Bah, and humbug. And the horses they rode in on.
I'm in a pissy mood today.
I mean, the day started well enough. The Sinus Infection From Hell seems, finally, to be moving out of my body. Cough disappearing, fever negligible, hearing back in both ears, nose almost completely back to normal. All of those good things.
I felt quite a bit better over the weekend but when Buehler showed up for work this morning, the first thing he did was diss me because I forgot to send a status update on one of my projects for him on Friday. He also dissed me because I forgot to send out a shipment on time last week and it had to be sent overnight.
I did forget the shipment, yes. But I 'forgot' in the three or four days when the shipment could have been sent out regular ground because I spent those days either at the doctor's office or in bed with a high fever and various other unpleasant symptoms of the SIFH.
I also 'forgot' because I lost Every. Single. Note. I had about projects and tasks to be done in the big network/e-mail crash.
As for the status report on Friday, I was having one of those days when I could either work or sit and write notes about what I was doing, and I chose to work.
I just think he's being unfair.
Granted, I do understand that making excuses doesn't get the work done, and I realize that since I've only worked for him for three months he doesn't know how very unusual it is for me to forget to something important, much less to be sick enough to miss multiple days of work, but I'm still mad at him.
I won't address it with him, of course. I'm not about addressing problems head-on. I'm about ignoring them until they either go away or fester and spread and eventually cause a gangrene of the workplace that requires an employee amputation to cure.
But since I'm passive-aggressive, I'm getting some of my own back by goofing off on company time. Which can only exacerbate the problem of me not being productive enough, I know, but I don't care at the moment.
So...on with the festivities!
Television still being a wasteland of non-entertainment, I'm currently shoving DVD's into the machine when I want to escape from it all. (I'm still reading the Aubrey-Maturin books as well, of course. Just finishing Far Side of the World and wondering when I'm going to find time to get to the movie.)
What am I watching, you ask? Purely escapist television. Britcoms (As Time Goes By and Are You Being Served), and sitcoms (Sports Night) for the most part.
I'm a big fan of Britcoms. Those mentioned above, along with Chef, and Mulberry and A Fine Romance and Good Neighbors and others live on the shelves at my house and get re-watched with surprising frequency. Some of my favorites, seen on television long ago, don't seem to have made it onto tape or DVD yet, which is sad. I've been waiting to see Butterflies again for years and years.
I'm still waffling on The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin though. I can't decide if that's one of the ones that won't have stood the test of time well. I may have to go ahead and buy it and see for myself.
I was about to start the first season West Wing DVDs I got for Christmas, but my roommate bought Sports Night so we're watching those instead at the moment. And then she bought the Highlander DVDs, so those were up next on the schedule, but then my first season Starsky & Hutch DVDs arrived Saturday, so those jumped to the top of the list. And then, of course, there are the Season Two Due South DVDs.
Not enough hours in the day.
Starsky & Hutch is the gayest show. I'm really surprised, even though it's always lived in my memory as amazingly slashy. The pilot, which I haven't seen for ten or fifteen years or more, was surprisingly gay. Much more, even, than the first few episodes. No matter how much time these two spend talking about the "blonde lovelies" they'd like to be spending time with, there's just no doubt that they're totally in love.
I understand that the movie has a great deal of fun with the 'homoerotic subtext' which is pretty much the only reason I can think of for going to see it, but it's pretty much enough to convince me to go and see it, so that's okay. I also understand that if you walk into the theatre with the firm idea that this is more a spoof than a real prequel, it's very funny.
I just keep looking at the casting and shaking my head, though.
Actually, I guess that's the only "festivity" I have to report at the moment. Getting laid low by the SIFH 24 hours after I got back from Escapade kind of derailed my nascent desire to become active in fandom again.
I went shopping over the weekend and practically everything I grabbed to try on was too big. I kept having to go back to the rack for smaller clothes. That's a nice ego boost. A very nice one, in fact.
It's the kind of positive reinforcement you need when you're sitting at your desk, trying to nerve yourself up to Make The Call to get The Lump examined.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:09 PMWell, I hope.
After I returned home from the joys of Escapade on February 23, I promptly succumbed (on Feb 25) to a horrendous, evil, endless, soul-destroying sinus infection from which I am only now able to say I am recovering. I'm still a bit cranky about it, as you can probably tell.
I actually missed two and a half days of work. I haven't missed that much work because of being sick in the last ten years.
It's been a while. I know. Again. I'm not doing well at regular blogging, am I? I experienced two moments of distinct guilt at Escapade when people told me they read this blog. And, at this moment, I'm experiencing a little panic at the idea that I need to be entertaining.
