Both Ends

When I got back to my desk from afternoon break on Friday, there was a sticky note on my chair from my boss, which read "See me ASAP!!!" This is never good.

It turned out we had some emergency last-minute changes to our itinerary for this trip; yesterday they developed further, and now we'll be heading back a day earlier than anticipated. So we're changing people's flight arrangements and trying to find hotel accommodations and travel finances and stuff like that.

Actually, they're handling most of it back at the office, but I did have to meet with our contacts last night to go over the changes, after the day's activities were over - hence the fun little gathering over drinks at the dance hall - and I still need to notify all the attendees today and coordinate things from their end.

I have the CUTEST room tonight. Last night. Whatever. It has a charming Swiss-chalet design with a little living area downstairs, with a day bed; the bathroom is downstairs too. Upstairs is an adorable big bedroom with a nice soft king-sized bed on an iron bedstead, cathedral ceilings, wood floors, and a little balcony overlooking the garden.

Downstairs, the floor is flagstones and the ceilings are pressed tin. The bathroom has a claw-footed tub and lace curtains. It's just beautiful! And there's free wi-fi, to boot.

But when you wake up at 4:30 needing to pee, having to navigate the stairs down and back up, when you've got lots of stuff on your mind, means you're not getting back to sleep.

Oh well. Hopefully I can make up for it tonight. Or tomorrow night. Whatever.

Revisitation

This time tomorrow, I should know a lot more about San Angelo than I do now. We'll be visiting Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum - particularly of interest as I understand they sometimes have re-enactors performing there.

You wouldn't be able to sleep, either.

Ah, the enduring glamor of the sex trade! Last week, a friend and I were lamenting the dearth of variety among 1-900 lines, and came up with the idea of a discount phone sex service - oh, say, $1.50 for the first minute, and just 39 cents a minute thereafter - which would be so cheap because it would be a random grab bag. You might get some sultry-voiced individual of the gender of your preference, describing in detail all the borderline illegal things he or she was going to do to you; or you might get Ernest Borgnine offering you a Siberian toenail massage. And no, you don't get to hang up and call back.

Or as in the present case, you could get a lapful of Slappy White, purring fish breath in your face and digging his claws affectionately into your bare legs.

I gotta get out of town.

Sleepless in Austin

If it's not one thing, it's another: this time, not only did Papa Silhavy's ashes get left on the baggage carousel in Seattle, but so did poor Magda. Oh! the indignity!

Those things pinch, too.

Meanwhile, here in Austin, I had a pretty quiet couple of days off, which I dedicated largely to manicure upkeep. This gets old after a while.

Do you know what a Beverly Hills manicure is? It used to be called an American manicure - as opposed to French, you know - back when I used to do the fake nail thing, which nobody does anymore, except in Beaumont. It's clear pink polish over the nail beds and sheer off-white on the tips, which gives the overall effect that you have really nice nails that aren't all split and peely and uneven-looking; and like a lot of the dumb stuff we dames do in the name of beauty, takes quite a lot of effort to make it look like you aren't even trying.

On those stupid MySpace survey things when one of the questions is "What's the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?" no man has ever, ever, ever answered "Her fingernails." Not the gay ones either. Nobody.

The other thing you can do if you take time off during the week is go to breakfast at Magnolia. Even on a Thursday morning there's a fifteen-minute wait. Forget about the weekend. It's a pity, because I remember a time when you could go there and actually hope to eat something yummy - gingerbread pancakes, perhaps, though my personal favorite is the Popeye omelet - within a reasonable amount of time. Now the waiting area is just as packed as Rain on a Saturday night. They should have bouncers who turn you away if you don't smell like locally-produced, organic personal hygiene products.

You can also go to happy hour and show up early enough that you might get a table and/or a parking space.

