Most satisfying. Don't overdo it.

[Rosie] It just occurred to me, after watching another Dr Who Xmas special, that there is a slight possibility of not developing mutant super-powers, instead devolving into a revolting blob, retiring inside a giant pimply salt shaker and going homicidal on everyone & his dog.

No sudden urges to hide in a dustbin and kill everyone on the street I hope?

Dessed badly? Check (I'm still getting dressed in the dark here in the Januarial low countries); wearing eye shadow (not eyeshade, but close enough) - check; chew rope cigars? Eeeuuuuwww. Yelling at everybody - check.
I think I qualify.

[penelope] Do you still get to rip open your office door, wave a fistful of paper in your hand and scream "Stop the Press!", or throw people out of your office, yelling "Either bring me the straight dope on the Mayor and the actress or find another job Kilcullen!"?

(Stevie) No, none of that but don't get too close.

[pen] Sounds fun. Maybe before Britain completes economic suicide I should be begging you for a job =)

Apparently my 'serious' demeanour prevents people from calling into the office and asking me to do things for them. I'd call that a result.
[Stevie] I'm not a newspaper or publication editor - I'm an in-house editor, so work on webpages, internal messages, brochures, our own news items. I miss the days of real newspaper work though - two decades ago now, when the most fun was finding puns to put into the reports of garden shed burglaries from the weekly CID briefing at the police station, and deciphering the spidery handwriting on the back of an envelope that had been shoved through our market place office letterbox, describing the weekly meeting of a village branch of the WI. *sigh*
The pay was utter rubbish though.

[pen] I fail to see why any of your description of your actual editing duties precludes the stuff I brought up.

That last entry sounds like Stevie calling pen into his office and telling her what's what.

[Bism] I can assure you that didn't happen. Stevie was too busy shovelling snow back into his neighbour's yard. Or should that be 'neighbor's yard'?

[pen] It should, the gardens in question being in New York.

[Bismarck] I've never warranted more than a cube in my life, and I haven't been in charge of anyone else since 1995, when my pig-headedness when it came to repeatedly requesting training for my staff and in giving them glowing reviews when the richly deserved it ensured I'd never be put into management again.

[Stevie] Quite. I've never wanted to be a manager - it's just trouble. However, I do want to become more expert at what I do (editing and copywriting). Trouble is, the career progression of most places, including this one, is set up assuming that everyone wants to be a manager. Therefore, I am unable to move up to the next pay grade unless I change my job and move to another department, no matter that I am nine years and umpteen training courses into becoming better at this one. Folly.

I have to take this semester off for financial aid reasons and I should concentrate on my class proposal, but then I get distracted . . . I need to treat this like it is a class and have some self-discipline.

May we know your subject?

31 down, 6 to go. I think I'm actually going to miss this routine.

I'm getting my Master's Degree in Theatre.

Anyone looking for a job? I'm recruiting for an IT assistant to join me. Need to have good knowledge of databases (Oracle and/or SQL) and programming skills in e.g. VB/C/C++/C# and ideally .NET environment. Salary negotiable, but think along the £50k lines

Ah, should mention location - Potters Bar, Herts, UK

I’m just procrastinating - I should be hoovering.

Sad to be driving New Yorkwards from Florida, where I’ve been lounging around and playing in Diagon Alley in my Slytherin drag.

There is a small group of Confederate flag waving reptiles heading your way. Please, please, prepare - if only for the sake of Stevie, who likes to arrive at work on time and then arrive home in time for his evening meal.
Yours etc.,
Duj

59 “we suck” advisory emails from the LIRR since Jan 29th. That’s just the Ronkonkoma branch suckage. 59. Only the LIRR could send “normal service restored” emails and think they were achieving greatness by doing so.

[Stevie] by those statistics, the advisory notes constitute normal service. I have submitted a petition to the MTA that the East Side Access should be opened by you and renamed the "Carpal Tunnel" in your honour, as of the pain and anguish caused by years of commuting.

Another example of wonderful planning. A tunnel between Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. This will solve ... what exactly? I mean, the choke point in the whole sorry mess is the fact that of the four tunnels under the East River, only two are signaled in both directions allowing for bi-directional travel without the need for time-consuming emergency train orders. One of the two is permanently assigned to Amtrak traffic. The other two tunnels are signaled in one direction only. One is signaled into Manhattan, the other out of it. Thus traffic will be disrupted in 3/4 of the possible tunnel signal outages (since if Amtrak's tunnel is lost, they immediately take possession of the other bi-directional tunnel (which means effectively that the bi-directional tunnel is twice as likely to fail as any of the others from the LIRR point of view.

Hidden text

The utterly stupid part of all this is that the tunnels flooded during superstorm Sandy and the signals had to be replaced using "Obama Dollars". Instead of wiring them properly (as had been known to be needed for at least the 33 years I've been travelling on the LIRR) They put them back the same retarded way they were before the flood happened.

So the extra Grand Central traffic will not only add to the system congestion, it will be f*cked-up by the same tunnel idiocy from which the existing network suffers.

I'm interviewing a domestic cleaner tomorrow. I'll get my weekends back (but will of course pay for the privilege).

[pen] Do they need special qualifications to tackle a windmill?

[pen] I thought y' had ter pay miller fer privilege.

[Bismarck] Just a long squeegee for the sails, I think.

That's a song. Or part of a limerick. Or a concept. Not sure.

[pen] It should be a band name.

[pen] Will the staff have to call you "mill-mistress" or is the proper term of servile respect "madame miller"?

I was 49 when I got my first-ever dishwasher. I am now 52, and have just engaged a cleaner. Why the hell didn't I do this years ago when I could barely afford it? It's unbloomingbelievable what a difference it makes. Now I have time at weekends to go and hoover the windmill.

I used to be a dishwasher, but now I'm single.

Weekends are filling up. I can blame the windy miller for most of this. Next weekend is a late Valentine's Day stay at our favourite aubergey kind of place in the Ardennes to eat beautifully prepared wild things and drink a lot of wine before sleeping it off; then the weekend after it's a hotel dinner, bed and breakfast en masse to celebrate my husband's business partner's 10 years in business (with a few other of his colleagues and their wives, who are all a great deal more fastidious about saying grace before and after a meal than we are because most of them come from the Dutch bible belt - this one will be interesting rather than fun), followed by, the next weekend, a few days in Blighty to celebrate Mothers' Day with Mater.
But this next one is empty. And the forecast says it won't rain,. Suggestions?