Four Days in November

Even most of TBL's closest friends did not know this until now: aside from all the story writing and blogging, TBL also keeps a journal. A traditional, handwritten journal. A diary, if you will. And while most of the contents are extremely private, TBL would like to share with all of you a few recent entries.

Do pardon the diarists' shorthand--they were not originally written for public consumption, and TBL does not bother with trivialities like grammar and prepositions when writing solely for herself. Proper names of people and companies have been redacted because they are nobody else's business.

25.Nov.07

First entry in weeks. Will shortly lose lack-of-time excuse as have been laid off. Do not expect to work between Wednesday (first day unemployed) and new year.

Announcement of layoff (19.Oct) followed by three weeks solid depression. Cleanliness of apartment has yet to completely recover. Will shortly have time to rectify that, as well.

Looking for new job downtown. Being there would go long way toward making up for recent events.

Hope to finish revisions of Catch Me in December, since will have all that time. Ask A____ for advice how to find right agent?

Severance package quite good. Jobless December not worrisome. Trying to view time off to write as gift. When else might have chance at whole month off? But still hoping to win Hot Lotto.

Have been reading up on Buddhism. Idea of "right thought" and seeing things as they really are very appealing. Also concept of mindfulness, opposite societal worship of multitasking. Meditation very difficult, though--brain not wired for stillness.

Knitting lots lately. Also reading and watching movies. Distractions sans interactions.


26.Nov.07

Tomorrow last day at job. Have résumé in for 3 positions--1 @ K____, 2 @ C____. REALLY want job at C____. Excellent benefits, everyone who works there seems to love the place.

Not sure how to make it through tomorrow with dignity intact. Have been known to cry at commercials.

J____ coming to pick me up, bless her--will not have to face teary bus ride clutching box of lost-job detritus. Have better friends than deserve.

One foot in front of other. No day lasts forever. Got through divorce, will get through this.


27.Nov.07

Last day @ G____. Plan to hand off key card and bolt before could cry foiled by sudden appearance of half of team. Somehow managed to joke around with them several minutes before making exit. Cried in car. Professional dignity intact, passenger seat slightly damp.

Spent evening watching DVDs with J____ & printing out résumé for job fair tomorrow. Résumé paper should go out, find job for me, given exorbitant cost.


28.Nov.07

Am now officially unemployed. Yet, still got up before crack of dawn, because job fair* at 8:30. Insult, meet injury.

Got all tarted up in best professional-style outfit, went to ass-end of Bloomington to beg for employment. ("Tarted up" prob. not best phrase; actually looked like Republican convention delegate. Very disturbing.)

Turns out, rumor that are more jobs like mine than people like me in need of jobs is true. IT recruiter from S____ tried to get me to give him all my résumés so I could not hand out elsewhere. IT recruiter from P____ wanted to know if could interview this week. Both companies, unfortunately, in locations that suck, also known as outer ring suburbs. IT recruiter from T____ downtown asked ton of questions, scribbled notes all over résumé and mentioned specific job trying to fill. HR types with W____ and U____ downtown made interested noises but unsure what openings were in IT. Left résumé, will be forwarded to IT types.

Really want to work downtown. If find job there, will be magically transformed into super-cool single girl about town. (Realistically, will prob. continue as awkward, knitting spinster with cats, but firmly believe that rich fantasy life is good thing, esp. in troubled times.)

Cat suddenly behaving very strangely, perhaps in odd feline attempt to cheer up the biped.

Is working.

* Not sure why called "job fair". "Fair" implies bright lights, food on stick, atmosphere of gaiety, possibly beer. Job fair had none of above. Also, facial muscles sore from excess of fake smiling. Should be "job gauntlet" or perhaps "employment roulette".

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Don't Let the Door Hit You, Etcetera

Well, dear readers, TBL's amazing run of luck has continued with the announcement on Wednesday that her job is being "eliminated" at the end of November.

You may have seen The Company on the news that evening; the story started "Massive layoffs today at a Bloomington mortgage company..." Yes, indeedy, the job TBL has had for the last eleven years was part of that sad tale.

