This past week has been *busy*! Yet another week where I was glued to my work computers, and I am too cautious to even log into gmail and post. I started several posts by phone and ended up having to abandon them all; I wish gmail kept WAP drafts.
Butsoanyway.
The Big Deal presentation I had on Tuesday could not have gone better if I had paid someone. I was quite floored at how well it went, but I had That Feeling when I was getting everything called up to start (PowerPoint, etc…) – I used to get That Feeling all the time when I worked in the theatre; I am not an actress (tech all the way, baby!), and whenever I was called upon to be, right before I walked on stage I would have this moment of absolute terror, followed by a total dissociative calm. I was Adel in Self-Torture and Strenuous Exercise in this thingy our theatre troupe did, though (the director begged me to do it 'cos he said that I *am* Adel…augh), and I barely remember a moment of the day (and virtually none of the actual performance, save for one fleeting second when I looked at our Alvin and saw that I was scaring the fuck out of him), I was *that* 'gone'. But I did well then, and I did so again on Tuesday, and that is what is important. Our group is under a lot less pressure now, and that presentation was a huge part of it. Whew.
I actually fucking kicked ASS as Adel, I was told. I do know that I probably gave myself a concussion from slamming my head on the floor, and our Bethany was a charm to be sure, but she was a heavier girl and I am not unhappy that I do not remember her squooshing me when she jumped on me and sat; my friends and family reported hearing quite a ker-THUMP, eclipsed only by the WHAP that heralded my concussing myself.
Seriously. I had a raised bruise on my forehead for a while after. If you want to read any of it, pieces are here. It is a fantastic play, one of my favourites.
Butsoanyway; so far we are up to last Tuesday.
Then on Wednesday, I received a phone call from a lady at Animal Services; they had picked up a cat near Eviljob, and I am (I found out Wednesday) on record as the 'mom' of the feral colony – not only at Eviljob, but in the *entire* corporate park Eviljob is in.
This is a *large* corporate park, with a lot of cats. Sigh.
So they have this cat, and wanted to give me a chance to re-home it before they put it down. I asked if it was friendly, and she told me yes, that she had just been holding it a little bit ago. I made some phone calls and got a place for the cat to stay with the president of the rescue group, who said she would evaluate the cat to see if she is adoptable or needs to be put back out in the corporate park.
Ok, awesome.
Then on Thursday, Harry is coming back from lunch (in Eviljob's cafeteria), and he sees four men and one of the security guards running around in the lobby. He looks out into the lobby, and they are chasing a small black cat! He went out and made them stop chasing it, and managed to catch it himself when it stuck its head into the hollow at the bottom of a sculpture in our lobby and decided that if it can't see anyone, that means no one can see it.
This is a *baby* cat!
Harry picked it up and it immediately hid its head in his neck; Harry tried to get it to calm down, and it started *purring*! He tried to phone me, but I was already upstairs at work, and had to give him the number of the same lady who had taken the cat from Animal Services. She couldn't come out right then, so Harry put the cat in his car and phoned his GF to come get the cat, and he went back to work.
No – not mean; first-off, Harry has a '05 or '06 Grand Am, and the air conditioner turns itself on every so often to keep the cabin at a below-baking temperature, his windows are tinted, and he cracked the windows, plus girl friend was only fifteen minutes away. The position Harry has right now prevents him from just *leaving*, and I was trapped and could not even leave the fifth floor. So GF got the cat and fed it (she ate a HUGE amount of food), and it went to the rescue president Friday morning. Harry and Prez both said the cat is NOT feral at ALL – it is very playful, and probably just got put out at Eviljob and went inside to get food. It is definitely an indoors cat, about six months old; she's a girl, and she is *very* playful, and LOVES attention. :-) Along with the cat from Animal Services, she will be tested for AIDS and leukaemia, spayed, and adopted out.
We have had other cats who were probably former pets look at the glass front of Eviljob longingly (and a couple I have trapped and gotten adopted out if they are friendly), but none have ever come *in* Eviljob! The guard told Harry that the little girl just walked right in with a group of employees!
This kind-of breaks my heart, you know. She was trying to get to some place that had food and water. Poor little baby!
If I ever catch the bastard who puts cats out in our corporate park, I will beat them senseless.
Butsoanyway.
I have been a little sparse in describing all the people I now work with at Job II, and I should mostly keep it that way, but we are having a little drama there; one of the new(er) guys is a Romanian from Canada, and when he first showed up, we had nowhere to put him, so I offered up my office to share (I got my own office a few months ago, when Sophie lost hers), because I am not territorial, and I am usually in the basement listening to creepy beeping anyway. Plus, one of my dearest friends – Dorina – is a Ceausescu refugee in Toronto, I have known a lot of Canadian Romanians throughout my life, and we get along well. This guy is a bit younger than my friend, maybe by five or ten years (I am guessing), and I thought this would work out well. We have an *extremely* multi-cultural group (two Russians, a Greek, a Romanian, two Chinese, four Indian, a few Brits, one Scot, and two French, and I could go on…and that is not even counting the 'American mix' of Spanish, Black, and those who are just mutts like me). Several of them cannot be in certain rooms unaccompanied or work on certain projects because of citizenship issues (which is how *I* come to be translating the directions for something we are working on currently into French, which is funny; I am sure I am telling people to fuck off and take their broccoli with them or something [Merci de votre coopération. Veuillez prendre votre broccoli et aller à l'enfer…Quoi?!?], but our French-speakers are tasked with another completely unrelated project that takes them off-site, and I cannot ask the two other people who speak French to do it, 'cos right now they would be looking at code, and they are not allowed to do that…and I keep forgetting to just write it down and take it out of my basement for review; I'll just change whatever is wrong when I am done), and the restrictions are silly and annoying. They do not factor into my immediate story, though.
