Barb’s Burblings

If you want to visit a site that you make you laugh until you cry, check out Hyperbole and a Half. Seriously, it brings me nothing but joy. And insight into my life. Seriously, this spiral (from “This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult“) happens to me on an all-too-regular basis at work:

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP.

Do yourself a favor and check out the archives. Made of awesome, and perfect for a Sunday night.

Yesterday at work we “celebrated” Breast Cancer Awareness at our all-staff meeting. Coworkers got up and told their tales of breast cancer. I didn’t share mine.

My grandfather died in November of 1997. My grandmother turned 80 the next month, and early the next year was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through treatment and has been in remission since 1998. She’s still going relatively strong and is almost 91 years old.

I don’t remember when my aunt was diagnosed with cancer in her mouth. I want to say it was spring of 2005 (around Easter, though I found out after, because who wants to bring down a holiday like that, right?). I watched as she fought treatment for a cancer that she didn’t deserve. She never smoked, never did anything like that. She taught reading at a local college, and read Agatha Christie and Anne of Green Gables, and loved watching Trading Spaces. She had four children, and a grandson, and fought the cancer and dealt with depression and died the day before her daughters’ 26th birthday. She didn’t get to see her second grandson or her daughters graduate from medical school.

It’s a story similar to so many about breast cancer, but I can’t help but feel that it’s not just breast cancer that needs awareness and research. People are out there dying of all forms of cancer. It’s not that I don’t support breast cancer research, it’s just that when I choose to spend my funds on charity, I have to prioritize. So when I give, it’s to causes that hit closer to home for me. Breast cancer is something that hits close to home…but more down the block than in my front yard.

At our monthly all-staff meeting today, we had a presentation on identity theft. Which is all well and good, except that I swear we just had one maybe 4 months ago. We get it. Protect ourselves.

(Though obviously there are people out there who need help. For example: The woman who lived in my apartment before me. She didn’t bother changing her address with the post office. When I moved in, I found a check for her deposit sitting in the mailbox. Since then I’ve gotten her bank statements and, even better, her credit card. Yep. Apparently her old one expired, so I now have her new one. Man, she’s lucky I’m honest.)

Anyway. One of the things the presenter talked about was identity theft and social networking sites. I thought that might be interesting–I can definitely see how Facebook, particularly, might lend itself to identity theft if you’re not careful. Except that the only thing she gave as an example was Tony LaRussa (of the football team the St. Louis Cardinals, according to her) suing Twitter (not that she said Twitter) because of the profile someone set up using his name. Sigh. Yeah. Before she talks, she might want to have looked into this a bit. She obviously has no idea what Twitter is like. Tons of celebrities have people set up fake profiles. It happens. I mean, I’m following “Peter Angelos” on Twitter (and I totally recommend it–it’s hilarious; from today: “This year, we’re drafting Matt Wieter’s [sic] DNA in the first round”). I’m following FakeRahmEmanuel, for heaven’s sake. I hate it when presentations have potential, then don’t live up to them. Particularly when it’s 45 minutes in the middle of what turned out to be a nearly 2-hour meeting. Good times.

On the positive side, I did make a list for myself of things I need to do for our conference. So that’s good.

I took a nap this afternoon instead of doing work–I was tired and had a headache, so figured it was for the best. Naturally, I had a dream that involved my teeth falling out. Like, all of them. They popped out of my mouth and looked like dentures. But anyway. I’ve always heard that dreams about your teeth falling out are a sign of stress. This isn’t surprising; I am pretty stressed right now, between my job and my freelance job–not to mention feeling bad about spending all my time in front of a computer, etc.

Naturally, I followed this up by going to the Orioles game, ensuring that I wouldn’t get a ton of work done today (I fit 2 hours in after I got home). Whee!

So, I went on a cruise with Becca and Steve. Technically it was a few weeks ago. But look! Pictures! The cruise was indeed super fun. I actually felt bad for the crew–it must’ve been a rough week for them.
On a cruise, you get a little card that’s basically everything on the ship; it’s your room key and is programmed with your picture to use when boarding and leaving the ship, it’s how you charge everything on board (food, casino, bingo, spa services, etc.). And it turned out that there were issues with the cards we were initially given; they all were associated with the wrong names. So on the second night, we had to exchange the cards for new ones.
On top of this, it was the first time they had done this cruise. The ship had been doing sailings in Europe all summer, then did a trans-Atlantic, followed by an 8-day cruise, then our 6-day. The crew hadn’t done the same cruise once in over a month, which had to have thrown off their routines.
But the topper came on Wednesday, when we were in Grand Cayman. As we headed off toward Jamaica, I could feel the ship make a very sharp turn. And then…keep turning. Eventually the cruise director made an announcement, that someone or something had gone overboard. Turned out that it was the giant inflatable monkey that someone had on their balcony (visible in one of the pictures linked to above). But they had to make absolutely sure–due to international law–so we were required to figures 8s just south of Grand Cayman as everyone on the ship had to check in again. Which took three hours. Steve, Becca, and I wound up sitting in the bar near where the check-ins were taking place to watch the fun in the latter portion of the proceedings. By that point, the director was listing names of people who hadn’t checked in. When the last ones did, there was much cheering.
Anyway, I did get my bobsledding in. Mystic Mountain was just fantastic–so beautiful. I went on the bobsled three times. Seriously, there was nothing not awesome about that day. And we got to Jamaica on time; just barely, due to aforementioned circling of Grand Cayman. In any case, if I run away from home someday, you’d be wise to check out Mystic Mountain. I may be living on a zipline platform there.

