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.