Therefore, TBL will be taking some time away from the blog to sob quietly in a corner, with occasional breaks to gnaw on the couch cushions and/or construct tinfoil hats. After that, the job hunting. Needless to say, blogging will probably be rather more spotty than usual for the foreseeable future. Either that, or you will be hearing from TBL much more than you'd prefer. Hard to say, really.

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Amusements

Hey, two sweeps out of five series in the new season! Even the most fervent of doomsayers might just crack a smile at that one.

Now, I have to admit, I missed it. I saw a grand total of about six innings of the three-game series, on account of having to get up at oh-hell-hundred in the morning to report to my little grey box o' gloom at The Company*. And on Thursday evenings I have a knitting group, so I missed most of the one game that was on at a decent hour. Alas. Judging from the box scores and postgame writeups, it was an amusing series!

Looks like Bartlett's bat is thawing, while Morneau, Castillo, and Mauer are riding those hot streaks. Santana got his mojo back, Ortiz continues to be surprisingly good, Silva's pitching well enough to stay in the rotation, and poor Pat Neshek got knocked right out of his tall socks. (Glad I missed that.)

Up next, the Kansas City Royals Landed Gentry. Before you all breathe that big ol' sigh of relief, recall that last season we were 12-7 against KC. That's a winning record, but hardly a blowout.

Probables:

4/20: MIN RHP S Ponson (1-1, 8.18) vs KC LHP O Perez (0-2, 9.26)
4/21: MIN RHP B Bonser (0-1, 6.89) vs KC RHP Z Greinke (1-2, 3.95)
4/22: MIN RHP R Ortiz (3-0, 2.05) vs KC LHP J De La Rosa (1-1, 4.34)

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*Speaking of The Company...

We had this corporate thing yesterday, at which one of the Grand High Muckety-Mucks attempted to revive flagging morale after record losses and a ~15% workforce reduction by bludgeoning all us Disgruntled Peons into submission with buzzwords and acronyms. Standard corporate fare. Anyhoo, he was going on about how we could save money by making sure we're not duplicating efforts. Someone needs to buy Mr. Muckety-Muck a thesaurus, because while we all knew he meant 'duplication', what he intoned so solemnly was:

"There's a lot of duplicity in this organization."

And yes, I actually managed not to burst out laughing. Although I certainly would have if we weren't having layoffs.

Making it all even more perfect, the meeting was in a conference room inside the Park at MoA (formerly Camp Snoopy), underneath part of the roller coaster. So the background noise to our ever-so-cheerful gathering was ominous rumbling and muffled screams.

All of which just goes to show, sometimes even upper management actually gets it right.

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2006 Preview - Overview

Believe it or not, I finally got all my holiday knitting done. (More on that another day.) The upshot is, there is now time to blog again. Oh, and guess what? The entire world is closed today, except for my company. That's right--you're probably still in your PJs, but I'm blogging on my lunch break. %$&#!

For anyone who might have been expecting a new year's resolutions post, I looked back and discovered that, of all the resolutions I made for 2005, I kept none. At least I'm consistent. It also saves me valuable thinking time--why come up with new resolutions when I have a list of perfectly good ones still waiting to be completed?

The Twins last 2005 game was October 2nd. Their first 2006 game will be April 4th. That makes tomorrow, to all intents and purposes, the midpoint of the offseason. The No-Star Break, if you will. (Those of you making cracks about that phrase describing last season can just zip it, thanks.)

So, what's new for the Twins in 2006?

1. The New Steroid Policy
TBL is more or less content with the new steroid policy, which adds amphetamines to the list of banned substances and increases penalties from 10 days to 50, 30 to half a season, and 60 days to "life", by which they mean two years.

How does this affect the Twins? Well, one hopes it doesn't. But if, for example, my beloved Juan were to get busted again, half a season should just barely be enough time for him to extricate my foot from his ass, providing Batgirl doesn't get to him first.


2. Whole New Infield
Well, partly. Let's jog around the diamond and see who we find.

Making his second full-season appearance at catcher will be the baby Jesus Joe Mauer. Verily, the catcher can do no wrong.

