beancounters

We drive, we drive, we drive

Home again, at 9 p.m. Bunny and I dropped Roxanne in the city at some random street corner she seemed familiar with from her past life. She assured us she would not get mugged. She better write or blog tomorrow to let us know she survived the red-eye flight back to D.C., followed by a normal work day. Rox, you were a great navigator.

What a terrific group I know now!

They all wanted to know who Anthony is, and how I know him. Sweetie, you are famous among dozens.

We eat, we talk, we blog

I'd just like to say how surreal this is, but in a friendly, Earth-motherly way, if that works for you ... to sit around, chatting and blogging. Ms. Jane is beside me, commenting on another person's site. Jo is writing, AGAIN, who knows what. Grace's sister is making history by creating her own site, right on the spot. Roxanne is offline, but looks ready to either take a nap or log back on.

Oh, now Jo is memorializing the whole day with her camera. She blogs almost hourly, did you know that? I announced that I thought we'd all come here to run an intervention on her.

It's Jo's birthday. I'mma have to show you the cupcake/candle creation that was wrought for the occasion.

Could you tell I was tipsy on that last post? Ms. Jane is critiquing it on her own laptop, even as I type on mine. Soon she will put two and two together.

Hola, Santa Cruz!

This is the place to be - Grace's lovely, lovely house in Santa Cruz. This is a lovely (did I say that already?) house with lots of wood, random staircases, a Buddha that overlooks the bathroom, and a dreamy kitchen, small but with shelves up to Heaven.

I've met Jo, Ms. Jane, Grace (of course), Roxanne (who made the trip down from SF with me), Beth, Badgerbag, and a lot of others. My daughter Bunny , and Jo's daughter Eliz, hit it off immediately, formed a little two-girl clique and disappeared. This is exactly what I thought would happen; Jo and I are delighted.

I'm working on my second mimosa, and have dibs on a third in a few minutes. First, some quiche. PIctures to follow. You'd know this is a blogger's brunch - half the guests are chatting in the kitchen, the rest are blogging in the living room! I'm next to Ms. Jane right now, with another guy on the opposite couch, probably making notes about my cute skirt. (No, probably not, but I can dream.)

More later. PIctures at eleven. Off for quiche.

The tail-end of caffeine insomnia

I'd just like to say ...

Maya's birthday was very cool. Saw many PPA buddies. Swore our undying loyalty to each other. But nobody knows what day the semester starts. I don't quite know why I thought that was funny, but it was. 'When does school start?' 'I dunno.' 'Gee, uh, you think somebody will e-mail us the first day of class?'

Memo

To: PPA 205 Students

From: PPA 205 Professor

It's 6:30 p.m., and you're cordially invited to get your asses to class.

Dirty T turns out to be a guy, with a penchant for making finger foods, and with a reasonably clean countenance. He was nice. I tried not to tease him too much, but since he was surprised I knew his nickname before we even met, I had to pretend to be telepathic for just a moment. I did. You know this. This had to be done.

Tomorrow - road trip! San Francisco, Rox, Santa Cruz, Grace and Jo! And Bunnylou, who talked her way into riding shotgun. Well, she's a blogger too - she'll be welcomed, I'm sure. Also, BB installed wifi on my laptop. We tried it out an authentic wifi-infused coffee shop on the way back from Savvy's house. Success!

Yeah, I said live-blogging was so last year. But I wasn't doing it last year. Now I need to catch up with the cool people, see.

Literary punk

It's Saturday*, so you have time to listen to the songs of Harry and the Potters. Maya sent us a timely link, which said they were playing at a branch of the local library at 2:00 today.

They're these two guys, who are both Harry Potter, and who sing punk songs they wrote themselves about their life at Hogwarts. They were very funky and funny. The crowd liked them a whole lot - many already knew the songs. My favorite was The Human Hosepipe, but Save Ginny Weasley brought down the house and made the books jump off the shelves. I bought a CD and had this 8 year-old girl go up after the show and get it autographed. I'm telling you, if they ever come to a library near you, go and see them.

* Well, there's 1 1/2 hours left in Saturday. But tomorrow's Sunday, and I know you definitely have time on Sunday.

Playing with my web friends

Looking forward to the weekend ... Saturday evening is Maya's birthday party, at Savvy's new place. From the invitation list, it looks like it'll be a big bash. BB and Bunny want to come along too, to find out whom I have been bumming around studying with for a year. Even so, there'll be a large number of people I won't have met yet, with credentials of questionable repute. Much to my consternation, I was informed someone named "dirty T" will be doing the cooking for the party. I ask you!

