2005-12-31 - 4:54 p.m.

some end of year rambling

Just some rambling since it's been a while...

When I said I'd take pictures of my house with the Christmas lights during the daylight "tomorrow," you all knew better than to sit and wait, right? Okay good. Here's a picture but quite honestly I don't think it was worth waiting for. And barring a new truckload of snow, the lights are coming down tomorrow.

I had a great Christmas. Went home to visit family. I know I confuse people sometimes by the fact that I refer to both the place where I grew up and the place where I now live, which are in different states over a thousand miles away from one another, as "home." Especially when I say something like, "I stayed home for Thanksgiving, but I went home for Christmas." Eh. Generally people I tell that to know my strangeness enough to know what I mean. Anyway, had a great visit with my parents, my sister and her family. The baby is 16 months now, which means she's walking and knows a few words. She's spoiled to death, but in a good way, in my opinion. She has lots of clothes and lots of toys, and whenever she turns and holds out her hands, there's always someone there to reach out and pick her up and play with her. But, when she goes to touch something she can't have, she's told NO, and it means NO, and once in a while she may whine about it just to see if that helps, but when it doesn't, she stops and goes on to something she is allowed to have. I took my laptop with me and checked email every night, but I was really too exhausted to answer anyone, so I let myself leave it all until I got back without feeling guilty.

Just as a side note, along with many people, I'm weary of the whole word war about "Christmas" vs. "holidays." I celebrate Christmas, but I'm not on the side of the "I don't care if I offend you, MERRY FREAKIN CHRISTMAS" people. I don't want to offend anyone. But if that's all it takes to offend you... then I have to say my immediate reaction is "get over it." I get wished Happy Hanukah a fair amount. I don't get offended and somehow don't even feel moved to reply, "I don't celebrate Hanukah, so get your good wishes away from me." I figure, the holiday is out there whether I celebrate it or not, and if someone wants to wish me happiness while it's going on - honestly, what's the offense? To me it's on a par with getting upset over being told "have a nice day," so if you're one of those people, go right ahead, I guess. Personally my only problem with "have a nice day" is that it sounds way too much like "you give love a bad name." And I can live with that.

I got an email recently from an online friend (who I've also met in person) whose blog I read. Her email was titled "my blog" and I my first thought on seeing the subject line was that she was going to say, "Um, I know I told you the URL of my blog, but now it's creeping me out that you're reading it, so cut it out." Not that I'm egocentric or projecting my own neuroses or anything. But no, actually she was telling me she is making her blog all "friends only" and wanted me to get a username so she could add me. So that was cool. I've never told her I have an online diary (I just can't call this thing a blog, perhaps because I'm 732 years old) and I felt kind of bad about not reciprocating and letting her read this, but I just can't... she's a sweet girl but she's part of the online community of my band, and I'm... just not ready.

Not as non sequitur as it will seem, but, I love Miss Manners. I asked for her book, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, for Christmas, and got it. I had no idea it would be so BIG. I'm not even a third of the way through it. She's awesome. Not what you'd expect if you never actually read her. For instance, on gossip, she says (I'm paraphrasing slightly) that when you decide to gossip, the questions to ask yourself first aren't so much "is this true" or "is this necessary to repeat" - but, "is this going to come back and hit me in the face?" And she's quite right in saying that, of course it will. So before you gossip, be prepared for that. Something that made me think, though, was how she categorized gossip - the first category was "gossip about oneself." And really... isn't that what I'm doing here mostly? Gossiping about myself? So if I choose to do that, it's my fault if someone goes and repeats it. Which probably means I should stop altogether and not just be paranoid about leaving out crucial proper names... but I probably won't.

And since we're on the topic of gossip. There are two people in my office who cover the phones, one being me, and we're not supposed to take our lunch at the same time. Our office is wildly busy if the phone rings six times in one day - but still. When I started, we determined that the other person would take her lunch at noon and I'd take mine at one. Our boss likes everyone to be done with their lunch by two, so if there's an afternoon project, he doesn't have to wait for people who are coming back from lunch "whenever." And really, who wants to take their lunch much later than 1:00 anyway when your hours are 8:30 to 5:30? At first she was pretty good at going at noon and getting back by one. It's been many months now though, and more often than not she leaves at 12:15 and comes back sometime between 1:15 and 1:30. Generally I go out and get lunch and then eat it at my desk so it's not a big deal - if my boss does want me at two though, it cuts my lunch short. But that's rare so I just live with it.

So... two days this week... that's TWO DAYS, in a row, out of a three day work week... 1pm comes and she hasn't gone anywhere yet. So I think, well maybe she brought lunch and ate at her desk, or is skipping lunch because she's busy. So the first day it happened, I went over to her desk at 1:00 and said, "I'm going to pick up something for lunch," and she said, OH - I haven't gone to lunch yet - and just looked at me like that was somehow my problem too. I said, "well, I'll be right back," and I left. You know, if you wait through your WHOLE lunch time until the time MINE is supposed to start, and don't even have the courtesy to come over and say to me, I'll be late today, do you want to go first... then surely you don't think I'm waiting until 2:15 or something to START my lunch? No. Without prior arrangements, I'm taking my lunch at my correct time, and if you missed yours... figure something out yourself.

Slightly rude the first day. Unbelievable when the SAME thing happened the very next day.

However.... I'm calm. The main reason I'm calm about that bull is that I know my boss notices. Every so often he says something to her about being 15 minutes late in the morning and still taking an hour and 15 minute lunch... and she is contrite to his face and righteously indignant to the rest of us behind his back. The way it works for me is when I want to leave early or take a day off, I have the brownie points, and I get priority. It works.

Okay, enough for now... so many other people have written these nice entries reflecting on 2005 and they look so good it makes me want to try it... maybe I will. But you know how I am.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -