As I'm sure you've read by now, Paul Newman died Friday.
I loved Paul Newman, and not just because of those incredible blue eyes. My favorite performances include "Long Hot Summer" (first movie with Woodward, and based on Faulkner short stories) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (which is the first I realized Liz Taylor could actually act); "Butch Cassidy," of course, and "Cool Hand Luke" (another movie that's full of familiar faces, and the fight scene is impressive for the point it makes about brutality); and the Richard Russo trio of "Nobody's Fool," "Empire Falls," and "Twilight." (The former two are based on Russo novels.)
I always admired his charity work--he basically created some good products and used them to raise money for a good cause. He recognized that he had more than he needed, so he just gave it away, happily and willingly. And, as I have noted, I am addicted to Ginger-Os. And I like that so many of the products are organic.
As an open-wheel racing fan, well, gotta love that part of him, too.
And he was an unabashed liberal--I had realized this until I read it in the NYTimes obit, but he was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention.
So go rent a Paul Newman movie tonight--almost any one of them will do--and have some Newman's Own popcorn with it.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Fail 'em
That, frankly, is what I wish the Democrats would do now. Stand up and say, we are only willing to go forward with a plan that limits executive compensation, that gives taxpayers a chance to make back some money if this effort is a success, that puts appropriate regulations back in place, and that keeps people in their homes. The Republican plan will not do that and we will not agree to it. When the Republicans come up with a plan that does that, they're welcome to offer it. We understand they are afraid of "socialism." Fine. Let's let the market work. If these firms fail, it shows the firms should not have made those loans, and they will suffer the penalty any other business would suffer. The failure of businesses that make poor decisions should not be a problem for free-market supporters.
Meanwhile, we are going to develop a bill that re-regulates Wall Street. The Republicans can go ahead and vote against it, and we'll make sure to highlight that in our campaigning in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, we are going to develop a bill that re-regulates Wall Street. The Republicans can go ahead and vote against it, and we'll make sure to highlight that in our campaigning in the coming weeks.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Replacementation
Is the Bible absolutely true? Is it truly the word of God?
Well, if it is, I am fucked. And then I'm fucked for saying fuck. And I say it a lot. It's not really a word to me, it's a comma.
--Lewis Black, Me of Little Faith
If you like Lewis Black, and I do, then go grab his book from the library. It's kind of like reading a long stand-up routine of his, and I find it quite entertaining.
My plate is getting extremely very full at work. I don't think my boss is entirely clear just how much he's piling onto it. We're going to discuss it tomorrow, however, although he doesn't know that just yet. The problem is the director of MIS left at the beginning of September, and there has yet to be any kind of replacement. On top of that, it's not clear that anyone else knew how to do any of the things he did, particularly the things that involved mining data from various big datawads around the organization. The upside is that his organizational skills make me look like a slacker, and he was extraordinarily good about documenting things very, very thoroughly. Thus, were I able to get access to the datawads, I might actually be able to extract material from said wads. It would not be easy for me, and it would be slow, but I might could do it.
However, my boss has not the slightest clue about the complexity of this whole thing, so explaining how difficult and time-consuming it is itself becomes difficult and time-consuming.
In addition, I fear that they will not be replacing the MIS guy any time soon. I suspect the pay scale is not attracting the quality of person they actually need to fill the position, and I fear they will not realize that, because the people making the decision include my boss, who is nearly computer-illiterate, and his boss, the ED, who is also pretty computer-illiterate. The latter can manage communications and documents and such, as can the former, to some extent, but asking either of them to, for example, put together a complex document and store it properly on the shared drive is like asking them to sprout wings and fly. The latter, for example, insists that, after I submit a proposal, I create a PDF of all of the sub-documents, attachments, and the like, into a single file, and that I include things like the audit. She then either prints this out or asks me to do so. Perhaps, then, you understand why I am skeptical that they will be able to hire an adequate replacement for the position.
Without said replacement, reporting, including reporting to our funding agencies, becomes quite difficult, because there won't be anyone to extract data, unless I can figure it out for myself and get access to the information--and a shitty replacement will be worse, in many ways, than no replacement, because it means I will have to fight with an idiot rather than merely fight to figure out how to do something. Well, whatever--still no sacks of flour involved.
Seriously: I am finding that, despite the APs (both of whom are gone now), and despite various little frustrations, I am not getting wrapped around the axle about these things. This is not particularly in my nature, so I don't know where this detachment is coming from.
I'm also finding that I have seriously blocked out large chunks of the whole Bakery Experience. Every so often I think back to some aspect of it, some task I would have been doing at a given time, or the pure physicality of it, or the noise, or the holiday music, or the constant busyness, or the sense of futility that I had to fight just to get out of bed in the morning, and whatever I am dealing with at the office becomes much less problematic. It's really only since I quit that I've been able to process just how awful the whole thing felt to me and how much energy it took for me to continue doing it. I'm also please that I am rediscovering baking--it feels good again, and I'm glad to have that back.
Anyway, I could probably blather awhile longer, but I am tired tonight; I think my zen shiatsu treatment took a lot out of me this evening. Or put it back in ways that made me realize how much I was holding together with duct tape and Elmer's glue. so, hey, I'm going to finish my wine and my water and get some sleep.
p.s. I have not brought myself to watch any of the Palin interviews, though I've been reading transcripts. Good lord--I'm more prepared to be President than she is, and I haven't held an elected position since college. And the whole suspending his campaign while not suspending it? Yeah, THAT's going to work out well.
Well, if it is, I am fucked. And then I'm fucked for saying fuck. And I say it a lot. It's not really a word to me, it's a comma.
--Lewis Black, Me of Little Faith
If you like Lewis Black, and I do, then go grab his book from the library. It's kind of like reading a long stand-up routine of his, and I find it quite entertaining.
My plate is getting extremely very full at work. I don't think my boss is entirely clear just how much he's piling onto it. We're going to discuss it tomorrow, however, although he doesn't know that just yet. The problem is the director of MIS left at the beginning of September, and there has yet to be any kind of replacement. On top of that, it's not clear that anyone else knew how to do any of the things he did, particularly the things that involved mining data from various big datawads around the organization. The upside is that his organizational skills make me look like a slacker, and he was extraordinarily good about documenting things very, very thoroughly. Thus, were I able to get access to the datawads, I might actually be able to extract material from said wads. It would not be easy for me, and it would be slow, but I might could do it.
However, my boss has not the slightest clue about the complexity of this whole thing, so explaining how difficult and time-consuming it is itself becomes difficult and time-consuming.
In addition, I fear that they will not be replacing the MIS guy any time soon. I suspect the pay scale is not attracting the quality of person they actually need to fill the position, and I fear they will not realize that, because the people making the decision include my boss, who is nearly computer-illiterate, and his boss, the ED, who is also pretty computer-illiterate. The latter can manage communications and documents and such, as can the former, to some extent, but asking either of them to, for example, put together a complex document and store it properly on the shared drive is like asking them to sprout wings and fly. The latter, for example, insists that, after I submit a proposal, I create a PDF of all of the sub-documents, attachments, and the like, into a single file, and that I include things like the audit. She then either prints this out or asks me to do so. Perhaps, then, you understand why I am skeptical that they will be able to hire an adequate replacement for the position.
Without said replacement, reporting, including reporting to our funding agencies, becomes quite difficult, because there won't be anyone to extract data, unless I can figure it out for myself and get access to the information--and a shitty replacement will be worse, in many ways, than no replacement, because it means I will have to fight with an idiot rather than merely fight to figure out how to do something. Well, whatever--still no sacks of flour involved.
Seriously: I am finding that, despite the APs (both of whom are gone now), and despite various little frustrations, I am not getting wrapped around the axle about these things. This is not particularly in my nature, so I don't know where this detachment is coming from.
I'm also finding that I have seriously blocked out large chunks of the whole Bakery Experience. Every so often I think back to some aspect of it, some task I would have been doing at a given time, or the pure physicality of it, or the noise, or the holiday music, or the constant busyness, or the sense of futility that I had to fight just to get out of bed in the morning, and whatever I am dealing with at the office becomes much less problematic. It's really only since I quit that I've been able to process just how awful the whole thing felt to me and how much energy it took for me to continue doing it. I'm also please that I am rediscovering baking--it feels good again, and I'm glad to have that back.
Anyway, I could probably blather awhile longer, but I am tired tonight; I think my zen shiatsu treatment took a lot out of me this evening. Or put it back in ways that made me realize how much I was holding together with duct tape and Elmer's glue. so, hey, I'm going to finish my wine and my water and get some sleep.
p.s. I have not brought myself to watch any of the Palin interviews, though I've been reading transcripts. Good lord--I'm more prepared to be President than she is, and I haven't held an elected position since college. And the whole suspending his campaign while not suspending it? Yeah, THAT's going to work out well.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Paper
Not only did I buy beets and tomatos at the farmers market, I have roasted the beets and am roasting the tomatos, as I type. I'm thinking I want to julienne the beets and throw them in with some onions and fresh spinach and toss it all with pasta, perhaps with a little tiny bit of cream. Not for tonight, but that's the beauty of having done this tonight--I can make the rest of it without waiting for something to roast first. And the beets are quite beautiful--they're more golden, with some scarlet bits, than they are that deep red we associate with beets. It's going to be beautiful. And the tomatos smell incredible.
