Poppy Cedes

This morning I received an email from a very dear friend who said she might maybe need my help. It turns out that she expressed frustration for a new work policy in a department-wide discussion list thread and both her direct supervisor and the division supervisor chose to take offense to her expression, chose to see it as insubordination, and will be having a meeting with her this coming week to discuss her behavior.

Other people in the same division chose to also express their disdain with the unclear policy via that same list but they received no suggestion of recourse or reprimand.

Her context is that she is both a boss and a worker bee because where she works everyone is always overextended and dual-purposed at the very least. And the policy that was being put into place directly affected the group she manages while she’s wearing her Boss Hat. So… It’s odd to me that she would be singled out as the only person who can’t speak freely about her opinions and customer-side resulting effects of the new policy.

I am fantasizing about taking a day off from work to show up on the doorstep of the office where the meeting will be held with my dear friend and the two bosses. I’ll just say, “I am Ms. Awesome’s counsel” then I’ll take a seat next to her, pull out my Netbook, and begin typing. I won’t say a damn thing for the whole meeting, just raise my eyebrows and shake my head disapprovingly as they make their case for her insubordination while none of the other members of the policy peanut gallery received so much as a mention of their disapproving words. But I won’t wear my high-heeled boots, perfect for stomping on People of Power who choose to admonish those with an opinion that differs from their own. Because if I did? They’d shit twice and die. And who wants to accidentally kill people who should live to suffer through a strong woman’s continued opinions of their poor policy making decisions.

I personally am frustrated with the idea of disapproval of a poorly thought through policy as insubordination and would really like your comments on the subject. Some of you are bosses and some of you are worker bees. If a “worker bee” expresses their dislike of a new policy and you don’t like how s/he words the expression of their thoughts… what do you do? If you’re a worker bee, have you ever been reprimanded? What’d you do about it?

I am so excited about RenYC tomorrow. Looks like it will be a smallish crowd of us, but that’s totally fine because it’s easier for everyone to feel included in the conversation. I will be bringing the Red camera. :) And drinking. :) :)

I went to the lady doctor on Thursday afternoon. It was an incredibly wonderful experience in which I learned that rapid HIV tests are now done with a mouth swab (so I had one done by a super nice woman who I am guessing is 12 years younger than I am… wow), and that I have to get poked four times with four different sticks of doom in order to check for everything that needs to be checked for. I was also prescribed a different birth control pill after being told the one I have been on specifically causes mood swings in a lot of women. If this new pill stops the crazies I will be praising it to the world.

The office I went to is in the area neighboring Chinatown so I got to walk around Chinatown a little bit afterward and noticed I had a voicemail from Verizon. Apparently my personal phone contract had expired in September. I emailed them a nastygram earlier in the week saying “OMG MY CAT THREW AWAY MY PHONE AND I WAS WAITING FOR MY CONTRACT TO EXPIRE AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME IT EXPIRED AND YOU SUCK” so despite having just continued my plan without consulting me they have now cancelled my account/plan/phone with no penalty to me. Which is a very good thing, because I think the people of Chinatown don’t need to hear me be psycho.

Things at work are going well. The people upstairs adore me and the salespeople I care at all about sing my praises loudly across my floor through the cubicles and into the ears of the evil salespeople. I was very productive, knocking several important projects off my whiteboard list this week, and that’s even with taking time off for professional development (the Apple certification studies continue) and with taking a half day for the aforementioned appointment.

Speaking of work, I was having a pretty rough day today physically because my cervix is bruised from my doctor’s appointment. At 3pm Dawg called me to ask me what I was doing… because he was downstairs with a piece of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting from Make My Cake. I ran down to him (ok, ok, took the elevator down, whatever!) and grabbed the cake from him then gave him lots of kisses before he drove off to go back to work until he had to work the event at the Garden (FDNY vs. NYPD boxing). I was actually headed upstairs to disinfect a computer, so I had to just hold onto the cake until after I was done with that then I went to my desk and started eating the cake… and apparently was making inappropriate sounds so loudly while eating this DELICIOUS cake that the guy in the cube next to me stated something to that effect. (Thanks for the cake, babe! :)

Here I am a girl who works in a cubicle with her back to both a main pass-through and her direct supervisor’s office.

