Playing Center Field

"I'm just not happy, I'm just not happy. I'm just not happy because my life didn't turn out the way I thought it would." Hey, join the fucking club! I thought I was going to be the starting center fielder for the Boston Red Sox.
--Denis Leary
Quite a year it's been, eh? Any year that involves a promotion and a "separation" in less than six months is going to make one's head spin a bit, I suppose, and mine is probably spinning a bit less than I might have predicted. I'm finding that my biggest problem really is getting some kind of order established--but, then again, the holiday season probably isn't the best time to do that, either. Partly to give myself a handy excuse, and partly because it is, in fact, a time of year when things are closed and people are vacating and not a lot is going on, I've been cutting myself some slack.

But I've also tried to think a bit about what might work for me--ways to stay busy and productive, essentially, and ways to get regular exercise. If nothing else, perhaps I can get into some kind of decent shape again. None of that will happen by magic, of course, and I have well-documented motivation issues, which are exacerbated by not having any particular schedule, but it's something that's in my control, so it would behoove me to, you know, fucking DO it. Yes, I know that exercise, per se, is really fucking boring; that's why I much preferred playing an actual sport. Not an option now, so time to STFU and get off my ass. I'm currently planning on a yoga class tomorrow--my favorite teacher is actually teaching--so I'm going to drag my sorry ass over there in the hope that starting the year with a positive effort will somehow help. Yes, I know, that is magical thinking.

Food for the weekend planned so far: tonight we're having tuna steaks (frozen, vacuum sealed, purchased months ago by Friend, and we might as well use them up), and I'll probably do some kind of garlic spinach. There will also be fresh sourdough bread; a loaf just came out of the oven a little while ago, and it's pretty tasty. The leftovers will become Toast from France tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow there will be collard greens and black-eyed peas, along with a little pancetta to make the spirit of my grandmother happy. I'll probably make another loaf of some kind of bread, and possibly something sweet if I get really motivated, and we'll probably have some venison, too. Monday will involve pizza of some kind; I have broccoli rabe, two kinds of mozzarella (because, really, why not), and a variety of tomato products, including bolognese sauce in the freezer and multiple jars of roasted pureed tomatos from the CSA people; I'm sure I can make something out of that.

Anyway. Lots of la-di-dah-ing going on here, trying to pretend I'm not unemployed, but whatevs. I'll keep hacking away at it, and maybe I'll find a job.

As for you all, have a wonderful new year.

Great Wall of Vegetables

The final tally (in number of more-or-less-serving-size packages):
9 lettuce soup
10 curried carrot turnip soup
6 roasted Hakurai turnips
6 roasted purple-top turnips (half w/ garlic & ginger)
18 roasted butternut squash (some roasted w/ honey & ginger)
12 blanched spinach
6 blanched kale
2 blanched broccoli stems
7 blanched broccoli florets
5 sliced and blanched kohlrabi
10 roasted beets
4 blanched chard

The beets were roasted in a little water, but everything else was tossed with a little fat (olive oil, butter, or a combo), sometimes with honey, ginger, maple syrup, or garlic. The only things left in the fridge are cabbages and leeks; there are some potatos in the back closet, and a bag of onions from the store in the fridge as well, plus odds and ends of onions and garlic on the counter. So, with some grains--pasta, bread, rice, farro, barley--and some cheese (which I just bought in moderately mass quantity), I can get by with a very low grocery bill for at least three or four months, maybe more.

My stand-alone freezer is full to the gills, and I ended up having to use the freezer on top of the fridge as well (which I try to avoid, because it's frost-free and therefore wreaks havoc upon frozen foods). I still have half a bag or so of AP flour, plus whole wheat, white whole wheat, and a variety of specialty flours with which I will not bore you (spelt, anyone?), so I can bake, too. (Did I mention that sourdough is magic??)

I wouldn't say that I'm battling depression, because this time of year always sucks for me, for such a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the relative lack of sunlight. I'm beginning to recognize that I really do need a plan, or a Plan, for how to spend my days. The past three weeks have been a whirl of creating the above pile of packages in the freezer, plus doing long-overdue cleaning tasks, with the occasional social occasion thrown in, but there's no order to it. That's the thing about being unemployed that I hated last time and don't want to recreate this time: the long days that end up being filled with a lot of nothing much, each livend with a dash of fear and a pinch of anxiety. I can spend hours (no lie) thinking that I Should Really Go Work Out--and by "go" I mean "change clothes and walk to the back bedroom"--and never actually do that. I can berate myself off and on for a day about how I should just get on the yoga mat--and never actually do it.

And, frankly, that cycle annoys me more than anything else. I recognize that it comes from the acres of time that stretch in front of me at the moment; when I'm most busy is also when I get the most accomplished, because I make schedules and I stick to them. When I'm just hanging out, I don't have a specific time to accomplish something, so I just . . . don't. This will make me insane if I don't find a way around it.

That, however, will have to wait for another day. I need to pack my crap and head off to the land of cheese and Packers fans. Enjoy whatever holidays, friends, and family members cross your path.

Reasons to Be Enjoying Unenjoyment

I spent the early part of last week cleaning and doing laundry and cleaning some more--plus going out to dinner with my furniture guy and with friends--and then . . . then I spent some time staring vacantly into space. I managed to get various small tasks accomplished, but I felt like I was doing them in a fog. Not surprising, I suppose. I even got a taste of schadenfreude on Friday, when I had lunch w/ an ex-coworker, who informed me that a proposal on which I did not work did not get re-funded (it's money the organization had been getting for multiple years). Yes, I know it's a little evil of me, but there it is. One of the advantages of the timing of my leaving is that there isn't anything due any time soon (except a big data report, about which I warned everyone), so it will be difficult--though, of course, not impossible--to blame me if there are issues with upcoming items.

As I vegetated last week, I realized a couple of things. First, this is the first time I've had two weeks off in a row since approximately 1994. Yes, seriously. I'm sure it will get old if it goes on too long (much the way it got old by the end of 1993, much less well into 1994), but a part of me was enjoying just being able to hang out. I will never be accused of being assiduous about housekeeping chores, but it was nice to be able to make a very long list of things to do and actually get them done, even while building in some baking and some slacking. There are still projects to be done--get more paint off of the sunroom brick; make curtains for the kitchen; clean up the desk in the back bedroom--but I accomplished a lot of crap.

Second, in case I have only mentioned this 472 times, sourdough is magic. It just kind of blows me away that I can use this goo to bake bread, with no added yeast. I've already gone through 10 pounds of flour, and I have resorted to giving away wads of stuff just to make room for more wads. Today, though, I made a batch of rolls that has extra fiber (in the form of barley flakes) and various fruity bits (cranberries, candied orange peel, date nuggets, dried apricots, and dried pears), and I glazed the rolls with a combination of ginger syrup and maple syrup. I'm thinking that these will become breakfast food; I haven't been eating well (or exercising, despite my resolutions to do so), and the Week of Slack has led to concrete strategies.

Third, the more I'm away from that job, and the more I think about the info I got on Friday, the more happy I am that I'm out of there. Yes, there is still a lot of fear and anxiety about finding a job, and yes, I realize this could be post hoc rationalization at its finest, but I think my gut is right about this one. The fundamental problem--and the problem at the core of my "separation" from the organization, I believe--is that the Head Honcho (my ex-boss) and his/her team don't know that they need to know things that they don't know. They think that they have it covered, and they cannot see beyond the bubble they've built. Personally, I think it's going to bite them, and the organization as a whole, in the ass, and I do not want to be around for that. When shit hits the fan, it splatters everyone in the vicinity, and there are people on that team who will do their level best to duck behind others when that happens. The thing is, if they manage to eliminate everyone outside the bubble, then they won't have anywhere to hide, or anyone to blame.

Don't get me wrong--I don't really wish for this to happen. For one thing, the bad karma generated by that kind of wish is not something I want to invoke. For another (much more important) thing, the people who are likely to suffer most, either in terms of reduced services or reduced staff, will be people who are way lower on the food chain. Even if the bubble team members lost their jobs (which I would be hard-pressed to predict), they will be better fixed, in terms of income and savings, for example, than line staff or program beneficiaries. And I think there's a very real risk here, because there are enormous changes in the works; many or most of those changes are systemic, i.e., outside of any given organization; and the changes will be centered around the part of the business that I was in but that the bubble team is not.

They could pull it off, of course; they are not stupid people, and they have at least a modest recognition that Things Must Change. But they are also systematically ignoring (or "separating" or reagarding as Negative Nellies) the people who know the most about the side of the business that will be changing the most and that will be the core of all the other changes. Bubble team members are doing a mediocre job transferring my knowledge and tasks to other people. And they are putting into moderately key positions people who do not know enough about the side of the business that will be the core of the new arrangements--but they are people who are subordinate to the bubble team, and are therefore Good & Knowledgable. There will be hiccups--as there always are--but the size and strength of those hiccups will be related, at least in part, to how much of the world outside the bubble they truly comprehend.

Here's another thing: there's no guarantee that, if I had been involved, the organization would have kept the contract that was lost--but I would have been Blamed, even if what was submitted was something that I did not fully support or something I did not think was what should be submitted. That's going to happen going forward, too. Contracts will be lost, or poorly managed, or whatever--it's a fact of life, particularly in an organization that now has no managers on my old side of the business (the other side is rife with them, but many are foot soldiers more than anything else, and no one has seen any urgency to get managers involved in my old side). It was one of the things that had become a serious challenge over the past year--not enough managers (and how often do you hear THAT said) to, well, manage.

My friend pointed out that I was doing three different jobs, with three different skill sets--not because I'm so spectacular, but because those tasks needed to be done. As we tried to mix our staffs and managers and directors and tasks together, I was increasingly being expected to follow a new set of rules (though finding out just what the relevant rule was remained an exercise in futility), hand off my tasks, and create a new job description/job for myself. No way is that going to work out well, unless the head person can communicate what s/he wants and the other members in the bubble are willing to break the bubble and build a new structure.

