dolphinish

Trust Women.

Favorite thing today:
Someone I work with made up a word "perseverating", meaning to obsess or worry about excessively. I don't think she realizes she made it up and the best part, everyone could clearly understand it. She described someone described as "perseverating" about depressing/violent news seen on television. A mashup of "persevere" and "peruse"?


Least favorite thing today:
Having someone jack-in-the-box at my desk and  want checks at 3:55. What...you had no idea at any time today you needed a check? Bullshit.


Neutral:
The strangely intimate relationship I have with our insurance rep. You know how if you're little late on a payment and a company contacts you to see when you'll be making payment and you say it will be tomorrow, most companies just ask you to let them know the check number and when you're sending it out? Our insurance rep offered to stop by and pick it up personally.

Which is just kind of embarrassing so I insisted on being the one to walk (well drive) it over.

By the way, this is also the woman who knew exactly when I went on vacation and called our payroll person, "Dolphinish is on vacation. Will payment still be going out?"

(By the way, if you're curious, the payment she's calling about is for a strikingly paternalistic service they provide for a number of employers on Cape. Someone can purchase their auto or homeowner's insurance thought this insurance company, but rather than paying for it conventionally, it's paid for via a small deduction out of each paycheck. Handy if you don't have a lot of ready cash or are just inept at handling money.)

I received word today that my maternal grandmother left us. It was not a surprise, she was frail ninety-three year old. It's sobering to consider that my parents are now the eldest generation of my family.

I was a bit nervous talking to my mother because her relationship with her mother has long been problematic, to say the least. My grandmother was not an easy woman to grow up with. I don't know what was going on with her family, but they seem to have been quite troubled. And my grandmother struggled with alcoholism. She stayed sober when I was a kid, but my grandfather's death devastated her control.

I learned Mom had been talking with her sister and (I gather) processing a bit. My grandmother seems to have always been a bit of a mystery to her grown children. There was plenty of evidence that my grandmother had been a vital, intense interesting woman, but not to her children. Domesticity seemed to bring out the intensity in a hard way and didn't bring her much happiness.

The two of them came to a conclusion something the lines of, "Isn't it funny that someone who had such an interesting life before and after children, didn't actually share any of that WITH her children." Which I thought was unusually insightful. Maybe my mother and her sister can find some peace around their troubled family stuff.

I guess in summation, I feel a bit sobered, but not sad. In a lot of ways, the woman I remember clearly who loved to garden and swim and worked as a waitress and traveled with her husband in a microbus (!) has been gone for awhile. She's been very frail and "out of it" for a few years. But I remember her as she was years ago,  in a swim cap and a gaudy old lady bathing suit, gently splashing childhood me's knees with water and laughing, laughing in the sun.

We got to see Anthony Bourdain in Lowell last night. Yay!

Quick aside. Lowell is the most confusing town for driving ever. There's the Merrimack river and poor maintenance of the infrastructure and no signs and a maze of former cowpaths purporting to be a modern town center. It was also freezing cold, so the obvious, "Well we'll just park and figure it out while we walk!" was not an appealing option. Also, there may be monsters with big pointy teeth waiting to gobble up visitors. kathygnome  was certain she saw one.

Anyway, all that was forgiven when we stepped inside the beautiful Lowell Memorial Auditorium. I can't find any proper history on the place or photos, but it's a strikingly beautiful venue. This picture shows the stage including some of the architecture and the old pipe organs.

Anthony Bourdain's speaker format is to talk first about what's on his mind and then take questions and ramble with the audience. Topics included Food Network personalities, the evil of Sandra Lee, the idiocy of American tourists, how to behave in a high-end sushi restaurant, what it's like to suddenly have a massively fun and successful new career in your fifties and how Ted Allen sends him congratulatory emails when he manages to work in a fisting reference on his show.

If you like Anthony Bourdain, definitely try to catch him live. It's all the humor with nothing bleeped out, but it's not just the potty mouth, he's also quite touching and thoughtful.

This is a really good blog entry (unfortunately the blog now seems to be defunct) from a hetero-sexual cis--man trying to wrap his head around straight and gender normative privilege when his little boy likes to wear dresses.

We have a VIP coming to visit my work tomorrow and everyone is losing their minds. We have been reminded repeatedly to dress nicely and clean up our offices, like we're all five years old.

Our department is giving this all the attention it deserves. Today we had a discussion on whether we should wear pajamas, so the VIP knows that we work so hard we don't even go home at night or whether we should all dress in rags, so he'll know we're not paid nearly enough and our organization deserves a big fat grant.

Anyway, it's all going to be a ruddy pain-in-the-ass. The VIP arrives at ten, but his camera crew is going to arrive before then. Hopefully, they will become enamored of something or someone on the other side of the building, far far away from us.

kathygnome  wants to know if in fifteen years, this film is going to be something well-meaning, but embarrassing and exploitative, like a Jerry Lewis telethon. All I can say is, probably. Any media dealing with the developmentally delayed seems to age remarkably poorly.

I think I'd like to be independently wealthy and not have to go to work. *nods head vigorously* Doesn't that sound good?

I am watching the weather online with horrified fascination. It is seventeen degrees F outside. Do you have any idea how cold seventeen degrees is? It's is far colder than Cape has any right to be. Brrr.

Poke, poke, poke.

I can scarcely believe it. There are not one, but TWO jobs I can imagine applying for being advertised. I have this urge to poke at the job adverts to see if they're real and won't vanish into a vapor of mist.


Pfffft.

I think I'll serve out my remaining term on the Bead Society Board and not run again next year. The latest irritation is a meeting has been scheduled Tuesday, 1-4pm. Which is not inconvenient for those of us who work five days a week, 8-4. No, not at all.

Also, I was talking a bit with a co-worker who is involved with a lighthouse society. Being on their Board is a lot of work, but then the lighthouse society actually manages properties (rental, repair), runs a full-fledged gift shop and has one full time employee. This just puts the amount of time wasted by our thirty person organization in perspective.

Amused.

Watching the bad squirrels outside eating our birdseed. Little do they know we're buying a proper feed to thwart them. Hah!

Oh I'm so glad they're dropping this stupid pregnancy ban in combat. Yes yes, I understand you don't want people to be "distracted", but aren't soldiers in dangerous situations supposed to be all red-blooded and randy?

Any ban that only punishes a tiny number of people unlucky enough to have the condom break is ridiculous. I'd rather time and energy be spent in keeping out white supremacist, sexual assaulters and other thuggish activity. You know, real problems.

Okay, I've had two dreams that I actually remember so far this Yule and the "object lessons" I think I'm supposed to take away.

First Dream

I dreamed I was having a discussion with someone I went to high school with, which got a little doppelgangery. The two of us did and do look rather alike (short, dark hair, glasses). Anyway, she was  telling me how she was going to give flute lessons to someone in order to get enough money to purchase a new catbox for the cats. 

I pointed out that catboxes are super-cheap and did it ever occur to her that several hours of flute lessons was worth a heck of a lot more than a catbox? We had a little discussion about selling one's creative talents short and how you can't get any respect that way. Pretty obvious I think what that dream was about.


Second Dream

I dreamed Sketchy was being pesty and chasing after pins and paper clips and all kinds of inappropriate things and managed to wedge one firmly in his mouth. It didn't seem to be troubling him, but we had a discussion on whether we should take him to the emergency vet and get it out. During the discussion, we looked over and yep, he'd gotten it out by himself and everything was good. So...don't sweat the small stuff? That's my thought.

Is there a meme currently being pushed that "young people" know nothing about history? Our receptionist was going on about this today at top volume. She doesn't talk to anyone under the age of forty who isn't developmentally delayed, so I'm perplexed as to how she comes to have a vehement opinion on the subject.

I am dealing with the dumbest issue with the Bead Society.

Someone who gets our informational emails about upcoming projects discusses said projects with her friends and says to them, "Oh, I can teach you herringbone stitch!" (or whatever) and they clique out and learn herringbone stitch on their own instead of coming to meetings. Which I don't really care about. I have zero interest in making cliquey people come to things they don't want to come to.

The more I think about it, the stranger it gets. They can't be bothered to get their own group together, but instead get ideas from our emails and that drives their pseudo-group activities. I mean, if you really have that little inspiration in your life that you never pick up a magazine, do a web search, read a book, glance through a catalog, go to a show, anything, instead you wait for these emails to knock on your door, after which you're all, "OMGS, I must learn this project NOW!...But I don't want to go to this group's meetings!". I mean think about how odd that is.  And that's the sum total of my reaction, I think it's funny and strange and a bit pathetic.

But some of the Board Members are Losing Their Shit because She's! Stealing! Our! Ideas!

Well different people feel differently about "stuff". If it's really that much of an issue, to me the sensible thing is to quietly "lose" the offending parties' emails off the announcement list. I doubt they'd even notice and maybe they'll even go off and do their own thing.

But the aforementioned Board Members who are LTS think instead we ought to have an elaborate system of separate announcements (down to misleading photos for non-members...you gotta be kidding me).  for members and non-members (what they'll do if the offending parties become members, I have no idea). Which is just a PITA and could only be thought up by people who don't have enough to do in their lives.

Dennisport is getting a Dollar Tree. It's going to move into the old rusted out hulk of the A&P building. On one hand, it's probably good that someone is rehabbing the rusted out hulk of an A&P building. On the other hand, does the town really need one more store filled with discounted crap? Questionable. My very favorite part of the article about Dennisport getting the Dollar Tree is when it mentions the Dennis Chamber of Commerce Executive Director "visited the chain's South Yarmouth store to better understand what is coming to Dennisport". Like it was a big trip and he'd have never gone to Yarmouth otherwise, Yarmouth, aka, The Town Next Door.

Trees up. Looks purty. Gotta take some pictures of the cats chasing each other around it.

Well, nice lazy weekend that was semi-productive.

Sent a bunch of stuff to the thrift store, started organizing our disaster of a basement, found a lovely dress at the back of my closet that I had forgotten about, worked out on the balance ball for about twenty minutes, did some massive cleaning of the living room and watched lots and lots of Harry Potter. The final available movie is on for tonight, along with shrimp scampi and homemade bread.

Some time this week I'm going to try and get in a walk and a swim, do some Yule prep, maybe send out cards (coughs)....mmmmm....try to do something about my disaster of Bead Society records. Try to get a bit ahead with work so that with holidays do not involve coming back to a complete disaster, oh crap, meeting at work tomorrow, so much for that idea. Maybe I'll stay late.

I leave you with a quote from M.F.K. Fisher, the food writer no one has heard of.

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.”

Well, I've been kinda ignoring you Livejournal. Days are blending much too much into it each other, an endless grind of working and trying to get projects done outside of work and sometimes feeling frustrated by things like the economy and sometimes feeling cheered by things like cats.

This weekend I'm hoping to get caught up on massive cleaning, get some exercise in, do some work for the Bead Society and maybe do some shopping. I need clothes and I have no idea what I'm going to wear tomorrow I think I'm going to wear a hoodie and my black jeans because K. and I are both being lazy about laundry.

( You chide your staff for hoarding file folder labels... )

( Seen on the forest floor today. )

I read this great comment about people who compare Hitler to Obama,

So... are (right-wingers) saying that the Holocaust was nothing more than Hitler wanting to give everyone health care? Boy, was my history teacher wrong!