Believe it or not, no alcohol was consumed in the writing of this post

This weekend, I learned a lot about friendship.

We – there’s a few of us in this together – have been doing this for over two decades. We might not see each other for a year or more, but put us in the same room and we've never been apart for more than 10 minutes. Put on the cheesy movie. Cook up a frozen pizza or a pot of pasta.  Catch up on the small stuff – and then get to the big stuff that you need to talk about with people who have known you for so long that you realize they knew you before you even had a real personality; Growing up together and figuring out life as it happens, because that’s the only way to start figuring out life. And they really are the ones who know how you got to Today.

There was a baby, when we were probably too young to even know what having a baby meant, but one of us (obviously, not me) was having one, so by God we were going to figure it out. Dealing with boys – and then men – before we knew what the difference between the two even meant, much less how to deal with the transition between the two.  Marriage, Divorce, Messy families –  before we learned that sometimes family just plain means messy and hurt feelings –and finding out that you learn a lot  about yourself when things get Messy and Hurtful. We have figured out so many Very Important Things together that we should have a freaking Nobel Prize in Life. Or at least, I assume that's what the multiple empty bottles of wine at 2 AM mean.

But most of all, friendship.

Friendship that grows from stupid boys to uninterpretable relationships to realizing that no matter what, there are some people that will always have your back. No questions asked – or at least, no questions that have wrong answers, because even bad answers are accepted. An understanding that sometimes just pouring the next glass of wine is affirming that we’re all in this together.

I think I've had the easiest path of all of us.  But I know I am lucky because we've shared the path together.

*** Seriously. No wine for me tonight. You should see the number of bottles we emptied over the past two nights.

****Also, too, inside joke: We should probably start making contingency plans for when one of us stops reacting to the volleyball scene in Top Gun. Do any of us know CPR?

Good Grief Jesus Jones

I got a request via email to provide a list of titles and money spent in a certain area. I whipped up a spreadsheet, clickety-clacked the information into it, tied it all together with a few well-placed and nicely-formed formulas and clicked on "email", feeling like I had earned that hour's income.

A minute later, the email was returned to me because the recipient's email inbox was full.

So I called him and let him know that I had the info waiting for him.

Me : But I can't send it because your inbox is full. Should I print it up for you?
Him: No, I don't know what's wrong with my email. I cleaned it out yesterday when this happened.
Me: Are you storing it on the email server or on your computer? If you store it on your computer, you won't really have a limit. A lot of people forgot to make the switch when our email changed last month.
Him: That's it! Do you remember how to do that?
[Please note that I'm feeling pretty gosh-darn smart right about now]
Me: Sure. I've got a document with screenshots to walk you through it. I'll email it to you.
Him: Umm...

Thank God It's Friday, indeed.

My brain needs an external hard drive

That's really all I have to say about that. I don't think those even exist in the Star Trek universe yet - which everyone knows is basically a crystal ball into our future - so I'm pretty sure I'm out of luck.

Great Things About My Life

1.) I have air conditioning.
Dear Baby Jesus, it is hot. The heat index got up to 110 today.Right now it's 10:30 PM and the heat index is still 95. The iced rum and coke {zero} make this much more tolerable.

2.) I have the most awesome lawyer ever.
The Professor & I met with our "lawyer" today to get our wills, powers of attorney and health directives set up. "Lawyer" is in  quotes because:
a) we pay him in bottles of Jamesons Irish Whiskey;
b) his wife feeds us lunch afterwards;
c) we have done the above at his house and then all go for a 2 hour swim together.
Seriously - is your lawyer that awesome???

3) We had dinner with The Beloved Stepson tonight.
In all seriousness, watching this boy young man grow up has been incredible. Having intelligent conversation with him rocks my world, because he's so freaking smart and intelligent.  The fact that he actually listens to what I say (I guess, to be fair, and I to him) - instead of rolling his eyes the second I open my mouth - really introduces a feeling I can't describe. Not that we agree on everything, it's just that we can have a conversation with different opinions that is still respectful and insightful, and yet doesn't devolve into "FINE!" and a stomping off and door slamming. I will never miss hearing "FINE!" in that Tone of Voice.*

4) The Professor & I finished our Saturday evening by going to Whole Foods and buying 12 bottles of wine. Life will be good for the next few days it seems.

*I may in 20 years or so say that I miss hearing "FINE!" in that tone of voice. I promise you, it will be the dementia speaking.

All By Myself

The Professor's gone to do his summer duty of grading AP exams (it's good money, but dear sweet baby kittens, the boredom of grading papers in Missouri for a week cannot even be exaggerated) and so I have a weekend alone to stew in my own juices.

That sounded a lot better in my head. Now I feel like a pile of strawberries in sugar.

ANYway, I have a Saturday ahead of me with absolutely no plans. The only thing on my to do list is "clean litter box", which isn't the most fun chore I can think of but at least it's not exactly time consuming. I have it in my mind to sit on the couch and watch Star Trek on Netflix all day. Because I know how to rock this house.

Update: Saturday morning:
Hey! I forgot to hit publish. You know what happens when you don't hit the "publish" button? Your blog post stays locked in Blogger and no one sees it.

I'm paying a large chunk of my income to the government in the form of student loans because they put me through 2 degrees and 9 years of 2 Universities. Yet I still forget how blogs work after the ... *cough*...um, well, let's not get caught up in how many glasses of wine I had last night, let's just say "after the last glass of wine".

9 AM: The litter box is cleaned.  Also, the cats completely agree with the Saturday Couch Plan.

11:30 AM: The Hallmark Channel is running a marathon of The Waltons,which may be dangerous to my tear ducts. At this point, to get off of my couch would be an insult to the universe.

11:50 PM: Holy Slothfulness, there's a Little House on the Prairie marathon tomorrow. I may be dehydrated by Monday.

