Yea, it's just one of those days.
I'm going to go home, go to bed, and start all over again tomorrow.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Just One of Those Days
Fuck the Fucking Fuckers
Blogger ate my goddamn post.
Die Blogger! Die!
I think this was blogger's way of saying, "Kameron, you're done for the day. Really. Relax. Take a chill pill. You don't have to be pissed at everyone today."
To which I reply: ARGGGGGGHH, you Fucker!
Episode 15: In Which I Try to Figure Out What the Hell it is I Do Here
The problem with having a new boss who's out of Denver and has about a zillion things he's responsible for is that I get no feedback whatsoever.
Now, really, this is nothing new for me. For the first three weeks I worked here, I didn't even know what the hell it was we did.
In fact, I have a feeling Blaine didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do either, and he was my boss. So, we were even.
As I've said before, Blaine is like a big puppydog. He's a big former football player, with a football player's distrust of his own intellect, a sweetheart, but sort of all over the place. He says thank you all the time, watches where he puts his hands, and has gone out of his way on numerous occasions to praise what I do. Even when he's busy, I'll at least get a, "Yes. This is good" or "This is good, but can you change this?"
In fact, he just called me into his office to read a line from an e-mail he couldn't understand to see if it was, and I quote, "Smart person lingo that you'd know" or "industry lingo."
I told him I didn't know it, so it must be industry lingo.
I feel so appreciated for being a geek.
And from Piper I'm getting zero reaction. I sent him oodles of crap I'd been compiling that I'll be using to, you know, do document controls work. The only reponse, "Can you make one of these up for X project too?"
Uh. Sure.
Today it's: "Make this look more professional, send it back to me."
Sure. I do so, he says, "Actually, that was the wrong thing I sent you, here's the right one."
OK. I do that one.
Radio silence.
Now it's "Convert this other document, we'll do this thing later. I'll call you tomorrow."
Right-o.
No "Thanks," no "This is great," or even "This frickin' sucks, you should go back to cleaning dog kennels."
In the grand scheme of things, of course, the formatting of documents for kick-off meetings shouldn't matter, but I've worked a year now with Ned the regional VP occasionally leaning over my shoulder, and that guy's a frickin' perfectionist. I reprinted Thank-You cards four times because he found crap he didn't like in them (thank god he wasn't around when I was doing audit packages).
I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that 1) Blaine is younger than Piper by well over a decade 2) Blaine actually shares the same office with me, whereas Piper's only met me once.
I think there's a generational difference in management styles going on.
That, or I've just gotten very, very cozy with all this overpraise, and I'm about to take a nosedive into Corporate Hell.
Getting a raise really sucks.
I just want to write books.
Damn, I'm Sore
Did 3.5 miles yesterday, which I didn't think would be a lot until I actually did it. When you're used to jogging 2.6 or 2.7 miles, jumping to 3.5 is a fucking bitch.
I just didn't realize how much until I stood up just now.
Damn. I've got kickboxing tonight, too.
It's Because Only Stupid Women Get Married, Obviously.
LONDON (AFP) - A high IQ is a hindrance for women wanting to get married while it is an asset for men, according to a study by four British universities published in The Sunday Times newspaper.
...for girls, there is a 40-percent drop [in marriage] for each 16-point rise [in IQ], according to the survey by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Smart women are just too smart to get married. They cohabitate and fuck around like any good, normal, sane person. Obviously.
"A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time. In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way."
Then let him go fuck his mother.
Midnight Cowboy
I watched Midnight Cowboy last night, and for some reason, I've had this insatiable desire for Dentyne gum all day...
Sisterly Love
Somebody else has purportedly got Lynne Cheney's lesbian romance up.
I sure wish my last name was Cheney. The opening paragraph to a book I wrote when I was fourteen sounded just like this:
"On every side, there was emptiness. On every side, the prairie stretched on and on, unbroken to the horizon. Even the dome of sky was a naked stretch, swept bare of clouds by the unceasing wind. In all its vast blueness, the only interruption was the inescapable sun. She felt its heat. She saw the shadow it made, her shadow, a startling darkness in the bright and infinite loneliness."
Looks like it's a real deep, penetrating read.
Yum.
Welcome to Chicago
It's quarter to seven. I'm heading to the train station, splashing through dark puddles on the pavement. The sky's that purple-black color that city skies get just before dawn. At this time of the morning, the smell of fried Thai food from the restaurants lining the street is more stink than smell, and my stomach heaves at the idea of consuming anything non-liquid at this time of the morning.
I'm listening to a Live cd, and thinking that you know, Live sounds pretty good until you actually listen to the lyrics, and then you start listening and you realize the lyrics are shit. Luckily, I'm in no state to actually listen to what the hell anybody's saying this morning.
I arrive at the top of the train platform just in time to see the ass-end of a train heading toward the loop.
Wait around for the next one, dreary day, rain, Chicago, the sound of garbage trucks. A northbound train clatters by. Somebody's smoking and eating a McDonald's breakfast sandwich. Heave.
Maybe I'm getting sick with something.
On the train, the only empty seat is full of gnawed chicken bones. I wait until a woman moves herself, her stroller, and her 3-year-old to a vacated seat, and then I take theirs, hoping they aren't moving because the kid pissed on the seat.
I doze and watch the rain on the windowpanes. Past Wrigley Field (Addison - amazing when the Cubs were in the playoffs, it was like Disneyland), past Boys' Town (Belmont - there's an army surplus store there I keep meaning to get to), past De Paul University (Fullerton - maybe I should go to law school?).
