‘Work’ Category

  1. the holiday spirit

    December 14, 2005 :: 2:55 pm

    i haven’t felt much in the way of holiday spirit this season. we have not decorated at home with lights or a tree or my beloved ornaments, and i’m not sure that we will, since we are leaving town in a week anyway.

    i did put a strand of lights up at work, through the designer quad cube. it helps a little.

    the holiday deluge of food at work has begun. there was the first party last friday that i wrote about, one yesterday at lunch, and another tomorrow afternoon. i should explain how this is structured. i’m part of a four-person Team (which i’ll call level 5), which is in turn part of a 17-person Department (level 4), which is part of a 30-ish person Office, (level 3), which is part of a much larger Division (level 2), which is part of the university as a whole (level 1). we get parties at levels 1, 2, and 3. this is not official policy or anything, just an explanation as to why there’s 3 different office christmas parties.

    last year there was a chocolate fountain at the all-university (level 1) party. i bet there will be again tomorrow, but i’m not sure i can partake of it. at the art show that doc and i were in back in late summer, they had a chocolate fountain and i witnessed double-dipping going on. i’m not sure i want to eat germy chocolate anymore.

    i think i’m getting karma payback for the nasty woman i encountered at the mall last saturday. on monday at lunch, i brown bagged it so only ordered a soda when out with brittney. the guy behind the counter gave it to me for free. this is the same guy that usually gives brittney (and whoever she’s with) free chips and queso — which he did on monday too. and then today at lunch, i tried to use my pony express cash card (which is cool, i can use it in all the vending machines on campus, the chick fila in the student center, plus some off campus places) to buy my salad and slice of pizza at stromboli’s, and their machine was having problems reading it. so i dug out the little cash i had, and ended up a dollar short plus change. and the cashier said “that’s ok, $4 is enough. merry christmas.” and then he brought free garlic twists to our table later on, to boot.

    i think i’m going to bake christmas cookies as a thank you for all these places we regularly go to at lunch where they are extra nice to us.

    Category Food, Work | Tags: | 1 Comment

  2. cock and bull

    December 10, 2005 :: 10:37 pm

    we had a great time out last night. first off, we went to a little early evening holiday party at my company’s VP’s house. it was funny how most people, rather than mingling, stood and talked to their immediate co-workers. me included, of course. i’m not that outgoing. i have to say that the mashed potato bar rocked. i’d never thought of serving mashed potatoes in martini glasses and letting people top them with things like pesto, mushrooms, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, etc. the VP’s house is quite nice. quite large. quite the cool wide-plank hardwood floors and all stainless viking appliances in the kitchen.

    after an hour or so, doc and i, brittney, yvonne and nate, and ben and his wife chelsea went over to the cock and bull pub in lakewood for a drink. i had SO much fun!! chelsea and brittney are both like four feet something tall and veeeeery outgoing. like two peas in a pod. she might even be perkier than brittney. ben is my supervisor but he’s a lot of fun to hang out with socially. he and chelsea left after a while but the rest of us stayed for a couple of hours. i like that place. not terribly loud, not smoky enough to make me want to immediately leave, nice colors on the walls, small, not full of college frat boys, and good happy hour prices. doc said that the hamburger he ordered was the best he’s had in recent memory. then he and nate started talking about all the good burger places in town. we resolved to try keller’s, if only for the cheezy drive-in classic car factor. i can’t even remember what all we talked about but after a while i started to get a headache — i blamed it on the smoke but what i didn’t want to admit (for whatever reason) was that the headache was from laughing so hard and my face constantly having a smile plastered on it. it started to hurt after a while! how dumbass is that!!

    doc’s two belhavens put him over the cluster edge; at the time he said it would be worth it to have a drink (24 hours later and the headache’s still going… now he’s rethinking the wisdom of that plan). we had talked about going back to yvonne and nate’s house to play board games and have more drinks and snacks, but we decided to go home instead. maybe next time.

    i really like yvonne and nate, and i’m glad to be making new friends. not that there’s anything wrong with my old friends!! i don’t see them nearly enough, and i miss them. but as i said before, i’m not very outgoing and don’t make friends easily. i also tend to assume that all strangers are completely unlike me and are not the type of people that i would want to be friends with. until, of course, i meet someone under circumstances where i am able to slowly get to know them (like work, say) and my preconceived notions unravel. maybe it’s from living in texas which is full of right wing religious republican SUV-driving gay-hating yokels (ranging in looks from cowboy to highland park mom), and me being a left wing atheist/agnostic liberal tree-hugging gay-loving person, i tend to assume that there are very few people like me, and what are the odds that i’ll meet another one.

