As my brain continues to swim back toward functionality, I realize a few things have been happening in Anne's World besides a runny nose.
I found another (small) project for DiamondGirl. The Gidget Co.'s website is a gross mess--Gidget's strong point not being html coding, not even the limited amount you need to use a content manager. We're offering DiamondGirl a modest payment to go in and clean it up for us, so we look more professional.
I'm going to be able to hand off a chunk of the Freethinker's projects (I think there are going to be two) to Gidget so, paying her for a change and she has to do the bit I think of as "boring" but she likes, so, good for both of us. (Did I mention that the Freethinker thing is a 'go'? I'm not sure if I did. I think the official word came a couple of weeks ago.)
Around that same time, when I not only didn't have brain but when trying to string four or more words together caused severe oxygen deprivation, I had to sit in on a meeting with another client of Bernie's who is going to want miracles produced for 50 cents a month. (At least, they did when the meeting was scheduled. After listening to me gasp and wheeze and mutter incoherently, they may have changed their minds.) That's another project I can probably hand some of off to Gidget.
I feel so much better! Even though the weather is supposed to be ghastly, I'm looking forward to a weekend when I have the energy to do more than just roll out of bed and sit in a chair.
It turns out that the coolest thing on earth is--the planet.
Surfing the official Google Blog for new release info today, I saw the post on the new Google Earth plug-in.
I grabbed it, installed it, and 30 seconds later was viewing Aconcagua, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Matterhorn, and more. I even went to China and took a look at the Forbidden City. Pretty darned cool.
Other than that, I'm feeling much better today and getting a lot done.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:04 PM | Comments (2)Wow. I can't remember the last time my butt was so thoroughly kicked by a virus. For the last ten days I've been hovering between killmenow and forget it, I'm too tired to kick a bucket.
Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I wasn't happy. I started drooping on the 17th, hit the floor on the 20th, kept spiraling down for three days, and didn't really start crawling back toward the vertical until yesterday. I'm at about 80% now, which constitutes a huge improvement.
That's really about all I have to report. I've spent my evenings sniffing, blowing, whining, and complaining.
I did very little last weekend and even less this past weekend. Even yesterday, when I took myself out in a search for new and different medicine, I found myself standing in the drugstore, staring vaguely at a lot of boxes, none of which seemed to promise the specific miracle cure I was hoping for. I left with a small bottle of aspirin that I didn't actually need.
If the R.C. hadn't kept a steady supply of soup, sympathy, pills, and tissues coming my way, I don't know what I'd have done. Now that I've had the same virus, I know I wasn't offering her nearly enough sympathy and support when she was sick.
She shouldn't have been so stoic. When the R.C. is sick, she mostly just keeps on keeping on. I mean, she mentioned, a couple of times, that she had a head cold. That's about it. Sheesh. When I'm sick, the world knows about it. I curl up in a chair and whimper--not quietly--for days.
By the way, it snowed last night.
The R.C. mentioned last night that I didn't update after Friday's psychotic meltdown, so I'm here today to say that both my bad mood and Saturday morning's manic burst of energy (I got things done that have been waiting a year for me to get around to them) seem to have been the prelude to a wicked spring cold.
sniff - sneeze - cough - whine
I worked from home on Monday and Tuesday of this week, to keep my germs out of the office, but a local 'Nut was coming in for a meeting this morning so I had to drag myself in today. I'm trying to keep my germs to myself--lots of tissues and handwashing.
It's almost noon and I've been vertical all day so far, which is a sign that I'm getting better. Sadly, although I plastered on the foundation this morning, I still look ghastly. Fluorescent lights should be banned.
I tell you what, though. If I'd known there was no coffee I probably wouldn't have bothered to drag myself in, 'Nut meeting or no 'Nut meeting.
And that's all. My head is too stopped up for thinking.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)NewBoss Anais wanted some edits to the first draft of the newsletter (I loathe and despise people who refuse to proofread before the blue line, but then I loathe and despise everyone at this moment) and I was pretty much fine with it until I got to her request to add more white space here and there in each article.
I had to go outside and walk it off, I was so angry.
Because, yes, what this stupid newsletter needs is more white space.
It's not ugly and confusing enough that the titles already float in a sea of white, with an inch-wide gap above and below them, disconnecting them from the articles they supposedly introduce, no, now we need the bullet points separated by empty spaces.
Considering that these people have tendency to use bullet points because they think it makes the article look professional and not because they have any kind of list to incorporate, this turned out to be just one step further into the mire of stupidity than I was willing to go today--at least, without cursing, stomping, and invoking the gods of style to come down and smite whoever decreed that "rules" don't apply online and whoever decided that everyone with a keyword can "write."
For a few minutes, I was just filled with ugliness. I'm still pretty angry.
I can't understand why this stupid newsletter affects me this way. I took my name off of it long ago--a year or more. I don't read the blasted thing--not even when I'm coding it. Other than wasting four or five hours of my day once a month, it really doesn't have anything to do with me or my job. Why, then, do the related idiocies that I'm unable to be unaware of have the power to drive me right to the brink of insanity?
I'm serious. You wouldn't think that anyone with my personally cavalier approach to grammar and punctuation would go so ballistic, but mention "newsletter" and "white space" in the same sentence and I'm looking at the world through blood-red glasses.
Even now, at this moment, I'm blogging about it because I have so far been unable to force myself to go back in, override the template ("correct" ) style, and recode it all manually so that not only article titles but individual paragraphs can swim in a sea of white.
TGIF
One hour later....
Oh, fine.
I fought with the software for half an hour and then told NewBoss Anais that overriding the default settings would mean the newsletter could not go out today and she said, "okay, then, forget it, it was just an idea."
And then from the Webstrainer forum I haunt, one of the Webstrainer people sent me an email and wants to arrange a call to explain all about how I'm about to be named one of Mother's Little Helpers on the forum (I was already user of the week a little while back) with associated (one assumes) responsibilities.
Way to waste a good mad.
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.
___________________
* Sadly for you, I am not so sick I won't be able to get online and whine about it for the next week.
I am just so crabby this week. I don't know why.
I'm trying to clean up some free Webstrainer listings and finding sheer anarchy--different 'Nuts have done whatever they felt like doing, regardless of what's best for the brand overall--of a kind that's almost impossible to clean up. Every six months, some half-wit "discovers" that the free resource exists and they tell all the 'Nuts to run out and take advantage of it and a couple of dozen of them do--with the result that we now have locations with two, three, or four competing listings, the only one of which is any good (mine) isn't actually active.
This project, Webstrainer-related or not, is completely outside the scope of my actual job, of course.
They are getting some kind of teenager summer help here, calling the kid an "intern" (which, I guess, sounds better than, "the boss's daughter" and NewBoss Anais wanted to know what the kid could help me with. I responded, quite promptly, that the best thing anyone could do for me is not help.
Also, I had forgotten that it's stupid 'NutNews week. The files, promised to me, as always, by 8:00 am on Thursday, have not yet appeared on my desk. (I did put it on my calendar for the next couple of months, so it would stop being a surprise to me.) All it really means is that all the projects that have been getting pushed back all week are now having to be pushed back another four hours--front-loading next week's schedule to a depressing extent.
I checked online and I still have 100 hours of vacation/sick time banked. Obviously, at least half of it has to be reserved for those days when I need to take a day off to work on special freelance projects*, but maybe I can afford to take a "spring fever" day off some day soon? Or a sick day, because I'm sick and tired of being crabby, although I don't actually think a single extra day off is going to make life all joyful again.
There are Things I Must Do this weekend. I have boxes to take to the post office, boxes to take to storage, a pile of papers to sort and shred, cleaning to accomplish, laundry to wash, and some seeds to plant. Thinking of these things, I realize none of them make me feel more cheerful** but I've got one of those over-stressed, over-stimulated, over-stuffed modes going and need to take some curative action.***
What I'm not going to do is go shopping--not for anything. I feel like I've been cleaning unloved clothes out of my closet and unloved junk out of the rest of my life for the past ten years without actually creating any space and I'm crabby about that as well. I don't really enjoy shopping if I'm not buying**** and all I'm buying this weekend is one more of my bookcases. (It's not an indulgence, it's a necessity, since getting the books on shelves is a key component of my Master Tidying Up Plan).
It's a problem to think of other things to do on the weekends, though. I don't enjoy museums when they're so crowded I can't really spend time looking at the things that interest me (and not all traveling exhibits interest me anyhow).
While I do realize that a little more physical exercise would do me no harm, for various reasons, long outdoor walks aren’t really ideal for me. (Also? Walking just to be walking? Talk about a waste of a conscious brain….)
Still. Not a problem this weekend. I have a list and the usual few hours of freelance work.
Two hours later
Today's "quick 30 minutes" meeting went on for just over an hour and a half.
So. Very. Crabby.
_______________________
* I should email Bernie. I haven't heard anything about the Freethinker's project yet.
_______________________
** Rationally I know that getting those boxes out of the floor is one of those chores I might not be interested in doing but will be glad to have done. (So stupid. Both of those things together will take a maximum 30 minutes, including waiting in line at the post office. Why can I not just make myself do them?)
_______________________
*** The inevitable, I suppose, result of the relentless stream of meetings and calls and consultations and whatnot I've been having all month. I feel like people have been coming at me from every direction all month long.
_______________________
**** Shopping is boring unless I'm looking for something in particular or indulging myself in new books. Shopping malls drive me crazy with the stroller brigades and the screaming kids and the tottering geezers.
I'm having one of those weeks--months--where there are so many 'special' projects on my calendar that the time between projects--which is the time I have left over to do my job--is almost non-existent.
Whiny 'Nuts on interminable conference calls, end-of-quarter reporting, sending out stats to 'Nuts, dealing with the inevitable flood of responses, creating and launching useless and time-wasting "test" campaigns of one kind or another, meetings, research projects, etc. It's all a bit much for me this week.
In fact, this morning I pushed all the "special projects" on my calendar back a couple of hours and swore to myself that I was going to work on my job for a little while, only to realize that it's been so long since I had a decent stretch of time to focus on that sort of thing that I couldn't quite remember what it was I should be doing.* (Checking my calendar, I see that I haven't had a lot of time to do my job, not for more than an hour at a stretch, since late February, before I left town (twice).)
I say all of this by way of justifying myself.
NewBoss Anais came to my desk yesterday and wanted "five or ten minutes" to show me the new website pages (like I care) and I told her to schedule a meeting on Friday or maybe one day next week.
I'm good at scheduling my tasks, okay? I'm sometimes, but rarely, over-committed, but I'm careful to leave time between projects so that if one runs long, it doesn't throw my whole schedule off.
What I can't do, is prevent NewBoss Anais from promising meetings to time-wasting losers** (like Moaning Martie) and shoving them onto my calendar, regardless. Including an hour for a very boring phone call, I lost four hours on Monday, trying to "prove" that the problem is Moaning Martie's unwillingness to spend the money it takes to succeed.***
So, four hours of Monday's projects got pushed to Tuesday but I could only push three hours of Tuesday's projects back and had to just work faster to get the rest done and now it's Wednesday and I can only fit two hours of Tuesday's projects in, so the other hour was slated to be pushed to Thursday except that I had a little hissy fit and pushed all of this morning's projects back two hours and now Tuesday's pushed projects and one Wednesday project are scheduled for Thursday and, sadly, Friday, a day when I'd actually "booked" time on my own calendar to do my job, something that no longer fits into my schedule.
So very annoying.
Two hours later
Aarrgghh. I'm going to run out of things to complain about.
Moaning Martie is moving his account to outside management so, no longer my problem. MadBoy is just plain going away. (Going away! Hooray!)
_____________________
* This, as I'm well aware, since she told me so, is precisely how Gidget got to the point of needing them to hire me. She was doing the job and got sidetracked onto so many other projects that they had to hire someone to do her original job--and then when layoff time came, they decided the 'special' projects weren't that important but that her original job, which I was now doing, was. So, she went and I didn't.
The big difference between her and me is that I rather like the work of this job and she hated it. And she's an actual (and expert) marketing, while I know nothing.
** I know, that's awfully rude. And I don't really mean to be insensitive, but working with bipolar people is just exhausting. Especially the kind that give strong evidence that they don't take their meds regularly.
*** Yes, I do realize that $300 bought him the sun, the moon, and the stars, in January of 2008, when he began. But it's now April of 2010 and things have changed.
Yesterday, I started writing a story. For absolutely no rational reason, I wrote a thousand words about a twelve year-old girl with, the improbable name of Annalouinda, who lives in a small town in Kansas, where nothing happens and it doesn't happen in the slowest, most boring way imaginable. She might be psychotic.
If this keeps up, I should just give in and write write, you know? Clearly my brain insists on writing, regardless. I should work on the Great Imaginary Novel instead of writing random and pointless scraps of nothing. (Although, like the Lent thing, this could be viewed as an exercise. I've never thought about mood before.*)
Also? It is a winter wonderland outside. They lied about the weather (as they frequently do) and it's sticking to the pavement. It's sticking to everything in sight. I cleaned four inches worth of their "maybe an inch" off my car this morning.
