Michael Dell gets schooled by Vladimir Putin

old advice

One of Mr. Aesthetic's posts this week made me think of this list. It's not that it applies directly to him but it does touch on how people in different offices can be so clueless about how much or how little each other is doing or how they feel about things.

Good Office Habits:

When you've finished a project and submitted the prints to proofreading, do not close the file or window on your monitor. Leave it up (hours if necessary) until you can find the next job to work on. Five seconds of blank screen will make any manager think you're doing nothing all day and yet the same thing up constantly even after completion gives them a feeling of security.

Always blow your own horn when you've accomplished or finished anything. List every mundane thing you do, even what's really just part of your job and nothing special. I always see articles saying you should list your accomplishments but in the end it just looks like your job description that's being glorified. Yes - you're supposed to find solutions to company problems - every day. That's why you're there but it looks good on paper to management.

Water cooler chat is greatly overrated and sometimes the rumor engine is detrimental to even be aware of. And I don't want to hear co-workers telling me what they're getting away with.

Conversely, sometimes it is helpful to be aware of perspectives both of management and the workforce of each other. There are a lot of times when they might have a completely different attitude if they knew how they appeared to each other in the snippets of time each actually gets to see. Then again, it's not your job to enlighten anyone.

Dead Tired Sleep Mask

on the mend

Hardly slept last night but still feel better today. Woke up, forced by the aches in my body, twice in the night. Got up. Sat upright as long as I could. Took Excedrin PM and drank as much water as I could. Finally made it back to bed for good until morning.

Just in time to return to work, we're both feeling better today. Eating soup. MonsterMustDie went treasure hunting in the neighborhood.
Put off meeting with the tenant for the key til tomorrow after work.
Installed system 10.5 on my computer. Watched Dr. Who.

We now have a new symptom for Monster: Hives

sick

Still sick. Turns out it's probably not the usual IBS he's suffering from since I feel sick too.

MonsterMustDie is still horribly ill. He still manages a joke "Don't pet/squeeze too hard cause there's no telling which end things will spew out of". He also has a fever that varies from 100 to 102. I still feel a constant nausea that's mild enough to leave leave me mostly functional but makes it impossible for me to eat anything solid. So we're both on a liquid diet today.

Even the cat seems to feel our pain - she had a couple of coughing spells this morning.

We're all in sorry condition this weekend.

home tonight

Staying home with a sick monster man tonight, him trying to sleep off a horrible bout of IBS and me at the moment watching Comedy Central. He hasn't had a spell in quite a while. I'm upstairs watching the tv with the cat until the Colbert Report, at which time I'll check on my sick man again and retire downstairs with the cat in front of the fire.

Today was my brother's 21st anniversay. I can still remember the winter wedding with red roses. Red brides maids dresses too, much to his mother-in-law's discomfort. Now my 18-year-old niece is in college and my 16-year-old nephew is in love with his first car.

stealth kitty

So it's the end of the evening and in my usual routine, I put the cat to bed downstairs on her heated pad. But she's nowhere to be seen. I look all over the house. I look under the lounge chair and sofa. Then I fear she slipped outside during one of my trips to the recycle bin or car so I walk around outdoors with the flashlight for a few minutes. I walk back downstairs. There's a seat that I've covered with an old shower curtain to keep her off of it. I throw back the old shower curtain and there she is, blinking surprised at me.

So now I've tucked things in a bit more and set her back to where she usually sleeps. Every day has a new hiding and sleeping place for her.

Izzard Gives Private Performance to Terror Victim

strange colorful dreams

The cold medications must have been working their magic last night.

I kept having vividly colourful dreams. They were all taking place during spring holidays. I was part of a family of women who were kinda like a New York or Buckhead group of Steel Magnolias in a modern version old Vinings. I kept flubbing things up like cake decorating (cakes? it's just a dream). And they would calm me and say it looked fine and repaired parts were no big deal. I kept working on setting up these cakes before tea.

Somehow these brightly colored cakes were sitting on a table underneath a decorative arc made of magenta sugar sand that came collapsing down on top of everything that I was working on.

In the last dream as I woke up, I was shoe shopping with Charo. She was picking out shoes for me to try on with too much bling (gold bits, rhinesones). I was explaining that I was looking for simple black sandals.

old school

Somehow, I've caught a cold this week.
I hope I'll be healthy enough to make it out later this month.

The English Beat w/ Bad Manners
01/24/2009 09:00 PM
The Loft
1374 West Peachtree St
Atlanta, GA 30309

moist

It is still raining tonight. Fourth day in a row now. Moss is beginning go grow on everything - and it's actually quite beautiful, the emerald green velvet of new moss on stone and brick.

It's also the fourth day in a row I've eaten out with friends for either lunch or dinner. I feel like I'm living quite the social and luxurious life this week. I blame Gillian. Where would I be without her?!

Watching the new Bourdain show tonight, I had to ask monster to kick up the sound to hear the tv over the rain on the roof.

Ms. Cat is much better now that we've precipitously cut her med dose in half. Still sleeping a lot but not comatose, limp kitty that she was this weekend. She's back upstairs now, lounging in the Queen's seat here - the bird chair.

notes on a foggy weekend

Started yesterday by taking the cat for an early morning vet appointment. She's started her coughing again and I wanted to have an update on her asthma treatment. We're now trying pills on her. She took the first dose yesterday morning as soon as we got in from the vet and gave us no problem. Greenies Pill Pockets are easy to use.

Saturday was incredibly foggy and the city was dead and empty all day long. After my usual morning errands, which included a trip to the green market for some good weekend eats, I hung around the house until I had cabin fever (it doesn't take much to send me clawing at the walls) and meandered down Peachtree. When I got to Lenox Mall, I found out where the entire metro Atlanta population was. It was crowded like Christmas Eve. I told myself I'd do one drive around the lot and, if I didn't see a space, I'd go on. And behold! There was a regular spot open immediately in front of Macy's. I took that as as sign the the Universe wanted me to go shopping and went in. The Mall Starbucks had a wrap-around line so I had to delay my afternoon caffeine fix. Everything is on sale but most of the Winter goods are already gone and they are already beginning to stock for Spring and Summer now. This was not a day I felt like shopping for sundresses and sandals. Still, I found a few thingies to pick up and even at treat for Monster to bring home.

On my way back to The Ranch, I went through a Starbucks drive-thru and ordered a "London Fog" tea latte, which just happened to be served to me by a girl with a British accent named Rose. How perfect was that?

Got back, put dinner in the oven, and got ready to watch "Kronos" on the DVD. Checked on the cat, who was near-comatose on her heated bed. She was so groggy I had trouble waking her up. Once I got her to move enough to prove she was still alive, I took her upstairs to hold her in my lap - just to keep an eye on her - while she slept off the new drugs. Really could not even get her to open her eyes completely and she was limp all over. Monster thinks we should just trust the vet's judgement and give a full pill in the morning but I think the vet also depends on our own assessment of her.

This morning we gave Ms. Doris Cat only half a pill and, if we must make it a whole dose a day for the first week, I prefer to give her the second half in the evening, if at all. Really - she was that far down. Her breathing was so shallow I had to check that she was still warm and rigor mortis had not set in.