The state is on fire
There are several major wildfires raging across Arizona right now, Phoenix is wreathed in smoke, and it is 115 out, which is something like ten degrees above average for this time of year. The only reason it's not even hotter is that the aforementioned smoke is thick enough that it's reflecting some of the heat. I would like very much to take every climate change denier in the country and force them to stand in the street outside our house for a couple of hours every afternoon this summer, so they can get a good, up close and personal look at the problem.
The higher-ups at work let us know a couple of weeks ago that the company would be returning to the office in September, but with a hybrid model, so it would be roughly 50% work from home on a permanent basis. Yay! Today, our department was told that we would be moving to a newer, nicer building about half a mile down the street from our current location, because the new model will allow the company to divest itself of some real estate, and of course they want to preferentially get rid of older, less nice buildings. Yay!
Unfortunately, they also want to change all in-office work to hoteling -- that is, you no longer have a permanent desk; you just get whatever is available that day in your team's area, I guess. MAJOR BOO. One, I've worked in situations like that before, and it's really, really depressing and morale-sucking to have to work in a bare cube. If you're going to have to work in a cube to begin with, being able to decorate it is one of the few things that makes it bearable. Secondly, our department has very disparate teams in it -- a number of them are on the phone all day. If those of us who are doing Quiet Computer Stuff are going to have to share the same space as those who are doing Loud Phone Stuff, that's really not going to work. I'm hoping that once we get over there, we'll be able to wring some concessions from the Powers That Be, but I'm not looking forward to it.
There is another stray Siamese in the yard. (There are all sorts of ferals in our neighborhood, but she's here fairly consistently). Not sure if she's a relative of Valentine's or not. This one is (we think) a female, has much darker points, and is a medium-long-haired cat, so maybe not. She's much, much spookier and more feral than Valentine; she's been hanging around for several weeks, and Kathy was only finally able to coax her close enough to pet her today. We are NOT going to try to tame her and take her in, damn it. But we are putting out food and water, because not to do so in this heat would be animal cruelty. :/ We should probably at least try to get her spayed if she's going to hang around, because the last thing this neighborhood needs is more kittens.
Possibly related to the feral cats, I found half a dead rabbit in the back yard yesterday. It looked like it had been bitten right in half, so it's possible that Bo killed it, but he didn't seem at all interested in it, so who knows. It might have been coyotes; they can jump a six foot fence, and might think our back yard a nice secluded place to enjoy lunch.
I was hunting for something the other night on the computer, and happened on the folder where I'd saved a bunch of old Elfquest stuff -- half finished stories, old letters and emails, plot discussions. I didn't save all the emails we exchanged (there were a lot of them) but I have all of mine from around 1996 through 1999 -- at that point, I think, we moved from a private email server at the place where Kathy and I were working at the time, to one of the pro email list places -- Onelist or eGroups or something. And I didn't bother to download any archives from that when I quit the group in 2001-ish. I rather regret that now, but c'est la vie. It's nostalgic reading all the old discussions, and I'm reminded how much I miss having a good writing group to discuss things with. But it also reminds me of why I quit; even in these emails I can see the traces of all the feuds that eventually paralyzed the group beyond saving. Still, there were some decent stories there in my unpublished folder. Perhaps one day I'll clean them up and slap them on AO3, with a note to the effect that since they were never published in the zine, they can't be considered canon.
Rants Talk to me
The higher-ups at work let us know a couple of weeks ago that the company would be returning to the office in September, but with a hybrid model, so it would be roughly 50% work from home on a permanent basis. Yay! Today, our department was told that we would be moving to a newer, nicer building about half a mile down the street from our current location, because the new model will allow the company to divest itself of some real estate, and of course they want to preferentially get rid of older, less nice buildings. Yay!
Unfortunately, they also want to change all in-office work to hoteling -- that is, you no longer have a permanent desk; you just get whatever is available that day in your team's area, I guess. MAJOR BOO. One, I've worked in situations like that before, and it's really, really depressing and morale-sucking to have to work in a bare cube. If you're going to have to work in a cube to begin with, being able to decorate it is one of the few things that makes it bearable. Secondly, our department has very disparate teams in it -- a number of them are on the phone all day. If those of us who are doing Quiet Computer Stuff are going to have to share the same space as those who are doing Loud Phone Stuff, that's really not going to work. I'm hoping that once we get over there, we'll be able to wring some concessions from the Powers That Be, but I'm not looking forward to it.
There is another stray Siamese in the yard. (There are all sorts of ferals in our neighborhood, but she's here fairly consistently). Not sure if she's a relative of Valentine's or not. This one is (we think) a female, has much darker points, and is a medium-long-haired cat, so maybe not. She's much, much spookier and more feral than Valentine; she's been hanging around for several weeks, and Kathy was only finally able to coax her close enough to pet her today. We are NOT going to try to tame her and take her in, damn it. But we are putting out food and water, because not to do so in this heat would be animal cruelty. :/ We should probably at least try to get her spayed if she's going to hang around, because the last thing this neighborhood needs is more kittens.
Possibly related to the feral cats, I found half a dead rabbit in the back yard yesterday. It looked like it had been bitten right in half, so it's possible that Bo killed it, but he didn't seem at all interested in it, so who knows. It might have been coyotes; they can jump a six foot fence, and might think our back yard a nice secluded place to enjoy lunch.
I was hunting for something the other night on the computer, and happened on the folder where I'd saved a bunch of old Elfquest stuff -- half finished stories, old letters and emails, plot discussions. I didn't save all the emails we exchanged (there were a lot of them) but I have all of mine from around 1996 through 1999 -- at that point, I think, we moved from a private email server at the place where Kathy and I were working at the time, to one of the pro email list places -- Onelist or eGroups or something. And I didn't bother to download any archives from that when I quit the group in 2001-ish. I rather regret that now, but c'est la vie. It's nostalgic reading all the old discussions, and I'm reminded how much I miss having a good writing group to discuss things with. But it also reminds me of why I quit; even in these emails I can see the traces of all the feuds that eventually paralyzed the group beyond saving. Still, there were some decent stories there in my unpublished folder. Perhaps one day I'll clean them up and slap them on AO3, with a note to the effect that since they were never published in the zine, they can't be considered canon.
Rants Talk to me