Yeah, as I said, failure of one kind or another was really the only thing that was going to come out of that, and I'm just as glad to be out of the way of the shrapnel. I'll figure out something, some way, somehow. I hope.

Roasted

If Tuesday was about blanching, Wednesday was about roasting: three butternut squash; two different batches of turnips (one was large purple-top turnips, which I roasted with garlic and ginger and butter; and the others were Hakurai, which I roasted with butter, ginger, garlic, and maple syrup); and two batches of radishes (one regular, one watermelon, which are a lovely purple color, both with butter, oil, salt), which came out quite tasty.

I'm definitely bringing a salad on Saturday--with the radishes, and some carrots and some cheese, as well as some bread, which will help me get rid of the things I least want to eat myself. The things that remain in the fridge are a whole butt-load of cabbages, some kohlrabi, and some leeks, and I have potatos in the closet as well. I'm tempted to roast or braise the leeks and just freeze them as is; I'm not convinced that potato-leek soup would freeze all that well (even if I leave out the milk until I reheat), and I've seen a few recipes for potato-leek gratin, which also would not freeze well. The potatos should keep in the closet for awhile, as it's pretty cool back there, though I do want to try to make some gnocchi, which also could be frozen. Basically, I won't need to buy food, except for dairy, for months--which sounds like a fine plan to me. I do need to re-up for next year's farm share, but at least that major expense is coming early in the unenjoyment.

Anyway. I still need to work out today, and Friend and I are having dinner tonight, using a Groupon purchased before all this set in. Tomorrow I'll start planning the cleaning.

Day 2: Enjoying the Unenjoyment

So now I'm officially unemployed. I'm not eligible to collect unemployment until the vacation pay runs out, I think, but I didn't go to a job yesterday or today, for the first time in awhile. Most of last week was just fine; I met with people, I provided information, I cleaned out my office. The business person kept asking me to try to take care of this and that before I left, and I basically made non-committal sounds and didn't do those things. You know what? I handed it off to you. I gave you the info I had so far, and the work I had done on those things, and they are now not my fucking problem. Seriously. I am not running around on my last couple of days to do tasks of any kind, but most especially not those tasks, because they're tedious and annoying and why the fuck should I do that? Bite me.

If you want to know the truth, I actually enjoyed ignoring the requests. Although I actually like this person in many ways (s/he is funny, for one thing), this person can be more than a little imperial, and it was delightful to just not do it. The other thing from which I took great joy was deleting files. The same person said, when I asked, oh, yeah, if you wouldn't mind, please do delete files and clean out your drive on the server. Certainly! With pleasure! Clearly you didn't value the work I did anyway, and clearly you assume that someone else knows what I knew about the various fiddly bits in the budget even though I've repeatedly said otherwise, so I'm sure you'll have no trouble at all, with either the various contract budgets or with the fiscal year budget.

I've ordered a case of schadenfreude, and I will be enjoying the consumption of it. It may need to age a bit, but that's okay; I have other things to do.

Meanwhile, though, I've realized that I need to find another topic of conversation, difficult though that task may be. It's time to settle into a routine that works--and that isn't about either my unemployed state or the complaints about the old job. The old job is a dead parrot, an ex-job, and there's no point in continuing to spend my time thinking about it. There are still some details to take care of: applying for unemployment; getting the cobra papers filled out; getting the final checks, which will happen in two weeks and then again after the first of the year, because I'm taking some of the income in 2012; transferring the retirement money. But that's all paperwork

Sunday I went to an exercise class (rowing) followed by a yoga class, and yesterday I got some exercise in the morning and then spent several hours with the hippy-dippy-restaurant folks. (I'm trying to help them figure out how to get out of the major hole they're in. Not clear i can do that, but it seems to be helpful to have them talk about it--I'm basically doing therapy with them, on some level.) Last evening I planned out the rest of the week a bit and watched the hockey game.

Today has been all about filling the freezer: chard, kale, and spinach are the items of the day, plus I made a batch of sourdough bread. I still have leeks, turnips, more turnips, lettuce, turnips, and potatos to address. And turnips. And lettuce. No matter; I'll think of something to make with all of it, or most of it, anyway. And I have to go to a pot luck on Saturday, so I might well take a salad, no matter what else I take.

Put Up and Freeze

For the second year in a row, the wheat cookies were the big hit--the cookie that caused the most spontaneous comments. Go figure. They do have a nice flavor, but they're not that amazing. Then again, people like what they like, and that's two years' worth of "like," so I'll have to concede on this one. My sourdough starter is bubbling away--I think I'll bake today with it, and then refrigerate it (it's been out on the counter). Otherwise, it needs feeding twice a day and you have to toss or bake with what you remove. I've noticed that the aroma has improved over the past few days; it's breadier, somehow, and not as pungently sour as it was at first.

Today's bread was the best yet, so yay. I froze three of the four loaves (batard-size, more or less), so I'll have bread to eat with my various soups. So: lettuce soup. Well, I sincerely doubt I would go buy lettuce to make into soup, but it's edible. I used all of the lettuce I had, plus onions, garlic, and potatos, and I blended it, so it's a chunky puree, and then I froze it in portions. When I reheat, some cheese or even some mascarpone or cream cheese or cream would probably help, and, with a hunk of bread, it'll make a meal.

I also made soup out of the large turnips and some carrots (added onions, garlic, ginger, spices, orange rind, and apple juice), and pureed that, too, then added a little honey. And I blanched and froze all the spinach.

The orange rind went in because I bought three oranges the other day to make the icing for the wheat cookies. One probably would have been sufficient, but whatevs; I grated the rind off all three oranges, then juiced them. I had way more juice and rind than I needed, so I froze the juice into cubes (so I can pull out only what I need), and I dumped the rind into the aforementioned soup.

I am so tiired . . . in the past four days I have made a double batch of barley cookies; wheat cookies with orange icing; two batches of banana clove muffins; three batches of sourdough bread--no, wait, four, I think?, whole wheat monkey buns, lettuce soup (10 servings). and carrot and turnip soup (10 servings). In addition, I cubed, roasted, and froze four butternut squash and an acorn squash, and I blanched and froze three bags of spinach.

I still have Hakurei turnips (and I"m getting more tomorrow), tatsoi greens, three or four heads of cabbage, a bag of radishes I don't know how I'll use, two heads of bok choi, a couple of leeks, some kale, and another butternut. Tomorrow, in addition to the turnips, I'm getting more lettuce (o joy), beets, leeks, and some greens, I think. Frankly, what with all of my flour and my sourdough starter and the bread that will result from combining the two, I have lunches for a couple of months, which pleases me. Friend didn't kill Bambi's grandfather this year--he got a doe for his mom, but only saw little bucks, and had decided to hold off unless he saw something big. He has plenty of venison in the freezer, so we won't lack for meat despite him not bringing one back this year.

The task for the coming week is to set up a daily schedule for myself. It is way too easy to fall into bad habits, and I want to use this time a little productively. But that's not a task I can do now.

Cookie Mania

The kitchen marathon continues . . . Thursday I only managed to make a loaf of sourdough, a batch of banana-clove mini muffins (half of which are just this side of burnt, which means I had to make another batch, as they're for tonight's beer event), a batch of whole wheat monkey buns with cranberries and dates (an experiment that worked reasonably well but needs some work), and two cubed, roasted butternut squash. Then my downstairs neighbor showed up with a bottle of wine around noon, and that was it for my productivity for the day. Which, fine; good conversation is always welcome, and I sent her off with the remainder of the monkey buns as she was going to a dinner with friends.

Firday I made two more loaves of sourdough and a double batch of barley cookie dough (it's supposed to be refrigerated overnight).The second batch of banana clove muffins got done, and I cubed, roasted, and froze two more butternut squash, along with an acorn squash. This morning I baked the barley cookies, plus a batch of wheat cookies (which got an orange glaze, a la wheat beer), and I have three loaves of sourdough cooling on the counter. The sourdough is akin to a lambic beer, because lambic beer is made with wild yeast, as is sourdough. I put some cranberries in it, too, as one might do with a lambic. I contemplated something chocolate or mocha, to get the porters and stouts in there--possibly even dipping the barley cookies in chocolate halfway--but then my ambition failed me. I'll be happy if I manage to work out.

I still need to make lettuce soup, curried carrot turnip soup, and maybe some potato leek soup and/or some gnocchi (I have leeks about which I keep forgetting, and I have a buttload of potatos). I keep thinking I should get up and roast the turnips for the soup, but then inertia pins me to the chair and the thought passes. (Roasting veggies gives them such a nice flavor.) None of this will get done today, but those cooking activities will use nearly everything in the fridge except some cabbage (which will keep), some bok choi (which I might take to work for one of my coworkers), and some celery leaves and parsley. I'll also have a full freezer, so yay for that; there's something a bit comforting about entering a period of unemployment with a freezer full of food. Between that and all of the flour I have, I could probably avoid buying groceries for a couple of months, other than dairy products. And I need to stock up on some canned goods, too--tomatos, mostly--but will wait until Friend is around with his vehicle for that.

I know that, ultimately, I need a winning lottery ticket or a job, but every little bit probably helps--psychologically as much as anything. Meanwhile, though, it's time to put this post to bed rather than continuing to tinker and needing to update.

Walls and No Bridges

One of the things that has been absolutely fascinating to me through the past two weeks or so--since the whole Narya's-Leaving thing became public--is that people have had such a variety of reactions to my impending departure. Other times in my life the events were "inside" me--I was going through a lot of turmoil of one kind or another, and those emotions overwhelmed my ability to truly pay attention to or be present for other people's responses. This time, though, I'm not feeling as overwhelmed, and as a result I can read the environment and other people much bettter, or I'm more open to what other people are going through, or something.