I'm becoming very experienced.
I should have blogged earlier this week, when I was on enough medication to send my brain to Pluto.
Escapade...Escapade...let me think.
I attended not one but two panels on the joys of Napoleonic War era slash. One was specific to Master and Commander and the other was a bit more generic. Since the Aubrey-Maturin books are the ones I chose to take for airplane/hotel room/spare time reading at the con this year, I was 'up' on the subject, a rare experience for me.
I also attended a panel on "the best stories I never finished" or something like that. It was about why some story ideas die half-born. Interesting, but not really productive.
I remember helping form the "shock and awe posse" but I'm not telling you what it was about or who the other guilty parties were. It was funny at the time, that's all.
I attended a couple of panels, I've already forgotten which ones, where I was obnoxious for no particular reason except that I felt like being obnoxious.* (It's possible I was mostly obnoxious in the privacy of my own mind, though. My doctor is of the opinion that I was already getting sick over the weekend, which explains why I was tucked up in bed at the unusual hour, for me, of 10:00 most nights and reminds me that I'd like to apologize to anyone to participated in Monday morning's promiscuous round of good-bye hugging that caught any cooties from me.)
I made cucumber sandwiches in the con suite. That's a regular feature of Escapade for me. Ever since my very first year, there's been some point at which I've found myself making cucumber sandwiches in the con suite.
I didn't attend the LotR panel. I've given up on complaining about that fandom and have decided, graciously, not to be bitter just because I seem to be the only person on the planet who didn't hear a fannish bell go off when the movies came out.
Go ahead. Indulge yourselves in hobbit porn. See if I care, you selfish perverts.
I learned a surprising number of things. Like that there's an unusual and rather inexplicable concentration of outspokenly "Christian" fen in Mag 7 slash.
Like that there's a noticeable percentage of slash writers and readers who are militantly anti gay marriage. (The illogic of some people boggles the mind, doesn't it?)
That last group, by the way, can confidently expect never to receive an invitation to join my new universe of a-better-kind-of-fandom when I get done creating it.
I saw a great many people I'm very fond of and didn't get to spend half enough time with most of them.
Then it was over, The End.
(* Speaking of obnoxious, I had a conversation with someone about why some lists take off and some don't and we came to the surprising conclusion that what lists, and maybe even fandom, need are a small but significant percentage of idiots. Say what else you will about them, idiots generate discussion.
For instance, I'm on one list where none but intelligent, rational people were invited to join and that list is lucky if it sees two posts a year. I've volunteered to be the village idiot on that one in an attempt to spark some discussion. I'll have to dig through my vast stock of stupid opinions on fandom for something suitable. If anyone has a favorite, feel free to speak up.)
It's hard to remember details when you've been heavily medicated for a week, okay? I had a great time, probably the best time I've had at Escapade in 3 years or more, which is saying a lot. I'm just a bit fuzzy on the details at the moment.
I did not, for instance, enjoy having my flight home cancelled and having to wait four or five hours for another one while in LAX, but it was very amusing to stumble across fen also roaming the airport. I have no memory of who I saw, but I do know I saw eight or ten people.
I remember that on my first day back to work, I discovered that the IT guy had been "fixing" my computer and that it was, in consequence, barely functioning.
I remember being told that our e-mail server had crashed and that, contrary to intelligent expectation, IT had not in fact, been backing up the e-mail files. I lost 1-1/2 years' worth of saved information, including the details on this new job that I was just beginning to understand and am now completely bewildered by once again.
Then, last Wednesday, I got dizzy and I don't remember much of the next six days.
I was ill, so I took 'ils' like Dayquil, Nyquil, and Advil. I took decongestants. I took horse-pill sized antibiotics from my doctor that cost $4.50 each. (Is that right? I got 20 pills, they cost $90 total.) I should say, I only paid 50 cents each for them because I have good insurance, but retail was $4.50 per pill.
I'm just saying. At $4.50 a pop, I really think I should have felt a lot better a lot faster, don't you?
Anyhow, enough about me for a sentence or two.
Note: I typed that last sentence twenty minutes ago. Surely I have something to talk about that doesn't center around my egotistical self, don't I?
By the way, I checked my blog this morning to see the date of my last post and noticed a pop-up ad appear. Please let me know if this is becoming a regular occurrence. If it is, I'm going to be pissed. I paid money to upgrade to BlogSpotPro (before they abolished it) so that readers wouldn't have ads inflicted on them and if Blogger is now putting pop-up ads on blog sites, I'm moving off of their server.
I'll work on something to talk about that isn't egocentric and I'll be back later, okay?
Posted by AnneZook at 10:59 AM