Funny thing these people

So one of my fellow writers was asked their opinion by a co-worker.  He correctly figured out that the person in question really didn't want any advice and probably would disregard any and all tidbits passed on to him with a dimwitted smile (my take...he didn't say that).  Shows me that my friend isn't stupid.

Which brings me to my co-workers.  I started in one part of the same division keeping my head down and working twice as hard as anyone else.  It wasn't about me trying to show up the natives but my personal work ethic.  I can't fake speed and pretend that something takes two hours when it takes ten minutes.  I consider that a form of stealing.  I was well qualified for the position and it was even remarked in my review that I was very over qualified.  Welcome to the 'not-so-great-depression' that's what it is.  When I relocated to the other coast I had to make some serious sacrifices and suck it up.  January my old supervisor volunteered me for the position open 'over the wall' with the international group and the build up group.  I reluctantly interviewed because I had started to look around to see if I could find another job.  Two days later I was in place in the new division.  Same money (everything in this company is a lateral move...what you opened the mail and now are vice-president...lateral move....yeah...really) but more challenging and more people to work with.  In the old position I kept my little head down and worked without too much interaction.  New one - interaction.

Okay, so I speak more Spanish than English some days it being the International division.  I also work with folks who've been in the company anywhere from three to ten years.  With that comes that age old problem of people who don't try anymore.  I am being handed more and more of other folks work.  I don't care.  Seriously I am at work and paid to work...so who cares if worker X or Y used to do it in a week and I kick it out in a day.  As far as I am concerned it's getting the job done.  That's a lost art.  There are some major waves rolling through the department as changes are on horizon again.  I am being asked my opinion by the folks in management constantly.  And they actually don't want me asking back, "Well what do you think?"

Thus I am forced into the uncomfortable position of carefully wording my opinions.  Argh.  But at least we have a smart receptionist!

Snake holes in old coral along the canal by Nick's house.

Woohoo

So I was able to log into Piker meeting last night and actually got to see a few of the 'usual suspects'.  It was raining off and on but no lightning.  The locals have been setting off fireworks so booms aren't necessarily as close as they sound. 

The painting inside of the building is going on and making lovely scents - not.  The crew sucks in all the wrong ways.  They have dripped paint in the stairwells on the flooring and seem to spatter willy-nilly.  I see smudges and streaks.  And for this we are probably paying way too much money.  Everything used to be light blue and they picked a light sea foam green very similar to what one sees in the hospitals and other government buildings.  Maybe they got a discount?

There's a baby lizard that has decided my bathroom is a great home.  I see it running around the walls at all hours.  No more than an inch and half in length I wonder at what point it will outgrow whatever sliver of a hole in the screen it uses?  Hopefully it will have a growth spurt outside the house.  I keep assuring myself it is probably living on mosquitoes and that's a good thing.

Hurricane in the Gulf won't hit my area from all the projections.  Maybe a raining 4th of July weekend.  Only time will tell.

Spam!

I don't know why I check my spam folder but it's one of those little quirks.  At times family have sent things that landed there by mistake but usually it's just filled with offers to sex up my life or get me doped from quality products suddenly available from Canada and Mexico.  It's been a while since bankers have been trying to help me but the emails have begun again. Mr. Hassam Mohamed needed an urgent response.  And I am his 'Dear Friend'.  I mean how cruel I must be that I didn't find a second to kindly read past the box that deletes the unread missive? 

Sadly MR. BARRY MARTINS shouted at me from the outset and I wasn't even curious as to which corner of the globe he works with the Finance Monetary Unit in the 'United...'.  Wow, he works with the Finance Monetary Unit?? Ah...that's ah...special? 

