Missing Persons

What a difference a month makes.  Those of you trying to follow the veiled mill updates deserve some news, after the most recent -- because everything old is new again.   

When we last checked in, some of the Readership were condemning my strategy of remaining invisible to the New Brass, and the joke's on you.  Because both of these yo-yos have been voted off of our show.

In a murder-suicide, she sent Crazy packing, then followed him by about a week.  And we are right back where we started from.  She held a new record, in fact, for shortest term in that chair.  We now choose it by lottery, if you're playing. 

The Big Project I am Unqualified to Run (the B-PUR) continues to hang on without showing any signs of progress.  I don't know why I chose Miss Haversham for this paragraph -- I guess because it was a Great Expectation and went all berserkers.  And because a picture of Karen Ann Quinlan seemed mean.

Poor B-PUR has no idea that it was completely eclipsed by B-PICS, The Big Project I Inherited from my Co-Shirker -- who, if I ever see him again gets a kick in the throat.  About B-PICS, I can say very little.  My Ace in the Hole is reminding the customer that they insisted I manage it.

I have a meeting with Customer Who Wants Me Dead the week I get back.  I think quite seriously about never going back.  This may also be what keeps me from booking the west coast trip -- because I don't want to be stuck with it if I am no longer in the traveling-to-the-west-coast business.

I must not be wearing the right shoulder scarves.

Steaming cup of simile

Welcome to the Divisional Meeting at Acquireon. Some of the readership have wondered why there have been no Mill Updates in some time. Let me remind you there have been no updates for some time, but I take your point.


We are waiting for the quarterly divisional meeting to begin, and since it is being hosted from Elbonia, we are waiting at our desks -- the desks they make us drive to so we can talk on the phone.

Here's how the Divisions work: Lucrative, Legacy, and Sexy.
I work for Lucrative, which has some value I suppose -- except that when you work for the breadwinner, you grind grind grind.

Below the divisions are fiefdoms, and duchies, and I don't know what all. I am not the horse that pulls the millstone. I am the guy who stands in the town square explaining why the bread isn't baked, and serving you cake instead, while begging the baker to at least turn the oven on.

At this point I'll explain that mixed metaphors in a single post are one good way to dodge the spyware.
I'm also not writing very hard.

We are trying out nicknames for New Grandboss, none of which may stick as we discover what makes her tick (and frankly, which side she's on). We sit silently by -- literally -- because this has historically been a guest spot on our little show. This is the 4th one I've seen, and I am still under 2 years.

The Boss was away for a week, leaving Grandboss at the mercy of one of the Crazier Brass, who are certainly imprinting her. Much farcical yelling of important data and deadlines and projections occurred across the cube rows, punctuated by rows of doors opening and closing. Possibly running maids and chortling butlers. That part might have been made-up.

There was a brief moment on Friday when we thought Crazy had pulled up stakes -- his office was completely empty, and he hadn't been seen in days. Turned out he was getting a new desk and he had a cold. The huddle broke up and we shrugged back to our pens.

This meeting is zooming over my head, lots of "COGS" and "EMEA" though "EBITDA" seems to have been mercifully retired. Draw yourself a cartoon of  EBITDA, TQM, and BHAG sitting in rocking chairs on the porch of an old folks' home. Approaching on the sidewalk, with suitcase in hand, is BRIC. One can only hope.

This being the Lucrative Divisional meeting, there is much talk of money, and we are earning much of it. Hooray for us! say the Execs, and that is nice. It is hard to be cynical in the Divisional Meeting, frankly. But it does reinforce for me every quarter that I work at some other company. We seem very far from this exciting town center. My new in-blog name for our little village might just become Anatevka. Our jobs are as shaky as... as.....

The Big Project I am Unqualified to Run (the B-PUR) was delayed. Today is the day in the week when I sit on the phone with the people who bought this project and try to drag it out of them. In project management talk, we overuse the "building a house" example. So this project is moving your mother-in-law into the caretaker's cottage on your property -- only you don't have a cottage, you don't own the property, and you don't much like your mother-in-law. But you've called the movers and I just got out of the van with a clipboard and said "where you want it, lady." Or, as we call it around the office, AOL-Time Warner.

