Last day!!!
Yay! Whooppeee! I'm very relieved on this rainy, cold day. One of the sales gals made me some yummy chocolate fudge cookies and we're supposed to go to lunch today. I have to choose a restaurant, drat! I hate choosing places to eat. I have no taste and enjoy cheap food, great for dating, but very bad if you want to choose a modest restaurant where a variety of people can find something that they will enjoy.
I'm very happy that I decided to leave here and I know that there are better things ahead for me. We're going to paint the hall this weekend. I hung the pot rack and sanded down the walls and made soup yesterday. It was a good rest.
I'm sorry to say Rebecca, but it is a Harry Potter thing. If you go back about a week in the blogs, there's a link to the sorting hat that decides which house of Hogwarts you belong to. I believe that there is some connection between stress and detal problems, I tend to grind my teeth and clench my jaw when I'm stressed. This dental problem was a wisdom tooth that had to be removed though, so I don't think that's stress-induced.

Have I missed something? What is this Gryffindor, Slytherin stuff anyway? If you say it's "a Harry Potter thing" I'll have to kill myself.
Dina, is there a parallel between your work life, home-painting, and dentist visits? It all seems so protracted and piecemeal and painful. I admire your stamina. If I could chuck it all for you and run away to the Caribbean, I would. (Of course, my life isn't all hearts and flowers either. I just don't read about on a blog, so I can't draw these parallels.) My hubby says dental problems and stress are intimately related, and I believe it.
Anybody else ever had a confluence of mental and dental grief?

2 days.....
I went to the dentist this morning for my follow up and decided that it was too crappy outside to battle the snow and freezing rain to go to the office and sit there trying to find something to do. Devotion to duty? Hah! I'm going to prep the rest of the hallway for painting and maybe even get the primer on all the walls. Wish me luck!

I heard about this site on the radio. This guy really loves the metro! I was impressed by the site and the pictures are amazing. Montreal Metro

My VP still isn't in. I'm tired and getting hungry. Cookies anyone? Christmas Cookie Glossary

3 days...
I left early yesterday because I was tired of sitting here trying to be busy when I actually have very little to do. I went over to a discount mall near here and got some Christmas cards, I'm ready for the holidays :-)
My VP called me yesterday, he wants me to do something today that involves Word templates. I may have to kill him.
I decided to give the stick figures a miss last night and instead painted the tile backsplash with white semi-gloss paint. You can't really tell I painted it, it still looks like there's only primer on the tile. I'll keep at it, those tiles will be fixed someday soon. Maggie came over and dropped off the stud finder and the pot rack, we are now that much closer to being organized.
It's cold today! I finally had to scrape the car windshield this morning. I knew that it was coming eventually. I wonder what I will do today? Work on my Christmas card list perhaps? I've been surfing for cookie recipes, I may have to create a separate page for the stuff that I'm doing while I'm not working.

Way to go, Dina! Done with true class. Now you can move on with a clear conscience. Onward and upwards!

4 days...
I had the exit interview yesterday and it went very well. What I had hoped would happen did, so now I can take the month of December off and truly enjoy it without worrying about money. Yay! HR also let on that several people who have heard that I am leaving have been giving her a hard time. She asked that I not say anything bad about P. I explained that I had not said anything bad about P, and that if people jumped to that conclusion, they must be getting that idea from their observations. Of course, I don't feel like I can't say that she treated me like something she scraped off her shoe. If someone asked, I would tell them, I don't think that it's acceptable to be treated the way that I was treated and I won't hide that fact. It's wrong, but I'm not wandering around the company whining.

Dina vs. the stick figures, part II
I went to the hardware store last night and bought a quart of high-hiding primer. The can said that this stuff was perfect for grafitti and would stick to anything. There was nothing on tv last night, so I attacked those fiendish painted goblins. The darker figures that I sanded seem to be fading away quite nicely, the carmen miranda stick figure (fruit bowl on head) is still bleeding through! Now I'm mad! I may sand that one down to see if that does that trick. This is war!! After I finished the walls, I took the can's claims to heart and primed the ugly 70s brownish-beige tiles that make up the kitchen backsplash. The can was right, that primer will stick to anything. I was going to take the tile off and retile, but if I can find a way to paint the tiles, that may be quite a bit easier. I'll have to do some research.

