I Just Got Some Sad News

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I just found out, through our alumni email, that one of my favorite High School teachers just died. He must have been early 70s or late 80s, as he was late 50s early 60s when he taught me 25 years ago.

Jack Betterly was a real hippie. He taught sitting cross legged on his desk, his Native American beaded wrist bands glistening in the florescent lights. He wore turquoise earrings and a beaded neck band as well. He taught History and inspired me to write the best research paper of my life (which I think I still have some where) on Leonardo Da Vinci and his Inventions. I got an A on that paper.

RIP Mr Betterly. Thanks for teaching me and generations of other young women at Emma Willard School. You will be missed.

For The Most Part, I Love my Job

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I have a lot of autonomy, I do a variety of things all day long, I get along well with my co-workers, I adore my bosses.

And then there are days like today.  I think the whole office had PMS.  And I found out no one told me they had taken the last C5 envelope (business no. 10 to you US readers) or the last sheet of invoice paper.  I apologized to my boss, who said it wasn’t my fault if no one told me, but I still felt like I hadn’t done my job.

Luckily I have a great relationship with my supplier and he ran me over a box of invoice paper.  I’ll have the envelopes tomorrow.

And I am still writing the minutes from our Board meetings last week.  Which would go a lot faster if certain members of our staff didn’t keep interrupting me to tell me stupid things.  Like that his envelope won’t seal.  Use a piece of tape, for freakin’ sake.

The good thing I found out today is that most likely I won’t be running our PO system any more.  Its being handed over to another person, I hope.  It doesn’t take much time, but it does take some time, and everyone wants their POs NOW NOW NOW.  Um, sorry, I have 24 hours to issue it, and I’m doing something else right now.  Not to forget that THERE’S NO ONE HERE TO SIGN IT, WANKER!

Oh, and that you didn’t follow procedures and if you want a PO for over £500, I need some quotes.  Duh, RTFM.

Oh, how I don’t miss my tech/customer support days!

Another Thing I Don’t Get About the UK

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There are no electric outlets in the bathrooms.

There is no way to plug in a hairdryer or an electric toothbrush.  Or a night light.

I guess I get the logic of it. No electricity around water.  But if that is truly the logic, then why are there outlets in kitchens?  And why can’t they do what they do in the US and put trips into them, so if water and electricity mix, the outlet turns off.

I don’t use a hairdryer or an electric toothbrush (well, I do, but it takes batteries), but a night light would be helpful.

Especially since when you turn on the overhead light in every bathroom I’ve been in the UK the extractor fan turns on also.  Which is very loud in the middle of the night and wakes up the world.

I just don’t get it.

I finished Folly

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Laurie R King is my god.

The book is incredibly good. Kept me guessing all the way through.

And the greatest mystery? Will Rae find her way? Is very satisfactorily resolved.

Most mysteries, even ones that aren’t, quite, I can figure out by the end. This one? Not so much. I had no idea what was actually going to happen until it happened. Which is true of all of Ms King’s work.

Read this book.

Rain, Always Rain

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Yup, raining again here in Belfast.  And cold.  Seems like spring is *never* going to come.

People ask me how I could possibly have moved from “sunny!” California to rainy Belfast.  Well, San Francisco isn’t exactly “sunny!” California.

Most people, when you say California, assume you mean Southern.  LA, in other words.  But I am not from LA.  I hate LA.  And, yes, I have been there.

In truth, the weather in Belfast isn’t all that different from Northern California.  Its colder, but both places are very very wet.  So I feel right at home.

Of course, in Northern California, it only rains in the winter.  In Belfast, it rains year round.

But its not really the rain that bothers me.  Its the cold.  I like rain.  I just don’t like cold rain.

Of course, if I could stay home while it rains, I’d like it just fine.  But no, I have to go to work.  In the rain.  And the cold. In the cold rain.

On Mental Illness and Reading About Mental Illness

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I am currently reading Folly by Laurie R King. It is about a mentally ill woman going to live on a private island, all by herself, to rebuild the house her great-uncle built years before.

