Buckets of Rain

I pre-ordered The Bob's new album this morning, before I even finished my coffee. The RLA himself drove me to the train this morning, the first day he's been out and about since last week's emergency appendectomy.

There were no disgusting people on the train, unless you count the Very Pregnant Woman in the belly-baring cropped, spaghetti-strapped t and those atrocious stretch-knit gaucho/capris that seem to be everywhere but the trash heap of fashion history, where they belong.

Then I got to work and everything went to hell in a hand basket. Yesterday I finished entering the data into the national hospice registry for all forty of our programs. Said data includes zip codes. All zip codes for all counties where we serve. We are in Los Angeles, and Phoenix, and Miami and Philadelphia and Chicago. We have 40 programs. They each serve multiple counties. Did you know that there are fifteen pages of zip codes for Los Angeles alone? It's been a fun three weeks.

Today I began the task of dropping cds, dvds and vhs tapes into envelopes for delivery to 150 people. That's 150 inter-office envelopes with the last name crossed out, the new name written in and a location if I have one. Some people get more than one copy of each format.

This mindless repetition is why I love my job. I know, you thought I was going to bitch about it, didn't you? But it isn't the endless pushing and pulling of paper that makes me wish I had another. No, it's the little things like the one person who won't take their phone off forward, making me trot down the hall every time someone calls for her. Or the power play of she won't gather information for another department her own self, she has me drop what I'm doing to pull the papers together for her. She's the person who talked to the other department. She's the one who knows what they want. She's the fucking media person, but I am the lowly dogsbody who gets to do the grunt work. All the grunt work. All the time. Sometimes even at the same time.