Some were obviously derived from their proper names…

Beauregard —> Beau

Scooter —> Scoots or Bootsie

Harlequin —> Harley Q

Matilda —> Tillie

Some were based on physical characteristics and give you a clue what the given animal looked like…

Beauregard —> Beast

Dulcie —> Larddonkey or Orca (guess who is gray on top, white on the bottom, and fat?)

Sasha —> Fluffers

Clove —> Pumpkin Belly or Couch (as in, the color of my old one)

Some were based on personality…

Lucy —> Lucifer (although she is not very devilish in reality)

Roscoe —> Fizzbin (referring to the fluff in her cranial cavity)

But only one truly has no explanation…

Tillie —> Goatgirl Monkeypants.

Sometimes these things just happen!

Friday: leave work early to be able to stop by the grocery store and pick up pizza, as Christopher needs to be up at the high school by 6:00 for theatre crew. He had gone to his father’s house to get his show black clothes, and I was supposed to fetch him there but found out on the way there that since he was hauling his choir tuxedo home his father had already gotten him (thanks again, Dad.) Drop that leg of running around, get to the house, feed everyone, drop Christopher off and then drop Anna at a friend’s house for a movie and sleepover. Pick Christopher up at 9:00.

Saturday: Christopher is picked up at 7:15 for a robotics competition 20 miles south of here. Rose is due at the middle school at 9:00 for theatre crew, after which she will go to a friend’s house for a Miyazaki marathon and sleepover. Anna needs to be picked up at 1:00; then after a grocery store run (last day on cheap milk, my father is out of bananas, they have 2-for$5 bacon, dude!) she and I will head out to the ubergiant-mall for Christmas and miscellany shopping. Being out and about then works out well as Christopher has to be picked up across town at around 4:45, brought home to change and get food, then back to the high school for theatre at 6:00. That should wind up around 9:00 with one final pick-up and today’s trips will be done.

Sunday: Christopher back at school at 12:30 for the final play performance. Rose needs to be picked up sometime mid-afternoon, then Christopher again around 3:00. Everyone under the age of, well, me will complain about being tired and I will make them do homework anyway, take their evening baths, and get ready for school on Monday.

Somehow this seemed a lot more complicated in my head, I guess it’s not so bad after all. It bemuses me a lot of the time, this being a parent thing, but once one learns to go with the flow and not stress out too much about what has to be done, it’s not so tough.

It occurred to me this evening that often I only make 4 turns between work and the house:

(1) Left out of the parking ramp;

(2) Right onto Lexington;

(3) Left onto Ruggles;

(4) Left into driveway.

Maybe some evening I’ll be bored enough to figure out how many right-turns-only it would take. Why muck up an easy commute, though?

Balloon Fiesta in USA

haven’t posted anything in a while, been sort of busy with work and travel and being braindead a bit. I hope that over the next couple weeks I’ll be able to distill the 750+ photos taken in France into a series of little photostories, but in the meanwhile here’s a youtube movie that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything… except I thought it was interesting.

What’s next, opposable thumbs? The mind boggles.

uh oh

dah dah DUM

A letter from the the U.S. Department of Justice.

Now in my experience a letter from the Feds is not always a good thing. Bracing myself I stood inside the post office and opened it, peeking inside to see what the heck they wanted from me now.

Well, who would have guessed? What they wanted this time was to inform me, via a rather official-looking certificate with the U.S. Department of Justice seal on top was:

SUBJECT: EMPLOYEE POSSESSOR LETTER OF CLEARANCE for: {Me}, Display Operator

You have been approved to transport, ship, receive or possess explosive materials as an employee possessor under the Federal explosive license or permit indicated above.”

Whee! The Feds are letting me blow shit up!

This is so cool.

But I don’t write much about work here for a couple reasons. The first is that it’s smart to not associate yourself with a company name, in case of googling and other search engines. There’s also the chance that a co-worker might happen on your website and somehow take it amiss and you will find yourself in hot water at work.

The second is that no one, myself included, really wants to hear an on-going litany of what’s bad at work and face it, it’s “work” and not “fun” so the negatives in general outweigh the positives. There are some good things about how I spend my 40 hours a week and I have written about them in the past but over the last few months they have sadly been few and far between.

Here’s why.

This is how my little piece of the then-920-person division was structured as of last October. The two remote sites had about 150 and 125 people respectively; except for 35 or so others here at Corporate everyone else was scattered across the country.

Here’s the changes that have happened in the 9 months since, with the division size decreasing to around 750:

Let me point out that this is not good. Most of the upstream and downstream work of the poor Employee Relations Person has fallen to her, with me taking some of that as well and also having quite a bit of her normal work being offloaded onto me.

I would rather be busy than not but it’s been a bit tough, especially since quite a few of the things that I ordinarily do have fallen to… not being done except in urgent emergency OH MY GOD IT’S ON FIRE situations. For me it’s meant extra work (that part is okay) as well as not doing what I ordinarily do very well as those things tend to be neglected. Overall I am not enjoying this a great deal.

And finally here is how the department structure is hypothetically going to settle:

Still much shorter than the original way but once the vacancies are filled life will be much more amenable. Having a boss and having another person to handle employee relations stuff will certainly make life much easier for my co-worker and me. In the meanwhile, it’s hang onto the bucking bronco and hope not to die and don’t write about work because what’s to say other than “Busy today.”