    i oughta give strangers more credit, but somehow i just can’t. i guess it’s closed-minded of me to assume that. maybe i should work on it harder.

    so today i tried to bust a move and get all my holiday shopping done. i nearly succeeded; i just need to get one more item from doc and i have to go to another location of the store i was at to find it. i spent about seven and a half hours shopping today. it was kind of a nightmare. i hate crowds, traffic, shopping, and people. i hate malls especially. do not, under any circumstances, go near town east mall this time of year. i held the door open for a woman who was exiting dillards, and got called a bitch for my trouble. i was going in the same door she was coming out of, and i stepped back and caught the edge of the door for her. did she think i was in her face or something? whatever. even though she was mean to me, i decided to be extra nice to other people while i was at the mall instead of taking it out by being rude to other people. building up extra karma points or something.

    Category Christmas, Doc, Food, Friends, Shopping, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  3. yesterday it was summer, today it’s 17 degrees

    December 8, 2005 :: 10:13 pm

    yesterday it was summer, today it’s 17 degrees

    i am not kidding.

    well, ok, it wasn’t summer yesterday, but it was last saturday. it was seriously over 90 degrees, according to the thermometer on my shaded porch.

    and today it was 17 degrees when i got up for work.

    dallas freaks out whenever there’s any kind of winter precipitation. yesterday we had the barest hint of freezing rain, and while it was true that there were thin glazes of ice on a lot of surfaces today, that wasn’t any reason for the whole city to shut down. but it did. all the school districts, and most of the universities… except, of course, for mine. which explains why i was awake, crabby, and outdoors at 7:30 a.m.

    i wasn’t about to drive when i didn’t know what the conditions were (and knowing how dallas people drive on ice, which is to say, the same way they drive every other day of the year, too fast and too close), so i left the house at 7:30 and walked 1/2 mile to the bus stop. pure misery. the wind was blowing hard enough to make my ears numb and tears run freely from my eyes. it felt like they were freezing on my cheeks. i’m glad i had some hot tea with me. my steamy peppermint savior.

    my clever plan to avoid having to drive today backfired when i got to work and realized that the university had made the call at 7:35 to delay opening until 10 a.m. i’d been checking my email and voice mail all the way up until the time i left the house, but missed it by 5 minutes.

    i was so mad! ben let me leave at 3:30 today to make up for the fact that i was there an hour and a half before anybody else.

    the trek home was an adventure, too. because i was leaving at a different time than normal, i had to figure out the buses and trains to catch to get myself home most efficiently. i decided to hoof it to lover’s lane station (about 1 mile from my office) and catch the 569 bus all the way to my stop, 1/2 mile from home.

    this would have worked fantastically had i gotten there 20 seconds earlier. the bus had JUST pulled away from the curb and i ran towards it, waving my arm like i was hailing a cab. i’ve seen people do this, it works. i was probably 10 yards from the bus. it stopped as i ran up to it… and then turned and drove off.

    and i was like, you motherfucker. it’s 29 fucking degrees out, you’re 20 feet away from your stop, we’re NOT on a major road, we’re at a train station… and you didn’t let me on! there was no way the driver couldn’t have seen me; i was running like a crazy person, waving my arms, directly towards the front of the bus.

    wait, maybe i DID look like a crazy person. no, that can’t be right. i had on a cute swing coat and cap, was dressed neatly, and was smiling. i don’t look crazy, do i?? do i??

    anyway, i just stood there looking shocked. a passerby expressed her shock that the driver didn’t let me on, especially because he was still “in the zone.” i guess “in the zone” is a bus station term i’m not familiar with, but maybe they’re supposed to let people on if they’re a certain number of feet from the stop or something.

    i realized that i was feeling actual pure anger. blood-boiling anger. i wanted to hit something! i thought about hitting the rear end of the bus as it pulled away but realized that i’d then be looked at like, well, a crazy person. so i stewed instead.

    and then i hopped on a red train south to mockingbird, then a blue train north to white rock. i hoped to beat that fucking 569 to white rock station, where i could then get on it and ride the rest of the way home. i spent the whole train ride thinking of something snarky to say to the bus driver when he pulled in to the station and saw me sitting at his stop, waiting. the best thing i could come up with was “gee, i guess it’s my lucky day.” subtle, not too mean, but definitely snarky.

    so as my train pulled into white rock, i saw the 569 pulling away. foiled again!!

    unbelievable.

    so i got on the 428 bus and it let me off at the corner of plano and northwest highway, where it was only a nice 1 mile walk home in the 29 degree weather.

    all told, i probably hiked 2-3/4 miles in subfreezing weather. that HAD to burn off some calories, right? being mad probably burned some more.

