Random(ish) Monday

If you are one of those people who get into semantic battles about the haphazard use of the word "random" then go elsewhere today you can shut it I do apologize. I use the word simply to indicate a bunch of unrelated musings.

-I woke up Friday thinking it was Saturday. That was the best couple of minutes until I realized it was Friday and I had to go to work. Needless to say (but will be said anyway) my Friday sucked as a result. I was so cranky.

-When I am cranky all pet peeves are magnified. For example:
*If you tell me you have a "few" questions but then only ask 1 or 2, you may incur my wrath.
*when driving, if you need to change lanes PLEASE for the love of all things Holy do not take 24 minutes to do so!!
*When driving, if you decide you need to be in my lane and only start signalling when your vehicle is even with mine and there is no one behind me, I will not see any reason to slow up so you can get in front of me in my lane.

-I went home for lunch on Friday, figuring that I was so cranky it was best to be alone for a while. I played Mario Kart (Wii!!) while at home and then promptly got back in my car to go back to work. The brain, apparently, could use a few minutes to shift between the 2 driving styles. Apparently.

-On Thursday, out of the blue, The Boy asked if I would like to go to the Symphony on Friday. The Calgary Philharmonic was presenting the Lord of the Rings Symphony with the CPO and Chorus. It was really good.
-More awesome still? They encouraged patrons to dress up. In LOTR costume. For the Symphony.
-More awesome yet? People did.

Welcome to 7th Grade

I work at Junior High. I don't mean I work in a Junior High. I mean my workplace, an office in a telecommunications field, with employees who are well past Junior High age, is basically a Junior High.

There are many isolated instances to support this, but today's incident cemented the feeling of Junior High.

I went into our (very small) lunch room to find that there was no space at the table. Normally there are only a few people in there, but today it was packed. There were chairs but not one person offered to move their chair so that I could fit a chair up to the table.

Did I mention that one of those employees has been giving me the patented 7th grade Freeze Out for the past few days? No?

Yes. It couldn't have been more Junior High if I had had braces and a bad perm.

Sigh.

Maybe I'll start telling those stories. That might be entertaining.

Hello out there, we're on the air/It's Hockey Night tonight

I'm Canadian. That much is obvious from my profile. But there are times when that Canadian-ness becomes more apparent.

Like last night when I caught a few minutes of the pre-season Flames/Coyotes game. My brain switched to "Hockey's Back!!!" mode instantly. It's like a dearly loved friend had come back from a trip. It's that great time of year again.

The Boy just called and asked if I had plans for tomorrow night. I said no, why? He wanted me to guess and my first thought was "Flames Game" so I said "Are we going to the game???!!!" He was somewhat disappointed that I guessed it so quickly (which I fully understand). Either way, I'm gonna get to see some hockey tomorrow night. Yay. And I couldn't be more happy or happy to be Canadian either.

workplace hazards

I wonder if it's possible to dislocate something in my eyes from all the eye-rolling that takes place at work while listening to co-workers complaining. I wonder if irony unrecognized by my coworkers will eventually do me in. I wonder if the not-so-subtle passive agressive behavior of coworkers will eventually be too much for me and i will end up as an evening news item "Woman goes on rampage with stapler." I wonder if the tension in my back and neck will eventually work itself into such a state that i will curl up into a ball and never come out of it.

Sigh. Where's a sugar-daddy when you need one?

Standing Ovation

My new job is stressing me out. The work load (way more than they mentioned in the interview), the learning curve, the hostile environment created by a caustic co-worker...

I just re-discovered something I had discovered last year around this time:

Songs from recordings of live performances on your iPod (or similar) give you a chance to pretend that you are being given a round of applause. My new workspace is in a cubicle (which, after years of being at reception or similar, i LOVE! privacy-ish!). The next time a "live" song comes up on shuffle, I'm taking a bow.

**btw: I realize it's been way way way too long since i've posted here. I think I may end up starting up here again, due to the aforementioned stressful job and relative privacy at work... shh...