At work today I finally (FINALLY!!) sorted through the multiple piles of paper that have accumulated in my office and, especially, on my desk. The thing that was most interesting about the exercise is that coming up with filing categories was quite simple--and I could not possibly have done it six months ago, or even three months ago, I'd say, so my apparent sloth actually worked out well for me.
My boss and I continue to discuss how to rewrite my job description. The challenge is writing it in a way such that it could be filled if I won the lottery. Although I suppose it could benefit me personally, I do not think it benefits the organization to have unwieldy, awkward job descriptions that are written primarily so that a particular person can be compensated "appropriately." What he is realizing is that the actual writing of grants is a relatively small part of the position; what he really needs is someone who is in charge of the infrastructure. Not the finances or the business operations, but the rest of the infrastructure, the part that goes along with providing human services, particularly when said services are funded largely by tax dollars (or contracts, for that matter, if it were like the old substance abuse treatment agency).
That is, we need to report, to various others (including multiple bits of the federal government), how many of what kind of thing we've been doing, or, more likely, how many of what kinds of services we have provided to how many of which kinds of people. On top of that, we need to have a more than nominal notion of "quality," and of how we can assess whether we are providing high-quality services. We also need a body of policies, procedures, rules, etc., to govern what we do, and we need to track whether the appropriate people (another bit of decision-making) have been trained properly on those policies and procedures. Also, we have to bill the appropriate people for the services we provide, using the appropriate diagnostic and other codes (although that falls under the financial side of things).
There are at least three ways to do this. One is to have each program report, more or less haphazardly, in whatever random fashion the reporting people deem appropriate, and, when it comes time to write for a renewal of the funding, the grants manager runs around like a crazy person trying to get actual data. I have been trying that system for seven months, and I have two words: epic fail.
A second way to do this is to have a reporting tsar (or tsaritsa, as the case may be), i.e., someone who controls everything. While the previous business manager did things this way, it, too, was an epic fail in several dimensions (but by no means all of them, as it did allow her to bring some order to an organization that was in chaos). One of the major difficulties with this strategy is that all of the knowledge/power resides in the hands of one person, which is problematic in more than just philosophical ways.
We are going to try a different path, however. I am going to build some infrastructural tools that allow us to track various bits, and thus report them, more openly and more easily, but these will be tools that managers of various programs will be able, and expected, to use. My successor would need to be able to maintain the tools, and continue the reporting and grantwriting--i.e., maintain the structure that I will be building--which requires a certain meta level of understanding and action. But the point of the exercise is to involve everyone in this, in a coordinated fashion, and I am looking forward to this challenge, a lot.
Which gets back to kstyle's comment on my last post.
I think my self-knowledge in this regard is a direct result of having done so many different things in the past 30 years. Especially when I started looking for an office job after the bakery epic fail, I had to think about what unified my experience, other than the fact that I was the person who did it. And I also realized that I have been doing a variation on this kind of thing since I was the stage manager for my high school production of "Guys and Dolls." (The bakery fits in, as well, in that a major part of what attracted me was the idea of running the business, in a particular way. The Tart and two other classmates were going to do more, although by no means all, of the production, but someone has to do the books, and it helps if s/he also knows the business, and can help with the production and selling ends of the business, and that was going to be me. In my fantasy, anyway.) And I like it. I like solving the problems, and I like trying to solve them in ways that bring out the best in everyone, if I can facilitate that. So, we'll see.
Meanwhile, the tomatos are done, and OMG!11!!eleventytwelve!! I can't wait to use those little suckers.
At work today I finally (FINALLY!!) sorted through the multiple piles of paper that have accumulated in my office and, especially, on my desk. The thing that was most interesting about the exercise is that coming up with filing categories was quite simple--and I could not possibly have done it six months ago, or even three months ago, I'd say, so my apparent sloth actually worked out well for me.
My boss and I continue to discuss how to rewrite my job description. The challenge is writing it in a way such that it could be filled if I won the lottery. Although I suppose it could benefit me personally, I do not think it benefits the organization to have unwieldy, awkward job descriptions that are written primarily so that a particular person can be compensated "appropriately." What he is realizing is that the actual writing of grants is a relatively small part of the position; what he really needs is someone who is in charge of the infrastructure. Not the finances or the business operations, but the rest of the infrastructure, the part that goes along with providing human services, particularly when said services are funded largely by tax dollars (or contracts, for that matter, if it were like the old substance abuse treatment agency).
That is, we need to report, to various others (including multiple bits of the federal government), how many of what kind of thing we've been doing, or, more likely, how many of what kinds of services we have provided to how many of which kinds of people. On top of that, we need to have a more than nominal notion of "quality," and of how we can assess whether we are providing high-quality services. We also need a body of policies, procedures, rules, etc., to govern what we do, and we need to track whether the appropriate people (another bit of decision-making) have been trained properly on those policies and procedures. Also, we have to bill the appropriate people for the services we provide, using the appropriate diagnostic and other codes (although that falls under the financial side of things).
There are at least three ways to do this. One is to have each program report, more or less haphazardly, in whatever random fashion the reporting people deem appropriate, and, when it comes time to write for a renewal of the funding, the grants manager runs around like a crazy person trying to get actual data. I have been trying that system for seven months, and I have two words: epic fail.
A second way to do this is to have a reporting tsar (or tsaritsa, as the case may be), i.e., someone who controls everything. While the previous business manager did things this way, it, too, was an epic fail in several dimensions (but by no means all of them, as it did allow her to bring some order to an organization that was in chaos). One of the major difficulties with this strategy is that all of the knowledge/power resides in the hands of one person, which is problematic in more than just philosophical ways.
We are going to try a different path, however. I am going to build some infrastructural tools that allow us to track various bits, and thus report them, more openly and more easily, but these will be tools that managers of various programs will be able, and expected, to use. My successor would need to be able to maintain the tools, and continue the reporting and grantwriting--i.e., maintain the structure that I will be building--which requires a certain meta level of understanding and action. But the point of the exercise is to involve everyone in this, in a coordinated fashion, and I am looking forward to this challenge, a lot.
Which gets back to kstyle's comment on my last post.
I think my self-knowledge in this regard is a direct result of having done so many different things in the past 30 years. Especially when I started looking for an office job after the bakery epic fail, I had to think about what unified my experience, other than the fact that I was the person who did it. And I also realized that I have been doing a variation on this kind of thing since I was the stage manager for my high school production of "Guys and Dolls." (The bakery fits in, as well, in that a major part of what attracted me was the idea of running the business, in a particular way. The Tart and two other classmates were going to do more, although by no means all, of the production, but someone has to do the books, and it helps if s/he also knows the business, and can help with the production and selling ends of the business, and that was going to be me. In my fantasy, anyway.) And I like it. I like solving the problems, and I like trying to solve them in ways that bring out the best in everyone, if I can facilitate that. So, we'll see.
Meanwhile, the tomatos are done, and OMG!11!!eleventytwelve!! I can't wait to use those little suckers.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Randomosity
"Best" trumps "good," except for values of "good" that include "convenient." More specifically, I've found a bakery between work and home that makes decent bread. It's not as good as the bread where I used to work, but I mentioned the part about how it's between home and work. As a result, I walked home tonight, despite not really wanting to do so; I committed to walking to the bakery and getting some bread, and then I just-missed a bus, so ended up walking the rest of the way home as well. I didn't get up to my usual pace, however; it was more of a stroll. Still, it's something, and I had bread for dinner (with excellent cheese from the farmers' market). Speaking of the market, I did manage to go on Saturday, and, in addition to the Excellent Cheeses, scored some beets, onions, tomatos (which I'm probably going to roast), broccoli, apples, and honey. I made an apple cake yesterday at Friend's house, but was seriously unhappy with it, despite the ginger in it; it was WAY too sweet, for one thing, and the cake part didn't work at all. Yes, I modified the recipe, but I'm not convinced that the original would have been any better. I found a new one today, though, that will likely work.
Work is getting interesting. AP number two, the more recent one, will no longer be with us after this Friday; her position has been eliminated. Some of her responsibilities will come to me (along with additional dollars in my pay, supposedly, although no actual numbers have been bandied about just yet). One one hand, that's kind of exciting; I am getting the opportunity to do all kinds of work that I really enjoy (more on that in a second). On the other hand, in order to do any of these things well, I need a few days to just wallow in paper--reading it, filing it, making notes on it--and a few more days to figure some things out, and a few more after that to make some plans.