I should note here the I adore Ms King’s writing.  I am a rabid fan of both her Beekeeper’s Apprentice series (a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes where he has retired to Sussex to raise bees and meets a young woman, Mary Russell, who becomes his apprentice) and her Kate Martinelli series (a series about a lesbian cop in San Francisco).  I have actually read the opening bits of Folly several times, as there have been excerpts of it at the end of other’s of Ms King’s work.  I have always avoided it, however.  I wasn’t ready to read about a mentally ill woman.  I guess now I was.  Also, I received $150 in Amazon.com vouchers between Christmas and my Birthday, and Ms King is hard to find here, as she is an American author, so I had a bit of a Laurie R King and Rita Mae Browne orgy with my vouchers!

Now, for the record, Rae, the protagonist, and I do not have exactly the same mental illness. She has hallucinations, which I never have had, and she’s tried to kill herself several times, which I have never done. But there are some similarities that make this a bit of a hard read for me.

Ms King’s descriptions of the way Rae feels, and thinks, could have been written by me. Descriptions of fog on the brain, of blackness surrounding everything.

There are two scenes so far, and I am about half way through the book, that hit me so hard I had to walk away from the book and read something stupid instead.

The first was when Rae was found, after her most recent mental break, curled up against a wall, shivering. Her daughter and grand-daughter walk into this, while Rae is surrounded by police officers. Rae sees her grand-daughter and starts whispering “I’m sorry.” over and over again.

I will never forget, and probably neither will Simon, the time I called him at oh so early in the morning Belfast time (I was still in California when this happened) and all I could say was “I’m sorry.” Over and over again. Sorry for waking you. Sorry that you have to hear/see this. Sorry that I’m sick. Sorry that I can’t be the way I am ‘suppose’ to be. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Even right now, it brings tears to my eyes. Even now, on occasion, that mantra goes through my head. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

The other scene that Ms King gets right on the money is one where Rae heads to the nearest populated island to do some shopping, make some phone calls and such.  Rae’s voyage from the dock to the newspaper office, where she is looking up the history of her little island and the fire that destroyed her great-uncle’s house, is so very realistic.  She stops in one shop for a bit, then literally forces herself out into the street, making it about half a street more before tucking herself into a coffee shop, near the back, against the wall, buying a sandwich and coffee she doesn’t want so she can stay where she feels safe for the moment.  Her feeling of inner triumph when she goes the rest of the way to the newspaper’s offices without pause after that is so very real.

I do that, when I’m shopping alone.  Stop into shops I have no interest in, if I see they aren’t crowded, to anchor myself for the next bit of crowd.  I also feel a bit of triumph when I make it without doing that.

I do not know if Ms King herself has a mental illness, but she writes it so well, I wouldn’t be surprised.  The book is, of course, about more than Rae’s illness.  It is actually a mystery and an intriguing one a that.  What really happened to her great-uncle?  And the even greater mystery of will Rae make it through without trying to kill herself again, out there on her island where it is a week between visits, so the likelihood of 59th minute of the 11th hour rescue is very slim.

As I said above I haven’t yet finished the book.  Bits of it are very hard going for me.  But I decided to write and post this before the end.  I’ll let you know if I make it through it and if there are any other parts that make me shudder with recognition of myself.

And do read any of Ms King’s work if you can find it.  She’s bloody brilliant.

Shopping, Shopping, Shopping, Get Those Doggies Shopping…SPEND!

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Heh, I amuse myself.

Anyway, today Simon and I are going to brave the opening weekend crowds to go to Victoria Square the largest something or other with the most something or other spent in NI.

Half the shops aren’t even open yet, apparently, but will be by June. I mostly want to go to House of Fraser today. I lurve me some House of Fraser. I still think its a little pricey/high class for Belfast, but we’ll see! Donna Karan Tights, here I come!

See, Donna Karan does something no other designer does. They size their tights based on height and hip size. Most companies do it by height and weight. And I am short. And a bit plump (although not as plump as I used to be!). Petite of height, not of width. So having the hip size there, helps tremendously to find the right size! And I adore DKNY anyway, which House of Fraser carries.

Speaking of not being as plump as I used to be, one of my friends at work, Pauline, told me yesterday that her husband Albert had asked her if I was okay. He noticed that I had lost a lot of weight and was thinking I was ill!! Nope, just trying to lose weight, thanks!

