Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Tufts E-News -- From The CIA To The Circulation Desk
Tufts E-News -- From The CIA To The Circulation Desk
Lots of folks enter librarianship as a second career. As did this person. Who can rig a toilet w/ explosives as handily as she can install an OPAC.
Lots of folks enter librarianship as a second career. As did this person. Who can rig a toilet w/ explosives as handily as she can install an OPAC.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Quakes and shakes
Yes, there was a 5.2 earthquake a few hours' drive from here today. Yes, I definitely felt it. I was sitting at my 'puter reading the news online when the floor began to vibrate. It went on for several seconds, and seemed serious enough that I got up and moved from my desk, which is adjacent to a tall bookcase which is not secured to the wall, to the center of the room next to my bed. In a quake you're supposed to crouch down snug up against the edge of some solid large object, which should hopefully provide some deflection for things falling from above or alongside. So I stood next to my bed ready to drop to my knees if things got really Interesting. They didn't.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Random scenes from my work life
Assorted scenes from my life at my present job. Those of you who are familiar w/ my previous employment tales will note an improvement in morale....
We have one client who has been supposed to come in for an interview w/ Marc on at least 4 previous occasions, and has stood him up every single time. Her fifth appt was this morning. Yesterday Marc asked me if I thought she'd show. I said, "No." He offered to bet me $1 that she would. I said okay. This morning she called and cancelled. I'm $1 richer. Wonder if Marc will put it on my W-2 as a bonus? :-)
Marc is a fiend about his coffee. If you could put coffee in an IV drip bag, Marc would be a prime customer. Except he also likes it for the taste, not just the caffeine, and he buys premium roasts fresh-ground in small batches for our office machine. On two different occasions, when he's been trapped at his desk on a long con-call early in the a.m. and unable to get his first cup of the workday, I've brought a mug in to him. He's reacted poorly both times--thinks a female secretary getting her male boss coffee is a relic of sexist days and that it makes him look like he's sexist to accept it. He doesn't get that, for me, it was just a way to be thoughtful, as I know how desperate I can feel when cut off from my caffeine source. Has nothing to do w/ him being male, or me being female.
Has a little to do w/ his being the boss, but only b/c I figure part of my job is to make his day go as smoothly as possible, w/in reason, and pouring a second mug of coffee while I'm pouring mine isn't exactly burdensome. Unlike when I used to work in the church, and was on the same level as the clergy (but was never treated like it) here I am support staff, not management. Since it's my job to support Marc, I support him, and if that means the occasional cup of coffee, I'm not going to start feeling oppressed. I never would have made Nick+ or Jim coffee, b/c that would have been enacting a subservient role, when in theory I was their equal. But here, that is the role I have. Me secretary, you lawyer. Me paid $15 hr, you paid $275 hr (minus considerable overhead). I don't think who gets who coffee is going to change this fundamental hierarchy.
But Marc still doesn't like the message he thinks my getting him coffee sends. So, this morning, while I was stuck on the phone, he brought *me* a mug of coffee. He set it down at my desk saying, "Payback is hell!" Ironic that I am being treated more as an equal colleague by my Jewish lawyer boss for whom I literally am a secretary, than I was by the Presbyterian pastor boss to whom I was supposedly an equal. Of course, my previous Jewish lawyer boss did treat me like a total serf, so one can not generalize.
The "payback" reference from Marc is b/c he's going to turn 50 in October and the other 2 attys in the office are planning to make a big deal out of it. He's trying to discourage them by saying he'll get back at them somehow. So every time they make some snark about his age, he says, "payback will be hell!"
Tonight was the bi-annual Family Law Bar dinner. The dinner apparently consists of cocktail hour, followed by the usual rubber chicken dish, followed by "the show"--which is a series of skits and roasts and such. The opening act is always a song performed by the 3 lawyers who do most of the Special Master work in the Family Law bar, 1 of whom is Marc and another of whom is our suitemate Bob. They have been working on this year's song for a while, but really kicked into high gear this week. It's titled "Special Master Man," and is a spoof of some other song which my late-night brain is forgetting.
On Tuesday Marc commissioned me to phone around to local menswear outlets to find cheap black trenchcoats as part of their costumes. I haven't asked him which category to enter this under in our billing software.... They're also wearing fedoras. The usual '30s gangster-style machine guns--the ones w/ the canister-shaped magazines--are being replaced by adding machines and abacuses, however. For the past 3 days Marc and Bob have been going around the suite singing the song to themselves, to us, to anyone unlucky enough to be around, as they tried to memorize the words. Marc serenaded me with it in an elevator on Monday--I was a captive audience. Neither of them can carry a tune in a bucket, so it's been an aurally painful week around the office.... Last night they rehearsed w/ the band (also composed of lawyers) and the rehearsal went so well, b/c the band is apparently actually pretty decent and can cover a multitude of sins on the part of the vocalists, that in the office today they were like little kids who've just gotten gold stars on their tests.
