10 May 2002

Well, Spider-Man was fun. I wouldn't go in expecting Oscar-winning acting, airtight plot, or Pulitzer writing (yes, I know screenplays are not Pulitzer-eligible; you know what I mean) but all in all, there were pretty people, nifty special effects, and all the fights, explosions, and chases you should expect from a comic-book movie. And they even stuck reasonably close to the comic-book origin story.

After the movie, we all went over to Ruby Tuesday's for a late dinner. Much hilarity ensued. It won't translate into written form well at all, but try to imagine, if you will, Matt and Carl having a conversation using Lucky-Charms leprechaun accents - but talking with urban street slang. "Ah, Seamus! What up?" "Finnegan, me homey! Are ye down wit' dat?" I don't remember what sparked it, but the rest of us were about to slide under the table, we were laughing so hard.

I always appreciate a waiter or waitress who's willing to join in the fun. At one point, when I was nearly suffocating from trying not to spit out my food while laughing, our waitress came by to drop off more drinks and asked if I was all right. K.T. answered for me that I was married to Matt, so of course I wasn't all right. The waitress said, "Oh, I'm sorry!" and moved off to another table.

The weird thing was that when we walked into the restaurant, there was a group of six or so adults waiting just before us, and I thought one of them looked a bit like Matt's mom. Matt did, too - as he said later, he nearly had a heart attack. He pointed her out to me as we were being seated, and I told him I'd already spotted her. I had fun bringing her up at several points throughout the meal, because every time he looked at her he got flustered again. She really did look like his mom, too - about the same height, same overall build, same haircut... She even folded her arms the same way when she stood up. I had to fight the urge to go over and ask her if she was an elementary school teacher.

So I was working away yesterday on my project (slowly, because I was very sleepy) when my manager came into my office and asked me to meet with him and a senior programmer, CK, on this little side-project that I'd been told I was going to be asked to do.

So I went down to his office where they explained the basic scope of what they needed me to do while the manager printed out a couple of documents for me to read on the project. I told them my estimate of how long it would take me to finish my little piece of this project (about half a week - it's a tiny little piece) and CK said he'd like to have it by the end of next week. Okay, shouldn't be a problem.

I went back to my desk and got back to work on the current project. Around 2:30 an e-mail dropped into my box asking if I could do another little side-project, because the guy who would normally do this work is out of the office for the next two weeks. A few e-mails zipped around, and I was assigned about a day to do this work, and told that if I could have it done by the end of today or lunchtime Monday, that would be great.

I appreciate being employed. And I understand that the fact that they're giving me these side-projects means that they trust me to do good, quick work - and that's good, because it means I will continue to be employed.

But they didn't really need to happen all at once like this!

--Liz