Speaking Plainly We're Delighted

Yesterday was my first day back to work in the New Year. Aside from being not particularly productive, it wasn't bad. Today went better but there were happy things both days:

Yesterday:

• Allergy shots were not particularly aggravating
• I met up with a friend of a friend who is nice and fun (but moving to Boston in a couple of weeks).
• In the meantime, she took me out to a bar in West Hollywood where they do a sing-a-long showtunes night on mondays, and serve reasonably priced drinks.

I was woefully ignorant of nearly every song they played at the sing-a-long, which surprised me. I thought I'd been a reasonable theater attendee. But then I remembered - I don't usually care for overpriced blockbusters and rarely go. (I want to see Wicked and Avenue Q, but didn't want to pay full price and so missed them.) What I do go to see is Drag Queen Theater.

I happen to have a soundtrack from the GDO's "Cinderella Rocks" and yesterday inspired me to dig it out to play today. The song the peasants sing after being invited to the ball contains some lines which are quirky and fun:

Every one is so exited
Speaking plainly, we're delighted
that we all have been invited
to the ball!

Women: The gentlemen have combed their hair
they're even wearing underwear
you couldn't tell they haven't bathed at all.

Men: The ladies are so pretty,
That one's showing off her titties
in a bra that is decidedly too small.
Women: (It's true, it's true, it's true!)

Women: The ladies are delirious;
the prince is so mysterious, so stately!
standing staring at the wall...
Men: (He must be concentrating.)

...Ryan Landry

Burlesque genius.

Other good things for today are that I got approval to take the next two fridays off to blow glass. I have the option of doing half days and coming back to work, but I'm guessing I won't feel like it! I will have to work out how to finish my first draft of my conference paper by monday, so it's not like I won't be busy - chances are I'll be going in on sunday (which isn't happy unless I finish, but it's not unhappy as it's my personal choice).

I also got a head's up that something I needed work on last year I managed to improve this year to a point where I went from reasonable to excellent on my review. Phew! I've kind of let one or two less important malingering projects color my self-perception of the job I've done but the truth is that those projects are delayed because higher priorities intervened, not because I'm a lousy engineer. I might be a little lazier than I should be, but I'm getting good work done in a reasonable time frame, for the most part.

And our stock went up enough today that the options I sold will pay for 2/3 of my upcoming lasik which will make budgeting that in muuuuch easier.