I won't know how it really went tonight, the performance that mattered, until copies of the video are available in about a month, as the dinner is closed to all butpracticing Family Law Bar attys. Not even spouses can attend. Certainly not paralegals/legal secretaries! Even if we did a) write the song (Bob's paralegal came up w/ the parody lyrics) and b) buy the costumes, and c) keep their schedules clear so they could attend the rehearsals.
We have one client who has been supposed to come in for an interview w/ Marc on at least 4 previous occasions, and has stood him up every single time. Her fifth appt was this morning. Yesterday Marc asked me if I thought she'd show. I said, "No." He offered to bet me $1 that she would. I said okay. This morning she called and cancelled. I'm $1 richer. Wonder if Marc will put it on my W-2 as a bonus? :-)
Marc is a fiend about his coffee. If you could put coffee in an IV drip bag, Marc would be a prime customer. Except he also likes it for the taste, not just the caffeine, and he buys premium roasts fresh-ground in small batches for our office machine. On two different occasions, when he's been trapped at his desk on a long con-call early in the a.m. and unable to get his first cup of the workday, I've brought a mug in to him. He's reacted poorly both times--thinks a female secretary getting her male boss coffee is a relic of sexist days and that it makes him look like he's sexist to accept it. He doesn't get that, for me, it was just a way to be thoughtful, as I know how desperate I can feel when cut off from my caffeine source. Has nothing to do w/ him being male, or me being female.
Has a little to do w/ his being the boss, but only b/c I figure part of my job is to make his day go as smoothly as possible, w/in reason, and pouring a second mug of coffee while I'm pouring mine isn't exactly burdensome. Unlike when I used to work in the church, and was on the same level as the clergy (but was never treated like it) here I am support staff, not management. Since it's my job to support Marc, I support him, and if that means the occasional cup of coffee, I'm not going to start feeling oppressed. I never would have made Nick+ or Jim coffee, b/c that would have been enacting a subservient role, when in theory I was their equal. But here, that is the role I have. Me secretary, you lawyer. Me paid $15 hr, you paid $275 hr (minus considerable overhead). I don't think who gets who coffee is going to change this fundamental hierarchy.
But Marc still doesn't like the message he thinks my getting him coffee sends. So, this morning, while I was stuck on the phone, he brought *me* a mug of coffee. He set it down at my desk saying, "Payback is hell!" Ironic that I am being treated more as an equal colleague by my Jewish lawyer boss for whom I literally am a secretary, than I was by the Presbyterian pastor boss to whom I was supposedly an equal. Of course, my previous Jewish lawyer boss did treat me like a total serf, so one can not generalize.
The "payback" reference from Marc is b/c he's going to turn 50 in October and the other 2 attys in the office are planning to make a big deal out of it. He's trying to discourage them by saying he'll get back at them somehow. So every time they make some snark about his age, he says, "payback will be hell!"
Tonight was the bi-annual Family Law Bar dinner. The dinner apparently consists of cocktail hour, followed by the usual rubber chicken dish, followed by "the show"--which is a series of skits and roasts and such. The opening act is always a song performed by the 3 lawyers who do most of the Special Master work in the Family Law bar, 1 of whom is Marc and another of whom is our suitemate Bob. They have been working on this year's song for a while, but really kicked into high gear this week. It's titled "Special Master Man," and is a spoof of some other song which my late-night brain is forgetting.
On Tuesday Marc commissioned me to phone around to local menswear outlets to find cheap black trenchcoats as part of their costumes. I haven't asked him which category to enter this under in our billing software.... They're also wearing fedoras. The usual '30s gangster-style machine guns--the ones w/ the canister-shaped magazines--are being replaced by adding machines and abacuses, however. For the past 3 days Marc and Bob have been going around the suite singing the song to themselves, to us, to anyone unlucky enough to be around, as they tried to memorize the words. Marc serenaded me with it in an elevator on Monday--I was a captive audience. Neither of them can carry a tune in a bucket, so it's been an aurally painful week around the office.... Last night they rehearsed w/ the band (also composed of lawyers) and the rehearsal went so well, b/c the band is apparently actually pretty decent and can cover a multitude of sins on the part of the vocalists, that in the office today they were like little kids who've just gotten gold stars on their tests.
I won't know how it really went tonight, the performance that mattered, until copies of the video are available in about a month, as the dinner is closed to all butpracticing Family Law Bar attys. Not even spouses can attend. Certainly not paralegals/legal secretaries! Even if we did a) write the song (Bob's paralegal came up w/ the parody lyrics) and b) buy the costumes, and c) keep their schedules clear so they could attend the rehearsals.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Good Things
Very good things from the past 10 days or so.....
Hearing Nora Gallagher speak at St. Paul's Cathedral, and beginning to re-read her two volumes of spiritual autobiography, Things Seen and Unseen and Practicing Resurrection.
Fresh locally grown cantaloupe for breakfast. A day which begins with a big segment of juicy ripe cantaloupe is off to a very good start indeed.
Hearing Nora Gallagher speak at St. Paul's Cathedral, and beginning to re-read her two volumes of spiritual autobiography, Things Seen and Unseen and Practicing Resurrection.
Fresh locally grown cantaloupe for breakfast. A day which begins with a big segment of juicy ripe cantaloupe is off to a very good start indeed.