Every time I turn around, however, there's another damned crisis, so I end up lurching from one thing to the next. In addition, now that I'm a Manager, I have to go to all of these goddamned training sessions and meetings--a total of 3.5 days in October will be devoted to this crap, for example. I haven't been to any of them yet, but, based on the chirpy advice-to-managers emails I'm now getting, I seriously doubt that the meetings are going to be worth the 15% or so of my work time next month. It's not entirely clear to me how anyone who has seen "Office Space" can conduct these things with anything resembling a straight face. We'll see if my skepticism is warranted.
On top of it all, after this coming weekend, Friend is basically going to be gone all or most of every weekend between now and Christmas (and, hell, maybe then, too), what with football and hockey games up in Cheeseland, plus his annual two-week deer-hunting-and-Thanksgiving extravaganza. I am not looking forward to this. We'll still see each other, I hope, but there's something nice about waking up on a Saturday or Sunday morning without having to go anywhere, or do anything more strenuous than making breakfast and providing a lap for the cat and planning dinner, and that's basically out of the picture for three months or so.
On top of that, one of his hockey-playing mates has organized outings to eleven Hawks games--and they are (a) on nights or to games that Friend and I might have attended, and (b) organized specifically as "boy's nights," which, okay, whatever, those guys all play hockey together. They're spread throughout the whole season, though, rather than in the next three months. Still, given that Friend has committed to spending the time/money on those games, I fear it will cut into his willingness to attend additional games with me, which kinda sucks; I really enjoyed going to the games last season and was looking forward to this season. I may just go by myself, which isn't as much fun, and turns into a later night, what with public transportation and all. On top of that, Friend is also playing hockey once or twice a week or so. Yes, I did in fact notice that there's not a lot of room in that for me.
In an effort to make lemonade out of that, if I don't get any more editing work (I haven't heard a peep from anyone in nearly two months, and I haven't been offered anything in nearly three) it will give me an opportunity to work my way through my List of Big Chores. There are two closets that need to be excavated, seeing as how, when I moved in here, I basically crammed stuff into them and shut the doors, and my kitchen cabinets are in serious need of organization. One of them is now operating under the organizing principle of "open door; cram or toss something on top of the pile; close door quickly and hope nothing falls out." No, I am not exaggerating. And there's the needlepoint I wanted to start nearly two years ago--that could use some work, seeing as how I have completed approximately one square inch of it.
Still, chores, no matter how necessary or how satisfying when completed, aren't nearly as much fun. Also, among the other functions that Friend serves, he gets to be my cooking and baking guinea pig, which is important. I'm simply not getting enough exercise to eat much by way of baked goods--or anything else, it seems sometimes--and he's bigger than I am, as well, so leftovers that would go to waste at my house get consumed at his. Well, whatever. It would be nice to get this place organized, two-and-a-half years after moving in, and I do want to work on the needlepoint.
In good news, I paid off my pastry school loan last week, 17 or 18 years early. I have to focus on the fact that it is paid off, rather than the fact that it feels like I took nearly $20k and set fire to it, but I'm also happy to not have any debt right now. Of course, if I had a LOT of debt, maybe Congress would bail me out.
As for the "work I like" part (no, I didn't forget), I've realized that the kind of work I like to do is building structures or infrastructures; providing people with the tools they need to do their jobs; creating tools that make everyone's job easier, or that make reporting open and obvious; finding and solving new problems. (What I do not like, so much, is doing the same thing over and over.) My current organization needs infrastructure--oh, my, yes, it does; it would be difficult to overestimate how much it needs it. In addition, my current boss recognizes this need, and has hired me specifically because he thought I'd be able to build it. Thus, despite the anxieties and frustrations, this is the kind of work I like to do; now we'll see whether I can be any good at doing it in this organization and environment.
This opportunity differs significantly from others in my past, because I'll be working with many more people, more directly, than in other jobs. At the substance abuse treatment agency, for example, I worked closely with my boss; the only infrastructure work I did was building a contracts management database (the core of which I believe they still use, 10 years later), and I did that on a whim, not as part of my official job. I worked closely with the two people who would use it, to make sure I got it right, but I didn't supervise anyone, or even work closely with anyone other than my boss, and any infrastructure building I did was sub rosa rather than an explicit part of my responsibilities. So, we'll see. I admit to some nervousness about the whole thing, but sometimes you gotta say what the fuck.
Work is getting interesting. AP number two, the more recent one, will no longer be with us after this Friday; her position has been eliminated. Some of her responsibilities will come to me (along with additional dollars in my pay, supposedly, although no actual numbers have been bandied about just yet). One one hand, that's kind of exciting; I am getting the opportunity to do all kinds of work that I really enjoy (more on that in a second). On the other hand, in order to do any of these things well, I need a few days to just wallow in paper--reading it, filing it, making notes on it--and a few more days to figure some things out, and a few more after that to make some plans.
Every time I turn around, however, there's another damned crisis, so I end up lurching from one thing to the next. In addition, now that I'm a Manager, I have to go to all of these goddamned training sessions and meetings--a total of 3.5 days in October will be devoted to this crap, for example. I haven't been to any of them yet, but, based on the chirpy advice-to-managers emails I'm now getting, I seriously doubt that the meetings are going to be worth the 15% or so of my work time next month. It's not entirely clear to me how anyone who has seen "Office Space" can conduct these things with anything resembling a straight face. We'll see if my skepticism is warranted.
On top of it all, after this coming weekend, Friend is basically going to be gone all or most of every weekend between now and Christmas (and, hell, maybe then, too), what with football and hockey games up in Cheeseland, plus his annual two-week deer-hunting-and-Thanksgiving extravaganza. I am not looking forward to this. We'll still see each other, I hope, but there's something nice about waking up on a Saturday or Sunday morning without having to go anywhere, or do anything more strenuous than making breakfast and providing a lap for the cat and planning dinner, and that's basically out of the picture for three months or so.
On top of that, one of his hockey-playing mates has organized outings to eleven Hawks games--and they are (a) on nights or to games that Friend and I might have attended, and (b) organized specifically as "boy's nights," which, okay, whatever, those guys all play hockey together. They're spread throughout the whole season, though, rather than in the next three months. Still, given that Friend has committed to spending the time/money on those games, I fear it will cut into his willingness to attend additional games with me, which kinda sucks; I really enjoyed going to the games last season and was looking forward to this season. I may just go by myself, which isn't as much fun, and turns into a later night, what with public transportation and all. On top of that, Friend is also playing hockey once or twice a week or so. Yes, I did in fact notice that there's not a lot of room in that for me.
In an effort to make lemonade out of that, if I don't get any more editing work (I haven't heard a peep from anyone in nearly two months, and I haven't been offered anything in nearly three) it will give me an opportunity to work my way through my List of Big Chores. There are two closets that need to be excavated, seeing as how, when I moved in here, I basically crammed stuff into them and shut the doors, and my kitchen cabinets are in serious need of organization. One of them is now operating under the organizing principle of "open door; cram or toss something on top of the pile; close door quickly and hope nothing falls out." No, I am not exaggerating. And there's the needlepoint I wanted to start nearly two years ago--that could use some work, seeing as how I have completed approximately one square inch of it.
Still, chores, no matter how necessary or how satisfying when completed, aren't nearly as much fun. Also, among the other functions that Friend serves, he gets to be my cooking and baking guinea pig, which is important. I'm simply not getting enough exercise to eat much by way of baked goods--or anything else, it seems sometimes--and he's bigger than I am, as well, so leftovers that would go to waste at my house get consumed at his. Well, whatever. It would be nice to get this place organized, two-and-a-half years after moving in, and I do want to work on the needlepoint.
In good news, I paid off my pastry school loan last week, 17 or 18 years early. I have to focus on the fact that it is paid off, rather than the fact that it feels like I took nearly $20k and set fire to it, but I'm also happy to not have any debt right now. Of course, if I had a LOT of debt, maybe Congress would bail me out.
As for the "work I like" part (no, I didn't forget), I've realized that the kind of work I like to do is building structures or infrastructures; providing people with the tools they need to do their jobs; creating tools that make everyone's job easier, or that make reporting open and obvious; finding and solving new problems. (What I do not like, so much, is doing the same thing over and over.) My current organization needs infrastructure--oh, my, yes, it does; it would be difficult to overestimate how much it needs it. In addition, my current boss recognizes this need, and has hired me specifically because he thought I'd be able to build it. Thus, despite the anxieties and frustrations, this is the kind of work I like to do; now we'll see whether I can be any good at doing it in this organization and environment.