Several people are really quite upset--they regard this as more decimation of the staff in our portion of the program. One administrative person with whom I work is really quite upset; s/he said, "but you're the brains of the operation!" No amount of reassurance that it will be fine has any effect on his/her reactions. Several others have expressed similar sentiments, which surprised me--I really didn't think people were all that aware of what I do, much less that they thought that highly of it. So that has been quite touching, really.

The people I've worked with most closely for the past year--the other senior manager types--are somewhat varied in their reactions. One person tried to get as much out of my brain as possible . . . and then left town last week, not to return until after I'm gone. I don't think that person learned enough, but (wait for it . . .) not my problem either way. A second person is going to introduce me to people in other organizations who might be able to make use of my skills, which is really quite helpful, and has expressed a desire to be friends with me (we've already done some things together outside of work, so that's actually a possibility, and I like this person a lot). A third person wants me to write things down, and I did some of that, but basically this person wants things handed out on silver platters and, well, not so much.

The boss invited me to meet with him/her for a break next week, a while before the goodbye party starts (I'm "crashing" the goodbye party for someone else whose last day is the same as mine), which, on one hand, I think is just bizarre--this person just FIRED me, fer chrissakes! We can dress up that pig and put diplomatic language in its mouth, but seriously? The thing is, I think the boss actually likes me quite a bit, so it's not completely insane, and, for another, I wouldn't dream of missing it--I cannot wait to see what s/he has to say. Much to the dismay of various friends and family members, all of whom regard me as too nice and/or too trusting, I actually like the boss, too.

And that's been interesting, too. The objectivity I've been able to maintain enables me to see both why the boss is doing this and why it's a big damn mistake. As I have said repeatedly, the senior team around the boss has worked together for more than a decade, and they are only interested in each other, only trust each other. They practically have a secret language. There are different standards of behavior for the "in" group versus everyone else. There is an unwillingness to share, and a refusal to recognize how they keep others out. The difficulties are masked by their history of success--but I think that what has worked in the past will not necessarily work in the future for them. They speak the language of Change and New, but they absolutely refuse to embrace it on any deep level. Which, hey, might work for them.

On Sunday after my yoga class I ran into someone who has worked with the senior team for a long time, and s/he had absolutely nothing good to say about them (and was more harsh than I would be, to tell you the truth). S/he basically congratulated me on "getting out," and offered to provide me with a reference any time, for anybody, which was a bit of a surprise. S/he ticked off all the things I had noticed myself (with no prompting from me, mind you), except with an extra helping of bitterness.

So, basically, I was doomed, from the beginning. And, on one hand, the boss has the right to put together the team that s/he thinks will best serve what s/he thinks the needs of the organization are--and if s/he doesn't think I help with that, then of course s/he absolutely positively should get rid of me, and the manner in which that has occurred has been reasonably respectful and . . . I don't know, not traumatic?, as possible, under the circumstances.

The fly in this particular ointment, however, at least in my opinion, is that the very difficulties I've identified point not to weaknesses on my part (which is not to say that I don't have weaknesses), but to weaknesses of the whole approach, the closed-team (with lots of language about how it's an "open" team) approach. The boss and, thus, the team, do not let others in, which means there are whole worlds of information they don't have. That was less of an issue before, when their areas of specialty were also the areas on which their part of the organization focused. Now, though, there's a huge other area, and they do not possess nearly as much knowledge or expertise, but they think they do. So, frankly, either they'll figure it out or they won't, but they'll have to do it without someone who actually knows a fair amount about it, in addition to possessing other potentially useful skills.

Back to the original point, and I do have one: it's been fascinating seeing and hearing people's reaction to this whole thing. The details in the previous four paragraphs are, by and large, unavailable to the vast majority of people--but they nevertheless have sensed them and comment on them. I don't confirm or deny--I stick to the script--but I'm fascinated how much people have picked up without my saying a word or lifting an eyebrow.

But, as Arlo Guthrie once said, that's not what i came here to talk about. (As an aside, I make it a point to listen to the Thanksgiving playing of "Alice's Restaurant" by my local radio station.) What I came here to discuss, and I probably should have put it in a whole separate post, is the Wall of Vegetables in my refrigerator. And on my counter. And in my closet. Seriously.

I have five butternut squash (two others have already been roasted and frozen), an acorn squash, four cabbages, four bags of potatos, several bags of turnips, five pounds of carrots, a fuckton of lettuce (which is going to become soup, I think), celery leaves and parsley, onions, garlic, radishes, two or three bags of spinach, some kale, and . . . more stuff? I know I'm forgetting things. I need to get through as much of it as possible this week. The potatos will keep for awhile, as would some of the other stuff, but it's easy enough to hack up the squash and roast it while I do other things.

The other task of Thursday and Friday is baking, because I'm doing the cookies to accompany the beer samples on Saturday, but that will require a different discussion. And, despite my understandable and nearly complete lack of motivation, not to mention lack of desire to show up early to work, I do have to make an appearance tomorrow.

New Start(er)

Today's task--which took all of five minutes--was to start a sourdough starter. I've thought about it over the years but never wanted to be bothered. Now, though, with the prospect of time on my hands (and the very belated realization that, once I get it going, it can live in the fridge with weekly feedings and be happy), I figured I might as well. The baking season is about to start in earnest--at least as much because I'm going to have a lot of time to do it as because of the calendar. Plus, I bought a whole lot of flour (despite already having more than just about anyone I know except Brazen Tart), including 10 pounds of whole wheat, 5 pounds of white whole wheat, 25 pounds of all-purpose, and some barley flour and barley flakes. One of the bags of whole wheat split during shipping--I didn't lose much out of the bag, but KAF is sending me another bag anyway, which means I'll have close to 20 pounds of whole wheat flour.

Yeah, I know, probably a bit much.

But why not, I say.

Work sort of continues, oddly enough. My last day isn't for two more weeks, though I'll be off for Thanksgiving and the day after as well as two days the following week, so I only have six more days there. I don't have a whole lot to do, though. There are a couple of tasks I should complete, and I've done one. The person who's taking over a lot of the grant-management stuff picked my brain for a few hours the other day and has since left town, not to return until after I'm gone. S/he seems pretty confident that s/he has what the organization needs to know from me; I'm much less sure. The operations person was out of town all week and says s/he is busy all next week as well, but s/he wants to send an email request for various things from me. Which, whatevs; I'll do what I can. Personally, I'm not convinced they're going to have what they need, but I don't much care.

I've sent out some applications, I've handed the resume to a few people with whom I've worked in the past couple of years, but nothing has bubbled so far, which doesn't really surprise me much. The separation agreement was sent out yesterday in draft form, and it's fine (i'm not even going to detail it here, because of all the prohibitions about disclosure).

The reality is, I'm glad to be going. Part of it is of course wanting to get out of a situation where I know I'm not wanted--there is absolutely no percentage in wanting to prolong that. Another part, though, is relief that I can stop fighting some of the battles in which I've been mired. A number of things have been a continuous struggle. I tend to think that they've been a struggle because of the particular people or systems with whom/which I've been struggling, but of course it's also possible that I'm the reason for the struggle. In my time there, I've taken on some tasks that absolutely had to be done, that weren't being done or weren't being done properly, but haven't had the resources or systems or support from others to really get things working properly. And now? Not my problem. Perhaps someone else can figure it out; perhaps I've really been the obstacle; or perhaps some shit is going to hit the fan--and I can't bring myself to have much of a stake in the answer.

A few people have suggested that I not be completely forthcoming about what I know, but I'm not going along with that suggestion. For one thing, it just goes against my nature. For another, that's a good way for people to blame me later. But finally, I want what happens after I leave to be unrelated to me. They'll likely figure it out--they're smart people, it's not rocket science, and there aren't many things due in the coming months, i.e., they have time to get things in order, which also means that, by the time things are due, I will be long gone and not a likely target for blame.

As for whether I can find another job, I have no idea--I simply cannot predict. My previous experience is all over the damn map, and therefore not necessarily a good clue. And who knows--I could come in second for a dozen jobs, which would be encouraging, in the sense of getting nibbles, but would still mean I'd be unemployed. I could win the lottery. I could end up having to take a job elsewhere. Who fucking knows.

So I'm going to exercise, and bake, and read, and donate some time to the hippy-dippy restaurant, and do some more in the sunroom, and make curtains for the kitchen window, and soon enough, it'll be January. Or February. Or March. If I'm still coming up with projects in March, then I will start to panic a bit, but I see no reason to panic in November about what might or might not happen by March.

Brassica Family Fun

Because you know how I love my cruciferous vegetables.

I started off by roasting the beets and slicing and freezing them; the greens became part of dinner.

Then it was on to the kohlrabi. Start with a couple of onions; sliced thin, cooked in a little olive oil and butter until slightly caramelized, then a few cloves of garlic. (I use about 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of fat, and I usually do about half olive oil and half butter. That way I get the flavor of butter but also the benefit of the olive oil.) I added some raspberry honey mustard and a wad of preserved ginger (is there anything that isn't improved by ginger? I didn't think so), and then I added the very thinly sliced kohlrabi (I got out the food processor for that operation, because it's so much faster and doesn't leave me with hunks the way the mandoline does) and a little water. While that cooked for a few minutes, I cored some apples and threw them into the food processor to slice them (skins on). After the apples went in, I washed the leaves from the last batch of kohlrabi and cut that up, too, and added a little salt and pepper. I ended up having to put it into a bigger pot so I could stir it better. When it was done, I ended up draining the juices back into the pot and added another little bit of butter and deglazed the pan, and mixed that back in.

Oh, my, is this concoction tasty. It occured to me that, for a crowd, I could take that mix and layer it with sliced potatos and make a gratin out of it, maybe adding some good cheese at the end. As it is, I'll haul it to work with some cheese and be happy. I would have liked to have some bread with it, but I didn't get around to doing any baking this weekend.

