Okay, my boyfriend Ryan Phillippe is peering up soulfully at me from my desktop wallpaper, so I�m in a fairly centered place and can now begin my journal entry.
My day began with a bang -- or, more accurately, a �pzzzt!� You see, first I was having dreams about floating (but of course, I was only about an inch off the ground, because even when I dream the classics, they�re still fucked up somehow), and then I was panicked about oversleeping�which I didn�t. Then I got to work and fired up my computer, only to have it freeze immediately.
My only recourse -- this machine being a Mac, which NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO OPERATE -- was to cut off the power and restart the thing. So I did. Only then it demanded I feed it Susie�s password, which no one bothered to teach me. So I stared at it blankly for a good ten minutes until it curiously defaulted and allowed me access anyway. Patience is rewarded, I suppose. Actually, I guess that in this particular instance, a better turn of phrase might be �ambivalence is rewarded�, but I digress.
No sooner had my machine rebooted than it was howling at me about some meeting I had with some dude, the very mention of whose name makes everyone else in the office tremble. I was alerted by Sophie that all I had to do for this meeting was promise to fax him some letters and confirm a phone conference for the next day. As it turned out, he had some other concerns. Most notably, why his revenue was in the toilet and what was I, personally, going to do about it?
After stumbling lamely through that fiery circus hoop, I received a frantic email from Sophie about some missing reports. I had my next appointment with disaster scheduled for a mere thirty minutes later, but I took that time to ascertain that said reports were not missing. Well, not per se, anyway. To be �missing� would imply that their existence was possible in the first place. Turns out that the activity she was seeking a report on had never been performed. I had nothing to do with it -- thank heaven -- but I did get to play messenger. And then it was into meeting number two!
I think if I never hear the words, �Why are these numbers so low?� or �Our invoices are all screwed up, and we�re not paying you guys until they�re fixed,� again, I will be a happy man. Particularly when my only avenue of recourse is, �Hmm�well, I�ll ask Sophie and get back to you!� Not terribly reassuring. For either of us. And let�s not talk about the occurrences coming immediately on the heels of that meeting, which involved six frantic emails, a fruitless search through 500 separate reports, grouped sporadically in the very general location of �somewhere in that pile, I think,� and the discovery that I�d been regularly screwing up two important functions of my job.
I�m happy to say the afternoon went much better, although it did include a phone conference in which we listened in as one of our employees did something ill-advised, and the client instantly turned to me for an explanation. Like I had anything to do with it.
Testy Client: Dr. No, why did she do that???Me: What am I, her inner monologue? How the fu�
Elaine: I think maybe she was confused!
So it was a very long day. And now it�s super late, and I have to get up in a few short hours, and I�m just going to bed.Oh, don�t look so surprised. After all, Summer is rerun season.