The Big Project I Inherited from my Co-Shirker (the B-PICS) is so close to launch it has nothing left to do but blow-up. Times like these I think about when the charter buses failed to pick the student retreat up on time, when the staging was impounded for turning left illegally on Huntington Avenue, when we lost Ryan White's mother in the building while she was being introduced at the podium.
My counterpart on the customer side will be out that day. The launch day. He picked.

The Customer Who Wants Me Dead (Voldemort) made some threats today, but their jobs are as much on the line as mine. So we stand on a wall. You know the rest of that speech. 

The Little Contracts I Ignore are like untended tupperware containers of rotting food in the back of the fridge that do nothing more harmful than smell until the day they suddenly give you blood poisoning.
You can't say you saw that simile coming.

And the west coast wants me to come back for a visit. But the bonus plan is being paid out at 100%, and from the Lucrative Divison, that might not be so bad. I can't pay my bills with Sexy Press.


Hope you're enjoying National Blogpost Month.
Here's another NaBloPoMo participant for you to enjoy.
http://www.researchingoconnells.wordpress.com

Invisibility

Those of you who thought I would never learn to keep my mouth shut (looking at you, Billy Scott) should meet my workmates.  I would love for that to happen, and I could be there to watch unseen.  They would say to you, "she seems really busy... I don't know her that well. She doesn't talk to people very much."

Not only am I not saying everything I'm thinking (except through the wall to my cube mate, and when he stops laughing, I'll stop muttering), I have gone past silent to truly invisible.  I'd like to end that phrase with "and I've never been happier," but it's still a pretty stupid experience all around.

Monday the new GrandBoss started, and I found a new game.  I decided to see how long I could go without meeting her, and this quickly turned into how long could I go without even seeing her.  Today is Wednesday.  This takes less energy than moving my cheese around, and turned out to be more interesting.  I figure, she has to meet her Boss, and her staff in the same week... she can skip me for a few days.  It sounds like a noble rationale; truth is, I just didn't want to, then it became a game.

I have the advantage here, because
1) I know of her, and she has only a marginal count of how many people work for her and in how many cities.

2) I know how to get through the warren, and she does not. (Neither, we recently learned, does one of her Crazy Subordinates, which we discovered this week as she began to require him to come to meeting rooms in person.  This has also been highly entertaining)
3) I can hear her coming.  My cube mate has his back to her, and can not.  She cornered him today with a "do you know how to XXX in Excel 2010?"  and his dread of being geographically in a P.A. slot came true.  Because he is a noble character, he rose (literally and figuratively) to the occasion.  I ducked like a trapdoor spider.

Most of the time I do not have control over my Invisibility.  I can be standing in a bank line, and someone will step right in front of me.  I pleasantly say , "Hi."  Sometimes I yawp, but quietly, like a Who.  And they jump out of their skin as if I just appeared there.  It can waste a lot of time getting errands done.  On the other hand... the conversations I've heard.

  Anyway, refer to your map.  On Tuesday, she entered the cube across the alleyway from me to introduce herself to the person who works in it, only to learn that she had crossed the border from people who work for her... but she played it off well, and made pleasant chit-chat with her new neighbor, then went about her business.  I know all this, because I was right there.

I got a glimpse of her today, but only a 3/4 side view.  I could not identify her in a lineup.

LM asked me, "Should I go introduce myself?"  I said, "Well, if I say yes... then I have to.  And I don't want to."  This was all the challenge she needed.  As she strode off, "I said, "Tell her I'm immature, ok?"

Incidentally, I've learned that in India one calls the Cube a "Cave."  More in the spirit of things, don't you think?

Picking Teams: a mill update

Which schoolyard metaphor shall I choose?
Red Rover, Red Rover, send Carrie right over?
Mother May I? It is kind of mother-may-I, only, no... you may not.

I remember one game we played that went like this:
It: Knock Knock
Mother Hen: Who's there?
It: Big Bad Wolf
Hen: What do you want?
It: Colored Eggs
Hen: What color?

Now "It" guesses a color.  If she guesses your color, you shriek like a Drag Queen and run around the yard and try to get back to the hen house without being tagged by the Wolf.  It makes only marginal sense.  Why would a wolf, standing in front of a chicken carry on a conversation, then run…. when it could be eating the chicken?  You may have played this game as Fruit Basket, and we played Fruit Basket too, but only at slumber parties, and only when we had run out of anything else to do.

Here's what this has to do with the Mill.  If it's spring, it must be time to Restructure.