When I lived in Corpus, the thing I really liked about it was that it wasn't crowded. There wasn't a lot of traffic, and even Wal-Mart shopping was not a completely traumatic experience. You could pop by the HEB after work to pick up a few items and have no trouble whatsoever acquiring a shopping cart (as long as you weren't looking for one of those kiddie-car shaped ones, because they don't have those there at all) and be in and out in fifteen minutes. If you went out dancing, there was room to get away from the person grinding on you if you wanted to (which you did; there are no cute guys in Corpus). People who live there tend to move away after a while, so there's plenty of elbow room.

Austin is wonderful and people keep moving here in droves and now it's just too crowded to go anywhere, but that's okay because you couldn't afford it anyway.

I hear Barrow is lovely this time of year.

In the Subjunctive Mood for Love

The problem with atrium-style hotels, you know, is that every room door is visible not only from every other room door, but from the lobby as well. This means there's really no way your paramour can get to you without a strong chance of being seen.

Let me pause for a moment and clarify that this is entirely hypothetical. If there were a man I would take for my lover - and I am not for one moment suggesting that there might be - well, he wouldn't be here in this hotel, or indeed in this city; and in fact, I wouldn't even work with him. No, it's just that I have a very big day ahead of me tomorrow, and an even bigger three days after that, and my mind is racing, and it's vitally important that I get a good night's sleep. Especially considering the whole coffee issue I mentioned earlier.

The rendez-vous could still be managed, but it'd be extremely risky. The whole hotel is booked with our conference. So even if my hypothetical suitor were so overcome by passion that he'd crawl to me on his hands and knees, hidden from sight behind the waist-high railing, he might still encounter a coworker in the hallway. And the carpet burns would probably put him out of action anyway.

Guess it just wouldn't have meant to been.

Major Adjustments

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: the great and terrible thing about working in Totally Pointless Projects was the lack of real expectations. How I miss those leisurely trips across Riverside to Dominican Joe! We won't even get started on three-martini breaks. What glorious times those were, when the 3MBG was fully staffed.

The bad thing about it was when they decided there damn well ought to be some expectations and started making us document everything, only without actually giving us anything to do, except some projects that are - well, totally pointless, to get right down to it. Weekly status reports, monthly status reports, Scotland Yard to document when we arrived and left, and pointless fish meetings every other week - those constituted the bulk of my workload. I don't miss 'em.

The really bad thing about it was the reason I kept trying to get out, despite the often cushy lifestyle: I was so afraid I'd be ruined for actual work. And it's true, though hopefully the effect is not permanent. I'm very busy, I have to get stuff done (though I'm not expected to produce a lot of documentation showing that I've done so, because it would be pretty obvious if I weren't doing my job); more than that, I worry about doing my job well, and I certainly don't have time to loaf about on the break tables or at the coffeehouse. It's not easy to adjust to.

But perhaps the strangest and most bittersweet change of all is no longer working among the sort of people who thrive in the Totally Pointless Projects environment - the people who have been there for years, or even decades, until they bear little resemblance to what you and I know as humans. I don't think I've smelled microwave popcorn since starting the new job, not even at breakfasttime. No Phantom Pharter haunts the kitchenette. No headphone antenna bobs about ominously over the tops of distant cubicles. The sound of snoring does not fill the air, nor does the floor shake violently, sending items tumbling off the shelves, with anyone's thunderous approach.

So I'm stressed out, depressed, and can't sleep. It's either PTSD or withdrawal from some chemical in the microwave popcorn fumes. Whatever it is, I better hurry up and get used to it.

Decisions, Decisions

This afternoon at about 4:40, my desk phone rang. It was the woman I interviewed with last Friday. She was calling to offer me the job. So we talked for a few minutes, and I told her that, while I was pretty sure I'd accept, I'd like to think about it over the weekend. I am still not completely certain it's the right thing to do. Well, who better to ask for advice than the interwebz?

So here are some good reasons and bad reasons, to stay and to go.

Good reasons to go:
I'm being offered a 6% pay increase. Shazayam!

