I've been having a little trouble getting excited about my upcoming trips. Travel--especially winter travel--can be such a hassle any more. But now that my first trip is tomorrow and now that the R.C. has fulfilled her primary function in life (making my life run more smoothly), I'm very excited!
I ran mad this morning and frittered away $3.50 on a celebratory latte on the way to work.
Considering that they don't live that far away (the next state), I don't really see the L-i-K-S, Rapunzel, and Pippi that often. While it might have been fun to plan a longer trip--really spend some time with them--I'm always mindful of Ben Franklin's warning that "Fish and visitors stink after three days" and I planned a three-day trip.
(Also? Even without Franklin's words of warning, I've always thought that if I'm able to leave a place with the people I leave behind wishing, even just a little, that I could have stayed longer, I probably left just in time.)
I think I've successfully squelched Bernie on the idea that I should do some work "in your free time" on the trip. As I pointed out to him, a three-day trip doesn't come loaded with "free time."
Anyhow. I'm off work on Tuesday next week, after I get back, and I'm planning on doing some free-lance work then. Wednesday I'm back in the office and then Thursday afternoon, I'm off to California.
In the meantime, I've been working with focus and dedication all week, but now, at 1:30 in the afternoon, I'm abruptly over it and ready to start vacationing! (Yes, even with the knowledge that it's going to snow.)
I mean, I don't really know or care from Mardi Gras, but I have got to jolly myself back into a better mood.
Yesterday's chores: bank (cash for my trip) and pharmacy (prescription refill). Today, I will potentially go to both the grocery store (almost out of coffee), and apartment management office (to refill my laundry card) on my way home. (Possibly I was a little too laid back and relaxed over the weekend--there seem to be a lot of things I didn't get done.)
Had a conference call with Bernie and Freethinker, the potential new client, Monday afternoon. In a complete reversal of what I expected to see, the Freethinker's website looked great (visually--layout--I didn't read anything during the meeting) and the ads I saw in his Webstrainer campaign looked, really, very good. Generally these things, especially good ads, are where DIY advertisers fail. It was nice to see a campaign where someone did it right.
Everything else was appalling, so, no surprises there. I mean, the guy did seem to have a vague idea of the potential of it all, but without defined goals (Bernie asked three times during the call and got three conflicting answers) and without some structure he isn't going to be able to tap into the potential.
I won't go on and on. I'll just say that if you open your account page and it's covered with red warning messages? Telling everyone how well you're doing it is--less convincing.
The Freethinker was pretty vague throughout the entire call, so I'm not sure if Bernie strong-armed him into agreeing to have someone evaluate his campaign or if it was his idea, but that's not my problem. I don't mind earning two or three hundred bucks for reviewing what he's got and making some suggestions. That's all I'm committed to right now.
Because I'm a moron, I just now realized that my 8:30am flight on Friday means I should be on the road and headed toward the airport by 6:30, at the latest. Since it's my vacation, there's snow forecast, and I'm not at my best before dawn under any circumstances, I'm almost thinking I should book a shuttle or something--get someone else to drive, somehow.
On the other hand, shuttle companies are insane any more. They refuse to pick you up any later than 4 hours before your flight. The odds of me getting out of bed, pulling myself together, and being downstairs, luggage in hand, at 4:00am are surprisingly small. Maybe I'll be wasteful and spend $50 on a cab. (Maybe I'll stop being such a baby and just drive myself--the stupid airport is only 30 minutes away.)
Today's excitement includes the stupid 'Nut Newsletter. We're on draft #6 right now. I only read one sentence (I'm getting very good at coding without reading) but it was ugly enough that I was unable to resist sending TeamChaos an email asking (after the fifth draft) if they were seriously going to leave it in the newsletter. NewBoss Anais emailed back and offered to let me rewrite it, but I refuse to take the first step down that slippery slope. I'm just going to decide to be Over it. Over it, over it, over it.
You'd be proud of me. They've been requesting additional bolding dropped in here and there, huge chunks of text in italics, more white space so titles can 'float' unconnected with the accompanying stories, and other random weirdness and I haven't said a single mean thing.
Over it, over it, over it.
Wow.
I've never really suffered from hormone-induced psychosis but I sort of wish I had. At least I'd have something to blame that last post on.
I blame my weekend. I spent a lot of the time thinking thoughts either creative or intelligent or both. I think there was a bit of cognitive dissonance--even culture shock--around finding myself trapped in a situation where habit, training, and good manners were trying to force me to pretend to be enjoying the sensation of my brain cells withering and dying before their time.
I had to go apologize to Tyro, who was enthusiastically discussing her favorites among such shows when I went into the lunch room. She should be able to eat lunch without having my prejudices shoved down her throat and certainly she was entitled to be allowed to express her opinions without me dissing her.
I really did have a nice weekend. A bit of laundry and housekeeping. A little knitting and a little boat-building* and a little reading and some time spent playing on the DS--very laid-back. Restful.
I worked for three or four hours Saturday morning but not much more than 30 minutes Sunday morning--had a bit of a headache.
The R.C. and I went to a shopping mall Saturday afternoon. I can't remember the last time I did that. I didn't really buy much--just the moisturizer I went for, but I very nearly bought a lot of other things, which means I was very well entertained. I got to get out, wander around for a few hours (inside, out of the cold, even biting wind), play "fashion cop," and window shop some interesting stores. Both an inexpensive and amusing afternoon.
Saturday evening, I read a book and spent some time viewing, reviewing, marking, and contemplating a catalog.
I have no idea how I got on the mailing list, but I got the most fabulous course catalog in the mail last week. The Great Courses. Although there are a least a dozen courses in the catalog (and more on-line) that life won't be worth living without, I'm going to start with one or two--apparently there's a sale on right now and if I order before March 4, I can get a couple of classes for $80 or less.
Sunday, while I was amusing part of my brain with the stuff already mentioned, most of my thoughts were contrasting and comparing the sale courses in the print catalog.
This is how it went:
The first title that caught my eye was an in-depth course on world mythology. I have something of a passion for mythology, but I've done a lot of reading already, on my own, on that topic. (Hour-long pause while I review what I know, think I remember, and/or my opinions about what I read.) From translated texts to high school classes and Joseph Campbell through "mythology in the movies--I've read a lot on this topic. Still. A formal course is always interesting and takes you unexpected places.
But! Physics--even metaphysics! Granted that I know almost nothing about mathematics and would drool on you if you tried to talk to me in calculus-speak, I understand the parts of the concepts that can be put into words and there's an endless fascination to them. (Hour-long pause while I mentally review Hawkings' popular works, think about Godel, Escher, and Bach, that briefly popular and probably little-read tome of brain-damaging exercises, remember some online references I used to look at, and some private musings I had about How It All Works.) It's possible that my aging brain is no longer up to the kind of concentrated, linear thought that physics requires, even on a casual basis.
Reading! Writing! Words are not yet too difficult for me. My remaining stock of 25+books on reading and writing are just a fraction of the sizable library I once possessed. (Hour-long pause while I revisit books about how to write, books about how to read, books about grammar, books about plot construction, essays on the impetus for writing and/or essays on how to read for the maximum return.) There are a number of reading and writing courses in the catalog, the most tempting of which are around reading.
Economics. I'm not informed. (Hour-long pause while I debate whether I took a single micro- or macro-economics course in college. Can't remember, but nothing that did much more than introduce me to terminology until I got to Krugman's books, of which I read two or three.) I haven't studied this. Why not? Anyhow, all I've read so far consists of "not much" and maybe I'm not particularly interested, but how can I resist a course on critical decision making?
Philosophy! History! Weeps at the wealth of things she will never know.
I don't know where to start. A reading class, for sure. But what else? Philosophy or history? Mythology? A sweeping exploration of Western Civ? A more focused study of Egypt? I can't decide!
