A meeting of minds

Another meeting at work. How unexciting. I know I’m not the only one with this opinion, but I do hate meetings. And, after many years in the workforce, I know exactly how each meeting will go.

To begin with, the scheduled start time will not be respected. If it’s meant to start at say, 4 o’clock, nothing will really happen until at least 4:15. This means that if you get there on time, you still have to wait. So the best thing to do is to arrive 15 minutes late. It is highly unlikely that you will miss a single thing.

Secondly, there will be junk food. There is an old saying: “If you want people to attend meetings, you must feed them.” This may or may not be true, but why is it always store-bought muffins. cookies or donuts, all chock-full of fats? Occasionally, there may be a fruit plate, but there are always way more desserts. And I always eat a donut that tastes of sugar swimming in fat. And I always wonder why the hell I did THAT again.

A corollary of the junk food is the fact that you will then spend a great deal of time during the meeting passing the food around. Just when there may be an item of interest and you’d like to pay attention for a change, somebody will tap you on the arm and whisper, “Pass this down” while handing you a box of Timbits.

And speaking of attention, it goes without saying that most of the items on the agenda will be of absolutely no interest to anybody at the meeting, save the person who planned that agenda. Except for perhaps one matter that is listed as #19 of 27. Time enough for a small nap while you wait – except that …

There are always a couple of people at every meeting who simply can’t shut up. I mean, none of us are paying much attention to what is going on, but some people just have to comment on EVERYTHING – and they are sitting right beside you. And when there is a small lull, they start muttering about something stupid their husband said to them last night, or why we should have assigned parking spots. Of course, this also means that when #19 actually arrives (you remember: the one item that you really wanted to concentrate upon), you won’t be able to hear it because your chatty co-workers are wittering on about what a mess the art room used to be four or five years ago.

And the discussion items! Oh, how I dread those! Because it’s always the same naysayers who will drone on and on about why this idea will not work because we have never done it that way before, as well as the same Pollyannas who will chirp up with their perpetual, “Well, I think that sounds great! I think we should try it!” You know, real constructive comments. And they don’t just say it once. They say it many, many times. But who’s listening anyway?

The committee reports are just as bad. It seems that the people who chair these committees are always people who just want to hear their own voices. Their reports frequently go on for ten minutes, liberally punctuated with, “As I wrote in my recent email…” and “As you probably already know…”. The whole report can usually be summarized in one sentence – and the long version was already emailed to everybody last week anyway. So why waste our time now?

And the chairperson never seems to understand their job. At many of the meetings I attend, the chair is a rotating job, but I truly think that the wrong people sign up for it. Note to those people: do not attempt to chair a meeting if: a) you are very timid and don’t like to speak in front of others, b) you do not like to interrupt discussion to get people to return to the actual topic that is supposed to be discussed, and c) you have no concept of time and allow the meeting to go on and on and on and on and on and on …

After a lot of thought and deliberation about this, I believe I now have a pretty efficient way of dealing with all these annoyances: call in sick on meeting days.

Backed up

A week’s vacation, then two days of work, and now I’m home today. I’m just not cut out for this work stuff!

Actually, it’s my back. I did something to it on Sunday when I washed my car. I was crouched down cleaning one of the wheels and when I tried to stand up, there was great pain in my lower back and I couldn’t move. It took a couple of minutes before I could stand up straight, but then I had to finish the other wheels on the car. Slowly, gingerly I did. I got through the rest of the day okay, with only a twinge every now and then. I even went for my usual walk, though I had to go a bit slower than usual. So I figured it would be okay.

Except it seized up again Monday morning. It took me forever to get out of bed! But it calmed down to a manageable roar, as they say, and as long as I moved carefully and minimized any bending over, I was okay.

But Tuesday morning it was worse. It took me even longer to get out of bed. Still, I was able to get to work, but then I thought, WTF? Why do I have paid sick days? So what if this is only the first week back after Spring Break? My back hurts, dammit!

So I booked a substitute teacher for the next day (Wednesday), and got through Tuesday as best I could. I planned to rest my back as much as I could on my day off – and maybe do my grocery shopping and some laundry, if I could move well enough.

And now it’s Wednesday and I’m at home and I’m getting concerned. I’ve had lower back issues before, but nothing that lasted quite this long without the pain abating. Of course, all kinds of stupid scenarios are running through my head: I’ve got a slipped disc, I’ve got a tumour, I’ve got cancer, I’ve got MS, I’ve got arthritis, I’m old and decrepit, I’m basically dying.

What I’ve really got is an imagination. If I would actually – here’s a novel idea! – go to my doctor or maybe try a chiropractor, I’d probably feel a lot better simply because I was DOING something about it. I’ve also not even taken any pain medication to date, which you would think would be the first step when something hurts this bad.

But I would like to know what’s really going on with my back. If I knew that I had some particular problem with it, then perhaps the pain might be preventable or even just manageable in the future. Or at least I’d know what I was dying of.

All I know right now is that apparently I must never wash my car again.

Sprung

Okay, it’s officially Spring. The rain has stopped. It’s 10º outside and sunny. I washed my car.

