companies show no loyalty to their staff (the Café laid off an employee of 18 years with no more emtion than they showed toward getting rid of the guy who had been here for four months) and expect increasingly ridiculous levels of loyalty and sacrifice in return.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:47 PM | Comments (3)Happy holidays! I hope everyone out there in the electronic world had a great time over the past few days and that Santa Claus brought you everything your little hearts could desire!*
Me? I cleaned up. A four-day weekend, a new DS game, new books, and other assorted whatsits to play with and/or eat. What's not to love?
I'm not big on official "resolutions" (why wait until the end of the year to make changes if you think they need to be made?) but I've been contemplating the Best Of--or, rather, a Best Discovery Of sort of thing.
The Best Discovery Of 2007 was a show called Clean House. During the First Great 21st Century Sabbatical, it provided much-needed impetus for me to get off my butt and clean out some of the accumulated debris of fifty years of living. (Because I live on the event horizon of a black hole or near the epicenter of a time warp or something, the flotsam and jetsam turned out to be limitless, but it gives me something to do when the weather is bad, right?)
The Best Discovery Of 2008 came last October when I discovered a show called What Not To Wear. Aside from the fun of mocking the show's victims, I found there was much to be learned. Practically nothing that was in my wardrobe in October of 2008 is in my wardrobe today.
The Best Discovery(ies) of 2009 are less life-improving but just as much, or more, fun.
There were three or four versions of Harvest Moon (The Game That Ate 2009) (I received yet another variation for Christmas!), there's a recently discovered show called Glee. and the year-long favorite Corner Gas, a little Canadian sitcom ("Time well-wasted.") that has me enchanted. (I got S6!)
Thanks to a friend of the R.C.'s, we discovered Hungry Girl. We have both tried and enjoyed recipes from the cookbook already (and the R.C. never cooks!) with at least two dozen more marked for trial. Since I have another five--or maybe ten--pounds I want to take off, a "diet" cookbook with recipes this delicious definitely comes in as a Discovery. I mean, cooking! I'm not good at it, but I do love to mess around in the kitchen. What fun to be able to mess around without packing on the pounds!
It's fun to contemplate the new things that have entered my life in the last few months. Probably more fun for me than for you, but that's okay. The internets are currently telling me that my blog site is down anyhow, so you aren't actually having this inflicted on you....
Two hours later - It's back! I'm inflicting!
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* I did intend to log on and wish y'all the best of the season before it was all in the past, but my head got befuddled on Wednesday by a very nasty virus attack on my work computer.
Seriously. What is the point? And what's with the redirects to pr0n sites? (So very Twentieth Century.) Are you seriously telling me there are still people out there who find some kind of satisfaction in that kind of thing?
Anyhow. After that, I got frustrated on Thursday, trying to fix the sound on my home laptop before I got distracted by some freelance work, and so on and so on and so on.
Minor thoughts I'm bored enough to share....
#1 - The R.C. introduced me to a new restaurant last week. Andre's is, from what I'm told, one of those long-time institutions, and one of the R.C.'s favorite-ever dining places. (Her excuse for not having introduced me to in any time in the last twenty years or so was that she thought it had closed.) (Right.) It's a fabulous little prix fixe patisserie tucked away just off of a major thoroughfare. It has atmosphere. I love a non-chain restaurant, don't you?
#2 - Those of us toiling away at the Argonut Café are getting a four-day weekend at New Year's as well. While I love the idea of having such lovely, long weekends, the (teeny-tiny) mature part of me knows that the remaining winter months, with no holidays at all, are going to be long and gray.
#3 - The first season of Glee is due to be released on DVD at the end of this month. The R.C. has it on pre-order, so I'll be able to get caught up before the new season starts (in April, I think). In the meantime, the network is showing two episodes this Wednesday evening and two next Wednesday, so I can get started watching ever before I get started getting caught up.
#4 - I did not practice Frugality around Christmas this year. Considering that I only really exchange gifts with the R.C. (and send small gifts to the L-i-K-S, Rapunzel, and Pippi), there are an astonishing number of packages under our little Christmas tree. While many of them are of the very small "stocking stuffer" variety, another heaping helping are not. So far I have refrained from poking, prodding, or shaking any of the interestingly shaped boxes. I'm very trustworthy that way.
