Weblog 10

January 24, 2006~ 8:30pm
Sunday brought joy here in Pittsburgh- the Steelers are going to the Superbowl- and let me say this: I am not a football fan-- but my mother most definitely is, so on Sunday I picked up some McDonalds instead of our usual restaurant jaunt and we ate hearty right there in front of the tv-- she was in her glory. LOL! At half-time, I ran down to the market and did her weekly shopping in 20 minutes flat, then raced back to catch the last 2 quarters. I have to say, when a team is smokin' the way the Steelers have been, makes a believer and a fan out of even the most casual of sport enthusiasts.

I mean- I have no idea what is going on on the field, but I can pick up enthusiam-- I can see the way those players scatter like struck pool balls and magnetize themselves to the opposing team mates, and I can suck up the roar of the crowd in the stadium. It was lots of fun- and I'm glad I watched nearly the whole game with mum. I think I may show up at work the Friday before the big game, one half my face painted black, the other gold.

Why not? Doesn't happen every year, ya know. I'm entitled to a day of absolute mayhem now and again......and a face to go with it.


January 27, 2006~ 8:50pm
Let me pour it all out here. This has been a strange week of drowning- mostly in work- at work- but in a way that feels like real- not metaphorical drowning- because the waves of it keep coming. I tread and tread the water but make no headway whatsoever- the waves get higher and faster and I'm drifting out, almost giving up, my legs cramping, and I'm watching the shore lights turn to specks on the receding, landed horizon. I've been filling in part of each day on the phones because my dear colleague is sick.....very, very sick- and that's a helpless feeling after working with her for eight years to finally realize we're all aging, and that with it--comes serious and life-threatening illnesses.

We've added new offices...and we've added days... extra days to these offices, and I now bill for 13 of them. That work doesn't go away; in fact it has multiplied to an enormous degree in the last several months--months that Patty has been ill, and this week I felt it all getting away from me. No matter how hard I try, there is just not one long stretch of time to do an uninterrupted day's work. There are 2 hour meetings, an hour and a half each day on the phones... and another problem is the overcrowding in our office. We have grown to the point where there simply is not enough room OR SPACE to hear yourself think -

Now add to that, a parking lot that looks like a filled-up Rubik's cube where cars are blocked in from every angle, and add an entire computer upgrade- new servers, etc., that require 3 full time computer IT people (also 'on site') in everyone's computers changing passwords, file storage, removing bookmarks, etc. NOW -


let me say a word about NOISE.........

THERE IS NOTHING I HATE WORSE IN THIS WORLD THAN HUMAN CACAPHONY: TALKING, JOKING, GOSSIPING, CLUSTERS OF FOLKS ALWAYS AN ELBOW AWAY, JAWING AND CLUCKING....and just in general, being a huge disruption to the kind of quiet concentration I need to do my job which involves continual checking of facts and numbers, and I have a cube. I do not have an office. I do not have quiet...therefore, I have neither of the two basic tools I need to perform with any degree of success.

There. I've unloaded. I am hopelessly behind in my work, and now I am being attacked on the poetry board I've been posting at for relaxion-- for coming to the defense of someone who was being pummeled sadistically by an insufferable egotist who happened in. (He then turned his vitriole on moi.) And nowI am targeted in a very passive-aggressive way by a maven of the board whose writing I admire, but for some unknown reason has decided she HATES ME. lol....no shit....just out and out despises me. And you know why? I 'post' too much, I 'like' too much- I'm too upbeat for the likes of her-

but I suspect it's pure territorialism and she liked the place much better before I happened on the scene.

So you see? I guess we all 'hate noise'. It's just humbling to know that you are somebody else's. Life.....is real damn hard.



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