What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Here�s a bad thing that�s happening at Gastro lately. Since my colleagues know that I have better skills than they do in the departments of, for example, formatting documents, strong-arming Word, making pretty graphics, and dealing with yellers on the telephone, they don�t try anymore and instead come wheedling to Yours Truly. "Can you help me?" they beseech. So I go to their workstations and I tell them what the problem is and how to fix it, and I walk them through what to do, and I always say something like Yes, great, you�ve got it, so next time you�ll be able to do it by yourself. But even if they are able to, they don�t want to, and two days or two weeks later, there they are again, can-you-help-me? Earlier this week I was called upon to draft an e-mail because, I was told by the draft shirker whose desk it would be sent from, "you�re the linguist." The linguist? Here are the facts that the e-mail needed to contain: Dear Recipient, (1) you are invited to (2) a talk by a visiting doctor on (3) his pet subject (4) in the auditorium from (5) noon to one on Friday. (6) Sorry, no lunch, so bring yours, but (7) we�ll have some token cookies on hand, and (8) tell your friends, since we have a lot of seats to fill. You really don�t need advanced linguistics training, or, hell, I�ll go out on a limb and say you don�t need any at all to write something like that. Then yesterday afternoon I stayed until almost six because the concept of a screen shot is apparently beyond some people, and likewise so is that of specifications � make it bigger, on second thought make it smaller, oh and while you�re at it can you also make me caption and no-caption versions of Figures 3 through 7 in this PowerPoint presentation? I don�t know what to do about this. I am a team player, it has been well established that I have no aversion to doing my share of scut work, and in most cases the people who are refusing to do stuff because I can do it better � the implication is that because I can, I *should*, and I don�t even know where to start with that; what, is Rebecca entitled to go on a hunger strike until I start cooking meals for her? � are people I like, which puts me in a situation even awkwarder than the one I�m already in on account of still being a temp and having to assume that everything I can do above and beyond the etc. will increase the likelihood that I�ll get hired and therefore is a grit-your-teeth necessity.

Which on the other hand is very nice to realize because it�s yet another factor convincing me that my particular terminal B.A. has become a shithole and it�s time to move to a new neighborhood. Also, Dr. Blahblah asked me yesterday if I�d be willing to do some confidential, non-hospital work for him personally. I would have to take it home and do it on non-hospital time and on non-hospital machines because apparently there are some liability or conflict-of-interest issues involved. He said he�d pay me, but I�d rather have him owing me a big favor.

Kung fu: don�t go if you�ve only had an unsatisfying snack since breakfast and are losing the battle against a bladder infection and are wearing street clothes to everyone else�s workout gear. After I had to eschew a proper dinner because I didn�t get out of here until late, grrr, all I was fit to do was sit and observe, which I had figured wouldn�t be a problem, but the instructor had other ideas. I was not happy. I guess I�m leaning towards signing up for the baby class, with my main reservation being that for most of the people I talked to last night, it isn�t about taking classes a few times a week, it is about "training." As in, "I�ve been training for a year." As in, kung fu classes are my lifestyle, this is what I do, I identify as a martial artist, I have arranged my schedule so that I can come to the studio during the daytime. And I don�t want that � I�m looking for an impetus to get my ass out of the house and use a different set of muscles than running does, and that's all. The baby class probably wouldn�t be so bad, but then later when most of the others started training and I was still taking classes � I also got the impression that this is a little bit looked down on, as if it *should* be my goal to be in training � then everyone else would be getting promoted faster than me, and I�d be the school dunce. And I know that if I liked what I was doing in my classes, this shouldn�t concern me, but I also know that it does.

Oh, and the dream. I guess it wasn�t so funny after all. Steve was the Tick, and the basement of the house in Fremont where I used to go pick up the co-op vegetables was actually made of bricks of compacted marijuana, and I was a superhero too, a minor one, who had the power of disappearing by flinging myself hard at the ground, but only if my torso went splat before any limbs did. That�s about it.

I�ll try to write more later and whine less, maybe after the doc talk. Right now I want to drink my tea, eat my donut, read my book, and sulk a little.