Monthly Archives: December 2011

Firewall…

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I’m very careful to keep a mighty firewall between my professional self and every other aspect of my life. Having either one bleeding over into the other is just not something I even want to contemplate dealing with. Today I’m reminded why. It seems one of my colleagues is having a baby… and that has led to an unending round of sonogram showing and appreciative cooing from the female members of the staff. It’s also let to merciless ribbing that it wasn’t the sought after son he had predicted. When I say unending, I mean that. It’s been going on now for three hours more or less non-stop. Fortunately, this poor soul apparently has a longer fuse than I do. Maybe it’s just me, but the squealing, shrieking girl thing just doesn’t play when it’s coming from a room of 30 and 40-somethings. Once is endearing. Doing it each time anyone who hasn’t yet been informed comes into the office makes you seem slightly insane.

It’s possible that I’m the oddball here, but most of my coworkers really know next to nothing about me other than that I come in on time, leave on time, get my work done, and generally keep a neat and tidy desk. That’s really all they need to know. They don’t really know if I’m married. Don’t know if I have kids. I don’t give away weekend or holiday plans other than letting one or two people know that I’ll be out of town or otherwise unreachable. For the most part the reverse is also true. I make every effort not to drag work issues home with me. No one at home needs to know the details of what’s going on at the office any more than the guy at the desk next to me needs to know if I enjoy collecting wedding cake toppers and visiting small New England bed and breakfasts.

Call me crazy, but there are aspects (i.e. most parts) of my life I just don’t feel compelled to share… and yes, the irony of saying that on a blog is not completely lost on me.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

The spirit…

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Tis the season to be meh. Honestly, if it weren’t for the calendar in Outlook and the sparkly Rudolph blinking happily on the neighbor’s lawn, I wouldn’t have any real idea it’s less than two weeks until Christmas. I have exactly one present purchased, which means this Saturday is probably going to involve the painful ordeal of going to a mall of some sort. On the flip side, I’m ridiculously excited about being off for 9 straight days and spending a big chunk of those banging around Allegany County. I’m insanely happy that this Christmas isn’t going to involve a 16 hour drive to get anywhere. So yeah, while Christmas spirit and holiday joy isn’t exactly twinkling inside me, but I’ve been doing this long enough now to be damned appreciative for the perks that come with it. After the last five years of Tennessee exile, I’ve come to think of Cecil County unblinkingly as home… But getting to spend some time at the real thing is definitely going to make the holiday for me.

Boorish…

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I’m sure it was some touchy feely sociologist who first said that people only have the control over us that we allow them to have. That’s horseshit, of course. Some people have power over us because we were dumb enough to elect them and others because their block on the organizational chart is further towards the top of the page than ours. On the other hand, some people have power over us because the law says beating them to death with their own shoe is illegal and would result in us spending much of the next 20 years in prison.

Just slightly behind my abject fear of prison is the lesson drummed into my head as a child to be polite. Sadly, some people take a polite smile and nod as encouragement to continue doing whatever they’re doing while staying happily oblivious to the murderous glare you’re giving them at the same time. Eventually the thin veneer of civilization that separates us from the wild beasts is going to wear through just enough that any normal person can’t help but snap in response. Still, in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder what it’s like going through life oblivious to the normally accepted social signs that your behavior is boorish and disliked. I half suspect it’s a bit like being the eternally happy, but not very bright family dog.

Reader’s remorse…

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Any serious reader will probably know what I’m talking about here. It’s that moment when you get to the end of a book or a series and realize that you’re going to miss the characters you’ve spent the last few days or weeks with. It doesn’t happen with every book you read, but some of them get inside your head and you devour a hundred pages in a sitting. Before you know it, you’ve read all there is to read. It leaves an inexplicable hole, because even though they only exist on paper – or as electrons in this case – you were invested in these characters; in how their stories turned out, or didn’t. However briefly, you shared extremely intimate moments with them (on the can or before going to sleep for example).

I’m not going to tell you what I’ve spent the last two weeks reading because that would call for the immediate and permanent revocation of my man card. Suffice to say, I’m casting around looking for a new fictitious family to occupy my free time. Thankfully there are a few movies that might help take the edge off my separation anxiety. They won’t be as good as the book, of course, but still it’s better than going cold turkey.

Sure, soon enough I’ll find a biography of Churchill or a tome on the Federalist period to capture my attention, but just now my sense of loss is too raw and bloody to even look seriously at another book. It would feel like I was cheating somehow. So yeah, there’s your unscheduled glimpse of the weirdness that goes on in my head when I don’t think anyone is paying attention.

Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Gathering…

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It’s that time of the year when those social butterflies of the office start soliciting donations, selling tickets, and generally making it impossible to forget that the Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Gathering. You and I know it as the Office Christmas Party. Now if you’re like me, you’d rather drive a blunted screwdriver into your eye than go to one of these functions, but since it’s being held during the day it’s slightly better than actually staying at your desk, but only because there’s a good chance that you’ll get home a hour or two earlier than you would on a normal Friday. Personally, if I could stay at my desk and get a few things done while everyone else wandered off to be festive, I’d be perfectly happy with the alone time.

