it's not in the way you look or the things that you say that you do

Today was totally awesome. It didn't feel totally awesome at the beginning; I woke up at six, after six hours of sleep, and proceeded to press snooze a couple of times. I made it to my eight a.m. meeting a v. respectable two minutes late, and proceeded to have a productive day. I had to run to main campus for my allergy shots later in the morning, and was dismayed to find the doctor was giving them instead of the tech -- the doctor is awesome and I love how straightforward she is, but she also doesn't try particularly hard to lessen the impact of the shots, and the result is that they hurt like hell. In fact, one of the three injection points is actually bruised. But, she's v. quick, which I suppose I appreciate.

I made it back in time to grab a sandwich from my favorite cafe before the place filled up, and then I spent the afternoon alternating between meetings and getting caught up on emails. I also managed to spend a few minutes hanging out with Gyre; I barely see him anymore, but we filled each other in v. effectively on everything going on (yes, this is a veiled way of saying that we gossiped like old ladies).

The highlight, though, was that I went for an early dinner with Pete and Heather (the two team leads who report to me), and we spent a couple of hours hashing things out over margaritas and enchiladas. Simply put, it was one of the best two-hour work/play periods I've had in awhile. While we were eating, we just talked about life -- but the point of the evening was 'margaritas and pie', only without the pie. It's based off of a tradition on another team of 'punch and pie' -- in which the team gets together, sans manager, discusses the state of the team, and then passes the feedback back to the manager anonymously. Obviously since I was there it completely changed the punch and pie purpose -- but the addition of real margaritas was totally welcome.

We just have an awesome management group, and I feel really great about how we're working together. The purpose of tonight's margaritas and pie was to give each other feedback on how we're doing, which went fantastically. It was so successful that we intend to keep doing these sessions regularly, not necessarily to give each other feedback, but to talk about management challenges in a non-conference-room setting.

So that left me very energized, excited, etc. -- all those positive emotions that make it hard for me to stay disengaged enough to focus on my book as well. After dinner, Pete rode back to the city with me, and we got into a heated political discussion -- we share similar viewpoints on a lot of things, which makes it easier, since I usually avoid bringing up politics at work because I get infuriated by the totally hypocritical refusal to see anyone else's viewpoints and to believe that conservatives are just stupid/ignorant -- hypocritical because this often comes from the same people who get all furious about disenfranchisement and equal rights, etc., even as they seem to think that most Americans shouldn't be voting and should let someone smarter take care of them.

Now that I have likely offended 90% of my readership, I think I will take a deep breath and go to bed early. I have an 8:30 meeting tomorrow, but I'm cutting out early to have dinner with Terry. Then, I'm going to the Loro dorm reunion! It's my Stanford five-year class reunion this weekend, which I'm not totally into just because most of my friends were other years and I already live in the area, but since Allie's up for the weekend, we're using it as an opportunity to have a Loro five-year reunion as well. So, that should be awesomely fun, as long as I don't fall asleep on the way home. With that in mind, it's definitely time for bed!