Category: Opinions

Change is good

Being of the Taurean persuasion, change doesn’t come easily to me.

It takes a lot of work to bomb me out of my ways.

That said, I’ve been tired of my old blogger template for quite some time. I’ve also seen FAR too many blogs with that same template.

One thing about Blogger…they don’t offer you just a ton of template choices.

Noticing my neice’s cool as heck blog and following her advice, I’d tried quite a few sites offering free code and flashy templates. But I have had no success getting them to load and work.

I ventured out into the fray again today and found a LOT of really ugly templates. REALLY REALLY UGLY.

Then I stumbled on this one…so far so good. It loaded. I had to go in and change the html because all the buttons and labels were in Spanish. But ok, that wasn’t hard.

So far it seems easy on the eyes. Muted colors. Still working out the kinks and getting used to my new space, but so far, so good!

Is it the air up there?

Today one of my employees stopped by my desk, and she was fuming. To be fair, she’s a black cloud kind of a gal, so I take her fuming quite lightly.

“Did you see what happened over there!?!?” she said, pointing in the direction of the corner where the “big boss” sits.

“Yes, I saw,” I replied calmly.

She sputtered. “But…but!”

See…there is some retrofit work being done in the building where Big Boss used to sit. And on an emergency basis, they’ve moved their operations over to our building.

Needless to say, Mr. Big Boss is going to make his space as comfortable as he wants it…even thought he will only be here for three months, tops.

My employee sputtered on, “Did you see that he had all the cubicles rearranged and then booted (her friend) out of their window cube so that his admin could sit there?!?!?”

“Yes, I saw,” I replied.

“But…doesn’t that make you mad!?!?” she howled.

“No, actually…in the scheme of all the crazy things execs have done at this company, this is mild.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said, sullenly walking away, “It’s still not fair, though.”

So that got me thinking…at what point in the escalation of your career path do you flip over from “wow, thanks for doing that for me” to “WHERE IS MY ROOM TEMPERATURE WATER!?!?!?!”

When do you get a hall pass for acting like a turd? How high does the title have to be?

I’m firmly lower middle management, and *clearly* it’s not that level.

I guess the real question is…how hard do I gotta work so I can get to the level where I don’t gotta work much at all?

For now, I can only gaze UP at the ivory tower.

Best Line of the Day*

“It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency.”

And that is what scares the beejeebus out of me about this year’s election.

Source: Op-Ed article “McCain Loses His Head” by George Will for the Washington Post.

*will all due deference to NewMexiKen

Let’s see…

Since I dropped out of the world yesterday (see post below), let’s see what’s going on in my little world today so I can get caught up. Yep, let’s go to the news.

Stock are down…blah, blah, blah

Government bail out…blah blah

Obama struggling to maintain lead in key states. Sure, yeah, ok.

Palin ain’t talking to the press. boooring

Tainted milk in China. : brr : scary.

David Blaine hanging upside down for a real long time. Yawn. My feelings on that yo-yo are already documented.

Every state has a personality. Hmm. Mildly interesting.

A crappy rendition of the National Anthem. Nothing new. Ya never know what yer gonna get when you go to the yard.

Meg Ryan talks about her divorce. From, uh, 2000?

Wow, ok, well, in one day, not much changed.

And in that same day…people were rude on the CalTrain. My boss pooped on one of my performance reviews. The shuttle to the train broke down. There was a major accident a block from my house. And I ended the day with a deep headache and a really bad mood…that I brought home to The Good Man…just so he could experience the special joy his wife had to bring to the table.

feh!

A quiet place to rest

Yesterday at work I had a meeting in a nearby building. I decided to be all eco-friendly and stuff and walk over.

As I toodled along, I was surprised to come across this:

I found it…peculiar.

It’s a nice cement bench with detailed Fish and Wildlife stuff about the “creek” that lay there in view of the bench (behind the, uh, chain link fence).

Here’s an unobstructed view of the “creek” from a small bridge.

(yes, the quotes around “creek” are on purpose)

Folks, where I come from, we call that an arroyo.

And we don’t sit by it and watch the weeds grow. We just don’t.

Is this like the LA river, where, to quote Wikipedia: “For most of its length, it flows through a narrow concrete channel?”

Does something that flows through a concrete channel really qualify as a river (or creek)?

I found it strange, on this walk, to find one random bench with a view of…a weed filled arroyo.

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Photos by Karen Fayeth and her trusty iPhone