Then Sunday, it's a road trip to Santa Cruz, with a possible stop in SF to pick up a carless blogger who wants to come to Grace's brunch. That'll be one long-ass car trip, folks, but I'm burning CDs to pass the time, and I'll hopefully have company for half the ride.

Grace says she has wifi at her house, but my laptop doesn't have a wifi card. Just never bothered to install one! So expect a full update when I get home. Old-fashioned, I know. Sorry. But live-blogging is so last year. And it's not like you come here on Sundays anyway.

I just noticed, everyone on my weekend social calendar has a blog. Except BB and (possibly) dirty T. Oh, the world we live in!

Bad writing

SJSU has announced the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners - affectionately known as the annual bad writing contest. Who do you have to be to enter this? Shoot, I ought to cull the best bits of this blog, and submit them next year!

Because handshakes take too long

Study: 72 Percent Of High-Fives Unwarranted

DALLAS—Specialists at the National Exuberance Institute said Monday that more than three quarters of national high-five slap exchanges are unnecessary. "Abuse and inappropriate implementation of the gesture is epidemic," said NEI president Avi Gupta. "Celebratory high-fives are marking such mundane accomplishments as the clearing of paper jams, the ordering of hot wings, the viewing of favorite TV commercials, and the simultaneous wearing of identical items of clothing." Gupta called for the use of restrained high-five alternatives, such as the "thumbs up" and the exchange of curt nods.

Babies nowadays as young as eight months old can do high-fives. Have you noticed?

High-fives and the prevalance of flip-flops - two things I do not understand about society today.

Spread a little sunshine

Yesterday I suffered through one of the worst meetings of my life. An hour of my life is lost forever.

To her everlasting credit, when Uberboss came on board, she ended the bleak tradition of managerial skulkery and subterfuge practiced by her predecessor. So we have monthly meetings wherein she faces us all and gets stuff out in the open. Some meetings are actually informative, as well as full of things to laugh about at others' expense.

But yesterday was no such luck. People nattered on and on about conventions they went to, work flowcharts they created, and legislation they think they might try and write someday. Snooze. And it was all in the agenda, God help us, so no amount of throat-clearing could put them back on topic.

The Birthday Club has become a source of controversy. Didn't I predict this months ago, didn't I? My own boss bought a sheet cake to celebrate Uberboss's legislative confirmation; consequently Uberboss's secretary neglected to buy the monthly birthday cake; consequently we forgot to acknowledge the July birthdays; consequently (I think) fully half our office boycotted Uberboss's cake.

Unless they boycotted the cake because they all HATE HATE my boss and everything she touches. Or maybe they hate Uberboss? Any way you go, very uncomfortable.

Somebody (not me) put a suggestion in the Suggestion Box that the birthday club be turned into a Sunshine Club, staffed by one person, funded by everybody, and sending out cards and announcements for all birthdays, funerals, engagements, bar mitzvahs, etc. Imagine! That's a big job, it's thankless, and if you mess up, you become an office joke. Gee, let me volunteer! Uberboss put it out among us for comment. Deep, resounding silence. Most uncomfortable.

I don't get it. What's wrong with having a quiet office birthday? A few coworkers bring you a card, or a Garfield magnet for your cubicle collection, or treat you to lunch, and you're done. And if you don't have coworkers who like you enough to do these things for you, well, you've got worse problems than can be helped by one piece of cake. If I am ever an Uberboss, these attempts to create false cohesion will be dropped. I don't care what Covey says. I figure, it's enough we consent to sit in the same office, act civil in the hallways, and don't kill each other.

Anonymity is the spite of life

Must restrain myself at once. The more people I tell about this blog, or who find out by roundabout means, the harder it will be to find people about whom I may rag safely.

For instance, if my coworker IT Guy ever finds me out, it'll be all over. The next morning, I will go to work and find this in place of my PC.

Oh yeah ... books ...

It's mid-July; I should be reading my policy books for the fall semester! Now that I've shifted into summer "vacation" mode, it's darned tough to imagine shifting back.

Well, Maya says she's inspired this time around by the Covey book that's been assigned for our Public Mgmt course. Maybe I will be, too.

Then I'll get sucked into the cult of time-management, never to be seen again! Run, Maya, run! Save yourself!

There are worse things than being a procrastinator, Maya. I'll tell you more tomorrow.

