Because I can.

Right now, well right now I'm looking at pictures of Sun Bears. Why? Because I can. And also Sun Bears are cool. There were a couple at Lowry Park Zoo, they might still be there, btu one in particular always stuck with me: it had three legs. I think it's name was Sunny.

When I first got Maisey, I told people she reminded me of a Sun Bear. She still does. And had she not had a cute name when I adopted her (for instance, if her name had still been Diamond, which I sometimes still whisper near her to see if she remembers that name...she kind of does), well I would have named her Sunny or Bear or something that related to a Sun Bear, like Sunny Bear?

I just checked Lowry Park Zoo's site...no more Sun Bears.

[Photo Credit: Wellington Zoo Web site]

What? Again? Within a week?

Good morning world. Things are looking up here. This weekend I go to New York City with a friend, L. She has a cool job at the university, and the university is paying her travel and such, and she asked if I wanted to go and take advantage of a free room. Well, yeah. Though it took me about a month to decided that I was going to go.

I leave in two days and get to spend nearly four full days in the City. Yay! And I get to see M and S, whom I haven't seen since they moved to Brooklyn almost two years ago...or wait, it may actually be just over two years ago. Anyway, I haven't seen them in forever. So, I'm exciting about spending time in the City with L, M, and S. There will be music shows...and I may even try for a matinee play one of the days, though that's seeming more and more unlikely when I think about all the things that I want to do.

***

Today is the Epiphany. Today is the last official day of the Christmas season (for the Catholics at least and probably some other Christians). It's the day when the Magi visited the Baby Jesus. I want to go around singing "We Three Kings" right now.

It's also the day that all the Greek Orthodox boys, ages 16-18, in and around Tarpon Springs, FL, jump into Spring's Bayou to retrieve a wooden cross thrown in by an Orthodox priest. he boy who retrieves it will be blessed for a year. I've always loved that tradition and that I grew up not too far from where it occurs. I've never been to the festivities/feast-day celebration, but I've wanted to.

When I was in high school, my French teacher, Dr. Groulx, would celebrate Epiphany in class (even if our period didn't fall on January 6th). There would be two volunteers from the class to back an Epiphany Cake, and in that cake there would be a plastic baby or a penny hidden. Whomever received the baby or penny would have good luck for the year. I got it one year. I don't think I had terribly good luck though. Basically the Epiphany Cake was similar to the tradition of the King Cake...not sure if I've ever gotten the baby from a King Cake either. And now that I think about it, I wonder if the King Cake descends from the Epiphany Cake and was later appropriated for Mardi Gras by the fine folks of New Orleans.

***

That's it for today.

Well hai there!

Yeah. So October 13 was my last post.

It seems appropriate to put up a post on the last day of the year.

Maybe in 2010 I'll resolve to post more. And most the two blogs I said I would definitely post: one full of pictures from the cruise I went on back in April and one or more full of pictures and narrative of my road trip from Tallahassee, FL to Salem, OR (there was even a commemorative apple pie that was made for our arrival in Salem).

So much has happened this year, and well, so much has happened these past few months. I need to be better about chronicling things better. I think that today maybe I'll do what Shannon does monthly (or tries) and that's going back and looking at posts from the same month but years previous and highlighting the events of the months of years past. But today, I'll go back and find the posts on or around NYE. Yeah that's a good idea. But first I'm going to fill out my time sheet for the current pay-period.

****

December 28, 2002:

Wishing I had money for "wicked cool" HP Legos. Meeting up with "hillsborough people [sic]" the day before. Fringe benefit of having a brother who scuba dives: Florida spiny lobsters. Something about a band...Morgan and Lindsay were friends with them: Loyal Frisbee. And lots of typos.

December 29, 2003:

Hadn't updated in a bit because I was apparently too bored. Nothing much really; kind of complained about not getting what I wanted for Christmas.

December 30, 2004 (three entries; also had just graduated and had just moved back home):

I was bored and wanted to type about something so I typed about how our white cat looked stoned most of the time, posited that he found a hidden stash of cat nip. Something dumb.... Oh and ordered the MS XP upgrade so I could download iTunes and sync up the iPod I had gotten for Christmas (...I still use that iPod. It's in my car in the center console...2nd generation).

