harder better faster stronger

Adit just walked into the living room and asked me "when are you getting your contract?" I was v. confused, so I asked him to 'splain, and he said, "your book contract, dude, you told everyone you were going to get one." This is a) not true but b) a classic Adit statement. Luckily for him, I'm in a pretty calm mood, or else I may have leapt over the back of the couch and clawed his eyes out (although given my lack of coordination, it's more likely that I would have fallen over the back of the couch, and he would have stood over me asking me more about the contract while I moaned self-pityingly).

Today was, all in all, rather excellent. I slept for almost ten hours last night, which did wonders for my incipient illness; I feel fine today, although Adit and I compared notes and discovered that we both felt dizzy, lightheaded, and warm yesterday afternoon, so perhaps we shall both succumb at the same time. I made it into work in time for my only real meeting of the day, and then intended to do some random stuff but got pulled into a 'firedrill' instead. Yes, I am embracing even more corporate-speak; firedrills are, as you might know or guess, short-term emergency situations that aren't really emergencies but that you're still forced to deal with with some urgency. According to my friend Joy, Friday firedrills for my new boss are pretty common (Joy can't remember the last time she didn't have one). My hypothesis is that many of the people at more senior levels are requiring their direct reports to send them end-of-week progress updates, and on Friday everyone who has to write one of these things panics because they didn't do enough, and so they push all these crazy demands on others so that they can try to meet their target. Luckily, this firedrill was interesting and relatively short, so I still had a chance to grab lunch despite everything.

This afternoon, I went to my first company-wide Friday gathering in well over two years; I tried to go to one this summer, but they were doing a winetasting on the patio and I got drunk with John instead. But today, they were promising a surprise, and so I stuck around with everyone and their mother who also heard that there would be a surprise (while I haven't been to one in years, neither has anyone else I know, so clearly the room was unusually packed). I shan't divulge the surprise here, but suffice it to say that they made up for the anger I felt when they replaced our usual Christmas bonus with a phone last year (six days after I bought an iPhone, let me remind you).

So after work, I decided to do some celebratory/therapeutic shopping. I hit up Nordstrom Rack (Nordstrom's outlet-style store), where I bought several cute tops on extreme sale, as well as a pair of killer heels so that I can attempt to look like less of a gremlin when I hang out with Katie next week, since she is super tall. I then checked out Ann Taylor; I was on a mission for pants, but of course none of the pants fit at either place and multiple, multiple tops did. Then I had some pizza a CPK in the mall, drove back to the city of sin, talked to Adit briefly, and now am going to go to bed. Chris and Natasha's wedding is tomorrow, and I want to be well-rested for it! Goodnight!