Justin Morneau is still our first baseman. Rumor has it he's drinking a gallon of orange juice a day to avoid a repeat of last offseason--apparently he didn't like being called Typhoid Mary all year. Moving on...

We, my friends, have gotten ourselves an honest-to-gosh second baseman in the person of Luis Castillo. Look upon his stats, ye mighty, and weep...with joy.

At short we find Jason Bartlett. No, wait, it's Juan Castro. Or maybe it's Nick Punto. So, same shortstop as last year. Glad that's been cleared up.

At third base, we have someone who not only likes to hit the ball over the fence a lot, but also might actually know what that leather thing on the end of his arm is for. Indeed, Terry Ryan went all the way to Japan to get us Tony Batista.

Now you may ask: TBL, doesn't it make you just a smidge nervous that his Japanese team, for which he had only played one year of a two-year, $15 million contract, released him outright shortly before this signing? My answer is: No. No, not in the slightest. I have complete faith in both Mr. Ryan and the excellent Irish whiskey I hide in my desk have at home, far, far away from work.

(TBL does, however, wish to remind Mr. Ryan that Toronto is making noises about unloading Corey Koskie. He's a lefty, Batista's a righty, and a platoon situation could keep him healthier. Whadda ya say?)


3. Right Field Vacancy
Hey, remember before we got Shannon Stewart, how we always had like five outfielders arm-wrestling for the day's start in right? Well, Jacque Jones bolted for the more lucrative confines of Wrigley Field, and no one's quite sure who's replacing him. Could be Kubel. Could be Cuddyer. Could be Ford. Could be a surprise spring-training demigod. Hell, it could be the batboy.


4. Mommy, Look! Santa Brought Us A DH!
I liked Matt LeCroy, don't get me wrong. But I like a healthy Rondell White even better. He's battled injuries the last few seasons, but staying out of the field should cut those down nicely. Some guys bitch and moan about being taken off the field in the twilight years of their career, but I've heard a few interviews with White and he seems to have the very sane attitude that DH is a really good spot for a guy with an injury history, and if that's going to extend his career by a few seasons then it's just fine.


5. Enter Liriano
The Twins bought out the option on the contract of starter Joe Mays, opening a spot in the Twins rotation. This spot is Francisco "Santana Junior" Liriano's to lose. The Twins will be providing excess 2002-2004 homer hankies at the gate before his starts for those with a tendency to drool over nascent greatness.



I'll be picking some of these topics apart in greater detail as the latter half of the offseason progresses, but that's all for now.

Happy new year, and remember--the offseason does end. Eventually.

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Things I Have Learned Today

• If I owned a firearm, I would use it inappropriately.
• There is no rational reason to ban moderate alcohol use in the workplace.
• As the urgency level of a problem rises, the denseness of corporate beaurocracy increases commensurately.
• I am obviously not buying enough Powerball tickets.

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Long Time, No Post Miscellany

The Very Interesting But Poorly Scheduled Project ate the last two weeks of my life. I'm currently working on posts about the new steroid policy and the Twins hot stove rumors, but neither is ready yet. However, I do have a few bits and bobs to entertain you (and assure you I'm still alive and writing):

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I just started reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's new book, "Yarn Harlot: the Secret Life of a Knitter", but already I can tell that this woman and I would get along famously. Witness the following snippet from page five, regarding buying an awful lot of yarn at once.

"I wrestled my new yarn out of the shop (ignoring the stares of the new knitter over by the mohair who was buying a single ball of something blue and clearly thought I might be dangerous). Forcing the yarn through the door of the bus, trying to avoid whacking people with it, I decided it was worth it."

Been there. Done that. Whacked the people anyway.

---

So lately, after acquiring a repetetive-stress injury to my right shoulder as the result of working on a computer way too much at work (the above-referenced VIBPSP) and at home (the novel, the blog--okay, not so much lately--and the email) and spending most of the rest of my time knitting holiday gifts (you guys are going to be seeing a LOT of knitting pictures in January, when they won't spoil the surprise), I've taken to working on the computer at home while standing up. It's more ergonomic, and way easier on the shoulder for some reason. I just toss a couple of phone books on the kitchen counter and plop the laptop on top of them. Instant standing desk.

