Boogie over and wish Lynnzo a happy birthday.

I'll wait.

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Today's Mumbling

I'm a teensy bit aggravated that today is her birthday and I won't be home tonight because it's Class Night. We're going to do the celebrating tomorrow. (Personally, I think any time someone gets the gift of An Evening Without Me, that's a celebration in itself.)

Drat. When you want a pen to run out, it never runs out, does it? The ink lasts forever. Isn't that annoying? I have a particular need for an ink pen that's out of ink, and I really need it to be this one, but even though the ink has been hit-or-miss for a week, it never quite runs out.

In the end, I did not complete my Shoe Sketch for tonight's class. I drew one, lonely shoe sitting in the middle of a blank page. And it's not a good shoe.

I wasted far too much time over the last week trying (and failing) to learn to draw deer so that my landscape wouldn't be so static. (Last night I discovered an entirely New Approach To Grasses, but by then it was too late to redo the entire picture.) Sigh.

I have a full-time job and at least three hobbies going simultaneously. I just couldn't find time to complete six decent drawings in one week (she said defensively, already picturing the scorn of the other students who probably finished their assignments in one afternoon since they're both experienced and talented). The blasted Still Life With Bottles took all day Sunday by itself.

And, yes, just I spent a lot of time generally Messing Around With Charcoal. And practicing Hands. I don't know why I've fixated on Hands. It's not like any of the drawing projects that I have in mind are going to require a lot of hands.

I'm becoming aware of some other fallout from the Drawing Obsession, too. For instance, today in line at Starbucks, I realized that I was staring at the butts of everyone in the place. And that I'd been doing so without pause for ten minutes. The way people's clothes fit is very important and the "fall" of the fabric, or the drape around the body is critical to creating a 3-D effect. It also tells you a lot about the body underneath...whether it's toned or not, heavy or slender, etc. With so many people wearing nothing but tee-shirts today, it's harder to figure out how to draw the top half of a clothed figure, but you can figure out from the waist down by studying how people's pants fit.

If you don't get arrested first. The ninety seconds I spent studying that cop's (rather nice) butt could have caused me problems and I rather doubt that that slightly heavy young woman three people ahead of me in line appreciated my attention.

When I started this hobby, I promised myself I wouldn't bore y'all incessantly in the blog about it, but I guess that little promise is thoroughly broken.

So...what else is new today?

We have the weekly conference call with Blister-Pak in 20 minutes, to explain to him why 15 doctors and nurses haven't been able to drop everything they need to do with their patients and install Hell's Own Software since last week.

Buehler did not say, but he implied one day that one of the reasons I'm expendable is that I'm not proactive and curious. I know what he means. Ever since I started working here, I've had the politiblog obsession going and I've spend a fair number of hours each day on it. That leaves time for me to do my actual job, but not much time for me to be proactive about taking on other tasks, or learning what else is going on around me so that I could help others. All of the time I should have spent on that (because I was being paid, was spent obsessing about politics.

And now I realize it was all a waste of time. It's not as though I changed anything, had any kind of an impact on anyone in a position to influence events, or even added to the total sum of intelligence flowing on any topic.

OTOH, I'm not whining or moping. I really like Buehler and I did a good job at the work I had to do, but I'm not really well-suited to this company. Medical stuff squicks me, I'd really rather not know the range of things that can go wrong with the human body, and after doing my presentation for Hell's Own Software about 200 times in the last year, I'm realizing that if I hear myself say some of those things One. More. Time. I'm going to stuff a giraffe down my throat to shut me up.

I don't mind being busy. I don't even mind having more stuff to do than I can conceivably complete in a day, but I do mind monotony. As far as that goes, if my previous employer, and then this one when I started, had had enough work for me to do originally, I'd never have had the time on my hands to even start the whole politiblog. I can work harder than they've every required.

One of my major regrets about this job, for instance, is that they never hired anyone I could name, "Sir Dorkalot." I really, really wanted to use that one.