The Plot Thickens

Okay, the hotel only looks like that because they ripped off the edge of the awning so they could build the new one. It really is on the way! Really!! That's why all the hotel staff are wearing safety vests, though they aren't wearing hard hats, Robbie.

They're going to have sleep number beds in every room, too. God, how I wish they had them now. My bed is so hard that last night I dreamt I was being chased by zombies and ended up having to sleep with all the lights on.

Next door - you walk under the railroad trestle to get to it - is the convention center, which we visited today, where extensive remodeling is well under way. It's going to be beautiful, and it's going to offer 21,400 square feet of - say it with me now - flexible meeting space!

That's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in meeting planner circles.

Here are a few other things we saw today (and pictures will just have to wait until I get home to a more powerful computer, sorry):

The Cactus Hotel, built in 1929. It was the fourth Hilton hotel - ever - and has an opulent tiled lobby, grand staircase and mezzanine, and incredible, beautiful ballroom on the second level. It's haunted, I expect. But it's used as lofts and office and retail space, plus private function space now, not as a hotel.

Paint Brush Alley, murals by local artists on the walls and windows of an alleyway, and part of a citywide mural art project. Some downtown buildings now being used as warehouses also have trompe l'oeil paintings on the windows of what the shops and restaurants inside once looked like. Very cool.

Painted doors - a series of painted doors hung on an outside wall downtown, also part of the outdoor urban art project.

The Texas Theatre, currently gutted and undergoing restoration. Actually, I thought it was cooler to see it like that, with the seats all pulled out and exposed brickwork, than to see it when it's finished - though I'm sure it will be beautiful; the cornices and moldings are very elaborate and you can tell it'll be amazing when it's done - along the lines of the Paramount.

Legends jewelry store, where they sell (among other pieces) jewelry crafted from the local pink, lavender, and peach Concho pearls, and also gold and silver horny toads ("horned lizards, my ass, they're horny toads" was almost, but not quite, what the proprietor said about their name).

Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum. Bet you can't wait for those pictures! All the ladies' boo-dwahs are lovingly restored, though the mannequin who normally stands in the window was lounging about on a red velvet chaise longue in her black lace skivvies, today.

Eggemeyers General Store. You can't get much more general; they have everything, from - well, they have lots of stuff. Handmade jams and jellies, 8-foot black iron wind chimes (which made me think of Robbie), you name it. Also, there are airplanes hanging from the ceiling. We didn't get to spend enough time there.

D'Vine Winery. We didn't sample the wine, but it's a beautiful place - maybe tomorrow I'll stop in and get a bottle or two to take home.

M.L. Leddy's boot and saddle shop. They also have belts! Founded in the 20's in Bryan, the store moved to San Angelo in 1936. The Fort Worth location came later, even though that's now the headquarters. The factory is adjacent to the shop and is walled with glass so you can see the work being done. It smells deliciously leathery!

The Celebration Bridge over the Concho. The bridge is attractive - it's such a pretty river - but I loved the statue in the water, the Pearl of the Conchos, a pretty bronze mermaid. She's topless. Come to think of it, she's bottomless too, but the bottom half is a fish so who cares? Anyway, I got a picture.

The San Angelo Museum of Fine Art. This is a gorgeous facility, which is all I can really say about it because actually I don't care much for museum art. I know, you thought I was all cultured and shit. Mais non! But I was in raptures over the mesquite parquet flooring.

Old Town - This is like Heritage Village in Corpus, y'all. They took a bunch of historic houses and buildings and moved them to one central location. They have offices in them, though - I don't know if the ones in Corpus are used for anything.

Santa Fe Depot Railway Museum. My favorite of the day, because they have not one, not two, not three, not four, but actually I lost count of how many huge, beautiful, detailed, elaborate model train sets, with the bridges and the tunnels and the cliffs and the little trees and houses?! Oh my god. SO totally cool!!! I took lots and lots and lots of pictures here, and not one of them is going to show how awesome the place really is. I like trains.

Fort Concho - we didn't actually see very much of this, just the visitor center in the barracks, the stables, and the commissary. You'd need a whole day to go over it properly, because it has a couple of museums on the grounds, too. I have to admit I liked Fort Ontario better. Fort Concho might want to consider building earth berms with catacomb-like tunnels around the complex, and maybe putting in a major inland lake. But it was still very interesting.

The Chicken Farm Art Center. This is an artists' commune which used to be, believe it or not, a chicken farm; there's also a very small restaurant on the premises which is supposed to be excellent, the Silo House. We saw some spectacular pottery and sculpture (I like this kind of art), some of it whimsical, some sublime... and the cats roaming the grounds are very friendly. What more could you ask?

Let's see, then we had lunch at the Butler's Pantry, a tiny little restaurant in an old house where you have to have reservations no matter when you go, because otherwise they won't be able to fit you. We all had stuffed fried avocadoes, Robbie. Wish you could have been there!

Then there was, let's see, the tour of the hotel with the description of the renovations - oh, those beds look like they're going to be so nice - and then the convention center.

The International Water Lily Garden is gorgeous, and the lilies are beautiful, but some of the pads look almost industrial. There are these gigantic ones that fold up around the edges like three-foot wide dinner plates, and have thorns on the bottom so fish can't eat them. On the grounds around the lily ponds were some cacti that made me think of Robbie.

The Angelo State University Planetarium was another favorite - well, there wasn't a lot that I saw that I didn't like, but I really really liked the Planetarium, and the railway museum. They didn't turn it on for us - but it was really cool just being in there, and hearing the professor talk about it. They're hoping to get in some new equipment, and as soon as they do I might make a trip just for that.

Lake Nasworthy, and the ASU Lake House - we visited the house as a potential dinner venue. You can see the Twin Buttes across the lake. They don't look like buttes, they look like - well, anyway.

The San Angelo Nature Center. This was a fascinating place with a trail by the lake and lots of exotic small animals on display - tarantulas, a chincilla, rattlers, a very restless lynx, lots of turtles, Tony! and horny toads! and so many snakes!!! One was a gigantic python named Baby; curled up in her tank, I couldn't tell how long she was, but she was easily as big around as my thigh. She eats rabbits and wild pigs and small deer. You all know who that made me think of.

That was all for today. I'm sorry to report that we rather anticlimactically had dinner at Cheddar's, then wound up with a spot of shopping at Payless and Wal-Mart, I'm sorry Billy. But tomorrow we're visiting a monastery and it turns out they have a pretty strict dress code for their female visitors, for which my hasty Tuesday morning packing job did not prepare me.

Tomorrow, Scarlett, is another day. But that bed's not getting any softer.

Don't Panic

The panicmonger has at long last been forced out - unless you want to believe the official story, which is that she resigned voluntarily, suddenly, without any notice, and without another job lined up.

I suspect the former.

Ernest, who is almost unbelievably still working there, came over this afternoon to give me the scoop. The group has been divvied up, the spoils of office politics, between the two rival managers in the section. I wouldn't want to work for either of those guys, especially the cheese-ass used-car salesman who runs the IT branch for the division. Ernest will be working for that massive tool now. He's excited about the change, which I suppose is a fair indicator of how bad things had gotten.

So I told Ernest a story today. I told him of the genesis of the Three-Martini Break Group.

When I started in that division, I told Ernest, our branch was deeply invested in a particular project. However, due to unforeseen technical issues (which really, really, really should not have been unforeseen), the project was on hold. We couldn't work on other projects, because that would entail updating data which would then be overwritten by data from the first project, when/if it ever got going again. So we were at. A. Complete. Standstill.

This is a bit of a hardship when you work for an agency that allows zero personal use of the internet.

So I learned about all kinds of things going on in the agency, or at least whatever was published on the agency website. Also, we're allowed to look at NOAA.com. I learned a lot about the weather. My coworkers - all intelligent, and terribly underemployed; all young, healthy, and funny; all energetic and all just marking time until they could make something better happen - my coworkers took the simple, 15-minute, twice-daily break and developed it into an elaborate art form. You know - kind of like a Japanese tea ritual, only with a lot more sexual innuendo.

Things weren't so bad for me. I was still shellshocked from the vicious day-to-day machinations of a small, family-run marketing company unexpectedly headquartered in Imperial Rome. A little boredom was not a bad thing; besides, pretty much all my new coworkers were young, male, and cute. Life could be a lot worse. A LOT worse.

We were dead in the water for months, so our boss - the panicmonger's predecessor - under increasing and hostile pressure from HIS boss, tried desperately to fill all that empty time with meetings, cross-training, and documentation on documentation on documentation. Nothing was enough. The project we were all waiting on was eventually scrapped altogether, and we all had to start actually working again. Not too hard, though. Every break was still an epic event. But 3MBG members began dropping like flies from sheer boredom. Still, I have to think those first few months after I started, when I had nothing whatsoever to do but spend hours every day hanging out with a bunch of bright, funny, dishy men, were some pretty darn good times.

And what do I have to show for all that now? Nothing, that's what. Well, except for a couple of years of happy memories, several ongoing and deeply rewarding friendships, and a busy, fun, challenging, but not stressful job among pleasant people.

Call it an object lesson on the pitfalls of ambition. The panicmonger doesn't even have anybody to go on break with.

Photo Ops

Omigod you guys! I got to have my picture taken holding an itty bitty teeny weeny ittle baby alligator! It was so cuuuuuuuute!