For dinner, onions again, with a lot of different greens: the beet greens, a little chard, some tatsoi greens, and something else--spicy mustard, maybe? That cooked while the whole wheat fusilli cooked, and, at the last minute, I put a tablespoon of heavy cream into the pan and stirred it around. Mascarpone would probably work well, too. Some grated parmesan on top, and, voila, dinner--and two lunches.

I always feel a little virtuous when I use things like beet greens or kohlrabi greens. I shouldn't I know--it's food, and I shouldn't feel virtuous for using food rather than wasting it. But there you have it.

Meanwhile, spending a lot of time in my own head this weekend has allowed some of the anger to start to surface, not surprisingly. I'm trying to acknowledge it and let go of it, because, while understandable, it's not useful in this situation. On one hand, I can see how Boss wants to put together his/her own team (and, seriously, that is the only fucking explanation I can even begin to find); that makes sense. But then why go to the trouble of "wooing" me? Why spend so much time convincing me how wonderful you are, and how wonderful you think I am? Why promote me and give me a big raise and create a job just for me, only to fire me six months later? Did you really think I could magically figure out what you wanted?

It's kind of demented, really.

The challenge is going to be to continue to stick to the script about my leaving and to answer the questions about the things that need to be handed over. So: deep breaths, practiced smiles, and as much good cheer as I can manage.

Prepare for Change

I keep thinking I'm going to panic eventually, but I haven't so far. I am noticing an uptick in anxiety, but really, that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, me included.

A few days after the last post, I met with the HR Person, which was helpful, and then HRP and Boss and I met this week (I requested that HRP join us, because I thought it would be helpful, and it was). We negotiated the quit date (2 December will be my last day, which means I have health insurance completely paid through December, and will start paying the COBRA in January, when our rates drop significantly because the company is switching insurance companies) and severance and such. Thursday, we (mostly Boss) told the other senior managers, while I was there, and there was major shock on the faces around the room--which was interesting not least because the other people around the table have worked with Boss for at least 10 years, and it seems to have caught them completely by surprise, too. Friday everyone else found out (and I told a few people privately before that announcement), and there was a lot more gnashing of teeth and tears from others than I would have predicted.

The announcements are all being couched in code that everyone will understand. We talk about it being a "mutual" or "joint" decision, but, given that I don't have another job at the moment, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't my first choice. I'm steadfastly not saying that to people, because there's no percentage in it for me to do that, but people aren't stupid, either.

All that aside, I still don't have any better idea why this happened than I did three weeks ago. On one hand, I'm not all that surprised, but, frankly, Boss would have been better off waiting six months. People haven't absorbed enough of what I know to even know all of the questions they should be asking--and while I am continuing to be professional, and I will answer the questions that people ask to the best of my ability, the reality is, a lot of shit is just not my problem any longer.

The best answer I can find is that this is Boss's opportunity: Boss has wanted this job for awhile and had to wait to get it, and now wants to put together his/her own team, which is understandable. I think it's also a mistake--my absence isn't going to wreck the place, and I am by no means irreplaceable, but I provide a set of skills and a body of information and knowledge that no one on his/her team possesses at this point. For example, in several meetings I've attended in the past month, meetings about the future direction the organization will be taking, I have asked questions (e.g., of consultants) that are based on my knowledge and that the other people around the table, including outsiders, clearly hadn't thought about but clearly regarded as important. There isn't anyone left who can ask those questions, and some of them are pretty crucial.

But did I mention that it's not my problem?

That part has been nothing but a joy to me these past weeks. Something comes along that I know is fucked up, and I try to do what I can--via email, if possible, so the record shows I tried to do the right thing--but others want it their way. Really? No problem, then! And when your actions fuck things up six months from now? Oh, wait: Not. My. Problem. And then I let go of it and move on to the next thing. I have the occasional twinge, because I have put so much time, energy, and effort into solving problems, but it's out of my control at this point.

So I'm planning my December. I'm applying to things that look like a good fit, and, now that it's public, I"ll start calling people I know; too soon to tell whether any of that will be successful. I can't look for jobs all the damn time, and, seriously, this is a crappy time of year for job hunting, so I'm going to refocus. The current plan is to reclaim my yoga practice; get regular exercise (possibly even lose some weight); do some general cleanup around the apartment; maybe take care of a few things (e.g., make curtains for the kitchen window); do some baking; read a lot of library books; and do some (volunteer) work for a local hippy-dippy restaurant that probably has less money in the bank than I do. (I have gotten to know the owners, and I offered my services and the offer was joyfully accepted, so that'll be fun, and will get me out of the house and won't threaten my unemployment.) I wouldn't be surprised if this plan carries into January or longer, but it's a pretty good plan, I think.

I'm looking forward to it, if you want to know the truth. If I haven't had a nibble of any kind by February, then perhaps my tune will change, but right now, it sounds like a fine plan to just have some time to sit in the sunroom and read. It also sounds like a fine idea to not have to worry that every thing I say is going to be misunderstood or will get me fired.

Partly in preparation for all of this, and partly because I had a 20%-off email from King Arthur, I bought a bunch of flour and other ingredients this week. Today I also did an inventory of what I have on hand, and, amazingly enough, I managed to not duplicate too much with my order, but I have an unbelievable amount of flour and grain products. Which, hey, for someone who likes to bake and who is about to have a bunch of time on her hands? Not so terrible.

My refrigerator was starting to look like a wall of produce, because, what with losing my job and all, I hadn't had time to get to very much of it. Today I focused on the broccoli (chop; steam the stems, florets, and leaves separately; chill, weigh and package; and freeze) and two of the three butternut squash (cube and roast, then package and freeze). Tomorrow I'll do something with the kohlrabi and beets (with greens), and maybe the (wait for it!) bok choi and turnips. And I need to bake some bread.

That will leave me with onions, garlic, greens of various sorts (spinach, a little chard, and some tatsoi greens), an acorn squash, and lettuce. Oh, and potatos--three bags of potatos, with which I have no idea what I'm going to do--and apples purchased last week, and, um, radishes. Monday I'll get even more lettuce, and more greens and turnips, and cabbage, so I might save the turnips and do them all at once.

I'm trying put up what I can--the freezer is my friend--which means I should be eating a whole lot of lettuce for the next two weeks, because that's the item that won't really keep. (Lettuce. Feh. There just isn't that much you can do with lettuce other than salads, which also means you need other crap--carrots, cheese, dried cranberries, whatever--to make it taste like food.) The farm share includes five more weeks after Monday, so even more produce will be coming my way. But that will have to wait for another post.

Unenjoyment

Remember that scene in Bull Durham where the manager calls a player into the office and says, "This is the hardest part of a manager's job . . . but the organization has decided to make some changes"? Yeah, that speech. Kinda like the one I heard this past Monday. I have a little more time than the player did--I'm still working, and we're going to start working out the details, probably Tuesday--but I don't expect to be there much longer. A couple of days? A week? Two? No way to know.

During the week, I went to several meetings the boss was in, and went out of my way to be professional (eloquent and brilliant and incisive, even), not least to demonstrate that I'm not going to be an asshole. It's tempting at times, of course, but I don't see the percentage in it, and, more important, it's not how I want to be. I can't control anyone else's behavior, but I can control mine, and I have no desire for this to devolve into anything that's more unpleasant.

At one point, I asked whether there was anything I could do or say to change his/her mind and was told no. So, there you have it. I haven't been let go before, but I have been wooed and then dumped, and it sure seems a lot like that, given the amount of effort this person put into getting me on his/her side over the first six months of working with this person.

So Monday night kinda sucked, as did Tuesday; Tuesday night Friend and I went to the hockey game as planned. By Wednesday I started getting better, and by the weekend I had applied for a bunch of jobs (like a zillion other people out there). As long as I can keep the fear at bay, I'm okay. It's a non-trivial task, of course, but there's only so much worrying I can do at this point. Depending on the terms of the leaving, depending on the cost of health insurance, depending on about 3 million things outside my control, it could work out fabulously well, it could be the worst fucking thing that ever happened, or it could be whatevs. No way to predict, and not much I can do to control the outcome.

The one thing I did do, though, was wait until the end of the week to apply for the jobs I identified. For one thing, it just felt like bad karma to apply when I was in a panic and such, even if all I was doing was sending a resume. Yeah, I know, kinda dumb and superstitious, but the prospect of being unemployed in this economy would make anyoe superstitious. Speaking of which, light a candle, say a prayer, cross your fingers, whatever it is you do, on my behalf, and I will be grateful.

On a better note, I called a halt to the paint-stripping project. It is by no means complete (but, hey, looks like I'm going to have some time on my hands soon!), but it is complete enough for now, and I moved the chairs into the sunroom yesterday and was pleased. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

All of Us

I hadn't been paying much attention to "occupy Wall Street"--in part because the news media weren't paying attention to it, and in part because I don't pay much attention to the news beyond the front page of the NY Times. But last night I stumbled across this site, started by two of the people who started the occupy Wall Street effort. (There's an article on the Mother Jones site about the creators.) And it nearly brought me to tears--it's every Springsteen song about hard luck and hard times.

It made me think of my own luck, and the luck the rest of my family shares. I've told you about my mom's new kidney, and my dad's onoing bladder cancer treatment, and my dad's quadruple bypass surgery, and my mom's back surgery that fused seven of her vertebrae. Why aren't my parents crippled by debt from all that health care? Not because they're wealthy--it's because my dad, thanks to his union, has excellent health insurance. Without that, my parents would be poor, or dead, or both, and that is all because my dad was a union member for 40-some years.

Thanks in part, again, to my dad's union membership, my parents were able to save money, and invest it. (Yes, there was a certain amount of hard work in there, and saving--and, again, luck: my dad didn't become disabled on the job, and he was able to work until retirement age, at a job that paid a good wage.) Thus, when my sister-in-law didn't pay the mortgage for more than a year, my parents were able to help my brother and SIL keep their house. When I've gone through bouts of grad school and unemployment, my parents have been able to help me out, too. (When I was in grad school, that extra couple hundred bucks meant that I could eat a little better, and maybe have a beer once in awhile.) In neither case was it the kind of "help" that trust fund kids get, but it was just enough.

