28 August 2002

Haven't I said it before? I have the coolest friends in the world.

For a completely made-up holiday, Karen sent a box. In the box was a story she'd written with keywords printed in green. For each keyword was a present. I was beyond stunned and into flabbergasted. She swore she'd set a budget and (mostly) stuck to it. (Not counting the collateral damage caused by walking into a bookstore, of course - but that happens to everyone, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Hey, come back here!)

But it wasn't the cost that threw me. Karen's grown up enough to manage her own money any way she sees fit. It was the time and effort. We've had this sort of escalating scale of package elaborateness for a while... But this "story" was something like ten pages long. And the candles - she wasn't sure whether the ones she saw in the catalog were unscented, so she went out and bought plain unscented candles and decorated them by hand.

Um, wow.

The theme, in case the picture didn't clue you in, was dragons. (The silly paper eyeglasses were part of the story. It was ten pages long; I'm not reproducing it here. Sorry.) And there were things in the package that aren't pictured... This morning, I have a new mousepad under my mouse, and a new coffee mug, which (after I finish getting this written and posted) will be filled with some green tea.

The coolest friends. Ever.

Oh, and Matt got me the DVD edition of Life Of Brian, which is my second-favorite Monty Python movie. It's got deleted scenes on the DVD. Can't wait to see that!

(I'd meant, in fact, to bring it to work with me today. Alas, I brought the computer, but forgot to put the DVD in my bag. Bah.)

Work? What work? Yesterday around 10:45, my project leader, R., came into our office and asked how we were doing. (I hadn't worked with this particular project leader before. I really have to say I like both him and his management style.) I said, "Weren't we going to have a meeting this morning so you could tell us about the next thing you wanted us to do?"

"Oh, right. Lemme get back to my office and print a couple things out, and I'll come back at about 11, okay?"

He came back around 11:15. Laid out the assignments, told us enough to get started, said we shouldn't hesitate to holler if we had questions. "Oh, and those database tables have a lot of fields. Like forty or fifty. I'll print them all out and send them to you so you don't have to crawl through them on your own."

(Then he told us some stories that filled Random and I in on the finer points of how to cause pain and destruction from within a wheelchair, some of which were extremely funny, but that's neither here nor there.)

So Random and I leapt into the first part of the assignment, and got it done in about ten minutes. Cool. Easier than we'd thought. Now we're waiting for those database fields.

R. came back to our office around 3:45 for the afternoon rounds. "How ya doin'? Is there anything you need?"

"Were you going to send us those fields?"

"ACK!"

Yeah. Work? What work? (Complaining? Who's complaining? Not me, I can assure you that.)

--Liz