Here I am today, sitting pretty with a new office that has a LOCKING DOOR and two guest chairs!!!wOOt!!!!!!

No promotion, just another lay-off in the company. The saddest one of all, in fact, but it is what it is. I stopped freaking out about IT staff turnover four turnovers ago. (There have been five since I arrived last November.)

It’s good to have an office, but I will never forget why. Rock on, Red. We miss you, buddy.

It all started with an email from my boss after he was away for a week, up through yesterday. It was titled “is everything ok?” and said “if anything is wrong please tell me.” I thought it was a JOKE because I had emailed him updates the whole time he was gone and I said hi to him when he got in and said hi to me, so I laughed it off and didn’t answer it. And then HE FORWARDED IT TO THE DIRECTOR AND CC’D IT TO ME AND COMPLAINED THAT I DIDN’T ANSWER HIM. The director had to read the email 5 times, still didn’t understand, then called my boss and asked him what the hell that was about. I emailed the director saying “I have no idea how to respond to that.” There are many theories as to why my boss did this, and none of them are good. He avoided me for the rest of the day, until the very end, when we had a regular discussion about work stuff. *shrug*

A few choice nuggets happened between this first incident of the day and 5pm when it was time to go home, including someone daring to ask me “what DO you know?” when she asked me where someone was who sits on the other fucking side of a wall because YO I AM SUPPOSED TO KEEP TABS ON MY CO-WORKERS AND ASK THEM WHERE THEY GO IF THEY LEAVE THEIR DESKS JUST IN CASE CRAZIES COME ASK ME WHERE THEY ARE, along with so many other incidents that at one point in the day I actually googled “phases of the moon” only to learn that the full moon was actually on May 17 so I really had no explanation for why so many crazies were trying to insert themselves into my life. I’m pretty sure the count was up to 10 by 5pm, just at work. I didn’t go anywhere all day, brought my lunch.

So, we’re at 5pm now and the elevators aren’t working and the fire warden gets on the building-wide intercom to tell us there has been a false alarm so it will be several minutes before the elevators are working. So a bunch of us go back in our office space to go down the stairs and that “cool” girl I mentioned before who doesn’t understand about work friends starts bitching at me for not holding the door for her and I fall into the trap, trying to explain that she wasn’t even AT the door when I was near it and she turns to her sister-in-law who also works there are starts high school name calling me, loudly saying I’m crazy and need prozac and that what I say doesn’t matter while I’m walking in front of her. I get to the closest stair landing and I yell at her “we are NOT friends. GO. GO!!!!!” and I give her the “don’t you DARE fuck with the Poppy” look and point down the stairs. And she and her SIL walk on by, not daring to say anything more to me. When we get street level I put in my ear phones and say nothing to anyone around me, just walk off to my own sunset.

And all this waiting to get down to the street makes me late to the train which turns into missing the first train that shows up 10 minutes after I get there because it’s just too jam-packed, but the next train arrives directly on its heels and I get a seat on that one. And we’re going, going, going, and we get to Queens Plaza and there is a huge THUD and people start scattering and other people start exiting the train and I look over and see a woman yelling out the door and then a few minutes later I see a Metro worker calling in whatever happened (it sounded like someone fell down, but who knows) and then we’re on our way and I get home a half hour later than life would normally allow me, not bad not bad, but then I’m supposed to walk up the 4 flights of stairs to the apartment, find my bank card that I left in my jeans pocket this weekend, and walk a city block down and a city block over to the bank to get money that I promised to give to Dawg, since it’s rightfully his, that he needs for 6am tomorrow, but I am so done with the day and so exhausted emotionally that I can’t even stand to think of going back down the stairs… so I check my cash stash and, look what I found!, exactly the correct amount that Dawg needs!

