Broken Week.

Early in my career, I worked for a large baseball card & sports memorabilia company as the EA to the head of their in-house legal department. The CEO’s assistant, a woman who was in her mid-to-late 40’s, had been with him forever. Her name was Millie. They were like an old married couple, except on a professional platform. They had their routines, they knew each others likes and dislikes. She had his back, and he had hers — no matter what. They trusted each other. They knew they were going to be together forever.

I envied them that, because that is what I want.

That is actually what I had there with my boss, now that I think about it. But circumstances out of our control came into play that caused my boss, and later me, to move on. He was the best boss I ever had.

That is the type of relationship I’ve sought at every job, there and at every job since, thinking I’d found it every time. And, finally, I thought I’d really found it at this last job… it sure seemed like it. In a nutshell, I suppose, that explains why I’m so hurt and disappointed. My expectations weren’t met. Isn’t that where we always get into trouble? We have expectations that aren’t met? (sigh) I’ve had some frustrations this week with the company in getting things finalized, but it all came together today in the mail, so it looks like it’s really over.

I contacted all my prior bosses (excepting the most recent one) this week to request that they act as references and all but one of them got back to me, each giving an “of course,” along with kind words and assurances… talk about giving support when I need it.

On Wednesday night I was working on a project for Tony and the video card on my longtime laptop, the one I purchased in 2002, went out. The hard drive is fine, it’s just that I can’t see to do anything… my window into its soul has been darkened. Most everything on there has been backed up, so there shouldn’t be any loss of data, but I’d like to double check. Dear Vince has a couple ideas up his sleeve to help me out. Shout out to Vince!

This morning, I noticed Mr. White (my male fish) had a weird red thing in the bottom of his tank and a bunch of strange things floating around. He seemed happy and was playing with the weird red thing, but … I hadn’t put a weird red thing in there. So I grabbed the long tank tweezers and pulled it out. That was when I realized, with some shock and definite horror, that it was the innards of the tank thermometer. I looked at the side of the tank where it should be and the glass casing was there, but broken off at the bottom. Immediately I thought, “OH NO! MERCURY! HE’S GONNA DIE!! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!” Because everyone knows that rampant mercury is like a silver stream of death!! But after an emergency phone call to Fish Whisperer, who reassured me that the fish is gonna be OK, mercury is more toxic to humans (if it gets in the blood stream), than it is to fish and no one is going to die. He said to leave Mr. White in the tank and do a 50% water change. So, I did that with a water vacuum and searched for glass bits and changed his tank’s filter. I examined the pieces of the broken thermometer and realized that the mercury is still intact (phew!!), but the red stuff that’s at the bottom of the thermometer had gone somewhere… dissolved in the tank, maybe? What is that red stuff anyway?

Mr. White has gashes on his sides because he, being the masochistic fish that he is, was happily slamming himself up against the broken thermometer. But he seems to be OK — active, and was actually pretty pissed that I took his toys away from him. Can’t have a pissed fish, so I put an artificial blue spiky plant in there that his dad used to love to beat up and I poked holes in a ping pong ball, soaked it in really hot water for a few minutes to sterilize it, and then sank it in his tank. He’s been having the time of his life this afternoon moving “fish safe” toys.

The blue, spike plant (Notice Mr. White in the lower right corner, moving the plant by “flashing” his body and flinging all the rocks around?)

While those gashes heal, I’ll be doing daily water changes. Good thing I have a little extra time these days, huh?

I figure if I can make it just a few more hours, the Broken Week will be over and we can move on to Recovery Week, right?