Good news/ Bad news

Good news: The office manager promised to call before the glass guys came to repair the sliding door.

Bad news: He didn’t.

Good news: They did lock the cat away in the bedroom.

Bad news:  It was the spare bedroom, not the master bedroom.  I.e., no food, water, or litter.

Bad news (2): They didn’t let him out when they left, so he was stuck there until I got home at 10:45 PM.

Good news: Rajah didn’t puke or poop on the carpet

Bad news: . . . . that I’ve discovered.  Yet.

Good news:  The glass guys removed the shattered pane of glass from the sliding door.

Bad news: They didn’t replace it with a new pane.

Good news: It’s a double-paned door so I still have the one whole piece of glass!

Bad news: It’s only Tuesday.  It’s gonna be a loooooooooong week . . .

Good news: I had beef stew ready in my crockpot when I came home that I’d cooked for over 24 hours.  YUM!!!!

I believe the good news wins

There are none so blind . . .

. . . as those whose power has gone out.

My timing was extraordinarily good yesterday; I had drunk my coffee, finished showering AND done my makeup before the blackness hit.  It wasn’t too bad inside the apartment; we’ve got two sliding doors in the living room that provided a decent amount of daylight.  We dug out flashlights and Mike shaved by candlelight (while I fluttered nearby and begged him not to cut himself).  Sure, I had to select an outfit with no ironing required, and we tried to keep the fridge closed as much as possible, but it wasn’t a big deal.

Getting OUT of the apartment, on the other hand . . . I opened the door and the hallway was completely black.  I snapped open my cell phone to light my way to the staircase, which was also completely pitch-black.  (So much for emergency lighting.  We learned later that the Kitty Den *does* have a backup generator.  Which did not click on.  Useful backup, there.)  I gingerly negotiated the stairs with a lit cellphone and a hand on the banister; thank goodness we live on the second floor.

Happily, the power went back on perhaps twenty minutes after I left, which meant that Mike was able to get the car out of the garage.

I know, I know, this post is extremely boring.  I don’t pretend otherwise.  I’m groggy and drinking coffee as fast as I can!  Late to bed and early to rise, makes a girl stupid and blind in the eyes . . .

Stress management

Wow!  Today’s post, like yesterday’s post, needs to start with a thank-you for comments.  Like all good bloggers I love me some comments; thank you everyone!  To the various questions, I say:

- I’m getting regular Custom Lasik, not Epi-Lasik.  Flap away, baby!

- I don’t have any pre-existing conditions that would prevent the surgery; I had all the tests done.  Twice.

- I’m not that worried about night halos, because 1) Custom Lasik is supposed to have a lesser chance of that than regular Lasik; 2) I’ve already got night halos, so what is there to lose?

- I should have mentioned that the surgery is more affordable because we can use FSA, or pre-tax, dollars.  Instant 30% discount!

I’m thrilled and encouraged by all your success stories.  Countdown to Lasik: 56 days!!

On to today’s post

Long story short . . . I had a work screwup.  An error was made back in June.  I didn’t MAKE the error, and the party that made the error was screwing around with stuff they shouldn’t be touching, but . . . part of my job is to catch errors before the final product.  I didn’t catch this one, it suddenly came to light, and suddenly everyone was pissed off and sending around nasty emails.

Oh, sh*t.

I panicked.  I felt terrible.  I worried about being reprimanded.  I worried about being put on warning.  I even wondered whether I would be fired.

I knew I was over-reacting even as I over-reacted.

It all turned out okay; no one is happy, but no one is angry at ME.  Everyone pretty much blames the party that made the error, and the fact that I obviously felt awful actually found favor with my group; my boss’s boss stopped by personally to assure me that it wasn’t my fault*.  Within a day or two it all blew over.

However . . . during that day or two I felt like hell.  I lost my appetite.  I couldn’t sleep very well.  I felt physically ill and terrified.

It’s a great dieting technique, but it’s a lousy life technique.

I’ve GOT to learn better ways of managing stress.  Being sick and shaky for twenty-four hours is SERIOUSLY less than optimal.

Suggestions, y’all?  When something goes very wrong and you think it’s your fault, how do you deal?

 

*I’m used to dealing with screwups and mistakes; aren’t we all?  But I find it much, much easier to help correct for something that wasn’t my fault to begin with.  When it is my fault, it’s just so much worse . . .

These are your eyes

Well, not your eyes; these are MY eyes*:

And these are my eyes on dilating drops:

Can you SEE how huge my pupil is?

No seriously, look:

I hate going to the eye doctor.  I come out looking like — well, I’ve no idea what my pupils would do on LSD, but popular culture leads me to believe they would look something like this.

And, of course, that made the hour-plus drive back to Lissaville an absolute joy.

*grumble, grumble, snarl*

Three things, though, made it bearable:

1) I’m not sensitive about my eyes.  The doctor can poke ‘em, prod ‘em, drip nasty potions into ‘em, and I just sit there phlegmatically.