I had lunch plans for today but I know my friends well, so I packed a lunch this morning. That way, when I opened my email and saw messages from them, suggesting we reschedule, I was ready.
I'm stalling before I get today's work started. I don't know why. My first task is to read a pile of surveys submitted by 'Nuts who responded to my request for more specific information around what markets they're interested in
I wrote the survey, I made NewBoss Anais send it out, most of them filled it out and sent it in, NewBoss Anais printed them all out and brought them to me, and they've been sitting in a file folder on my desk for the last six weeks, waiting for me to have time to get to them.
Oh, and did I mention that I've chosen my next Great Course? I need to get it ordered this week, I hope it's still on sale. Quantum Mechanics. I tried to resist, but I just can't. Physics--quantum physics--is endlessly fascinating and the description of this one swears you don't need a PhD in math to understand the material.
__________________
* I'm eager to get my reading course finished because I really do want to go back and listen to a couple of the earlier lessons. There was some good stuff around point of view and how selecting different points of view affects what you can do in the story, like setting mood or using narrative voice. This making conscious choices about this stuff is new to me, but I'm starting to find it very interesting.**
I'm also eager to finish because the mythology course is burning a (metaphorical) hole in my (mental) pocket. I love mythology and am looking forward to this course adding to my appreciation. (Also, the G.I.N., being a work of fantasy, requires me to ponder gods, goddesses, and divine intervention.)
__________________
** I know you can completely stall yourself by spending too much time pondering process. I don't care. It's my hobby and I'll wander off on whatever tangents I find amusing.
They put snow back into our forecast for tomorrow. Booo! Only an inch or two and it's been too warm for it to stick to the pavement, but still.
I stopped by Micro Center on the way home last night and picked up a second set of composite cables. I also grabbed a coaxial adapter, just in case. Last night, I unpackaged the composites, unhooked the old VCR, put the new VCR on the TV stand, and basically just hooked every cable I could find into some kind of (color-coded) receptor.
And it worked! Hooray!
The R.C. complained, pointing out that we could have chandelier-bulbed* it for at least two more weeks. I see her point and I'm as capable as anyone, or much more, of chandelier-bulbing things endlessly, but that's before I start a project. Once I get started, I have to finish
Also, the R.C. is complaining about the mess in the living room and she has a point. The unloved TV and an oversize, wheeled plastic chest I took out of my room and intended to put down in the lobby with a "free to a good home" sign take up a fair amount of real estate. As do the old VCR and the boxes from both the new television and the new VCR.
But, although the R.C. hates the old VCR with the heat of a thousand suns (it's a bit notional these days), I can see a use for a tape player in my bedroom (I can play DVDs, but a lot of what I own is still on videotape) and I'm considering putting the machine in there until it actually and finally gives up the ghost.
Anyhow. Snow is coming. This might discourage our trees and flowers, all of which are bursting into bloom after a gloriously warm, sunny weekend.
You might ask why I have time for random blogging this week. Well, it's the first two weeks of April, which is pretty much our slowest two weeks of the year. Right after tax day, the busy season starts in a hurry and it will be rush-rush-rush for several months after that. I'm taking some advantage of the relative calm (this week's calendar shows several spots where I have nothing actually scheduled--sometimes for a full hour at a time) to dink around a little. I have a seminar in an hour, but until then, there's only one small project on my schedule.
Also, yesterday afternoon I finally figured out what I'd done that trashed two of my best campaigns so thoroughly in March and undid it. Now I'm chewing my nails and waiting to see results.
Also, I'm waiting on a report to run.
Last night (after the Electronics Adventure), I slouched down into my comfy chair and played my new game for three solid hours. It's very interesting. More complicated than the others--this is the first major structural change in how the Harvest Moon games work that I've seen. There are new characters, some old characters were not included, and many of the basic, familiar goals have been significantly altered.
I'm writing Rapunzel a letter right now and I have not forgotten to mention this to her--and to blame :) her for getting me addicted to these silly games. Her mom, the L-i-K-S, showed me Harvest Moon on the Wii when I visited them in February, but I don't see me getting a Wii. The point of gaming, to me, is that it's hand-held--I can do it without annoying anyone else in the room, and it's easy to pick up and put down.
