You're right, I'm a bad blogger this week. The flagellation line can form to the left, the adulation line to the right. Let's try not to get those lines confused this time, okay?

It's just been a busy week. Normally, work equals blogging time for me I work hard and never give a stray thought to posting tidbits about my life online. This week, we moved to a new office. Words cannot adequately convey my utter overwhelming delight at this particular turn of events, except that they can because I'm less than thrilled. My commute just went from 2.7 miles to 11. I know, I know, it could be worse, but I liked being that close to home, not to mention about 1/2 mile from Jacob's daycare. Ah, well, it's a big-ish agency with random senseless decisions trickling down from the top, so I'm sure that just about the time I settle in here, they'll move us again. My coworker, Perfect J, says this is her ninth move in eleven years here.

Which reminds me, there is a silver lining to this particular cloud. The inconvenience to me isn't that huge, and the building has a nicer vibe to it - the old office was very cookie-cutter-prefab-strip-mall, whereas this one has actual bricks and wood - so I'm not that put out by it. Perfect J, on the other hand, is foaming at the mouth. She lives in the same town I do, so the old office was closer to her house (actually within 1/2 mile) and she has to go home at least twice a day to roll her dog.

No, you read it correctly. She rolls her dog. Apparently it's about 4,000 years old, severely arthritic, blind, and unable to get itself up off the floor or roll over on its own, but "he's not in any pain, so I can't see any reason to put him down." I'm staying very, very far away from THAT one. I understand her pain... but... anyway.

So, now, she can't get home as easily to do the dog-rolling. Plus, at the old office, there was a clear sense that it was her place, and I just happened to get a corner of the room. Here, we're all starting from scratch, so I got to choose my own desk location and I physically arrived here earlier than her, so there's a bit more of a sense of equality. She's not thrilled. She remained at the old office until every last stick of furniture and acre of 5-year-old paperwork was loaded up, literally sitting in her chair and refusing to stand up until SHE was ready. Don't laugh, I could suffer serious eyestrain from all the eye-rolling I was doing.

And, I tell you what, she tried HARD to prevent that nasty slimy equality from sneaking in. We sit in a cubicle area, four desks clustered together, with two along an outside wall (and, therefore, having windows) and two along a hallway, with no delineation between those two desks and the hallway. When I arrived Wednesday morning, three different people made a point of showing me, "THAT is the desk that J chose. That's J's desk. I don't know which one is yours, but THAT is J's spot." Gotcha. Good to know she's already been here, marking her territory. Whatever.

She had picked one of the desks with a window, which made sense to me. I didn't have placement envy, and I decided to take the other window-desk for myself. And, like I said, I arrived here earlier than she did, so I had a little time to get my stuff (a whole grocery-store bag of it; I don't tend to keep much stuff at work) organized. I was 99.9% unpacked when my phone rings.
J: Hi. They took my chair, so I guess I should head over.
K: Okay, well, I'm here and pretty much set up.
J: Which desk did you take?
K: Oh, they showed me which one you wanted, no worries. I took the other one by the window.
J: [OMINOUS SILENCE] Oh. [MORE SILENCE] Um. [CONTINUED JUDGMENT OOZING THROUGH PHONE] Well, I think Supervisor N wanted you to sit at the other desk, so that you would be next to me rather than behind me.
K: [RETURNS THE SILENCE AND ADDS SOME BAFFLEMENT] Excuse me? I'm confused. You had desk assignments planned out?
J: Well, Supervisor N did. I think.
K: Really? That's so unlike her. She didn't make the assignments at the old office.
J: Oh. Right. Well. Maybe it was you who said you'd rather be next to me than behind me?
K: Well, J, I've never actually been in this office building before, so I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have claimed a desk already.
J: Oh. Right. Well. I guess I just thought it would be better for you to be at the other desk.
K: Well, you head here, and if there's a problem with the setup we can talk about it.

See, and words aren't working here to convey her sheer bossy petulant tone on this one. It was precisely like a fourth-grader on the playground saying, "The teacher wants you to wear your hat," and then backing down when asked to actually prove it. I continue not to take Perfect J's perfectionism and bossiness too personally, because she's like this with everyone, and really, how comfortable can it be, to live in a world where you feel personally responsible for every niggling little decision that is ever made? Must be exhausting.

But she got here, I was all set up, and she didn't press the issue.

So now I have a desk with a second-floor window, overlooking a busy intersection. Lots to watch, for those times when I'm not blogging working hard on obscure paperwork just to be a busy bee. And I couldn't blog Wednesday because Rickheadwas here (I got to meet him face-to-face, and I was able to resist saying, "Funny, you don't look like a prick.") setting up the computers and changing the printers, blah blah blah, and so I was being physically as well as virtually monitored, so to speak.

Ugh, this is enough babbling already. I do have plenty more to talk about, things like surrogacy and Paris and knitting debacles and iPods and my own personal Mecca, but they can wait. I'll be back later...