December 25, 2005/January 7, 2006:

Got a laptop for Christmas (the one that slowly started to die this summer and has been huddled in a corner since July). I beat my brother at Stratego for the first time ever, and we played that game a lot growing up. "well things are kind of boring now. and so is this entry. oh, and i had one student email me about her grade. i haven't emailed her back yet. i have to think of something other than 'be happy with a b-. i could've failed you because you miseed seven classes, and if you look at the course policy sheet you'll see that more than six absences is grounds for failure.'"

In January I updated the world about my teaching roster (two repeat students) and the books I had read outside of school. I also pretentiously wrote about three books with editorial mistakes and how all were put out by Picador (Dry: A Memoir, Augusten Burroughs; I am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe; Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs). I wonder if I would find mistakes if I read them again.

December 27, 2006 (and this is the whole entry):

For dorks like me at least.

Bridge to Teribithia has been made into a movie and is coming out on Feb 16!!! YAY!!

But I probably won't be able to see it until April (or its on DVD) because of my horrible thesis writing/defending schedule. Oh and teaching. (sidenote: I've still not seen it...and never finished my thesis...these things might be related.)

December 28, 2007 (Blogger blog):

Wrote about going and seeing P.S. I Love You with my mother (I later bought the soundtrack and it's still good). The entry was about how I really liked it, how it made me cry, and how I was pissed that it was billed as a "date movie." "And again, I ask: Why is this a good date movie? He dies and she doesn't really find love again."

December 31, 2008:

I had work off, which is why I probably posted and I was watching television all day.

"anybody else ever notice that, on bones, brennan and booth never wear seat belts?

this frustrates me because booth is an fbi agent, and it's against the law not to wear a seat belt. you would think a show about crimes and law enforcement would have its characters wear seat belts. "

And a post about Pizza Hut's All Natural pizza...was it not natural before?

****

So yeah. That was fun. I laughed out loud at the Bridge to Teribithia post. And now to fuck with a coworker's cubicle.

A whole month? Really?

Hmm. No post in 31 or so days. Time has flown by. Part of time flying by is that things at work are going really well.

***

Two friends from high school came to visit this past week/weekend, and it was a blast. Most things haven't changed, but the things that have changed are as follows:

--We're grown up (kind of...we all commented on the fact that we're getting older and it kind of sucks).
--We went to the grocery store on a snack binge. Items purchased: Triscuits, brie, ice cream, frozen yogurt, gummy bears, and beer. Of those things, there are three things we would never have dreamed of buying on a snack binge in high school.
--We made fun of people we went to school with. (What, you never did that? I don't believe you.)
--We watched Jeopardy! together. Someone we knew from school was a contestant, that didn't happen in high school.
--We told corny, lame, dirty jokes that are completely hilarious.
--I drove us all around. Well that didn't ever happen until senior year.
--We stayed up late watching movies...though we used to stay up till the sun came up.

***

Other news: I'm taking a roadtrip to Portland in three weeks. This is kind of spontaneous and totally exciting.

***

Okay. Back to work.

Looking back

Wow. Eight years. A lot has happened in eight years.

A Facebook friend just posited the following question: "Where were you eight years ago today?"

I responded. I also had thought about this this morning when I woke up and the current NPR story began to make sense and no longer played the part of narrator in the limbo between sleep and waking.

Right now it's 11:24 am. At that time I was either walking back to my room in Dorman Hall from Honors Religion in America (REL 2121) in Dodd Hall or had just gotten back from class. Lauren was still in her pajamas, sitting under the covers of her bad with her knees drawn up to her chest, the television remote clutched in her right hand, and chewing on her right thumbnail. The lights hadn't been turned on. She hadn't been able to do anything but watch as the events unfolded. Lauren had watched as the towers had begun to fall.

I told her how my teacher held class as normal, only slightly touching on the subject of what had happened by saying, "We have to go about our lives as we normally would. If we don't, they've won. That's what people like that always want. They want to create disaster and terror and disruption. We can resist by going on like we normally would." This was before we knew about all four planes. This was before we knew about the plot. This was before the towers fell.

---

That Tuesday morning the phone rang before my alarm went off. I jumped out of bed to retrieve the handset from the cradle.

"Hello?"

"Danielle. This is Miss Sharon."

"Oh, hi."