And I really like it, especially because when I'm working on the novel I always have the MP3 player practically surgically attached to my ears, and I often find myself typing and dancing at the same time. Since I dance like most white girls--I have just enough rhythm to give myself delusions of adequacy--I'm sure I look utterly ridiculous, but there's something perfect about doing something you love while also dancing. That's simple happiness right there, folks. (And it's probably going to go a long way toward staving off "secretary's butt". You ladies with office jobs know what I'm talking about.)

But this also reminded me of something I saw on TV months ago. A guy who worked in an office and didn't exercise much and started getting pretty soft around the edges got this brilliant idea to build an entire office workstation onto a treadmill. You stand and walk at a moderate pace while working on your computer and talking on your office phone all day. You can even attach a printer and a fax to this thing. The whole setup will fit into a standard cubicle, and Inventor-Guy lost like 40 pounds just by using it for a year.

I WANT ONE.

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That's all for now. I have a scarf to start!

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Nothing New Under the Sun

What can I tell you that you don't already know?

I could tell you that the Twins have given up on winning and are instead concentrating on finding innovative ways to suck. But you knew that. I could tell you the hitters aren't hitting and the pitchers are too often merely throwing, but I suspect you reached that conclusion long ago on your own.

I could tell you that my company recently went through a major re-organization to maximize its soul-sucking capabilities, and that for the first time in the history of corporate re-orgs the goal behind the chaos has actually been achieved. Would that be news?

I could tell you that the project I am currently working on (for the aforementioned soul-suckers) will eventually end up in the Journal of American Science as scientific proof of Murphy's Law. You probably didn't know that, but it's equally probable that you don't care.

I could tell you that President Emperor Bush recently gave the media the finger. And now his mouthpieces say it was his thumb. I wonder what he calls the short, squat finger that's a bit separate from all the rest, then?

But, back to baseball. Here are a few obscure things, in no particular order, that you may not know about the Twins:

• Kyle Lohse leads the Twins' staff in walks, with 31. Behind (or, if you prefer, in front of) him are three pitchers with 29...but only two of those are starters. I'm looking at you, Romero...
• Eight of Minnesota's 25 active players are under 6 feet tall.
• Everyone knows that Johan Santana leads the staff (and the league) in strikeouts. Which Twin is second in the team standings? You might be surprised: it's Brad Radke.
• Improbable team leaders:
• Justin Morneau - triples (4), fielding percent for an "everyday" player (.994)
• Jacque Jones - walks (41)
• Torii Hunter - stolen bases (23)
• Brad Radke - hit batsmen (7)
• Mike Redmond - errors (0), runners caught stealing (9)
• Juan Rincón has the most innings, lowest ERA and fewest home runs allowed of Twins relievers who have been here all season.
• Slump-O-Rama:
• Lew Ford went 13 for 75 (.173) in July.
• Other July slumps:
  • Nick Punto - 20 for 100 (.200)
  • Justin Morneau 19 for 89 (.213)
• Throwing, as opposed to pitching (July):
• Jesse Crain - 9.28 ERA, ten walks, three strikeouts
• Terry Mulholland - 7.36 ERA
• Joe Mays - 7.36 ERA, four home runs
• Only the Kansas City Landed Gentry have scored fewer runs than the Twins this season, and they're only 3 runs behind us.
• The Twins are third in the league in pitching, behind only the @$#! Whine Sox and the Los Angeles Angels of Names That Are Too Damn Long, respectively.

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Notes from the Soul-Sucking Cubicle

She was doing nine to life

working for The Company.

--the Levellers, "Outside/Inside"

Hello. My name is Peon, and I work for The Company.

I joined The Company in 1996, when it was small, and casual, and friendly. It has grown quite a bit since then, and become much like other companies. It has also grown a second face. Recently, one face looked very sad and apologetic when it informed us that money was very, very scarce and as a result they were going to have to lay off 10% of the technology peons. The other face was busy making toasts at the corporate managing director conference in Hawaii. Who knew it was cheaper to meet at a Hawaiian resort than in your own headquarters? Perhaps we should re-think our lease.