Anyway, I’ll let you know how Victoria Square is.

Shopping Shopping Shopping…..

Back now.  No DKNY tights, *pout*.  I guess not one of her women’s fashion House of Fraser’s cuz all I saw was DKNY Jeans for Men and some handbags. Speaking of handbags…HANDBAG NIRVANA!!

1,000 sq ft of that store is *nothing* but handbags.  Every handbag you can imagine? On display at the Belfast House of Fraser.

Also? Biggest Benefit cosmetic counter in Belfast.  I am not sure why we need 3 such cosmetic counters in Belfast (one in Boots, one in Debenhams and now one in House of Fraser) but this one was very nice.  I will still probably use the Boots one, however, as I get points on my Boots card when I buy it there!

Overall its a lovely shopping centre.  Mostly fashion, so nothing for the ‘boys’ as my husband pointed out.  Well, Zavvi, but other than that, nothing.  And we already have a Zavvi on Royal Avenue.  There were rumors of an Apple Store, but it either hasn’t moved in or wasn’t true.

I do think some stores in it are a little high brow for Belfast.  Now, there is a lot of money in certain parts of NI, but for the every day shopper? Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss and Fossil are going to be out of their league.  Which I think is bad for a shopping centre billing itself as ‘A Renaissance for Belfast.’

Still Working on the in Depth Post

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But I thought I’d come over and ramble for a bit while I am still working on that one.

So, as previously mentioned, yesterday was our board meetings at work.  We had 3 boards and 1 committee meeting.  9:15am until about 4:15pm.

What went wrong:

Caterers forgot about the meeting, so we had no lunch.  Had to order from a local sandwich place.  Which ran 30 minutes late.  Which pissed off the Chairman, who more or less yelled at me.

Discovered that my numbering went wacky in one set of papers so we jumped from agenda item 5.9 to agenda item 5.3.  I hate hate hate Word’s numbering feature.  It totally sucks.  Also, once again proving, if you read something enough you miss things.  CEO probably would have caught it in his final read through, but he was in Spain when we were doing the papers.

One person is a member of only one of the boards, so came in about 2:30 to join the last meeting.  So we get to the end of the Agenda and he says “I have an AOB (any other business)” and proceeds to lead a discussion, which was important, for about 20 minutes.  The rest of us were like COME ON!! We’ve been in here all friggin’ day!

For the first time I took minutes on a laptop…so.much.easier.

Now I have to write the actual minutes.  Takes about a day for each board meeting.  So 4 more days and we can wrap these meetings up for another  month.

There Will be a Slight Delay in Posts

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I am trying to write one that is very hard for me, about a book that I am reading where the lead character has a mental illness similar to mine.  Its not something I would normally read, but I really like the author so I am giving it a try.

I will write more about this in a few days.  After tomorrow.  Which is Board Meeting Day.  I’ll be taking minutes from 9:15am to around 5pm.  With two short breaks.

Kill me now.

Looking to the Future

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First of all, no one tried to guess my mom’s age yesterday, but if you want to know highlight here: 68 to see.

I think about the future a lot. Not so much what it will bring, but what will future generations think of us? If Simon and I have kids, what will their kids and their kids kids know about Gran Robyn and Gramps Simon?

Will they be in the US and look at the inside of my wedding ring and think we were married on April 9th rather than 4th September? Or will they still be in the UK and understand perfectly?

Will they hear the story of how Simon and I met, a family fable including a trip across the Atlantic? Not really so different from the story of my great-grandmother and her story from Romania to Boston, except with diamonds sewn in the hem of her skirt. If you ever meet my sister-in-law, ask to see her engagement ring. The diamond in it was one of the ones in my great-grandmothers hem.

I also think about the future of the children I know. My niece, who will be 8 in April, is, according to her mother, very very grown up. She asked if she could wear make up the other day and was given permission to do so. Apparently she put it on herself so well that her dad didn’t even notice until her mom pointed it out to him. And then he was impressed.

I wonder what she’ll be when she grows up. And her sister. And all my other nieces and nephews, who range in age from 3 to 19. Who will they be? Will they be happy? Rich? Straight? Gay? Married? Sad?

The future…what will it bring?