A coworker who went through a policy graduate program at another school is slowly making her way through her old textbooks. She brings me the textbooks she doesn't want anymore. And they're not even worth anything on the Amazon Marketplace. Thanks! As if I'm not compiling a ginormous number of books on my own!

Be vewwy, vewwy quiet

Spoke to Anthony over the weekend, and he suggested this topic of debate.

Sylvester chases Tweety, Wiley Coyote chases the Roadrunner, Elmer stalks wabbits and ducks ... one of the central themes of Warner Bros. cartoons is the punishment and persecution of characters whose only crime is following their instinctive need to hunt for their food. Why?

My first thought is that most of these cartoons were made after WWII, during the big urbanization boom. Popular culture turning away from the rural life. Picture Sylvester forswearing pet birds, taking his pocket change, and buying 2-for-1 game hens at the A & P instead. Would that have made him more socially acceptable?

Separated at birth?

Harry Potter and Dimitri Shostakovich. Uncanny!

[via Anthony, of course]

FYI: It is TOO BLOODY HOT to ...

... vacuum my car to try and find whatever the hell died in there to make it smell as horrible as it does.

... shampoo the carpets in my car for the same reason and because the vacuuming didn't remotely take care of the problem.

... tack up the four floor mats from the car on the back fence, and spray the shit out of them with soap and the garden hose, followed by an exorcism with a bell, book and candle.

... edge and mow the meadow lawn again. [Aah, BB's doing the mowing, but I'll leave this up as his own bitch about the heat.]

The black robes of justice

It's Saturday, so you have time to get a second cup of coffee and read Ricky's take on the Supreme Court nomination(s) and Dubya's chances of making history in spite of himself. It's first-rate stuff.

Mwah-ha-ha-haaa!

Congratulations on being the creator of a new Evil Plan (tm)!

Your objective is simple: Soul Accumulation

Your motive is a little bit more complex: To show them all

Stage One:

To begin your plan, you must first Traumatize a Young Helpless Child. This will cause the world to sit up and take notice, stunned by your arrival. Who is this Despoiler of all that is Good and Nice and True? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good as an Intelligence Transferred into a Computer?

Stage Two:

Next, you will Contaminate/poison that Opera House in Sydney. This will cause countless hordes of the Religious Right to flock to you, begging to do your every bidding. Your name will become synonymous with the Spice Girls, as lesser men whisper your name in terror.

Stage Three:

Finally, you will Activate your Great Supernatural Forces, bringing about an End to Sanity. This will all be done from a Fake Mountain, an excellent choice if we might say. These three deeds will herald the end, and the citizens of this planet will have no choice but to elect you their new god.

Too lazy to come up with your own Evil Plan? I know I am. Go here and let them build one for you! [Via Our Robot Leader.]

Another 'Bob' to worship

Bob Saget is God.

It has been my life-long goal to spread the word of Lord Saget, and I vow to keep on spreading the love until every soul has been saved. Millions of people all over the world have already joined our forces. It took some convincing, but after looking deep into their hearts, even the biggest non-believers eventually turned toward the light. It's impossible to deny the power of our chosen LEADER, after all, there isn't a man or woman on earth who can make you smile quite like BOB SAGET!

Praise 'Bob'! I have seen the light! And in the spirit of 'Full House' worship, let me ask you: WWUJD?

[I'd just like to brag that last week's Friday Blasphemy alarmed my mother so much, she ordered my brother away from the computer for fear of lightning strikes. In the words of Uncle Jesse, "Sweeeet!"]

Hi-ya! Beware the sword of the civil samurai

I'm not going to beat this subject to death. Promise. (Don't tell me "too late".) But one solid month after I put in my first request for access to the database, IT Guy finally came through. Only then, when it was safe to assume I wouldn't holler at him, did he come around to visit in person. The thing is, I like him. He's funny and he's smart. It just bugs the shit out of me that this department ever authorized him to invent a database that only he can operate. Now the man is moving on, and he's going to attempt to teach another IT Guy the ropes. Just one guy! I believe there will be a solemn blood ritual and a decoder ring involved in the exchange.

On the ugly side of today, I got a voice mail from Mrs. S. She's a former patron of one of the businesses we oversee. The business defrauded her and skipped town; now she wants compensation from a special insurance fund, and I, Pamela, the civil samurai, am the One Thing standing in her way. At least, that's what she assures me whenever she leaves me voice mails.  Today's sounded like this:

"You may remember me; you told me to send in my paperwork to you and I did and that was one to two months ago and you told me I'd receive a jillion dollars by now and I haven't received anything. This is just another example of California's incompetence --" beep boop [the sound of me accidentally deleting her message]

Lucky for me, she called again and this time we spoke in person! Hurray! I listened with great enjoyment as her story morphed from "I sent you everything, you incompetent beancounter" to "I requested insurance forms from somebody" to "I may have submitted my insurance forms to the proper department, which has nothing to do with you, but you're my only contact phone number, and you let me vent for free." Okay! I think we've made some real progress today. I explained she had to speak to the insurance department and I transferred her call, while listening to the dulcet tones of her continued beratement.