The DS also distracts me. I have been snacking far too much recently. I'm getting all porky again. I need to pull myself together--spring and summer are coming and I'm going to have to stop wearing a coat pretty soon--and start dieting. Playing a new and absorbing game is a good dieting tool for me.
____________________________
* That one (the chandelier bulb thing) needs explaining**, I know.
Long ago, my mother lived in a house with an overhead light-ceiling fan fixture. She loved it, except that she didn't like the shape of the light bulbs.
So, every store she went in to, she looked to see if they sold light bulbs and if they did, what shape bulbs they sold.
If she went to the same store three times in one week, she checked their stock of light bulbs every time she was in there. She would inspect every bulb and discuss whether or not it was made for ceiling fixtures and why the shape was "wrong" for what she wanted. In all the time I shopped with her, I never actually saw her buy a light bulb.
She did this for two or three years. She went to the same stores every week, inspected the same stock of light bulbs, complained about each of them individually, and left the store empty-handed.
Anyhow. Now, when the R.C. and I spend more time discussing a project than it would take to do it, or we talk about doing something but don't actually get around to doing it for several weeks (or months, as in the case of cleaning out the hall closet), we refer to it as "chandelier-bulbing" the project.
** The R.C. complained that by the time she gets to the end of some of these posts, she's forgotten what the asterisks refer to. She thought I should give context each time.
As I pointed out, I don't write these posts to be read. It would never have occurred to me that people routinely read them all the way through (Heck, I write them and I don't read them) so I never worried about that kind of thing. However, for those of you who waded down this far--context!
Posted by AnneZook at 09:19 AM | Comments (3)Okay, two-and-a-half, but it felt like eight hours.
The R.C. and I are both big Austen fans and are always up for trying a new movie or miniseries from any of her works. Unfortunately, Persuasion (coincidentally, the favorite of each of us) has never been brought to screen successfully. About a year ago, we purchased a DVD that we thought was the "best" of what we'd seen--talk about damned with faint praise--and yesterday we sat down to re-watch it for the first time.
That’s two-and-a-half hours of a gloriously sunny Sunday that I'll never get back again.
All I can say is that if, at a time when we were trying a lot of versions, this one not only struck us as the "best" but as something good enough to spend money on, I hope I never remember how ghastly the others were.
I remember a time, quite a few years ago, when the local art house was showing a new adaptation that was getting a lot of good press and word of mouth. I took myself off to see it one day and then walked out--very early on--at the point where Our Heroine was packed off to visit her sister, dangling her legs off the back of a farm cart.
I want my weekend back!
Pauses to blush.
Yes, mostly because I got a new Harvest Moon game. Sunshine Islands! I need to be home playing with it.
Also because we got a new television Saturday. Not because we're rich, but because our VCR is going out and we got a new one and then it turned out that our TV was so old that it didn't have the necessary connectors on the back to hook up the (inexpensive) new VCR. So, the $80 VCR led to a $400 television expense.
Anyhow, I need to be, not home, but at Micro Center, buying a set of cables--I got the new TV hooked up and working fine, but we didn't have the right cables for the new VCR, so now we have a $a brand-new television and still can't watch anything on tape. I'm stopping at Micro Center on the way home tonight.
I can't think of anything else that needs to be said right now.
(In response to the R.C.s recent complaint about excess randomness, I have not footnoted. Thus, the world is spared my opinion on how Persuasion could be fitted to a movie screen, my idle thoughts about one one-hour stage adaptation, and a discussion of the daffodils that are blooming outside the office. You're welcome.)
Posted by AnneZook at 03:09 PM | Comments (4)Hollywood, that is. Of course, it frequently does seem to be, and in this list of 75 movie reboots, I found evidence that the 'film industry' is in one of their periodic slumps.
I assume they're working on the theory that something someone liked once upon a time must still be a good idea, regardless of why that someone liked it fifty years ago and whether or not plans include trying to duplicate that circumstance today.
Some of these things are good ideas. The Phantom Tollbooth is a good idea, although it would be better entirely animated than a live-animation mix.
Remaking The Rockford Files (this one's for tv--I don't know why it's in a movie reboot list) is a good idea, if they stay true to the original flavor.
Remaking Hawaii 5-0, well, that might work.
More Johnny (Number) Five in a new Short Circuit is a happy idea.
Other than that, the list seems to be composed largely of remakes of horror movies. (Trust me, people. If you're not Hitchcock, you should leave Hitchcock's material alone. If you were smart enough to remake it decently, you'd be smart enough to come up with your own storyline.)
