2006-10-10 - 10:53 p.m.

back from vacation

Well, we went on vacation. It was great, even though I gained a pound back, despite walking and climbing my poor busted knees and arthritic ankles to within an inch of their lives. See how being in the process of trying to lose weight just dominates everything?? But I'm fine with that... hopefully once I get back into my routine of drinking water, that extra pound will run right back away. And even if it takes the same amount of work it did to lose it the first time, it was worth it not to feel deprived and eat salads and rice cakes through my whole vacation. Plus these days, you eat a salad and worry about e coli.

Okay, end of diet report.

Vacation was great. At least I did get to go. I never did bring it up with my boss, because I ended up finding out from someone else at work, without my having to bring it up with them either, that my boss was in fact still expecting me to go on vacation. So I guess I kind of got my door #3, as far as I didn't have to decide between cancelling vacation or quitting. It's the best of the possible outcomes I guess, in a world where the outcome I really wanted isn't going to happen. And that would have been - my boss realizing he'd gone insane and putting things back the way they were. But, there's an expression that says something like, things can't be the way they used to be, and they probably never were. For my boss to have suddenly gone from "fine" to "pissed enough to dock my pay" in the blink of an eye probably means that things were never as "fine" as I thought they were - or at least that they haven't been for a good while.

And I would still love to know WHAT was the thing that happened that made him so mad he decided to change the rules on me, retroactively. And I'm still pissed. Now, the way he's acting is like everything is okay. IT'S NOT.

I need to figure out how to bring it up so I can see whether this can be worked out or not. I just need to practice in my head until I think I can manage to keep it purely professional and not make it all "I can't believe you did this to me." But it was clearly anger, or at the VERY least annoyance, that made him do what he did. So it's hard to keep emotion out of it. (Inner child: He started it! It wasn't me!)

I'd like to say I need to talk to him to find out what the current terms of my employment are. But the truth is I guess I know. So when (eventually) I talk to him to confirm that... then what? I guess the question is, do I still want this job on those terms? And again here's the problem... it's not the change he made to the terms. It's HOW he made the change. It was unfair, unreasonable, and it was punishment unrelated to any wrongdoing. I don't want to leave the job I had. But I don't want to keep the one I have now - where the rules may change unpredictably at any moment.

How weird is it that in the elevator this morning, some guys who work on another floor were talking, and one of them began telling the story of the donkey in the well. You can find the story in a mazillion places online. It goes approximately like this:

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The farmer decided the donkey was old and not particularly valuable, and wasn't worth the trouble and expense it would take to extract it from the well. He needed to cover the well, so he decided to fill in the well and just bury the donkey in it. He started shoveling dirt into the well. At first, the donkey made all kinds of noise, but then it got quiet. The farmer looked down into the well, and was surprised to see that the donkey was fine. Every time a shovel of dirt hit its back, the donkey would shake it off and step up on top. The farmer kept shoveling, and every time, the donkey shook off the dirt and stepped up. Eventually, the donkey was able to step up over the edge the well and run off.

The elevator got to my floor before the guy finished telling the story, but I had heard it before. Just interesting that I happened to hear it today - it was kind of what I needed to start my day. A reminder that even though I may feel I'm getting covered with dirt, I need to shake it off and rise above it.

But... as soon as I'm able... run like hell.

Sometimes this story ends with the "shake it off, bla de bla" part. Sometimes there's an additional ending that says the donkey came back and bit the farmer, the bite got infected and the farmer died a horrible death, so that the "real" moral is that if you try to cover your ass instead of doing the right thing, it will come back to bite you.

But I like mine better.

I also like the other joke I came up with to explain why my boss did this out of the blue. He took too much "n@tural male enh@ncer" one night, and when he woke up the next morning, he'd turned into a giant dick!

Fine. Don't laugh.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -