72 posts tagged “work”
You bet your ass I do. Loud and clear. Especially if the tree falls with the "help" of a giant scoop loader.
It's true. They killed my little tree with the same scoop loader they used to rip up the road next to it. Like some malevolent mechanical giraffe, rending it limb from limb.
I refer to it as my tree because no one else really cares about it. Plenty of people have expressed sadness that the tree was killed, but nobody loved that tree the way I did. It stood right outside my window and every day I admired it--how it was tall and elegant and framed my beautiful view. The people who made the decision to kill it probably looked at it a handful of times, and it never occurred to them that someone might care.
The lesson in all of this is not a happy one. The things you care about? No one loves them the way you do. The same goes for the people you love. After you're dead, no one will ever love them the way you did. That will be gone forever. And the people who love you? After they're dead, no one's going to love you the way they did. Everything and everyone is transient. You're going to lose them. They're going to lose you. It's hard to remember that. People invented religion so they wouldn't have to accept that, but you need to. It's good for you to look at the people and things around you and remember that you're going to lose them.
Hubbicula and I agreed that he'd probably lost his hand to some very voracious man-eating tree. Now he spends his days as an itinerant scoop loader operator, seeking revenge on all of tree-kind.
Today, I hate everybody.
Construction up the block woke me up early this morning. For days and days (all last week), they didn't work on the 19th Street project, but this morning, they started at 6 am? Drilling near the water main, so every pipe in the house rattled.
I left my breakfast sitting on the kitchen counter--my fault. So I walked up to the Union for some croissants and some coffee to cheer me up. No croissants. The kid in the bakery just shrugged when I asked him why. There are chunks of burned milk in my cafe au lait. Not my fault.
Outside my office, they're tearing up the road behind the building...and they're getting ready to rip out the little tree outside my window. The lovely little tree that provides me shade in the summer and a place for birds and skwerls to hang out. Where will Stumpy come to get my apple cores when the tree is gone? And it's not like I can complain--they're ripping out the tree to put in a new handicap entrance to the building, which is desperately needed.
Also, there are people who need to communicate with me who aren't. Who just aren't saying anything important that needs to be said.
Of course, it could be worse. I could be unemployed or homeless or in need of a handicap entrance or starving in Somalia or chained by the neck in a Columbian jungle or or or. It could be a lot worse, but that doesn't make me hate everybody less. It makes me hate everybody more.
End of the fiscal year, here I come.
If I can just make it through the next 16 inches of paperwork, I will be in the clear. If I can just untangle the last piece of travel paperwork, I'll have the rest of the summer to devote to my higher study of Slack. If I can just...
Bonus randomocity from the end of yesterday:
As I was leaving work, I walked past the new air-handling shaft that runs all the way from the roof to the basement. Inside the shaft, I could hear a bunch of guys working, then suddenly, someone shouted, "OH MY GOD!" This cry of alarm was followed by, "JESUS CHRIST!" "WHAT IS THAT?" and then at last: "Damn it, Bobby, did you shit your pants?" and hysterical man laughter.
Yup, basically, they've got a dozen guys like my dad doing construction on Brain Tumor Hall.
Little mouse that visited my office: you're very cute, but you need to move along. Also, I advise against going down to Slavic. They have snap traps.
Wow. French movies are really different. Nothing like getting what you believe to be a drama and finding out there's a blow job in the first 15 minutes. A real blow job. Not an off-screen simulated one. Now, I'm not a prude. I have nothing against cock-sucking. Some of my best friends are...okay, that's not actually true. My best friends are not cocksuckers, but I do have close friends who are. Still, even for racy French cinema, I wasn't expecting that. Imagine trying to get funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to make an America film that has a blow job in it. I'm not a prude, but I didn't keep watching. I figure, if I'm 15 minutes in and I don't like either of the main characters, I don't really want to watch one of them perform oral sex on the other one. I'm weird that way.
Bacon food-ku
Grease popping on me
Ow! Even when you hurt me,
I will still love you.
Never mind art movies with blow jobs, you know what we need to borrow from the French? A month of summer vacation. Summer is awesome and it would only be better if we all got to take a month off.
So, after months of inconveniences and mysterious dust and bobcats ripping holes in the wall below my window and a hammer drill running all the time that sounds distantly like a giant calico trying to hork up a hairball, I've finally had my first real temper tantrum. I came in this morning to find a professor in a tizzy, because he'd planned to show a movie in the conference room, but there were maintenance guys in there, who told him they'd been sent to remove the digital projector.
