Turns out there was a sort of a reason I've been irritable all week. I have a slight (but mounting) summer cold coming on. Right now it's just a little sinus dripping, the occasional sneezing, a touch of feverish I'm-hot-I'm-cold temperature intolerance, and the inability to tolerate stupidity.

Oh, wait. That last one is chronic.

So, what's up at the Argonut Café today?

Well, the stupid NutNews is not up. I haven't gotten the files yet. I suppose I could have spent the waiting time working on another "project" (instead of wasting it doing parts of my actual job) but I honestly find analyzing 50,000 lines of data more feasible if I don't keep putting the project down and picking it up again four hours later. I'm not good with numbers--I have to keep my mind on topic for that kind of thing. If you have 50,000 lines and fifteen columns of data and sorting it all by different columns suggests different results, I think almost anyone would admit they would do a better job of making sense of it all if they focused.

Moaning Martie is On My List, not that he hasn’t been all along. This loser has not only decided to go to an outside agency for his campaign needs, he has also--after two years of refusing to even discuss the subject for my benefit--doubled his budget, so that the outside agency now has a chance to make his program successful--a chance I never had and am a little bitter about. I don't really care, though. Bottom line? He's going to be SEP!

It's cold in this office today. Why is it so cold? It was hot yesterday. It was hot two hours ago. Now it's cold. My fingers are cold. I hate being sick.*

NewBoss Anais is a really, really nice person, but she's driving me nuts. There's such a thing as overcommunication, okay? Coming to my desk to tell me that she'll IM me to let me know when she's sent me an email--that's oversharing.

She's been showing up at my desk--and not just for the candy-- eight or ten times a day for the past few weeks, and she rarely has anything to say that couldn't have been communicated just as well or better (because of having a paper trail) by email.

I was bad last night. Very bad. I'm here to confess.

First, the good news--remember that part of my two trips that I didn't pay for in advance or as I went? Credit card balance is now zero! I paid off my travel expenses in six weeks, hooray! (Only rich people can afford to let credit card balances linger. Us po' folk can't afford the usurious rates of interest on running balances.)

I also, thanks to several weekends in a row of snowy weather, had enough built up in my bank account to pay for my half of the new tv promptly. My debt to the R.C. is dwindling. Slowly, but dwindling. With those two trips behind me, I hope to be able to pay off the remaining balance before the end of the year--or even by early fall--a goal that's starting to look very achievable.

So, how was I bad last night? I celebrated this occasion with a leisurely surf of Amazon.com. Wincing. Could have been worse, but I had to forcibly stop myself and walk away before I even got to the reason I sat down at the computer, which was ordering a particular hanging lamp I wanted for my bedroom. A small, $20 indulgence, that's all I was planning on. Sigh.

I wonder if they turned the thermostat up? I'm not cold any more.

One hour later

Stupid newsletter files arrived.

For the record, NewBoss Anais neither came to my desk nor sent an IM when she finally sent the email.

Sheesh.

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* Sadly for you, I am not so sick I won't be able to get online and whine about it for the next week.