And the game goes like this:
Manager 1: Knock Knock
Manager 2: Who's there?
1: Big New Chart
2: What do you want?
1: Specialists
2: What kind of Specialist?
1: uummm... project specialists?

We used to say, back in the cult, "People support what they help create."  This was a nice way to use minimum wage student staff and make it feel developmental.  (And it does work.  People do).  I would like to coin the maxim, "People ignore what has become tedious."  And when you are 9 levels down, it is easy to ignore.


In fact, this game has become Red Light/Green Light.  1-2-3...write your accomplishments!  1-2-3...fill out this survey!  1-2-3...rank your projects!  Now Red Light - we have nothing new to report.  We're going back to the big kids table to invent ubby-dubby so you can't tell what we're talking about.  

I sympathize.  The Lower Middle is just so excited to have something to do; they can't help but show off a little.  And even though the Big New Chart has them at the same level they are now, it is with Bigger Teams  (fanfare) and they are pretty excited about that.

Get these levels.  I don’t even know the insignia.  I just address everybody.  And I thank the guy who stocks the kitchen, just in case.

• CEO
• GM – who let us know yesterday that the honeymoon is over, our freebie year is up, and you’re all accountable.  I love the Accountable speech.
• Invisible Senior Director
• More invisible Director – in that Senior works in my building, junior does not
• To-Be-Hired Senior manager.  You gotta love that.  I thought for sure one of our Lower Middles would apply for that, but apparently the lure of having Bigger Teams  was better reward.
• Team managers – These are our Lower Middles – they have blog names, but I can’t put everything in the same post
• Senior Account managers
• less senior account managers.  It’s a money thing
• Us and those like us.

While the GM was laying down the law yesterday, I commented to a fellow 9-er, “I think there will never be an opportunity for [her] to know my name.”  Unless she happens to blog-surf.

There are 40+ 8s and 9s in my department.  (it goes corporation-division-department-group-team-platoon-troop…. what was I going?)  And 4 Lower Middles.  To make it all even-steven we are being reassigned, and in some cases those customers in our care as well.

Here is how it going to go down.

Juu-uu-st kidding.  I don’t really know.  And I do care, but not enough to stress about it.
It is much more entertaining to do this:


Yesterday I got to overhear the most senior of the Lower Middle and our outgoing (but mostly visible) Director have one of these kinds of conversations:
LM:  We can do this, but then there’s this problem.
Dir:  yeh, that's a problem.
LM:  Now this one's will all need to be redistributed....
Dir: But not over here...
LM:  No - that mess this up.

Oh, shut the door, already.  And up.

So the Boss says to me – (level 6, if you are counting), “Any questions you have?”

“When’s it over?” I said.  I won’t sugarcoat it for you, my Readership, you know I said it.  I had asked earlier, in a group setting, whether the target (these words always appear in my head in quotes, and a Madison Avenue Helvetica) whether the target was  “as soon as you can make this happen, or is it effective next fiscal year.”
And she said, “Oh right away.”  In a spiky kind of font, like a Dennis the Menace comic, “I don’t think we can drag this out any longer.”   


excellent.  do say more….

Lately I have been working through an exercise where I play out each possible trade so I can prepare myself for how I might react.   More than 1 of my colleagues has confessed s/he will give notice if s/he gets a bad match.  I’m not thinking that boldly; I am just practicing not responding F*** Me.  Let’s take this one day at a time.

Value-ADD

An imaginary Twitter feed from one company's uptown, high-tech annual users' conference.

Boston parking -- I am not walking back there at 10pm on a Sunday night.  This it the kind of problem I throw money at.

Jamell the Valet: Do you know if they are validating?   Me:  We can assume not

Marketing Director has lectured on and on: take away – don’t eat anything.

Naturally I am too early.  Naturally, I am tricking out this name-tag so I don’t have to wear it on a ribbon.

Six customers, one me.  Good thing I am shallow.

The trays they are passing are more interesting than the food on them.  Let the customers take the last of whatever that was.

Our entertainment tonight are 2 wedding singers doing a dueling keyboards banter over whose side of the room is better.  The bar. Is. Open.

Glad that the cold fish I just met is not my customer.

Overheard in the ballroom “He killed someone yesterday.  They called it while he was taking his turn at CPR.  But she was already dead.”  Laughter.