This opportunity differs significantly from others in my past, because I'll be working with many more people, more directly, than in other jobs. At the substance abuse treatment agency, for example, I worked closely with my boss; the only infrastructure work I did was building a contracts management database (the core of which I believe they still use, 10 years later), and I did that on a whim, not as part of my official job. I worked closely with the two people who would use it, to make sure I got it right, but I didn't supervise anyone, or even work closely with anyone other than my boss, and any infrastructure building I did was sub rosa rather than an explicit part of my responsibilities. So, we'll see. I admit to some nervousness about the whole thing, but sometimes you gotta say what the fuck.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Tools
The book that I didn't like much was "Girl Cook" by Hannah Mccouch; I thought I would like it, for obvious reasons, and there were bits--some of the cooking bits, in particular--that I liked well enough, but the whole thing was chicklit at its worst. I was musing about why I don't like that genre, and, no surprise here, it's because the stories always seem to be a version of "how I found my prince, even though I didn't think I would." Okay, that's not exactly a novel observation, I suppose, and occasionally there are stories that are well-written, so I don't mean to dismiss them all. (I'd also add that not everything that's written by a young(ish) woman falls into the category, despite the marketing that tells us otherwise.) But it got me thinking about how marriage, at least in its novelistic incarnations, has been transformed.
If you read Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope (or, for all I know, a bunch of other writers from more than a century ago), one of the central plotlines of many of the novels is the urgent need for young women without independent means to find a husband. In all of the stories I can think of, the gentlewomen of no or little means know that if they do not find husbands, they will be relegated to a very poor existence. The only work available (for a gentlewoman, anyway) is as a governess or a companion. In both cases, the women live with another family. In the former, she tutors and raises their children, and in the latter, she provides companionship and, in some cases ("The Eustace Diamonds," for example) she provides a veneer of respectability, because no woman, no matter how wealthy, can live alone, and, of course, household help does not count. Thus, poor women provide the veneer, in exchange for a roof over their heads and food to eat.
One of the other things that's interesting is that women who have an income (Austen's Emma; Lizzy Eustace; Glendora Palliser; an assortment of other Trollope characters) still face tremendous pressure to marry. They are on the market, and they must find someone to marry them before their sell-by dates, else they come to be regarded as old goods.
In all cases, no matter their finances, women are regarded as lucky if they marry for, or with, love and affection. This is particularly true for the poorer women, who literally cannot afford to marry only for love. In the case of wealthy women, the love of a good man makes them better people somehow (as in "Emma," particularly, although that novel has always creeped me out a little). Thus, it becomes advantageous for wealthy women to find wealthy husbands--not because either of them needs the other's money, but because the woman will never believe that he married her for her wealth. Take the Pallisers, for example: Glendora has huge wads of money, much more than Planty, but he has so much of his own that her money is irrelevant to him.
What does this have to do with chicklit?
Well, women now can earn their own way in the world, it turns out. Money confers advantages--that is always going to be the case, I imagine, until we live in a propertyless anarchist paradise--and I bet I was not the only person here who was informed that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor one (probably not true for me, but that's a different story), but I have never depended on a man for my bread. I thought I was going to do that, at least until the bakery was a wild success, but we remember how that turned out. It's also true that the trajectory of my life has different significantly from that of the majority of women, and it's also true that I don't have children. (On the other hand, I'm not the only woman my age I know personally who has lived alone so much of her life, and another friend my age decided to have a child by herself and has done so. It may be that we all "attract" each other, precisely because of our deviation from the mainstream, but it may also be the case that there are simply more women out there who have, in one way or another, for some amount of time, made major life decisions without a partner being involved in the decision and have not been destituted by that. Yes, I know that it DOES impoverish many women.)
That is, despite the pay iniquities and the financial and other burdens that raising children add to the mix, it is more possible--though, of course, not easy--for a woman to get by without a man. (Of course this is all heteronormative, but it's an aspect of heteronormativity, not an aspect of being a woman, per se, about which I am writing.)
The point--and I do have one here--is that patriarchy, as a system, increasingly must make marriage attractive to women for reasons other than the monetary ones about which Trollope and Austen wrote so perceptively. This is made easier by heterosexual attraction--many women like having sex with men, and vice versa, and at least some of that attraction is every bit as inborn as the attraction that some women feel for women and some men feel for men. And, really, humans are, by and large, social creatures (that's a whole other Wittgensteinian argument that I'll leave unexplicated for now), so forging bonds of various sorts isn't exactly an unusual thing to do. But neither the sexual attraction nor the sociability necessitates marriage as we understand it.
I could also argue, and not just for the sake of argument, that there are all kinds of arrangements that would suit women better: imagine if we had adequate childcare available, or imagine if women were paid equitably. Those two things alone would put more cards in women's hands, and would enable them to tell men who were being assholes to fuck off. Adequate childcare--and the lack of penalties for caring for children--would also enable more men to be better parents, as well. It's hard to be an involved parent when you have to work 80 hours a week, and it's hard to forego that, if you know that foregoing it means you will not be regarded as eligible for any number of career paths that you might desire for your own reasons. That conundrum affects men and women differently in our current society, but it does affect both men and women. (I also know an unusual number of men who have been the primary caregiver for significant stints of their children's lives, and all of them had job or career situations that did not fit the current norm in some important way.)
In the chicklit genre, at least the bits of it that have crossed my path, the men end up fulfilling the same function they did with Trollope and Austen--providing an escape from a situation that was socially, and possibly financially, undesirable, while at the same time providing True Love. "Girl Cook" is a stellar example of it, in fact, because the woman in question is broke, wants to be a chef, leaves the job she has (for very good reasons), and Just Happens to meet a man who is smitten with her and Very Very Rich, plus he owns (wait for it) a food-oriented television network. In addition to her cooking abilities, she was raised in an environment of sufficient wealth & privilege that she can hang with the rich people and not embarrass him.
But the question that always occurs to me is why the women in these novels spend so much time worrying about finding the right man. They certainly do not need to do that in the same way that Austen's and Trollope's gentlewomen needed to do that. However, it does serve the patriarchy, as a system, for women to be worrying about this, so I do, indeed, blame the patriarchy for chicklit, and I have come to regard chicklit as a tool of the patriarchy.
ETA: I posted this, then meandered over to flea's place and found HER critique of chicklit, in terms of a specific book. Go read it.
If you read Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope (or, for all I know, a bunch of other writers from more than a century ago), one of the central plotlines of many of the novels is the urgent need for young women without independent means to find a husband. In all of the stories I can think of, the gentlewomen of no or little means know that if they do not find husbands, they will be relegated to a very poor existence. The only work available (for a gentlewoman, anyway) is as a governess or a companion. In both cases, the women live with another family. In the former, she tutors and raises their children, and in the latter, she provides companionship and, in some cases ("The Eustace Diamonds," for example) she provides a veneer of respectability, because no woman, no matter how wealthy, can live alone, and, of course, household help does not count. Thus, poor women provide the veneer, in exchange for a roof over their heads and food to eat.
One of the other things that's interesting is that women who have an income (Austen's Emma; Lizzy Eustace; Glendora Palliser; an assortment of other Trollope characters) still face tremendous pressure to marry. They are on the market, and they must find someone to marry them before their sell-by dates, else they come to be regarded as old goods.
In all cases, no matter their finances, women are regarded as lucky if they marry for, or with, love and affection. This is particularly true for the poorer women, who literally cannot afford to marry only for love. In the case of wealthy women, the love of a good man makes them better people somehow (as in "Emma," particularly, although that novel has always creeped me out a little). Thus, it becomes advantageous for wealthy women to find wealthy husbands--not because either of them needs the other's money, but because the woman will never believe that he married her for her wealth. Take the Pallisers, for example: Glendora has huge wads of money, much more than Planty, but he has so much of his own that her money is irrelevant to him.
What does this have to do with chicklit?
Well, women now can earn their own way in the world, it turns out. Money confers advantages--that is always going to be the case, I imagine, until we live in a propertyless anarchist paradise--and I bet I was not the only person here who was informed that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor one (probably not true for me, but that's a different story), but I have never depended on a man for my bread. I thought I was going to do that, at least until the bakery was a wild success, but we remember how that turned out. It's also true that the trajectory of my life has different significantly from that of the majority of women, and it's also true that I don't have children. (On the other hand, I'm not the only woman my age I know personally who has lived alone so much of her life, and another friend my age decided to have a child by herself and has done so. It may be that we all "attract" each other, precisely because of our deviation from the mainstream, but it may also be the case that there are simply more women out there who have, in one way or another, for some amount of time, made major life decisions without a partner being involved in the decision and have not been destituted by that. Yes, I know that it DOES impoverish many women.)
That is, despite the pay iniquities and the financial and other burdens that raising children add to the mix, it is more possible--though, of course, not easy--for a woman to get by without a man. (Of course this is all heteronormative, but it's an aspect of heteronormativity, not an aspect of being a woman, per se, about which I am writing.)
