24 typical hours in the life of Dawn
There were a million things I wanted to blog about, but alas, work had to come first. Damn career, getting in the way of what’s important! 😉
Had the utmost pleasure of meeting Rocket Jones last night. I almost didn’t make it, after being partially asleep while I was driving to meet him and missing every convenient turn and getting stuck in Old Town rush-hour traffic. But the five-minute-turned-half-hour odyssey was incredibly worth it. It’s nice to know the person behind the brilliant prose on the website! The good news is that he will be in my neck of the woods a few more times till the springtime, and that means more intelligent (and crazy) conversations are in short order. 🙂
I went to bed early with a migraine last night and stayed home for the better part of the day doing editing. It’s amazing what a RELIEF it is when most of the work is turned around — I had full intentions on spending the night editing, but I arrived at my senses when I realized that nobody ELSE loses sleep over whether the paper is produced on time. I find myself waiting for submissions and letting our volunteer writers turn in their stuff at their earliest convenience … not mine. That’s the problem with working in a highly charged political environment — ya can’t piss off the help ya ain’t payin’ for. I’m still waiting for my least-favorite column to arrive (from the Queen of the Underworld, of course), but Angie did get me her stories and they were just about the only pleasurable reading I had this month, save for a good OpEd and Reader View that arrived earlier in the menstrual cycle that is my job.
The Queen of the Underworld is the asshole who wants to create and head an unnecessary advisory council whose sole purpose is to tell me how to do my job and through which hoops I need to jump at her command. *sigh* I told my boss that perhaps we need to concentrate on firing the old volunteers and bring in some fresh blood and that maybe if Queen wasn’t so busy dicking around with my sanity, she might write her fucking column in a timely manner. I mean, Angie’s stuff is sometimes late because she’s trying hard to track down coherent people to interview; the other people are writing first-person drivel that consists of nothing more than their over-inflated opinions of what they wish the world could be like. You’d THINK that they could write their 1,200 words of complete and utter nonsense that within a 30-day period! I mean, gah, it’s not like they are lacking in opinions — they delight in forcing their bullshit down the throats of the unimpressed masses!
No wonder my temple throbs uncontrollably during editorial deadline week. I usually budget two days to edit all the last-minute submissions and then work overnight once or twice to get the stuff to the designer on the day he’s expecting it. I swear, people have come to rely upon the two of us to perform miracles. (Angie nailed it: he is my Midol in the menstrual cycle of magazine production!)
And I was hell-bent on getting a proof by tomorrow (seeing as though SOME employees get to celebrate a long holiday weekend — I never get to enjoy holidays or stay home on furlough days because they always seem to fall smack during production hell). And my designer, lovely man though he is, was intent on accommodating my crazy request. But at some point yesterday evening, I finally e-mailed him and said that I had come to my senses and that the Inner Bitch needs to channel her energies on the right people and not make him jump through hoops so I don’t get yelled at for only giving the proofers one workday to do their thing. He was grateful, and it made me come to some serious conclusions about how the volunteers need a whip cracked over them, whether or not my superiors may agree. In any event, there is something about my staff that makes me want to be a better mentor, a better person, a better champion for our sanity. Me, I kill myself to do things, oftentimes the hard way. And I would never expect people to give up their free time the way I do.
I have to bitch about INS CVS Pharmacy, or, rather, my experience there tonight. I was loading up on Advil Migraine and Tylenol PM (a sure sign you just shouldn’t fuck with me while I’m standing in line, right?), and some dumb bitch standing behind me was practically attached to me. At least she didn’t have a shopping cart, but every 30 seconds, she bumped into me. And the line hadn’t moved! I hope she doesn’t drive as horribly as she stands in line!
So anyway, I’m finally getting waited on, and when I grab my bag and turn to leave (the exit was literally three feet to my right), I ran smack into the girl. Not content to be firmly wedged up my ass, she also attached herself to my side. Um, it’s hard for me to LEAVE so you can get waited on when you’re BLOCKING MY FUCKING WAY TO EXIT THE DAMN BUILDING!
Tonight, I treated myself to doing laundry, watching Phoebe’s wedding on “Friends” and waiting for “ER” to start. The world is almost well again. For me, anyway. 😉