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10:38 p.m. - 2004-08-12
Strange Days indeed
It was still too hot in the house to go to bed at midnight last night. Too hot even to dance. So I locked the cats up in their nursery, opened all the doors and windows wide and ............... washed the floors. Put on the new yoga video to audit as I went along. Some of it looked pretty good for a background for a meditation or reverie. I even tried a few asanas. Problem was that my hip has locked up from that little incident with the rolling shelves at work, so I just faked it as best I could. 2 in the am before I finished up everything.

It was Friday the 13th a day early I think - or Mercury retrograde squared. Don't know, but I was running a bit late - nothing I couldn't handle though, until I realized that I couldn't find my bus pass. That's kind of important when travelling to work wouldn't you say? Remembered the last time I'd had it was when I stepped on the feeder bus into my community the day before. I think I put it in my shirt pocket. All I had to do was find the shirt - right? Um oh yes, I had done the laundry the night before - that shirt had gone through both the washer and dryer, y'all. Ok fine, let's find enough change to make $2 Can. Doable and oh ... there goes my bus. Got into work about 15 minutes late, but did have a nice visit with the young woman who just got back from Romania on the way in. Anyway, I've been late more times in the past few weeks than in the whole past two years combined. What's wrong with me? I hate being late - it's rude in personal relationships and just dumb in work ones.

Anyway none of my co-workers were in yet, but that didn't make me feel any better. I had planned my morning out and I was already "behind". Started working on the documents sitting on my desk and chair. Headphones on with BB King and Tracy Chapman singing "The Thrill is Gone" oh yeah, Tennessee Ernie Ford singing "Sixteen Tons" uh huh, and BB and John Lee Hooker singing "Riding With the King" amen. I was cool and none of the staff wandering through seemed to mind that some of that was leaking out my ears. Blues and Roots festival this weekend you know. One of the office support people came in to help the co-ordinator move all her gear into the empty office across from my liaison, so that the renovations to her space could begin. She wasn't happy about the "exile" to an office nor the fact I was zoned out and marching with my own "drummers - um guitar men". I was happy, because I think it might mean I'm a little safer going in and out of the rolling files to work on data. We'll see.

The co-ordinator did come by later and started talking about her family history as pioneers in this province, trying to explain her interest in the work we share. Turns out that our families likely knew each other - at least professionally. Small world - both having grandparents who were born in Nebraska,from families that had emigrated there from the south of England. The Dirty Thirties gets all the good press, but there was a major drought there in the early 1900's that caused a major migration from there to here. Our gain of course. And the Fickle Finger of Fate Award too.

The brother arrived and we went over a number of tools that are in the database to support the project we are working on. One is a public web based software that I loathe because it is notoriously inaccurate. It contains data that the companies in the industry publicly disclose about their activities. Said information is often deceptive. One has only to open a file set up on one location to learn that quickly. Anyway, gears were shifted again. Could I work with the new properties just aquired in a buy out? Assess them by using the software that is so inaccurate first, then asking the co-ordinator second, if I'm not sure how to determine their status. Might as well "go ask Alice -when she's ten feet tall" "White Rabbit"; Jefferson Airplane from Lewis Carroll - "remember what the dormouse said - feed your head" or "hide behind your wooden walls" per the Delphic Oracle when asked how to emerge victorious from an impending assault and seige on Ancient Athens. (Had to slip the Olympics in somehow). Wooden walls - did that mean hide in the City of Athens or on the boats - both had wooden walls. See where this is going?

So ... I did it my way - or at least the way that is the standard practice in the industry other than in this contract. I actually read the documents in the files and based my analysis on real time data. Such a concept. Once I had gone through ten properties, I asked the brother to meet with me so I could show him my findings - I like show and tell, vestigial childhood training I guess. To give him his due, his background is in accounting and finance so the documents that we are supposed to work with don't give him much information at this time - he is trying though. I walked him through each file, each of which had a number of examples of why one shouldn't rely on the software in question and why one should rely on one's own eyes. With a direct inspection of the property too of course -words frame lies as well as the truth. Sometimes they can even be the same thing at the same time - another one from the Delphic Oracle (fumes leaking out of a volcanic fissure that altered the senses in that cave). Excuse me - I went to my chiropractor at lunch. Sometimes when he makes all the pain go away for a while I get a tad giddy. Sue me. He also listened to me while I explained why I had to come back to see him so soon. It helped both emotionally and psychologically to tell someone and feel safe about it.

Anyway ...... That lesson ended in a more general discussion of industry practices and issues of ethical standards - oxymoron don't you know. He'd wondered about some of the experiences he had had - they didn't add up, but they should have. Uh huh. His directions changed at that point, with a request for another spreadsheet reflecting the information I had gleaned directly from the files so that he could then justify the choices he made as a result. I've done that for this company in both previous contracts, but my liaison this time requested that there be no documentation, reports or spreadsheets. I have to talk to my supervisor about that one out of respect for the work he does, the scope of the contract/project, unsigned still, and his lines of accountability to our company. The brother offered to write a letter to my supervisor explaining why I was doing any of the work I have the past week instead of working with the technology that my contract was set up around. That might help so that my supervisor doesn't think I'm ignoring or undermining his directions to me.

Then the brother did a couple of odd things. First he went over to the very large work area the co-ordinator had vacated that morning and washed it all down. Then he asked me to spread all the material that I was now working with on it, so it would be easier for me than working on my tiny table covered with the other two projects or three - that I now have on the go but which have been superceded - maybe - by this new one. He noted that it would be available until noon tomorrow when the movers and renovators arrived. I appeciated his thoughtfulness, but didn't bother to move thinking that all that material would have to be moved twice more than necessary than if I just stayed put. A little later he came by and was quite upset that I hadn't moved as he asked. I explained my reasons but it was obvious it was very important to him that I sit at the other desk. So I did. He added a few other files he had been concerned about from some place else and asked if I'd mind assessing those too. Fair enough pending a response from my supervisor. The co-ordinator came in to the library several times after that - she seemed quite upset that I would work there so I can't really win, but maybe that isn't the point. Don't know.

Anyway it's nearing the witching hour and the cats are restless - it's feeding time at the zoo. It's still too hot to dance but I guess I'll get the kitchen cleaned up and the dishes washed. The plumber didn't make it today, but maybe it was because I was meant to have the house tidy first. Better be here tomorrow though - I hate not being able to have a bath when I want it.

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