Some are only available on DVD, but I have the laptop so that's not a problem. Some can also be had on CD, so I'd need to buy a little player but I understand those aren't expensive these days. I'm more interested in topic--I'll take whatever media they suggest.
Okay, everyone. Vote!
Anyhow. I spent a lot of Sunday mentally reviewing Things I Have Learned, or Things I'm Starting To Learn and I wasn't in the right place, mentally, for a lunchroom conversation about television shows that expose people's weaknesses for entertainment. I had an entirely ugly flashback to books I've read that describe how, a couple of hundred years ago, people paid money to be able to tour asylums and laugh at the crazy people from a safe distance. The only difference between that and so-called "reality" television is that today we can laugh at the crazy people without leaving our living rooms or smelling anything too real.
Oh, dear.
Not over the crabby yet, I guess.
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* Following up last weeks' "So, You Want To Build A Three-masted Schooner?" post, in the remote event than anyone cares, I got two pieces together! In fact, with the help of my old friends, Elmer and the Bulldog Clip, I got two pieces together solidly enough to let me attach another four pieces! Right now, it's all sitting on my table, clamped and drying. Right, wrong, or disastrous, I have a foundation upon which I can build a boat!
I may and/or may not have time to get back to it one evening this week before I leave town. If not, It will be there on March 7 (the next scheduled Lazy Sunday At Home on my calendar).
Posted by AnneZook at 12:25 PM | Comments (4)Suppose you didn't, but the stupid fire alarm went off every four or five days anyhow? Getting bored with that game.
Minor wig-out this morning. Could be because I forgot to eat breakfast, could be (as I am beginning to suspect) that when they lowered the prescription on my thyroid meds last fall, they lowered it too far.
Common sense tells me to go in and get myself re-checked, but since I'm going to be more-or-less continuously out of town for the next two weeks (starting this Friday), I'm going to muddle through.
This is me. Suddenly crabby.
I honestly can't figure out what this stupid insurance plan does cover. Not tests relating to the thyroid which, although a "pre-existing condition" was covered by my last plan and should have been grandfathered for this one. Not "wellness" or "diagnostic" visits or testing--I have to pay for the visit to the doctor's office and anything they order just to make sure my innards are all still functioning properly. I think there's some kind of prescription drug coverage, but my meds are actually cheaper if I pay for them myself-- I get 90-day refills, which gives me three months for the same cost I'd have to pay each month if I used the prescription benefit.
I guess if they don't pay for conditions I have, maybe they'd pay for anything I developed while they had me covered, even though they won't pay for the tests to find out that I have it.
I find myself peculiarly unwilling to test that theory.
Today, impromptu pizza lunch for the half-dozen employees in the building. It was interrupted halfway through by the afore-complained-about fire alarm, which saved my coworkers hearing the rest of my rant about the stupidity of so-called "reality" television. Apparently, as I was unwillingly forced to learn, there are now shows exploiting a variety of mental disorders as well as shows that purport to do a public service by entrapping pedophiles or offer second-hand thrills by following various types of law-enforcement agents around the country. Of the six people in the room, four confessed themselves "addicted" to at least a handful of such shows.
I hate having to sit and make polite while people flaunt their shallowness and stupidity. (Pedophiles, while criminal under our current laws and absolutely needing to be separated from their potential victims are not "so stupid, to get caught." Psycho-sexual disorders are mental illnesses.)
(Also? It's not at all relevant, appropriate, or intelligent to criticize a female law enforcement agent's personal appearance as she's tracking a murderer cross-county. There is television, and then there is reality. The blurring of the line between the two frightens me.)
At moments like this, it's comforting for me to realize that I'll likely be dead long before this country actually implodes from sheet stupidity.
Crabby, crabby, crabby.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:14 PM | Comments (2)This morning, as I struggled to untangle myself from my bed, I realized I was arising from a dream where I'd been sitting at a computer, doing some Webstrainer research.
This must cease! I refuse to work in my sleep!
