Pre-travel brain dump

I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow (woo hoo!) and have all sorts of things pinging around in my head. Some are relevant to vacation, and some are not, but I probably won't be blogging while I'm gone (what with the not having a computer handy and all...) so I figured I purge it all now. I always like to set my "out of office" reply a few hours before I leave for a trip so that I am not on the hook for dealing with non-urgent stuff, but when other people do the same thing, and we have to contact each other, we create this "out of office" loop that threatens to crash the system. eek. I followed a car into work today with a license plate holder that said "A classy car for a classy lady." First of all, I recently read a comment (I can't for the life of me remember where, though, so I can't give credit) that if you have to describe yourself as classy, you probably aren't. Second of all, it was a Chevy Malibu. Is that a status car now? I had another sensor light on my dashboard yesterday. I can't remember if I chronicled my sensor issues last month (Reader's Digest version: June 4, engine light came on, it was a bad sensor, sensor was replaced. June 15, air bag sensor light came on, it was a bad sensor, sensor was replaced. In short, more money spent in June on replacing sensors than was spent on car payment.) So, I took my car for service, and was greeted with a cheery "How are you today?" "Well..." I started. "Uh, oh" he says, "You sound like you're going to yell at someone." "Only if I have to," I said, and explained the carnival of sensor lights. "I'm sensing a problem," he said. Yippee. My service technician thinks this is a comedy club. Anyway, he took my info and I waited (and waited and waited) for the courtesy shuttle to take me to the subway to take me to work. It ends up OK, though, because it was just some sensor code that doesn't indicate anything that causes damage, and if it persists they will look into it again and do more diagnostics, but the diagnostics need to be done with less than half a tank of gas, and I had just filled up. When I was waiting for them to bring my car around last night so I could leave, technician made a joking remark about how everyone was trying to beat him down, what with my service being free of charge, and some other lady who didn't want to pay $3 for a floor mat and such. "I did not beat you down!" I said, "I thought I was very nice to you this morning." "Yeah, you were," he said, "I was suprised." My being nice is surprising? I thought I was a doormat. "The last time you were in here, you yelled at Bill. He's not here anymore, I think you sent him over the edge." One of my co-workers is retiring after 20-some years. She can be a big pain in the ass, and her retirement is not a day too soon. I don't have an issue with her personally, but she is so rigid and uncooperative. She is a support person for a high level executive, just as I have been for the past few years, but will not keep his electronic calendar up to date, will not adjust his schedule to accomodate others, will not provide background information when she delegates tasks ("It's your responsibility now, I don't have to think about it anymore.") The organizers of her retirement party are passing around a journal for all of us to write little notes to her. How do you politely say "I'm glad your retiring, because you drove me nuts"? Other people made reference in their notes to her being helpful and cheerful and such. The other exec support person and I could barely hold our laughter at that concept. "It's tough to support someone as busy as [boss' name], but you always handled it," I wrote. I did not include "as though you were the queen of the damned world." "Thanks for all the things you've helped me with in the past five years," I wrote, omitting, "All two of them." "Best wishes on your retirement," I wrote. "Because we are doing a happy dance at not having to deal with you anymore," I wanted to write. The building I used to work in is a pile of rubble right now. My company has leveled our old building to construct a bigger, nicer one. During an all-employee meeting last week, the VP of Construction said that the old building was being demolitioned and that pictures of the demolition would available for all to see. Yes, "demolitioned." We can all conversate about destroyingness of the building. DS2 had a big, nasty blister on his foot, which I had to pop. It needs a bandage on it to let is heal up without getting dirty. In order to keep him from picking at the bandage, we put socks on him, but he still insists on wearing his sandals. Next I'm going to hike his pants up to his armpits and rename him "Melvin."