Divisions and Precisions

Working for the Weekend

I had originally planned to write an entry about my body image. It's an issue I've had occasion to really think about over the past couple days, since I've been playing around with taking pictures of myself. Unfortunately, this is has not been the sort of day to allow for that kind of introspection and serious thought.

I will say this much on that subject. I'm wondering what it means, when my favorite picture so far of myself is this one:

Hiding behind my own hair. I do that a lot. Oddly, I know I do it mostly because I like the feeling of my hair in my face. Truth be told, that's the main reason I'm letting my hair grow out at all. I like how long hair feels. How it looks is (usually) secondary. Until I start taking a bunch of pictures of myself. Then I go, 'yuck!'

But this has not been a good day. We upgraded computers computers at work a couple of weeks ago. A good thing, right? I copied all the files I wanted to save onto a disk. There were a lot of them, most of them personal things: stories, journal stuff, and two documents for my Changeling game, one a 40+ page Word document with place descriptions and maps and city background information and game and plot notes, the other an Excel file with character sheets and descriptions for all my NPCs (non-player characters, for you non-gaming types). There were also several work-related files, including a month's worth of data entry. Record-keeping for over 100 support representatives, including how many hours they'd all worked and how many calls they'd taken and how long they were, all figured into a spreadsheet that calculated averages.

I learned something. When transferring a folder, like oh, say, My Documents, transfer the files, not the folder. What I ended up with on disk was a nice little shortcut to my new My Documents folder. Which was empty of all my lovely files. And MIS had already re-formatted my old computer.

And today my manager asked me for the month end reports for all the data entry I'd done. So... I get to redo a month's worth of work this weekend. Wow. Boy. Am I ever glad I have a computer that has Excel on it now. Really. Feh. Data entry at home. Woohoo.

While I was stressing about this (I was briefly convinced I was going to get fired), my mom called. My favorite uncle is in the hospital. They aren't sure if he had a heart attack or a stroke. I can't stand this. We lost my uncle Eddie less than a year ago, then my aunt Eula on Thanksgiving, I can't stand the idea of losing anyone else. Elmer (yeah, that's his name. We're hicks!) was always my favorite uncle as a kid. You know, the odd one who's still pretty childlike himself. Of course, in high school he embarrassed me to death, and I would have nearly died rather than let him meet one of my boyfriends. (When he met the first one, he told his dog to pee on my boyfriend's tires. The dog obliged.) He's one of the sweetest men I know. He used to bluster a lot to hide the fact, but he's not so much anymore.

I don't even know who to pray to. Praying to God doesn't feel right. Praying to a goddess doesn't feel right either. I'm just wishing, hoping. But... if you pray to someone, say a prayer for my uncle.