Oh, and there was an incident at home with the smoke alarm, and Georgie got locked in the bedroom, and when she finally got out she sat on my lap and she pushed out a big, fat, juicy TEAR from her eye. SHE CRIED! MY BABY CRIED! Broke my heart. I can’t even explain…

My boss is single. I have overheard on more than one occasion from more than one person talking to more than one other person in the IT area that he’s never really been in a long-term relationship, and if you ever meet him and have a 5-minute conversation with him you will guarantee-edly understand why. He takes quirky to a whole new level… and that’s all I’ll say about that.

Tuesday he was “late” to work (absolutely normal), took a very long lunch (so long that one of the other guys started to worry he’d gotten hurt at the gym), then left at 5pm. He always stays late to make up his time. Always.

I was walking out the door at the same time and said, “you’re leaving on time today?” to which he responded, “on time?! I’m leaving early!” It was very bizarre behavior from a man who has a pretty specific routine, but honestly I really don’t care to know what he does with his outside-of-work time, so I said, “ok, yes!” and then walked to my train while he walked to Destination Unknown.

Wednesday he came in late again (normal), took an even longer lunch (hey, wait a minute…), then upon his return he randomly mentioned that he had a coffee date with a girl the day before. He said he ordered a coffee with soy milk, to which the woman exclaimed, “there’s estrogen in that! I can’t believe you’re drinking that!” and then he said he didn’t know how to respond to that. I was going to give him Woman Wisdom but the boys all did their typical locker room harasstics of “that wasn’t soy milk, that was bull milk! *nudge wink* get it???? bwahahahaha!” I finally interjected that next time he needs to take us allllll with him so we can sit in the corner and watch and when he says unfortunate things we give him the thumbs down but if he says something good we give him the thumbs up. He smiled at that idea.

Never gonna happen in the presented scenario above, but how awesome would that be if People Who Have Trouble Finding Love brought a team of judges with them to encourage or discourage their conversational habits? I bet people would pay big bucks for that.

My boss called me into his office and told me something about “shenanigans” (which he could never exactly explain what he meant), not knowing my cellphone number so-would-I-please-give-it-to-him, eating lunch with me next week at a restaurant down the block, and me going to Columbus Circle to read a tech book. I told Dawg about all this and he BETTER keep his promise that he said he’ll be sending someone from work to said lunch place next Tuesday, if he himself cannot arrive. (Dawg, for real. And warn me ahead of time the name of who’s showing up!)

And then I was on Amazon looking up tech books for WDS and the front page showed this:

I would so buy this for Dawg to put on his middle finger if he wore ringsssss. And then maybe he could use it in the Tuesday lunch situation.

And then my SC Magazine for the month arrived and it had an article about passchords (holding down multiple keys simultaneous in the correct order, such as holding down “fi” at once then “do” at once rather than typing f-i-d-o) and it dawned on me that somebody watched Goonies one too many times as a kid (I’m referring to 2m15s into the video, but the whole trailer is awesome) and came up with the coolest idea in the universe until the blackhats break the passchords too.

And, I just need to say that my brother needs to start a blog and publish all the great stuff he finds and then sends me which I then feel compelled to share with you because it’s so awesome, such as Dwarfed Punk:

Yes, he and I are obsessed with that song. He’s the one who sent me the hand version. And that slinkies thing you all love.

I’m sure I have more interesting things to say, but I’m not aware of them. That was enough for today, right? Oh, well, actually, I’ll just say: If you’re coming to TequilaCon then you’re automatically invited to BeerHer which is a bunch of TequilaCon bloggers showing up to the Santa Fe Brewing Company at 8pm on Friday, April 24 to drink beer in bikinis. (Beer is optional.) (Ok, ok, bikinis are optional too, but please at least wear something on your feet cuz I DON’T WANNA SEE THAT!)

Oh, and this last thing I keep thinking lately but forgetting to mention: If I ever had a Half-Nekkid Thursday blog (which I never will) it would have one whole photo on it. Can you guess what it would be? (Guess, dammit.)

