Stark-raving pissed off. Oh, and writing.

A coworker is driving me barking mad (arf!). Just barking. She's obsequious, disingenuous, self-serving. Her time-management skills mock the term. She was witless enough to alienate her department's admin within a week of her arrival nearly a year ago. She makes promises about my services that I can't keep (not only because her promises are ill-informed, but because they are usually ridiculous). She calls in me and my services as though I were her gifts to offer. Her products. And I'm not even a member of her department. It's clear that in a company whose internal motto is "We are here to make lives better," my coworker is here only to make her portfolio better. I rant, I know. But I seethe. She's been making me nutters for almost 12 months. I've tried talking with her, coaching her, baldly saying what she needs to know. I've tried different approaches, saying the same thing many different ways in case she has an unusual way of learning. All to no avail. She just keeps getting upset when I don't fulfill the promises she makes in my stead. It's unbelievable. So today I sent an incendiary 360 review form to her boss. I feel bad, but only marginally so, and that only because I have to deal with her now. (We work on the same floor of the same building, she in Public Affairs on the north side of the building and me in my little cube hosted by Public Affairs on the south side of the building. Which makes me hope her boss even marginally agrees with my assessment of her, because otherwise I may be out of a seat. No matter. I can work from home and other remote locations.). I heeded the advice of my longtime friend and dear mentor, J.H., and didn't put anything in the review that I haven't said to her face. Still, I'm certain she'll act shocked and hurt, probably even betrayed. That's because no matter how many times or how many ways she's told something, if it doesn't fall in line with her own objectives or perceptions, she doesn't retain it. It's kind of like talking to a brain-damaged person who has no short-term memory. I have to keep repeating myself. Now, I'm one of the most forgiving, mentoring, second-chance-ing, patient people I know. But once I've been crossed too many times, my patience runs out and then I am not a supportive person. No, not at all. So I'm starting with the negative review. We'll see where it goes from there.
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I owe fiction at our next group meeting, 2/12. Eeep! I have some pretty raw stuff and now I have to sit down and hold it against the shaping and buffing wheels for a while. Wish me luck.

Holidays' end

Our first Christmas tree met an undignified end on Sunday night: we unhooked the ornaments, unwound the strands of lights, hauled it out to the balcony and pitched it over the rail to the sidewalk below. Once we got the tinder-dry pine out onto the balcony, I threw on a jacket and went down to the metal-cage security door that opens out onto the sidewalk on our busy SoMa thoroughfare. I looked both ways, then shouted up an all-clear and ducked back behind the steel mesh. The tree hit the sidewalk sideways, rustling on the way down. Then my fiance came zipping downstairs and dragged the sad castoff to a pile of windfall across the street. The city is scheduled to come by, saw up the all the trees that fell in the big storm last week, and take the pieces to the mulch yard. We figured that'd be a better use for our Christmas tree than being chucked into a landfill. Still. As much as I love the fragrance and cheer of a live tree, I really regret having a dying plant in our home and using it as a symbol for renewed life. I'd much rather have an aluminum tree and funky silver ornaments. But my fiance doesn't have a retro molecule in his body so that's never going to happen. Ah, well. More news over at 1+1 (see link at right).

Demon-free for another year

Today Theophany was celebrated in the Orthodox Church, complete with the Blessing of the Waters. Along with an uncommonly long commitment of TIC (time in church), this involves being sprinkled with holy water, which feels pretty good, particularly when the guy doing the sprinkling is His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas of the Dardanelles. I got to take communion from him, too. Nikitas is a cool metropolitan. He mentioned during his little chat exhorting parishioners to stay after liturgy for the whole holy water to-do that he's a Florida Gators fan, so he understands the die-hard commitment of waiting in the rain and snow until the end of a close game. Any priest who brings football into his preaching is OK in my book. After the liturgy and blessing of the waters, everyone was free to pick up a vial of holy water from a tray in the narthex. Cool. Tap water that through the power of 20 minutes' blessing can safeguard my home, car, spirit, bodily health* and even allegedly my peace of mind. I nabbed a bottle and left almost immediately afterward, DFH (dear future husband) in tow, to meet friend Andrew for lunch. Andrew, a wit and fellow convert who now attends an Orthodox church a bit south of mine, said they celebrated theophany/epiphany at his church, too, and that "nobody had burst into flames so it was all good. No vampires." Then he allowed as to how the whole sprinkling with holy water thing was handy, as once a year it allows the priests to check their congregations for demons. One thing I really appreciate about Andrew is that he's a churchgoer with a wicked sense of humor.

*The whole bodily-healing thing really had me going there for a while. But I tried it on my mom multiple times. Either holy water just works on the Orthodox, or I wasn't enough of a believer. Or it wasn't in God's plan. Or maybe it's just that nobody gets out of that final train ride and my mom's car was at the blasted station. Whatever. It didn't do anything for her bodily health and even though I find holy water charming, I'm also still a little bitter about that.

Whew!

Much better now. Being inside and cozy while a huge rainstorm is blustering outside has added substantially to my now-much-lighter mood. We woke up this morning to see many trees split or downed in the tree-lined alley across the way. Huge limbs blocked both ends of the alley, and a good 40 or so cars were blocked until mid-day when the city showed up with big power saws and cleared the way. Power was out until 2. I'm happy my good spirits are back, and not even the prospect of a party-less birthday (my birthday is tomorrow!) is getting me down. Our friend Arthur, who was going to make dinner for me and dear future husband and a small group of friends, came down with a bug. So that's probably off. But now that the power is back on, my sweetie can make the cake he was planning to bake, so there will (if the storm gods are with us and don't take the electricity back out) be sweet chocolatey goodness on the morrow. Bonus: my older brother sent me a present and it arrived by FedEx today. I love getting packages in the mail.