The point--and I do have one here--is that patriarchy, as a system, increasingly must make marriage attractive to women for reasons other than the monetary ones about which Trollope and Austen wrote so perceptively. This is made easier by heterosexual attraction--many women like having sex with men, and vice versa, and at least some of that attraction is every bit as inborn as the attraction that some women feel for women and some men feel for men. And, really, humans are, by and large, social creatures (that's a whole other Wittgensteinian argument that I'll leave unexplicated for now), so forging bonds of various sorts isn't exactly an unusual thing to do. But neither the sexual attraction nor the sociability necessitates marriage as we understand it.
I could also argue, and not just for the sake of argument, that there are all kinds of arrangements that would suit women better: imagine if we had adequate childcare available, or imagine if women were paid equitably. Those two things alone would put more cards in women's hands, and would enable them to tell men who were being assholes to fuck off. Adequate childcare--and the lack of penalties for caring for children--would also enable more men to be better parents, as well. It's hard to be an involved parent when you have to work 80 hours a week, and it's hard to forego that, if you know that foregoing it means you will not be regarded as eligible for any number of career paths that you might desire for your own reasons. That conundrum affects men and women differently in our current society, but it does affect both men and women. (I also know an unusual number of men who have been the primary caregiver for significant stints of their children's lives, and all of them had job or career situations that did not fit the current norm in some important way.)
In the chicklit genre, at least the bits of it that have crossed my path, the men end up fulfilling the same function they did with Trollope and Austen--providing an escape from a situation that was socially, and possibly financially, undesirable, while at the same time providing True Love. "Girl Cook" is a stellar example of it, in fact, because the woman in question is broke, wants to be a chef, leaves the job she has (for very good reasons), and Just Happens to meet a man who is smitten with her and Very Very Rich, plus he owns (wait for it) a food-oriented television network. In addition to her cooking abilities, she was raised in an environment of sufficient wealth & privilege that she can hang with the rich people and not embarrass him.
But the question that always occurs to me is why the women in these novels spend so much time worrying about finding the right man. They certainly do not need to do that in the same way that Austen's and Trollope's gentlewomen needed to do that. However, it does serve the patriarchy, as a system, for women to be worrying about this, so I do, indeed, blame the patriarchy for chicklit, and I have come to regard chicklit as a tool of the patriarchy.
ETA: I posted this, then meandered over to flea's place and found HER critique of chicklit, in terms of a specific book. Go read it.
Monday, September 15, 2008
In Which Narya Actually Goes to a Movie Theatre
I finally got around to seeing "The Dark Knight"--in Imax, no less--on Friday night; Friend had wanted to see it because much of it was filmed in and around the building in which he works (the Lamborghini was parked outside his building for a couple of days), and I thought it might be interesting. I hated it, however, to put it bluntly, for many of the same reasons that others have noted. In no particular order (and there are spoilers all over the place, if you haven't seen it and care about that):
It was way, way, too full of gratuitous violence. I cannot watch graphic violence because it gives me bad dreams (that's a whole other post), and gratuitous violence really puts me over the edge. I close my eyes when I sense it's coming (which means I pay a buttload of money to listen to a movie), but this movie really started to annoy the fuck out of me. There are people being blown up FOR REAL every goddamned day, so watching it happen for "entertainment" seems wrong in some important way. I tend not to mind violence that is part of a story quite as much (though I may still close my eyes), because then it is not gratuitous. Nearly every bit of violence in this movie was for the sake of watching things or people blow up or get hurt. Also, there were some seriously gross bits, like showing formerly-crusading-DA-what'shisname's half of a face. People, I hate to break the news for you, but that kind of damage, untreated, would lead to a staph or other infection that would kill you, in hours, possibly days. Also, the dehydration that would occur from a wound like that? Would also kill you. And, I'm sorry, the pain would also prevent any of the crap he was doing. So he should have been dead, thrice, instead of running around being psycho with half his face burned off. It was too unbelievable, as well as gross for the sake of gross. I didn't watch those bits, either.
Second, there were no real women in it. It did not pass the Alison Bechdel/"Dykes to Watch Out For" test--i.e., it did not (a) have at least two women in it, (b) who talk to each other, (c) about something other than a man. The women who had speaking roles were (a) Batman's ex-girlfriend--now boinking the new DA--who wore major cleavage to her work as an assistant DA or something like that and who of course had to die, in order to provide a Plot Point (i.e., half-face-DA-guy was going to marry her but heard her get blown up and went psycho) and (b) a cop, who merely provided another plot point (she betrayed the commissioner because the Joker bribed her because her mom's medical bills were piling up) and who actually didn't say very much at all, and (c) the ballerina Batman was dating for a couple of scenes and whose main purpose was as eye candy and/or a minor plot point. None of the women was actually driving the action in any way whatsoever; they provided some ostensible excuse for the men to act. And the women did not talk to each other at any point. Annoyed the everloving shit out of me.
Third, the movie is basically a defense of the political/philosophical stance of the current administration, particularly the "theorists" behind it. There's a bunch of blather in the movie, especially at the end, about whether Batman is a hero, and about whether the half-faced-now-dead-but-previously-reformer-DA is a hero, and the conclusion is that Batman and the commissioner decide that they won't tell anyone that the DA went nuts and killed a bunch of people, that they'll say that Batman did it, so the DA can still be a Hero, because the People need Heros, and on and on. The point was that The People were simple-minded sheep who couldn't handle the complicated truth, so the Elites would make the decisions for the good of the People. I cannot begin to tell you how much this annoyed me, and, though I cannot point you to other reviews, I know I saw more than a few who mentioned this (although perhaps not in exactly these quasi-Platonic terms).
Also, the movie was way too fucking long. It was (and I hadn't realized this) two-and-a-half hours long. And did I mention I hated it? After awhile it felt like I'd been there for a couple of days.
But, hey, now I've seen it.
The rest of the weekend was spent cooking some yummy (improvised) food, bailing out Friend's basement, and watching sports on television (F1 race in Italy and a bunch of football games), plus providing some lap time for the cat. We had a bunch of rain (the northern effects of Ike, basically), which resulted in flooding throughout parts of the city (there were people rowing down the street only a mile or two from Friend's house). Friend's basement drains were spewing water for a little while, which isn't really desireable, but it receded pretty quickly, and we were able to get it to drain pretty well. Plus, Friend had scored a couple of industrial-strength air conditioners/dehumidifiers (suitable for a server room; his company wanted to get rid of them so he snagged them), which turned out to work quite well in dehumidifying his basement. The whole thing made my trip to work this morning an adventure, too--a bus trip that normally takes about 45 minutes took nearly two hours, because all of the streets north of the bus street were blocked off from flooding--but I got off easy, so I am not really complaining at all.
As for the food, Saturday we made the last of Friend's wild turkey breast, along with wild and brown rice with a little onion, plus some cranberries and apple, and roasted green beans from Friend's garden. Sunday Friend had a pork tenderloin that he cooked on top of the stove, along with mashed potatos (from the family farm), and cabbage (also family farm) and a little broccoli (Friend's garden) that I sauteed with a little butter, plus salt and pepper. I also made a sauce for the pork from the fond from the pork, plus onion (garden), red wine, rosemary, and cherries. Earlier I'd made a cake from flour, butter, toasted oat bran, honey, cherries, a couple of eggs, and some chopped bittersweet chocolate. I had some frozen cherries I'd wanted to use up, and the cake and the sauce turned out to be excellent ways to do that. It was also kind of fun to just invent a cake. It was, as one of my chefs would say, "rustic," in that it didn't have a fine crumb and was heartier than one would normally think of a cake as being, but the flavor was quite nice, and it is sufficiently Healthy that it's a fine substitute for my breakfast muffins until I get around to making some. (That was supposed to happen tonight, but didn't.) I could have tarted it up for presentation with, say, some whipped cream, and/or a chocolate drizzle, or some kind of ice cream (perhaps even a savory ice cream, like rosemary), but it was just us and Friend has a physical next week, so adding fat would not have been a helpful idea.
You will notice that I have made no mention of the farmers' market. Despite the intentions stated in the last post, when Friend and I woke up Saturday morning and heard the pouring rain (which I had been hearing off and on for several hours), i decided to bag that idea, figuring many vendors might not even show up. The trip would have been complicated as it was (public transportation is going through infrastructure-rebuilding gyrations that occur mostly on weekends these days), and I had no intention of making the slog only to not get what I wanted. Once we got downstairs and discovered the flooding basement, it became even more unlikely, as helping Friend seemed like a better use of my time. I still want to get those items, however; maybe next Saturday? We'll see.
Also: remind me to tell you why I hated a book I read recently.