A few hours later, the insurance department queen herself came to my cube. "Thanks for the voice mail," she gushed. "Golly, she's charming. Is it a full moon, or what?"

My call to Grace

So to start with: Blogher is this July 30. I'd been thinking for months that I ought to go, especially since it's taking place in Santa Clara, which is pretty close to Sacramento, and will feature bloggers I've read for a long time. But I just couldn't muster up the interest. From what I've read, it's going to be all about (a) women, (b) writing, and (c) the blog medium as realm of technogeekitude. Now, I already know (a) pretty well, have no interest in the geek factor of (c), and as for (b), it should be painfully obvious by now I'm no writer.

Still, Grace has been talking up a post-Blogher brunch she wants to throw the next day. No! - worse for my guilt, alas! - I was there, talking to her on IM, the day she conceived of the whole post-Blogher brunch thing! And here I was, unwilling to follow through and commit to a whole weekend rubbing elbows with strangers.

Well, reservations for the conference finally ran out, which took some pressure off me. And then yesterday I decided that dammit, the hell with Blogher, what I really want to do is meet Grace and anybody she thinks is good enough to be friends with, and see her cool house and use her free wifi to rat her out about stuff like dust bunnies under the furniture or framed photos of Nancy Reagan on the mantle.

So I called her to accept her invitation. It was a comedy of errors, I must say. First of all, she started the call thinking I was the veternarian's office where Malcolm was being treated. Grace's poor little dog had accidentally swallowed meds he's not supposed to have, and the whole family was waiting by the phone.

After that mix-up, Grace demonstrated what must be either amazing psychic powers, or waay too much blog knowledge about me.

"Are you at work? I bet you're at your desk eating lunch right now," said Grace, "out of little Tupperware containers. And you're wearing clogs!"

All completely correct. Plus a baggie of carrots! "I can totally picture it!" she said.

Then we settled down to what we love to do best - gossip about other bloggers. (I suspect that's going to be the real drawing power of Blogher.)

I really flustered her at one point. She expressed admiration for the tomato plants I'd blogged about a few days ago. "No, those are my mother's tomatoes," I reminded her.

Grace's composure was shattered. "I should have known! Now you know, Pammy, I confess I only skimmed your blog that day!" Remorseful, and hoping to make it up to me in some small way, she offered to put up my whole family at her house for a few years, rent-free, while I complete my grad work at UC Santa Cruz. Wasn't that special of her?

Turning Grandma

Whew. Finished HP6 last night at a reasonable hour. All in all, I'm satisfied with the way it came out, though sad. Interesting developments. Number 7 will be very different than I imagined!

[Warning: HP6 spoilers in the comments section below. Read at your own risk.]

So then I should have gone to bed, but I stayed up after cleaning the kitchen to catch a little of the movie The First Wives Club. Trying to figure out why it's so awful. I decided the supporting cast/characters are unimpeachable, but the plot reads like a self-congratulatory docudrama instead of a comedic adventure, and the three main characters over-emote so dreadfully, it's like they're getting stage direction tips from old Three Stooges movies. A full-blown pie fight would not have been out of place. I guess that's Hugh Wilson's idea of how three actresses who usually star in movies by themselves should act when sharing the bill.

Got a package in yesterday's mail, from my grandmother. This was unexpected, and not a little unnerving, since it's not close to any birthdays or anniversaries. Bunny got some clothes and a book of Bible bedtime stories. BB got a shirt, and I got a robe. And the hilarious thing about the robe is, it looks exactly like the style I've seen my grandma wear her whole life - short-sleeved, pastel, cotton, with lace and two big pockets in the front.

Just putting on this robe made me want to break out in hysterical laughter. So it begins! I'm officially turning into my grandmother! She has passed on the mantle of her matronly office! Between this and my salt-and-pepper hair, it's practically a lock. Very freaky. Yesterday I could only stand a few minutes before running back to my T-shirt and shorts, but this morning, well ... it's just so darned comfortable ...

Karen nailed it in the comments: It's a housecoat! Gaah!