#5- One of the aforementioned parcels, embarrassingly enough, is from NewBoss Anais, someone for whom I not only didn't buy a gift, but didn't send a card.
#6 - Another friend surprised me with a bag of very good coffee. I like knowing someone thought of me and do try to accept gifts in that spirit, but I'm always flustered when gifted from someone with whom I have not previously made gift exchange plans and, yes, I'm aware that this sentence could have been more graceful but I don't care that much.
#7 - The R.C. was insufficiently inventive when it came to providing a wish list for gifts this year. I had to take some chances and I'm a bit concerned about one or two of them.
#8 - Gidget and I don't gift, but I did manage to convince her not to pay me for The Gidget Co work this month. She's short of money at the moment, so that amount really will be useful to her. Anyhow, I finally remembered to bill Bernie for the work I did this fall so I'm flush, and as I told her repeatedly, I haven't had that much time to spend on her accounts the last three weeks and I'd be ashamed to take money at this point.
#9 - When I lunched with Gidget and Vela last week, one of them mentioned the rumor that CEOJason had gotten canned. I can vouch for the fact that he's still showing up here every day, but the rumor (they have a pipeline into the Shadow Board that rules us all) does have me wondering....
#10 - I don't think I mentioned the Argonut Café Holiday get-together, did I? It was the evening of the 11th, at ChaosManager Daenna's home. Each member of the 10-person staff here at the Café was warned that there would be two dozen attendees and asked to bring enough of their dish (it was a pot-luck) to feed twenty. I suspect I'm the only person who thought about it and realized that if ten people each bring food for twenty, you have enough food to feed two hundred people--especially taking into account the American hostess's ever-present fear that there Won't Be Enough* which she inevitably insures against by providing a ham, two pies, home-made cookies, and six kinds of dinner rolls. We ate, they played pool or foosball or air hockey and then, endless hours later, we played a gift game--a variation of the dreidel game--and I wound up with two free movie tickets, big thrill, then everyone was getting tipsy and it was 11:00 p.m., so I went home. The end.
#11 - The last week or so, work has been a peculiar mixture of urgent tasks and "nothing to do." Because of the holidays, people who might ordinarily be searching for our services are now searching for things almost but not quite what we do. It would be a mistake, as I keep telling myself, to interpret any of the stats for the latter half of December as representative. So, basically I'm either doing four things at once, or sneaking over to read H. Rider Haggard novels online. I don't normally (aside from the occasional blog entry) goof off on company time. I'm not sure I really enjoy it, either. I think the days pass much more quickly when I'm working.
#12 - Am I lame if my favorite-ever Christmas movie is A Muppet Christmas Carol?
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* Culturally, Americans seem to have some kind of weird issue around enoughness. Our entire society sometimes seems fixated on getting what's there to be gotten before there's not enough left to go around.
Without getting excessively political, I still want to say that I'm amused that the major oil contracts in Iraq are not being awarded to Chump & Cheney's Corporate Cohorts or, indeed, any US-based oil companies.
Right now, Dick and George are probably sitting there, stewing--thinking that killing a hundred thousand or so Iraqis should have done the trick and wondering what a guy's gotta do these days to get a guaranteed payoff.
So, yesterday's joys included the 'NutNews--which was supposed to go out on Friday but then they're supposed to give me 24 hours for coding and proofreading and I didn't even get the files until 3:00 Friday afternoon. This edition may and/or may not have gone out error-free--I just didn't have time to care.
Yesterday's joys also included an appointment with HairMan originally scheduled for 4:00 but then moved to 11:00 am to accommodate his schedule. Carving 1-1/2 hour out of the middle of my day is stressful for me. While I generally do eat lunch, I couldn't be said to stop working while I chew. (My brain was so out of kilter that I stiffed HairMan on the tip. I left him a message this morning apologizing and promising to make it up to him next time. So embarrassing.)
Since yesterday's joys also included a request from NewBoss Anais to create and activate a campaign to cover the Southernest DIY 'Nut's location (he just closed his doors)--a campaign intended to run for one or two weeks while she waits for 3Dorks to get their highly automated process up and running--well, it was Monday all day long yesterday.
