Ugh Maria, that sucks. You've earned all the alcohol you want

And ugh Steph, vertigo is such a bummer.

Speaking of bummers, my headache wants to come back. It can go fork itself if you ask me.

BOGGLE.

WHOA. Oh, that's seriously messing with my mind, flea.

Serious ugh, Maria. It's one thing when stuff goes sideways and there was something you could have done about it, but when it is noways your fault, that's infuriating.

Yeah, Steph, call the freaking doctor. I have some ear problems at the moment, just due to the allergies, I think, but I am on Hyper Status Orange Alert for vertiginous symptoms.

Oh man, Maria. I would be flying to Memphis under my own power to bust some heads.

Steph, I'm pretty sure antihistamines were the first thing they recommended when I had vertigo, so try that? (Assuming you're not full up already....)

I was about to say I wish I had wine, but I do have wine!

I'm stressed out by a client that is being a bit crazy right now.

The latest is travel. I'm fine doing travel for my team by paying and then submitting for reimbursement, but you need to send me the list of what is acceptable for travel and how you want things submitted for approval. Also it helps if every email doesn't have a snotty sounding "as per your contract" reference in it. I get it, and I'm not arguing that, I'm just asking for some sort of rational procedure and I don't think that's too much to ask.

Steph, I'm pretty sure antihistamines were the first thing they recommended when I had vertigo, so try that? (Assuming you're not full up already....)

I may be due for some antihistamines, so I'll be glad to load up on them!

Happy Birthday Tom!

I feel you, Maria. I do, even if nothing has blown up on me.Yet.

I've been on a major grind the past couple weeks and will be for at least the rest of the month, writing up test plans. Today, I discovered I've been assigned basically a third more requirements than anyone and virtually all are new implementations, which means none but the developers really know *how* they interpreted and implemented the requirement and they all worked on it MONTHS ago and can't answer my questions quickly. And whereas some of the other testers have had access to this shit for months, I wasn't available until this month thanks to operations going batshit. Which it still is, but I can't if I'm going to test these requirement by a very hard deadline.

I need to have a Conversation, but my boss has been out due to her husband having surgery. It's a resources discussion above my pay grade that we've specifically been asked to make mgmt deal with when it happens. Which only works if mgmt is present and not worried about spouses bleeding to death.And we're down a coworker because her son is in the hospital as well.

There's a reason I'm a little concerned my application to get hired under the new contract to do my own damned job might have a vein of exasperation and impudence running between the lines. The above is it.

So, this is going on down the way:

A crowd waiting for Donald Trump to speak Friday erupted after the presidential front-runner postponed his rally at the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion over safety concerns.

Lots of helicopters overhead, but hopefully things quiet down w/o too much ugliness.

Of course, this also happened:

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's and a Bernie Sanders supporter, showed up at the pavilion wearing a Sanders hoodie and scooped out free ice cream.

I'm a little concerned my application to get hired under the new contract to do my own damned job might have a vein of exasperation and impudence running between the lines.

That sounds appropriate to me. The vein, not the concern. Probably no one should ever take career advice from me, though.

Free ice cream is good.

And my knee still hates me. I don't think there's any permanent damage, but it took an epic whack. Not really swollen, but bruising is slowly turning ugly. Stairs are miserable. If it's straight for any period of time, getting moving again sucks. Swimming went really well and loosened it up even though I felt every one of the 168 pushes off the wall.

Been seeing Chicago tweets. Narrative in my (very activist) feed makes it sound like counter-trump protesters shut him down.