Ok, found the trailer. Obviously, you need sound. Click the "Charades" link. The Official Monsters, Inc. Home Page

The countdown begins - 5 days...
It's Monday morning and I have five more days at this place before I am truly free ... I cannot wait! I'm not sure what I'm going to be able to finish by the end of the week, we shall see. I have an exit interview today and will probably find out whether or not they are going to lay me off. I am beyond caring and so looking forward to not having to think about this place next week. I can paint and put up shelves and fix things and organize and bake cookies and finish all the projects that I've been in the middle of for months, and rest, oh boy do I need a rest.
Damn stick figures
No, this isn't a rant about supermodels, at least this time :-)
I started washing those hideous stick things off the walls of the hallway, arghhhh! One of them, a very lightly painted stick person with a fruit basket atop its head, washed off pretty well leaving only an outline. The other ones, which are painted with layers and layers of paint were impossible to wash. I couldn't keep the water clean enough to make a difference. Solution? Of course I brought out the sander. After about 45 minutes, I had slightly less paint on the walls and many colours of dust floating everywhere......oh joy! After that I washed off the dust and got some primer on the walls over the sticks and guess what? It bleeds through! Solution? I'm going to pick up a quart of high-hiding primer at the hardware store tonight and go over those areas with it, should do the trick! We went up to the townies yesterday and got my snow tires on the car, I've finally accepted that winter is coming. My folks sent us home with a paint stick and an edging tool, we'll find out how they work this week.
Harry Potter!
Steve got tickets and we went to see the Harry Potter movie Saturday night. It was quite good, but not as good as in my head and there were bits where I thought they could have done things better without taking up any more time. I think that they should have let me see it before they brought it out and I would have helped them fix it :-) Really, I enjoyed it and it was true to the book. Now we get to wait for Lord of the Rings. They ran the trailer for it and it was amazing, Steve wanted them to show it over and over. There was a really funny ad for Monsters Inc before the Harry Potter movie as well, maybe I can find it somewhere. I really want to see that movie as well.

I'm surrounded by Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs!
Ok, so I haven't made everyone take the test, but it seems that there are an awful lot of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in my circle of friends. So far, no other Gryffindors and no Slytherins. Toronto is a mighty strange place, I hope that this headhunter gets over himself and sends my c.v. to the two places in Montreal....
Had a quiet evening of tv and Maggie came over for tea. I'm at home today, I explained to my VP that I couldn't do anything else truly productive until he makes up his mind about the template and reviews the guide I gave him two weeks ago. We'll see what he has to say. So far, no word from the prez about my lay off and it looks like my last week is definitely next week, the end of the month. I'm going to go through an installation guide today and clean up some of the bigger problems, then I plan to wash the walls of the hallway. We decided not to paint this weekend and instead go to the townies on Sunday and visit my folks. I may do some priming today depending on how easily the stick figures wash off the walls. Much to do, much to do!

I'm a Hufflepuff! I love it! Yay Hufflepuffs!
Your Torontonian STC contact is like most Torontonians and yes, many of them are uppety and they live in things worse than basements, I've seen a few in cardboard boxes. The neat thing about cardboard boxes is they can be kicked over, burnt down or squashed, thereby leaving their occupants homeless but with really expensive mortgages, because even cardboard boxes go for 500K.

The thing with Torontonians is they don't like anybody who isn't from Toronto and they are especially uptight about Montrealers, as they think we're all going to beat them up if they come here and don't speak any French. They also think they are better than we are (you know all that World Class nonsense.) However, they are just Muggles and are just like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia with sons like Dudley...(I know a lot of Dudleys who work here.)

Seriously though, I have always found the Toronto STC less than friendly or helpful and they tend to view themselves as the super chapter....(But really they are in severe need of an edit for tone and attitude.)

What is it with Torontonians?
Ok, so I checked out Toronto's STC Web site and there are a couple of contract positions advertised for Montreal. I email the person in question to inquire and the responses I have received from "Victor" have been abrupt and snotty. I don't think that he's at all interested, but I sent my c.v. anyway. Awfully uppety for a guy who probably works out of his basement........

The Sorting Hat!!!