Seriously. How stupid is that? I can barely start getting real traction in a normal 7-14 day period, much less a time when two major holidays are distracting the entire country from getting any work done. I kept wondering if it was really worth eight hours of my time to create a campaign that might generate one phone call in the next two weeks?
And! Then she comes to my desk, at noon today, and tells me that 3Dorks might actually be able to get their act together in a timely fashion (for a change) and that their campaign should be active today or tomorrow. So, yes, the campaign I finally got activated at 10:00 this morning might get shut off at 5:00 this afternoon.
I don't normally mind having a busy day--not even if there are conflicting projects to be done.
What really fried my brain cells and created chaos in what passes for my mind these days was the discovery, as I walked into the office yesterday morning, that I'd donned black shoes, a gray shirt, a black jacket, and a pair of very distinctly blue pants.
Even as late as 5:00 yesterday afternoon I was sitting here thinking that I'd be willing to do the entire day over again if I could get a do over to dress myself properly, remember to tip the guy who worked me into his holiday schedule on a couple of days' notice, etc. Sigh. I suck.
At the moment, I'm ignoring about 30 emails in my (work) in-box. Whatever those people want, they can wait for tomorrow or even next week. I can't deal with it today.
But!
Holidays!
With a four-day weekend coming up, I'm prepared to really relax and enjoy the holidays this year. This is the first time I haven't been unemployed or on a Major Frugality Plan during the holidays in--I'm not sure--maybe four or five years? And a four-day weekend! It was nice of the Argonut Café to give us Christmas Eve off, since they couldn't afford bonuses or even reinstating our original pay levels.
I'm still working my way toward the quasi-completion of two Harvest Moon games, the R.C. got the new Zelda game earlier this month and we're both working on it, I treated myself to a new book last week and I want to get time to read it, etc. I have big plans for the long weekend.
Most of which don't involve spending money--at some point in the next 30-60 days I need to get some major work done on my car, which needs both struts and a new clutch. I'm guessing, two or three thousand for all of it. Wincing. Even reminding myself that I'll probably be able to keep driving this car for another five or six years doesn't really ease the pain.
In the "free, but annoying" category, I have to take the laptop back to the repair shop again. The sound on the CD/DVD player doesn't work any more--it was fine until I took it in for them to fix a busted power switch, but hasn't worked since. (I'm getting my money's worth out of that extended warranty I bought.)
We're supposed to get weather tonight and tomorrow. Not as frigid as the last round--eighteen above instead of below for the low, but an unknown amount of snow. It always worries me when the weather forecasters won't guess at how much snow is coming. Sometimes we wind up with a foot or more.
On a final, happy note, I should point out that after having ignored the PC speakers Gidget left behind when she was laid off--ignored them for the last year--I thought to move them to my desk last Friday.
I have sound! I brought in some CDs. This morning I had the Brandenburg Concertos and this afternoon I'm having Strauss waltzes.
More sensibly, it also means I can finally view some of those training and education videos that Webstrainer shares so freely.
After a leisurely two-hour lunch with Gidget and (former boss) Vela, I went to get back into my car and I got a leg cramp! I had to stand up to make it go away!
Yes, that's what passes for drama in my life these days.
What can I say? I'm done with my holiday shopping, I mailed my cards, I've even finished my wrapping, all but one small gift. I survived the office party (so boring), made the long-overdue appointment to get my gray roots banished, got (mostly) caught up on my free-lance work, and even remembered to invoice Bernie for the last three months' work I've done for him.
I fell in love with a new television show (Glee) and have found online episodes I can watch. I'm working my way toward the "end" (as much as these have an "ending") of both Harvest Moon Island of Happiness and Cute. (Harvest Moon: The Game That Ate 2009!)
I finished fringing four more scarves for my ongoing personal Warm Necks For the Needy program. (I'm getting better at it - there are a couple of these I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen in myself). I have two more scarves underway--both with self-invented (or at least "discovered") patterns and an idea for another one (pattern, I mean, not scarf) (although I suppose it's much the same thing). I bought a circular needle and am dabbling with the notion of hats--I have a lot of yarn to use up from a 2007 buying spree.
This year, I seem to be receiving the gift of peace for the holidays. My life is largely uneventful. I'm so pleased.