Predicted the conga line about 20 minutes ahead of schedule.  Someone is going to jump into a fountain before this night is out.

 Drinking soda because I have to drive home from here.  But I'm not happy about it.

The truffles stuck to the branches over the dessert buffet are real.  My Director used that as a conversation  opener.  Creativity points.

Overtipped Jamell because I don’t want to wait for change.  Intercontinental is very nice and easy to get to.  But it is not home.

Monday morning:  Missed breakfast sitting on Rt 2 in a downpour.  Barely made it to the GM’s opening address.

Boston Police are removing a floater from the harbor outside our ballroom.  (Not one of ours.)  [kuh-KUNG] Welcome to Boston.

We’re a pretty good-looking company when we show up dressed for work.

Lunch:   more small talk, introductions, comments on the food.  I tried some of my wedding table jokes, but really no one here gets me.

Member of another dept said how glad we were going to be working together.  Say MORE.  Pumped her for info the next 2 hours.

Why didn’t I go for that Linguistics program in 95?  Our product is so cool – I am  unqualified to work on the cool parts of it.

Tried to take my co-workers for Happy Hour – she was faster with the card than I was with cash.  Good thing – a cab and a Mark were $22.

Sales weenies stuck 2 PMs with a $300 bar bill.  Didn’t even bother to chip in.  Someone got some ‘splaining to do.

Dinner at Miel.  Let’s see if the company pays for this.  Chowdah and Nicoise.  Floating bodies notwithstanding.

2 newlywed brides (not to each other) talk about who is hot at the conference. Women are the new men.  The man at our table smiles uncomfortably.

Customers have gone to the Harvard Club.  We escape the bar just as their buses return.  Day One.

Robots in the workplace

This story is from this summer's NYTimes, but I had to set it aside because it was too frightening.  Not in the 1984/Big Brother/Dystopia way.  Just, you know, robots are.... {{{shuddderrr}}}


Some of you like your robots, and I try to respect that.  May God bless and keep the robots... far away from us.  I am actually surrounded by robots in my workplace -- I just don't have to see them, or really even hear them.  Watching their little brains work is fascinating.  If we keep them looking like furniture, I like them just fine.

(I think what I really resent is that I don't get to wear a labcoat.)


You may have read reactions to Polar Express that tried to explain why animated Tom "Dead Eyes" Hank is so much more disturbing than, say, grumpy little Ed Asner from Up.  It seems there is a theorem on  how close an unreal thing can come to looking like a real thing before it crosses a line into TOO real.  (see my earlier commentary on Pinocchio who looks weirder as a boy than as a "poppet."

I think I have to call it a "theorem," since Popular Mechanics has debunked the Uncanny Valley (as the creepy robot theorem is known) as not a true "theory," since there is no data supporting the idea.  We just know it.  Let's be honest.


I am going to make a complete leap of creative logic and assert that therefore.... human beings who look a little creepy... are probably robots.


*                                    *                                                         *

The DrawingIn Field Guide to Robots in Your Workplace

1. Hard-coded Clothing: If there are people in your workplace wearing the same clothes every day -- to the point where you could make them on the fuzziest security camera -- you either work on Gilligan's Island, or they are robots.

2. Recurring Conversation (also never letting the joke die):  If they can't get off the weather, or if Andy Bernard keeps calling you Tuna, sneak up behind him with a magnet.

3.  Mechanical Laugh: dead giveaway

4.  Unfailing Loyalty:  (again...note the dead eyes)

5. Dead Eyes can be a clue, but is not for certain.  Check first to see if they are a goat.  There's a lot of that going around.

Found essay

I made a list, and tore the page out of a notebook, to take said list with me -- found this on the following page.   It has been over a year since I left The Mill.  At the time I wrote this, I was waiting   for a meeting.  And, from the sounds of it, trying to put myself at ease.  I present this just as I found it.




The Mill has become a ghost town.  In one of the few public buildings, where I wait to meet with a former millboss, there is no traffic at all, and nearly all of the "retail," which was always questionable to begin with, has gone dark.  The coffee shop no one can seem to keep running looks more like the front to a street corner casino than ever, and next to that the dry cleaning desk where I have never seen clothes nor staff, but the door stands open and the lights are on.  Am I supposed to leave my clothes there?  How do I pick them up?

The gold buyer/vitamin seller is new, and they are having a staff meeting.  They seem to have recently acquired, but not hung, some art.