In the last few years, The Company has been pursuing a program called "Associate Engagement". "Associate" is a nicer word for peon, and "Engagement" basically means a peon's emotional investment in his/her job and in The Company itself. You see, there was a big nationwide study a few years ago that indicated a high level of "engagement" among workers resulted in greater job satisfaction and higher productivity.

So The Company, being duly concerned about its peons' happiness productivity, implemented an annual Associate Engagement Survey to gauge the level of contentment among its worker bees and presumably to try to fix areas of dissatisfaction. This survey is given every fall, usually in late September or early October.

The first few times, after the results of the survey came in around the new year, The Company would exclaim over the questions which received poor ratings, and the issues would be hashed and rehashed ad nauseum for the next six months. The Company would build new informational websites for our benefit, set up anonymous call centers where we could report problems, and gather all our managers together for a conference in a tropical paradise to try to puzzle out why those of us left behind in the swirling snows of Minnesota weren't beaming with pride to work for such a fine and caring organization.

Last year, they gave up on those tactics, and took the much simpler approach of releasing the next survey's questions to management several months before the survey and instructing them to discuss these questions with their team. By "discuss", of course, they meant "prime the peons to rate everything a 5 out of 5".

So our managers give us the questions one by one, and ask us to air any reasons we might have for rating that question less than a five. And then they explain to us, very gently, why our problems aren't really what the question is about, so of course we can't in good conscience consider trifling little difficulties like layoffs when faced with the survey.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret they don't think we're bright enough to have figured out. They don't actually give a rip if we're happy or productive--they just want us to say we're happy and productive on their little survey so they can show the survey results to their investors as proof that not only is their money safe with The Company, but they should invest even more.

I could admire their sheer nerve and Machiavellian lack of conscience if they weren't so ham-handed about it. A little subtlety would go a very long way. It might even be worth a 3.

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Think Happy Thoughts

Yesterday I started writing a post. It was about going to a company meeting, and how dismal it is to sit in a cramped, stuffy hotel conference room munching on stale party mix while a bunch of management types smile through clenched teeth and try to convince you that, despite their having bungled everything so badly that it became necessary to lay off 10% of the workforce (but not, mind you, of the management staff) last week, everything is going to be perfectly okay now. I wondered how dumb they think we are, to expect us not to realize that the people who f***ed it all up are still in charge. I remarked upon how disheartening it was to look around and realize that most of your (remaining) peers are swallowing this bullshit hook, line and sinker. Then I realized I was turning phrases around way too many words starting with "d" and besides I was getting pretty depressed glum just remembering it, so I just trashed the whole thing and went to the Twins game.

At first, it didn't look like the game was going to be much better than the post-writing. We were fielding the "B" team behind Brad "My Kingdom For Some Run Support" Radke, and Detroit had a lefthander on the mound. Then Brad coughed up the obligatory first-inning runs (two of them), putting the Twins in a hole, and the Twins went down meekly 1-2-3 in the bottom of the inning.

Note: nine games into the season, the Twins are the only ML team which has yet to score first in a game. Pride is not what I'm feeling here, boys, 6-3 record aside.

Ah, but then...

Then Radke said, "I want a 1-2-3 inning!" and he went out and got himself one. The guys in the field said, "Hey, Radke needs some run support!" and they ran to the dugout and grabbed their lucky eyeglasses--the better to see all the balls Detroit lefty Nate Robertson threw outside of the strikezone--and on two walks, two hits and a hit-by-pitch they tied up the game.

Mr. Radke liked that 1-2-3 feeling, so he pitched himself another in the top of the third. The Twins hitters said, "Hey, let's try something different and score 1-2-3 instead of going down that way!" Ably assisted by Mr. Robertson, who hit one, walked one, and gave up two hits, and Omar Infante, who committed a well-timed error at second, they did indeed score three.