The work appears, on the face of it, to be a better match for my background and overall career goals, inasmuch as I have any.

My current work group is permanently bogged down in one pointless, fruitless project after another, and as far as I can tell, this is largely just because the panicmonger's boss dislikes her so much.

No more panicmonger, no more hourly and daily and weekly and monthly status reports, no more documenting the documentation, no more Scotland Yard... at least, not as far as I know. I have to admit I didn't ask that in the interview. ("Would I be expected to show up on time at this job?")

I'd get to travel a lot more!

Jobs don't seem to open up very often in the new division, which would kind of tend to indicate that people aren't leaving. And I do take it as a positive sign that they move so quickly.

Bad reasons to go:
Practically everybody else has, and I really want a happy hour.

I beat the newbies! Ha ha! In your face, newbies!

Robbie wants me to make the PM cry.

The building has better lighting. And it's closer to home!

The prospective new boss seemed really, really happy and excited when she called to make the offer. (I don't know if that's really a bad reason, but I'm putting it under the emotional reasons vs. rational reasons column, anyway.)

I wouldn't have to share a ladies' room with those stuck-up girls from Bridge anymore.

Good reasons to stay:
In the new job, I would be the third person in line to answer phones to the general public in case of an emergency such as Hurricane Rita. That sounds so not fun.

The job overall is entirely administrative - "soft" work, whereas what I'm doing now is partly technical - "hard" work. I'm probably better suited to "soft" but the "hard" work makes me feel smarter. And overall this would put me back on the "softer" career path.

I enjoy a significant portion of my current work, and those particular job duties excuse me from the bulk of the hopeless, endless, pointless projects mentioned above.

I'm on the short track to promotion and am generally treated extremely well, including being exempt from a lot of the tracking and checking up that many of my coworkers - and for that matter the PM - are subject to.

I like the people I work with, particularly Robert, with whom I work very closely, who recruited me to the agency two years ago, thus rescuing me from Corpus and from underpaid marketing hell, and who will be seriously left in the lurch by my leaving.

Bad reasons to stay:
The great unknown. What if I don't like it? Is there an "undo" button?

Guilt. Agh! The walloping, horrible, awful guilt.

Though it's closer to home, the building is further from the break spot as well as Dominican Joe. And will I still be able to take three-martini breaks? This is another important question I didn't ask during the interview.

I'd still be with the agency, so I couldn't spend 43 seconds on LeatherDreams.com on my last day.

What if the new division doesn't have people who snore all day or walk around with antennas sticking out of their heads?!? I'll be seriously short on blog fodder.

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And on a superstitious note: If you want to be sure you're offered a position, call in sick with the runs when you go to your interview. So far, this tactic has a 100% success rate.

Brown Paper Bags

One time, when I was seven or eight, my stepfather got me out of bed late at night because he had to take Mom to the emergency room. I remember her trembling, and snuggling up to her in the waiting room in my pajamas. It turned out she was having a panic attack. She was prone to those, and I guess maybe it's hereditary, though I don't get anything so severe: just, once in a while, a sickening sense of impending doom, a nasty case of the screaming heebie-jeebies in the middle of the night.

You know how people tend to establish balanced roles in their relationships? I mean, not just "relationship" relationships but any kind of ongoing interpersonal interaction. Anyway, for the last year or so I've been dealing with the panicmonger boss on a daily basis; but ever since Friday she's been calm and relaxed and cheerful. I don't know if she found another job or is just on some good drugs - or both - but maybe I'm picking up the slack, panicwise.

Or it's Robbie leaving, which will constitute a major upheaval in my daily life and is setting off some ass-kicking abandonment issues. Ugh, that terrible fear of rejection and loss and loneliness, of being left behind and unloved and unwanted... And even aside from missing him, it's just a big change, and change is scary.

Or perhaps it's a creeping terror of overwrought armchair psychology. Or it's Slappy White washing his unmentionable bits upwind of me on the bed. Or the lasagna I had for dinner.

