(no subject)

This morning my favourite (or close to it) comic strip, Over the Hedge, featured the two main characters talking about the anniversary that's coming up tomorrow. And about spending time wisely and cherishing each day and so on. This is particularly unusual for this strip because the characters in question are a raccoon responsible for something like 2% of the annual Twinkie consumption of the entire continental United States and a turtle who, at least until recently, worshipped Martha Stewart. They were musing about what they'd done on September 10th last year and it was something on the order of 'got my shell waxed', I forget the exact details.

I had to smile just a little bit. Last year, on September 10th, I know exactly what I was doing and what the day was like. See, at this time of year last year, my boss hadn't given me my performance evaluation yet. I was unspeakably nervous, as I usually get before such things, and my stomach was tying up in knots. I was also dealing with the onset of the school year at Kean, involving a professor I knew nothing about; the 11th was going to be my first day in Systems Analysis. I'd been waiting and waiting andwaitingandwaiting for that eval and it was more than I wanted to deal with... on the 10th of September, 2001, I got to work on a gray and drizzly day and said to myself, "know what? Your boss isn't in for half of today. For the other half, he has scheduled meetings to deal with. You can't get your eval today, it has to be tomorrow. You don't have class tonight, you have it tomorrow. Just do your work, sit back, and relax."

So I did. And, peculiarly, the world cooperated. I had almost no pestering requests for computer help. I was able to catch up with work that had gone begging. I got to relax. The sky outside seemed to be cooperating, even; it was gray, too wet to skate and too cool to be uncomfortable.

On 10 September, 2001, I had the closest I think I've ever gotten as an adult to a day of perfect peace. On the next day I realised why - in my life these things never happen by accident, it was compensation in advance by the Universe for the rest that was to come.

That having been said, I got my Cute, pelogrande. I have so got to take it to work with me tomorrow!

The inevitable survey.

Aaah, furkit. I knew this was gonna come up sooner or later. Might as well get it out of the way.

( I've seen the lights go out on Broadway, I watched the mighty skyline fall. . . )

At what point does ice cream in the office freezer join the public domain?

Our fridges at work - there are two - are cleaned out roughly every week. The freezers are not cleaned out as often, because they're not used as often. Fridges? If your food is still there on Friday and not labeled with your name and the fact that you plan to eat it on Monday, it's not there on Monday. Freezers? Ha, ha, it is to laugh...

Most of the time I don't care about this, because the food in the freezers is mostly diet lunches or dinners or non-diet lunches or dinners in the nice little 'slit the plastic wrap' packages for the microwave. But one of the freezers has five or six containers of ice cream. Two or three are super-premium pints, like Godiva Dark Chocolate and some form of Edy's Dreamery ("We'll inject the saturated dairy fats directly into your carotid, but you'll be so happy you won't care!"). I'm not sure about most of the others. One is a full-sized container - what are those, gallons? - of Healthy Choice Low Fat Mint Chocolate Chip. It melted partly, then re-froze; there's this weird translucent olive-greenish patch on the lowest side when I pull off the lid, like that area used to be liquid and never got subjected to the mixing with air that gives us ice cream theoretically capable of being scooped.

I am tired today. I would say exhausted from my karate lesson last night, but I don't think that's it. I'm tired for that reason and for stress reasons and for a lot of other reasons, most of which have to do with tomorrow. That ice cream's been in the freezer since before I went to Texas, sometime in July. I don't know whose it is. I don't know if it was intended for something, or if it belonged to someone who no longer works here and didn't bother clearing it out, or what. Right now I have the most amazing urge to go and scoop out a mugful of that refrozen mint choco chip, but I don't know if that's allowed, or stealing, or what...

aaargh. Og want ice cream. Og want mint ice cream. Og not want wait two and half hours so Og get to health food store sell Turtle Mountain Mint Marble Fudge soy ice cream substitute. Og want mint ice cream NOW.

*sigh* I'm gonna go get a drink of water.

According to our Public Relations director,

the President just put the country on high alert.

This is how I know I've been at this job too long: instead of keeping my mouth shut, I looked at the PR director and asked, "So we should just be wetting our pants, instead of dumping core?"

The fundraising officer from National Headquarters behind her burst into laughter and wandered off to lean on the wall.

This is how I know the PR person's been at this job too long: she just nodded and said "yeah, that's about right."