Is there anyone out in the 'real' world actually falling for these emails still?  I hear of the folks that get duped by door-to-door collections.  Hell, one stupid lady let a murderer in her house figuring it had to be the a/c repairman because he was supposed to stop inside.  She flung herself out of the third story window of her condo and two years later is the proud recipient of a 1.8 MILLION dollar lawsuit because the community that ran the ghetto - I mean low income housing - hadn't done enough to protect her from opening the door to strangers.  Maybe she wasn't that stupid?  At least one lawyer is going to be wealthy.  Hey, I wonder what his email is?

Storming

Last few days the rains finally arrived.  In this neck of the woods they arrive in fine style with crashing of clouds and crackling of lightning.  The lights flicker and at times the island is without power.  And naturally that means no Internet.  I had to bail off a Piker meeting two weeks ago and that was the beginning of ickyness with my laptop.  Microstupid took that log off to download 14 urgent updates so while I was frantically trying to monitor the lightning hitting near me and trying to figure out if I should yank the power strip from the wall should it get too close or just the plug from the laptop - against all the warnings not to turn off the computer while downloads were running.  It took an hour and ten minutes.  After that my computer started exhibiting really bad behavior.  I would give it 'time outs' to little effect.  It wanted to phone home at times and say it had been bad but I know Microstupid doesn't giving a rat's furry hindquarter about any of its product once your check or credit card clears. 

Like all bad puters it went to black and gave me fits until I had to scrub its brain out.  Nathan and I 'recovered' the system and last night spent 3 hours further 'recovering'.  I still have to load my Office program so Sand's survives the next 4 eps of "The Building" without cursing Microsoft 7 I use at work (automatically configures my old Word to 7 when I load it at my desk).  So crossing fingers and toes there won't be more lightning tonight and I make the meeting.  On the plus side saw Nick and his son over the weekend and snapped more pictures.  Too bad I can't download them from my camera (yet).  Needless to say I haven't been doing much writing but much cursing. *deep sigh*

Brackish water along canal....dark and deep with gators

Sushi Rock

As some of you may know I am a fan of sushi.  I wrote about it for Piker Press in detail a few years back and even had pictures of the sushi my sister and I made.  Lately co-workers and I have been celebrating our birthdays by going to Bluefin Thai/Sushi place.  For some reason here sushi is served with Thai food.  I never quite get the combo but maybe that's how they deal with the day old fish "Pad Thai special!!" *shrugs*  Today my co-worker and I went to one of her favorite places. 

The lunch specials range from $10-15 a special which isn't bad considering all you get.  We both started with the salad and ginger dressing. I went with the tempura combo since I am not a fan of octopus on my tongue.  The 'bento box' comes beautifully arranged with flourishes most lunch places don't do.  Six pieces of sashimi.  I don't like salmon so I asked for no salmon.  To me salmon should be poached or bbq'd on a cedar plank.  Or lox...hmmmmm....bagels and cream cheese.  Not propped up by seaweed.  I had yellowtail and tuna sashimi, three pieces of sushi - two tuna and one shrimp, 4 slices of California roll and the tempura.  I wasn't overly crazy about their tempura since they didn't seem to cook it properly.  Too greasy so that was left on the plate.  I gobbled up the two slices of pineapple that were so sweet they tasted nearly like mango.

It was delicious and satisfied my hunger for all things raw.  We had a great conversation some work some not.  All in all a nice way to spend a Friday lunch.

Summer are you sure?

Summer Equinox was yesterday.  It did seem like a long day but the extra minute or three I rarely notice.  When I lived up in Michigan the longer days were really noticeable because of the fireflies and the noisy kids playing in the yards at 10pm - way to parent huh? 

The wildfires are still filling the air with smoke.  My company is refurbishing our building.  Nearly two months and the outside is almost finished (the email said it would take a week weather permitting).  Now they have started on the inside.  It is supposed to be done all after hours.  Yesterday the south stairwell I use was shut for painting, the lobby to elevators was scraped and taped with tons of dust in air and the air conditioning died.  So yes, this will be 'fun'. 