But more importantly, the grass in my tiny back yard got cut!

And another anxiously-anticipated harbinger of Spring, my daffodils are blooming! (It was touch-and-go there for a few rainy days, you may recall, what with the leaky gutter next door pouring its contents onto my flowerbox instead of down the drainpipe.)

Spring is my favourite season, and it’s really here now! I’m hopeful that the weather will only get better now. I’m feeling all relaxed and cheerful. And … I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Blah.

Busy, busy

I’ve been on Spring Break all week. It has rained pretty much all week. Is there a correlation perhaps?

Anyway, I have rarely participated in that well-known Canadian ritual known as “Going away somewhere warm for Spring Break”, and obviously I didn’t this year either. I don’t know why that is.

Maybe it’s because I have so darn much to do at home. So far this week I have: -slept in every single morning
-drank half a pot of coffee all by myself every single morning
-spent literally hours each day reading blogs or writing my own or emailing or just plain surfing the intarnets
-baked banana bread
-gone grocery shopping
-vacuumed and dusted the house
-cleaned two bathrooms
-downloaded about 200 more songs to my iPod
-gone back to the store for batteries
-gone out for one brunch and one dinner
-won 20$ at the casino, gambling with my mom’s money
-done 5 loads of laundry (on two different days)
-run and emptied the dishwasher three times
-collected the mail only twice
-gone back to the store yet again for hairspray
-watched three hockey games on TV (and have fallen asleep on the couch each time)
-somehow deleted the email program on my laptop
-with DD’s help, reinstalled said email program
-whined enough to DD that she gave me her old external hard drive and then she backed up all my computer files for me
-gone back to the damn store for the fourth time to pick up a bag of candy and a bunch of magazines as a birthday gift
-researched this summer’s proposed trip to Greece (I’m THIS CLOSE to booking the flights)
-bought new runners and a new flat-iron (different store, thank goodness)
-gone for a long walk most days to break the runners in (depending upon how hard it’s been raining)
-perfected my flat-iron technique
-phoned to make a dentist appointment
-managed to prepare two proper dinners
-regularly questioned DD about her progress on her thesis
-regularly dodged the evil looks she responded with

I mean, really, I haven’t had TIME to go away somewhere this week, have I?

Ka-ching!

My mom loves going to the local casino. She should: overall, she wins quite often. She has a system whereby she will only gamble with a certain amount of money, and when that’s all gone, that’s it for her. She cashes out immediately as soon as she wins, and when all her gambling money is gone, she converts all her tickets to cash. Then she goes home and phones me to tell me how much she won. Last year, based upon maybe two casino visits every month, she netted about 6000$, she estimates. Obviously a foolproof system for her.

Mom is a valuable enough customer at that casino that just after Christmas, they sent her a thank-you for her business in the form of a voucher for Sunday brunch for four people at their restaurant. So she took DD and I there for brunch last Sunday. She had wanted to do this while my brother was here visiting in January, but she couldn’t get a reservation till now, so it was just three of us.

Brunch was very nice (though I didn’t dare order my usual champagne and orange juice – it wouldn’t have been worth all the nagging and comments: “First thing in the morning, dear?” “Take it easy on that, dear.” “Are you sure you should?” “And is DD going to drive home then?”).

Anyway, there were plenty of different dishes to choose from, good hot coffee, and even bread pudding for dessert. Just for the record, if there’s bread pudding available, all is well in Pinklea-land. With vanilla sauce, it’s pretty much ecstacy in Pinklea-land.

So we all ate very well, then Mom announced that she was going to take DD to try the slots with her. “She’s 21,” Mom reasoned. “It’s time she learned how to do it.”

This is what it’s like in my family: there are certain coming-of-age rituals that must be respected. Downing shot glasses of rye is one of them. Playing slot machines is another.

Now DD has never expressed any interest at all in gambling of any size, shape, or form. (But drinking rye, yes.) But this was her beloved grandma. DD does not turn down any suggestion by her grandma. So, with trepidation evident in her whole demeanor, she followed along as we headed over to the casino …

… and got stopped before entering. Mom and I were ahead of her and we sailed right in, oblivious. DD was being asked for ID. Mom and I eventually realized that she wasn’t with us, so we turned around to see her fumbling in her gigantic purse, face flushed, looking even more uncomfortable.

But she is of age, so in she soon came. Mom led us over to her favourite corner of the casino, and handed DD twenty dollars. “Try this machine,” she instructed. “Sit down. Put the bill in here.”

She pressed a few buttons, explaining all the while what she was doing and what DD was supposed to do next. “Push that button.”

DD pushed. And won. Sixty dollars. Just like that.

Mom told her to cash out, then handed me another twenty dollars and shooed me off to play. I tried a couple of different machines, then I won another twenty dollars. I cashed out.

Then we watched Mom win 100$ on about her fourth pull on a machine. She carefully tucked the ticket into her wallet – along with the tickets from her previous winnings that morning. It totalled something like 400$.

She stayed to gamble some more. We went home. Not bad for a couple hours work: free food and free money.