The copy center that used to Buzz (as much as a copy center does) is evacuated.  Good retail space for anyone who doesn't really want to do any business.  The Senior Center seems happy.  They are in the abandoned video game room which reeked of mold, and where no one ever was.  Like Quadside.

The lack of foot traffic is entirely due to the cafeteria being closed for the day, but even when it is open, this is not the Statler Bldg, downtown Boston.  I may be dating myself, but that used to be where the secretary on 30 min lunch got her bidness done.  Those who work there now, please report in.

I am meeting here because meeting in the office requires sign-in privileges, and draws some attention.  This time of day, in this spot, we are not likely to attract onlookers.  I probably should have called.

This style of unemployment speed dating is awkward for anyone, but I am especially bad at it.  I suppose I fake it well enough -- I am good at conversation and I can make people think they are all I am thinking about.  Never speak about jobs in these contacts, experts say.  This has a WASPish "it is never done" quality I can take on as a challenge.  How can I help you... one asks.

The freight elevator has landed.  It is painfully slow and dumps into a long basement hallways, so when the riders arrive, they are in full voice conversation and their voices echo off the cinder walls.  It is like hearing the rabble approach.

I wonder if I could sit here all day and make it my office.  That dry cleaning desk seems set up and ready to go.

http://my.simmons.edu/services/business/docs/quadside-menu.pdf

Enter the webcam

I've started to write about this many times. There are a lot of reasons I haven't.  But a couple of things tipped me this past week -- least of all not having updated this blog in 10 days.

And maybe that was the real catalyst . A frequent reader suggested that the new job must be "very interesting," since I hadn't written in awhile.  Or... I replied, there is nothing interesting to write about it.

Neither one is true.

It is 8am and I am in my desk -- in the dark, because I haven't learned where the light switches are and because I don't want that to now be my responsibility, turning the lights on, when I am not at all the first person here in the morning. Someone is already making and tagging the coffee. The interesting things I have to do today are accompany a co-worker on a customer call and make it back on time for a run-through of a PowerPoint deck. Until then, I am heightening the intensity by blogging to you about work... at work.

I have narrowed our topic to the Webcam because it is the source of much whispering around the cube-farm, yet no one seems about to confront it --- including me.  It's easily a year before I start calling those balls and strikes.

The manager I have nicknamed Sparky has installed a webcam in her cube.  Sparky should have an office, but as these things go in corporate politics, she was too late to the dance, and does not rate high enough to have someone bounced on her behalf.  If she has been offered an office around the corner, she has turned it down (and I have no evidence that she has).   One can extrapolate that she has turned it down in favor of her webcam.

Here's the set up.
It's aimed behind her, and certainly many people set up rear-view mirrors in their cubes to see who is behind them.  I have never caught on to that (like I need more distractions) but I get the appeal for a certain kind of personality.

Originally, it was inside her cube, but it seems she didn't like the mise en scene, because a day or two later she was standing on her desk, mounting the watchful eye on the support pole conveniently located behind her back wall.Weeelll... now... we have depth of field, see.... and we are in business.

Point # 1 (or #2, if you count the existence of the camera as the first point, and already I can hear some of you howling your protests) - when you do come to her cube "door," and you appear on the 2nd monitor she has set up primarily for this purpose, she will talk to the screen for at least a few seconds before she turns around to talk to you.

Point #2 - the office door it actually points at (presumably the office she would have if it weren't for those meddling kids) belongs to our HR rep (or Haytch-Are rep, as one commonly says around here).  She is like Toby from The Office, but without the sense of duty.  So even if she is aware of it (which I doubt) she is not going to speak up or out. 

Point #3 - Other people who are not going to complain are Sparky's team; her cohort, whose team members have complained to them; her peers in other departments who find it appalling but none of their business.  Like the cargo shorts and sneakers.  But that's another blog.  In fact, it's this blog.

Point #4 - The Tipper - In a recent meeting, to which Sparky now brings her personal iPad rather than the company asset, the webcam view appeared on her screen.

To reiterate: on her iPad screen.
a. this took some effort, more so than standing on her desk
b. is a truly "personal" personal computer the appropriate place for this?
c. w.t.f.