Supposed to go back and see Nick Jr on Saturday.  I snapped some pictures last weekend I am going to print up I hope to share with him.  ...tried to put picture here but goog ain't having it.  sigh.  Third try still no go. 

Internet is like Swiss Cheese...full of holes!

And I am not talking about assholes - though there are those - but the sink holes where all of a sudden you aren't able to do what you could mere days or even hours ago.  Sand and I spoke on Friday (thanks Sand! and great hearing Lil's voice) and she said she hadn't been writing on Blogger because she and Bernie have fallen into one of those holes.  In her case it is conflict between her reality and the router's.  Unfortunately the router won.

I was out West on Saturday at a friend's house for a barbecue.  Nick has been taking care of his son for a few years since the young man was struck down with a severe form of MS.  Nick Jr actually gets online via Facebook even having only the use of his right hand.  This young man humbles me.  He nearly died two months ago and still has a terminal illness yet he and I talked for a good hour.  Next weekend I plan on going back and talking more with him.  The government doesn't see him as disabled since one of his neuro scans a few years ago wasn't 'severe' enough.  He has an amazingly solid grasp of how ridiculous it all is and we talked about that and his photography.

Before Nick, Jr. was diagnosed with MS he had gone to school for photography and the entire house is covered in family pictures and his photographs.  He doesn't have any of them on CD or digital images.  His current state of health has him on some funky meds and not able to go far from home.  He and I talked about getting his pictures loaded onto discs so he could start putting them on Facebook if nothing else.  I snapped a few pictures of the canal behind their home where Nick fishes.  He calls it his catch and release program since all he pulls out are bass which you can't eat in this state unless you want to glow in the dark.

Weather finally a foot.....

Well the rainy season is here.  Only it's not nice sweet scattered showers with rainbows currently but hail storms, massive clouds rumbling with lightning running amok in the air and danger warnings flashing on the TV and Internet.  Which strikes me as pretty funny given you aren't supposed to have TV running or be online in severe weather.  Silly me for actually paying attention in those science classes I took in college.  Last night I had to bail on the Piker Press meeting which made me unhappy since it was folks I like to talk with as a rule.  *wicked pout*

Good stuff I have been catching up and getting a bit ahead in my tale "The Building".  Having had some really crappy news and sudden deaths actually feeds my muse rather well.  Gee is it any wonder I write how I write?  Fires burning to the west have been blowing soot, dust and ash across the state again and I am not good sucking down a lung full of that mess so coughing like I am going to toss a lung out.  The rain does help that a bit.  But this morning the smoke haze was so thick it was nearly a fog.  The sun rose angry red and soon was smothered out of view before I could snap a picture.  All in all a strange week.

It will be interesting

My old supervisor sent out an all-department meeting on Friday at nearly 5pm for today.  Not her boss, not my boss - the supervisor.  One of the gals I worked with said, "Well, this can't be good."

It probably won't be.  There are things done I find awkward given my background in accounting.  But like RidgeWalker I am not the one in charge, I am just the cog in the machinery here.  So I plan on keeping my mouth shut and nodding at the right times in order to let the half hour pass quickly. 

The weekend ended with some rain and now it is sultry and sticky outside in all the wrong ways.  I did get time to read my latest 4 episodes to Suzanne so I will do my edits and get those off my puter. 

Tropical weather gives us tropical flowers I don't have a clue what they are called.

Birthday Month

No not mine.  That was last month.  June has always been the birthday month in my family.  My two younger siblings are 3 days apart on the calendar plus a year.  Then I have a good 5 or 6 cousins all born in June and four of my friends.  Add in Father's Day and Hallmark makes a bundle off me in June.  Or at least they used to.  Until I began making my own cards with pictures I take. 

Smoke is in the air again with the fire they never got control on from earlier this week.  It's weird here because the only 'mountain' is the garbage dump anything can and does take to the wind on any given day.  Currently it's the smoke and ash.  Usually it's the pollens and allergens.  And every now and then the dust from Africa blows across the Atlantic and there is an ocher shade to the air.  Without mountains and valleys to trap the stuff it just blows back and forth across the state. 

