…

There’s something about getting away with it that makes you want to do it again.

Something that’s been eating at me a bit.

On New Years, I flew home from the east coast and when I was on the plane, I saw a guy who stuck out to me. I saw him in the security line, and then on the plane. It wasn’t until we were standing up to get off the plane that I thought of why he might strike me, which is that he looks a lot like  a friend of mine from way back. Not really a friend of mine so much as a friend of a boyfriend, but we were still friendly. But by then it was too late and I had looked at him too many times to ask if it was him, and I don’t even know if it was, which made me sad, that we can forget what people looked like like that.

But if it was you, and you happen to read this, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.

Peeved

A work issue has been frustrating me and I need to vent it.

 

A short time after I was  hired a few months ago, we hired another audiologist to set up a new office with our practice. She hasn’t been working for many years, so she’s pretty much as clueless as I am about the hearing aid technology, but she knows more about testing etc than I do.

 

Anyway, we both need to do product training, and we had set up a time for one of the reps from one of the companies we work with to come in and do training with us in Lafayette. Well, she decides to call him and move it up to her office (about an hour of mountain driving away from me) and not tell me, or set up a time for him to meet with me.

 

So today I’m on the phone with the rep, trying to figure out when I can meet with him, and he says, “well, I think we’ll probably try to keep the original meeting up at the other office” but the ORIGINAL meeting was supposed to be in my office.

I just hate feeling brushed under the carpet.  I don’t get that many learning opportunities, and then I feel bad for not knowing what I’m doing half the time.

Hearing Aid Clinics

Installment two of stuff I do at work. Health Fairs was installment one, so I guess it’d be more aptly named “work I do not at work.”

Hearing aid clinics are something we do at several retirement communities where we go, set up in a room for an hour and residents stop by to have their aids cleaned… But they don’t really stop by and it’s pretty mellow for the most part.

Today I’m at a more upscale one, sitting in an office off from the main lobby, listening to old music and watching a fire. Definitely not the worst way to spend an hour.

October Project 365

My month in pictures! Only a week late.

For the whole year so far, go here.

Memories

Lately the nostalgia has been pretty serious. It always is in autumn.

Here are a few memories that I miss.

It’s late, Indian summer, we’re on a road next to a lake. We’re lying in the middle of the road. There are four of us, we’re in a square, head on belly. We’re holding hands, and it’s electric. The stars are out and I’m not afraid that a car will drive by and kill us all. When one of us laughs, the rest of us can’t help but start due to the reaction set off by our bouncing bellies. Later, it starts to get colder, so we move to a pile of leaves. There are five of us now, and we’re in a pile. Touching, not knowing who or where, staying close to keep warm. The stars are bright in the middle of nowhere. The next day, that magical moment is passed, it’s as if we’ve never met.

*  *  *

This one is more of a feeling, I remember an attic above a church, converted into a theatre. It’s a rainy day, and I’m wearing someone else’s clothes because mine are soaked from an earlier adventure. We’re telling secrets, and I’m thinking that they’ll be kept but the next thing I know everyone knows and I’m glad it isn’t a secret anymore because HE knows and he was keeping the same secret and we were friends before but now we’ll have to talk about it. So we set up a time where we can talk alone but we never do end up talking.

*  *  *

It’s in my parent’s living room, and there are brownies in the oven. There are always brownies in the oven on nights like this, when the room is full of warm light and the smell of the brownies and people that I like to be around. We’re playing a game on the big table, and we’re reading out loud from books on the sunken couch, and we’re dancing, and eating half cooked brownies and licking the batter off our fingers before we brave the cold outside.

Texts and Lovers

The other day, the New York Times ran this really interesting article about romance in the age of text messages.

To be honest, it sort of bummed me out. Maybe I’m a bit too young, or a bit too conventional, or maybe I lack the confidence to treat love like economics, to be constantly searching for the “best offer.” Maybe I think that if I keep my options too open, I’ll end up with none of them. Maybe I’m missing out by not having a “back burner” who I can realistically fall back on in a pinch.

