I Lead a Charmed Existence

Unless you’re brutal with the delete key, your email inbox fills up pretty fast. Especially if I’m one of your friends!

At least all my material is original.

The problem is that, even among legitimate work emails, many defy categorization. I tend to keep anything dealing with work in progress sitting in my inbox, but there are also things that just don’t fit in any of the myriad different email folders I have set up. You could create a different folder for every single email you get, but that would sort of defeat the purpose.

Every so often, though, you get an email that demands a folder of its very own. I received such an email today.

At USDM in Corpus, Annette once wrote an email to Tricia and me, firmly instructing us to be very precise in composing a particular sales proposal. The prospective client was a government agency, so the requirements had to be individually and specifically addressed. So Annette told us to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb and pay very, very, very careful attention to every detail. But Tricia had to forward the email to me, because Annette had absent-mindedly addressed it to her twice, and left me off.

I created an email folder called “Irony.” It was actually pretty full by the time I left.

Today we had a meeting about a project a subset of my group is working on. I’m involved, but only on the side, helping out when other duties allow; for the others in this sub-group, this project is the primary focus. Meetings with the panicmonger are one of the less uplifting aspects of my job. I wouldn’t really call her a particularly upbeat person. I wouldn't call Genghis Khan a pacifist, either.

She sent out an email after the meeting to everyone else on the project, cc’ing me, with the subject line “Lets start daily meetings from tomorrow” and assigning everyone else on the project, except me, a fifteen-minute block of time to meet with her, one on one, every day, every day, to go over project status.

Everybody else. Except me.

I created a special folder for it in my email. Guess what it’s called?

Severe Tire Damage

This happened while I was doing 70 down I-35 today.


Lucky, lucky, lucky me! It was a back tire, so I didn't lose control of the car; plus traffic was light and I was able to get immediately over onto the shoulder. Plus it was on the passenger side, away from oncoming 18-wheelers.

Ironically, Robbie and I were on our way back to work from his mechanic, where he'd just dropped off his car. Lucky, lucky, lucky me to have a big strong guy at hand!

Well, bigger and stronger than me, anyway. He struggled for a bit with the lug wrench. "Do you have any Stop-Leak?" he asked.

But he was eventually able to loosen the wheel and change the tire. I think tire dealers' strategy is to make sure you'll be killed in a roadside accident if you ever get a flat. That way you'll never buy tires anywhere else! Can you think of a better explanation for why they always machine-tighten the lug nuts all the way?

Lucky, lucky, lucky me that it happened only about a mile from my house so we could limp the car home, because by the time we got there, the spare looked like this.


Lucky, lucky, lucky me that I live walking distance from work!

Lucky

I'm on a roll,
I'm on a roll this time,
I feel my luck could change...

That's actually a photo of a cardinal, perched in the live oak in the backyard on Sunday. For some reason I always think cardinals are really good luck, so I followed it around for several minutes taking pictures, and this is the best one I was able to get; which might give the lie to my theory.

Today seemed like an excellent day to stay home and pamper the bum leg. They say to ice muscle sprains, which just seems sadistic. Hasn't my poor leg been through enough? I've been putting a heat pad on it and it feels wonderful, though I keep having to fight the cats for it (the heat pad, not my leg). I'll go back to work tomorrow, but I guess I'm driving, for a little while, at least.

Anna made me a birthday card. It says,

Deear mommy
Happy
birthday i love
you so much
you to yes you do
so much yes
yes yes as
much as
a hipo

She's a nice baby. I might actually love her even more than a hippo.