Questions for Discussion:
Discuss the following questions with members of your team.  Designate a note-taker and present your findings to the larger group.
1.  Does Sparky watch her webcam when she is away from her desk?
2.  If yes, what is she watching?  What measures would be required to actually steal something off her desk under the weak peripheral vision of the lens?
3.   If yes, does she watch from home?Is that a sickness?If yes, which sickness and which pharmaceutical should be applied?
4.   Is she, right now, looking up devices that will allow her to aim said camera from her laptop, from home?
5.   If yes, will she come across this post?

I thought of taking a picture of the webcam in a kind of meta-spy counter-measure.  But you know I don't know how to work those things.

Office Dress Code BINGO

In time for tomorrow's unseasonably warm day in the office, The DrawingIn Room presents...


Dress Code BINGO fields - make your own card!

B column:
flip-flops
mandles
pedicure
shoeless
sockless

I column:
cargo shorts
madras shorts
cut-off shorts
short-shorts
beach volleyball uniform

N column:
Jams
Grateful Dead skirt
FREE: Capris
denim mini
long shirt/no pants

G column:
tank top - male
tank top - female
midriff
tube top
shirtless

O column:
terry cloth
seersucker
linen
visor
no shave - this has nothing to do with the weather, but tends to go along with Too Casual

ENJOY

Almost entirely fat

Know your BI-RADS.  Your mammogram just became more appalling.

Here’s what the gang in the lab have to say about you. Using the Breast Image Reporting and Data System (I promise you, it is not Rating, but Reporting) the Rad Techs have this to say:

4 = Extremely dense

3 = Heterogeneously Dense

(said the letch to the buxom gal wearing a name tag… “And what’s the other one’s name?”)

 

2 = Scattered fibroglandular densities (lumpy)

And your #1 BI-RAD code is… Almost entirely fat

 

It seems sort of mean, doesn’t it?  Like they went from fibroglandular (which this spell check doesn’t even understand), to this… judgment call. 

I went looking for its male equivalent (understanding, of course, that men do occasionally get breast imaging, but rarely have a lifetime of their fat being assessed).  And while I learned far more about scrotal ultrasonography (Ultra! Low tar!  King Size!) than I will ever use in  life,  I was unable to find the related RAD.  SU-RAD, you would think.

Sooooo Rad.

I invite you to make up your own ratings.  this is a family show.

You said it. I didn't.

You caahn't get there from here

Road Closed.  Seek Alternate Route.
("good luck with that," the roadside signs should flash)


And so the rains came.  For days.
Monday was the scariest, because the roads hadn't yet been closed, but certainly should have been.  These thickly settled Massachusetts towns rest along narrow 2 lane roads that meander past streams and brooks, reservoirs, and yes mill-driving rivers that on most days one just drives over without much thought other than worrying over the color of the duckweed or fooling yourself that one of these weekends you'll try renting a canoe. 

Then comes a day when you are driving through it, with no alternative in sight -- 100 cars in both directions, as far as the eye can see. 


I've been through a few of these by now -- some much worse than others, worse than this week's even.  But not until this week did one make me think about quitting my job.

This is the map around which we center our lives of quiet desperation.  The rings are 93, 95, and 495.  The long east/west road at the center is the Mass Turnpike.  Above that Rt 2.  Or, as we like to say, Bleepin' Root Two.  A necessary evil.  Four lanes of state roads full of stop lights, Jersey barriers, a Stephen King-worthy State Pen, and the kind of rotary that makes the rest of the country throw up their hands.  (It's a simple explanation, really: the road is 300 years old.  And we were British at the time.)


Rt 2 got the ARRA money!  And what an exciting summer it was with one road constantly down for paving, and tunnels being installed for migrating animals.  The area I have shaded above contains the even smaller back roads that daily commuters use to avoid as much of Rt 2 as they possibly can.  When it all works, the traffic moves steadily.  Not very quickly, and with the occasional school bus stop.  But it moves.


And so the rains came.  And so the waters rose, in the Assabet, the Sudbury, the Nashua, the Concord.  Behold the sinkholes, potholes, guardrails with nothing to guard, train tracks that can not support trains, lost shoulders, pastures, ponds....oh...my.  You can see how they powered the Industrial Revolution.




(Nice Mill footage at 4 and 5 minutes)

With the roads awash in that yellow-shaded area of the map, all traffic that usually fans out along those wooded river roads was now on Rt 2.  All morning.  Every morning.