Also, I demand to know why my bed is never as welcoming at night as it is when the alarm goes off in the morning. Last night I accidentally sat up until midnight (reading) and it still took me over an hour to convince my brain and body to knock off for the day.
The day started with a latte from the Sekrit Starbucks I now know is a mere four blocks from my office. Hooray for milk-drenched espresso!
Then a 75-minute conference call where, much against my will, I found myself--wait for it--explaining a Webstrainer search results page to an audience of otherwise reasonably intelligent people. It seems that I've been vastly overestimating everyone's understanding of how and why ads show up when you search for things.
Talked to Bernie today and heard myself agreeing to take on two more accounts. Before you shout at me, one of them was the one we had the conference call on a week or two ago, so I'd already half-promised that one.
The other will be--hmmm. How can I put this that won't 'out' the client's name or attract sp*mbots but that will nevertheless amuse me?
Well (she said delicately), I'm not religious (although I'm not inclined to care if others are), so I don't precisely pay attention to the latest developments in the field. Imagine my surprise when Bernie explained that an otherwise extremely successful business person of his acquaintance is apparently starting--well, I don't know. So far it's some books and a website or two, but I suspect he has delusions of secthood.
Apparently there's a (and now I have to be extremely delicate) sort of a crossroads where concepts introduced in a certain late-60s SF television show (spawning three sequels and half a dozen movies and earning its place in the mythology of the planet) meet the major spiritual denomination of most of this country. (Hah! I defy any sp*mbots to untangle that!) At that crossroads, exists the place where our potential client, hereinafter referred to as the Freethinker, visualizes a new set of beliefs.
Hoping that's enough to disguise the subject from random searches, I have to admit that there's a certain amusement value in the idea of running a Webstrainer campaign for the guy. I don't like strangeness, but I know Bernie's pretty New Age and so any client of his is likely to be Very Left. I am not, in short, in danger of finding myself selling the Inquisitional beliefs of any denomination, organization, or movement.
Bernie was a bit hesitant to ask me to take this one on. Seems he had to ask three developers to do the coding before he found one willing to be associated with the project. Subject to my reviewing the material and making a better-informed decision, I assured him that, Inquisitions, purges, and demon-hunts ruled out, I have no particular prejudices. Peace, love, and understanding--I can deal with those, regardless of the wrapper.
While I had him on the phone, I took the opportunity to point out that my original project (which I may and/or may not have named but have now decided to rechristen BunnyHouse) is gorgeous, is lovely, is running like a sweet dream but is producing nothing in the way of actual sales inquiries.
Proving that I'm sometimes unjust to him and that he is, actually, listening when I talk, he responded that it's the client's fault for not spending the $$ the project needs, we sent at least one highly qualified lead and the sales person never bothered to follow-up on it, and that it's not my fault the market is still in the middle of a huge meltdown.
I'm feeling very much in charity with Bernie at the moment. I think I'll send him a bill this evening.
Those of you who know me reasonably well (which includes everyone who reads this blog), know that I'm prone to occasional, pointless wigouts. I'm thinking of having one today. Try not to take it too seriously--in a previous life, I may have been a drama queen.
A whole slew of Gidget's campaigns need work--the idiot client revamped their website, which we knew about, but they swore that no URLS would change, which turned out to be a big, fat lie since all the URLs changed. For the last few days, I've been grabbing an hour here and there wherever I can find one, to get their ads redirected before Webstrainer notices that we're bouncing ad traffic around. I'm going to take an actual "lunch" break today, drive home, and try to get the last few reloaded.
The campaign I've been working on for Bernie is humming along like a well-oiled machine. Stats look good, search queries are relevant, ads are all performing well. (One of the best-performing has a typo, but I'm afraid to fix it because I don't want to rock the boat.) The campaign just isn't producing any actual leads for Bernie's client. My wits, they are at an end for what the problem is. I know zilch--maybe double-zilch about real estate. Webstrainer likes the ads and shows them. When people see the ads, they click on them. I've decided that my responsibility ends there.