Just enough so Bro and SIL were able to keep the house, and pay off their consumer debts, and start over without having to either lose everything or be saddled by crippling debt for the rest of their lives. Just enough so that I never truly worried about starving--moving back in with my parents when I was in my mid-30s (or mid-40s) would not have been the least bit desirable, but I did not have to worry about becoming homeless.

I've been able to pay off my debts, too--three rounds of student loans!--but it's all so precarious. Suppose, for example, that when they got rid of my boss last year they decided to get rid of me, too--six months after I took on a mortgage. Finding a job in this economy is a nightmare, and finding one that would enable me to keep my home--in which I had put nearly all my savings--might have been impossible.

There are other parts to the luck, too: my parents didn't just throw money at my brother's problems, they were also knowledgeable enough to sit down and consolidate the debt and get a lower interest rate (by cosigning, I think). Someone who doesn't have access to that form of help is going to get in trouble all over again, even if the immediate cash need is met; more likely, they'll get just enough out of the hole to stay afloat and keep paying exorbitant interest rates on any credit they get.

So, even though I make a decent living, and can enjoy myself a bit, I, too, am one of the 99%. And the good luck I've experienced isn't entirely luck. Some of it is that my father made a good living working with his hands--thanks to a union. Some of it is that my parents didn't have to deal with any major financial crises. Some of it is that my mother's parents earned and saved a little, too, along the way, Some of it is that we were all able to work hard, and we have done that--no crippling medical conditions; no mental illness; no disabling accidents.
Some of it is that I was able to go to a good college, and end up with less than $5k of debt, thanks to government programs (and thanks to having a sister who was only two years behind me in school, so we both ended up with more financial aid than if we'd gone separately).

But that list isn't so outrageous. It should not be beyond the reach of most people. People should be able to start over, either out of choice or necessity. (Suppose you're in a terrible marriage for 30 years and your spouse spends every nickel and you have kids and can't or don't quite want to or don't know how to get out of that situation, and now you're nearly 50 and divorced and have no savings and you lose your job, or even are just stuck in a job that pays enough to live on, and gives you health insurance, but you can barely get by. Suppose your partner runs up debts that you dont find out about until it's too late, and your name is attached to that debt, too. Suppose you buy a house and don't use it as a cash machine and take all the equity out, but you lose your job and your adjustable rate goes up and now you can't pay the bills, even though you found another job--at a third less money--because you had to live on credit cards for awhile, after you drained your savings.

I could come up with a thousand more scenarios, because they're all out there. The thing is, money isn't a good in itself. Money insulates us from disaster. (For the 1%, it buys big homes and private schools and yachts and European trips or whatevs, but for us, it's insulation.) Money means, if you make a mistake--even a stupid one, like your spouse isn't paying the mortgage but writes it in the checkbook, so you don't find out for more than a year, and then only because a coworker saw in the paper that your house is up for a sheriff's sale--you're not completely doomed. Money means if you have to start over, you can come up with the security deposit and moving expenses for a decent apartment. Money means that you can get medical care if you need it--and medical insurance, in case something big and expensive comes along. And none of these amounts of money would be a pimple on the ass of the 1%, but all these amounts of money are the difference between having a life and barely clinging to the edge of the abyss for the other 99% of us.

Bounty

I can't think about work, because it's wearing me out. And writing about it here is probably a bad idea, no matter how few readers I have. One never knows when the Google gods may deliver one onto the screen of one's coworkers.

So: food. Though first I must tell you that my furniture, it is here!!1eleventy!!

No pictures for you yet, however, because (a) the sun room bricks are still being stripped (and oh what a pain in the ass that project is), so the floor is covered in plastic and the walls are ugly, and (b) the bigger chair is, indeed big--bigger than I thought it was going to be--so I need to rethink its placement. It's a gorgeous piece of work, and the price could not be beat, so I have no regrets about buying it, but it is quite large, and requires aforementioned rethinking. So nothing is in its space yet, and, in fact, much of it is draped in fabric so that Loaner Cat doesn't decide to claw at it. I also broke down and got a new futon--and a handmade cotton and wool one at that, from a place in Montana. So, yes, expensive, but comfy, and I can no longer count the slats of the bedframe while I'm in bed.

Anyway, this is the time of year when there's basically a bounty of food, and I love it. Sunday morning I dragged Friend to the local farmers' market--it's a small market, but it has a lot of organic farmers and my favorite cheese people, and I like supporting neighborhood things. At the market I got fresh mozzarella, cheese curds (that was an impulse purchase), even more tomatos (my farm share has been very tomato-heavy, but so have my lunches), a quarter loaf of miche, a bag of thin green beans, a dozen ears of sweet corn, and two containers of peaches. Friend went back to his house for the afternoon, while I scraped more paint.

So, for dinner: more of the eggplant stuff I've been making, this time tossed with chunks of crystalized ginger, soy sauce, olive oil, and a bunch of crushed garlic, baked, and then tossed with some light coconut milk, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, rice wine vinegar, and fresh basil. Sweet corn--I made it all, with the intention of cutting the leftovers off the cobs and using in my lunch salads this week. The green beans, steamed/boiled until just tender, then glazed with a little butter and some salt. A tomato/basil/mozzarella salad. Caramelized onions, with some sliced venison ring baloney thrown in. And for dessert, crepes with peaches that had been sitting in lemon juice and ginger syrup.

Seriously, this shit was so good we ended up eating dinner standing up in the kitchen. We couldn't even get ourselves to put together plates and sit down. It was fucking amazing. Not terribly dignified, but dignity is overrated. Plus, I managed to make another dent in the farm share, just in time for Monday's delivery (lettuce, four kinds of tomatos, parsley, and peppers, which I promptly gave to a neighbor).

It was huge wads of food, too, so I gave Friend at least a third of it, maybe a little more, to take with him for his lunches this week (my payback to him for shlepping back & forth to my house just for dinner). I've been feasting on the leftovers as well, and it's heaven.

But peaches, oy. This morning I cut up the rest of them and tossed them with more lemon juice and ginger syrup and stuck them in the fridge, because otherwise I'd have a counter full of mold within another day or two. I love peaches; they are such an incredible feast for the senses, what with that intoxicating scent, and that incredible taste, and the juice running down your arm if you eat it in bites. But if you look at them sideways they get bruised, it seems. I practically carry them wrapped in cotton and bubble wrap and they still seem to get mottled practically instantaneously. No matter; the cut-up peaches should last a few days, so it'll be fine.

Change

Well.

The Big Transition continues at work, and it's taking its toll on everyone. While I can rant with the best of them, there are days when I think that I am least . . . deeply bothered? freaked out? of all of my coworkers. It's really kind of fascinating to watch (and to have a hand in, for that matter). Some of it is definitely age, but most of it, as I think I've said before, is that I have changed "careers" multiple times in my life, sometimes by choice and other times not so much, and each time I've done so, I've had to learn a whole new field. On one hand, of course, this is a bit stressful, but, on the other, it gives me something new to learn, and it has given me experience being discomfited, if you will. The people within whom I'm now working have (a) worked with the organization for at least 10 years, and (b) worked with each other for at least 10 years; at this point, they have worked out all of their miscommunication and their routines and their divvying up of the world.

Suddenly, the world has gotten much larger, and it has new stuff in it, and they must work with people who do not have any clue how they Do Things, and there are many more Things to Do, and some of those things are Very New Things. This all makes for much discomfort and dislocation, and, as we all know, people deal with that in different ways. (I actually think my boss created the position for me that s/he did precisely because of my experience with such dislocations.) As I have been saying, despite the multiple frustrations we experience with each other, no one is lazy, malicious, or stupid, and that is huge. No one else seems to think it's as huge as I think it is, but I think it's absolutely vital. It doesn't mean that we're going to be able to work everything out with no bumps or irritaitons or rashes, it just means that the people involved are capable of working it out, are unlikely to sabotage working it out, and will likely work hard to work it out.

It's also true that I have lost a couple of battles--that makes it sounds too dire. It's true that, in several arenas that I think are important, the person who is making the decision doesn't see/agree with the things I've observed and pointed out. I do think it will backfire, in a big way, but some mistakes have to be made for people to understand the flaws in their systems.

What's also interesting and sort of amusing to me is that the people who are, at least theoretically, taking over chunks of what I have been doing, are both multitudinous and freaking out. Seriously--and not to pat myself on the back--but it's taking three or four of them to even begin to do what I have been doing single-handedly, and they haven't really taken over yet. It's more like they look over my shoulder as I keep doing big chunks of it. And criticizing, of course, when they're not freaking out.

The other thing around which I have not yet wrapped my head is that they don't seem to forego vacation time when there's something big due. The last two Big Things--including the one where we/I fucked up--included vacation time by people who are supposed to be taking over big chunks of what I do, and the vacation time was within a week or 10 days of the due date. Which makes no sense to me, and probably explains why I have nearly maxed out the amount of vacation time one can accrue. One of them included airplane tickets to a foreign country, so that's understandable, but that person also arrived back in town and started fucking with my Plan, because That's The Way WE Have Always Done Things (even though I could only have discerned the Way YOU Do Things through psychic abilities, and was therefore taken aback and peevish).

And, truly, I'm not being critical there. Having a Way to Do Things that actually includes people other than oneself does probably mean that one can take vacations, and there was no way to know that this particular adventure really didn't allow for vacations for the people in charge of getting it done. Lessons have been learned, i believe, but there's still a lot of freaking out to do.

