Notes from Underground

I'm in the middle of a huge huge huge huge huge workload. I am saving my commas for my report, the first "final" draft (oh, the redundance, the oxymoronicness, the lack of tequila in my house!) of which is due on Monday. If my bleary eyes could spare the tears, I would weep.

(I've not completely ruled out laughing maniacally, if you must know.)

Yesterday I worked from home. I'm approximately a million times more productive at home. It's inexplicable.

There I am, compiling data on my laptop. My wrist slips as I turn the page from the research instrument. (I hate jargon.) I press any mixture of unknown keys, by accident. I continue typing blandly. And notice that I'm now typing in the Cyrillic font.

The horrors. It took me 10 minutes to find the correct sequence of keys to bring me back to that beauteous Latin script they were expecting back at the office.

I did rejoice at my laptops bilingualism, though... As I imagine you would too. :)

My Duck

Last week, dear innocent readers, you read:

A Tale Told By An Idiot

In which the heroine of this blog came out of a meeting tooting her own horn about being given less work rather than more.

That was balderdash.

The clouds have opened up to crap on me. I am baptized by stress.

No, nothing has been officially handed to me. Well, other than what I assigned myself upon realizing the work would not get done otherwise.

Le sigh.

Enough of work rants. They're so ... 2004.

*flump*

Miracle on Broadway

Peons and workers of the world, lend me your eyes! A miracle has occurred in the bowels of the Big Fruit...

Less is More

For the first time today, in nigh near a decade of work-related meetings, I exited a task-based meeting with ... (drumroll) less to do.

Lift your weary bones from your office floor, wipe your spittle from your dusty off-blue carpetting, cut short your secret smoking break in the vestibule, and commence with this miraculous reading, my dear friends...

As of only a moment ago, I have two projects OFF my hands, and one mind-bendingly vast first-draft report OFF my hands. Of course, I am slightly stressed about the latter, since managing is still not poetry to me (mark that one as another fugged up saying), and it takes time to edit, support and generally push a report into being. I imagine it's not that different from childbirth, minus the blood, wailing and tears. Hm. On second thoughts, it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch at all. Other than the lifetime commitment of raising a good human being.

Now, for the other piece of news, or rather, an update of unremarkable proportions. And I'd like to preface it in the words of a rather remarkable person, so as to place this detail where it belongs in the pantheon of mankind's success stories. *ahem*

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. ~ Thomas Edison

My new saying which does not exist. In handing off the work to my colleague:

"It'll be your duck."



I'm told that I should have said: "It'll be your baby."
Ahem. But then I wouldn't have brightened up the poor woman's mood with a bit of well-deserved laughter. *winning smile*

Now, on to the rest of my two-task-less day!

Mission: Make Lamb Taste Like Liver

Once again, I have succeeded where Julia Child would have failed. Warping a recipe beyond recognition, in a way in which alchemists wish could be reproduced in chemistry, I managed to distort and extend a dinner with friends such that every last one of them spent the entire evening in the kitchen nursing my culinary disaster-to-be.

Because that's what friends are for. Comments upon eating the main course, Mongolian-style Lamb (with a garnish of chilli peppers and onion) and Chinese Stir-Fried Beans:

Friend 1 (-r2): (pause) The chilli pepper garnish is tasty!
Friend 2: (pause) The beans are good.
Friend 3: The lamb is interesting!
Friend 4: Can I have more soup?

How sad is it when one's garnish is more interesting than the main production? (rhetorical question)

I felt Bridget Jones' "Blue Soup" pain. Or joy. What are friends for, if not to laugh over my culinary lack of distinction. Or positive distinction. :)

Okay, friends are for sharing life, and making it a swell place to be at. :) And my friends, present or not that evening, do exactly that. I'm bluddy lucky, really.

SO. Thank you :)

How Many Meetings Can a Person Have in One Day???

(To be continued when I'm not in a meeting... )

*pause to rend hair from my head*

FYI, have managed to accidentally stumble onto some Russian idiom which essentially says something sucks. However, did not bother to confirm the spelling when I blurted it out hopefully during my last tutoring session, and as a result, am finding my dictionary woefully inadequate, and cannot even revel in my one singular moment of potential idiomatic suaveness.

Oh well. As suaveness is hardly a word, I guess I can hardly even recap in glee and triumph... :)