I sat in on a call a week or so ago--I think I told you this--with another potential client for Bernie. He sent me an email yesterday saying he has yet another potential client who wants online advertising--maybe two more.
His idea, of course, is that I should quit my full-time work and focus on maximizing my free-lance work, but since his idea is also that he can grow his company to a substantial size by signing up clients and free-lancing out whatever actual work needs to be done, he would feel that way, wouldn't he?
It's not that I've gone off the idea of The Gidget Co, because I most emphatically have not, but the whole Bernie deal is a separate issue and I have to wonder just how much I want to put my future in his hands, you know?
I've barely done any work on the 'Nut campaigns this week--not for lack of interest but because I need to wait a few days to evaluate ads and the rest of the campaigns are performing well enough to sort of worry me. (I'm not well-equipped to deal with success.)
I have to get on a plane next week and then again the week after that. Flying is such a hassle any more. I'm very excited about both trips, but the actual travel part is going to be a drag.
I'm stressing. For no particular reason, but I am. Feeling pressured.
That's probably why I started writing again. I originally started when I was massively stressed--I used it as an escape from work problems and pressure I was getting from the people in my life. It worries me--just a little--that I'm back to that level of stress for the first time in 10 years, when I'm working at what is arguably the lowest-stress job I have ever had.
I tell myself that maybe I just don't have the stress tolerance levels I had twenty years ago, but that's hardly a cheerful thought.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:10 AM | Comments (2)It's ten degrees below cold outside. Normally I don't complain that much about cold temps, not unless they dip into negative numbers, but after last fall's sub-zero stretch, we had a long interlude of mild, sunny weather. I think spring fever set in early for me this year--I wasn't ready for winter to come back.
Not that I'm really complaining. It could be worse--I could be on the East Coast shoveling out from under two or three feet of white stuff and waiting on the next foot to arrive.
Our last round didn't dump more than six inches on us. (Six inches is sort of borderline--less than that and we don't bother to notice it. More and we start telling war stories.)
But, and this is where the ouch comes in, it's been warm and then it snowed and got very cold very quickly and in a careless moment I stepped out of a door and over what I thought was a puddle of melted snow but that turned out to be a six-foot long sheet of glassy ice.
sniffle I banged my knee. sniffle
Okay, not so much "banged" since it was more of a slo-mo sinking toward the pavement than an outright slip-and-crash, but it smarted for several minutes. And I got my pants dirty.
Yes, you heard that right. The biggest trauma in my life at the moment is that I had to do a load of laundry last night.
Also, I am fat. Not only did I not get that last two pounds lost, but I put two pounds back on and now I have to take all of them off. (I might have more of a head of steam up about it if I wasn't casting an eye back over the last two or three weeks and seeing a lot of pizza, Mexican food, and pasta in my days. I know I can't eat like that every day. Why I do it sometimes, I don't know.)
I am pondering having a new Theory Of Dieting. I might write a book, rip off a million pudgy but hopeful people, and retire laughing. I have a title. It's called, Eat Something. It's all about eating real food (no sugar "substitutes" or imitation this or that) but learning to exercise portion control (something I still struggle with myself, but mostly only when I eat prepared food or frozen items that are packaged as "single serving" but have enough calories to make two full meals).
I had a fairly comprehensive outline worked out, but now it's boring me and I don't care any more.
No apologies for the obscure Frasier reference. I love that show.
I forgot to tell you that, the Argonut Café having an Actual Name that's tangentially related to, well, Argonauting, I find boat references sort of funny.
So, when wandering through a craft store a week ago, I spotted an incredibly inexpensive balsa-or-wood (the material is somewhere between those two) model of a sailing ship that you were allowed to assemble and finish yourself, I forked over the six bucks (yes, that's what it cost) and took my new toy home with me.
This weekend, I finally had a couple of hours to sit down, unwrap it, lay the pieces out, and--I know you're expecting my next words to be "assemble it" or even "start assembling it, but they aren't going to be--stare at it in bewilderment.
All of the pieces are there, no problem. There's a picture--unvarnished and unpainted for better reference--of the finished product. I just--can't tell which piece is which or what goes where.
Instructions: "Punch the pieces out from the balsa/wood board they're cut into. Attach to same number (1 to 1, 2 to 2, 3 to 3, etc.) using the picture and diagrams below as reference."
That's all very nice. Simple and clear, right? When I disassemble the pieces, there are handy slots for attaching, so that all seems good. But.
The pieces don't have numbers, not on them. The numbers are on the diagram and you're supposed to figure out (guess?) which piece they apply to. Many of the pieces are very similar in shape with only slight but (I suspect) rather important differences in length or width. It's impossible to tell from the diagram or picture if these two identical pieces are A1 and the two slightly larger pieces are B1, or vice-versa. the diagram isn't that precise.
Thirty minutes into the project, I thought to stop and Ponder Boatness. This led me to the revelation that the assorted pieces needed to be assembled on the framework of the keel (something mentioned nowhere in the instructions but which, in hindsight, I should have assumed from the beginning). You can't just hook "1" to "1" (assuming you figured out which two pieces each had a slot the designer thought of as "1") because you can't just push two pieces of wood together and shout stay! It's not a puppy.
So, I found the keel, found the pieces with slots "1" and "1" (or reasonable facsimiles thereof), placed each (facsimile) "1" on one side of the keel, let them go, and watched them drop to the floor. Not a puppy. Didn't stay.
There are no tabs--none of that Tab A and Slot B stuff. Yes, slots everywhere, but no tabs to push into them. The instructions mention gluing as an option if you want a permanent piece, but not just for assembly.
Another thirty minutes, and now I'm thinking that probably, when they told us to punch the pieces out from the board they were stamp-cut into? They didn't actually intend for us to separate mirror images from each other, even though those were stamp/cut in the same way other pieces were. Because, you see, if you didn't separate the mirror image pieces, then "1" and "1" are already hooked together! Voila!!
Granted, that would have been a better thought before I detached everything, but that was what the instructions said to do and, okay, the pieces wouldn't actually be attached to the keel, so you couldn't actually make a boat but I felt encouraged by this line of thought, even without having solved the problem of which pair of mirror-images had the designer's imaginary "1" on them and which had the "2", etc.)
It took only a few minutes to pick a handful of little strips of balsa-or-wood out of the trash with the idea that these discards might have been intended to do double-duty as pegs to keep "1" and "1" in contact while YES! if you pegged the mirror-image pieces together, then separated them a fraction of an inch, the middle part of the peg would just about fit into a heretofore unexplained slot in the keel and holding the two pieces against it!
That was the theory. It worked, too, except that the (probably makeshift) pegs are a trifle too wide for the slot and tend to break rather than slide in and except that the mirror-image pieces are a little too heavy to be held into place by 1/4" of balsa-or-wood sitting loosely in a 1/2" slot.
It looked right when I was holding the first piece, but when I let it go, it was not a puppy again.
Still. I'm not discouraged. I might have spent 90 minutes on the project and not actually have gotten two pieces attached, but I will try again. I don't think I have ever made a model before, of any kind. It is verrrry interesting.
I mean, you wonder what line of work is actually available to a sociopath in today's modern society, don't you? And then you try to assemble something and you look at the wholly inadequate and frequently outright dishonest instructions, and you know.
So, NewBoss Anais and I showed up at the office at the same time last Friday, only to find out that the fire alarm was going off again. Instead of herding together in the front of the building with the other lost souls, we took off for Starbucks* and a quick latte run. They finally let us in the building around 8:30.
Note to R.C. - You see? Beyond the pleasure of an unanticipated latte, there was no particular value in me having shown up "on time" on Friday.
Then there was one of those obligatory, "it's so-and-so's birthday this week so everyone is going out to lunch on Friday" gatherings that ate up another 90 minutes of my day.