Whatever it is, I can't sleep.

Macs = Better Than People

When it's time for your Mac to go to sleep, all you have to do is pull the menu down from the pretty blue apple in the top left corner and select "Sleep." And it does. It sleeps, silent and peaceful, its power button slowly pulsing with a gentle glow. It stays asleep until you come and wake it up again.

Or until your cat Bingo, some hitherto unknown species of nocturnal bug up his butt, scrambles sideways into the room at 2am, leaps onto the keyboard, clatters your mouse and some photos and several CDs to the floor, and washes your bedroom in sudden humming light.

I need somebody to Ctrl-Alt-Delete me now.

Dwelling in Harmony with Nature

While I was at Robbie's earlier, he showed me a cute little religious tract some friendly neighborhood Jehovah's Witnesses had left on his door. You've seen these, right? The front is headed "Life in a Peaceful New World" and bears an idyllic scene of humans, mingling in interracial harmony in a beautiful natural setting. A mother and daughter are gathering berries and feeding some to a happy grizzly bear as a deer looks on. On the back of the pamphlet, a young couple with a toddler are petting a reclining lion. Everyone is smiling. I did note that, though there are black people and Hispanic people and white people all apparently living together in this ideal world, none of the couples are actually mixed-race. Or gay. But no matter: it's an earthly paradise!

I don't know how well some ecosystems would fare in God's New World, though:

The whole earth will eventually be brought to a gardenlike paradise state. The Bible says: "The wilderness and the waterless region will exult, and the desert plain will be joyful and blossom as the saffron. . . . For in the wilderness waters will have burst out, and torrents in the desert plain. And the heat-parched ground will have become as a reedy pool, and the thirsty ground as springs of water." - Isaiah 35:1,6,7.

I suppose desert life can evolve to adapt to its new surroundings. Oh, wait...

In time, God's Kingdom will even restore the peaceful relations that existed in the garden of Eden between animals, and between animals and humans. The Bible says, "The wolf will actuallly reside for a while with the male lamb, and with the kid the leopard itself will lie down, and the calf and the maned young lion and the well-fed animal all together; and a mere little boy will be leader over them."-Isaiah 11:6-9; Hosea 2:18.

Lions love tofu! On the other hand, I note that Jehovah's Witnesses are apparently not vegetarians.

When you look at the scene on this tract, what feelings do you have? Does not your heart yearn for the peace, happiness, and properity seen there?

Whatever. I'm already dwelling in perfect harmony with nature.

It's a Miracle

I was sick, but now I'm cured. Hallelujah!

Or it may just be that I didn't feel well enough to go to work today, but now it's past five.

It's beautiful out - lovely and cool, or at least not hot. There's a nice breeze, and late afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees. There are contented cats dotted here and there on the grass around me. There are also swarms of mosquitoes, but you can't expect miracles.

Birthdays and PMS are a terrible combination. Possibly even worse than popcorn and clam juice. But these things, too, shall pass. It's not the getting older that I mind, or at least not yet. It's the lying awake all night tossing and turning and thinking of all the things that I had assumed, when I was a mere slip of a girl, that I would have accomplished by now: financial comfort or at least security; an advanced degree or two; a meaningful and stimulating career; love and contentment; and I expect I meant to have saved the world at least once. Something, anything to make the concept of death less imminent, less horrifying to face. But what have I done? Passed on my genes a few times, then made an emergency backup copy of my personality on the internet? Was this what the world needed?

I am forced to admit that it probably is not.

So I've been sorrowful and sorry, too much so to keep from showing it, which means I'm embarrassed and ashamed to boot. And feeling lost.

But maybe, if I'm miraculously lucky, if you love me, you'll forgive me, and I can be found.

HR Explained, Slowly and Patiently

You know, if you don't pull your head out of your ass every once in a while, you won't be able to breathe. If you can't breathe, you won't get enough oxygen. Lack of oxygen causes brain damage.

Think about it.