Point and Click (and Shake and Curse)

I spent pretty much my entire day at work today pointing and clicking. And, no, I wasn't simply surfing the 'net. I was actually doing work.

The problem is that it wasn't really *my* work. You see, I was working on the second round of editing of a manuscript. In other words, I had worked on it a while ago and made tons of edits using "Track Changes" in MSWord.

Then I sent it to the author, who read through it all, made some changes, responded to my comments, tweaked it, fluffed it, and dinked around, and then sent it back.

The one thing he didn't do was clear out all of my Track Changes markings before he started. So when it came back to me, it was full of all of my original comments and changes PLUS all of his new comments and changes. Honestly, I think there were more pages in red and blue than there were in black.

It would be fine if I could have just opened it, done "Accept All" and moved on. But, of course, this author decided to respond to my comments IN my comments. And not just after what I'd written, but sometimes literally writing his comments in the middle of sentences I had written. So I didn't want to accidentally accept things that he had actually said "Leave that in" about.

I contemplated sending the entire manuscript back to him and telling him to do his work before sending it to me. But... yeah... that would have been bad.

Which is why I spent 2 hours yesterday, and 7 hours today pointing and clicking my way through clearing out my old changes but leaving all of his new ones.

When I eventually develop carpal tunnel, I'm going to look back on this day and shake my (carpal tunnel-weakened) wrist and curse his name.

Which will only be different from what I did for most of today in that I'll be shaking my fist, instead of just cursing his name and flipping him off via my computer screen.

Past Lives

It has been a strange day of living in my past. Kind of unintentionally.

I mean... I haven't been in a funk and wanting to relive some other time - which I totally admit happens from time to time - it just kind of happened of its own accord, today.

I reached into my closet this morning for a t-shirt. I wanted something with a graphic of some kind (because I can wear that kind of thing to work), and just pulled out the first shirt that I put my hand on. It's a really comfortable t-shirt from the 30th Birthday celebration for a store called Kitchen Bazaar from out in Maryland. I worked there in... umm... 1993, maybe? Maybe 1994? But I still have good friends from there, and good friends I met while working there - but who, themselves, did not work there.

At work, today, I was introduced to a new member of staff, and the topic came up that - having started at the company 4 years ago - I'm currently the 6th most senior member of the staff.

In the course of the day, I got a notice that a good friend of mine will be leaving his job at CenterStage Theater in Baltimore in the near future. This is a good friend of mine whom I hired to work under me in the Box Office many years ago - I worked there from 1996 until 2002. (He has, since, gone on to be a Box Office manager and then work in the Development office and do all sorts of cool things.) He's kind of my last solid connection to that theater. It's a weird feeling knowing that he's moving on and that I won't need to stop by the theater to see people on future visits to Baltimore.

Got home from work and had a SDSU alumni magazine (class of 1989!) in the mail. No biggie. I get those often enough - although it did seem a bit coincidental.

But then I opened an envelope from my parents to find that the note was written on a card which had the show artwork from a CenterStage production of the August Wilson play "Two Trains Running" on the front of it (which I recognized and was able to name even before looking at the back of the card, even though the show ran a couple of seasons before I started work there).

What else was in the envelope? A clipping from my hometown newspaper's "Way Back When" column where, from 24 years ago, there was a notice that I had just been awarded a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to France (apparently one of 12 recipients from SDSU from 1968 until 1989, in case you were wondering).

I'm not sure what it all means, really.

Perhaps it's just all funky coincidence based in the fact that today was the birthday of Douglas Adams - the guy who wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books.

Perhaps it's the universe's not-so-subtle way of reminding me where I've come from.

Perhaps it's a hint that I need to clear out my closet more frequently.

We may never know.

Spring Forward

Yep. It's that time, again. Time to move the clocks forward, to have a lot more sunlight in the evenings, and to have to re-adjust to darkness when the alarm goes off in the morning. 

With a rainy day in our area, today, the "spring" part of that finally feels like it's coming closer. Definitely a difference from the eight or ten inches of snow we got last weekend. Granted, when the temperatures drop this could all turn to ice - which snow doesn't do - but at least during the dog walks, today, I didn't have to bundle up so far that I couldn't see. 

It's strange, though. Since the time changes got moved a few years ago, I'm still not used to this happening so soon. It seems, in some odd way, that there should be more dark evenings in the spring before we launch forward. 

Perhaps, though, that's because I live in Minnesota, where even the earliest of flowers won't actually come up for at least another 4 to 6 weeks, so getting too much sun just makes us all that much more antsy. Spring fever gets pretty bad around here when there's extra daylight but you can't go out and enjoy it.

For now, I guess I'll just keep buying bundles of tulips at the store and imagining a time - sometime soon - when I'll be able to see them outdoors, too. 

Updated Expectations

So I gave the Mapley Brown Sugar Oatmeal Delights PopTarts another chance, today.

This time, I made sure to think about them as "Mapley" instead of "Cinnamony."

They smelled just as good as they did the other day. And, once again, my officemates commented on how much it smelled like I was making oatmeal in the office.

And this time when I bit into them, I reminded myself that they were not going to taste like Brown Sugar Cinnamon PopTarts.