And there was another obligatory get-together in the conference room at 4:00, the reason for which I never quite grasped but inferred was related to something that happened about a month ago. We all had a glass of champagne, including me!
Not one of my more productive days, Friday, but not at all my fault.
The weekend was fun. Not wildly eventful, but fun. A trip to the Container Store where I finally broke down and bought one of the bookcases I've been coveting for the last two years. I also picked up some planet-killing stackable plastic drawers to organize some stuff in the closet. Tab: $220.00. Winces.
The drawers were just the kind of thing. Everything I needed to have fit in them did fit and it freed up a lot of space in the bottom half of the closet since I was able to remove a fairly massive but un-functional chest. (Unimportant except to me, since what I was working toward was enough vertical space for things like my pants to be able to hang without creasing.)
I disassembled and discarded** the last two black plastic bookcases in my bedroom. As I had hoped, the single wood bookcase held all of those books and has room for more. It's very exciting--I swear the room looks twice as big. Just replacing black with white lightened the entire room up--the black color had a lot of "weight" to it. And it's so tidy! The plastic bookcases wasted a lot of space both above the books on each shelf and in front of them. It's much more compact now.
And then it started to snow.
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* This was a good thing. I didn't know that Starbucks was there - it's almost within walking distance!
** Not in the trash. First floor lobby with a "free to a good home" label on them. As usual, someone wanted them and they were gone in an hour.
I like arriving in the office in the morning, opening my email, and finding some nitwit shouting at me because I haven't "fixed" something I told him was out of my control.
Yeah. I like that.
Next to that, I like opening the next email on the page and finding that someone else who doesn't understand the problem has promised that I'll "fix" it today.
Yeah, I really like that.
That was how last Friday started. Fortunately it got better after that, but I seem to be having a little trouble getting over it.
Today started off with me pouring soup on the kitchen floor when I tried to pack my lunch. I had to stop and mop up, which made me 20 minutes late to work.
I'd feel guiltier about that if it wasn't for the fact that I wasn't the last one in, not by a long ways. This place is pretty casual about that sort of thing. Whoever is covering the reception phones is supposed to be in by 8 or before but the rest of us straggle in as the mood takes us. Since I don't consider punctuality a particularly interesting or worthwhile 'virtue' I like to work places where there's a lot of -ish to that 8 am start time. I'm reasonably capable of arriving at the office around 8-ish.
This irritates the heck out of the R.C. She feels that if the official start time to a work day is 8:00, then you should be at your desk, computer booted up and bright smile pasted on your face by at least 7:55. Me, I say that if you look back two weeks ago on Tuesday and you can't remember who came in "on time" and who was either five minutes late or five minutes early? Then it's not really important, is it?
Today we also had a little fire drill here at the office. Not exactly a drill, since the alarm sounding was neither planned nor expected by any of us, but nevertheless it went off and we trooped cheerfully outside to soak in some sunshine. Ten or fifteen minutes later we were still enjoying the sunshine because the firemen hadn't arrived.
Someone called the building management company (I don't know why they didn't call the firemen, so don't ask) who apparently contacted the fire department to tell them there might and/or might not be an actual fire and that we'd all appreciate it if they could fit us into their apparently busy schedules.
Obviously, since I have the time to blog about soup on the floor, there was no fire. I don't know what triggered the alarm. They didn't show up because no one invited them to the party.Turns out that some essential connection between our alarm system and the fire house wasn't working and the firemen didn't know we'd been alarmed.
To do them credit, once they got here, they cleared the building for us all to get back to work in about five minutes, but still. Most of them weren't even very cute, which has to be against some kind of fireman regulation, don't you think?
Bernie called yesterday and I promised to take a look at a potential campaign for a potential new client. He gave me a chance to bail out--to say I didn't have time. I didn't take it. Temporary insanity or something, I don't know.
Anyhow. With luck, he won't close the deal--this one is in a completely different industry than the last one and these stand-alone campaigns are a lot harder to make successful than my other ones are.