A gift for the Toothfairy
Went to the dentist yesterday with Steve as back up. I was out of there in about 45 minutes! The whole thing was quick and relatively painless, although slightly more expensive than I thought. It certainly went much better than I expected. My tooth is now in a small envelope in my purse. My mouth didn't completely unfreeze until about 4pm. I ate at about 2:30 because I was starving and couldn't wait another minute. Steve got me all comfy on the couch and brought me food and Advil and sympathetic looks. Later on we had a fire and and watched the Legend of Drunken Master, a Jackie Chan movie. It was great! Today my jaw is stiff and achy, but it's not so bad. I have yet to hear about whether or not the company will lay me off. I also think that it is very strange that my VP has asked me to work on a project this week that is entirely dependent on his review of a manual that he has not looked at yet..... oh well. I'm not getting as much done as I hoped, but at least it's not just because of my waning enthusiasm for this job.

The Stoned Age
Saw this review of a hysterical new book entitled Non Campus Mentis. The book is a collection of the funniest gaffes in college student essays. Some jewels are simply typos, others are malapropisms, and some leaving you wondering what kind of brownies those kids were eating. My favourites? Yahoo, God of Judyism, Chairman Moo, Hitler, head of the Gespacho. Enjoy!

Absolut Riot
Saw this game on the Salon site. Real mindless fun! The Absolut site is also amazing.

It's a good idea for Steve to go with you tomorrow. In one of my many death-defying experiences in my 20s, I had 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed with 2 local injections of pain killers and a general sedative to ease me through it, then drove all the way from downtown Montreal to St-Hyacinthe (60 minutes +). Shudder.... If you're going to be floating home, it's better to do it on somebody's arm.

Why am I still here?
I still haven't spoken with my VP, but it looks like I'm here until the end of the month. It's starting to get a bit monotonous, I come in and find it harder and harder to focus on work. It's that idea that I'm not of any use that's getting me down. Yesterday, I worked on an installation guide, but my mind was creating a x-mas list and thinking about house projects. Sigh........
Tomorrow I'm going to the oral surgeon guy who is going to remove the wisdom tooth that is no longer welcome in my mouth. The appointment is at 11, so there's no point in me coming to work. Steve's going to go with me, I'm not sure why. I don't think that there's going to be a huge problem getting it out, but there may be some cutting involved. Of course, there's also that tongue has to go looking for missing tooth syndrome as well. It will be good to get it out, but I'm not looking forward to it......

Comments
You may have noticed that the blog entries now end with [comment]. If you click comment, you will be able to add a comment to the entry without posting. This is a feature that I added for members and nonmembers of the Coffee Ring to include a little aside about the entry. If there's a comment on the entry, you will see a number and if you click it you can see what others have had to say. It's just a little something to make the blog a bit more interactive. It can be fun, try it! :-)

Wow! That's yellow!
So, the kitchen is painted and looks pretty good! Steve and Maggie like it a lot, I'm thinking that it's a bit too orangy, but I'll learn to love it. I'm sure that it will be better once we have stuff on the walls and it's organized. It's just not what I had in my head. It also means that we've had to rethink the colours in the hallway and going with a slightly darker shade on the bottom of the wall. Yesterday was very nice and warm and we finished up the painting, went to Club Price and then came home and put everything back together. I'm tired, but another room is done! Next weekend Steve has an STC thing all day on Saturday, so we're thinking that it will probably be less productive. I also have to find some time to go up to the townies and get my snow tires from home. I think that we're going to try to prep the hall walls this week and perhaps prime them so they're ready when we are. We have to scrub down those stick figures painted in the hallway or they're going to bleed right through the paint. I got a chalk line, so we're ready to lay out the line between the dark and light colour in the hallway and I found pre-primed mdf chair rail at reno depot for $1.98 for 7 feet! This is going to look great!
We made a nice fire last night (finally) and rented Tomb Raider. It was my choice and I don't know what I was thinking. What a terrible movie. Good action, but no acting, dialogue, or plot worth mentioning. Yuck! The fire was way nicer, although it didn't really warm up the room very much. We'll have to work on that....