It was way, way, too full of gratuitous violence. I cannot watch graphic violence because it gives me bad dreams (that's a whole other post), and gratuitous violence really puts me over the edge. I close my eyes when I sense it's coming (which means I pay a buttload of money to listen to a movie), but this movie really started to annoy the fuck out of me. There are people being blown up FOR REAL every goddamned day, so watching it happen for "entertainment" seems wrong in some important way. I tend not to mind violence that is part of a story quite as much (though I may still close my eyes), because then it is not gratuitous. Nearly every bit of violence in this movie was for the sake of watching things or people blow up or get hurt. Also, there were some seriously gross bits, like showing formerly-crusading-DA-what'shisname's half of a face. People, I hate to break the news for you, but that kind of damage, untreated, would lead to a staph or other infection that would kill you, in hours, possibly days. Also, the dehydration that would occur from a wound like that? Would also kill you. And, I'm sorry, the pain would also prevent any of the crap he was doing. So he should have been dead, thrice, instead of running around being psycho with half his face burned off. It was too unbelievable, as well as gross for the sake of gross. I didn't watch those bits, either.
Second, there were no real women in it. It did not pass the Alison Bechdel/"Dykes to Watch Out For" test--i.e., it did not (a) have at least two women in it, (b) who talk to each other, (c) about something other than a man. The women who had speaking roles were (a) Batman's ex-girlfriend--now boinking the new DA--who wore major cleavage to her work as an assistant DA or something like that and who of course had to die, in order to provide a Plot Point (i.e., half-face-DA-guy was going to marry her but heard her get blown up and went psycho) and (b) a cop, who merely provided another plot point (she betrayed the commissioner because the Joker bribed her because her mom's medical bills were piling up) and who actually didn't say very much at all, and (c) the ballerina Batman was dating for a couple of scenes and whose main purpose was as eye candy and/or a minor plot point. None of the women was actually driving the action in any way whatsoever; they provided some ostensible excuse for the men to act. And the women did not talk to each other at any point. Annoyed the everloving shit out of me.
Third, the movie is basically a defense of the political/philosophical stance of the current administration, particularly the "theorists" behind it. There's a bunch of blather in the movie, especially at the end, about whether Batman is a hero, and about whether the half-faced-now-dead-but-previously-reformer-DA is a hero, and the conclusion is that Batman and the commissioner decide that they won't tell anyone that the DA went nuts and killed a bunch of people, that they'll say that Batman did it, so the DA can still be a Hero, because the People need Heros, and on and on. The point was that The People were simple-minded sheep who couldn't handle the complicated truth, so the Elites would make the decisions for the good of the People. I cannot begin to tell you how much this annoyed me, and, though I cannot point you to other reviews, I know I saw more than a few who mentioned this (although perhaps not in exactly these quasi-Platonic terms).
Also, the movie was way too fucking long. It was (and I hadn't realized this) two-and-a-half hours long. And did I mention I hated it? After awhile it felt like I'd been there for a couple of days.
But, hey, now I've seen it.
The rest of the weekend was spent cooking some yummy (improvised) food, bailing out Friend's basement, and watching sports on television (F1 race in Italy and a bunch of football games), plus providing some lap time for the cat. We had a bunch of rain (the northern effects of Ike, basically), which resulted in flooding throughout parts of the city (there were people rowing down the street only a mile or two from Friend's house). Friend's basement drains were spewing water for a little while, which isn't really desireable, but it receded pretty quickly, and we were able to get it to drain pretty well. Plus, Friend had scored a couple of industrial-strength air conditioners/dehumidifiers (suitable for a server room; his company wanted to get rid of them so he snagged them), which turned out to work quite well in dehumidifying his basement. The whole thing made my trip to work this morning an adventure, too--a bus trip that normally takes about 45 minutes took nearly two hours, because all of the streets north of the bus street were blocked off from flooding--but I got off easy, so I am not really complaining at all.
As for the food, Saturday we made the last of Friend's wild turkey breast, along with wild and brown rice with a little onion, plus some cranberries and apple, and roasted green beans from Friend's garden. Sunday Friend had a pork tenderloin that he cooked on top of the stove, along with mashed potatos (from the family farm), and cabbage (also family farm) and a little broccoli (Friend's garden) that I sauteed with a little butter, plus salt and pepper. I also made a sauce for the pork from the fond from the pork, plus onion (garden), red wine, rosemary, and cherries. Earlier I'd made a cake from flour, butter, toasted oat bran, honey, cherries, a couple of eggs, and some chopped bittersweet chocolate. I had some frozen cherries I'd wanted to use up, and the cake and the sauce turned out to be excellent ways to do that. It was also kind of fun to just invent a cake. It was, as one of my chefs would say, "rustic," in that it didn't have a fine crumb and was heartier than one would normally think of a cake as being, but the flavor was quite nice, and it is sufficiently Healthy that it's a fine substitute for my breakfast muffins until I get around to making some. (That was supposed to happen tonight, but didn't.) I could have tarted it up for presentation with, say, some whipped cream, and/or a chocolate drizzle, or some kind of ice cream (perhaps even a savory ice cream, like rosemary), but it was just us and Friend has a physical next week, so adding fat would not have been a helpful idea.
You will notice that I have made no mention of the farmers' market. Despite the intentions stated in the last post, when Friend and I woke up Saturday morning and heard the pouring rain (which I had been hearing off and on for several hours), i decided to bag that idea, figuring many vendors might not even show up. The trip would have been complicated as it was (public transportation is going through infrastructure-rebuilding gyrations that occur mostly on weekends these days), and I had no intention of making the slog only to not get what I wanted. Once we got downstairs and discovered the flooding basement, it became even more unlikely, as helping Friend seemed like a better use of my time. I still want to get those items, however; maybe next Saturday? We'll see.
Also: remind me to tell you why I hated a book I read recently.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Rantational Goodness with a Side of Beets
My Fair City has, in many of its neighborhoods, including mine, parking regulations such that, if one is a resident, one must have a windshield sticker for one's vehicle or, if one does not have a vehicle but has friends with vehicles, one must have temporary stickers, good for one 24-hour period. Said temporary stickers can (theoretically) be purchased in the form of 20 for $10. All in all, not that big a hassle. Theoretically.
The first year, I stood in line downtown and got stickers. Last year I mailed in a form and got them in the mail. (Both years I had leftovers, and I expect to have leftovers this year, too, as Friend is pretty much the only person who uses the stickers, and we tend to go to his house because of the cat, and because it's less inconvenient for me than it would be for him, and because he shlepped for the two years I was at the bakery so I didn't have to get up even earlier to get to the bakery from his house.) This year, I tried to do it online but was thwarted repeatedly, so I called the office. Oh, we shut down the online ordering because it had too many problems, I was told, so you can mail a check. Which I did, dutifully, on or about August 15. I got it back today, with a form letter noting that my request had been refused because I had already purchased the allotted two packs of 10 for the month and was therefore ineligible for purchasing more. Well, no. And, may I add, by the time you got around to answering this, it was A DIFFERENT MONTH.
Someone will get a testy phone call from Yours Truly tomorrow, not least because I have had enough stupid this week to take a bath in it, were I to want to bathe in stupid, which I don't.
I've had to deal with both Annoying People this week, in abundance. The one who supposedly left back in April but who has been "consulting" for months (the end of September, they say, will really, truly, cross your fingers this time, be the end of her consulting tenure here) is such a queen bee. I need some budget manipulations from her. I spelled them out, in detail, in writing, on Monday, and I sat with her at some length on Tuesday (and listened while she lectured me), and she knows I need to get this back to the project officer on Friday (that would be tomorrow) and I would like some time to pretty up what she does. Has she done this yet? No she has not. People, I am here to tell you that the things she needs to do are quite small. I could do them in a couple of hours, if I had access to the rest of the budgets, which I don't particularly want, mind you. (The time of some people is spread across a couple of grants, so one cannot change salary allocations on one grant willy-nilly, as it will affect all of the other grants. Seeing as how I have been working with grants for, oh, nearly 30 fucking years, I know this, and therefore did not start moving money around. Nevertheless, I had to endure a lecture from her about how one cannot do this.)
The another Annoying Person is just . . . I don't know. Dyslexic? Not terribly bright? I can't tell what the issue is, but she wears me out. And she's got a passive-aggressive streak that is tiresome. The boss told her, directly and repeatedly, that he wanted me to sit in on a site visit yesterday (some people with the funding agency were visiting us). When the funding agency person showed up, AP shepherded her into the conference room without even going by my office, much less letting me know that she was here. I had the boss interrupt and introduce me and so on, but it was aggravating.
On the other hand? Another paycheck tomorrow! And still no sacks of flour.
Which brings me to a point other than bitching about random life stuff (and, truly, the RLS is just kind of eye-rollingly annoying, and I forget it; it's not that big a deal, and I know it).