At work, we have a monthly all-staff meeting. They bribe us into attending by having cake (in honor of that month’s birthdays)–which is enough for me, honestly. They also have us fill out attendance cards, and then hold a drawing. One person wins free parking in the building garage for a month and one person wins Metro passes. And I won at the June all-staff! It was very exciting. And I discovered that parking in the building itself is incredibly superior to parking in the garage right next door. (That yes, even has a walkway between the two. I am that lazy.) Also nice was not having to pay and sleeping in a bit later.
Anyway. I picked up the clicker to get into the garage and the window tag on June 16. And we had the July all-staff this Tuesday. Which means that the next person should get them starting next week. Only…nobody from HR has contacted me to tell me that. And when I picked them up, the HR person didn’t say anything about returning them. I really probably should take the bus on Monday and turn in the parking pass, but…man, I don’t want to.
Although driving such a short distance is killing my mileage.

I try to do my work. I have a manuscript to proofread, and what do I have to deal with?

You try getting those papers away from him.
(And isn’t it super cute how he looks so casual with that leg on the manuscript? Too adorable!)

I was at work a bit late this evening–I stayed until 5:15 or so. I usually work 8:30 to 4:30, but got to work around 8:45, so it wasn’t like I was working incredibly late. I was in the middle of something and just wanted to finish it. But as I went to drop something off at someone’s desk, I ran into three people who were all, “You’re still here?!” This is somewhat unnerving. For one thing, it’s hardly the first time I’ve stayed late. Should I be staying late more often? Do I come across as a slacker?
I’ve actually been staying a bit later more frequently lately. Some of it is that I’m super busy. But it’s mostly because I’ve been driving to work (I won free parking for a month). For some reason, when I drive to work, I stay later. When I take the bus, I am hyper aware of the time at the end of the day, and always try to get the same bus home. It makes no sense. My bus runs every 10 minutes or so, so it’s not like missing my normal bus will get me home much later. At my previous job, when my commute involved a shuttle to the Metro to my bus, missing the shuttle did mean getting home considerably later, so maybe I just still have that mindset.
Of course, it just seems that I have some odd notion set in my mind that no, in fact, I have to take the same bus to work every morning and the same bus home every night. In the mornings, I know what time I have to get up in order to catch my normal bus. And if I hit snooze one time too many, I’ll think, “Oh, I’ll just drive.” Because apparently, I can’t just catch a slightly later bus. And then I wind up getting to work late.
None of this makes sense, but I have no idea how to change it.

We got a new person in my department today, and to welcome her, we had some bagels and sat around chatting for a while. One person suggested we go around and have every person provide a word or two to describe each other. What did they come up for me?
Neat. Precise. Consistent. Sporty. Soft-spoken. And, after a bit of a pause, a hidden, wicked sense of humor.
It’s interesting, because those are probably not words that I’d use to describe myself. Well, maybe consistent. Consistent and precise probably come from my being an editor–that’s my job, and these are coworkers, so that makes sense. Neat is because for some reason, everyone at work is fixated on how tidy my desk is. I admit it. We’re actually having a clean-up day in a couple of weeks, and people were scoffing that I needed to clean at all. As my apartment proves, a place can be neat, but not clean. (I desperately need to clean my apartment–vacuum, dust, the works.) I just happen to keep things nicely in piles. That’s how I work. Otherwise, everything’s confused and I can’t concentrate.
But sporty? Really? I guess it’s because I like baseball, but that hardly makes me “sporty.” That makes me “a sports fan.” And really, “a baseball fan.” (Though I do like other sports.) I haven’t actively played a sport since…volleyball. In the tenth grade.
I think soft-spoken and hidden, wicked sense of humor go together. I am pretty quiet at work. I stay in my cube. I pop out and talk every now and then, but I’m probably not as social as the others in my department. And when you have a more sarcastic sense of humor, you try to watch it at the office–it’s hard to know how people react, and annoying people you work with isn’t a good idea. It does creep out, though.
It is always interesting to get a glimpse into how other people see you.

The other day at work, I spent the entire afternoon just completely dragging. After lunch, I was forcing myself through the day…and this is hardly a rare occurrence. I finally perked up and got some energy around 4. So I’m going to officially come out in favor of siestas. I feel like my productivity would skyrocket if I worked, say, from 8:30 to 1, then 4 to 7. Nap for a little while, maybe play with the cats. It would be great! Seriously, I think I spend more energy in a typical afternoon trying to keep myself awake than I do actually working.
Of course, this arrangement would really only work for people like me, who live close to their offices. Maybe they could add siesta rooms to office buildings…