We were at Gator Country. On the way out we passed an employee holding a reasonable-sized anaconda. I insisted on posing with that too.

All I was really thinking was how fun it will be to send these pictures to the panicmonger to show her what I'm up to these days. Is this wrong?

The other thing I was thinking, which I have to post here because no one I've spoken to gets the reference, is that it's a good thing we coordinators were wearing white shirts today. Wednesday is red shirt day. You don't want to be in a red shirt when you're dealing with large, amply-toothed reptilian life forms. I'm sure I needn't explain why.

Well, my alarm's set for 5:10 so I'd better hit the hay. Miss you! Mwah!

Potluck of Champions

"We haven't had a monthly birthday lunch since October," remarked my supervisor in our staff meeting today, perhaps reminded by the fact that today was her birthday.

We all felt awful. Well, you know - more or less.

"You have to understand the culture I come from," she went on. "I have never tasted meat. I never smelled it. If we can just have a potluck with no meat, we can start having group lunches again. Perhaps breakfast would be easier."

Mmmm, bacon!

It's not fair. I've never been insensitve towards vegetarians. I would never dream of trying to sneak meat into one (stop snickering - I heard that!). My ex-mother-in-law used to, when her older son was a vegetarian; she made a point of cooking things like rice and soups with beef broth, and denying, right to your face, that they contained any meat products whatsoever. But she's batshit insane, so I don't know if I should really hold her up as an example of the kind of behavior I virtuously refrain from emulating.

It's just that I've never known a vegetarian whose dietary requirements forbade anyone else in the same room to eat what they might personally prefer. Granted that much too often, a vegetarian doesn't have enough options at a potluck, restaurant, or buffet - a small garden salad does not a meal make, especially if it consists largely of iceberg lettuce, which makes a handy packing material but is not technically food. So at a potluck where a vegetarian will be present, the attendees should all keep that fact in mind, and be sure to bring at least something that everyone can eat. But to insist that no one else gets to have any meat at all?

You could apply the argument that it's inconsiderate to smoke around nonsmokers, who might find the smell of cigarette smoke unpleasant, not to say unhealthful. And as a meat-eater, I wouldn't want to force the side-effects of my own taste on an innocent bysteander.

Then again, if that's the case, I really don't see why I can't have microwave popcorn permanently banned from my office.

Perhaps I'd be more sensitive to my supervisor's taste if not for the fact that it's part of an ongoing pattern with her: she's terrified of snakes, so we didn't get to have a snake guy do an educational presentation at a safety meeting which she would not have attended anyway. She's disorganized, so everyone else has to jump through multiple hoops to present information to her in as idiot-proof a format as possible, at not inconsiderable inconvenience. She's micromanagerial to the point of insanity, so all her staff must sign in and out on an electronic dot-board, track every phone call, email, and visit in a special database, and submit weekly and monthly status reports.

Whatever the reason, I'm starting to have thoughts of branding my resignation letter into a slab of raw meat with a live snake wrapped around it, and this worries me.

Well, it wouldn't make for a very happy birthday for the snake, would it?

Who's on Crack?

Somebody where I work is on crack, but I don't like to say anything, just in case it turns out to be me.

A few months ago, I was assigned to plan a safety training session for a group that my section belongs to. We all have to attend these things about once a quarter, and they're always dull as dirt. They are, in fact, so dull that sometimes the guest presenters don't bother showing up; and when that happens, we all have to sit through the work-zone safety film "One Step from Death" AGAIN.

After you've seen this film six or seven times, you start rooting for the cement mixer. Kill! Kill! Kill!

"You're creative," my boss told me when the session was assigned to me to plan. "These meetings are always so dull. I know you can do something much better. Let's show 'em!"

If that doesn't translate into "Hire a snake guy," I'd like to know what does.

My boss, as it turns out, is terrified of snakes. Fair enough: she doesn't have to attend. But she seems to have a certain odd hangup about letting other people do something she personally wouldn't enjoy, and she's also very anxious about doing everything as much by the book as she can manage. If there's not a book for her to go by, she'll get somebody to write one. So even though this snake guy has done multiple safety presentations for other groups in our organization, she decided (though I was supposed to be the one planning this) to take initiative and send an email to the Legal folks, and ask if they were okay with us hiring someone to bring a couple dozen venomous snakes to a safety meeting.

Legal wrote back that they were not sure this was such a good idea.

"Well, forward the email to me," I told my boss, "and I'll talk to them, I'll see if I can straighten it out."

So I wrote back to them, and explained the situation in more detail. I sent the snake guy's long and impressive list of references, mentioned that he does this for schoolchildren and birthday parties, for heaven's sake, and assured them that it was completely safe. Not to mention cool as shit; but I didn't think they'd care about that.

Nothing doing. I'm sure they wouldn't have taken any notice of it if they hadn't been outright asked for their written permission. I talked to a woman from one of the groups he's presented to several times in the past, and she said it had simply never occurred to her to clear it with Legal, because she didn't consider there to be any safety issue. "Snakes can't fly, you know," she informed me.

I knew that.

Anyway, while I was on vacation, Legal wrote back to my boss again reiterating that they could not give their blessing, so it's off. My boss came into my cube today and sat down heavily.

"I got in so much trouble with my boss about the snake guy," she sighed, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "She was so mad. We shouldn't have handled it the way we did. I'm not blaming you, but you never should have contacted Legal. We never should have asked. We should have just planned it, and now we can't. You should never have - we should never have emailed them."

She left me with a bit of a dazed look on my face, I guess. Wait a minute. Am I dreaming? Is she on crack? Did she just chew me out for what she did? What the hell kind of Howard Johnson's is this?!?

So I emailed the snake guy, apologized profusely, explained as much of the situation as I could, and regretfully informed him that we'd have to cancel. I did not use the word "dumbasses" at any point, and I'm rather proud of my self-control; aren't you? He wrote back that he was surprised and disappointed, and that in twenty years of doing this he's never had a presentation cancelled for safety reasons. He didn't use the word "dumbasses" either, but he didn't really need to.

Anyway, this is a terribly long lead-up to the two important questions blazing in the forefront of my brain tonight:

1. Am I on crack?
2. Should I be?

For Your Reference

You can't tell me this makes any sense.

I need to quit checking my work email.

I am not working. But Robbie has no other way to talk to me during the day! What am I supposed to do?! And then I see the subject lines of the other emails waiting in my inbox, but I do not read them, because then the senders would be able to see that I had.

Except the snake guy. He doesn't work for us, so like the entire rest of the world besides my agency, he is not using Novell GroupWise, and I can look at his email without him knowing it.

Only it's an email I really need to answer, so I do. I have to apologize to him for the difficulties we are experiencing in scheduling him (and his amazing snakes!!) to present at our December safety training. He's going to describe how not to be bitten by snakes. He's a pro and it's perfectly safe and should be no problem at all, but someone in my department likes to make a big fuss about how scared she (or he) is of snakes, so a few hoops have been generated for me to jump through.

Yesterday evening, as my dad and I were walking along the pretty, if amply horse-poop-bedecked, trail that wends up the hill just a (careful) hop, (careful!!) skip and a (Jesus, watch where the hell you're putting your foot!!!) jump from my parents' house, a teeny tiny little itty bitty baby snakie-pie wriggled across the path right in front of us. I wanted to catch it and bring it back, and let it live a happy little life among the plants in my cubicle, but it disappeared into the underbrush before I could quite finish working out the logistics of transporting it safely and comfortably in my luggage. I emailed Robbie about this, but he said he'd prefer something larger.

There are other emails in my inbox with subject lines that tempt me to open them. Intriguingly, there's one entitled "Go paperless" which was sent today from, um, somebody who's extremely frightened of snakes, or at least wants everybody else to think that he (or she) is. But I can't see who the message is addressed to without opening it, so I don't know if I was the only one who received it. Maybe so. Maybe she (or he) is peremptorily ordering me to get rid of all the paper files in my office, on the grounds that they are likely to harbor snakes.

It would make about as much sense as anything else.

Anyway, today we went to Onondaga Lake Park, walked approximately 82 miles, and got a lot of pretty pictures of the lake, fall foliage, some boats, some wildlife, and more. Don't feel like you have to look at them. I don't want to be one of those people who sits you down in front of a slide projector (remember those, kids?) and subjects you to hours of vacation slides from a place you were never particularly curious about.

I promise that the reference marker is the only work-related photo I took.

It's a Fact!

Did you know...

...that Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale is almost as appetizing as the name implies?

...that, if I am locked out of my house, I can crawl in through the cat door?

...that St. Patrick's Day commemorates the driving out of Ireland of all the snakes by St. Patrick?

...that this in turn symbolizes the driving out of the indigenous pagan religions and the conversion of the country to Christianity, and that therefore I tend to take the snakes' side, and if you pinch me for not wearing green, you will be in terrible peril?

...that falling in love is one of the sillier things an otherwise rational person can do?

...that Anna has a wet butt because she went wading in the creek and fell down?

...that bicycle helmets, no matter how stylishly designed, brightly colored, and diligently worn by safety-minded cyclists, are nonetheless irretrievably uncool?

...that today is such a spectacularly nice day that the Dogfish Head, sipped on the back patio, tastes almost bearable?

Well, now you do.