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Beets are not forever

The tiny spots of beet juice washed out of my white fleece sweatshirt. I like it well and I've worn it about to death (and to work too, because the princess cut, mock turtleneck, 3/4 zip style isn't totally sweatshirty). (Also, my workplace is very casual.) I'm sure if my co-workers ever saw me, they'd be tired of seeing me in it.

The sweatshirt is on its last legs anyway, so I went and ordered a bunch of more grown-up looking sweaters yesterday evening. No one will recognize me in something other than the same three things I've been wearing all winter, right? I'll have to think of something stealthy to do.

Hmm. Still thinking.

What I'd like to do is discover the secret of the puppy room in the daycare center in my building, but I suspect I could just go in and ask, "What is the puppy room?" and there's nothing particularly stealthy about that.

Where's the puppy room for the office workers? That's what I'd like to know. We could all use some puppy time.

Tired is as tired does

When I was self-employed, I never had a weekly fatigue cycle like I do now that I'm a wage slave. The fact that I'm getting less sleep and working more hours probably has something to do with it. (Ya think?)

Under self-employment, my fatigue cycle was daily. As in: it is a day of the week and I am working. Can I stop yet?

Under other-employment, it's more like this:

Monday: I am actually fairly energetic.

Tuesday: Wow, it's been a long week.

Wednesday: Still a pretty long week.

Thursday: How can it be only Thursday?

Friday: How much can I get done before I leave for Richmond?

If it weren't for Tuesdays, it wouldn't be that bad. What I really need is a way to skip Tuesdays.

That not being an option, I've found I can alleviate the fatigue somewhat by marching up the stairs (second to ninth floors) twice a day and making sure to eat my afternoon snack (2:00: an apple and maybe some nuts if I remembered to pack any).

Co-workers comment on how "healthy" I'm being, but really, I'm just trying to stay awake.

Just this week, as I was slicing up my apple in the break room, one guy said, "Oh, you really like fruit. That's so healthy. I don't really get enough. We're vegetarians, and I try to eat green vegetables like once a week, but it's hard."

"What do you eat?" I'm a vegetarian and I eat vegetables every day. I am not sure how you can be a vegetarian and avoid eating vegetables daily. (Vegetarians get asked the "What do you eat?" question a lot. The answer is, depending on the vegetarian, some variation on "everything but chickens and cows and pigs". I've never asked another vegetarian this question. Till now.)

"Oh, we eat a lot of fried."

I boggle. He's a fried-starchian. I wonder how he stays awake.

Don't tell anyone I told you

Where I'm working we have this huge Manual that tells us how to do our jobs, down to the most miniscule detail. The Manual has accreted a couple thousand pages, give or take, over the many, many years that the organization has been operating. The idea was to cover every eventuality, in a world of ever-changing eventualities. Someday, some final Procedure will be added and the Manual will collapse into a deranged wave function and start absorbing everything in the immediate vicinity. Oh! Happy day indeed, for everything not in the immediate vicinity. One hopes this happens while one is on vacation.

In the meantime, we get tested on the Manual regularly, this being the only way to advance to the next level in the organization.

During training, we are taught how to apply the procedures in the Manual, how to search the Manual electronically, and how to interpret what the damn thing is actually saying. The interpretation part of the process has led to the (waxy yellow) build-up of much Dogma about how to apply the rules in practice and a number of extraneous, time-consuming procedures to effect such application.

Then there is a third layer of received wisdom about just how much of the Manual and the Dogma one must ignore. If everyone practiced the procedures of the Manual as written, or even as mitigated through the waxy haze of the Dogma, the entire organization would grind to a halt and collapse into an even worse wave function. Vacation would not be enough to save one.

The third layer involves closed doors, lowered voices, occasional fingertips pressed across lips and shushing noises. The transmission of the third layer begins with , "Okay. So I know They told you to [tedious process], but you can [skip it]." The end of the transmission is always "Don't tell Them I told you."

So far I've worked under a few different people and I've noticed much consistency across the [tedious process]/[skip it] combinations. (Amazing when you consider that no one ever tells anyone anything.) Still, you occasionally get someone who hews a little closer to the nominal procedures, and you have to be prepared to do things how they want. You don't get to do things how you want (or make up your own rules) until you've passed the Final Test on the Manual.

