April 10, 2003
Dear Everyone:
This has been a full and busy week for me, with training every day so far. All those people who got “volunteered” to serve on “focus teams” to find the $23 million that our operating company president intends to save were told not only to show up for the team “kick off meetings”, but also to report for training on the not-quite-released document management system that we’re working on.
So we “sliced-and-diced” a full-day’s training session and compressed it into two hours. But two hours of training doesn’t mean that you’re finished after two hours. There’s still creating an attendance list in said system, listing everyone who came to the session. And there’s sending a detailed email to the system administrator (not me, for once!) to have their user-ids (pronounced user-eye-dees) set up. And following up with the new users when their ids are ready.
In other words: Lots to do.
I’ve also been rushing home after work every evening to try and get ready for the workman who is coming tomorrow to install the new shutters on all of my windows. That means taking down all the drapes (and arranging for dry cleaning as long as we’re at it). And cleaning around the windows. Translation: Wipe up five years worth of dust and dead bugs on the window sills.
Also, by the way, the dishwasher, which took six weeks to get fixed, broke again Sunday night, almost one month, to the date, after it was repaired before. Rather than deal with the obnoxious repairman again, I’ve decided it’s time to buy a new dishwasher. That will be next weekend. In the meantime, I’m back to washing dishes by hand.
Bottom line: I’m busy and exhausted. So this will be a short Letter.
In the Good News Column:
Good News: “Jeannie’s” PC is now working. We spent most of last weekend getting it set up and finding workarounds for the things that tend to make it freeze. (Reset the video display to the lowest resolution setting, replacing the ancient trackball, not using the scrollbar when on the Internet.) This is one reason why I’m spending the evenings getting ready for the shutters. I had originally planned to do it on the weekend.
Good News: Mother has adopted a cat. His name is now Nebuchadnezzar, or “Nebbie” for short. This is an improvement over “Tigger”, with apologies to A. A. Milne and Winnie the Pooh. He is, as I understand, a four-year-old short-haired tabby and is settling nicely into his new home.
Good News: I am not, as it turns out, allergic to popcorn. That diagnosis was based on imperfect data combined with a technique known as “jumping to a conclusion”. A happenstance occurred when I used an over-the-counter skin product in a slightly different order than I normally would. The next morning, I had the same strange reaction, but only where I had used the aforementioned product.
This suggested a correlation not previously investigated. I waited a few days, then tried a bona fide patch test and confirmed: It was the combination of one product, used occasionally, with other products, used nightly that caused my face to blow up like a puffer fish. One reason I hadn’t stumbled onto this before is that the first question to ask was, “What have you done that’s new and/or different?” And the answer was: Nothing. Apparently, the product changed over time. Now the product is in the trash and I can once again eat popcorn (but not as much as I have in the past).
Good News:
My new shutters will be installed tomorrow, some time between
And that’s enough Good News for one week.
Love, as always,
Pete
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