Not by me, though, if I can help it. Loaner Cat does what she can to refocus my attentions, which is always good. I've also been reading again. There for awhile I was rereading a bunch of stuff, but suddenly I'm back in New Book land. And my latest somewhat guilty pleasure has been the George Martin books, or the first one, anyway. People whose opinion I trust (all online) seemed to like it a lot, so I figured I'd get the first one and see whether I like it, and, so far, it's entertaining, A potboiler, for sure, in the manner of Dorothy Dunnett, I'd say, but I admit to liking her stuff, too, way more than I probably should.

I'm always a bit annoyed at comparisons to Tolkien, though. While I freely admit that Tolkien isn't for everyone, and while i have registered my various objections to the film versions here, and while I recognize that Tolkien's inclusion/treatment of women leaves much to be desired in many ways, I fell under the spell 35 years ago, and it's not going to change. More to the point: the issues notwithstanding, Tolkien's fiction was an outgrowth of his philology and linguistics, of his invention of new languages and the creation of backstories around the beings who spoke those languages. While others have certainly created whole worlds out of whole cloth--Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea, for example, which I love--that world creation takes a different form. It's neither good nor bad (except for the occasional author who apparently consciously tries to emulate Tolkien in some way, which is a project doomed to failure), but it has a different origin than Tolkien's world creation.

Thus, while I am only part of the way into the first volume, I would liken the Martin books more to Dunnett, or, I suppose, LeGuin, than to Tolkien. But Tolkien got a big boost with the movies, and nobody knows Dunnett, mostly, so, to sell the books, Tolkien gets thrown around, which does a disservice to both him and to whomever is supposed to be the "new" Tolkien.

Look, people, Tolkien is sui generis. Unique. Singular. Stop using him to sell things that Aren't Like His Works At All.

Count Me Out

Remember that big thing I was working on in June? The important thing worth a lot of money to my organization? Well, in the mad dash (not created by me) to get it submitted in time, I ended up going over the page limit, so we lost the money. We can likely get it back, by doing a big thing (and counting correctly this time through), and the people who kinda-sorta took it away are also trying to make sure we get it back and are covered in the gap, but, yeah, a little stress. Fun times.

The whole experience has been useful in a meta way, to me and, I think and very much hope, to others, but fuck, this is NOT the most fun way to learn these lessons. I already knew these risks existed, but control over things was kinda ripped from my hands in the days prior to its due date. Which is not to say that it's someone else's fault that I cannot fucking count (though one coworker was quick to point out to me privately that the only time in my long experience at this where I've made such a mistake is the one wherein others were fiddling, at the last minute). I've tried very, very hard to keep that observation between us, rather than starting the fingerpointing in team meetings that has so far been avoided. There's no point to it except as a defensive measure, and that hasn't been needed.

Meanwhile, this weekend was another exercise in using the things that were closest to going bad in the fridge. So: last night we had salmon with a warm chutney (mango, tomato, onion, and fresh basil, barely warmed in a bit of butter), white bean dip (rosemary, onion, garlic, and white beans, cooked in chicken broth and then pureed with some olive oil) with carrots and slightly steamed broccoli (both from the farm share), and eggplant (farm share) tossed with rehydrated dried pears (because I didn't have apricots), crystalized ginger, lime juice, and olive oil, then baked, then tossed with coconut milk and lime juice and soy sauce, with the whole shmear mixed with farro. It all was quite tasty.

Today's exercise was to use the bag of sweet cherries that was starting to get kinda soft in the fridge. I was thinking I wanted something with chocolate, so I pitted the cherries, macerated them a bit with a little of the chocolate port I bought on Friday, then cooked them on the stove with a little butter to soften them up and further infuse them. The vanilla went in the cherries, too. The batter was a combo of things and utilized flax seed, whole wheat pastry flour and all-purpose flour, cocoa, some ground hazelnuts that had been hanging around forever in the freezer, and the usual stuff--butter, sugar, baking soda (not powder), and eggs. I haven't tasted one yet, but they sure smell good. The rest of the cherries are sitting in a little red wine and will be used for a sauce for venison, I think, along with some caramelized onions. Plus there are a few more eggplant to use, and I have some kale I have to use as well.

So the things I (will have) used up this weekend included, from the farm share, tomatos, broccoli, kale, some of the onions and garlic and basil, and most of the eggplant (all of it by the end of dinner tonight, I hope), I also used up a bag of cherries, a bag of dried white beans, some old hazelnut flour, and some old cocoa (it turns out I had two UNopened tins of cocoa powder, in addition to the one that was open), and continued to work my way through the whole wheat pastry flour that's been hanging around. I also used up my brown sugar, so must buy more of that.

I find that I enjoy this exercise, by and large; it's an interesting challenge. It has the unfortunate effect of making me feel more virtuous than is probably warranted, but still. I'm getting lunches out of it, too, as I basically try to cook as many things as possible, even if I/we only have a little of it for that meal, because then I have lunches, too.

Anyway. I'm exhausted--Loaner Cat was rambunctious last night, and I haven't been sleeping all that well anyway--but a nap is probably not possible. So: time to stare vacantly.

About That Recipe . . .

Well, it didn't suck, but it also was, um, different from what I said below.

The carrots are very good, but are one-of-a-kind, because of the shit I dumped in there, including some leftover caramelized onions and garlic from last week, a couple of tablespoons of cherry compote that has been hanging around (basically, just cherries cooked down), the remnants of the dried currants that have been in my cupboard for, oh, 5 years?, and some spices--cinnamon and cumin, I think, and some raspberry honey mustard. Instead of the orange juice in the recipe, I chopped up a couple of the meyer lemons and threw the whole things in there. I added a couple of tablespoons of orange juice, and something sweet; maybe some ginger syrup? Maybe some crystalized ginger? A splooge of honey? Whatever, it's very strong-tasting, but quite good.

When I went to do the eggplant, I realized I have no soy sauce. How the fuck can I have no soy sauce? Anyway, I took the remnants of some apricot ginger chutney (again, probably 5 years old, but chutney isn't going to go bad), some olive oil, some lime juice, and some of the garlic scape pesto that's been sitting in the fridge making everything smell like garlic and smeared it all over the chopped/cubed eggplant. I baked it for awhile until it was tender, then tossed it with low-fat coconut milk, lime juice, and parsley (supposed to be cilantro, but didn't have any of that either), plus some more crystalized ginger, I think; not a lot.

I had thought I was going to make a tart with the onions and kale, but instead I just caramelized a buttload of thinly sliced onions and eventually threw in the chopped kale. Finally, I chopped up some more onions pretty fine and sweated them awhile. (I typically use a mix of olive oil and butter.) I added more garlic scapes, and then the kohlrabi. I think I ended up adding a little water to that, too, so the kohlrabi would get tender. Finally, I added some shredded wild turkey meat from the freezer.

BT and I caught up for awhile and drank iced tea with lime slices. When we got hungry, I had her grate some gruyere and made some crepes and we filled them with combinations of the stuff listed above. None of it sucked.

I did not get to do anything with the shredded zucchini, of which I have a huge bowl, mixed with some grated onions and some pesto. I think I'll just make some zucchini pancakes, possibly, or . . . or I don't know what. That might be the best thing to do with it, that or a pasta salad of some kind.

In addition to it all tasting quite good, I have lunches and leftovers for DAYS, and I managed to use up a bunch of stuff that was sitting around--scraps of this, bits of that. I made the rest of the crepes and just stacked them between parchment paper and stuck them in the fridge. I suppose I could freeze them, but I think they'll make good wrap material for the aforementioned lunches this week. I say that I managed to use up a bunch of stuff, and that's true, but I ended up putting transformed versions of everything back in the fridge, so it's not as though there's any more space in the fridge, really. And? more veggies coming tomorrow.

VegStravaganza!

The time has come, once again, to deal with the Refrigerator Full of Vegetables. I don't want it to sound as though it's a chore; I've been enjoying the exercise, this year even more than last year, because the variety this year is way better, and the quality of the food is really extraordinary. It's probably a teensy bit too much for one person, but I feed Friend often enough that I'm glad I got this size share, plus I'm getting nearly all of my meals from it, especially when I throw in a little bread. It also means that I really haven't needed to go to the market much at all; for fruit, maybe, and cheese, because I cannot stop myself (I bet I have eight varieties in the fridge at the moment).

Anyway, in order to use the current wad of vegetation, I'm going to make a batch of whole wheat crepes; the batter is resting in the fridge right now. For filings, I'm going to make broiled (or possibly baked) eggplant, Thai style (from a Moosewood cookbook, and Thai-style means it has ginger and coconut milk); Moroccan carrots (ginger, garam masala, I forget what else); a gratin with onions, cheese, and kale; and something with summer squash, either throwing that in the gratin, too, or making some summer squash pancakes. I also need to do something with the kohlrabi, so I think I'm going to do something with ginger and garlic, as one might with broccoli.

That will leave some Meyer lemons (which aren't from the farm share, and which I should just confit or something), way more dill than I could possibly use, and a couple of small cabbages, which will keep well enough. I'm supposed to be getting potatos this week, and a potato/cabbage/venison ring bologna mix will go nicely. I figure cheese of various sorts can go in or on the veggies, and all of it will be fine for leftovers with leftover crepes or whatever, especially with the tomatos that are also supposed to show up this week. There are surprisingly few recipes for kohlrabi--none, actually--in my cookbooks, many of which are vegetable-friendly cookbooks (mostly from Moosewood). But I figure it's just another brassica, so I'll pretend it's broccoli and call it a day. I'm not adding meat to any of today's dishes, but you could throw some in with just about any of it, I suppose. Actually, there's some wild turkey I should use, which I can add to something; the carrots, maybe.

And? Brazen Tart is coming to visit this afternoon, so I can feed some vegetables to her, too. She eats all kinds of stuff, so she's a good guest for extravaganzas like this one.