Today I was meeting with the current person who has utter control over my life and employment situation. We had more of the "Skip that. Don't tell." in one hour than I had heard in the past six months. "Leave this out, leave that out, all you have to do is this [little thing]. Don't bother with [rather important thing (or so I had gathered from the Manual)] at all."

My eyes got wider and wider.

He said, "Don't worry. They never catch me and They won't catch you."

Apocalypse of snow

Not.

So very, very not.

As usual, I dismissed all the wishful thinking cleverly masked as dire warnings. Then, on Friday night we saw the ring around the moon, impressive and suggestive of heavy weather (the math, more photos). The only other time in my life that I saw the moon ring, a huge thunderstorm hit the following night. (I was camping at the time. While we listened to the thunderstorm hammer down outside, the Princess and I congratulated ourselves on having given up on the swampy little pup tent and gone to sleep in her dad's van instead.)

So what horrendous weather rolled in after the moon ring?

A day-long flurry. Yes, it snowed for a whole day and looked pretty in the process, but a minor accumulation of slush on grassy areas just doesn't say "winter storm" to me.

It was still too cold to go outside, so I played with my camera inside.

Sparky by speedlight

Oz got me some gels to help with color correction on the flashgun. Here I've got a tungsten gel (to compensate for light bulb light) on the flash and the white balance on the camera set to tungsten. The result? A kitty with a healthy golden glow and the daylight from the window behind him blued up quite nicely. It was actually bright and sunny outside.

Time continues to fly by. I still have my job. I seem to be getting used to it (in that I am still employed, still able to get myself to the office every day, still interested in what I'm doing). I'm liking the benefits and the steady paycheck. I get days off and my paycheck stays the same. I can make financial plans based on the expectation that the money will show up when it's supposed to. When you're self-employed, you base your plans on the money not showing up and a day off is always a day without pay.

One thing that is hard to get used to is being indoors all day. Leaving home in the dark and returning home in the dark. But it's already starting to get lighter. The last couple weeks I've been able to enjoy winter sunset clouds on my way home. And from one of the windows in the office I can glimpse the Washington Monument turning pink when the sun is hanging out at the horizon. I'm only going to be in this particular office till April, so I'll enjoy the windows and the view while I can.

My trainee group was tops in production for the quarter, so we got swag. They didn't give us swag when we started up. I guess it's cheaper to wait and then give the swag to just ten percent of the incoming trainees. We got a mug and a lapel pin with the organization seal. Pretty minimal swaggage. The mug has a flared top. Yeah, basically they rewarded us with dribble cups.

Am I in a Dilbert cartoon yet?

Break time

When I was heating up my lunch in the break area at work today, the guy with the very large lunchbox (he eats many small meals a day and uses a lunch carrier the size of a small suitcase) was setting up his lunch. He was opening a can of tuna. Jars of mustard and peanut butter sat on the counter beside him.

I said, "Oh. You're not having a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich."

"No. I'm making toast to go with the peanut butter and I'm eating the tuna from the can because I didn't have time to make food today. I've never tried peanut butter and tuna, but I bet the peanut butter would cover up the tuna taste."

"Ugh." Now I'm wondering why, if he dislikes tuna, he's eating it right out of the can. And how he could think the addition of peanut butter would be an improvement.

Mayberry

As I walked from the bus stop to my apartment, I was feeling more and more overwhelmed by my to-do list. Lots of little chores, none of which would take very long to do, but so many! Then a bird shat on my head (the nasty purple kind of poo) and the to-do list instantaneously shrank to "get shit off head".

It was rather freeing, actually, because once I took a shower and washed my hair, I really didn't feel compelled to walk to the grocery store and buy fruit, or run the vacuum, or anything much at all.

My work is going okay, especially since we're still in training and haven't had to do any work yet. The first sign of trouble in paradise cropped up today, when our trainer marked off the last item on the training list and said, "Hey, we've covered everything now. That means you're ready to start working."

I've never heard the sound a rabbit makes when it finds itself caught in the headlights. It probably sounds much like the little squeak which spontaneously emerged from the throats of everyone in my lab group.

