Oops, missed writing a blog post on the first of the month or saying “Rabbit Rabbit”. Do you do that? I can’t remember when I first heard about that tradition, but it’s been around for a long time, apparently. It was definitely after I moved to Sweden, though, which is weird, since it’s not something Swedes do. If you click on that link and scroll down to the section titled Other Traditions, it talks about saying “Rabbits Rabbits” to get the smoke from a fire to move away from you. THAT one I’ve done since I can remember, probably all the way back to camping trips with my family when I was young, though I don’t specifically remember when it would have started.
So, anyway, if I don’t have good luck this month, you’ll know why. Or rather I’ll know why, since no one is readng this stupid blog, haha.
We had a big meeting “summit” this morning with the entire department, which I usually dread because it’s hours of death by Powerpoint and often presentations about stuff that I’m just not all that interested in, and a mediocre lunch, plus I have to be social, which I’m not feeling much of lately. But I was mostly pleasantly surprised. The presentations were, for the most part, very interesting, and the guest speaker who is new to the management team of the company, was fantastic, even though I was dismayed to see that she was using OLD slides that should have been the ones I fixed for her but weren’t. And the brown bag lunch was a delicious chicken caesar wrap, with double-delicious chocolate mousse cake for dessert!
There were lots of other awful things with slides in the presentations, so I brought it up to our director, and then to both the head of our sub-department, and my own manager, because I feel it’s important to point out that if people in our own department can’t be bothered to send their PPTs for review and they look terrible and off-brand, that sends a very bad message to everyone that it’s okay since these are “just internal”. It’s quite frustrating for me as well as embarrassing, because EVERYONE comes up to me and comments on the slides because they know I’m the one that usually fixes presentations, and they all want to know why I let these through…in my defense, I have to point out that I didn’t see ANY of them beforehand, and I can’t fix what I don’t get.
It’s finally Friday, and I’m very glad the work week is over, since it was one of those weeks where everything was just a little too much. During one daily meeting with my team (where we go through the incoming jobs and assign them), our consultant had us do a check-in about how we were feeling by drawing an animal on a post-it that represented how we were feeling that day. This is something I hate doing, in case you were wondering.
I drew a snake. A coiled snake with its head reared up, fangs, a rattling tail, and “sssss” above its head. We had to show the animal and describe why we chose it. HAHA! I said, “I’m a snake. I can warn you off with my rattle-y tail. Or I can sink my POISONOUS fangs into you. Or I can wrap around your neck and choke the life out of you.” Everyone moved their chairs away from me. Especially my team members who said they were cats. 😀
One teammate drew a blob with lots of blobby appendages and said she was an amoeba because she was feeling like she had no boundaries or form and everything was all over the place. And our 10-week intern, who is 21/22-years old, said she didn’t know what an amoeba was.
Seriously. Do they not have 8th grade biology here?? Do they not have to learn how to draw and label a cell? And learn what an amoeba is? Or a paramecium?? I’m not a biologist, but these things seem like part of the basic universal knowledge that every schoolkid, everywhere, should learn.
Sigh.
I don’t have to be social at all tonight, at least. I picked up sushi for dinner, and I read at the table while I was eating it, and I’m reveling in my last day of being alone because Anders gets home late tomorrow from his ski trip. I have to be social tomorrow before that though, because I’m going to a movie (and possibly dinner) with Debbie and Camilla. That’s about the level of social I’m up for right now. SSSSSSS
Mood: cranky
Music: Laufey—Falling Behind