It was all pretty much over at that point. Sure, the Tigers would manage two more runs, and Gardy would be ejected when he got a teensy bit angry about the umpire warning both dugouts after Radke just barely brushed Marcus Thames' jersey with an inside fastball. But the Twins would put another five runs on the board, and the brooms would come out, and many a fan would have a good laugh at Dmitri Young's expense.

"Control issues" was the phrase of the day for the Tigers, as their pitchers (they used four) combined to face 44 batters, pitching themselves into six full counts, allowing eleven hits, a mind-boggling nine walks, and hitting two batters while striking out only three. I think the whole team had a little too much Starbucks, because the defense was almost as wild as the pitching, accumulating three errors. Try the decaf, guys.

And Brad Radke actually got run support. To steal a line from Bull Durham: "It's a miracle!"

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Friday Afternoon Miscellany

Today's strip in the Dilbert-a-Day calendar is about estimating time to completion for a project. It went like so:

Dilbert: "In a perfect world the project would take eight months. But based on past projects in this company, I applied a 1.5 incompetence multiplier. And then I applied an LWF of 6.3."
Pointy-Haired Boss: "LWF?"
Alice: "Lying Weasel Factor."

I thought, "Hey, that's MY project!"

First baseman Justin Morneau, after battling appendicitis (October), chicken pox (January), pleurisy and pneumonia (February) this offseason, now has to have minor surgery to remove a cyst which has developed at the site of his appendectomy incision. What's next, scurvy? Arrrr!

In other news, the Twins lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 2-3 in exhibition action this afternoon. Apparently Santana pitched three scoreless innings, but since the game wasn't broadcast (@#*%!) I have no further detail to offer.

I just looked out the window, and the snow is falling sideways. Brrr.

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Dreaming of the Sun

Long time, no post. Things have been pretty busy the last couple of weeks. Here's the update.

Work:
Worst. Project. Ever.

Home:
Been getting ready for the trip to Florida. Flying out Thursday, Mom and I will get into Fort Myers late in the afternoon. We've got Twins spring training games Friday and Saturday, a minor-league hockey game Sunday, another Twins game Monday, and then it's back in the air at the crack of hell Tuesday morning. Provided I can find wireless internet access, I'll be blogging the trip!
I tell ya, I can't wait for the sunshine. There had better be sunshine. I'm starting to feel like one of those weird hairless creatures that lives in the depths of a cave, hunting fish and bugs among the fossilized bear bones. I expect to evolve myself some sonar any day now.

Miscellany:
So I'm listening to the news this morning while I get ready for work, and there's this woman ranting and raving about how there aren't any African-Americans on the Michael Jackson jury and how's a black man supposed to get a fair trial like that? And all I can think is, "Lady, Michael Jackson hasn't been black for years."

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Pass the Advil

<vent>

I hate Javascript with the sort of seething passion generally reserved for child molesters and Rush Limbaugh. Javascript, FYI, is the demented bastard offspring of C (a fairly reasonable sort of language), created for the sole purpose of aging web developers before their time. You might be able to beat it into submission if you had, say, a good language reference manual for it, but there is no such thing. Why? Try writing a comprehensive reference on that language toddlers make up and use somewhere between crawling and English. You'll probably have more luck.

</vent>

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"Programmer" <> "Mind Reader"

Top five tips for working effectively with programmers/developers/engineers:

5. If we liked people, we wouldn't be programmers.

4. We can explain technology to you in terms you can understand, and we will if we think you'll actually listen.

3. Remember, you signed off on the requirements--you have no right to be angry when we code what you asked for, not what you meant.

2. Regardless of what your kindergarten teacher told you, there is such a thing as a stupid question. (If you must ask it anyway, please wait until after we've had our first cup of coffee.)

and...

1. Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part.

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OSHA Doesn't Cover This

So, have you ever been sitting in your cubicle, puzzling something out and kind of swivelling back and forth in your chair, and you accidentally swivel a bit too far and pin your arm between your chair and the desk?

It hurts. Quite a lot, actually. On the bright side, it completely negates the need for another cup of what we here in the office like to laughingly call "coffee".

TGIF, folks!

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