I was reading a post by Amanda Marcotte a few weeks ago (I'm too lazy to track down the citation), and the issue was whether "mixed" couples could work out--mixed as in vegetarian and meat-eating, or vegan and either of those, or, I suppose, even gluten-free and gluten-loving. The commenters seemed to agree that, so long as everyone was truly respectful of the other person's choices, it could probably work out okay. The two that would be most difficult for me would be gluten-free--because I bake so much, and flour does get everywhere, which would make it dificult to make the kitchen a safe place for someone who is really sensitive--and, to some extent, vegan, because of my love for butter and cheese and eggs and honey. I do like meat and fish, though I tend to eat it in small quantities, and much of it was killed by someone I know; I try to avoid commercially raised meat, unless it's small-farm produced, etc. Which, yes, a million dollars a pound, but I'm willing to, and privileged to be able to, pay that price.

I was discussing this with K, who doesn't eat a whole lot of red meat, and we decided that the most difficult restriction would be someone who is picky and not adventurous. There are things I don't want to try--like bugs, for example, or dog or cat--and a few things I really cannot tolerate; I accept my reaction to those things, because I have decided that it's basically my body telling me something important and I am otherwise an omnivore. (The list: bell peppers; cucumbers; iceberg lettuce; and cantaloupe. I also cannot stand mint "flavor," though fresh mint is okay. I can sometimes eat small amounts of the first two, but I avoid them all in my cooking.)

I can do anything for a few meals, and am more than happy to respect people's needs and preferences when they are my guests, and I have even enjoyed the challenge of meeting people's needs. But to have most or all meals with someone whose preferences or needs are very different from mine would be much more difficult. Mostly this is because I am old and cranky, and because I am such a taste/sensation junkie, and I want to eat everything. I also know, from experience, that I have an especially hard time with people who are just uninterested in food; I dated someone who would just as happily eat canned ravioli (unheated, from the can) as delicious homemade ravioli, and, even 30 years ago, that just seemed bizarre to me.

Anyway. There won't be any food at all if I don't get started on this stuff, so it's time to do that.

Into the Wet

At what point does principled objection become mere intransigence? Interesting question, no? And, let me hasten to add, I'm the one who has the objection, and, indeed, it's principled. It would do little harm to break the particular rule for This One Time. But it's a rule that has been broken in the past, and I have spent most of my time at the organization cleaning up various messes that resulted from such breakage, so I am disinclined to do so. More to the point, I am disinclined to break it, or allow it to be broken, precisely because of the attitude of the people who want to break it. They want to break it for the sake of expedience--and not expedience that will actually result in more services being provided. In addition, they do not seem to regard the principle as an important one, and they seem to regard expedience as more important, and that is making me dig in my heels more than I otherwise might do so. Finally, they do not fully understand some of the pieces about which they are being insistent, and I do not like when people are trying to make big decisions when they do not have full information.

All that aside, I had to act like a Senior Management-Type Person on Friday. A string of circumstances led to the ceiling falling in, in several places, because of leakage from storms. Given that I was the only Senior Management-Type Person in the vicinity, I closed the place down. There was some immediate fallout from that--I sent people home, with pay--but, as the full extent of the damages became clear, the fallout has lessened. And then, last night, at my house, in addition to having to try to sleep through lightning outside the buiilding, and in addition to running around closing windows, the electricity went out. Which, normally, who cares; roll over and sleep.

Except, now that I'm a Property Owner (or, at least, I share ownership with a bank), I have an Alarm System. Which beeps, when the power goes out., every 20 minutes or so. (The first time this happened, I looked at the display, which says, among other things, "No AC," and thought, because it was the middle of the night, "But I don't HAVE air conditioning!" Eventually I realized this was "alternating current," not "air conditioning.") I could not, for the life of me, get it to stop beeping. Finally, at 2:45 am, I dug up a phone number and called the company. No, I do not, in fact, remember my "code word," but, for the love of FSM, tell me how to stop the beeping. (The unspoken threat, in my head, went something like, "Or I will take a fucking HAMMER to the thing.") I got it to stop, I think, and then the power came back, but not much sleep was left in the night, and then today I had to put together the report that I would have put together yesterday if the sky had not fallen on everyone's heads.

Yes, I AM tired; why do you ask?

But it is what it is. There are interesting challenges, which I would relate if i didn't want sleep so badly, and I could rhapsodize about the steamy weather, if I didn't want to collapse on the bed, and so on, so it'll all have to wait.

Baked

I have, in fact, taken pictures of the sunroom paintstripping project, but I'm too lazy to get up and find the fiddly bits needed to download the pics to the computer. Meanwhile, here are some pics of the furniture in its natural habitat (i.e., Richard's shop); the movers picked it up yesterday and I should get it by the end of the week.



This paintstripping project is a bear. I have a tendency to do this: start something, or get it in my head to do something, while not considering just how much work it's going to be. Or, really, I do know that it's going to be a lot of work, I just try to ignore this inconvenient fact and proceed with it. In this case, that's probably the best tactic anyway, as I really did want to strip the paint off the brick, and there's no way that's ever going to be anything but a pain-in-the-ass job. It's not something to job out, even, because there are no special skills or equipment needed, just lots of time and a paint scraper and a wire brush, and I have those. With the dining room panels, for example, I don't have any of the tools to do that job; same with the windowsill. Mike has an orbital sander, so it took him maybe ten minutes to sand it, and he did a better job of it than I could have done by hand. The paintstripping is just plugging away at it, trying not to get paint goo all over everything. There are a few things I should have planned out a bit better, but overall, it's just a lot of elbow grease. I will probably try to take some more days off so it doesn't drag on forever.

Yesterday I managed to get at least one layer of goop off of all of the bricks I could reach. I only have a little left in the current bottle, number one, and, second, I didn't want to commit to doing any tonight when I get home. So I cleaned up a bit, and formulated a Plan for the next phase or two. I'm really not comitting to doing anything this week, unless I take off a couple of days. Even then, it's so hot, and going to be hotter, and that room faces south, and the trees outside were cut down (because they were dead inside and about to fall, apparently). Today I'll get the materials I need for the next phases and be happy with that. I also found an old white cloth shower curtain left by the previous owners, and I'm going to see if I can hang that somehow in the window in the sunroom.

The other thing I did yesterday, because I am apparently moderately insane, was bake some bread. Yes, I know that it was nuts, particularly because I made double-barley pretzel rolls, which means the rolls had to be boiled before they were baked. And then I cooked dinner. So, yes, insane. But I'm managing to stay ahead of the produce in the fridge, just barely. There are a few things to which I'm not getting, but they'll all keep (cabbage, carrots, squash, onions, kohlrabi), and I think tonight's delivery is similarly keepable.

Okay, time to see if I can stay awake for work . . .

Brick, Paint, Wood

It turns out that watching paint melt is only marginally more exciting than watching it dry. And watching it melt ultimately means more work, because it doesn't just fall off the brick, it needs to be scraped. It also requires patience, because you really do have to let it sit for several hours, particularly because there are approximately 437 layers of paint on the brick.

It goes slowly, but it could be a lot worse. I found a soy-based paint stripper (SoyGel by Franmar, in case you're interested), and it works pretty well and, while it's not odor-free, it's not completely awful, either, and it's certainly not the nasty batch of chemicals that's common with paint stripper. It's going to take at least three, and possibly four applications (I ordered my second 2.5-gallon jug yesterday; guess I could have gone for the 5-gallon bucket after all), and the last bit is going to be annoyingly painstaking, but I will prefer it to the grey-green-beige paint that's there now. Or, actually, the grey-green-beige, over whte, red, green, and maybe some others as well.

I was hoping to finish before the new furniture gets here, but I think that won't happen unless I manage to get some done during the week. (Yes! The sunroom chairs, table, and ottoman, and the additional chair and ottoman, are done! I've seen pictures, and they look beautiful.) There are about 8 rows of brick that haven't had any application of goop yet, because I need a ladder (Friend is bringing one today, I think).

The other thing that's being completed is my dining room, where some of the panels had warped and kinda sprung (apparently from a leak behind the panels, as it backs on to the bathroom). The guy who's doing the work is a little vague, and a little slowish, but he seems to be doing a very good job of it. He also sanded and refinished the windowsill in the dining room while he was at it. It would have been nice if he could have done the sill in the living room, too, but I need at least one or two rooms where there's no work being done, no walls torn out, and no paint or solvent or varnish exuding fumes. The cat is a little stressed, but seems to be dealing with it pretty well. I've been here with her most of the time, which helps, but she still wants to go crawling around in the open wall. I don't think there's anything she could damage, including herself, but I dont' want to take the chance, so I've mostly kept the door between the dining room and the hallway closed. He just showed up, so he'll be able to finish today, which is great. I'll be able to clean the room before moving the furniture back into it, which will keep me from attacking the paint scraping before the remover has the opportunity to work.

Even though everything's torn up at the moment and there's dust or fumes or a plastic dropcloth or some combination in what feels like every space, I'm glad to be doing something, finally. I'm also glad I waited: Living here for awhile made me realize that what I really wanted to do was get the sunroom outfitted (though stripping the paint wasn't always part of the plan), and, if I found someone, to get the dining room fixed. Everything else can wait a bit, let me save up money and figure out exactly what I want.

But I love the sunroom; I spend a lot of time there, especially in the summer, but the chairs available are just uncomfortable, so doing something about that really became a priority. I wanted to fix the dining room wall--I've had a chair in front of it for a year, to keep people from snagging on the bits that bulged out--but didn't know anyone who could do the work. It'll be nice to be able to turn it into a real room again. Financially, that's as much as I really want to attempt this year, not least because I'm just not sure what else I want.

The one exception might be a rug or two, if I find something I like. The one I got from a Groupon is okay--it's sisal, so it's not exactly comfy--and it fits in either the dining room or the living room, but I still need one for whichever place doesn't house the sisal. I know I could spend a billion dollars, but a couple hundred is more my speed at the moment; I just don't have anything in mind, but want to protect the floors.

