I have probably done this to people without even realizing it.

Today was pretty much taken up by one blamed report I was putting together for Management. The requirements for something that I got Friday were kind of blurry, but I put together something pretty spiffy. It was, however, wrong. I got the actual requirements, put something far better together, then realized that OMG, stuff from non-current interviewers were not being counted. (And there's still stuff that's not being counted, because the numbers are off. But it's better.) It needed a whole chunk of data, broken down in specific ways. And it wasn't stuff that I was comfortable shoving around with queries, because it was just so fiddly and obnoxious (and I wanted to see wtf I was doing; I'll use queries next time on all the other jobs). But I got it done and got to go home early and go play.

It's planned for four-hour shifts the rest of the weekend. Oi. Not fun with the happy. There's dayshift starting up Real Soon Now. That's good, because hours are short.

Instead of being quite as short as they might be and sending everyone home totally obscenely early, they are doing "review training", aka "sit & bitch & review stuff we should have known and leave some of the phone work alone." My numbers are occasionally the star of the show.

Mr. Boring-Ass McCrankypants who attempted^* to Start Shit At Work With The Supervisors for othercat some time ago was Not Pleased with the fact that while he may in fact be above average, he is not in fact above planned production. There was snark at his expense. There was rather a lot of it from 3:30pm Eyeliner Woman right then and there (she was loudly excited about her above-production scores) and a rather lot more behind the scenes later. (*And failed. Succeeded in putting him deeper in the hole himself, though. Tip to obnoxious know-it-all old men: don't complain about "my neighbor talks to herself" to the multiple-personalitied supervisor. Especially when you don't want anyone to, like, let your neighbor know that it's a touch disturbing, or be moved, you just "think someone should be aware." I'm aware that you're an asshole and trying to start shit, and I'm aware that she's better at her job than you are at yours, and that the supervisors like her and don't like you. And if you mouth off the way you have been lately to the wrong person, you're going to be searching for some of that employment elsewhere that you're evidently so much better suited for.) (Amazingly, Cute Desk Guy and the Figment actually get along with the dude. What is it about pompous windbags?)

Don't keep objects that could possibly be misused by the very determined off the plane, keep potential terrorists off the plane. Oh, goodness. I almost wrote "phone".

I made Cute Desk Guy cry on Sunday.

I was telling him the backstory on the Stoner Dude thing, see, and when I got to the part where Stoner Dude had gone on break and come back (late) smelling strongly of "one of God's green herbs" (there's a certain amount of diplomacy recommended around Cute Desk Guy), the man put the story on pause so he could find something to mop at his eyes. The sheer stupidity involved brought tears to his eyes.


I was trying to get on the bus to go to the library just as someone who could only have been a lady of the night got off. I was talking with V on the cellphone at the time, and it was the sort of moment that's the middle of a conversation, and clearly the wrong time to enter the conversation, but the lady of the night lewdly informed me that I could probably make more money than she did. It's nice to hear from a complete stranger that I have nice boobs, but it was a seriously surreal moment.


Cracktastic Lone Power/Nita plot bunnies.


I have gotten Halloween-themed candies to distribute at work. I'm not sure if there will be enough to go around on the phone floor, but there are definitely enough for the supervisors. My Inner Slytherin is plotting ways of calculatedly demonstrating that I do actually care about my co-workers. I am good about caring. I am not good about expression.

(In the same "not good about expression" category: I regret adding to that girl's distress, but I don't see any other way it could have gone under the circumstances. And each irate message I get from her friends diminishes the amount of charity I feel for her.)

Freud has been nearly entirely vanquished as of Sunday.

figment0 called late in the evening, and we giggled on our respective cordless phones while the storm raged outside. He's a good Figment, he is.

I chatted with jdllama about the current e-mail angst I'm having. What it looks like is there's a bad routing table somewhere between me and http://mail.yahoo.com, and that just sucks. When I next talk to Qwest, you can be sure that my opinion of their IVR will be even lower than usual in comparison to the friendly and helpful stuff from a competitor's tech support fellow.

It seems, now that I've been awake long enough to have my defences go down utterly and completely, that I've been resisting perving over the Cute Desk Guy just as hard as I once resisted perving over figment0. This, however, seems to be somewhat more successful than the resistance against figment0, for a few reasons.

First, I don't feel an incomplete bond hanging around. He's safe. That means whatever happens between us -- indifference, friendship, gods know what else -- is between us (well, and our respective deities) and not due to something larger than us looming. It's such a relief to not have that hanging over my head, unspeakably wonderful. I don't have to balance Destiny against practicality, and figure out how to lower a figurative stack of fragile and explosive items gently to the ground. What we build is up to us. We're not picking up after anything.

Part of the difficulty in balancing Destiny, I must admit, is my silly habit of making plans that override Destiny, and wanting to stick with them. If I just let it all loose and let it balance itself, would it work? Somehow, I don't think this society is set up to allow much of that, not any more. You need money to make that work, or ability to be accepted in public as some form of shaman in tune with the Universe, or something.

Second, the Cute Desk Guy is actually celibate. He mentioned, and then I confirmed with mutual friends, and -- celibate. He's got his reasons, and I'll definitely respect that, and I won't be smacking myself into a brick wall. Besides, someone of the same social group already registered an interest in him with me, and while they may well be extremely incompatible (laid back to the extreme vs. brittle high-tension) it's still not polite to muddy up a social group's romance eddies by cutting the queue. Never mind that to jump into that queue, I'd be jumping out of a more important one, and that's a place I can't afford to lose.

My romantic interest in figment0, now that other things are getting out of the way, would be more aptly termed a disinterest. I can socially flirt with him because we are close enough friends so that I feel all right with this, but any actual interest is ... just not there. And I'm quite all right with that. Wax and wane; this is how my seasons are. Only Darkside has been a constant.

The utter embarrassment of talking with an interesting co-worker about good books ... and then suddenly capsizing completely, spilling Mountain Dew (orange) all over his desk...

...Oy vey.

I'll be showing up in the security guy's report, to boot -- the security guy was on duty then, and has to report it when the silly monitor's shoes and ankles contribute to her going and falling down boom.