As I detailed here endlessly, my two years at the bakery were grueling. I worked long, hard hours at repetitive, physical labor, for low pay, and there was no real future for me in that business once my husband started on the path of becoming my ex-husband. I am grateful every fucking day that I managed to get out of that whole thing--the job, the career change, the marriage--relatively unscathed. Yes, there are lingering pains; yes, I had to incinerate another dream; yes, I have been paying back a substantial student loan. But it could have been so much worse, in so many ways that I can't even count, and, did I mention, I got out, relatively unscathed. I did not open a bakery (though I still look at storefronts with a tinge of longing sometimes, and evaluate the neighborhood in terms of foot traffic and customer base). I am not still married. I am out a bunch of money. But I am not still lugging 50-pound sacks of flour up a flight of stairs. I am not working 10-hour days for shitty pay. I get a comma in every paycheck. And I appreciate all of those things way more than I might otherwise have done, simply because the experience of the grueling labor was so recent, not merely a memory from high school or college.
That's all kind of beside the point. The real point is that I have always had a bias that everyone should have to do a shit job--something tedious, or grueling, or whatever, but definitely low-paying, for at least a year. Further, they have to do this job in order to survive, not just as a little hobby. (A new coworker and I were discussing this point--she went to, and then worked at, one of the high-end universities in the city, and she learned, she said, to ask what work people had done in high school, and she learned to hire people who needed the money to live on, not just wanted to work long enough to, as she put it, buy another Gucci purse.) Interning in mom's/dad's friend's law office for the summer does not count. Without the shit-job experience, I think it is nearly impossible to truly understand what the fuck hard work is, because it's not just the work itself, it's that on top of knowing that one cannot afford to quit, one actually needs the fucking job, and that one better hope and pray to whatever deities seem relevant and helpful that an injury doesn't occur, because no work means no pay. I'm sure there are some people out there who were born rich and whose parents didn't let them get away with crap, but so many of the privileged people I have met do not have a fucking clue how precarious one's existence can really be. Shit, some days I don't think I really know, either; my parents would not have let me starve, and they have the means for preventing it from happening, and many, many, many people don't have that, so I don't want to get too high on my horse here. But I did, in fact, lug the fucking flour, the same way other people stand behind a counter, or answer phones, or make copies, or do whatever needs to be done to put food on the table and pay the rent and put gas in the car or money on the bus pass or pay for health insurance (and clothes and doctors and stuff) for their kids. Shit, kids; that's a whole other thing I can't even fathom. I only had to bail out me, not me a kid or three.
Anyway, that's my rantyness for tonight. I've been slowly making my way through the mess at my apartment--these long weekends away have allowed the crap to pile up. I've been chipping away at chores--doing something each night, but usually not everything I planned; oh well. I may even go on a massive cleaning spree this weekend; we'll see. My main goal is to get tomatos, possibly sweet corn, beets, onions, and cheese at the farmers market.
The first year, I stood in line downtown and got stickers. Last year I mailed in a form and got them in the mail. (Both years I had leftovers, and I expect to have leftovers this year, too, as Friend is pretty much the only person who uses the stickers, and we tend to go to his house because of the cat, and because it's less inconvenient for me than it would be for him, and because he shlepped for the two years I was at the bakery so I didn't have to get up even earlier to get to the bakery from his house.) This year, I tried to do it online but was thwarted repeatedly, so I called the office. Oh, we shut down the online ordering because it had too many problems, I was told, so you can mail a check. Which I did, dutifully, on or about August 15. I got it back today, with a form letter noting that my request had been refused because I had already purchased the allotted two packs of 10 for the month and was therefore ineligible for purchasing more. Well, no. And, may I add, by the time you got around to answering this, it was A DIFFERENT MONTH.
Someone will get a testy phone call from Yours Truly tomorrow, not least because I have had enough stupid this week to take a bath in it, were I to want to bathe in stupid, which I don't.
I've had to deal with both Annoying People this week, in abundance. The one who supposedly left back in April but who has been "consulting" for months (the end of September, they say, will really, truly, cross your fingers this time, be the end of her consulting tenure here) is such a queen bee. I need some budget manipulations from her. I spelled them out, in detail, in writing, on Monday, and I sat with her at some length on Tuesday (and listened while she lectured me), and she knows I need to get this back to the project officer on Friday (that would be tomorrow) and I would like some time to pretty up what she does. Has she done this yet? No she has not. People, I am here to tell you that the things she needs to do are quite small. I could do them in a couple of hours, if I had access to the rest of the budgets, which I don't particularly want, mind you. (The time of some people is spread across a couple of grants, so one cannot change salary allocations on one grant willy-nilly, as it will affect all of the other grants. Seeing as how I have been working with grants for, oh, nearly 30 fucking years, I know this, and therefore did not start moving money around. Nevertheless, I had to endure a lecture from her about how one cannot do this.)
The another Annoying Person is just . . . I don't know. Dyslexic? Not terribly bright? I can't tell what the issue is, but she wears me out. And she's got a passive-aggressive streak that is tiresome. The boss told her, directly and repeatedly, that he wanted me to sit in on a site visit yesterday (some people with the funding agency were visiting us). When the funding agency person showed up, AP shepherded her into the conference room without even going by my office, much less letting me know that she was here. I had the boss interrupt and introduce me and so on, but it was aggravating.
On the other hand? Another paycheck tomorrow! And still no sacks of flour.
Which brings me to a point other than bitching about random life stuff (and, truly, the RLS is just kind of eye-rollingly annoying, and I forget it; it's not that big a deal, and I know it).
As I detailed here endlessly, my two years at the bakery were grueling. I worked long, hard hours at repetitive, physical labor, for low pay, and there was no real future for me in that business once my husband started on the path of becoming my ex-husband. I am grateful every fucking day that I managed to get out of that whole thing--the job, the career change, the marriage--relatively unscathed. Yes, there are lingering pains; yes, I had to incinerate another dream; yes, I have been paying back a substantial student loan. But it could have been so much worse, in so many ways that I can't even count, and, did I mention, I got out, relatively unscathed. I did not open a bakery (though I still look at storefronts with a tinge of longing sometimes, and evaluate the neighborhood in terms of foot traffic and customer base). I am not still married. I am out a bunch of money. But I am not still lugging 50-pound sacks of flour up a flight of stairs. I am not working 10-hour days for shitty pay. I get a comma in every paycheck. And I appreciate all of those things way more than I might otherwise have done, simply because the experience of the grueling labor was so recent, not merely a memory from high school or college.
That's all kind of beside the point. The real point is that I have always had a bias that everyone should have to do a shit job--something tedious, or grueling, or whatever, but definitely low-paying, for at least a year. Further, they have to do this job in order to survive, not just as a little hobby. (A new coworker and I were discussing this point--she went to, and then worked at, one of the high-end universities in the city, and she learned, she said, to ask what work people had done in high school, and she learned to hire people who needed the money to live on, not just wanted to work long enough to, as she put it, buy another Gucci purse.) Interning in mom's/dad's friend's law office for the summer does not count. Without the shit-job experience, I think it is nearly impossible to truly understand what the fuck hard work is, because it's not just the work itself, it's that on top of knowing that one cannot afford to quit, one actually needs the fucking job, and that one better hope and pray to whatever deities seem relevant and helpful that an injury doesn't occur, because no work means no pay. I'm sure there are some people out there who were born rich and whose parents didn't let them get away with crap, but so many of the privileged people I have met do not have a fucking clue how precarious one's existence can really be. Shit, some days I don't think I really know, either; my parents would not have let me starve, and they have the means for preventing it from happening, and many, many, many people don't have that, so I don't want to get too high on my horse here. But I did, in fact, lug the fucking flour, the same way other people stand behind a counter, or answer phones, or make copies, or do whatever needs to be done to put food on the table and pay the rent and put gas in the car or money on the bus pass or pay for health insurance (and clothes and doctors and stuff) for their kids. Shit, kids; that's a whole other thing I can't even fathom. I only had to bail out me, not me a kid or three.
Anyway, that's my rantyness for tonight. I've been slowly making my way through the mess at my apartment--these long weekends away have allowed the crap to pile up. I've been chipping away at chores--doing something each night, but usually not everything I planned; oh well. I may even go on a massive cleaning spree this weekend; we'll see. My main goal is to get tomatos, possibly sweet corn, beets, onions, and cheese at the farmers market.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Get the Razor
Occam's razor, that is.
What are the possible reasons that the Republicans chose Sarah Palin?
1. McCain (or his handlers, which I think is more likely) want to make sure the rightwing nutcase base comes out to vote. That group is ambivalent about McCain, at best--mostly on the forced-pregnancy issues--because he has not always toed the line as thoroughly as they want him to. Palin doesn't believe in evolution; doesn't believe in sex education (except abstinence only); and doesn't believe women really should have choices about when or whether to bear children. She is, in other words, a rightwing nutcase herself. It also means, if there were ties in Senate votes, she could be relied upon to vote their way (in her role as president pro tem of the Senate). It's also worth pointing out that Lieberman and Casey (the other two names that were tossed around) would lose this vote, because of their positions on these issues.