My mind being as convoluted as it is then thinks of the Great Depression and how the lack of rain coupled with horrific winds blew dust and dirt across states destroying the bread basket of America in less than two years.  The pictures I've seen are stunning in their starkness and desolate conditions.  I ache seeing what happened.  Then I think of today and how the economy is in the toilet with weather conditions damaging entire towns and cities and wonder how far have we really come?

from Library of Congress

Argh....and set sail

Growing up on the Pacific Ocean I have always been fascinated by the sea.  My Irish grandfather used to take us walking on the beach in Seal Beach as children and we'd watch ships sailing and cruising to exotic locations (like a few miles further to the Ports A Call in the freight area where now they have cruise ships leaving).  When we moved south to San Diego I got to see sail boats up close and personal.  I was amazed at the idea of taking those little itty bitty hunks of wood and canvas and embarking wherever to see what there was to see on the sea.  The Saturday morning movies introduced me to the idea of pirates.  I was completely hooked.  That robbers would suddenly sail up and steal from unsuspecting folks with nowhere to run and hide tripped my imagination.  I was all of ten or eleven at some Boys and Girls Club summer day camp when I was introduced to paper mache.  Naturally I took the coffee cup and made a gray and green felt monstrosity resembling a pirate.  It was crafted either in mid-June or July because I gave to my father for either Father's Day or his birthday in July.  My dad had that on his desk for decades and later moved it home.  In fact when I went back to my parents house in my forties my dad still had it on his dresser.  It moved to his home office when mom redecorated. 

When I was a teenager my cousin moved down the coast bringing with him his sail boat.  He took us out and I loved the feeling of the wind whipping my hair around and the vastness of the ocean beneath the wooden hull of his boat.  Once he passed away when I was 17 my older brother and I tried to convince my folks that we could keep up the boat.  Alas, it wasn't to be and it got sold or given away before winter set in and my parents would have to pay to have someone live aboard to make sure it didn't rot on the docks. 

Enter the summer movies.  Pirates of the Caribbean, in Search of More Money (yeah I know that's not the name).  Like Sand said in her review on Piker Press (http://www.pikerpress.com/) it's based on a kids ride at Disneyland so don't expect tons just enjoy.  And I did enjoy.  But it reminded me again that I've always had that fascination. 

Over the years, I read the history of pirates in a few books and found the privateers to be something other than what many of the movies portrayed.  And that many a captain abused his crew to mutiny and some of the historical personalities who charted and 'discovered' new islands were often set a drift or slain by their crew.  It didn't diminish my interest just illustrated the cautionary tale of treat others as you want to be treated.  As some of my friends know two or so years ago I was supposed to house sit for a neighbor while the family went sailing around the world.  At least that was their intention.  Like many intentions it was derailed.  I didn't end up house sitting because of complications and they didn't stay out for the two years they'd planned. 

Their planning was odd.  The husband of my friend ran the computer department of a major university for decades.  Born into a wealthy family he could afford to retire early and buy the boat of his dreams.  I saw pictures and was less than impressed in this day and age.  It didn't look sturdy enough or large enough for two adults and a very high strung teenager to spend two years.  Hell, the kitchen-storage area was little more than what you get in a Embassy Suites or Comfort Inn extended stay room.  Only smaller!  They didn't have a satellite phone or any of the fancy electronics I expected from the man.  Slowly it dawned on me that he never intended the sailing to be easy but his Hemingway-esque venture to remember in his declining years.  Man against Sea (just with wife and Internet addicted gamer kid in tow).  My friend was stunned to find out that she wasn't keeping her cell phone and would be able to access the Internet now and then - when they weren't out on the water.  He didn't have any weapons aboard but a spear gun for fishing. Another neighbor and I joked that the captain would have a mutiny on his hands for sure at the rate he was going. 