2) Today’s Friday, and Mike’s coming home!

and 3) it was a consultation for maybe doing Lasik.  SQUEEE!!!

*No, I haven’t had to pull out the fleece hoods yet.  I don’t look forward to it.

I will give you twenty bucks

. . . if you will drink my coffee, take my shower, do my makeup, put on my suit, and button up my coat.

In other words, if you’ll let me sleep another hour.

Pretty please?

Otherwise known as a timberdoodle

This . . . is a woodcock in its natural habitat:

THIS . . . is a woodcock in a most un-natural habitat.  Said habitat being the sidewalk outside my office, after having crashed into the glass.

I stood by the poor thing for a good forty-five minutes waiting for animal control to show up.  It didn’t move at all until right before the guy got there.  When it did move, it suddenly flapped its wings and darted across the sidewalk . . . to smash into the glass, this time at floor-level.

*sigh*

Yes, I considered whacking it on the head or (as someone recommended) wringing its neck.  I didn’t because

A) I wasn’t sure it was internally damaged; if it were only stunned, it could be healed.  (The fact that woodcocks have a moveable beak makes me hope it was bleeding from the beak, not internally.)

B) I was too scared that I’d just hurt it, instead of mercy-killing it.

Anyway, the Animal Control guy popped it in a cardboard box and carried it off.  I asked him if they’d just euthanize it, or try to fix it; he said he’d leave it at the vet and thought it would probably be okay.

By the way . . . you’d be AMAZED how many people walk without looking where their frickin’ feet are going.  I stood there for forty-five minutes because otherwise that poor thing would have been punted like a soccer ball twenty times over.

(No, I was not tempted to take it home for Rajah to play with.  Wild birds often have lice, you know!)

Double bleg

Two pieces of advice being solicited this morning, dear readers!

First off . . .  how does one choose a holster?  I know, I know, try lots of stuff and see how it works . . . but where’s the starting point?  There are lots of things one needs to purchase before actually getting a gun (e.g. holster, bulletproof vest or big bucket of sand, cleaning kit, gun safe, etc.).  Where do I begin?  Which shops do y’all patronize?  How do I go about this business WITHOUT dropping a few hundred bucks on experimental holsters that I’ll never use?

***

And the second piece of advice I’d like today is:

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOUR COWORKER WILL NOT BLOW HER GODS-BEDAMNED NOSE????

The woman in the cube next to mine has severe sinus problems.  She continuously sniffles, snorks, and snerks.  You can HEAR the gunk in her neb move about as she snorts.  It’s absolutely disgusting.

And she does it VERY BLOODY FREQUENTLY.  I counted once — in the space of one minute, the longest she went without horking was thirteen seconds.

Mind you, there were a lot of five- and six-second intervals before we made it to that golden thirteen.

I freely admit that I have my fair share of character flaws.  It so happens that one of my flaws centers around aural cues such as sniffles — said flaw being that I cannot tune them out. No matter how hard I try to concentrate on my work, I find myself keeping half an ear out for that next, repulsive HNGKKKKKKK inhale.

It actually got bad enough that I broke all sorts of work etiquette rules and offered her a tissue.  Very politely, very sweetly, very hesitantly called her name and, when she looked up over the connecting wall, held up a box of tissues and sweetly, hesitantly asked if she needed one.

“Oh,” she said blankly.  “No,” she said flatly.

Four seconds later:  “CNHNNNKKKKK.”

I’m contemplating wearing my hair down and loose today so that I can hide earplugs.

There’s gotta be a better way.  Help me, Readers wan Kanobe — you’re my only hope!!

UPDATE:  Jay G links, and SayUncle links us both.  Thanks!  And thank you, readers, for the great suggestions in the comments!

Blowhard.

Hmmm.  We’ve noticed lately that the fan on my Eee seems to be working overtime.  You can hear it across the room.  Is that normal, or does Lissa need to take her baby to BestBuy for a checkup?

Stupid fire alarm

Yet another reason to be glad for an Eee!  I’m sitting on the sidewalk next to a terrified kitty waiting for the fire department to come and turn off the silly alarm.  On the bright side I *did* grab my Eee as well as our Kindles, and Mike was kind enough to pour my freshly-brewed coffee into a travel mug.  Try THAT with a desktop!

Hey, you know what sucks?

Soaking chicken breasts in buttermilk . . .

coating them with a mixture of Panko, breadcrumbs, toasted sesame seeds, Italian herb seasoning, salt, and pepper . . .

baking them at 350° for precisely 25 minutes . . .

storing leftovers-for-tomorrow in the toaster oven to shield them from your cat’s gluttonous depredations . . .

and, of course, forgetting them.

Until your husband goes to toast his English Muffins and finds them, sad and forlorn and abandoned, the next morning.

Dammit!

Sigh.  Guess we’re going to the Lissaville (Home of the Evil Conservatives) Mexican Restaurant tonight!