Hmmmmmm.....
I just checked my email at work and discovered that my VP has booked me for another two weeks of work. I'm not sure what to do about this; as far as I knew, I was only working next week. There is not so much for me to do right now and my project managers are trying to avoid me whenever possible. It's not their fault, they know I'm not staying. This past week I've kind of worked in a bubble aside from my VP questioning the new template (he likes the old one better) and one project manager asking about some content changes. I just finished breaking up one manual that I created into 6 smaller manuals, that brings my total up to 9 manuals created in the past three weeks. I really don't see the point in me staying, but if they agree to lay me off when it's all over and they pay me, I guess that there's no harm. I don't enjoy going into work and having to watch the harpie blatantly ignoring me, but I could certainly use the money. I went to the dentist for my check up yesterday. He found a cavity on a wisdom tooth that has been sitting at the back of my mouth, half covered, for the past five years. He suggested that I just have it extracted and finally get rid of it. We'd both been ignoring it until it posed a problem. I love my dentist. He's nice and does his own cleanings and doesn't believe in doing work unless it's necessary. He's referred me to an oral surgeon for the extraction. I'm not looking forward to it. I'm at home today fiddling around with stuff and cleaning. So far, a relaxing day......

I wonder why there is so much video and audio tape on the roads. I started thinking about this on my drive to work this morning, there was tape all over the side of the road, stuck in the grass, tangled around poles. Do people throw tapes out of their car windows? Why? Had enough of Hootie and the Blowfish or trying to get rid of some nasty evidence? What would happen if someone retrieved all the tape and watched/listened to it? Seems to me that there are better ways to get rid of tape. You could burn it, throw it in the garbage, even eat it.

Thursday, wheh!
Let's see, I went out for drinks with Melissa last night. We went to Typhoon. I had a Cape Fear, vodka, cranberry juice and something else, maybe lemon juice? It was yummy! We had a nice chat despite the way too loud music. Melissa entertained me by telling her dating tales. This summer she joined an online dating thing and the stories of the weirdos she's met are hilarious! She's finally met a non-weirdo who sounds very nice!
Yesterday was depressing, stuff to do but no feeling that there is any appreciation for anything I'm trying to do. To start this morning off right, the VP just sent me an email telling me that he liked the old template better than the new one that I've started using for all the new docs. I don't care........ hee hee!

Can't see it if you did...What are we supposed to see?

Trying to put a comment thingie on the blog......I wonder if it worked.....

Google changes its logo for special days and events which I think is really cute. Happy birthday Monet!! Google

Why am I here?
This is the second time I'm trying to post this morning. The first one just disappeared. Ever feel like you're not needed anymore? I have given the company two weeks to be fair and offered to stay longer on some basis so that teams weren't left without documentation. My VP hasn't talked to me since I resigned and I feel like I probably won't be here after next week. The good thing is that I've had some time to experiment with a few new things. Oh, also that I don't care about a lot of stuff and I've also started sleeping at night. Weeee!
I looked at the tracker info we have on this site and this is what people have been searching for on search engines and finding on our site:

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When were we talking about tweetie bird wallpaper?
Elizabeth, your getaway sounded heavenly!!

Serenity
How right you are, Kathy. How you leave a place is a great indication of who you are as a person. And it really determines whether you send out little ripples of positivity that radiate out and eventually make their way throughout a community (whatever your field is) or whether you sink like a stone into oblivion, or worse, infamy. When you leave with serenity and respect, it only reflects well on you.

Sorry for all this zen-like imagery, but I'm basking in the afterglow of my heavenly weekend at Tremblant. We enjoyed our first weekend away together in 8 years with long walks in the woods, great dinners at local restaurants and the incredible scenery of the Laurentians. We stayed at the Grand Lodge in a nice condo with a fireplace. So I'm serene and well-rested. Now I feel up to withstanding even the relentless onslaught of the Christmas consumerama. Hurray for time-outs!

Post Boom--But No Gloom and Other Signs of the Times

Well things at CDS are definitely in a post-boom mode now. First the downside: a training course I very badly need to go on was cancelled this morning due to low registration. Our budgets for the coming fiscal year have been slashed quite dramatically with training and travel dollars being the major casualties. No surprises there.

We are still in a hiring freeze but hiring temp and contract help only (at great expense no doubt). However, very few involuntary terminations are happening unless you are in severe need of weeding out. (We had 3 of those cases recently and they were totally foreseeable.)