Sadly, the Christmas party is yet another score keeping activity, so I’ll be there with a gratuitous smile plastered on my face. I’ll overpay for lunch and do my best to duck out at the first available opportunity. Even in the face of peer pressure, I won’t be participating in the gag gift exchanges or endless number of parlor games that the diehards are going to want to play. If you really want me to get into the Christmas spirit, give me a bottle of bourbon and a roaring fire… or at a bare minimum make this a non-official function and open the bar. At least with booze flowing there’s a chance that something interesting might happen. As it is, it will be the same tired work people talking about the same tired work issues. Hard to believe anyone wouldn’t be in a festive mood for that.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Wasted Sunday…

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This hasn’t been the sunday I thought I was going to have. Mostly it involved dragging the computer down from the office (not all that hard since it’s a laptop) and spreading out the dozen odds and ends I’ve been putting off around the kitchen table and taking them on one after another. The good news is that I just shredded the last bit of paper and closed the last file. The bad news is that I’ve been sitting here in the kitchen hammering at the keyboard since almost 8:00 this morning. That’s pretty much the working definition of a wasted Sunday. Sure, it’s all stuff that needed done and I’d been putting some of it off for weeks now, but that doesn’t make looking at the tail end of the weekend any easier… Especially when you know you’re going to spend the next five days hammering away at a different keyboard. I’m glad it’s all done, I just wish I could have figured out a way to do it in half the time. You know when going down to the crawlspace to shut off the outside water spigots counts as a break, you’ve seriously misspent your day.

For the time being, I’ll take as much comfort as possible in knowing that getting this particular pile of stuff done now frees me up next weekend. The long break coming after the next two work weeks is definitely a high point. I’ll do my best to live in the moment, but for the record my head is already in Western MD complaining about how friggin’ cold it is up here.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Wannabe Wordsmiths. The written word is a subjective thing. Just because something isn’t written using the same style and manner you would use doesn’t necessarily make it bad, it just makes it different. There are plenty of other legitimate reasons for writing being bad, so let’s focus on stamping those out before we start getting hung up on the stylistic differences, shall we?

Wood Floors. Yep. That one was a surprise to me too. I’ve always wanted them. I wanted to like them. But the truth is they’re cold as blue hell at 5:30 in the morning no matter how warm the rest of the room is, and even worse now that the weather has taken what’s probably it’s final turn towards chilly for the year. And don’t get me started on the enormous hairballs wood floors seem to generate by magic. At least with carpet, the dirt has the common decency to hide until I was ready to do something about it.

Alec Baldwin. Even when I was a smoker, I somehow managed to rein in my addiction for the couple of hours it took to get the jet across the continent. That fact that this asshat was too engrossed in his game of Words with Friends to turn off his phone, well that’s not addiction, that’s just flat out stupidity. If I was king of homeland security, I’d put him on a watch list and never let him within spitting distance of any vehicle that travels faster than Greyhound.

Cell phone cases. How the hell can we launch a probe to the outer edge of the solar system, but can’t seem to come up with a cell phone holder that I don’t destroy in a matter of weeks. I’ve spent more on these damned things than I did on the phone. Then again, that’s probably the point. And that annoys me even more.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Filler…

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I am a professional; highly educated, certified, and experienced. I’ve forgotten more about this kind of work than most people know. Today, however, I am going to be a warm body filling a seat because someone at echelons higher than reality has determined that the most mission critical thing 500 of us can do is make sure the auditorium is full during a presentation.

I’m sure whatever this graybeard has to say will be very interesting and informative, but not at all relevant to any of the eight or nine assignments sitting on my desk waiting to get finished in a semi-timely manner. It’s all a matter of priorities, I suppose. In this case the priority is clearly on looking good rather than actually doing good. As long as I know that up front, I’ll happily adjust my expectations accordingly… and make sure my Kindle has a full charge.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Missing it…

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I really have two minds when I watch the news covering the snow that fell on Memphis this morning and the on my old stomping grounds in Western Maryland tonight. Part of me that would be perfectly happy sitting on a beach watching the palm trees sway 24/7/365 is appalled that it’s only a matter of time before real winter finds me here on the cusp of the Eastern Shore. The other part of me that’s still 15 years old gets immediately giddy at even the mention of an impending snow storm. That would also be the part of me that insists on staying up too late on nights when snow is forecast to start late out of misplaced confidence that I’ll have the next day off.

For the last five years the closest thing I did to preparation for winter weather was grope under the driver’s seat until I found my ice scraper. It occurs to me that this might me an appropriate time to pick up an actual snow shovel or something. At some point sooner rather than later, the moderating influence of the Bay isn’t going to be enough to keep old man winter off the doorstep. For now, though, I think I’ll just be happy with the rain.

Guilt…

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I’ve been feeling guilty lately. Because I’ve never really trusted them not to either pee all over everything or shred every rug in the house, Winston and Maggie have slept in their kennels at night since they were puppies. They seemed find with it and since dogs sleep about two-thirds of the day anyway, I sort of figured it was no harm/no foul. It was leaving work late the last two days that got me thinking, though… On a typical weekday, when I leave on time and get home on time, they’re in their crates about 17 hours a day. That leaves seven hours for wandering around, sniffing, pooping, barking, and doing dog stuff. When I leave early or get home late, of course, that number decreases dramatically. And that’s when the guilt started.

Intellectually, I’m convinced that both of them are perfectly happy snoozing in their crates as they are on the living room floor. Emotionally, though, I felt a compulsion to give them a shot at having the run of the house at night. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable enough to let them wander all day while I’m gone, but surely if I’m there at night there’s a limit to how much trouble they can get themselves into without waking me up, right?

Well, it’s so far so good. Last night was the first step in this grand experiment. When I went to bed, Maggie sprawled out taking up more space than seems possible for an 80 pound Labrador. I’m not sure how big a fan of that I am yet, but it seems that the precedent is already set. Winston, I’m fairly certain, slept in the basement until around 3AM, when he came upstairs wanting an early morning belly rub. I’m not sure I’m going to be a fan of that, either. Other than those relatively minor issues, the test run went well. Nothing got destroyed. Nothing (obvious) got peed on. And they both seemed perfectly happy to lay around the bedroom until I got ready to take them out this morning.

Like I said, I know it’s nothing but my own guilt at getting home late that’s driving this, but I secretly hope they’ll prove trustworthy enough to justify this new degree of freedom.