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The immediate thought I have right now is that it pisses me off when people hold "hallway meetings" right outside my cubicle, and don't get the hint when I turn around in my chair and stare pointedly at them.
I am grateful for the clams that gave their life so that I could have nibbly, crunchy, fried clammy goodness at lunch.
Okay, it's not a dry heat during monsoon season.
Who knew knitting was so amusing?
"I-- I 'll do anything that you want me to do,
And I'll do almost anything, that you want me too, ooh,
But I can't go for that, (No can do)
No, I can't go for that, (No can do)
Oh, I can't go for that, (No can do)
I can't go for that, can't go for that, can't go for that."
-- Hall and Oates, "I Can't Go For That"
2003 - First day back to work.
2002 - Fifteen favorite pictures from the wedding.
2001 - Changes in latitude.
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July 28, 2004
Taking Notes
Okay! I've sent out messages to my Notify List members, and posted information on Colloquial, so the only place left to declare the information is here. I'm switching from Notify List to Yahoo Groups for the e-mail notifications of when this site is updated. If you're on Notify List, you should have gotten an e-mail invitation to join the Snerkology Yahoo Group, and you'll have seven days from the receipt of that invitation to "accept" via that e-mail. If you didn't get the invitation, or if the invitation expires, or if you weren't on the list in the first place and you wish to join up now, you can join the notification list by sending an e-mail here, or visit the group site. Hopefully the reliability issues I had with Notify List (and I'm not the only one, apparently) will not follow me to Yahoo Groups, and my dear loyal readers can stop receiving multiple "Is this List on?" messages.
Onto another item of dubious interest - I've been having really screwed up dreams (always have, really) and decided to start a new blog in which to record them. I'm not looking for patterns or signs or analysis or anything, I just figured that things as vivid and screwed up as what has been happening in my sleeping brain deserve to get recorded. If only to provide my future therapist with interesting reading.
I'm currently sitting in hour 2.5 of a four hour "Process Requirements Document" review for a project I'm working on. We're going item by item down through a list of requirements; going through the entire list for one discipline, then moving onto the next discipline and going through the list again. There's a list of about fifteen disciplines - we're making sure that the requirements can be met for each, and recording any gaps or issues. It's a LOOOONG and tedious process.
So I'm writing an entry, which looks to anyone else like I'm "taking notes". I remember to look up periodically and nod wisely. I'm listening with half an ear and interjecting when I need to. They don't need me for this part, anyway.
I look cute, at least. Heh. I've got on a jean skirt, black tank and pink sweater, with black sandals. My toes match my sweater, thanks to last week's birthday pedicure, which makes me feel very fancy indeed. I'm having a good hair day. I haven't missed a workout for two weeks. I've got silver on my ears, neck, wrist, fingers, and ankle. I feel good. Rare, that.
I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and still felt that it was surreal to consider that I'm thirty years old. It's not a bad thing, just surreal. Hell, at work I've had to defend my youth for so long (I started working at AcronymCo at the age of 20 - less years than many people's tenure) that it almost feels like I've crossed the border into "legitimate adult". A feeling which will get old quick, I'm sure. No pun intended.
My brain still "sounds" like it did back when I was a teenager, looking into the mirror while getting ready for school in the morning. My thought processes are startlingly unchanged. I still remember with immediate clarity who I was at fifteen, which was half my lifetime ago (and when I can say that thirty was half my lifetime ago, I'll be sixty - eep). I can see myself, still, in that mirror. I remember standing at the bathroom sink and casting my thoughts ahead, wondering what it will be like when I'm grown. And now, here I am. Realizing (with some measure of relief, I think) that I'm still the same person, just distilled and de-fluffed.
My priorities are grown-up. My experiences are broader. I have more patience. I'm more responsible. I can cook now, and can drive fearlessly down a six-lane highway. I use my brain a lot more than I used to. I can have sex as much as I want to and don't have to feel guilty about it. Heh.
But I still talk too much and say the wrong things sometimes. The stuff that was funny to me then is still funny to me now. My taste in music has gotten younger, if anything (Marie's influence). I still sing at the top of my lungs to any song I know the words to. I still lose myself in a book as much as ever. I still need to write, every single day.
I guess it would be untrue to say that I haven't noticed any significant difference in myself, having achieved this milestone. One HUGE difference, which I was recently discussing with Calvin, is my self-confidence. Nonexistent at fifteen, it has grown in such leaps and bounds that I can speak my mind and have confidence in my knowledge and skills, in a meeting in which I am one of the only women - if not the only woman. Such a thing would have scared me to tears even ten years ago, when I sat as silent as a mouse in any meeting and avoided presentations like the plague. If I knew then that I'd be required routinely to present, in meetings with as few as three attendees and as many as four hundred, I would have quit then and there. I knew nothing of the things I'm relied upon as an "expert" in now. The sheer amount of learning I've done since starting at AcronymCo is staggering. And I think I can admit, without sounding too self-important, that makes me proud.
I think I'm right where I want to be, at thirty. Really the only "regrets" I have are that I haven't finished my degree, I never learned to play the piano, I live very far away from where I consider to be my real home, and I no longer own horses. More than compensating for those things are the fact that I have just the exact kind of family that I've always wanted to be a part of (the grandkids before thirty were unanticipated, but in a positive way). My relationship is MORE than I ever dreamed of. I have a career that never even crossed my mind when I was young (I never did know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I still don't know), but is challenging and as secure as a job gets these days. My home is welcoming and comfortable and I take pride in the ownership of it. I never set any of these goals, to be achieved by the time I hit thirty. But being here, I feel like the progression of my life has gone along just as it should have.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm happy. Happy to be me, regardless of how old I am.
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