And one more thing: DAWG DID A CEREAL WEDNESDAY!!!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!!!!!

And, oki, one very last thing: My mom and stepdad arrive Friday the 13th! w00t!

I groggily walked out of the bathroom and looked ahead of me at his silhouette. In my morning fog I interpreted the figure before me correctly, but the wrong name came to my lips and I called it out softly, so softly that he did not even hear. But I did not know this and I instantly felt embarrassed, upset, horrified at what I had done.

“I’m so sorry.”
“What, what happened?”
“I called you by the wrong name.”
“What did you call me?”

I rushed to tell him the name I had called him and regretted admitting to it as the name escaped my lips a second time.

“Ohh… that’s ok…”

But it really wasn’t. He had looked down, embarrassed too. I had insulted him, as I expected I had the first time the name left my lips, when I thought he’d heard.

I felt ashamed of myself.

They all look alike to me.

That’s the message I had just given this man. This man who has been nothing but nice to me the past three months. This man who always smiles and calls me by my correct name when he sees me. This man who speaks sweetly to his woman on the phone , and gives a knowing chuckle if he hears me talking to my man. This man who yesterday was an ally but today is rightfully suspicious of me.

Foot, I hope you don’t mind getting a little pruned up in this mouth of mine.

getting ready
My alarm went off at 6am. I got out of bed at 6:30am to pee. The bathtub wasn’t wet yet. I went back to bed. By the time it was my turn to use the shower I had 25 minutes to get from bed clothes to out the door. I did it! But the kitties were grumpy about the distinct lack of Mama Time.

walking
On the way to the subway it was sleeting.
When I came out of the tunnel to Manhattan street level it was warmish but grey.
When I was walking back from the deli at lunch time such gigantic flakes of snow were falling from the sky that I didn’t believe my eyes and had to grab a flake to make sure.
When I got off the J train it was heavily snowing, making surfaces slick. Looking forward to the subway stairs tomorrow…

the subway
I saw a man wearing a Boston Red Sox hat on the E train. Which felt like turning into an F train part way through the ride. Dude, tell us up front it’s changed to an E train travelling the F train route so we can not even bother boarding. Waiting for the E acting as an E I saw some more black rats. And then at the J train switchover I saw mice instead of rats running around the track. And then when we came out of the tunnel I saw snow so I zipped up my jacket.

working
I was supposed to have to work late turning a physical server into a virtual one but it went so smoothly that I was done by 5pm, and only ended up staying a little bit later to install memory into another server. My boss kept stopping by and being very impressed with my progress on that project. And then he’d distract me with something redonk. We had a little moment where he asked me if I wanted to do something and I told him he was the boss. I said it in such a way that all the other IT guys went “ooooooooooh” like I had just said something rude. And then my boss and I quickly emailed back and forth with each other to make sure everything was cool. He was worried I thought he was treating me like a secretary, I was worried he thought I was being rude. I assured him I was just being quirky and that if I ever thought he was treating me like a secretary we’d be having words about that. I did add that there’s nothing wrong with being a secretary, but I’m just not one. However, if anyone gets me a gift on Secretary Day (PC-ly named Administrative Professionals Day) that someone’s going to get a gift of a tasty hand sandwich to the mouth. Just sayin’.

holiday cards
I’ve made no more progress than I had by Sunday night. That includes me having no stamps to put on the cards. I’m expecting to have to go into work super early Thursday which means I’ll get out early and then will get to go to the post office to get two packages and drop off all the holiday cards, so I’m hoping to go to Duane Reade tomorrow night to get stamps.

eating
I had absolutely nothing to do with the new design at Cereal Wednesday, other than saying “OMG IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL!!! *KISS KISS KISS HUUUUUG*” but I did get to premiere the new design by eating some cereal for you. Yay.

