Vacation
The condition of vacating.
That would be me.
Vacating work.
Just for one day, but still.
“Vacation all I ever wanted, Vacation have to get away….”
Oh the Go-Go’s. So 80’s, yet so applicable today.
Enjoy the holiday! I’ll be back on Monday.
Category: work
This Is What Being The New Kid Looks Like
New job + No vacation accrued = One of maybe eight people at work on Christmas Eve Eve.
This is the first floor of the parking garage at 9:00am (usually packed by then). I parked in the most coveted spot.
Don’t feel too bad for me, though. My executive boss-type guy said I could leave at 1:00.
Until then, the halls are pretty empty. Helloooooooooooooo….?
In Lieu Of a Bonus
Yesterday, after a oh-so-very-long day at work, I did what busy worker bees have done for years…
I went home and whined to my spouse.
The Good Man was very considerate, listened to my tale of woe, made sure I had dinner and tucked me into bed with a “maybe tomorrow will be better.”
Well, he was right. Tomorrow, now known as today, has been *much* better.
The tipoff that today might be a bit different began when I saw a strange truck in the parking lot, located in one of the front spots.
So, you know, curious as I am, I made my over to the assigned area and got in line.
After about a half hour of waiting, I got to see what the hubbub was all about.
Yeah. They call that the Commissioner’s Trophy. You know, nothing much…they just hand it out to the team that wins the World Series**.
No big deal right? Just a hunk of metal.
Let me tell you this, I’ve been within inches of an Oscar, a Grammy and two Emmys.
They got nothing on this little beauty. NOTHING! The Commissioner’s Trophy glows and shimmers and giggles with glee.
Or maybe that was me giggling. Hard to know.
Anyhow, when I got to the front of the line, I handed my camera to a decidedly NON photographer so she could take a blurry and out of focus shot of me with the trophy.
Forgive me readers, this is a terrible photograph. But we were only allotted one and this is it.
Just know this…blurry though it may be, make no mistake, I’m very, very happy.
(why do my eyes look so funky? Gah! Couldn’t I look cute for just ONE minute, but noooo, geek girl looks geeked out)
My employer pays reasonable but not large salaries and rare bonuses. But this, this was TOTALLY worth that long, mean, very bad day yesterday!
**To my readers outside the US, I do realize that to call a sporting event a “World Series” in which twenty nine US and one Canadian team competes is rather audacious.
Brevity Is Not My Middle Name
(Sometimes the pump just needs priming. After writing about having nothing to say, it turns out I actually did have something to say today. It was just hiding. Here’s a second post for the day.)
A few weeks ago, we had a manager’s meeting here at work. This is a once a quarter affair where we meet, eat pastry, and talk about our plans for the department over the next three months.
Part of these meetings is also a discussion about how we, the management team, can improve ourselves and be better leaders for our team.
This quarter’s growth topic in support of that goal was about our use of words.
A senior member of our staff held aloft the cap from a water bottle, and told us the goal was to “use a capful, don’t pour out the whole bottle.”
He told us to shorten the bullets on our PowerPoint presentations.
He told us to “speak in conclusions” in our emails.
He told us to always be aware of how many words we’re using and then trim it back.
Ironically, it took him over half an hour to pass along this message.
I deeply considered throwing the cap from my own water bottle at him.
But I didn’t.
Ahem.
Look, dear readers, you’ve been with me for over three years, and 1,000 posts which amounts to approximately half a million words.
Do you *really* think I can “use a capful” when I write?
People, please.
To paraphrase The Dude, I’m not really into that whole brevity thing.
I’m a writer! I’m a creative! I pass words like currency through my life. My husband and my best friend, the closest people to me, both have kick ass vocabularies! If you’re gonna run with me, you gotta love the use of words and language and be willing to endure my penchant for storytelling the whole damn six pack, not just the capful.
No, I say! No! I reject the capful and dive headfirst into the ocean of words, swim around nekkid, get the words all soaked into my skin and then I’ll use a few more adverbs just to make it more, erm, wordly!
Damnit! Asking me to ratchet back the words is like tying Rodin‘s hands behind his back and asking him to craft a masterpiece with his toes.*
Ain’t gonna happen.**
* Look who is comparing herself to Rodin. That’s a bit audacious, innit?
** That said…I’m trying. Well, trying at work anyway. Be warned, all the words I have to cut out of my days at work are so totally going to show up here.
Cartoon from Toothpaste for Dinner
A less than beautiful mind
When I look inside my head, as I usually do about this time of day, and ask myself “what would I like to blog about today?” I often see many colorful suggestions, images and ideas pop to the forefront.
Sure, many of the suggestions that my monkey mind puts forth are so capricious they become either not appropriate or too complicated to write about in about 500 words, on average. But I can usually find one gem among the rubble and bring that to you, every weekday, on my blog.
Today, on my walk over to the cafeteria to grab a salad and rush back to my office in time for another conference call, when I turned inward for a good blog idea, what I got, instead of colorful confetti and suggestions of “poop!,” was resoundingly gray. Quiet. Lonesome.
As gray as the cubicle walls that line my office building.
As quiet as the dark winter clouds that have gathered over the Bay Area to lie down and weep cold rain on our heads.
As lonesome as New Mexico state highway 285 between Vaughan and Roswell.
When I looked inward, I discovered that my brain hurts.
For every company that’s ever employed me, December has always been a busy month. My current employer is no exception.
At five months into my new gig, I really like it a lot, and as I’ve begun to hit my stride, I have discovered that cute little word “global” in my title means my days begin in the UK, lunch with Sao Paulo, a quick break for the US, afternoon tea with Australia, early evening snack with Hong Kong and I am put down to bed for the night with India.
All on the phone. All day long. The UK to India run encompasses about twelve hours of my day.
Then I wake up and do it all again.
While this probably sounds like complaining, it’s really not. My job is fascinating and fun and really good stuff.
But I am *tired*.
In the interest of my own health, I’ve begun working out again. Nothing major, Jazzercise a couple times a week and a sashay on the treadmill a couple other days a week.
I found I need that exercise to build up my stamina so I can sustain these long days at work.
But all that exercise wears me out too.
And my blog, my beautiful, wonderful blog. It’s suffering too. My goal of a post every weekday stands firm. Then I go and miss a day (like yesterday) and I’ve got to climb back out of the hole.
So all of these words (about 430 so far) are just my way of saying I don’t have much to say.
For today, anyway. That quiet, gray, lonesome mind only lasts for a little while. Then my severe latent childhood will kick in, and I’ll figure out how to write another post about poop.
You can count on that.
Artist Heather Gorham‘s interpretation of the monkey mind