conversations

1. Yesterday evening it was really warm (for May)(in Calgary)(it was about 25C at 7-ish pm) so I went for a walk down to the St*rb*cks just down the road to get a fr*pp*cino.
I ordered: "Grande Decaf Fr*pp*cino".
The Overly Made Up and Hair-Done (OMUHD) girl at the cash register said back to me: "Grande Decaf Fr*pp*cino?" She then turned to the B*rista behind her and repeated: "Grande Decaf Cappucino."
"Fr*pp*cino", I corrected.
"Right, Cappucino." OMUHD asserted.
I corrected again: "No, Fr*pp*cino."
OMUHD looked confused and said (to me): "Fr*pp*cino?" At my assurance that this was correct, she turned back to B*rista girl and said "Fr*pp*cino. Right. Grande Fr*pp*cino."
I reminded OMUHD of the "Decaf" portion of the order. She turned, once again to the B*rista girl and said "Grande Decaf Cappucino I mean Fr*pp*cino."
That established, it was B*rista girl's turn to be confused.
"Decaf?" she asked. "We don't have Decaf."
There was then a brief discussion between B*rista and Overly Made Up and Hair-Done (OMUHD) girl about the availability of the Decaf (whatever it is they needed. I missed that part). OMUHD turned back to me and told me that they couldn't do a decaf Fr*pp*cino. I asked her why not and got a long story about the missing (whatever it is). OMUHD had the look of a trapped (overly made up and hair-done) deer as she tried to find a solution for me.
"We have Regular and Coffee Lite."
"What is 'Coffee Lite'?" I asked, trying to figure out how that could be a substitute for decaf.
"Well, um. It's lighter. Like it has less calories?"

2. This afternoon at work, a coworker stood behind me for 5 minutes not saying anything. I finally realized she must be there to talk to me, so I asked her "Are you waiting for me?"
"Yes," she said. "I didn't want to bother you."
So I assured her she wasn't bothering me and asked what I could do to help.
"Do you have any undone paperwork for the City?" she asked.
"Like pending invoices?" I asked her.
"No, invoices you haven't done yet." she corrected in the sort of tone one uses with small children.
I told her I didn't have anything for her so she went to find out what was going on. Later, she came back to me with some paperwork that needed to be invoiced.
I asked her, "Do you need me to enter that?" indicating the paperwork in her hand.
"No," she replied. "You just need to enter this," also indicating the paperwork in her hand.

moment of silence

I was just about to post yesterday. It was profound. It was witty. It was my finest work*...

Have I ever mentioned how clumsy I am? It will be on my yet-to-be-completed list of interesting (wierd) things about me. I'm clumsy. I consistently misjudge the height of car door frames, the distance between my body and a table, the length of my arms, the placement of items on the floor within toe-stubbing distance.

Amazingly (and this too should be on my yet-to-be-completed list) I've never broken a bone. Considering how truly clumsy I am, this is a minor miracle.

So, back to my post from yesterday that did not get posted:

I was sitting at my desk at home, composing the previously mentioned amazing post, when I set a glass of water down. I thought to myself "Be careful. Those particular glasses are somewhat unstable and you wouldn't want something bad to happen." (well, actually I thought to myself "hmm... watch it" and then was distracted by something shiny).

You can see where this is going, right?

No sooner had I set the glass down than I bumped the desk and it went flying. I grabbed my iBook and picked it up and unplugged it but it was too late.

It was all I could do to not cry/scream/throw up. I called a service place today and the prognosis, cost-wise, doesn't look good.

The worst part? Aside from not having my computer, not being able to google whatever strange things pop up at any given moment. Aside from not being able to email/MSN/lurk on various blogs. Aside from the sick feeling of having potentially destroyed data/photos on my computer. The worst part?

I have no one to blame but myself.

Ugh.

So, I'm posting from work. I'm trying to figure out when/how I can take poor poor computer in for assessment/repair. Not that it will make much noticeable difference in the regular appearance of posts here. ehem.

Wish me luck.

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket... and put foam on all sharp corners around me.

*okay, so it was probably just a nothing post but work with me here. I'm grieving the loss of my computer. and feeling stupid. and poor. and stupid.



7:08 pm (MST)
Update: IT. IS. A. MIRACLE!!!

I spent most of my day fighting back the sinking feeling that comes from knowing that I will have to spend a large sum of money to fix something that needs fixing because I messed up. That's not a fun feeling. Sort of ranks up there with the feeling of needing a rootcanal... on ALL of your teeth.

Talking to the repair technician earlier in the day made me feel worse, since he said that the WORST thing I could have done was try to turn the computer back on after the water incident (well, it was after the water had drained off and the computer was mostly dry). All afternoon, I sort of had a running conversation with God, begging for my computer to work when I got home. It didn't work when I tried it a bunch of times last night, nor did it this morning when I left for work, so I figured I had nothing to lose when I got home, put the battery back in and plugged it in.

Well, sign me up for a Mac commercial: My computer "healed" itself. I'm writing this update on my formerly soaked iBook. Take THAT service tech with your scary proclamations of doom. Take THAT know-it-alls who laughed at me. Take THAT self for panicking and all the self-recrimination.

whew.

Now to set up the impenetrable moisture barriers around my desk.