"Were you and Lauren awake?"

"No. I have class in...30 minutes."

"Turn on the television to a news channel."

"What? Why?"

"Just turn it on. Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center towers and another one has crashed into the Pentagon."

I woke Lauren and did as I was told. Footage of the second plane was being aired, smoke rising up from the first tower.

Miss Sharon was concerned about a plane coming for the capitol building here in Tallahassee. I assured her that we were far enough away from the capitol and the governor's house.

---

We kept CNN on all day. I cried watching all the people fleeing. I talked with friends from high school about the surrealness of it all. We all agreed that it was like watching Black Rain come to life, except that that was about the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and this was people fleeing from the world's tallest towers which had fallen.

---

I remember the numbness that fell over me. The numbness that seemed to have fallen over the university. The numbness that seemed to have fallen over the rest of the country. We were separated from the events, but inexplicably linked by our humanity. I didn't know how to react. Sometimes I still don't know how to react.

The 2.5 Week Countdown Has Begun

All I can do right now is sit in my cubicle and shake my head at what I hear and wait for two and a half weeks to be finished.

(Well, I could do more...but this is all I can do about a certain situation.)

Also, I cannot wait for the day when multiple people are brought into the same project (individually) in the middle of the project without consult to the person who started the project. Oh wait, that day is coming in two and a half weeks.
___

In other news: My parents were in town this weekend. They brought up my bedroom set from Tampa. The set I picked out in ninth grade, when my mom took me to pick out my adult furniture, saying that this is the furniture that I would have with me when I became a grown up. They also brought up a kitchen table that my dad hand built 33 years ago. He put new legs on it (the other ones were on the skinny side for the weight of the table) and started to refinish it. I'll finish the refinishing this week (daily applications of Tung Oil).

I took loads of pictures and will hopefully do a picture blog about the furniture (unlike the promised and unfulfilled picture blog of the cruise we took in April).

Complaining Time

Dear Sir,

When you come up to my desk and say, "Please tell her that we will need to talk to them about this today," do not get pissy at me for replying, "Who is her? Who is them? and What is this?"

See when you don't use antecedents, I have no idea what in the hell you are talking about. I know your favorite game to have your employees play is "Guess what I'm thinking!" However, the majority of us don't enjoy that game and would much rather get to the heart of the matter right away, so that we can get back to that "Top Priority" assignment you gave us at 4:30 yesterday and from which you just interrupted us to guess what you were saying only to have to pass that message onto a coworker because you can't be bothered, and now we have to take more time out of our day and away from this "Top Priority" project to bitch about your over-reliance on pronouns and constant clarity issues.

KTHXBYE!

D

It's def. Hurrican Season

On Saturday afternoon I caught wind of a named tropical storm in the Atlantic. So of course I checked out NOAA first and called my dad second. We chatted a bit about the current condition until I said, "Hey, our first names storm in the middle of August. Doesn't seem like it's going to be a bad Hurricane Season."

"Wait a second. Charlie was in the middle of August."

"Well that was the third and that was a bad season. I'm just saying--"

"And Camille. And what about Betsy. Oh! And Andrew was the first named storm and in the middle of August."

"Okay, okay. But those weren't bad seasons. Except for Charlie, but he was the third named storm. I'm just saying. Plus Ana is only a tropical storm."

"How tall do you want this table? Have you looked at chairs yet?"

But I gotta say that three named storms in one weekend is pretty amazing.

Luckily, the one that formed in the Gulf (Claudette) was never more than a tropical storm and downgraded quickly to a tropical depression. She dropped some rain here...not a lot, just enough to make things overcast and force me to shove the dog out the backdoor this morning.

Bill's a cat 1 hurricane, but it looks like he will skirt the US (though not Bermuda). It'll be interesting to watch his progress.

Now Ana...hmm. She might be a trouble maker. She's currently a tropical depression, but was a tropical storm. I wasn't really tracking her Saturday evening/Sunday morning, but I'm guessing she was downgraded once she hit land. But she's coming up to the Gulf, and we know that things can change in the Gulf, paths can become unpredictable, storms can gain strength. Hmmm. Ana likes to change her mind. In the four hours or so since I checked NOAA's cone of probability, she's shifted her proposed course: She's not going to be in the Gulf for as much/as long as before.