7am-9am; 5pm-7pm.  Standing... Woodstock...Great James River Raft Race traffic.  

I can think a lot of things with time like that on my hands. Mostly it was "this is not worth it."  And I thought the 90 minute standing bus ride on the 111 to Chelsea (which one Good Friday famously crashed through a telephone pole and into a building, but that is not the story I am telling)  I thought that commute was worth it.  So I am not just being a big baby.  I am just assessing the ROI.

Now it is Friday night.  I see that roads will still be facacta through the weekend.  Then, presumably, we are back to normal.  Until I get to complain about my commute on Patriot's Day.

Recreational Efficiency

I made Minchin laugh yesterday with my use of the term "recreational efficiency" to describe how I am trying to manage my social/creative life within the confines of my new job structure.  I decided this was more of an off-campus discussion than something for the Finishing School. This is not one more "having it all" rant; it is a system for using the time I have available (such as posting at 7:35 on a Sunday) to do the things I like so I don't have to feel like all I do is go to work and thread needles, then come back from work.

My hour commute would be more pleasant by train or bus, where I could be reading, but I have my podcasts to keep me company and the occasional audio book.  Here the efficiency is finding audio books already on my booklists rather than starting another list of books just for this purpose.  The challenge is that I am very easily irritated by audio books, and for the pettiest Seinfeldian complaints such as Barak Obama's whistling S or the way Scott McClellan pronounces the article "a" as "ay" long A.  This approach also requires a library trip, but since other parts of my recreational life do too (parrrr-tay!) I can combine those trips and take care of it all at once.  See, recreational efficiency.

I still drive by the gym on the way home, but now I am much closer to home than to work when I do, so it requires an extra push to make that turn into the parking lot.  If the gym bag is always in the car, I minimize my excuses for not going.  If I can also use any opportunity I am in that town to visit the gym (such as lunch at Minchin's or the aforementioned library) then even better.

I used to be a very efficient person in this regard.  I had to be, because I traveled by public transportation and I didn't work near my house.  When I packed for the day, it was packing for the whole day, and sometimes the evening (which can be tricky with just a courier bag and the late 1980s).  Of course, the kids today dress for work like Saturday at the Maine cottage, and all you have to do to go out for an evening is take off your pants.

I don't have a lot of morning time anymore, and I've lost 2 hours in the evening in order to get enough sleep to make that 7am drive.  Minchin takes a 6 o'clock train and has 2 children.  So I am not complaining.  just explaining.  (I just lost a few minutes exploring the Latin root plangere in both of those words.  sigh).  So I shifted my coffee and letter writing to the office, and my fruit and/or energy bar to the car.  Lunch making, shower, ironing (hell yes I do) moved to the evening, and can be done in under an hour if I do it right when I get home.  While dinner is cooking.

Household crap has to wait for weekends.  sorry.  I am just not that into you, my house.  And bills and checkbook, you are right in there with him. Talk among yourselves.

I am being set-up by RFBandD to begin recording from home (ironically, audio books), which will both save and spend time.  In exchange for this set-up, I am committed to giving them more recording hours per week, which will likely eat into my Netflix time.  But I can watch TV while eating dinner, and I can't record while doing that.  If I could come up with some other chore I could knock out in the shower.....

I have not gotten any better at blogging ahead of time.  The Finishing School takes up a lot of time, and that is without actually writing anything.  This post started out to be my Oscar Picks, but I realize I don't have time for that article this morning.  I need to shower before meeting up with Otto and though he won't care if I am shaven, I need to get the shave in for the week to save myself a second shower today.  Fortunately, I have already had my Cheerios.

115 days

I didn't count them all along.  I didn't even count them correctly in the beginning.  I suppose John Kennedy would have done more in 100+ days than I did while laid off, but then I sir, am no John Kennedy.  But what I did do was turn around unemployment within 3 months, with an entire holiday season thrown in.  Made a gross of cookies.  Ate a LOT of lunch. Took a vacation and turned 46.

What have you been up to?