And, you know, they were okay. They tasted like instant maple brown sugar oatmeal. Which is pretty amazing, considering they are PopTarts.

Unfortunately, I like real maple syrup. And I *have* real maple syrup (and brown sugar) at my disposal in the house. And... well... there's a difference between the taste of manufactured maple syrup and the real stuff.

Plus - although when I tried them on Tuesday I was amused by the "streusel-like" topping on them, today I found myself kind of annoyed by how much oatmeal streusel I kept getting on my desk.

So although I'm now convinced that the PopTarts do taste like what most people will think is quite good maple brown sugar oatmeal, I don't think I'll be running out to buy any more of those. I'll probably just stick to Brown Sugar Cinnamon - now if only I could find a storehouse of those in the unfrosted variety, I'd be set.

Expectations Versus Reality

We may have discussed, in the past, the fact that I eat PopTarts for breakfast pretty much every day at work. I have a toaster on a small table behind my desk specifically for this reason. It doesn't have a PopTarts setting, but I use it, anyway. (Yes, they do make toasters with PopTarts settings.)

My favorite PopTarts are unfrosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon, but those are really hard to find. So I usually have frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon at work. And either frosted or unfrosted Strawberry. And then something with chocolate - Cookies & Cream and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough are two of my fallbacks.

This week, though, I decided to try the new Oatmeal Delights "Mapley Brown Sugar" PopTarts. They sounded really interesting. Kind of like warm oatmeal with brown sugar and maple syrup. So I bought some and took them to work and tried them, today.

They smelled amazing when they were in the toaster. Basically, they smelled like... well... brown sugar maple oatmeal. And they tasted like - no surprises, here - brown sugar maple oatmeal.

So I should be happy, right?

The problem is that somehow, in my brain, I had come to expect cinnamon. There was no mention of cinnamon anywhere on the packaging, but I had gotten it in my head that there would be cinnamon - I think because the other brown sugar PopTarts I've had have always had cinnamon. But these have maple, instead.

Reality did not meet Expectation, today.

Of course, with PopTarts, there's more than one breakfast in each box. We'll have to see how the next tasting goes. Perhaps my Expectations will be more Realistic, and my outcome will be more interesting.

Anti-SNOW-pation

After a mostly sunny weekend, we're being warned that the next 48 hours could get "messy" due to snow. (No, really. That's what the weatherman said on one of the local stations - it was above "mild" but below "major" on his "snow threat level" chart.)

It's funny, though. As much as everyone I know is getting tired of snow and looking forward to spring (which, granted, is not the opinion of everyone in Minnesota - just most of the people I know), we've also gotten kind of blase about it.

Right now, I think they're predicting anywhere from 5 to 12 inches of snow could fall in the Twin Cities metropolitan area between tonight and Tuesday. And although we're seeing the big Winter Storm Watch stuff on TV, mostly they're just saying "the commutes on Monday and Tuesday could be slower than usual."

Maybe it's because, at the very least, this means that the next few days won't be foggy.

Maybe it's because we're supposed to be above freezing during most of the storm and into the latter part of the week - which is a move in the right direction even with snow in the forecast.

Maybe it's just because we're tired of weatherpeople crying "wolf" and us coming up with 3 inches when they've predicted 2 feet.

All I know for sure is that I'll be getting up tomorrow and trying to leave at least a little early to deal with traffic. Not snow traffic, but just Monday commute traffic.

And when I come home tomorrow night I'll put out the recycling, walk the dog, and prepare for Tuesday's still-snowy commute - during which I suspect I'll be dreaming of spring.

The Friday Wall

I know that a lot of people dread Mondays (or whatever days their workweeks start on). They don't like the idea of starting out a new workweek. They're upset about the weekend ending. They hate getting back to the grind.

I am *totally* with those people. (Which is why, occasionally, I play the lottery.) But I don't think Monday is the worst part of the workweek.

For me, Friday afternoon - beginning about an hour after lunch - is the worst part of the week.

Sure, there is the anticipation of being *this close* to the weekend. And there's the feeling of impending freedom. And - for a lot of people - the excitement of a frosty cold beverage in hand as soon as the clock strikes 5.

But while I love to think about the coming weekend, freedom, and frosty beverages, I frequently find it incredibly hard to deal with the afternoon that comes before all of those things.

Friday afternoon is when you get to that point where you're pretty sure that every last brain cell has already been used. It's when you're either rushing to finish a project (and are probably putting errors into it because you're rushing - let's be honest), or you've just finished a project and really don't have enough time left in the week to get a decent start on something new.

And it's when those of us who usually feel beyond the age of "I'm going out to party after work!" begin to feel just a little guilty about not wanting to go out to party after work.

I would suspect that Friday afternoons generate the highest number of nuisance calls to IT departments, the largest spikes in non-work-related Internet usage, and the greatest number of trips to the bathroom/hallway/smoking area/vending machines of any time of week.

They might even inspire the most blog posts written while their authors were "on a break - no, really." (Although I'm not sure I have any facts to back that up... Nope... No facts about that around here...)

So here's to the weekend - which I think is only another 742 hours away (give or take).