Depressed. It's all gray and cloudy outside. It takes very little gray and cloudy to interfere with my disposition. I like sunshine. I can take one gray day if I'm home and curled up but I hate having to work and pretend to be all chipper and happy when it's gray outside.

This is the second gray day in a row.

What some people might think of as "fog" but what is at this altitude actually low-hanging clouds are covering most of the city I can see from the windows. Visibility is about five or six blocks. It's drizzling. It's cool. It's yucky.

It's annoying me.

I forgot to pack a lunch yesterday (deprived!) so I had a choice between braving the elements (spending the rest of the day looking like I'd put my finger in a light socket) and just skipping lunch. I'd about made up my mind to live with the light socket look when it occurred to me that I had a two hour training session coming up fast and that I'd debated lunch for so long that I no longer had time to go and get it, much less eat it.

Today I packed a lot of food, none of which I'm in the mood to eat.

You know what I hate? I hate spending two hours in a training session learning to use a new gadget when the first hour of it is spent on remedial training for people who didn't bother to actually look at the gadget before the training or even bring a modicum of common sense to using it.

It's a freaking telephone, okay? How can you walk into a training session and say you need to start by learning how to dial a call?

I swear, people do shit like that just to piss me off.

I mean, I'm old, okay? My brain cells are dying by the thousands every day or something, and even I was able to figure out how to make a call, take a call, transfer a call, and check my voicemail without expert assistance. How is it possible that the Tweenybopper, at about 23 years of age, couldn't figure these things out?

Also? To everyone who was too busy and/or too important to talk about the configuration of the new phone system before it was actually installed? Shut up and live with the choices I made. I don't actually give a shit if you don't like how it works. You had a chance to put your two cents in and you couldn't be bothered. You're not going to drive me nuts, demanding idiotic adjustments now, after the fact, so get away from me before I hurt you.

I'm not in a bad mood, though. Not really.

I mean, yeah, I'm, sick to death of hearing about the new phones and listening to people bitch because they don't work like the old phones did, but other than that, I'm not in a bad mood.

I have a lot of work I should be doing. My phone is ringing off the hook, I have, at last count, 118 people standing by, dying to hear from me about using our new product, I'm two days behind in putting my notes into the shared MIS system so everyone can see I'm actually working during the days, and I have a stack of things on my desk that I've been accumulating all week, all under the heading of, "what is this and should I be taking some kind of action about it" but here I sit…blogging.

The Head Stooge showed up yesterday (actually, he dragged me out of a meeting) to casually inquire if I'd set him up with any appointments for a business trip he didn't tell me he was making.

I'm sort of proud of the fact that I didn't explain to him, very, very gently, that you don't drag someone out of a meeting with outside vendors unless it's an emergency, that I am not his (or anyone else's) secretary and I don't actually book other people's appointments, and that since I don't actually work for him, I'm not obligated to read his mind and become psychically aware that he's considering making a business trip.

All of that is, I think, indication of a mood that's better than it might be, considering the circumstances. I even went all out and booked one appointment for him before I went home last night.

From someone who hadn't eaten anything all day except an apple, I think sitting here until 6:00 in the evening to book his stupid appointment was going above and beyond, don't you? (Ed. Yes. Way above.) (Me: I knew you'd see it my way.)

Also? Allow me to explain to all of you that if I tell you someone is ON THE PHONE, it does no good to call me every sixty seconds demanding to speak to this person. I have neither the authority nor the desire to go to someone's desk, forcibly disconnect them from another business call, and demand that they speak to you.

By the time you call me for the fifth time, the only real desire I have it to leap through the phone and throttle you. (Yes, I'm looking at you Sassy. You've worked in this office. You know what kind of nutcases these people are. Why are you making my life a misery in this fashion?)

If anyone, anyone asks me why I'm not getting my work done, I may go postal.

Okay, I could be in a better mood.

I've been re-reading the HP series this week. I hadn't actually read the books for several months but seeing the new movie put me back in the mood.

First, I was amazed afresh by the amount of material in the books that didn't make it into the movies. While not the richest, most textured universe in literature, the books are more well-rounded than I'd remembered. Also, because of the ruthless plot and character pruning for the movies, I'd forgotten how much better JKR's adult characters are than her child characters. In the movies, the adults are mere walk-ons most of the time, but in the books they're far superior to most of the 'stars' of the series.

Tuesday night, with a certain amount of trepidation, I picked up Book Five to re-read it for the first time. I remember hating it. The characters were too different than they'd been in Book Four, and I loathe torture, I loathe mistreating children, and unexpectedly coming across torturing children in Book Five nearly drove me 'round the bend when I first read the book.

It was more like bad fanfic than a novel from the pen of the same author who wrote the first four novels. You know what I mean. Wallowing in character abuse just to wallow in it, not because it really adds anything to the plot. (Those of you in fandom who like character abuse probably don't agree with my assessment, but that's okay. I personally have never been able to understand how you can reconcile your protestation that you "love" the characters with the kind of pain you feel impelled to inflict upon them. I'm just saying. If this is how you treat the ones you "love" you might want to consider a bit of therapy. Or a lot of therapy, for that matter.)

(No, seriously, I know that although we use the same words to describe our reactions to our favorite characters, few of you truly view them as "real people." Most of you have no problem separating fact from fiction. Unfortunately, I'm someone with a problem that way and when I "love" a fictional character, I have great difficulty treating them any differently than I would any other "real" person. It's with the greatest difficulty that I manage to inflict even the slightest emotional suffering on my characters. I don't care for "hurt/comfort" for instance. I can sometimes manage "comfort/owie/comfort/comfort/comfort," but not often.)

But, let's stick to the topic at hand. I hate it when an author or a series gets too popular and no one edits their work any more. (Stephen King became completely unreadable in later years.) Some judicious pruning would have improved Book Five enormously. I thought that the first time I read it and I'm not changing my mind this time around.

It's like JKR couldn't remember how to build tension between characters, so she keeps falling back on having the kids squabbling with each other for little or no reason.

While I do understand that kids do squabble, I feel like I've been reading, "Harry didn't speak to _____ for the rest of the day" over and over and over.

On a more personal note, I also object to turning Sirius into an idiot who confuses Harry with his (Sirius's) dead friend and who, contrary to all of his (Sirius's) behavior up until this point, never hesitates to tell Harry to take chances and go into danger "for the fun of it." This character actually bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Sirius in the earlier books.

Okay, maybe I'm not in such a good mood.

I'll stop now.