jinxed

gabriel... so healthy, once...

yesterday I ran out for lunch about 1. grabbed some mcdonald's and had just backed out of my parking spot when the oil light came on. I live in fear of that light, especially since I haven't put oil in since mid-january (my bad). I'm trying to think fast and not panic when all of a sudden the engine turns off, and the brakes, steering wheel, and ignition lock up. holy hannah, I say out loud, this is very, very bad. turned the steering wheel a tiny bit before it froze, allowing me to be not quite in the middle of the parking lot, and put it in park. mick sr came and rescued me -- brought me oil and tried to fix the problem, with minimal rebuking -- but said it was beyond his power to heal, in a manner of speaking. on the drive back to the office he told me I'd need to have the car towed, and then he jinxed me.

not intentionally, of course. but jinxed nonetheless. "I hope it isn't your timing belt," he said.

got a call from the repair shop today. yep, it's my timing belt. and it will cost, as a bottom estimate, $650-700 to get it fixed. my parents are going out of town tomorrow, and won't be back until thursday night...my car will be ready tomorrow afternoon if all goes well, and thursday afternoon if all goes not well. which means though I can get my mom to drive me to work tomorrow, I'll need to find a ride home, and possibly a ride to and from work on thursday. blah. I have no desire to spend money on this right now, but it's not as if I have a choice, is it?

I will be so glad to get away this weekend.

so today we took pictures at work for our new marketing such-and-such. liz and daryll asked us yesterday if we'd adhere to a certain dress code for the pictures, which is fine by me. the whole thing only lasted about 15 minutes or so, and it was a nice break for everyone. except that when I finally got a chance to take my lunch, I'd had two or three bites of my delicious sandwich when someone told me, "we're ready to meet now if you can join us in the conference room." thinking this would be a short meeting (ha), I left my food on the table in the break room and went into the conference room. there we sat for half an hour looking at the pictures, laughing about so-and-so's expression in this one, commenting on the lighting in that one, discussing options for a new round of pictures. what we liked and didn't like. what kind of an image we wanted to give to the potential clients.

that took 12 minutes. then we spent 13 minutes talking about color schemes for everyone to wear the next time we do pictures. and 5 minutes when liz, daryll and soli started telling all the other people about the us attorney's office clearance security packet we've been filling out (we = the people who've been asked to do that job). I cleared my throat. "liz, are we about done here?" suddenly she remembered we were in fact done discussing the pictures. "alright everybody, let's meet up again in the morning, and each of you bring a color suggestions for shirts, ok? thanks!"

now, half an hour (actually, 25 minutes) talking about this topic is small fries compared to corporations that spend months researching customer preferences, marketing tactics, etc. however -- those are corporations that can afford a separate commmittee for said actions. we have no more than 30 employees, and because liz and daryll "wanted our opinions," they completely stopped all processes for half an hour. I have deadlines, y'know? I realize that the people in production are just plodding through day after day, doing whatever their manager tells them to do and enjoying the break they get when we have a meeting. but I've got a long list of things to do, too many things to finish before I leave this weekend. and no time to waste listening to people talk about "earthy tones" and what color khakis the guys should wear (clay or camel?). aaaaaaahhhh!!!

and no mail still. wouldn't mind a letter from jarom. life goes on, though.

jacopo seems to be having a worse day than I am, but he couldn't point to anything bad actually happening -- more like just being in a bad mood. that's always worse to me than having things go wrong. pobreryan.