    Category Deep Thoughts, Travel, Work | Tags: | 1 Comment

  4. just a few minor fixes…

    October 4, 2005 :: 9:36 am

    Category Design, Work | Tags: | 2 Comments

  5. stress

    August 19, 2005 :: 1:11 pm

    doc has more freelance work than he knows what to do with, which is both good and bad.

    i’m going to be helping him on several projects, so i had to buy quark xpress. YUCK!! these projects are due in a ridiculously short amount of time, so here’s hoping i didn’t get myself in over my head. for the next 2 weeks i probably will be doing nothing but going to work, coming home, working some more, eating dinner, working, going to bed. if it proves to be too much i will hire brittney to help out with some of it.

    but it is a good thing, it’s building doc’s business.

    not that there’s ever a good time for this, but angst is pretty sick also. he was getting lighter and lighter, it seemed, and sneezing a lot, so we took him to the vet to see if they could give him something to help his allergies and appetite. they put him on prescription food and three medications. he’s done nothing but throw up and worse since. he finally stopped throwing up after we took him off all the medicine and gave him his regular food, but he’s been having accidents all over the place. we had to take him in again this morning and they are trying a different kind of antibiotic.

    also, our art show is tomorrow night. i have to go hang the art after work today.

    art stress, cat stress, job stress.

    luckily when i get stressed and busy, i don’t eat. maybe i’ll lose a few freakin’ pounds over this.

    Category Art, Cats, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  6. let the wookiee win

    April 18, 2005 :: 4:44 pm

    aah, harrison. a fine, fine actor. a fine, fine man. i don’t care that he’s 30 years my senior. here’s a great collection of him pointing his finger at various people in movies.

    just read that adobe bought macromedia. wow. seems like they’re approaching microsoft with regards to a monopoly. i wonder how this is going to affect dreamweaver. hmm. i like adobe and all, but sheesh, do they have to own EVERYTHING?

    yesterday’s dilbert was GREAT. this is exactly what happens in my office on a daily basis. i wish i had an ejector seat, but i’d have to go through the four floors above me before i broke free.

    kathryn is getting married in thirteen days. i’m trying to remember what i felt like 13 days out. probably pretty panicked. which is dumb, because it is JUST A PARTY, but for some reason even the most laid back and levelheaded among us get antsy and freaked out as it approaches. i guess it’s the whole “making sure that everyone has a good time, not just us” type of thing. at the end of the day, you’ll still be married, which is the important thing. but it’s always difficult, expensive, and time consuming to throw a party — especially one that big with that many people, many of whom have wildly differing expectations. you have to balance wanting everyone to have a good time with not doing something you don’t want to do just because it’s traditional or expected by traditional-minded people.

    Category Friends, Movies, Technology, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  7. turn to face the strange…

    April 5, 2005 :: 9:51 pm

    i was trying to think of something clever and pithy to say to introduce this post, but i’m coming up dry tonight. our big news of late is that we are a one-income family now. doc’s company is closing business at the end of april, at which time he will become unemployed, unless he lands a new job before then. i have no doubt that he’ll be able to find another job quickly; the question is, will he find something that he likes or that is, at the very least, more personally satisfying than producing literature about air conditioners and heaters, day in, day out?

    emotional state check: not bad. a little nervous, trying not to become a lot of nervous. remaining mostly pragmatic with random “holy shit” moments. doc is really on top of things, feeling almost a sense of relief mixed in with the uncertainty. i know he needed a change… i guess sometimes change has to be forced upon us for us to take advantage of it. that’s how i am, anyway.

    so we sat down and took stock of all our expenses and all our assets. we’ve spent a couple of nights doing that and coming up with lists of ways where we can cut back, decision/question lists and to-do lists. we’re mostly ok. we can’t live on my paycheck indefinitely; i don’t make enough to cover all our bills and expenses (even the super scaled back version of things). but we’re ok for a while.

    health insurance bites. i’m utterly amazed at how much it costs. i pay nearly $200/mo for just myself; to add doc will be an additional $250/mo. but we gotta do what we gotta do; going without health insurance is not an option.

    as they say at work, problems are not problems but instead “opportunities for growth.” so we’ve just been handed a big growth opportunity. don’t you just hate all those feel-good human-resources buzzwords? for instance, in our annual performance reviews, we’re required to rate ourselves in a number of areas… but we don’t use the “excellent, good, fair, needs improvement” terminology — oh no. that would be too NORMAL. instead we use “excelling, doing, learning, absent.” they correlate to the original terms but they’re not so “judgmental,” says HR. i say “bullshit!” i’d like to tell them that they can shove their key messages and strategic impact decisions into either their blue, red, or green hat and then identify their performance gaps, remove obstacles, and self-correct to their heart’s content!!! as joel said, they should also move their cheese and determine their parachute color. all the while developing any of the seven habits of highly effective people!!!

    upbeat news: i get to to go chicago in june for the HOW design conference. four days of hanging out with other artists, talking about art and design, and eating deep dish pizza. sweet!