So I am sharing an office with this guy; we'll call him Karol. I was going to call him Mircea, but I know a Mircea whom I like greatly, so we're going with Karol. And I am friends with The Wacky Divorcee, whom I am going to have to call something, so let's call her Kate.
Kate is older – in her late 40's – and 200% Lucille Ball; she is American with two kids, and divorcing a Chinese artist at least ten years her senior. She has a HUGE history behind her (we brought her in because of her expertise in a certain area), and when I came on board there was no room (space-wise) for me, so Kate and I roomed together for a few months until I was conscripted into Sophie-saving (but that is another story), similar to what Karol and I are doing.
So Karol has been talking with me when I am up in my office area, and the conversations have been weird. They are not about business; he keeps asking me to check out his body (no, I am NOT kidding; he actually *points*), and so on. To the extent that I actually said 'let's change the subject' at one point, not that he then did. He *made* me put his number into my cell phone – as in stood OVER me as I entered it.
Oh! And! Karol has been calling the woman in the office next to me a 'sex goddess', and lamenting that he has no female companionship (and I am putting that oh so much more tactfully).
I have been doing a lot of hiding in the basement. Karol not only cannot go into the basement unaccompanied, he has no purpose in there at all; he is on a different project.
Kate, however, has to coordinate things with Karol; they *are* working together. And on Friday Kate and I took lunch together, and she told me what has been going on. She even printed out an email from Karol to show me which was *indescribably* rude, as well as having been sent through Job II's email, which is potentially some very, very serious shit, going way, WAY deeper than just basic sexual harassment because of the nature of Job II, and the nature of Karol's current standing (basically, not being an American, Karol has less rights at Job II. That may not sound fair, but that is the way it is; being psycho will land him back Home fast enough to make his head spin).
When Kate left her husband, she took up with a local contractor, and they have been happy (enough). Kate has looked up other old flames, and did manage to pick up TWO admirers when we were at a military technology expo late last year, including one guy who went *way* out of his way to have dinner with her (in the past four years, I have NEVER seen ANYONE make a love connection at those things; Kate may be older, but she is a major cutie patootie), but largely she is committed to Mr Current Muffin. Well, Kate made a comment to Karol about how she feels so tired and has no stamina these past few months (oh, tell me about it!!), and Karol sent an email to her that basically said Kate had no stamina because she needs to get laid, and Karol can tell Mr Current Muffin is bad in bed, if – IF! – they are even sleeping together, and if Kate ever wants to remedy that situation, she may call upon Karol any time.
I swear to you, I damn near fell off my chair right in the restaurant.
Karol sent that to Kate earlier this week, and Kate had done nothing about it. This is somewhat understandable, because Kate and I have similar histories, and do have a habit of just accepting some behaviours as our hardships to bear; I had not told Kate (or anyone else) about the gross conversations Karol and I had been having, and Kate had not told anyone about the conversations (and IMs, email) she had been having with Karol. For some reason, as soon as I saw it in writing I just realised that this whole thing is WRONG. I told Kate that I thought there was something wrong with Karol's mind, and she agreed, and told me about the *other* conversations she has had with Karol, which were as bad as mine, or worse. She had thought this stuff with Karol was a Romanian thing, and I assured her that *nothing* was being messed up in translation, as it were; I knew *no one* so crude, and I know quite a few Eastern Europeans; in addition, none of our other men are behaving this way. I tried to talk Kate into taking the email she had printed out and her IM history (Karol has put nothing into writing with me, so I have nothing as 'proof') and making a formal complaint with it, but Kate did not want to cause problems. I let it drop, 'cos I do understand where she is coming from; if Karol was not made to leave, things could be quite uncomfortable. But I did vow to stay as far away from Karol as possible.
So after lunch I returned to my basement, and checked my work email; during the time Kate and I had been away, a few people had had an email back-and-forth, and Karol had participated; I was on the phone to Kate in two seconds, 'cos Karol had emailed – to the ENTIRE FACILITY – some crap totally unrelated to the discussion about how he wishes he could have a woman living with him at the present time because such an arrangement carries with it its own 'unique benefits' (nudge, nudge), or somesuch. It was a very crude attempt to put feelers out to see if there were any interested females, basically. UGH!! On top of which, this is taking place AT WORK. On a *monitored* email list.
I phoned Kate and told her about the email, and that I think Karol is having a meltdown. Or that he was totally batshit to begin with, and it is about to explode. We both decided that we will talk to our manager on Monday, because this is getting scary. And now I have to go and meet Mummers for dinner; Meg may be joining us, but I am not optimistic because she was at a tournament yesterday, and I am not sure she is back yet. Just me and Mommy...this will be fun. :-)
So how was your week?
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