Now, I am the only person who would order such a thing. The only person who would initiate the work request paperwork for such a thing, so I knew something was wrong. When I went down to the conference room, I found two maintenance guys walking around in boots on my newly refinished antique conference table. They had just finished removing the projector from the ceiling. When I asked them what the hell they were doing, they said, "We got a work order to remove the projector."
From whom? The maintenance guys clearly recognized the danger I represented, because they were already apologizing as they fished out their work order papers. In full blown menstrual fury mode, with flames licking off the top of my head, I snatched it out of their hands. Scrawled there was the vague notation: "Remove dig. proj. from seminar room. Scribble Scribble Something. 2nd Floor." Signed: the Director of Construction at Design and Construction Management.
You know I got that fucker on conference call fast and proceeded to tear him a new one. His excuse for the vague instructions: he didn't know the room number of the seminar room where the projector needed to be removed, but it was on the 2nd Floor somewhere. The maintenance guys were quick to say: "This is the only seminar room with a projector on the 2nd Floor, so we assumed you meant this one."
The Director of DCM mumbled to himself for a while and said, "Well, that should be right, because it has to be removed prior to the duct work."
"The duct work in JANUARY?" I said. "Are you sure you don't mean the seminar room ON THIRD FLOOR, where they're doing duct work in AUGUST?"
Dead silence, then a tiny little voice said, "Oh, uh, right. I guess that's right."
Then I said a few things that may come back to bite me in the ass, if this guy is brave enough to tell anyone his mistake. Things like: "Dumbass. Moron. How can you be in charge of this project when you don't even know which floor they're working on? I'm just a lowly secretary and I can keep that straight."
So now I'm stewing around waiting for the maintenance guys to replace the projector, speakers and ceiling tiles, while walking around on my conference table in their socks.
Close enough for government work, I guess.
Some stuff:
My street is a wildlife sanctuary now, with baby buns and squirrels running up and down, chasing each other around the medians. This is cute but alarming, because the street isn't going to be closed forever. This is a whole generation of critters failing to learn that the street is a Dangerous Place.
I thought the German secretary talked a lot. Now with the reshuffling, though, we've got three other departments down on our floor. Verdict: History secretary talks a lot more than German secretary. In fact, History secretary has not shut up since she got here this morning.
Dude riding your motorcycle without a helmet. At first, I thought you were just an idiot, but then I noticed that you were wearing one of those really nice, padded, Motocross jackets. That's so thoughtful of you, so that when you're in a wreck, even though your brain will be splattered all over the pavement, your kidneys and liver and other internal organs will be protected from damage. Thanks for thinking of all those people waiting on the transplant lists.
I like getting requests for manuscripts in the mail. Makes me feel like I didn't waste the stamp on my SASE.
I hate getting e-mail rejections. It's like the final frontier of disappointment. Oh, and agents who reject by e-mail when I've queried by snail mail, what are they doing with my stamps? Bastards.
I'm feeling a little guilty, because all the crazy weather that trashed Manhattan and flooded Iowa, well, it's really delivered some lovely spring-like weather to Lawrence. Normally, summer would already be heating up here, but that last two days have been delightfully sunny and cool. Sorry about that.
On my errand to the post office, I had a near disgruntled encounter. The postal clerk was so pissed off, she was pacing up and down in her little cubicle, muttering to herself. She glared up at the line of people and snarled, "Next!" I said, "I'll come back later." When I did, she wasn't there. I bought my stamps and got the hell out. That's all I need, getting shot on a Tuesday.
These two lovely women, who have been together for more than 50 years, finally got married today. I don't care where you are on the political spectrum, if that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, you don't have one. I almost cried listening to this story on the radio this morning, because I had this sudden, completely uncontrollable feeling of hope. I don't get that a lot, but this morning, it seemed like maybe someday, we really will have equal rights for everyone in this country.
Well, I thought I'd been keeping low, but Hieronymous saw me and tagged me.
1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was living in Wichita with my sister, who was getting ready to sell her house and move in with her boyfriend. I was working for Planned Parenthood, trying to avoid my adorable, sad little stalker, and writing a lot of letters to a Marine in Okinawa.
2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
- Prep a manuscript to send to an agent.
- Go to post office to send manuscript and buy stamps for the department (I know, we're living in the Dark Ages.)
- Go to flower shop with my stripper-like pile of crumpled ones to pay for departmental flowers for a sick GTA.