I wanted to know what other people think of this article–is this your view of dating? Or are you, like me, still stuck in the past?

Health Fairs

Today I worked my first health fair.

It made me realize how much of life in the business world is based on networking, and how obnoxious that it. All the vendors are there to shmooze with anyone who can possibly scratch their back when it comes to business matters, and their insincerity is brutally obvious. I guess I didn’t expect to have to live up to “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

And I’m doing this health fair at 7am on a Monday after a Sunday afternoon of not unsubstantial drinking and a terrible night’s sleep. And I’m there for 6 hours, without food or water, in a room with no windows, laughing at people making the same 2 hearing jokes over and over before we screen their hearing.

Bleh I think I just need a nap.

Vanished from the face of the Earth?!

If you follow me online at all, you may think that I have! I’ve been terrible at keeping up any kind of online correspondence lately, and I really don’t have any excuses. I guess I just sort of need to take time away from the computer screen.

A brief update: Work is going well, I think I’m settling in pretty well. I’ve gotten into a good routine of taking the bus (have to wake up 45 minutes earlier every day but it’s worth it). I just got my hair cut short to where it was a year or so ago, I’m very happy with how much easier it is to make it look halfway decent now. The one area of my life that I’ve been pretty unhappy with is my level of fitness. I’ve been trying to get as much walking in as possible and as many crunches on the ball as I can stand while watching tv, but my overall activity level has definitely gone down since I graduated. The fact that I no longer have to walk all over campus every day has led to a lot less movement. Finally today I decided to check on craigslist for workout equiptment (I would join the gym but when I get home at 5:30 all I want to do is eat and then all I want to do is watch a movie, so it wouldn’t be money well spent. I can’t motivate myself to drive across town, especially when it starts to get snowy out.) Anyway, found an elliptical machine on craigslist for $150, stopping by after work tonight to check it out and hopefully buy it! Since it’ll be in my living room, I really won’t have an excuse not to use it, and it’ll be a good routine to get into, especially since when it gets colder out there are so many more excuses to eat unhealthy food (thanks Halloween and thanksgiving!)

The Geography of Bliss

As a graduation present, my former boss, owner of an independent bookstore, gave me this book, by Eric Weiner. The basic idea is that he goes to countries and figures out what makes them happy (or not) to try to unlock the secret to happiness. It isn’t profound, but it is informational and entertaining.

Basically what he finds is, what we think will make us happy won’t make us happy. Having more money, being incredibly good-looking, etc, don’t have nearly as much of an impact on an individual’s personality than things like altruistic behaviors, feeling like one is making a difference, and healthy relationships with people.

Here’s my digression.

At Catacombs lately, we’ve branched out. Friends of friends have started joining the trivia team lately, which is really great. I have found myself to have a really big crush on one of them. The problem is my boyfriend, who is also a trivia regular. We’ve fallen into a rut, we’ve grown bored with each other. Which, I’m sure, raises the crush-level on this new guy even more. So I’m walking home, kind of visualizing hypothetical dating scenarios with the other guy (I would say fantasizing but I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea–it’s purely platonic visualization) and knowing it’s totally irrational, and he’s not the way he is in my imagination, and so on.

Here’s where the book comes back.

So I catch myself thinking, as Mr. Weiner does often in the book, and a question he poses to everyone he meets, “are you happy?” And then I realize I’ve fallen into the American happiness trap: We want more, we think that certain tangible things will add to our overall level of happiness, that somehow we can make our lives complete through accumulation. (Yes I am talking about the accumulation of men. Sounds awesome, right?) So while this new guy, or any new guy, would boost my mood temporarily, it’s not likely I would find anymore satisfaction with him than the one I’ve got. And if I’m doing this well on the one I’ve got after nearly 2 years, I may as well stick with it.