    Category Doc, Finance, Work | Tags: | 4 Comments

  8. random thoughts on politics, holidays, and the moon

    October 27, 2004 :: 9:27 pm

    we voted early last weekend. not that it matters one way or the other, seeing as how we live in a giant red state. however, something interesting has been happening: i’ve been seeing pro-bush, anti-kerry ads on tv. here. in texas.

    why?

    you’d think that if they thought they had the state wrapped up, they wouldn’t bother spending the money on unnecessary ads.

    unless they’re not unnecessary.

    ha-HA!

    oh, hell, i know it’s a pipe dream. but i can dream, can’t i??

    in other news…
    chris hamilton, a friend who is a photographer, came over and took a bunch of pictures of our cats for a business he’s starting. they turned out great! i don’t think that i can really post any in a public forum (they are his pictures, after all). our halloween party is this coming saturday. on friday, in our new building at work, we are having little preschool kids coming through to trick-or-treat. our office’s theme is “black and white” (even though we just moved and are still settling in, and have had no time to think of holiday decor, the whole building is apparently expecting great things from “the creative group,” so we brainstormed the other day and came up with something). anyway, i’m going to wear my black and white stripey stockings and my short black supermodel wig. man, any excuse to wear alternate hair!!

    the moon eclipsed tonight. we saw it for a few minutes through a break in the clouds. it was pretty cool; it turned this nice rusty red color. actually it’s still going on, but it’s awfully cloudy outside. in fact, the weather has just been horrible lately: incredibly sticky and very very warm. i want my cool dry crips autumn days, goddammit!

    Team America: World Police is freakin’ hilarious!! I highly recommend it, as long as you are over the age of 16 or so. America, FUCK YEAH!

    jon stewart was on crossfire last week, i think — the lesson learned here is, do not fuck with jon stewart; he will make you look like an idiot. he called that bowtied freak tucker carlson a dick! my favorite line, when carlson was poking at him about the quality of the questions he asked john kerry during his daily show appearance: “wait a minute, you are on CNN. you know what show leads into mine? puppets making crank phone calls.”

    Some fun links…
    Give Bush a Brain!
    iFilm political short films & clips (freakin’ awesome site!)
    the U2 iPod

    Category Cats, Halloween, Links, Movies, Photography, Politics, TV, Weather, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  9. fonts suck!

    December 16, 2003 :: 11:12 pm

    I have managed to completely mess up my font situation on my home computer. I think I deleted some important system fonts while trying to wrangle FontBook, because now everything is completely screwy. Regular old standard system fonts are defaulting to other ones, etc. Right now this is supposed to be displaying in nice smooth anti-aliased Arial as I type this, and it looks all Helvetica-y and somewhat jagged, even though Arial appears to be activated.

    I think I might actually have to reinstall something. Yuck.

    Happy birthday, Bob! I can’t believe my youngest brother is 24. Wow.

    So, my division at work gave out Christmas gifts yesterday… a nice card with a nice imprinted message, along with a sheet of address labels featuring our home address… which is all very nice. But then, included in the card, was a donation request form. Merry Christmas, now return some of that paycheck! Many companies give out holiday bonuses — THEY give US a little something extra (and I’ve never had any illusions that this would actually occur at my office). But asking US to give money back?? And in the guise of a Christmas card??? Talk about tacky!! They might as well have said “Yeah, happy holidays, whatever. Now, down to the real business — give us your money.”

    We have finally acquired a Christmas tree. We got a real one this year (spiky old Scotch Pine, but they all turn brown and die within a couple weeks anyway). We might look for a nice fake tree during the post-holiday sales. We haven’t named him yet. Oswald was our tree a couple of years ago. I’m having trouble thinking of a good name for this one. Maybe Emporer Crumpington. Now, for the fun part — decorating! I loooooove my ornaments. Doc bought them for me a couple Christmases ago. They are freakin’ gorgeous. I don’t get all girly and knick-knacky about much of anything, but I just loooooove these ornaments.

