Areas of Unrest

1 June 2000 - Nomar Brings Me Luck

QOTD: "A nice conservative is someone who advocates upholstered electric chairs." - Mark Russell

Reading: Ellen Emerson White, All Emergencies, Ring Super

Listening to: Mac Umba, Don't Hold Your Breath

I was having a pretty dreadful week. There's been major nastiness going on at work, most of it having to do with an evil coworker who loves to claim credit for other people's work. If I didn't care about our company, I would have let him hang himself on a particular task, but I figured that the rest of us were too likely to be in the way of the noose. (The issue involves having gotten a request from the colonel for a briefing on program risks. Any sane person with any perspective would have prepared a briefing on risk. The evil coworker was trying to get away with presenting pages and pages of detailed system description that didn't include any risk analysis. Mary Joan and I kept saying, "but the colonel asked about risk" and getting told that was just shorthand for him wanting to hear excruciating detail about the contents of a bunch of prototype software.) Unfortunately, Milo (my boss) is on vacation, and Mary Joan and I had promised him we wouldn't commit homicide while he was gone.

And then there's the general unfairness of the universe. A local storyteller was killed by a drunk driver Saturday night. Here was a woman who was just pulling her life together after some bad experiences (abusive childhood, bad first marriage, messy divorce) and was starting to do well (engaged to a nice man, getting a fair amount of work). And some selfish asshole can make a bad decision and take that away in an instant. (Her fiance survived, by the way, but was seriously injured. Some of the Dreamshapers folks are working on helping him out, including raising money since he doesn't have insurance.) While I didn't know Lora well and I've only met Gary once, I was livid over the accident.

Of course, I can add any level of personal irritation into raising my stress level. I wasted my time to see a really dull, pretentious movie (Time Code) and I can berate myself over not spending my time better. There's always more housework I should have done. And I've been stressed out over waiting to get my passport back, having sent it to get extra visa pages added.

Well, last night was a Bards meeting and I was running some errands on the way home. I decided to stop into Toys R Us, almost on a whim. And I found a Nomar Garciaparra action figure! (Starting Lineup, by Hasbro, in case you wondered.) Of course, I had to bring him home, since he's just so cute. I brought him into work today and placed him on my desk.

And I have triumphed over the evil coworker! Not only triumphed, but done so in front of my boss's boss! I ended up having to stay at work very late to get the briefing straightened out and to finish another heinous chore that had been interrupted by trying to salvage our company's reputation. But it was worth it. I hate to gloat but ... well, no, actually, I like to gloat!

I came home, tired but mildly triumphant and took in the mail. Which included a nice thick envelope from the Department of State! I now have plenty of visa pages and can get to work on the paperwork for my trip in August. (I do need to get a whole bunch of visa photos, but that just takes a trip to the mall.) Incidentally, for some reason I had thought they staple the extra pages to the end. What they actually do is sew an insert into the middle, with a seal that makes it official and a printed statement that says it was amended to add extra pages.

Nomar can't bring the dead back to life, alas, but I feel so much better that I can focus on what I can do to help Gary. Never underestimate the power of a shortstop.