I've got a legal article open in my browser, written by Carl T. Bogus. And no, it's not a parody.

I'm so grateful: one of my coworkers had finally had enough of the chatter in the office, and sent out a long email demanding the chatterers cut it out. There's a little group of them in the center aisle of our cube farm who were going on and on and on recently, just talking and talking about politics and movies and so forth. And my coworker finally had enough.

If I'd done it, I probably would have been labeled a bitca and gotten in trouble, since I'm a contractor. But yay for unpassive aggressiveness!

Sweet Baby Jesus, person on the other side of the cubicle wall! Why do you think we're interested in the condition of your scabs??? And blessed be, other people, why are you apparently interested?

I am caught in the middle between a PM and a consultant. I am just a lowly tester. I know nothing.

I came very near to applying for a job at the UK Parliamentary Archives yesterday. But then it became clear that you couldn't apply without already being able to work in the UK. It was a bummer.

My boss has been out for three days, so needless to say I've been dicking around like crazy. And now I'm trying to do some small things that I can check off, so at least it looks like I've been doing something.

I'm nervous about carrying out the task, and it would probably be easier if I just go to town and get the tool, but instead I am just futzing about.

Yeah, I need to keep reminding myself that the earlier I start things, the easier it is on me in the long run. To break things into baby steps so things seem less overwhelming. And that it's okay to ask for help if I am actually overwhelmed.

Okay! I have tackled the easy stuff. I need to sketch out a project plan for our team meeting so I can invite people to help me with it. And by "invite" I mean "volunteer or get drafted, suckers."

I've got a legal article open in my browser, written by Carl T. Bogus. And no, it's not a parody.

The least interesting class required of Psychology graduate students is usually History of Psychology. By purest chance, the author of the standard text was Edwin G. Boring.

This allowed every first-year grad student at least one moment of insight, leading them to make a sly comment about the boring Boring textbook to someone else who, unfortunately, had already had the same thought, so inevitably found the comment to be kind of boring.

Okay! I have tackled the easy stuff.

Good for you! Okay! I am leaving. I will get the tool. I will finish this project. It will literally rock. And then my brainspace will be free and I can get other stuff done.

Ok, lunch was just a meet and greet. The person doing the introduction was hoping to add to my overhead workload until I told him I'm overloaded with client work (I get paid for client overtime, but overhead hours get deducted first, so when there is OT, OH is bad). A year ago, I would have gladly taken on the work as I was scrabbling for anything. I did get lots of work related compliments, which is always nice.

At my sister's birthday party I did actually ask her friend (sis caught me as I was formulating the question, read my mind, and tried to stop me, but the friend dragged it out of me) why her mother was okay with being Mrs Moyston-Cumming, but there's really not any good answer to that. She made her decision decades ago, so there it is.

I have sent a non-passive aggressive email to the incompetent developer telling her I was assuming she wasn't doing any work on the problems that had been raised with her if she didn't say so, and that I wasn't fielding those questions for her any more. She tried to push back some of the problem solving back onto the user, but it's not their job. So I stepped one step further and took it off my plate as well, two minutes before she emailed me to ask what I had done in the two days she'd been ignoring the issue. "What I have done doesn't count since I won't be working the problem to completion."

And now I'm taking a break. I've written up stuff the other analyst was supposed to have done (he could stand to be a bit more passive aggressive when he's sniping at the director I'm 50% on loan to--"only girls shorten their names like that" and "your new best friend" is really unbecoming), and the moment I said hello to our main business user he asked who'd made me sick.