I think that the person I replaced had multiple personalities. One of them filed obsessively, cross-referencing, color-coding, duplicating entries, creating mind-boggling obscure abbreviations, and on and on. The other one tossed all of her files into one big manilla pocket.
I'm serious about this. I have a spreadsheet that I supposed to be working with that has thirty-one fields. Color coded. I tried to duplicate it, but the most fields I can conceivably use for this project is ten, and that's only if I pad it.

The documents that come about from the work requested in those spreadsheets, which are the things that I would file by State, Location, Year and Month, are dumped higgledy-piggledy into a single lump.

Of course, all filing by my predecessor stopped some time around the beginning of this year, so that means I have plenty of filing to do. And no file folders to do it in. I don't know which of the personalities ordered office supplies, but she must have been on vacation.

Now that I have my digital camera working again, I'll post the view from the 18th floor outdoor lunch room. And the hair cut.

Did I mention that here? It's been such a brutal summer that despite my desire to become an old lady with a long grey braid down my back, I whacked off all my hair. It's going to Locks of Love, where some poor kid will be happy to have my curls.

My hairdresser kept telling me that she was afraid to cut it as short as I was telling her to cut it, because my hair had been sooo long and she didn't want me going into hair shock. I told her that having spent the first seventeen years or so of my life as the only person with curly hair in my small town, any potential traumas and hangups I may have had about haircuts, I had gotten over by the age of ten.

You can't do anything to my hair that I didn't suffer through early on. Pixie cuts? Check. Pageboys and bobs? Check. A side part? A middle part? Check and check.

I think the last time I cried over a haircut, I was about 20 and it was the first time I got a GOOD haircut. But I digress. It's short, and as far as I'm concerned, it could be shorter still. It is just too hot this summer to have hair longer than an inch.

Anyway. It's hot. It's late. I'm going to the cool end of the house, and so to bed.

One of the things I learned at the mall was that, among the great unwashed, the plural form of the computer mouse is "mouses". Where are the mouses? Do you have wireless mouses? Like that. Don't ask me why, because I haven't a clue.
One of the last customers I had was adamant about finding a new Mighty Mouse.

Lame Ass Customer: "Do you have any of the new Mighty Mouses?"

Me: "Well, we have a couple on display that you can play with, but I'm afraid that we're out of stock."

LAC: "You don't have any?"

Me: "Uh, no... we are out of stock."

LAC: "I was here yesterday and you didn't have any. They told me that you were getting more in today."

Me: "Be that as it may, we are out of stock."

LAC: "I know what that means.* When do you expect another shipment?"

Me: "Well, every time a box comes in the back we all crowd around to see if there are any inside."

LAC: "Look, did you get any more today or not?"

Me (giving up): "Yes. We did. But we sold them all. We are out of stock."

* Thinking to self, if you DID know what that meant, this conversation would have been over two questions ago.


On a related note, when I was on the train yesterday, the guy in front of me had the telltale white cord of an i-pod trailing out of his ear. I poked him in the shoulder, held up the plug of my own headphones, reached over, unplugged his headset and swapped his for mine. Then I plugged him into my i-pod. We listened to each other's music for about ten seconds, showed each other our screens, and then swapped back. It was very cool. He was a khaki-clad, serious glasses-wearing sort of guy, and he was listening to Sting. I was dressed in a sensible work dress, in olive drab, and wearing scary-pointed toed shoes. I was listening to Tom Petty. I'm going to have to do that (swap i-pod jacks) more often with even more random folks.

Finally, here's a scary, scary photo for you.



Little Steven, baby, what happened to your neck? Please tell me that all that weight is for your role on the Sopranos. Eek.

The only good thing about this photo is that it accompanied a story that said that a judge in New York stayed the eviction of CBGB's saying that the landlord was just as culpable in not noticing for four years that the club was underpaying its rent as the club was for not noticing that the rent had increased. She even went on about what a landmark and historical site CBGB's is, which leads me to believe that she might have been walking around in the late seventies with purple hair, too, just like me.

In my newest job, I am a glorified secretary. The official title for what I do is "Executive Assistant". But since the Skipper books his own travel, and can touch type faster than most secretaries, and keeps his own calendar, the secretarial portion of the job is minimal.
In fact, the majority of my work is low-level, designing-in-Word kind of stuff, and I'm down with that, y'all. The only problem I have is that I've inherited the work of an anal-compulsive. Things are cross referenced, abbreviated, listed multiple times, high-lighted, boxed, color coded (even though things are printed in black and white), available in multiple sizes, and in general, balloxed beyond all recognition.

It is so bad that even using a search field I can't find all the iterations of a person's name or phone number.

This just brings to mind what I used to tell the nurses at Jackson. Just because you can use seventeen different type faces in a document, it doesn't mean that you should.

Or, look. You went to school to learn certain things, and so did I. I mean, I could, theoretically, start an IV, but it would be messy and painful and you wouldn't want me to do it to you. Likewise, you could, theoretically, design a newsletter, but...

They never got it.

I'm getting it now. This is an unusable document, and I get to re-engineer it. But without stepping on the toes of the actual art director and her junior designer.

Yippee.

On the up tick, they have an espresso/latte maker in the break room. Do you people know how much coffee I can consume in the average day? Whee!

It's my first day at my (latest) newest job. I'm an executive assistant for a guy I've worked for twice before in the past 15 years. I hope that this one sticks. He's a great boss, and an intensely odd fellow. I absolutely adore him.
We once had a screaming match over whether or not he should have told me that Joe Dimaggio* was a patient at our hospital BEFORE he checked out. Our conversation was at top volume, held in the middle of the office, and went something like this.