I am not really here to toot my own horn (though, ya know.... Toot).  This production number comes with some credits, and they are these:
- The team down-the-Mill who packaged a painless layoff and made it possible to leave them laughing.  (Well, I was, anyway.) 
- Financial Dan - the first person I called
- Smurph, who hooked me up with Outlook before I went into the DTs
- The at-home moms, dads, and self-employed contractors who make Facebook the best malt shoppe to hang out in
- The unemployed Emersonians network, including those who are re-employed, and came forward with a lot of advice and encouragement
- The People's Republic of Massachusetts.  If this is what a Nanny state feels like, well tuck me in.
- All your kids.  Everything seems possible with a little Lego.
- Everyone who made time.  Fuh li'l ole me.
- Memphis.  Still.  I can't tell you enough how right place/right time that trip was.
- NaBloPoMo, for somewhere to put all the brain energy.
- Miss Read, for the project
- The dear dear Readership.  You know who you are.

It hardly felt like a hardship.  Just the leave of absence I needed that might have forgiven a host of sins.  But that is not how we do, is it?  Instead we work 1900 days at full throttle until we are too flooded to keep in the garage.  I rounded up, because there were a damn lot of Saturdays.

Signing on to the New Mill on Monday.  Please flip your calendars.



*Ouija Lunchbox by Paul van Scott, available at etsy.com

Funny what you miss

I heard my suits whimpering the other night.  It's my own fault; I sleep with the closet doors open.  I think you can imagine why. 

They are lonesome.  And as of this month, products of "an earlier decade."  But they don't get to go out anymore.  Since joining the Unemployed in October, my wardrobe is made of 2 pairs of jeans, 2 fleeces, and 1 of 2 pair of wool socks.  Sometimes I put pajamas on at the end of the day.  Sometimes.... meh.

Of the things I miss about working life, I miss my clothes the most.  I feel like Wonder Woman in a business suit -- well, to be precise, I feel like Diana Prince, because I would not feel powerful in Wonder Woman's business wear.

Imagine how awesome I'll feel when my clothes actually fit, which they never do.  Experts agree that one's clothes should be tailored to them, and there is a new seamstress in town who may be able to take on this project with me.  We are working slowly, because besides living on severance, I am also losing weight and redistributing shape.  So one project at a time.

I gave her a 3-piece that has never fit (oh, because I bought it one Black Friday in a wrong size because it was 2-for-1.  I bought 2.  blink...blink) to see how she did, and she did not disappoint.  Tomorrow perhaps I'll take the other, then we can start to work the pants.

Loft Turtles

There was a radio story about a particular athlete, or entertainer, or member of Parliament -- I wasn't listening very closely -- who had an opportunity but decided to pass it by.  "The timing wasn't right," said the reporter, "and he had loft turtles..."  He said this in the kind of dismissive "what ya gonna do" tone that tells you this is a common occurrence, and apparently a common phrase any listener to NPR or the BBC should be familiar with. I took it to be a kind of "butterflies in the stomach," a "bats in the belfrey" -- phrases we know and don't use in normal conversation.

Of course it wasn't what he said.  He said "loftier goals."  The subject of his piece had let an ordinary opportunity go by because he had loftier goals.

In spite of what this blog may lead you to believe, I am not losing my hearing.  I am over-analyzing.  It got me to thinking what a Loft Turtle might be, and how I could use it correctly.  Turtles, of course, do not live in lofts.  They live as close to the ground as they can get, under it, or in the water.  The last thing a turtle would want to do is fall, especially from something lofty. 

Yertle was a lofty turtle: "This throne that I sit on is too, too low down..." and he goes through several pages of tetrameter to get loftier.  Interestingly, though, Yertle was not the type of turtle I pictured when working out my metaphor.  One isn't being a Loft Turtle - one has or gets Loft Turtles -- and I think they are more timid creatures than Yertle.  They are even more timid than Mack, the underrated hero of that story who shrugs, Atlas-style, and brings the whole thing down.  If Mack had Loft Turtles, he might not have attempted it.

Loft Turtles are timid because they know they are out of their element.  They have landed somewhere they don't belong, and even though they might live a long happy life in a very large loft with a bed of hay, giant spider webs, and a leaky roof that puddles nicely in a depression in the wood, and from 6-9am the sun is perfect for sunning on a rusted bucket, Loft Turtle will stay tucked in his shell and just die there, longing to get back to where he belongs.

These are the Loft Turtles we have, and that is how they get us.  We pass up the opportunities to eat spiders and sun on a bucket because it seems against our nature, even though it is exactly what we are driven to do in any other place and time.

It is easy to mix up your Loft Turtles with your Loftier Goals.  Try to convince them they are not going to fall, and see if you can coax them out of their shells.