On the fifth day, I rose again and seem to be doing better, as was projected by Esteban’s course of this mystery illness. Last night, I was able to drink a nice cabernet at my work Christmas party and didn’t throw up at the smell of food. I did manage to get through half of a steak without having an unfortunate incident, although the standard gag while swallowing my nightly vitamins turned into a rather dramatic event that made me run for the trashcan and stand there, waiting expectantly for what turned out to be only a false alarm. Perhaps the norovirus wanted to go out with a bang and not a whimper. Today, my tum still sounds a little like Golem and I don’t exactly have an appetite back yet, but this morning, my soldiers were more or less in formation. A cheer filled the Bix household, because frankly? I am really over all of the sicky sickness.
(If you’re hungry for more, however, check out this week’s 3 Fast 3 Furious podcast.)
While Esteban was gone, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. It was all the non-cooking and non-talking, I think. Even though I was sick, I managed to get through the five loads of dishes he left untouched when he flew out for San Jose (thanks hon and also fuck you) as well as started going through my closet to pull out items for the Minicon clothing exchange/drive (more info in the forum. I had to fight with my urge to clean everything out of the house and rip the carpeting out of the dining room, which is quite ridiculous, because it took me half an hour just to change the sheets on the bed and the effort it took to put the duvet back on the down comforter had me panting. I really wish I had minions who would go out and do these tasks for me at such moments. Actually, minions would be handy any time, all the day long.
I chatted a bit with the Senior VP at the work party last night, and he told me that he was impressed with my performance on my big hairy project this year, more specifically on the fact that I kept asking questions and ended up uncovering and fixing some inefficiencies that weren’t even attached to the project at all. And as my boss had mentioned, he wants me to work on another project in 2007, if not a second one. Man, it sucks to be good. One kind of awesome side note though: at some point during our discussion, he mentioned that he couldn’t believe it when someone mentioned that I was a few credits shy of getting my MA in English. He said that he knew I had an undergrad degree, but had assumed that it was in engineering or computer sciences or chemistry or something, because I’m so logical. He never would have dreamed that I would be so well-rounded. And the fact that I refrained from asking if he just called me fat really speaks to some amazing self control. I should get a fucking degree in that.
The conversation was sort of amazing, though. I have gotten so accustomed to wearing the two extremes of my personality between work and my social life that I forget how crazy it is that most people aren’t equally comfortable talking about post-modern narrators as they are talking about business models and making statistical root cause analysis my bitch. At one point, I was talking about my visit to the client a few weeks ago and the opportunities for 2007. The words coming out of my mouth were making sense and all businessy and I thought “who the fuck are you, chica?” because I sounded exactly like some kind of executive or something. And I was making sense. He was engaged by what I was saying and nodding and we were for a moment two ball busters standing up against a bar, drinking cabernet and talking about bottom lines and I swear to God, we were just a Powerpoint deck shy of being in a board meeting. It was sort of awesome for a moment and I can’t believe how much I’ve changed in the almost ten years of working at this company.
I probably lost all credibility when we were talking about the company changing its name and he asked what I thought it should be called. I replied, “Sparkles! Wait, no, Sparkle Co! No, Sparkle Co, Inc! Yes. Sparkle Co, Incorporated!”
If that’s not upwardly mobile, I don’t know what is.