Me: You should have told me. I would have prostrated myself on his floor and begged for an autograph.

Boss: No. He's a fucking Yankee pig.

Me: Hall of Fame Yankee pig. Joltin' Joe? Married to Marilyn? American icon? Worth prostrating for an autograph.

Boss: No. Fucking Yankee pig. And a real asshole.

Me: FUCKING HALL OF FAME YANKEE PIG!!!!

Well, it went on like that at some length. How could you NOT want to work for a man who has no respect for one of the greatest of all baseball players ever, just because he played for the (Evil) New York Yankees.

The boss and I agree that the designated hitter rule is an abomination and only National League play is real baseball.

Anyway. I'm back on the train in the morning. There will be photos, of course, of unpardonable sins against sartorial reason, and other crimes, like putting on foundation while in public. But I'm so in love with the Overheard In New York site, that I may start putting up actual eavesdropped conversations.

It's late. I put in a ten-hour day, and I'm making dinner while I write this, so in the immortal words of S. Pepys, and so, to bed.

*face lift.

I'm the happiest girly in the world these past couple of days, because my favorite human in the world (except of course for the RLA) has been visiting us from the wilds of Gallofornia. This would be our friend Paul, the genius behind my mermaid costume.
Paulie and I have been designing a web site for him, talking trash, drinking like fish and eating like pigs. We also worked out this morning with Nic Cage. It was muy swell. I know that the description of fun with Paulie sounds an awful lot like the fun I have with The Coolest Person In The World (TM), but that could just be a coinkydink. Or it could be indicative of my ideas of fun.

Anyway, it's been a lot more fun than I had last week, when in the space of four hours, I was (almost) in two car accidents. The first was after the RLA and I had lunch at the Ale House. Some random woman in a VW came barreling out from between two parked cars and nearly t-boned me. I stood on the brakes, and we avoided impact. She turned in front of us and proceeded to the stop sign at the end of the parking row.

And then, without rhyme or reason, she backed up. I was right behind her. I leaned on the horn, and I watched in horror and disbelief as she continued to back straight into me. I was right behind her. I was clearly in her rear view mirror. I wasn't on her bumper, I was a good few feet behind her and she, without so much as a glance in her mirrors or out her windows, threw her car into reverse and plowed into me, all the while my horn was bleating.

She jumped out of her car and said "I didn't mean to hit you!" No shit. I should fucking hope you didn't mean to do it, asshat. "I didn't see you," she continued. Really? I sort of guessed that from the fact that you ran directly into my front bumper with your rear bumper. That and when you came racing through the lot, turning between cars instead of at intersections and nearly t-boned me. Yeah. That was a clue that you aren't a particularly observant driver. Asshat.

There was no damage to Zelda Bleu, and so off I drove to work. Where I was almost involved in a head on collision as some moron decided to pass a car coming toward me. He passed, and in order not to hit me head on, turned left across my lane and into a driveway on my right. Once more, I found myself standing on the brakes and screaming "HOLY SHIT".

And then I got to work, and had a lovely day straightening up the stock and trying not to apply discipline to undisciplined and unaccompanied children.

It's been a busy few days here at the Casita de Zapatos. The RLA put up a ceiling fan/light fixture in my studio, and for the first time in 12 years I can work after dark or work during the day without fainting from the heat.
I have accepted a new job, working as the personal assistant to a man I've worked for twice before in the past 15 years. This means no more mall stories (thank the gods) but it also means a return to public transit, a mixed blessing at best. On the one hand, there will be plenty of "overheard on the train" stories. On the other hand, there will be more photos of women putting on makeup and doing other things best done in private.

An aside: I think that "on the one hand, on the other hand" has to be the phrase I speak most often... well, that and "what the fuck are you looking at?" I always considered putting the latter on my tombstone, but maybe something could be done with the former, as in "On the one hand, I'm dead. On the other hand, I don't have to listen to politicians anymore."

Anyway. I also finished all three thousand pages of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. What a great read. A hard read, and a dense one, but also brilliantly written and wonderfully funny. I've now moved on to a Harry Flashman knock-off series about a cad in the US military during the turn of the last century. It isn't nearly as well written as either Fraser or Stephenson, but it's a breeze to read, and keeps me busy until I can find the next ten-pounder to slog through.

The RLA reads constantly, but mostly sci-fi, not that there's anything wrong with that. I have read about a bajillion sci-fi books my own self, it's just that I'm on an historical novel kick that seems to have started several years ago with my finally making it through Marcel Proust's Rememberance of Things Past (all million plus words of it.)

There is just something magical about being able to be transported to another time and place through the power of imagination.

Yesterday, Miss Jojo learned to swim. She is a veritable merdog. She'd been watching the Noble Dog Nails as he did laps and chased the tennis ball around the pool, but was loathe to actually get more than a paw in the water. All of a sudden yesterday, she put first one front paw, and then the other on the top step of the pool. Then her whole head went under water and she snapped away at the wet. Then, without warning, she launched herself off the steps and proceeded to do doggie laps. She can do the side stroke, the dog paddle and something that could be a backstroke. We had to bribe her with cookies to get her out of the pool. We've got a monster on our hands.

Finally, to George in Tennessee, the rumblings on my horizon which you found ominous, were merely the sounds of the job coming to fruition and my increased hours at the gym with the Marquis de Steve.