Random Wednesday Thoughts

It's been observed that I haven't been blogging as frequently. This is true, and due mostly to my returning to the corporate world. Not that I'm actually physically IN the corporate world more than one day per week (usually Tuesday); however, the other days of the week (which may even include a Saturday or Sunday), I'm working on various things from home. All in all, it's going ok (although the connection to their server from home is incredibly slow at times; so, that can be rather frustrating). Anyway, I thought I'd do a quickie post before I get going with my day.

So, yeah, "work" has been fine. Although yesterday was a tad stressful; mostly because it was my third time down there and they've all "discovered" me now. There was some confusion with my purchase order (or lack thereof); not my problem, really, but, I DO want to get paid at some point! The guy I'm working with said he'd take care of it, no worries. But, of course, it should have been taken care of before I even set foot in the door (so suggested the head of purchasing as he glared at me; then, backed down and became nice and apologetic when he realized I wasn't an employee).

Some things about working I really don't miss; things like that, and, the hyper stress moods of some folks. I certainly don't like being in a "bull pen" environment (where I'd formerly worked, I'd traveled high up the ladder to have a fairly decent office). EVERYONE at this place is in a cube, even the boss of the guy I'm working with. These guys are not junior by any stretch. It's just this company's culture.

But, it sucks. I tell you, it's hard to concentrate when there are constantly people walking by, talking on the phone next to you, shouting over cube tops to one another, etc. I am working with sensitive information, too; so, I'm constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure no one is lurking around. It's just bizarre to me. Oh, and then there was the dude sitting behind me. About noon, he started crunching away on his lunch. Ok, I can understand that, he's got to eat. But, several hours later, he was still crunching away; this time, on menthol lozenges. So, not only did I keep hearing "crunch crunch crunch" I was also getting this haze of menthol aroma swirling around my head. I turned around at one point to see him sitting there staring at me. Ick. I later heard him say to someone else, "I just need to sit here for a second and cool off or else I'm gonna go blow that guy away". Uh, nice. Thank God I don't actually work there in an HR capacity or else I would have felt obligated to walk over to him and smack him up the side of the head for saying something so dumb in the work place; especially since, in past lives, I've had to deal with the aftermath of someone doing just that.

Needless to say, I was glad when I was able to pack up all my gear and trudge out to the parking lot (quite a haul) where I had to stumble over medians of red mud to get to my car.

Then, the long drive home in the rain.

Yeah, these parts of working I really didn't miss at all!

But, on the lighter side, I got my box of business cards in the mail (too cool) as well as address labels. Sorta fun!

Ok, onto other subjects.

It seems my post about potential cat names generated a lot of interest/comments, more so than anything I've written about recently. Funny how that turns out.

I just read in the paper this morning that a priest in Italy has decided to squelch his on-line beauty pageant for nuns idea. Yep, he wanted to hold a beauty pageant in order to show the world that nuns are not all old and dour looking. It was going to be called "Miss Sister 2008" (I am NOT making this up); but, after he saw suggestions that folks would want to see the nuns on a virtual catwalk, he decided there wouldn't be anything too exciting about nuns parading around in their habits.

Hey, another great thing about returning to work has been we decided, if I was going to work 20+ hours a week, I shouldn't spend the other hours cleaning. So, we hired Merry Maids to come to the house every other week. They started yesterday, and, although I felt badly that we had to keep Lucy penned up in our sun room all day, they did a great job. Whew, take that off the "to do" list!

That damn BMW; Mr. B was at a gas station Monday night (The Kid and I were here at home) when the battery died on him. Luckily, he was at a gas station so he was able to get a jump. But, this meant a morning (yesterday) of him taking The Kid to school and then having to go to BMW service and wait around for them to replace the battery. For a BMW service bill, it was relatively cheap, but, the situation just brought to my mind, again, that it very well may be time to say good-bye to E5150.

It's raining. Still. And, it's gonna rain all day and into tomorrow. And, it'll probably rain Friday night (we have a Bulls game). Why am I not surprised?

One positive thing about driving an hour and ten minutes (or so) each way to Greensboro for my "job" is I can listen to NPR. It's much less irritating than other radio stations. And, informative. Yesterday morning I was amused to hear banter between John McCain and Jay Leno (yep, while the Democratic Convention is going on in Denver, McCain's been getting busy with the celebs). Anyway, Leno was jabbing McCain about all of his houses (and the fact, apparently, that he couldn't remember how many he actually owns). There was one exchange when McCain went down the somber "I used to be a POW" path (and of course that must have been awful). But, later, when talking about the possibility that he might end up in the White House, McCain said, "Hey, and I hear the house is really nice!" to which Leno replied, "Like you need another house!"

It's nice, I suppose, that we can manage to have humor around our Presidential candidates; it still doesn't help me figure out what to do in November.

Ok, best sign off for now!

Mrs. B