I think the next project will probably be the back bedroom, which might require a somewhat bigger investment, as it will need a floor and a built-in where the closet now is. That space was originally how the ice was delivered, and it has a window, so I want to take the closet doors off and turn it into a space where a desk or cabinets or something are built into it. That project will require a somewhat larger budget, I suspect, so I'm going to hold off for a bit. And I might want to do some stuff with the bathroom while I'm at it, so it's worth thinking about.

Anyway: I'm very excited, despite the pile of work that remains to be done in the sunroom and the large checks I've been writing.

Clean, Chop, Steam, Repeat

After three weeks of extreme stress (which, seriously, just keeps getting worse, though the immediate deadline got met), I've spent the weekend trying to catch up. All those chores that went undone--and all that produce that was crammed into my refrigerator--needed attention. Five loads of laundry (including a load of towels that got soaked Thursday by massive leaks through my sunroom wall under the window). Mopping up another cat's worth of hair. Defrosting the little freezer, since I had to wash the towels anyway.

But mostly food: shell the peas (caramelized some onions, added some garlic, then cooked the peas in there with chicken broth, then pureed it; I'm going to serve it cold, I think, with a little mascarpone in it); clean and steam the broccoli; clean all the lettuce and the mesclun mix (the quality of the produce is such that this lettuce, washed, dried, torn, and bagged, will last all week); slice carrots, scallions, and radishes; candy some lemon peel (and then use the juice with vodka and club soda for a lovely summer drink imbibed on the back porch); bake some muffins to use up the bananas in the freezer, and add some barley flakes which had been soaked in the banana liquid to soften them, plus dried cranberries and frozen blueberries; bake some barley rolls and some fruit tarts; make berry compote with the bag of frozen fruit discovered in the freezer, and use it on french toast as well as in the blueberry tarts; pit a buttload of cherries for the cherry tarts, and make a cherry compote to intensify the flavor of those tarts; decide the crust was kinda eh; make salad dressing; and, finally, last night, caramelize some onions, add garlic, add some cut-up venison ring baloney, and throw in all of the chopped-up kale, and serve over barley--which was also a "last-of" thing from the cupboard. Oh--and clean a bunch of strawberries, and serve those over the lemon cakes from the freezer, and over the french toast on top of the berry compote.

My feet hurt, and the fridge is still full, but mostly of food that has been transformed from its raw state. The only things I didn't get to were bok choy, turnips, and some beets. I might roast the beets today, if I get ambitious, seeing as how it mostly involves putting the beets in the oven for awhile. And I now have a fridge full of lunches. I'm getting more produce tonight, so I'll ship some of the stuff off with Friend. I could maybe have gotten the "micro" share instead of the small share (there's also a large share, for 4-5 people), but I have wasted surprisingly little of this. I do share it with Friend, to some extent, but I could probably eat it all myself if I had to. And the quality has been quite good; my only quibble is with the extent of the bok choy and turnips and radishes; I really don't need that many of those items. I like them okay, but I don't love them, and they're pretty tiresome to eat day after day after day. Some of the other things also freeze better--I had a bunch of various greens at one point that I knew I wouldn't get to right away, so I blanched and froze them; I can always throw them into a stew somewhere along the line.

Basically, a vast number of my meals have come from the share. I add onions and garlic to various things (onions, garlic, bok choy, and turnips, for example), I do the baking and make the salad dressing, I add the grains for various dishes, Friend adds a little meat (venison or wild turkey, mostly), and it's a meal (or, more likely, several meals), so, all in all, it's been a pretty good deal. Plus, because they deliver, I'm not hauling all this stuff on buses and trains; hard to beat that. For that matter, King Arthur "delivers," too; I've been getting stuff by mail order from them, so I have an unbelievable variety of grains and flours in my possession at the moment, which means, when I've been home on a weekend rather than at work, I have been able to experiment with various recipes. I like being able to grab a roll or two from the freezer to take to work to eat with the salad or stir fry.

Speaking of which, despite my original intention to do a lot of nothing today and give my feet a rest, I think I might make some ginger rolls after all . . .

The Takeaway Was . . .

My antipathy toward kumbayfuckingyah activities is well-documented and longstanding. Nothing I experienced last week has caused me to change my mind. I won't get into my objections to the day's events that were specific to our organization; those are internal, and a function of the work we're doing now to merge some service bits together. And I won't even object to some of the other training sessions I've had to attend recently; while they didn't do much for me, they clearly seemed to be valuable to many other people, and I don't want to harsh that. Sometimes you just have to sit through shit and do your best not to put a damper on other people's experience. I didn't succeed in that nearly as well as I would have liked, and I admit that it's a challenge for me, and one on which I truly feel I need to work.

However.

Two things in particular highlighted my opposition. The first thing was in relation to the afternoon's "team-building" exercise. Even though the team that I was on actually won (despite have two people, me being one of them, with official Bad Attitudes about the whole thing), I found the whole thing to be completely tedious and, more important, a complete fucking waste of time. I tried very hard not to let my attitude fuck up other people's chances to win, and, in fact, it could be argued that one of my contributions was instrumental in our winning. And I still think it was a complete fucking waste of time. Why?

Because teams don't get "built" by forcing people to work together on some stupid, pointless task. Every last person, except, of course, our would-be Galtian would-be overlords, recognizes that nearly everything we do is a group effort. Even my dissertation, which, of course, I had to actually write, relied on many other people for help, advice, a sounding board, etc., and those pieces were, in fact, crucial to my being able to write a goddamned dissertation. Should their names go on it as co-authors? Well, no, probably not, given the way we think about these things, and given that, without me, that particular piece of scholarship would not have occurred. But I absolutely believe that others' contributions were vital to my being able to do it.

Back to my point: the whole afternoon's exercise was just stupid and pointless. It accomplished nothing. Nothing was gained. No teams were built. We would have spent our time better if we had come together to take a crack at some of the issues the organization is actually trying to address, rather than what we did, and people would have ended up with a greater sense of real accomplishment.

My second serious opposition was to a different activity during the day, one wherein a speaker came in and talked about changes, and how to deal with them, and blahblahfuckingblah. S/he had a particular Model Of Change (of course), which was simplistic and not at all how I think about these things, but whatevs. I could suffer through that part by stressing about all the writing that wasn't getting done on the thing that is due this Friday and not listening much to the speaker. The thing that put me over the edge, though, was that each table was supposed to use this Model to write down some change in the past year that we experienced, and to analyze the change in terms of the Model.

I absolutely refused to do it.

I didn't say anything, but I didn't fill out my notecard, and I didn't say anything when we were all supposed to be Discussing It In Our Groups. I try, as best I can, not to piss too much on what others are doing, and, hey, maybe some people get something out of shit like that; not my place to say, and good on them if they do.

But I am profoundly uncomfortable talking about made-up shit like that, in groups of people at work. I will tell people very intimate things. I have had some very deep discussions with all kinds of coworkers. I share all kinds of shit. Nevertheless, I repeat, I am profoundly uncomfortable doing this kind of pseudo-group-therapy. I hate it. I think it's worse than pointless, and I have no interest in babbling about this shit to the people with whom I work. I think it's demeaning and degrading, and I think it's a distraction from the true issues that we face, from the true elephants in the room that everyone's ignoring.

Meanwhile, I spent substantial parts of Saturday and Sunday in my office, and today was nearly a 12-hour day and tomorrow and Wednesday are likely to be similar. In fact, I'll be lucky if it's just tomorrow and Wednesday, and not an all-nighter on Thursday as well.

Other than that? The kumbaifuckingyah event was wonderful.

Sing With Me

Rest in peace, Big Man . . .

Today is a big kumbaifuckingyah day, and, as you might imagine, I am absolutely breathless with anticipation. The fact that I have a major fucking competing grant due next Friday and have done not nearly enough work on it yet, and the fact that I'm going to be losing Wednesday afternoon to training on some new purchase order system (a four-hour training? is calculus involved? because otherwise four hours seems excessive), aren't bothering me at ALL! You know why? Because I simply love, love, love all-day retreats. It just excites and energizes me So. Much.

Was that convincing? Yeah, I figured not, but it's the best I can do. Welcome to the world of senior management, where you slap on a happy face and do the needful. And get paid for it, mind you. But still; I have so much fucking work to do. I hate these things to begin with, but when I am completely overwhelmed, it just makes them worse.

In non-work-related news, I have managed to find someone to fix my broken paneling, which excites me to no end. He'll do the work after the beginning of July, and he won't be cheap, but he really does seem to know what he's doing. I also ordered the chairs for the sunroom, and they're under construction at the moment--I'm also getting a third chair, plus footstool, for the living room, at half price. Turns out some bozo decided he didn't want what he ordered after all, and returned it and made a huge fuss about it, and my furniture guy was happy to get rid of it. I also seem to have located someone who can move the stuff when it's complete, for cheaper than the shipping costs would have been, so that's exciting news, too.

And rowing classes! Those turned out to be totally cool. It turns out I was, in fact, Doing It Wrong for all those years, and that doing it right is harder. I liked the classes so much I bought a package, too, and am aiming for once or twice a week, plus the workouts at home.

I had intended to go to a class last night, but work got in the way, and, by the time I got home, I simply could not motivate myself, despite the fact that these days I look at pictures of food and my clothes get tighter. I'm trying not to stress out about that, but not doing very well. Some of it is vanity, of course; no denying that. But some of it is practical--I really do not want to have to buy new clothes; and I really like the clothes I have, but I can't wear many of them without looking like an overstuffed sausage and feeling very uncomfortable (physically: they're tight); and I can't help but think that hauling around an extra 20 pounds is just tiring in and of itself--it's like having a load of groceries strapped to me at all times. Actually, it IS groceries strapped to me--in the sense that I've already consumed them and they're now attached. And of course this morning I had all these grand plans of a workout before the kumbaifuckingyah event, but that didn't happen, either. Too bad; so sad.

A full night's sleep would be nice, too. I don't need all that much, but more than four hours would be nice . . .