They nevertheless set sail a month later than planned and went south.  First stop was Baja California (Mexico) where we got one postcard.  "Having fun" sort.  I didn't have a way to reply easily. All I could think was, "Oh My God, you've been out at sea for a month you must be out of wine by now."  My friend likes her nightly bottle of wine.  The news was sporatic and eventually just a comment from her adult daughter how her mom was missing everyone.  Their trip was cut short due to illness in the family (her sister who's an absolute hoot is dying of a nasty variety of cancer) so they flew home at Christmas.  They were gone for little more than 13 months. 

Yes, flew home ...from Australia. 

This weekend the husband flew back to Australia to go sail the boat home.  All I can wonder is if now he's going to find that slice of his life he wanted for his declining years.  He will be sailing by himself ...Man Against Sea. 

Heavy Heart

HR sends out on average ten to fifteen emails a week.  Some are pre-packaged infomercials from our healthcare providers with the slick advertising bits and pieces easily recognized as the product of years of research by crackerjack marketing 'experts' who think they need to tell you exactly why fatty foods are bad and water and exercise is good.  Hmmm....first day on the planet?  Some are to alert us to the sections of the building closed because of the renovation schedule (the week to paint the outside of the building lasted a month and many emails telling us that winds were bad in Florida but they weren't responsible if our cars were painted in the mustard and orange shades they painted the building).  The weekly FedEx mailing alert and the notification that Juan will wash and detail your car for $25 bucks leave the keys and the directions to your house in the basket at the receptionist's desk (ok...he doesn't need directions since you have your registration in the glove box with the address plainly printed).

Yesterday there was a horrible piece of news I could have done without.  My former co-worker died.  He was only 30.  He was in a motorcycle accident in Tampa whereas the truck didn't stop and he didn't survive.  The email started "As some of you already have heard" from the sobs and shouts around the cube farm none of us had.  Everyone was pretty well stunned by the news. 

Jonathan was not the best worker but he was fun.  His approach to life was to enjoy the hell out of it and plan well for retirement.  He grew up the pet of a bunch of senior citizens who he'd refer to as "the usual suspects" whenever I asked him what he did over the weekend. Answering after looking right then left, "I hung out with the usual suspects".  He took his grandfather to lunch every other month and worried about his sugar and cholesterol.  Not his grandfathers...HIS.  He would screw up and then say, "It just leaves me more room for improvement".  I covered his tush often and with amusement because he really did enjoy life and lived it.  He worried about gaining weight so there were always at least a dozen choices of sugar free candy on his desk.  He would breakdown and buy cookies then foist them off on me and another gal.  He'd disappear for hours when he was supposed to be working then come back and say, "Oh, yeah I gave blood".  I mean how could you not find his approach to life fun?  His funeral is today - I won't be able to go.  But he will be missed.

Stormy Weather

It's the beginning of the hurricane season.  That means all the local news shows are telling us how to kiss our asses goodbye in the event of epic Cat 5 (category five level hurricanes - those sucky ones that kill folks and cause millions of dollars worth of damage) events.  Yes, they call them events.  Like I'm supposed to run out and buy tickets to the 'main event'.  What I am supposed to buy is canned goods, toilet paper and keep my gas tank full.  Okay, have you seen the cost of gas?  Hello.....that's a luxury item in La-La land.  A dollar a gallon more than it was a year ago but nobody is seeing the frog boiling going on (the old adage if you try to put a live frog in a pot of boiling water it will hop right out but if you put it in lukewarm water and gradually raise the heat soon you'll be feasting on boiled frog).

This past weekend we had some interesting weird weather.  Naturally I grabbed my camera.  Had the weather happened a week before the Camping followers (ie currently 'campers' given they gave up all their worldly goods and cashed out their savings in order to prepare to be snatched off the face of Earth) there would have been more idiots sipping from the Kool-aid cup for sure.