- Pay some bills.
- Write.
3) Snacks I enjoy:
Lindt milk chocolate, bacon, grapes, pistachios
4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Pay off the mortgages of all my family and friends. Build a massive media empire to rival Rupert Murdoch's, only mine would actually disseminate news and facts. Give a shload of cash to Planned Parenthood, Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières, and other charities. Use the rest of it to start a foundation to provide education and reproductive health services to girls and women all over the world, but especially in Afghanistan and most of Africa. Oh, and if I had anything left over, let's not forget the golden chariot pulled by 500 hairless cats wearing diamond encrusted harnesses.
5) Places I have lived:
In Kansas: Hugoton, Liberal, Wichita, Manhattan, and Lawrence. Nagaoka, Japan. Tampa, Florida.
6) Jobs I have had:
Church janitor, architectural image library archivist, secretary at nuclear reactor--lasted 4 days, hotel maid, English teacher, sex educator, public relations nimbob, editor, volunteer coordinator, church secretary, university secretary, writer.
7) Bloggers I am tagging who I will enjoy getting to know better:
Seriously, I can't think of anyone who hasn't done this. Really, I thought I had a few people, but when I looked back through their blogs...too late. Already tagged. So, it's all on you now.
Apparently the administration at the university has never heard of this old adage. Or they just don't care. Here's what I faced coming into work this morning:
Yes, that's an entire dumpster full of student desks. It's one of at least five that have been hauled away in the last week. As preparations are made to redo the ductwork in Brain Tumor Hall, all the classrooms on the fourth floor are being converted to temporary office space. So, naturally, all the student desks are being thrown away.
Not stored until the fourth floor rooms are turned back into classrooms again. Not sold to another school. Not donated to another school. Not used as a fund raiser gimmick for alumni--donate $$ and get one of your old desks. Thrown away. Hauled to a land fill.
The other side of this wastrel behavior is the question of what will happen in two years when the fourth floor is reconverted into classrooms. Of course, the university will buy new desks. Because we don't have more pressing things to spend money on, like this staircase to Brain Tumor Hall that seems to be steadily disintegrating.
I'm drafting an e-mail to the Provost, to which I plan to attach that dumpster photo. My main question will be this: is this the image the university wants to promote of itself?
I don't know what accountants do at parties, but I have a few ideas. I just came from a three hour meeting with Central Accounting and let me tell you: these people get seriously turned on by numbers and accounting and spreadsheets and data processing software and end-of-year financial processes. The guy who gave us the run-down on the changes to the university's accounting procedures for the new fiscal year got some serious wood just talking about it. The woman next to me seemed equally excited and giddy, laughing at all his accounting jokes.
Now, how did I end up at this wild and crazy Accountants Orgy? Crap, I dunno. How does anybody with an advanced degree in English end up doing accountant work? It's what English majors are good for. We're minimally competent in just about anything and can learn whatever we don't already know. We know our degree isn't worth anything, so we face the world prepared to do any work that will pay the bills.
That said, year-end financial reporting doesn't trip my trigger, if you know what I mean.
I did. You don't like it, you can fuck off.
Today is Phase One of the Sadly Only Temporary Evacuation of Brain Tumor Hall. This means that all the GTA's in the building get relocated elsewhere. So all morning, I've been running up and down the hill, dogging the movers, nagging the IT people, to get ten offices relocated to the Glorified Quonset Hut that will house the GTA's for the next 16 months. (And really, it's not that glorified.) I've sweated through my clothes and courtesy of the 99% humidity, I have an orange afro going on. Add to this the fact that all of the movers are stoners who weren't very smart before they started smoking the weed. They barely understand how a moving dolly works and every desk they've rolled around the corner of the main entrance, they've smacked into the wall. Thus all the newer desks now have one dinged up corner, and all the old, steel WW2 battleship desks have left dents in the wall. It's lovely. Oh, and can you imagine what a hundred pound steel double-pedestal desk sounds like tumbling off a dolly and down two flights of concrete stairs in an enclosed space? Yeah, like a migraine.
The best part: we get to do this over again come December. Then the rest of the department--twenty more offices and all of our administrative space--temporarily moves out of the Brain Tumor Hall while the duct work is replaced.
No, wait. Here's the best part: we get to do it all over again on a grand scale come next August, when the whole department returns to the places we're now vacating. Supposedly, the end result will be fewer brain tumors. I want to believe.
