Strongly Worded

Some Cool and Not-So-Cool Things I'd Like to Discuss

Cool:

1) My subway pass. After 3 years of daily driving to a (soul-sucking) suburban workplace, and then a summer of "commuting" from my bedroom to my home office, it brings me great joy to be a member of the Greater Metro Area Workforce. I bought a pass for October and it feels luxurious to get into the station and zip through the turnstiles knowing I can ride as much as I want. During the summer, when money worries were extreme, it was sad to see the balance on my pre-paid card drop with every trip. Sometimes I walked to save cash.

2) Some damn good reads. I just finished Allegra Goodman's Intuition, which is about politics in an academic cancer research lab. It is riveting and I loved, it especially since so many of my friends/friends' loved ones are scientists working in these settings. I also read T.C. Boyle's somewhat creepy Inner Circle (also about researchers--this time about Kinsey's people). And also Elizabeth Berg's We are all Welcome Here. Which made me cry.

3) The fact that I have finished writing all of the profiles (more than 55 of them--about 200 single spaced pages!) for the trade association consulting project that has brought me such trials. On Friday, I rewarded myself with some Key Lime pie. When the profiles are completely edited, and I have written an introduction, I will be getting a massage.

Not So Cool:

1) My main email account (yahoo) has become overrun with spam. Every day, I get maybe 15 spam messages in my in-box, in addition to dozens of messages that get appropriately diverted to "bulk mail". I have had this account since college and really do not want to part with it, but the situation is grim. The other problem is that I now have eight email accounts. There's the "main" yahoo one (now spam-infested), the dating/shopping one, the blog one, two teaching ones (official university account and gmail account), the "applying for jobs" one, the foster job one, and the consulting project one. I definitely do not want to open another account.

2) I have offended my new boss. At my foster job, there is a lot of socializing after hours, which I relish after three years of working with a single 50-ish co-worker. However, I have made a gaffe. Last night a bunch of us went out for dinner, and my boss said something about himself which struck me as funny, and I giggled, which then caused everyone else at the table to start giggling, and then someone else made a well-meaning joke at the boss' expense, and then the boss stormed out and vanished into the night. When I called to apologize, he didn't pick up.

Anyone who knows me knows that I sometimes get swept up in random hilarity. In sixth grade, someone mentioned the Dead Milkmen (an 80s band) during class, and I couldn't stop laughing. I was asked to leave the classroom. I have a quirky sense of humor. Sometimes it gets set off randomly. But the boss at my foster job doesn't know this. And he is way influential and I really want his help in getting a real job. And of course I feel bad for hurting his feelings.

Posted by Dori at 12:20 PM