The upside, yes there is one and that is there is a project for which I am in the process of writing a proposal and until now the typical response is to get an outside contractor todo it. For once, this company is seeing the advantage of using an inhouse resource todo the job--namely me! (The trouble is I could really have used that course, but then there's nothing like on the job training!)

However the documentation unit is suffering as one the writers upped and quit without talking to anybody about it at all and the manager is having a heck of a time trying to get her boss to allow her to get a replacement in any shape or form. All he did was leave his letter of resignation on the manager's desk and dropped off his pass at the front desk and out he walked.(He did this early in the morning when nobody would see him.) No explanations nothing. So Dina, at least Silanis knows what the issues are. Whether they decide to act on them, well, that is likely to take some time. In our case, this individual didn't have the mojo to speak up and give us a chance to find out what was wrong and if there could have been something we as a company could have done.

The moral of the story, I guess painful and all as it is, I think despite all conventional wisdom out there these days not to show any loyalty of any kind to a company, I think you are doing a disservice by not telling them what they are doing wrong. How you go about it naturally will colour the result, but at least both parties stand a chance to benefit and learn from the experience as long as an attempt is made at constructive dialogue.

Back to the bedroom
Got home last night and tore up the tape and paper and plastic on the floor and vacuumed and mopped and then put everything back in the room. Believe it or not, the room looks bigger. Most of the room is stratford blue. There's wainscoting on two walls and we've painted that white, it was varnished wood before, not nice wood, cheapy wood. The contrast between the blue and white seems to lengthen the room. We got to sleep in our bed last night and it was so nice! Steve finished the first Harry Potter book last night. He started it in the morning. I thought that he should read it before seeing the movie, there's nothing worse than having your impression of the characters wrecked by movie images. Of course, there's been so much hype that it's kind of a moot point. Work is continuing to go ok. I'm concentrating on trying to develop a help system for one of my projects. On the whole, the news that I am leaving seems to be quite upsetting for the developers. I'm telling them the truth, and trying to be as nice as possible about getting their work done before I leave. I enjoy developing help systems and guis. Ran into Alison Thoms this weekend and she just emailed to let me know that there's a 3 month contract in the downtown area, but it's a really French environment, so I guess that's out.

Well, back to another week of work! We finished painting the bedroom this weekend. We were a bit late at finishing yesterday, so we had to camp out on the sofa bed last night. We should be fine to clean up the room and move everything back into the room tonight. P is not in yet today, perhaps she is working from home. I had a real panic attack Friday afternoon that lasted all weekend. It's the "What the hell was I thinking? What did I do?" rant. A wave of sadness and depression hit me and remains. I keep telling myself that I did the right thing, but faced with unemployment, it's a big deal. What if I can't find work? How am I going to pay off my debts without income? This kinda sucks. I haven't heard from my VP, so I have no idea if he's spoken with my project managers. Should be an interesting two weeks.....

The morning after
Well, I resigned yesterday and it went ok. I spoke with the president of the company, who was very classy about the whole thing, was very sad about losing me and promised that the problem would be looked into. He even told me that he'd be available for a coffee or a beer if I wanted to talk about anything. I don't know if anything will actually be looked into, but he made me feel better and that's what counts. I then officially handed in my resignation to my VP and we spoke about what kind of time I could give them. I agreed to two weeks, the standard, and told him that after that we could come to an arrangement if there was any more work I could do for them. He seemed relieved that I was going and I could tell that I never would have won with him in this situation. HR was upset, but I explained that nothing else could be done under the circumstances. I feel better. I'm at home again today, planning a day of wood stripping and paint preparation. I have to get the paint for the bedroom today. Thank you to all my friends who have been so supportive throughout this ordeal, I'm so lucky to have you all.
Steve came home last night with Smirnoff vodka coolers, what a guy!

Yay! Blogger is back up! I'm at work today and have my resignation letter ready. I'm talking to the Prez this afternoon and have given him the letter to read before we meet. I'm waiting until I meet with the Prez before I officially hand it in. I asked the HR person to speak with two people who have observed P's mistreatment of me, but I don't know if she did. I feel an odd sense of dread and freedom, I wish that I wasn't leaving and I don't want P to win, but I'm happy to think that I won't have to be here with her much longer. My stuff is cleaned up and I'm ready to go....
I just checked my home email, a headhunter has already contacted me, that's encouraging!

