Going to school

Not eating my eraser this Saturday morning, but I am back in school. Get to sit next to a nose-whistler. Just like elementary school.

Post Update

So I'm moved into my cube, starting to like my post and this space. It's kind of quiet with a post on one side and a wall on the other, and only one guy next door who plays muzak all day long. That's wearing a little thin, but otherwise I'm pretty happy. Oh and also except for every person who walks past my cube stopping and saying "how's it going? like your new space?" Here's an updated for everyone: YES. Yes, I like my new space. Yes, the post feng shui sucks. The poison arrows of the sharp corners are pointed straight at the back of my head. GOT IT. Shut up and GO AWAY!!

Post

We're moving offices. I get to move two cubicles down, which hardly seems worth it. Especially since I was practically volunteered to move into a cubicle with a 3 x 3 foot post in the middle of it. There is some room for a chair to slide out from under the desk, but barely. The reason I get this lovely spot? I don't really do anything that involves moving away from my computer anyhow...

So, I've come up with a brilliant plan - I need to make the post more friendly by coming up with a good use for it (like for example a "beat head here" target holder) or a good name for it. That'll make it friendlier and more sympathetic.

Or pathetic.

I'll keep you posted! Aha ha ha ha!

But... what about you?

I was telling a colleague about people bringing over dinners for us now that my mom is sick. On Tuesday we had a huge roaster brought over with chicken and all kinds of vegetables and a salad and even a beautiful strawberry dessert made with fresh strawberries and cream. Yum!

Last night dinner showed up and it was turkey dinner. Potatoes and rice, steamed carrots, steamed cauliflower, steamed brussle sprouts, and a salad, enough gravy to float my boat, and stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce. Topped off by cooked chocolate pudding and a homemade plum cake. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

My colleague said "but... what about you? Don't these people realize that you're fully capable of cooking for your family?"

Well, it's not like I'm tricking them into bringing food...

Back to the grind...

I had a couple days off to take care of my mom who was at home sick... came back to an absolute panicked boss and co-workers. Kind of nice to know I was missed!

Unfortunately it means three hours of slogging through emails and catching up projects for the next couple of days. Oh well! At least I had a couple of beautiful sunny days at home doing what I love best: reading!

P.S.

You were probably wondering what happened with my new best friend today?? Well today for the fifth time this week I had to explain to her that it was impossible for us to change our splash page for our homepage because it was built in flash and can only handle text-only XML components. I think the computer words "only" and "text" confused her.

"But how about we add a logo graphic instead of text?" "No."
"Could we make this an extra button?" "No. And those elements aren't buttons. They're Flash, it's a whole picture, think of it as a flat one screen movie."
"How about we could change the font to a larger size." "No. It's an XML portion imbedded in Flash. We can't change the font."

She went to my boss and checked with her. (grr!) "Maria said that I can't change this page..." My boss said "what are you checking with me for? Maria's right. If Maria says it can't be changed it can't be changed, you can depend on it. I can't give you a different answer than that, and I'll give you the same reason -- it's built in Flash. We can't change it. We know it sucks but we can't change it."

She wanted to add: and don't come and ask me to change Maria's answer ever again!

And now you all know why we're called the "No" Girls around the office.

Staff Planning Day

Today we had a Staff Planning Day. It was as boring as it sounds excepting, of course, the unit updates. We had Celebrity Hollywood Squares done by our team and I was Where's Waldo and Martha Stewart, a sock puppet/Barenaked Ladies performance by the ever creative Resource Development group, and a hilarious Research Hit Mix 2005 Album that highlighted great hits by the Research group this year. But the rest of it was a complete waste of a day... or maybe I'm just one of those employees who don't really need to have a say of what the department does. We had exercises that seemed to be really managerial with setting up hypothetical budgets for hypothetical important projects that we could decide about. Kind of a waste of a day... except they let us out at 2pm. Whoo!

Logging off

I have a new best friend at work. She doesn't know how to turn her computer on. She doesn't know how to link in an email. She doesn't know how to use the internet.

She came to my desk today to ask me what the IT guy meant when he asked her to log off her computer before she left. I showed her: click on start, then choose log off. She didn't think she had a start button on her machine, so I had to go with her to check.

Apparently she does know enough to change her settings. Her back drop is a cute puppy, her task bar is up the right side of the window, her start button really doesn't say start. Why do people mess with their settings and then expect help??

What a waste

Our department meeting on Friday will be a spectacular event. All the units have to present a five minute update on last year's projects and a heads-up on new projects. It's always been a time for units to out-do each other. Even in five minutes.

This year I get to be Where's Waldo in our project update. I'm telling ya, it's going to be spectacular!

Retail Therapy

Went out at lunch to do some shopping, only to arrive at the corner of the street where I thought there was a certain shop, only to find a different one there. For some reason, even though I knew that that one was there too, I was suprised.

So no retail therapy for me at lunch. How disappointing.

Sneezing

Sometimes when you're asleep on the bus and someone sneezes three times really loudly on to the back of your head, don't you just want to get up and smack them and then throw them off the bus for spreading germs?

Sneaky suspicion

I always have this sneaky suspicion that the drycleaners don't actually clean my stuff... just return it to me ironed. How do they do it? Do they use soap but no water? Ultraviolet radiation?

Especially suspicious is this place that advertises Martinizing brand of dry cleaning. Martinizing : Slave labour Martians?

Cards for guys

Here's a great business opportunity, creating a line of cards for guys... you could come up with all kinds of pseudo-serious card categories and have the funniest cards with all kinds of wild statements in them. Like "thanks for distracting the hot blonde girl's ugly friend last night" "Please remember, I owe you 15 beers next time we go out" "Dude, sorry that I always puke in your car, we can take mine next time." Too bady guys don't really go into card stores.

Maybe in my next life I should write cards... that would be an interesting fun job! I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm contemplating my next job change.

Anxiety

I have a certain amount of anxiety about people making fun of a character trait or one of my habits... isn't there always a grain of truth to sarcasm?

Office supplies

I am so lame... for leaving this so long and then starting with such a lame topic.

So the most exciting thing that has happened to me lately is shopping for office supplies. I got all geeked about standing in front of rows and rows of nice new pens and pencils in packages, and envelopes and folders and important office stuff. I felt about seven years old, like I was getting ready for "back to school" - enough to know it was going to be monumental at first with all new stuff, but then kind of a let down to know that once you've got the pencils unwrapped and sharpened and have taken the first bite out of the brand new eraser, it's just back to the grind for another year.

Except that I don't go to school anymore, so my life is back to the grind... every single day.