A few days ago, I got an e-mail from Michael Moore insisting that those of us Politically Left don't need clean socks that badly. We don't need to sweep the kitchen floor or even go to work, not for the next few days. What we need is to get out there and help Get Out The Vote.

And I thought...there speaks a man who doesn't do his own laundry. There's not a chance in hell he'll visit his bureau and find himself sockless.

NaNoWriMo begins on Monday. I'm already sending love and encouragement to those I know who are participating this year. Especially those In A Pickle due to the mysterious disappearance of the World's Most Perfect NaNoPen.

(If anything would tempt me to NaNo this year, it would be, aside from the pleasure of pleasing the Pickle, the idea of blogging my novel as it happens. That's what Blogger is pushing this year.)

(If anything would convince me not to NaNo this year, it's the idea that my first-draft embarrassments would be out there, in all their shame, for the world to see. Not that the world stops by here, but still.)

A Kind Friend who has been seeking employment finally found it...and after one day on the job, she hates it. Me, I always hate a new job the first few days. I loathe and abominate being the newbie, the dummy, and the know-nothing. It wears off...although not as quickly as it did when I was 30. (I can feel my brain calcifying these days.) Anyhow, I counseled her to give it a week or so and then if she still hates it, to cut her losses and run.

Also, she has other problems. Everyone take a moment and send her a bit of good pastry karma to help out with those concrete piecrusts.

The Lily Lady is graduation-bound this spring. She's going to be Highly, Highly Eddicated, an accomplishment for which I intend to congratulate her while reserving the right to abuse her on every other subject under the sun.

Don't let anyone tell you spending money on a college education will solve all your problems. No matter what degree you get, I'll still be here.

I always thought I was pretty much of a champion when it comes to passive-aggressive behavior, but I have to take my (metaphorical) hat off to BossyBoots (and beat him to death with it). For the past week, no matter what topic I send him an e-mail on, he's been very careful to answer the e-mails, but he's been equally careful to avoid answering the questions therein.

I know what his problem is, of course. He's in a snit because I sent him a stream of e-mails asking about the status of projects that he's had lying around for the past few weeks. It started when someone called me to complain they'd been waiting a month for him to answer a question. (I got the answer in 20 seconds, e-mailed it to BossyBoots, and instructed him to call the client.)

Then I checked the system and found five other projects that, if one assumes a lack of update notes indicates a lack of action, have been catching dust in various corners for about that long. So, I e-mailed to ask him what was up with them. (I take it back...he's not actually answering all of my e-mails, but I know if I go look in the system, he'll have put notes in by the end of today. )

(We're having a little passive-aggressive war about it, silently. My point is that if he makes a major change in status on a client, which he does once or twice a month, he should send out an e-mail, the way the rest of us do if we make status changes. He thinks that if he puts a note in, on those occasions that he does put in notes, that should be good enough.

He's only working with a few clients, so I could go look for myself when I'm compiling the weekly status report...but he doesn't always put notes in, I'm not his f__king secretary, and I'm not chasing him down every week to ask him what he's done. I'm handling 153 clients to his 11, so I really don't have time for his shit.)

Sorry. Had a little moment. I'm a bit tired of him this week.

Tonight I’m getting together with Coco. It's odd that we really only get together every 2-3 months...but that's how life goes. I cherish her for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being she's one of my few entirely non-fandom friends. She has no idea of my Sekrit Life as a pornographer. When I was writing madly, that made spending time with her rather complicated.

"What have you been up to?"

"Ummm...nothing."

That was our conversation for two years.

Nowadays, of course, I don't have that problem, but I always say you have to love a friend who can stick with you through two years of that kind of crap. I have a couple of other non-fandom friends as well, but I see them even less often than I see Coco.

I no longer see Tuffy the Tank. She blames me for the dissolution of her business relationship with Alvin. Since she and Coco recommended me for the job with Alvin, it was her perspective that I "owed her" and that I should use my charm and influence to pass along inside information and be her champion with Alvin.

First, I'm not like that, and she knows it. What on earth made her think I was any more likely to do that now than I've been for the last ten years? Second, on those few occasions I did try to tell her she was screwing up in a major way, she chose not to alter her behavior. Third, the amount of charm I possess is negligible and the "influence" I have with an employer who knows I'm a personal friend of hers and is on the look-out for Undue Influence being exerted is even more negligible.

Negligible is a difficult word to type.

Anyhow, she and I weren't so much "personal friends" as I think she made Alvin believe. It's not like we spent much time together, outside a work environment. In the ten years I've known her, I think I've seen her four times outside of a business setting. This is not friendship.

Coco and I get together half a dozen times a year. That may not be the world's tightest friendship, but it counts. When I was unemployed, she took me out for lunch occasionally and cheered me up. When she was underemployed and struggling to make ends meet, I returned the favor. And, of course, we've always bonded over the topic of Tuffy's myriad insanities.

I've been frantically busy so far this morning, so I should probably call this mid-morning break "over" and get back to it.

I'm contemplating the weekend and waiting, with breathless anticipation, to see if I actually make it to tomorrow's Fair Vote Colorado training session. Back when I was political, I was signed up to do poll-watching this year. Now I'm off the whole political thing and I'm thinking...not so much with wasting a Saturday morning that way.