The subject then turned to scheduling our Christmas holidays.

Working'll kill ya

Actually, I like my new job. So far.

We haven't done any work yet, but anyway …

We're in training. Eight months of training! The Princess elbows her husband and says, "Yeah, honey, they get training! Imagine that." She has started a job with no training whatsoever and is hating it. The husband says, "You know how to be a project manager." The problem is no one will give her any information about these projects.

I, on the other hand, am being swamped with information. I am having to trust The System. They will give me all the information I need. The information will be sufficient. I will retain enough of it to do my job. I will not crash and burn.

We'll all just keep our fingers crossed, won't we?

What else can I say without betraying too much?

My training group is fun. A bunch of people are fresh out of college. They are so cute! They don't know how to sign up for health benefits and are going to consult their moms. A few of us are older. We are totally down with the benefits because we have been self-employed and this is our big fantasy. Health insurance! That we hardly have to pay for! And paid days off. Baby, we are getting Columbus Day! Off! But yet we still get paid! It's like a dream.

This training system is like being in school again. While there is no formal homework, I feel the need to study and review the plethora of information outside the office. Some of it is starting to make sense.

I have three Smart Cards to get me to work (commuter pass), into the building (key card), and into the office (employee badge). We have noticed that the badges must be scanned to get into the office each time we step out into the hallway to use the bathroom. I feel the need to point this out to the younger, less paranoid ones. "Watch that toilet time, people."

I have discovered that a large part of this job involves denying people Things They Want and, in fact, involves saying "No!" with toddler-like frequency. I find this strangely empowering. I notice that life has yet to squash the urge to be compliant out of the younger ones, who have yet to re-enter the "No!" stage, having only left it about fifteen years ago. I find myself at the advantage. Heh.

Weekend trips home: Getting on that train Sunday evening is not easy.

Whiskey for breakfast

The other morning I dreamed that I had whiskey for breakfast. A not-wee dram of single malt in a cut crystal glass with the sun sparkling through it. Very pretty, but even in my dream I was appalled at myself.

Later that morning, after one cup of coffee, I was buried in the paperwork for my new job (the preliminary forms, just so they'll let me in the door). That whiskey was looking a lot less appalling.

I didn't know it then, but "Whiskey for Breakfast" is a song. In fact, there are many songs. Listen to the pretty one [at].

I stuck with coffee and got through the forms, more or less. I am not sure what to put for my address: my permanent address or my local address in Alexandria? My indecision is an excuse to play with my collection of sticky arrow flags. I will find out the answer at orientation. Or perhaps I'll email the long-suffering HR lady.

One of the forms was a blank fingerprint card. The instruction directed me to go to my local police department and get fingerprinted. What, I can't get a stamp pad from Ben Franklin and do it myself? Well, that would be a bad idea. They only gave me one card and I'd probably make a hideous mess of it, my clothes, my kitchen, the cats … Surprisingly, people need to get fingerprinted often enough, outside of being arrested, that it's on the Police Department FAQ. And fingerprinting is pretty high tech now, I discovered. There is no ink, just a scanner, a laser printer, and a person to press your fingers onto the glass many, many times, until there's a good capture.

That's not the last of the forms by a long shot. The packet included instructions for some online forms to which I won't have access for another week.

I can hardly wait.

Time flies

A whole week since I updated. Not meeting my minimum standard, am I?

I have been keeping busy with arrangements for my upcoming (not quite) move to Northern Virginia. (Words are involved. It's like writing.)

I've lined up a place to live: a cute basement apartment in the charming Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria. It's a serious step up from the basement in Georgetown where I lived in 1989, but not quite as nice as my house. Unlike my house, however, the apartment is a ten minute (according to the bus schedule) bus ride from my office. I signed the lease today. My landlady now has more concrete proof of my employment than I do: my prospective employer faxed her a copy of my offer letter, which is more than I've seen.

I discovered that traffic on the Demon Highway is so horrendous I cannot face it on anything like a regular basis. Fortunately for my sanity, there are an Amtrak station within an easy walk of my office and conveniently timed trains to Richmond.

I'm making a list of everything I'll need to set up a satellite household. Damn. This is expensive. And neverending.