I figured out something totally geeky at work that’s been plaguing me for two weeks. The project itself has been plaguing me for the entire time I’ve worked for my current employer because of this one obstacle. I finally figured out how to get around the fact that our file sharing server says it will share as NFS but doesn’t seem to want a unix box to mount it (presumably because of incompatible file system types, although that’s just what I’m piecing together since I can’t find another configuration reason). I finally read the entire sentence that was on page 140 of the manual I’ve been referring to for two weeks and it said “or you can use Windows Services for Unix if you want.” Wait, what? What’s that?! Ohhhh, you mean I can actually tell my very own Windows computer that it can whore itself out as an NFS share to unix?! SILLY ME!!!!!! siiiiigh. I am the closest thing to a unix guru at my new job. We’re definitely in trouble.

Let’s see, the only entertaining subway thing that happened today is that two guys who obviously weren’t together both boarded the morning train from opposite sides of the car then stood together in front of the doors. I was quietly grinny laughing at them and they looked very confused. I never told them it was because they were wearing matching Old Navy sweatshirts.

I guess we’re going in reverse order in this post. I awoke from a VERY bad dream Thursday morning, grabbed Dawg and held onto him, shaking. He scooched over to me because he was falling off the bed and asked me what was wrong. I told him I had a very bad dream. I didn’t tell him what it was about. Nothing to tell really. In the light of day it was just me killing someone who was trying to harm my family. But in the dream there was a lot of blood and a lot of fear and a lot of … vigilante justice, let’s just say that. Scissors don’t actually do what my scissors did. And blood doesn’t gush that high. And why would the guy be sitting in a chair with me standing over him if he was harming my family? See? No sense in the light of day.

As I’m writing this a little box below this one says “Saving Draft” then it says “You do not have permission to do that.” Great… probably because “You are using a development version (2.7-RC1). Cool! Please stay updated.”

At approximately 1:00pm Eastern on Thursday I told the IT director I was going for a walk so I didn’t hurt anyone and promptly walked around several city blocks. The rage fog I was feeling quietly lifted and I went to get a medium three lentil chili from HALE and Hearty Soups on W 55 St and 8 Ave. And then I came back and finished out my day!

Friday went a bit better, but I did get told something would be done, it wasn’t delivered, and I had to go chase after it. The person who was supposed to deliver it knew I was not pleased with him, as did the director. I chewed him out with silence, the director told the guy not to ignore me in front of everyone. And then when I wasn’t looking or listening my work buddy who listened to me gripe about this situation chewed the guy out with harsh words. Deserved, muthafucka. Deeeeeeserved.

I stole this from Frankie because I think she is rad:

9 Layers
A meme to peel away the layers of you.

Layer One:
- Name: Poppy
- Birth date: July 25
- Birthplace: Vermont
- Current Location: NYC
- Eye color: Hazel green
- Hair Color: Strawberry blonde naturally, auburn red unnaturally
- Height: 5′ 4″
- Righty or Lefty: Left-handed, right-brained
- Zodiac sign: Leo

Layer Two:
- Your Heritage: English, English, and more English AFAIK
-The shoes you wore today:

- Your weakness: My animals (yup)
- Your fears: I had none while I needed to have none, now I have many.
- Your perfect pizza: Quadruple garlic. Break Boy and Knitting Girl know how to make that happen for me.
- Goal you’d like to achieve: Get a very deserved raise during a dire economic time

Layer Three:
- Your most overused phrase on AIM: Hmm, I haven’t been in chatland for a while, but probably “hehehe”
- Your first waking thoughts: If I had a dream it’s a recap of the dream. If Dawg is holding me, it’s “I love him so much, I hope he never lets go.”
- Your best physical feature: My braaaaaaaain, which Sylar totally helps me show you when I feel like it.
- Your most missed memory: I’m guessing they don’t mean it how it sounds. I miss the animals who touched my heart but have passed away. Humans are animals too.