2. McCain/his handlers believed their own rhetoric, i.e., believed that (a) there are a whole big bunch of Bitter Old Women who supported Clinton and who not only will not vote for Obama but might vote for McCain and (b) these women are only interested in voting for someone else with a vagina, i.e., they would not care about the head that is attached. (I have never believed that the so-called "puma" vote is anything except a bunch of rightwing nutcases trying to get face time on Faux news by ginning up this story; most--perhaps all--of the women they've profiled have a certain amount of republican-ness in their backgrounds, which makes it difficult for me to believe they were truly Clinton supporters to begin with; the hatred for anyone named Clinton is too overwhelming for that.)
3. McCain truly believed that Palin is the best person for the job of Vice President--her extensive experience in government, particularly her experience in some aspect of governance in which McCain is seen as weak, makes her the perfect complement to McCain, and makes her an ideal choice as a potential president.
4. They knew it would be a controversial choice--possibly even because of the family mess, especially insofar as the republicans have actually been the ones to do most of the publicizing of it, and they've been making things up, while they're at it--and figured it would be a way to distract everyone from her actual lack of qualifications, suck attention away from Obama, and, perhaps most important, suck attention away from the actual issues.
I think we can safely rule out 3. There's no possible way that anyone is going to claim that Palin is the most qualified Republican in the country. We can argue about whether Biden is the "most" qualified--because we can have different definitions of "most"--but we would be unlikely to say that he is UNqualified. Despite my carping, I would not regard Biden as unqualified. Palin is unqualified.
I think we can rule out 2, as well. While they may have hoped to pick up a few votes from vagina-Americans, I don't believe they really believe their own rhetoric on this matter. If that were their intent, there are plenty of other Republican women out there with more experience than Palin.
What's going on, then, is mostly 1, with a possible dash of 4 thrown in for excitement. Basically, Palin is a dogwhistle to the far-right, which is the group of voters that McCain absolutely must get to go vote but that was least enthusiastic about him. The dash of 4 is mostly an attempt to make lemonade, because it's clear that (a) the vetters did not do their job at all, or (b) the vetters were from the far-right, or (c) the vetters decided to listen to the far right. I find it difficult to believe that they looked specifically for an anti-choice candidate with very little governing experience AND a family Situation.
As for whether Palin's daughter is fair game, well, no, mostly not. I think it is relevant to point out that Palin reduced funding for a program that provided pregnant unmarried teens with a place to live; if that isn't an example of punishing women for having sex, even when they want to actually bear the child, then I don't know what the fuck is.
On another note, however, the weekend provided great barrels of fun. Friend and I had dinner last Thursday night. I bought a NYTimes and took myself out to breakfast Friday morning. Friday afternoon we went to the baseball game; Saturday morning we rose at the crack of dawn to drive to his friends' house, climb in their vehicle, and then tailgate and then go to see Bucky's season opener. We killed some time at the tailgate location after the game before going to the tex-mex place at which Friend and I ate a few weeks ago. After that, back to the friends' house for some beer and euchre, and some stargazing (it was clear, and their house is way out in the middle of nowhere, so there were many stars to be seen--and no sound at all, pretty much, except crickets). Sunday we hung out, then got in the pool, and eventually wandered to a local establishment for burgers and beer, then home for more beer and euchre. (We hadn't originally planned on staying Sunday night, I don't think, but once more alcohol came into play, driving two hours back here seemed unwise.) We left early Monday morning and were back here before noon; we also made a spectacular dinner Monday night that included grilled boar steaks and grilled vegetables, the latter tossed with pasta, and some cabbage and broccoli.
This weekend we do another set of excursions. Friday night we drive to the friends' house again, then go out for dinner and bowling (!), and, who knows, maybe more euchre. Saturday we go to a crafts fair/wine tasting, at which Friend purchased much good wine last year and probably will again this year (and I'll probably get some as well). Sunday we get up at the crack of dawn and drive to Joliet for the IRL race (from his friends' house), which means we have to pack for several different events this weekend. I had intended to do some laundry this week, but the weather has gotten cooler, and I've decided that with careful underwear management, I can make it through the weekend with clean underwear and without having to do laundry.
What are the possible reasons that the Republicans chose Sarah Palin?
1. McCain (or his handlers, which I think is more likely) want to make sure the rightwing nutcase base comes out to vote. That group is ambivalent about McCain, at best--mostly on the forced-pregnancy issues--because he has not always toed the line as thoroughly as they want him to. Palin doesn't believe in evolution; doesn't believe in sex education (except abstinence only); and doesn't believe women really should have choices about when or whether to bear children. She is, in other words, a rightwing nutcase herself. It also means, if there were ties in Senate votes, she could be relied upon to vote their way (in her role as president pro tem of the Senate). It's also worth pointing out that Lieberman and Casey (the other two names that were tossed around) would lose this vote, because of their positions on these issues.
2. McCain/his handlers believed their own rhetoric, i.e., believed that (a) there are a whole big bunch of Bitter Old Women who supported Clinton and who not only will not vote for Obama but might vote for McCain and (b) these women are only interested in voting for someone else with a vagina, i.e., they would not care about the head that is attached. (I have never believed that the so-called "puma" vote is anything except a bunch of rightwing nutcases trying to get face time on Faux news by ginning up this story; most--perhaps all--of the women they've profiled have a certain amount of republican-ness in their backgrounds, which makes it difficult for me to believe they were truly Clinton supporters to begin with; the hatred for anyone named Clinton is too overwhelming for that.)
3. McCain truly believed that Palin is the best person for the job of Vice President--her extensive experience in government, particularly her experience in some aspect of governance in which McCain is seen as weak, makes her the perfect complement to McCain, and makes her an ideal choice as a potential president.
4. They knew it would be a controversial choice--possibly even because of the family mess, especially insofar as the republicans have actually been the ones to do most of the publicizing of it, and they've been making things up, while they're at it--and figured it would be a way to distract everyone from her actual lack of qualifications, suck attention away from Obama, and, perhaps most important, suck attention away from the actual issues.
I think we can safely rule out 3. There's no possible way that anyone is going to claim that Palin is the most qualified Republican in the country. We can argue about whether Biden is the "most" qualified--because we can have different definitions of "most"--but we would be unlikely to say that he is UNqualified. Despite my carping, I would not regard Biden as unqualified. Palin is unqualified.
I think we can rule out 2, as well. While they may have hoped to pick up a few votes from vagina-Americans, I don't believe they really believe their own rhetoric on this matter. If that were their intent, there are plenty of other Republican women out there with more experience than Palin.
What's going on, then, is mostly 1, with a possible dash of 4 thrown in for excitement. Basically, Palin is a dogwhistle to the far-right, which is the group of voters that McCain absolutely must get to go vote but that was least enthusiastic about him. The dash of 4 is mostly an attempt to make lemonade, because it's clear that (a) the vetters did not do their job at all, or (b) the vetters were from the far-right, or (c) the vetters decided to listen to the far right. I find it difficult to believe that they looked specifically for an anti-choice candidate with very little governing experience AND a family Situation.
As for whether Palin's daughter is fair game, well, no, mostly not. I think it is relevant to point out that Palin reduced funding for a program that provided pregnant unmarried teens with a place to live; if that isn't an example of punishing women for having sex, even when they want to actually bear the child, then I don't know what the fuck is.
On another note, however, the weekend provided great barrels of fun. Friend and I had dinner last Thursday night. I bought a NYTimes and took myself out to breakfast Friday morning. Friday afternoon we went to the baseball game; Saturday morning we rose at the crack of dawn to drive to his friends' house, climb in their vehicle, and then tailgate and then go to see Bucky's season opener. We killed some time at the tailgate location after the game before going to the tex-mex place at which Friend and I ate a few weeks ago. After that, back to the friends' house for some beer and euchre, and some stargazing (it was clear, and their house is way out in the middle of nowhere, so there were many stars to be seen--and no sound at all, pretty much, except crickets). Sunday we hung out, then got in the pool, and eventually wandered to a local establishment for burgers and beer, then home for more beer and euchre. (We hadn't originally planned on staying Sunday night, I don't think, but once more alcohol came into play, driving two hours back here seemed unwise.) We left early Monday morning and were back here before noon; we also made a spectacular dinner Monday night that included grilled boar steaks and grilled vegetables, the latter tossed with pasta, and some cabbage and broccoli.
This weekend we do another set of excursions. Friday night we drive to the friends' house again, then go out for dinner and bowling (!), and, who knows, maybe more euchre. Saturday we go to a crafts fair/wine tasting, at which Friend purchased much good wine last year and probably will again this year (and I'll probably get some as well). Sunday we get up at the crack of dawn and drive to Joliet for the IRL race (from his friends' house), which means we have to pack for several different events this weekend. I had intended to do some laundry this week, but the weather has gotten cooler, and I've decided that with careful underwear management, I can make it through the weekend with clean underwear and without having to do laundry.
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