    I put lights in the tree in the front yard and on the garden gate on Sunday night. And some around the interior of the house as well. I guess I have a little more holiday spirit this year than usual. Maybe it’s that two week vacation I’m taking starting next week.

    OK, on to other more important topics. I could talk for a while about the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the way the media has reported on it, but Hillsman at work summed it up best this morning: “Four more years.”

    . He’s probably right, too. I haven’t been paying enough attention to the Democratic debates, but it seems like the Dems are a house divided this year. If they do not get together and strongly back one guy, ONE GUY (or gal, although that’s not looking likely, even thought it is freakin’ 2004, for god’s sake), then the Dem vote will be split and Bush will be a no-brainer in 2004.

    And I do mean no-brainer.

    Category Christmas, Politics, Technology, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  10. new fall pants

    September 23, 2003 :: 3:54 pm

    Well well well… it seems that things are looking up on the job front. If I don’t get the designer job in M&D (which I really really am hoping that I get!!), at least I have a little consolation in that my current job apparently will change dramatically. I had a little talk with the AVP about it, who was worried that I am thinking about leaving. I told her that I don’t want to, but I have to have a change. I have to do something more creative, and if I can’t do it here, I’ll find someplace else to do it. So with any luck, I won’t have to deal with people wanting me to stop their Quark from crashing and help them unjam the printer and install a new version of their browser and determine why their e-mail attachments don’t go through. She promised to find some way to change my job description, even change my reporting department, to allow me to do creative and design work. I made it clear that I don’t want to do technical stuff anymore that is non-design-related.

    New fall pants that fit properly make me happy!! It’s the little things sometimes… pants that are a good color and a nice material and are long enough and make me look classy and cool and not fat.

    Category My Boring Life, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  11. quick updates only

    August 5, 2003 :: 9:45 pm

    Update 1: My surgery has been moved to Friday. I won’t have to take 3 days off work; just one, which is both good and bad. Kinda ruins my weekend though.

    Update 2: Cooper Smith, who used to be an intern in my office and now has his own PR firm , has been getting us wonderful leads on our book… and we haven’t even formally hired him yet. He’s one of the sweetest guys in the world. Through his contacts, we have been asked to teach two two-hour cooking classes at Market Street, which apparently is like a Central Market/Whole Foods type gourmet market. It’s not open yet, but we’re doing one in Colleyville and one in McKinney in February.

    Update 3: I think we can wait on buying a new A/C unit until next summer. The freon charge ought to last us the year (we hope). I’m damn glad we got it recharged, though, because our July elec-fucking-tricity bill was almost $300 due to the unit running constantly.

    Update 4: I moved offices at work. I now have a smaller office, with a metal wall, many more drawers, and in a much quieter area surrounded by designers. Now, it’s all about finding cool magnets.

    Update 5: I think our tree is dying. Doc says we didn’t kill it, and he’s probably right; the inspection report when we bought the house indicated that we’d probably need to have the tree removed soon. But I still feel bad. There’s probably something I could have done — fertilizer, more water, trimming… something. Hell, I don’t know enough about trees to even know what I could have done differently.

    Category Books, Health, House, Work, Writing | Tags: | No Comments

  12. the value of things

    July 11, 2002 :: 7:19 pm

    Today I got a taste of what it’s like to design by committee. I feel like I might as well be a trained monkey for all the creativity/originality I will get to bring to the table. That’s a story for another day, though.

    My boss was on vacation in New Mexico, and was shocked at how expensive the Native American crafts and art was. He asked me, as an artist, wouldn’t you sell something at a lower price (say, a small rug for $500 instead of $5000) in order that more people could afford it, and thus increase the number of people buying your art… thus increasing your popularity AND your overall sales? Assuming that your product was just as good as everyone else around you? I said that I don’t know if it really works that way. In theory he’s right, I think, but you also have to look at pricing your work competitively in order to maintain “status.” For example, a $5000 rug is perceived as somehow more valuable than a $500 rug, even if they are exactly the same thing.

    BUT… (and this is a big but)… I think it’s this type of thinking that causes us to STOP thinking. Take for instance the ridiculous farce known as major league sports. WHY in the world should a guy who basically runs around with a ball for a living make multimillions every year? Well, it’s because that’s what everyone else in his field gets, and if he played for a lower salary, people would perceive him as a less valuable player. Right? So is it all about keeping up appearances??

    Maybe they should just chop the salaries of all professional sports players in half and use that additional money to supplement public school teacher salaries. If I was president of the world, that’s what I’d do.

    Category Design, Sociology, Work | Tags: | No Comments

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