We pass underground, and at Washington I prepare to alight from the wrong side of the train - that's how out of it I am. When the doors open on the other side, I do an about-face and stumble onto the platform, heading toward the blue line tunnel. I follow after the same little old woman almost every morning. She usually wears a lime green coat, but today it's gray featherdown.
At the blue line platform, familiar faces, but no violin player, no man crooning alongside bad tape recordings of cheesy songs. The street performers appear to have taken the day off.
Step onto the blue line, sharing the train with people and luggage, bound for O'Hare. I get off before O'Hare, trundle up the escalators with a bazillion other commuters, click, click of high heels and good men's shoes.
Twelve minute walk, past the mini-skyscrapers of this cozy little office complex (look, mom, I have a real job!), under the parking garage, follow the sidewalk, cross at the blinking light, there across the street I can see Cyllia the secretary's van already parked out front. Another day, another dollar.
Push inside, turn off the Live album, Blaine's office light is on, Blaine's in early... Cyllia's greeting, "Happy new year," dump my crap in my cubicle behind Cyllia, fish out my chicken and broccoli, stow it in the breakroom. Nobody else is in this early, we're all a bunch of slackers...
Blaine is on a conference call or something, Cyllia's listening to some funny ditty somebody forwarded to her.
I take my seat, CD collection at my left elbow, open up the computer, change the password (my old one: "Tragic!"), check my g-mail, nothing, check my work e-mail, nothing but "read by" receipts (if I "work" the work comes in by e-mail, unless Blaine tells me to print something, which has been my default position for the last six months - printer of Blaine's RFPs), blow me, blogging time, get some coffee, sitemeter, hotmail, random bullshit.
Another day, another dollar.
The printer next to me jams. Cyllia comes over, and one of the lead architects appears to retrieve his jammed document, tells me I should have told him I needed a car - he just sold "a real chick magnet" (there's a running bet in the office on the nature of my sexuality, as I never talk about a boyfriend. I've preferred to remain ambiguous. Who I take to bed or don't isn't their business. Their bafflement amuses me).
The accountant who took off so suddenly and was summarily fired is back, and chatting with the lead architect. She's apparently so good with Oracle that she can flake out, fly out, and abandon her key card and her job for three months and then burst back in without a salary penalty.
Must be great to be her.
Blaine bumbles in for said dictionary, discusses how he and his fiance suffered from stomach flu over New Year's.
Way to ring it in.
Cyllia comes by, whispers the usual lament against the injustices of the HR manager.
There are no messages on my phone. I could be in bed right now.
I can't believe I get paid for this shit.
Whose Book Would You Rather Read?
Quote of the Day
Blaine, my former boss and head of regional business development for North America, comes in and goes, "I need a dictionary. What the hell does burgeoning mean? I've been reading it everywhere."
I love these guys.
Blogging For Feminism, and Other Flights of Fancy
Media girl has up a poll about what feminist priorities should be for 2005.
My favorite was using blogs to reach people. But as much as I love the idea of blogging as being a bit like consciousness-raising groups ("You mean it's not just me?"), there's a big problem with it:
The internet isn't free. It's not in everybody's home, and unless you have broadband or wireless internet, reading or creating blogs is pretty much a hopeless cause. You'll never be able to keep up. If you're savvy, you might create your own newsfeed of favs so you don't have to visit each every morning, but that means a couple of Saturdays spent with a sloooooooowwww dial-up connection trying to find blogs (probably initially starting with google and moving on to blogrolls from there). You've gotta have the leisure time, which means people who work 12 hours a day (not at a cooshy office job like mine where I can screw off) and then put in a second shift with kids and housework aren't going to have the time to do it.
I'm a big proponent of free wifi, though as someone who works in telecommunications, I can tell you that all the telephone and wireless companies are fighting like SOBs to keep wifi private - and as long as you can surf around for porn, you're going to see this administration protecting private businesses by preaching that tax payer dollars shouldn't go toward paying for teenagers to surf for porn.
And it means most of the red states go radio silent.
Yea! The Obligatory Holiday Weight Woes Article!
Look at CNN covering that hard news on your after-holiday Monday morning!
Blow it out your ass, CNN.
I *lost* weight over the holiday. Fuck off.
Insomnia
Currently functioning on 0 hours of sleep. That's right, 0, for no good reason. This is highly erratic. I don't have trouble sleeping. I love sleeping.
I was in bed by 9pm so I could make my 5:15am alarm, and tossed and turned, got a massive headache, checked e-mail and blogs, went back to bed, tossed and turned for hours and hours, got up again, couldn't find any painkiller in the house except Midol, went back to bed, wishing my brain would just stop thinking...
Yes, brain, it's going to be a busy week. Yes, Denver trip, going back to MA classes, diet and exercise, yes, you're way behind on your books, no you haven't written anything substantial in months, yes, all of your latest stories have bounced, Jenn will be back, you need to go to those Saturday writing meetings, and you have 0, count them, 0 stories currently in the mail, and no, you currently *can't* afford to go to Glasgow in August, and you need to write a letter to that agent who's got the 50 pages, cause it looks like you're SOL on that threadbare hope, too, and oh, my damn head hurts...
I'm still feeling strangely wired, though I expect this to turn into total collapse by 3pm. I look like hell.
Oh, goodness, it's gonna be one of those days.
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