The Song of Bernadette
5:36 p.m. - 2002-10-21


I hate having to learn a whole new thing at the office. This is the third new job they have put me in, and because I am good at learning new things, they keep moving me around. Now Bernadette, the little workhorse, is trying to cram all the knowledge she has accumulated in years of working at the company into my head and she only has two weeks to do it. They all know so much and take a lot of their knowledge for granted, and forget they are working with a Title novice. For example, Bernadette forgets that no one has ever taught me to read an assessors map and blithely tosses out commands for me to do this and that, but I have to stop her and ask things like "What do the little circled numbers mean compared to the bigger circled numbers?" However, I now have my computer back and a desk and a chair to sit in, and although the computer does not have on it the subdivision programs I need, the big lady boss is so hassled by the restructuring that my new boss is afraid to ask her for anything else for a few days. I do not have to interact with El Dougie anymore.

On the pleasant side, the weather is lovely now, cool and fallish. I love the fall. Ah, the pleasures of this season, like lying on the bed with the window opened, watching your new birthday TV/DVD combo, and having the picture stay on the screen without blinking out.

Tonight I have to go to the quilt meeting. One of these days I will have to quit and stay home, or at least, stop being the button lady. I have to work for the entire meeting, I swear, it is like being in the office. It has been a while since we had a really interesting meeting, which means one that included clothing and a fashion show.

This weekend was quite productive for me. I made a lot of deviled eggs for my birthday party, and some marinated garbonzo beans, which some people even ate (Mary the vegetarian), read my book (finished The Painted House by Grisham - very good), and went to my birthday party. The food was excellent, and in addition, Alex brought the video of his appearance on CNN. CNN did a story on visual forensics and used some footage made by Alex and had several scenes of Alex working at his computer - only the back of his head, but still, he was on TV.

Then on Sunday I got up very early, puttered around, and thought about my junky bedroom. He had said that there was another bookcase in the garage, so I hauled it into the house, cleaned it up and stacked it up on top of the other one (against the bathroom wall, only in the bedroom). I fastened it to the wall with stick-on velcro to give us a split second to roll out of the way when The Big One hits. Now it looks some better, helping to create better ambiance for the new TV. I threw away a lot of useless papers - why was I saving them anyway?

Well, time to go set the VCR to record Raymond since I have to go to the meeting.