seriously, tho, wtf
today's work wtf was a grad student in one of my groups sending me a bunch of expenses from november that he wanted to be reimbursed for. they were all legitimate expenses neatly organized in an excel spreadsheet and normally this would be a piece of cake (a long and complicated piece of cake, but submitting expenses is part of my job and i know how to do it) except for three things: a. said expenses were for two different trips which are charged to two different funds, and he needed to separate them into trip 1 and trip 2 so i know what to charge where, b. he didn't send me any receipts for any of his meals (there were like fifteen of them), and c. he embedded six pdfs in the excel file. i didn't even know you could do that. i don't know how he did it or why he did it and i recognize that he was probably trying to help me and make my life easier but nothing he sent me was actually useful. i can't extract a pdf from an excel file. i can't read a pdf in an excel file. so i emailed him back and said thank you but i'm about to make more work for you and i apologize. i said can you please do these three things for me, and this is why, and then i can submit your expenses. and if you don't have any of the meal receipts, which i get because they're from FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS AGO, that's fine, but please send me what you have. (for one thing, if there's alcohol i need to submit it separately from the food.) so i hear back from him that he actually does have the meal receipts, or most of them, but he doesn't have access to a scanner so he'll have to take pictures of them with his phone, and he'd subtracted the cost of any alcohol for the totals he gave me on the spreadsheet because he didn't think he could get reimbursed for it.
i totally understand that he doesn't have a scanner - i don't either - and i get that it's a pain for him to take pics of all his receipts, but if he'd sent me his expenses in december like a normal person we would've had this conversation already. i may or may not have to fill out what's called a missing receipt affidavit for every. single. expense. for which he doesn't have a receipt, and they don't pay me enough and to be honest i don't care enough to do that for fifteen or so missing meal receipts. (the pi told him he didn't need to submit receipts for anything under $75, which is technically true but at the same time if you have the receipts why wouldn't you send them to me?) (also the pi sends me his receipts for under $75 so i don't know what he was thinking.)
also? his expenses came to a little over $3200. must be nice to be able to sit on that much reimbursement for over four months and not care.
in any case, he's going to take pics of all his under-$75 receipts and send them to me, and i will train him to not do this again. save us both some work next time.
but seriously, who embeds pdfs in an excel file?
i left work early and booked it home to meet tamalinn and friend a so we could go to ikea, and when we got there the restaurant was CLOSED. we were anticipating meatballs and were DENIED. the little cafe downstairs was closed too, so we (by which i mean me) couldn't even get a hotdog and a soft serve. hmph. but we went in the first place so tamalinn could get a bunch of stuff, and she mostly did, so at least we accomplished something, even if that something was NOT meatballs. we stopped at mcdonald's on the way home and i had two regular hamburgers and a medium fries and an orange fanta and i felt like i was in college again. i love the regular burgers - they're just a burger and pickles and chopped onions and some ketchup. so simple and so perfect. altho it didn't quite make up for us not being able to get meatballs at ikea.
and now, the daily poem. :D
after Iris Cushing
There is no empire in nerve.
When I come home, I roam the map.
My cursor lands on Truth or Consequences,
and I read facts about Titanic till I’m blue.
When I come home I’ve roamed the map.
I tell my love what I have done Wyoming.
The facts stack up titanic and I blue.
I don’t know what I love now, he tells me.
I’ve done it, told my love Wyoming.
Bit the corner off a dumpling before cooking.
I don’t know if I love you, I should say.
I want to see if there’s a mark left later.
I bit the corner off this dumb thing.
What was left behind and then uncovered?
I want to see the mark that I felt later.
When I got home my love was thinned obscure.
Left behind and then uncovered,
by noon the moon had taken the blue stage.
My homeland, love, has been obscured, smeared
into surrounding states. Grass was growing greener.
By two the moon had exited the stage.
I preen into my screen and blue but I am gone.
Grass was growing green where I should be,
bared beneath the briefly darkening desert.
I preen into a blue screen where I’ve gone,
a darkened noon, Wyoming under shadow,
briefly spared beneath the blackening desert,
an earth threaded with crescent meaning.
At noon Wyoming slides from under shadow.
I want to pull the fabric back, to see the other cloth.
The threads I tend with meaning:
dirt on my head, I should die, I would say.
I pulled the fabric back and saw the other cloth.
Beneath us is a net of empire sewn with nerve.
Dirt in my mouth, I will die.
I asked you for your weather, then your liver.
--"Eclipse", Tracy Fuad
i totally understand that he doesn't have a scanner - i don't either - and i get that it's a pain for him to take pics of all his receipts, but if he'd sent me his expenses in december like a normal person we would've had this conversation already. i may or may not have to fill out what's called a missing receipt affidavit for every. single. expense. for which he doesn't have a receipt, and they don't pay me enough and to be honest i don't care enough to do that for fifteen or so missing meal receipts. (the pi told him he didn't need to submit receipts for anything under $75, which is technically true but at the same time if you have the receipts why wouldn't you send them to me?) (also the pi sends me his receipts for under $75 so i don't know what he was thinking.)
also? his expenses came to a little over $3200. must be nice to be able to sit on that much reimbursement for over four months and not care.
in any case, he's going to take pics of all his under-$75 receipts and send them to me, and i will train him to not do this again. save us both some work next time.
but seriously, who embeds pdfs in an excel file?
i left work early and booked it home to meet tamalinn and friend a so we could go to ikea, and when we got there the restaurant was CLOSED. we were anticipating meatballs and were DENIED. the little cafe downstairs was closed too, so we (by which i mean me) couldn't even get a hotdog and a soft serve. hmph. but we went in the first place so tamalinn could get a bunch of stuff, and she mostly did, so at least we accomplished something, even if that something was NOT meatballs. we stopped at mcdonald's on the way home and i had two regular hamburgers and a medium fries and an orange fanta and i felt like i was in college again. i love the regular burgers - they're just a burger and pickles and chopped onions and some ketchup. so simple and so perfect. altho it didn't quite make up for us not being able to get meatballs at ikea.
and now, the daily poem. :D
after Iris Cushing
There is no empire in nerve.
When I come home, I roam the map.
My cursor lands on Truth or Consequences,
and I read facts about Titanic till I’m blue.
When I come home I’ve roamed the map.
I tell my love what I have done Wyoming.
The facts stack up titanic and I blue.
I don’t know what I love now, he tells me.
I’ve done it, told my love Wyoming.
Bit the corner off a dumpling before cooking.
I don’t know if I love you, I should say.
I want to see if there’s a mark left later.
I bit the corner off this dumb thing.
What was left behind and then uncovered?
I want to see the mark that I felt later.
When I got home my love was thinned obscure.
Left behind and then uncovered,
by noon the moon had taken the blue stage.
My homeland, love, has been obscured, smeared
into surrounding states. Grass was growing greener.
By two the moon had exited the stage.
I preen into my screen and blue but I am gone.
Grass was growing green where I should be,
bared beneath the briefly darkening desert.
I preen into a blue screen where I’ve gone,
a darkened noon, Wyoming under shadow,
briefly spared beneath the blackening desert,
an earth threaded with crescent meaning.
At noon Wyoming slides from under shadow.
I want to pull the fabric back, to see the other cloth.
The threads I tend with meaning:
dirt on my head, I should die, I would say.
I pulled the fabric back and saw the other cloth.
Beneath us is a net of empire sewn with nerve.
Dirt in my mouth, I will die.
I asked you for your weather, then your liver.
--"Eclipse", Tracy Fuad