SUVs don't Seem to Live up to the Hype

Continuing my favourite theme...My husband had to go up to Ottawa on Monday on company business to take some heavy equipment for repair. Because it was company business and because the equipment was big and heavy, he had to rent a vehicle and wound up with a Ford Explorer. His verdict--the seats were very uncomfortable, there didn't seem to be any more room than in a station wagon, the vehicle felt unstable on the road in the wind and last but not least, the darn thing sucked up 52 litres of gas to go less than 200 kilometres. Why do people like these things again?

To all of you out there, I promise this is my last rant on this subject. However, I will find other things go raving on and on about...Since Xmas is coming maybe someone could supply me with a virtual weapon so that I could go and vent on my next object with that...How about a virtual paint gun or flame thrower?

Looks like I may be out on the street
This stupid saga continues. Why can't I get a normal job with normal people??? I was supposed to meet yesterday with my VP and HR and discuss the separation. Well, my colleague had her meeting before mine and suggested that we all meet together to hash this out. I had requested that we do this the last few times that we have had trouble communicating, but she didn't think that it was necessary. So, we tried to discuss why we don't work together and P is being very nice and rational and lying through her teeth and I have very little proof so I try to stand up for myself, but apparently I'm insane. At the end of the meeting, my VP could see nothing but a communication problem and wants us to make up lists for tomorrow so that we can resolve this and keep the team together. I spoke up at this point and said that in my opinion, it wasn't going to work because we've been down this road before. I told HR before I left yesterday that I'm not walking back into a relationship with P, that it would be like a battered wife returning to her abusive husband. I think that she may have understood. I'm at home today licking my wounds and polishing the old c.v.

I'm not out on the street....yet
Well, yesterday afternoon I finally wandered into my VP's office and had a talk with him. He doesn't understand why we can't work together. I told him that I have tried, but that I can't deal with the bullying, pushiness and bossiness any longer. He's agreed to the separation option, we will divide the projects as evenly as possible and work on them alone. It's a drag, but at least this way she can't tell me what to do, how to do it, and I don't have to put up with her rudeness and pettiness. We should also find out what the hell she does with her time if I'm no longer going to have to help her with her work. Last week I was going through some of her files, making some changes, and I opened one that hadn't been opened since we switched from Frame 5.5 to 6.0! That's more than two months ago! I can't figure out why she hasn't had time to completely redo the manuals that she's in charge of, yet she somehow has time to create a user feedback questionnaire about the manuals. I know that you haven't seen these manuals, but I would not want to draw attention to them until they're rewritten and I know what people would have to say about them.....
So, at 3:00, I'm sitting down with HR and discussing the changes that will be made. I wonder what P will think of all this? We will work with our project managers and report to the VP and that's that. Allakazaam! No tech pubs department!

It's 3pm and I've spoken to no one yet..... feel like someone's putting something off? procrastination

Darn Monkey and Let's "Weaponize"

I'm glad it wasn't just me. What a thoroughly horrible creature. I wanted to push its stupid face in. Oh well. It reminds me of working with some people at CDS.

Elizabeth I couldn't agree more about verbless wonders. In my book they are as bad as "verbalizing" nouns when perfectly good words exist as for example "He was arming the Swiss Navy" or "He sold arms to the Inuit." It makes you wonder what sort of fuzzy thinking is going on and then you maybe don't want to know.....Maybe we're "fuzzilizing" our thoughts (that's myspeak for being politically correct and I just made that up.) There seems to be a very high sense of entitlement among the media to turn the English language into something only a drooling idiot could possibly use. (Oops, not politically correct, but accurate.)

Verbless wonders
Try as I might, I just couldn't spank the monkey! He just keeps leering at me defiantly, the little *!$%!. Kind of like at our place... : 0

Read a great article on the disappearing verb in the news these days. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one increasingly irritated at half-completed thoughts and sloppy speech ("Top government officials today adding their voices to the call for Americans to remain vigilant."). For more verbless wonders like that one, check it out.

Good luck, Dina, and keep positive and enthusiastic about your work. It's impossible to fault that.