Grrr.

Damn it. One of my allied coworkers has taken another job within the building. This is not good.

I wish him well but am mad at him right now. But it's mad combined with jealousy tinged with some sadness.

I tried, I did try.

This is slightly amusing to me.

When I changed positions at the end of January/beginning of February, I had two weeks with my predecessor, wherein he attempted to impart all of the knowledge of the position (which by the way was impossible because there are little things that you forget about until they come up because all of the big things overshadow those little things).

One thing that he told me, the thing that he said was the most important to learn and remember was to keep my mouth shut in planning meetings for a certain project. That I needed to sit in my seat, with my notepad, take notes, and KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT.

Last week I had a performance review/appraisal. One thing I was told that I need to work on is listening and not talking so much. (I did tell them that improving my listening skills has been a life-long task.) They told me (two of the three men sitting in on my review) that sometimes when I talk, it's hard for other people to get a word in. And that maybe I should just listen. The other guy in the review, a coworker and friend, pointed out that my talking might go back to what my boss had said earlier in the meeting about how I seemed to process information three to four times more quickly than most people.

These two things don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. The "sitting in certain planning meetings and keeping my mouth shut" and the "needs to improve listening skills." My predecessor was not picking on me because I talk too much. The planning meetings had been going on for awhile. Three (maybe more) offices were involved in the project. There had been a lot of talk but no action. That's how it was for the first two meetings I attended.

Then all of sudden. The bossman volunteered our office to organize the project. Basically he volunteered me to do the whole thing. And that's what happened. And gradually I began to talk in the meetings. Pointing out things that were not the best way to do something. Offering suggestions and the like. Mainly I started to talk in these meetings in order to make my life easier when it came to this ginormous project that I had no experience doing. That's right. No experience with this type of project.

So I began to talk. I began to coordinate. And now, now I'm the point person for certain things. I wouldn't say I'm the head of the project, someone from higher up is the actual project coordinator, but I do know the most about what's going on. I have the most time and effort and energy invested in this project.

Tomorrow, well tomorrow I'm facillitating the first meeting of a series of four big meetings leading to the end of this project. I'm freaking out. I have to organize materials. I have to train people. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

And then I think to how my predecessor told me to sit in the meetings and KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT. I tried, I really tried.

From the Inbox

Got to work this morning to find an e-mail in my inbox about some local events. The following is one of them:

Taking Care of you - W.E. Planning is launching the fourth annual “Taking Care of You” seminar to educate and inspire mothers and daughters within the Big Bend community. The event will feature motivational speakers who will cover various aspects of how to better care for yourself and your loved ones. Topics of discussion will include healthy eating do’s and don’ts, getting fit and staying fit, physical exams and their importance, ways to relieve stress, and ways to communicate. Breakfast and lunch will be provided along with door prizes and giveaways.

Way to go local community! Let's keep enforcing gender stereotypes!

Young women definitely need to how to better care for their loved ones. But young men do too. In fact everyone could benefit from learning how to take care of other people, their own selves, and better ways to communicate.

Yep. We may live in a diverse community of academics, politicians, hippies, and the working class, but we still live in the South where women are the ones expected to improve themselves so they can better serve men.

Not many things get me riled up, but gender inequality and stereotypes certainly do. Maybe more on this later.

Hmmm. I got nothing for a title.

And good morning to you.

Couple things rattling around in my noggin today.

1. I think I'm getting sick. This is no fun, but would explain why I'm tired after going to bed early.

2. No texts from Rayray. This is a good thing.

3. I'm still digging on Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade after having repeatedly listened to the album I bought after their show on Monday night. I can't wait for them to release their new album--the songs they played from it were amazing.

4. Coincidentally, my current music recommendation for anyone and everyone is Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade.

5. Work is very boring when there's nothing to do. There was stuff to do yesterday, but not today. Well there I do need to type up and agenda for a meeting later today--if that meeting happens.

6. I need to go to the dentist.

7. When I write down passphrases, I should really put the post-it some place where it won't get thrown away and that I'll remember where it is.

8. Keep going back and forth about e-mailing the publisher I work for about getting another manuscript for editing. The current ms I'm working on has been with the author for nearly a week while he does his half. I could have been working on another ms this whole time.