Layer Four:
- Pepsi or Coke: I mix them together at the 7-11
- McDonalds or Burger King: McDonald’s fries and Coke, Burger King Whopper and chicken sandwich, Wendy’s everything
- Single or group dates: Single
- Adidas or Nike: I don’t care about that.
-Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Neither; fresh, please.
- Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate
- Cappuccino or coffee: Coffee

Layer Five:
- Smoke: I have, but never regularly
- Cuss: Since I was 3! Thank you, Big Brother!
- Sing: I am an alto.
- Take a shower everyday: I do almost every day, but twice this week I didn’t quite get enough morning time for that. When that happens I take nighttime showers.
- Do you think you’ve been in love: I know I am in love right now.
- Want to go to college: I was already there, I don’t do well with standardized schooling.
- Liked high school: Loved it! (I know, I’m a paradoxical enigma wrapped in a burrito.)
- Want to get married: My truthful answer should probably be communicated to Dawg first.
- Believe in yourself: Almost always
- Get motion sickness: If I read in a car, yes. If I read on the train, no.
- Think you’re attractive: Yes
- Think you’re a health freak: No
- Get along with your parents: I get along famously with Mom and Marvin, I attempt to tolerate Dad and Stepmom.
- Like thunderstorms: I love them.
- Play an instrument: Nope

Layer Six: In the past month….
- Drank alcohol: Yes
- Smoked: No
- Done drugs: Only the legal ones
- Made out: It’s a favorite pastime
- Gone on a date: Yes! We go on dates! It’s so much fun when we get to do that.
- Gone to the mall: Yes
- Eaten an entire box of Oreos: No
- Eaten sushi: No
- Been on stage: No
- Been dumped: Uhhhhh, not that I’m aware of, which, if anyone (friends, I mean) did dump me they did a silly job of letting me know.
- Gone skating: No
- Made homemade cookies: No, but thought about it, and did make brownie batter!
- Gone skinny dipping: Haven’t done that in years…
- Dyed your hair: No (my poor hair hasn’t been taken care of since July)
- Stolen anything: Yes but gave it back.

Layer Seven: Have you ever….
- Played a game that required removal of clothing: Yup
- Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: Yup
- Been caught “doing something”: Yup but not by my mom
- Been called a tease: Yup!
- Gotten beat up: Hmm, gotten beaten on, but not up
- Shoplifted: Ohhhhhh, yah, but not since I was a kid.
- Changed who you were to fit in: Used to do it regularly, don’t bother anymore.

Layer Eight:
- Age you hope to be married: This is what happens when I don’t read memes…
- Names of children: …all the way to the end…
- Describe your dream wedding: before I commit to doing them.
- How do you want to die: Without knowing it, but when people who love me are somewhat prepared.
- Where do you want to go to college: If I did go again it’d be through SANS.
-What do you want to be when you grow up: Career-wise I’m already doing it. Life-wise I’m almost there.
- What country would you most like to visit: When I was a kid it was Sri Lanka just cuz. Now it’s Switzerland, because they have three official languages and that’s really cool.

Layer Nine:
- Number of drugs taken illegally: Without a prescription that’d be zero.
- Number of people I could trust with my life: It depends on the circumstances. Under any and every circumstance imaginable I only trust myself, if even myself, but that’s just because it’s not fair to rely on others to save you from certain things.
- Number of CD’s that I own: Hundreds
- Number of piercings: 2 closed over (ears)
- Number of tattoos: 0
- Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper: I dunno.
- Number of scars on my body: Many, but I love them all.
- Number of things in my past I regret: I used to regret nothing, now I have been told I will always feel regret for something I shouldn’t. At least I’m in good company for that one thing, and at least I did the right thing to cause me to regret unnecessarily.

Also, I got this from Dawg and originally answered the cooking question incorrectly so now I’m up from 54% to 58% – yay!

You Are 58% Likely to Survive Another Great Depression

Even though you may not be expecting the worst, you’re the type of person who prepares for the worst. You live a relatively modest life. You don’t overspend, and you aren’t very materialistic. You are also quite self sufficient and independent. You have many useful skills. You can take care of yourself and those you love… which is crucial to surviving another Great Depression. Could You Survive Another Great Depression?

Ok, that’s that.