Saw this on SillyCow, Spank the Monkey

D-day
I keep saying this, but today everything should be resolved one way or the other. I feel as though I've been going on with this melodrama for way too long and I apologize. So, today there will be no backing down, no wishy-washy compromises and no working with P again. This is it, let's see what happens. Will Dina stay or go? Will she end up crying in some Indian restaurant drowning her sorrows in curry? We shall see.......
We have a nice tv room now, yay! The painting went very well. We went with a colour called Kennebunkport green, a nice weathered green that's not too grey, not too brown and should look very nice with the yellow of the kitchen. We got everything prepped and started painting the ceiling and putting primer on the walls Saturday. Saturday night we put the first coat of paint on the walls and followed up with a second coat on Sunday. The trim is going to wait until I have the time and energy to strip paint, but it will be a very clean white which is going to look very nice. I'm pleased with the room, next weekend: the bedroom!!!

Friday!
I'm back in the office and have discovered that all my favorites are gone and I can't get into my Outlook, ugh! I'm waiting for the IT guy to get in and fix it. I did a bit of sanding yesterday, It's going to be a big sanding job. I keep finding bits that aren't quite right and try to fix them, there's only so much spackle in the world. May have come up with a colour, I'm not sure yet......it's a drak, rainy day here, good nap weather. This weekend there will be much painting and sanding and stuff. Wish us luck!

I don't need anymore candy...... it's tempting me, make it stop!
I spent my lunch hour filling in a few spot on the walls that the plasterer missed. Steve thinks that he missed spots in the tv room because he was driven blind by the nasty colour. I dragged out the paint chips and started trying to figure out what colours will work with the warm yellow that we want to go with for the kitchen.....found a few nice greens (yeah, yeah, more green!) or more camel colours that may work. It's kind of crucial that the colours work together because you can clearly see the tv room from the kitchen and from the hallway (we're thinking a creamy colour for the hallway that will tie in with the yellow in the kitchen and work with the other rooms when they're eventually painted. The tv room is going to be filled with wall-mounted shelving. Perhaps the trick is to choose a lighter colour for the walls and then paint the shelving a darker colour for contrast. We have to get the paint picked out and the walls prepped for the weekend so we can paint. Maybe I can start sanding down all the walls today. The paint in there is high gloss and I fear that it's also oil, and it needs a good sanding down anyhow.
By the by, Steve and I have officially been married two months today. I have no complaints about my wonderful husband, I'm a lucky girl :-)

Ho-Hum Hallowe'en
You're not alone, Dina, in being left with tons of candy after last night's disappointing turn-out. I've got more Glossettes than I know what to do with now. Guess I'll have to ply my co-workers with them whenever they get mid-afternoon sugar lows. (Note to self: Do not provoke certain excitable Italian tech writers around here when in midst of chocolate bender. - You talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?)

Loved your descriptions of SUV ads, Kathy. I have to admit, I share your disdain for these monsters on wheels. Can't wait for them to become Suddenly Undesirable Vehicles. If you like that term, you'll find lots of other great ones for post-September 11 life in today's Salon. My faves are Talibanity and Ground Bores. Check it out!

Overall the trick or treat activity was down I think.In our neighbourhood they were seen early walking around. In other neighbourhoods, they were seen being driven around. But most people had stuff left over. I heard at the gym this morning and at the train station alot of people had Hallowe'en parties for their kids. When I went out at 7:30 last night, there wasn't a soul or a goblin out there.

You obviously got the other part of the equation, the trick side of the treat (your pumpkin smashers)

So if you're working from home today, no doubt you'll have plenty of goodies to keep your energy levels up.

Where were the treaters?
I'm working from home today. My computer at work started going wonky, so the IT guy is trying to fix it today. Getting home last night took twice as long as normal and it was cold and rainy. The apartment was covered in dust from the plasterer except for the rooms we closed off. I ran around getting the pumpkins out on the stoop and putting candy in bowls, when it occurred to me that my neighbours didn't have their lights on or pumpkins, they weren't giving out candy and their houses were dark! Talk about a killer! Our building is at the end of the street. We don't have a light on our porch, so aside from the pumpkins, there was nothing to bring the kids down to our part of the street. Stupid neighbours! In the end, we got about 12 kids, that works out to about $3/kid that I spent for candy, and Steve is thrilled that there is so darn much left. To top it off, some little cretin kicked one of our pumpkins down the street.....