I personally feel that most contemporary horror movies rely too heavily on special effects for blood and gore and on someone jumping out from a dark corner every thirty seconds. I generally assume that these moviemakers are trying to disguise the fact that they don't actually know what a good horror movie should look like.
Some of the ones that aren't horror remakes are new sequels to some of the Dumbest Movies Ever, including Police Academy and Porkys.
The remaking of Conan (as in Barbarian) gets a bye for casting Jason Momoa.
I don't disapprove of more Alien, if done well, but without Sigourney Weaver, I won't be lining up for popcorn.
The one that really has my brain whirling, though, is the plan to remake Gilligan's Island. I cannot imagine how you could translate the dopey (no pun intended) charm of the original into a move for the 21st century.
Someone go see it for me (if it ever reaches release) and tell me about it, okay?
Month-end reporting today. I know I whine about month-end reporting sometimes, but I whine about everything.
Truth is, I like month-end reporting. It's my one chance to spend several hours staring at today's numbers in the context of the numbers from the past three years and decide if I'm an abject failure or just not quite "good" yet.* To add to the excitement, I change how I capture data each year, so it's never quite an apples-to-apples comparison. This, along with the tendency of any spreadsheet full of numbers to adjust itself to produce whatever results it thinks will give you the fastest aneurysm**--regardless of "truth"--means that month-end reporting can be fairly amusing.
My boss is doing Lent. People think I don't know anything about religion, but I know things. Lent comes before Easter. People do Lent--deprive themselves--because Jesus died--they were deprived of him--and then they stop Lenting (I'm pretty sure that's not a word) and celebrate Easter, which is when it turned out he wasn't all that dead after, all, he'd just gone off to live in a cave for a while until the lynch mob dispersed.
Ashes come into it somehow, on your face, but I've never been quite clear about that bit. Also, communion, but I'm incapable of talking about that without Stranger In a Strange Land references, so I'll move on.
Maybe they--the ashes--are something Jewish people do. I know very little about Judaism (except that a close inspection of many of their religious "rules" reveals a foundation more sensible and more logical than most other religions can offer).
Also, getting back to the Lent thing, I think there was something about bees or honey in the wilderness. Maybe bees and honey, which would make more sense. There were fish, but that came earlier on. And hearing voices, but bibles are full of a lot of that kind of thing. ***
I don't know why they call it Lent. Maybe you're supposed to give back? (ba-da-boom!)
Anyhow. I also know that when my boss is done Lenting (definitely not a word), she'll be allowed to eat chocolate again. The reason I know this is because ever since she saw I have a big bowl of bite-sized candy bars at my desk, she's been coming over to check the chocolate level in the bowl at least once a day. She thinks I don't notice, but I know she's checking to see if there will still be any left by the time she's allowed to eat chocolate again.
What I know and she doesn't is that I saved half the bag of candy bars to put out next week, when she's post-Lent. I couldn't decide whether or not to tell her.
It might be against the rules, you know? Maybe when they're giving things up, they're not allowed to console themselves with the thought that one day soon they'll be able to have them again? Because, you know, Back In the Day, no one knew Jesus was off in the cave, they thought he was gone forever.
Or, maybe because now they know he was going to come back, they're allowed to think of how the stuff they loved and gave up will come back?
Both possibilities are equally likely, aren't they?
I'm really just working on my story at the moment. I'm pondering the uses of ambiguity--writing events where the real meaning isn't immediately clear. Precisely why my brain chose to work out this question in terms of Lent is a mystery to me.
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*I'm the latter this month, which is about as good as it gets.
** No, really. They do that. It's like--it's like horses.
A horse can tell by the way you walk up to it whether or not you know what you're doing. If it thinks you don't, then nothing you do will induce it to behave properly. Nudges, commands, and directions that, if delivered by an "expert" would produce walking, trotting, or even dancing a polka, are rewarded with stolid indifference until eventually you're reduced to the humiliation of having someone lead the stupid beast along the trail while you sit on its back like a bag o'rocks.
Numbers are like that. If they know you don't really like them, that you prefer words, they wait until you blink and then scurry around the page, landing in strange and unfamiliar places. Then they laugh at you, and not quietly.
***I am aware that much of that was erroneous. I wouldn't want you to think I'm quite that culturally ignorant.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:29 PM | Comments (2)