One of my employees is getting a new computer, because her old one stopped playing nicely with others. Since I know how to plug the damn thing into the wall, I get to to be the one to deal with our IT people. This requires an advanced degree all on its own.

Step 1: File a request with IT:  "I have a brand-spanking shiny new computer - still in the box! - that needs to be hooked up to the network. The employee is at work stoppage due to broken and exploded old PC that has gone to a better place. Please help."*

Step 2: Negotiate
Email from IT: Can you give me the computer's MAC address?

My reply: Sorry, it doesn't have one because it's brand new and has never been on the network.

Email from IT: Can you give me the computer name?

My reply: Sorry, it doesn't have one because it's brand new and has never been on the network.

Email from IT: It should be on the paper attached to the front of the machine from the last workstation that had it installed.

Me: It's never been installed at another work station. It's brand new. I still have the box. Will that help?

Email from IT: the address and name would be helpful.
 
My (Silent) Brain: IT DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING BECAUSE IT IS BRAND NEW AND YOU ARE INCOMPETENT AND WE WILL JUST DO WITHOUT COMPUTERS FOR EVER AND EVER AND MY BRAIN IS LEAKING OUT OF MY EARS.

Right now, the employee is computer-less. I don't know if IT wants me to break out a Ouija Board to divine the address and name for this machine, or if they have a method that will involve me being allowed to turn the damn thing on at some point in the future. They've stopped communicating.  Honestly, it's a lot more calm in my brain now that I'm not retyping the same information over and over. Hey, did I mention that this is a brand new computer? Could you tell my IT people?

*The original request may have been more formal, but it was certainly clear that it was a BRAND. NEW. COMPUTER.

Unleashed

I've started having waking nightmares - or maybe they're fantasies - that my tongue is going to completely break free of the leash my brain has on that keeps me from saying exactly what I want at completely inappropriate times. I can't tell if I'm horrified at the thought or unbelievably tempted.

I'm never one to tell you that I like your skirt if I don't (do you like it? that's what matters, not my inadequate opinions! Why are you crying because I don't like green tweed???), or pretend for very long that I like a person that I'd rather never set eyes on again (I'm pretty good at leaving rooms just as certain other people enter, as I inevitably must leave to look at that invoice I need check on or that wine glass I need to fill. Sometimes both things may happen at once).

 But somehow even thinking about telling a lady in a wheelchair to mind her own business just seems over the line. Even if she was being an interfering busybody in the first place, even if she followed me through 3 different aisles in Publix telling me that I was carrying my purse wrong, my hair was "cheaply dyed" and god knows what else... Still, it felt like yelling "How much I spend on wine is none of your damn business!" in the middle of the grocery store would be a tad harsh. She probably would've run me over with her Rascal, too, which would not have made the hair situation any better.

Yet still, my brain introduces the image and I'm immediately scared that my tongue will be lured into action, jumping into the fray with no helmet to protect itself from the wrath that will surely follow. One day that leash is going to snap and God, I hope it's worth it. Will someone remember to sneak some contraband rum into whichever asylum I end up?

All The Live Long Day

The chaos continues unabated. I should really write down the stories so they are never forgotten, but it seems almost cruel to the people who don't realize how ridiculous they are being. How anyone can be that un-self-aware is beyond me, but there you have it. I guess if you're the kind of person who needs to call someone in another department to yell at them for 5 minutes for not turning off the bathroom light, you're also not the kind of person who does a lot of thinking about good time management skills.
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There's a growing misconception that I have direct access to my boss' brain waves. I keep getting questions that start with "Is he going to___________?". I always - and I mean always - have to resist the urge to say "How the hell would I know?", because I try pretty hard not to even mildly curse at my employees. Rest assured - if I had a telepathic link into his brain, I would spend my time trying to get him to bring cheesecake to work every day. I would not be worrying about where he's thinking about placing the clock.
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The entire organization - ~75 people - had a team-building day a couple of weeks ago. One of the "games" we played was a version of bingo that's pretty popular around base. Each space on the bingo card lists something like "Born in the same month as you" or "has the same favorite color as you" or "has visited at least 3 other countries". You have to find a different person to fill in each square. So I had to find a person born in November, and a different person that likes the color blue, etc. I learned 2 things about how people think of me that day: 1) One of the squares was "Likes to cook". Now: I know I love to cook, but I didn't realize a) how many people know that, and b) how many people do NOT like to cook. I think I was the name on about half of those "likes to cook" squares. 2.) One of the squares was "has at least 1 tattoo". About 5 people - and these were people I actually spend breaks/lunches with, not people I barely acknowledge - have always assumed I had a tattoo somewhere and asked me to put my name down. At least I had the cooking thing to fall back on.

Heat

Reason 1,628 why I am glad I am working in the trailers and not in the building: This just came through email: "Group X & Group Y* are trying to determine if one or both of the boilers in Room Z* are operational and whether any heat can be generated for the main library." *Not their real names

New Year

I woke up on January 1st with a head stuffed full of ickiness. No, it wasn't a hangover (at least I've never had a hangover that involved snot, but I guess there's a first time for everything). So let's hope I'm getting any and all illness for 2012 out of my system right out of the gate so that the rest of the year can be snot-free. There's a new blessing for you: "May your new year be snot free". Amen.

I got my greedy little paws on my new eReader yesterday. Charged it up, took some [expired] cold meds and then tried to transfer books from my laptop. Anyone else see a problem with that sequence of events?

So I've put the eReader away until cold meds, expired or otherwise, are no longer needed. The SyFy channel has a Star Trek marathon on, I have cold pork chops to keep me hydrated(?) and my cat is in desperate need of some snuggling on the couch after four days without me.

Happy New Year! May it be snot free!