I made Robert breakfast in bed today — a “version” of sausage biscuits, and coffee.
When I went back up to see if he needed a “warm up,” he was a zombie — just staring straight ahead into space. “Still trying to shake that bad dream.”
I went into the office today, and had my “1:1 — Interim Discussion” with my manager from 11:00 until 11:30.
It’s quite extraordinary (and not in a good way) the lengths to which my company goes to make a flawed, biased, and “political” contribution appraisal system seem like it’s logical as opposed to emotional, “best of breed,” and ensures your “compensation is commensurate with your contribution.”
In a veiled attempt to not say this, the message was: “Some people are going to go this year.”
What she did say was, “We’ve ranked every one of you from lowest contributor to highest contributer. Our department’s scores ranged from the lowest contributer’s score being in the ‘low-20s,’ and the highest contributer’s score being in the ‘mid-50s.’ You scored in the…”
At the time, I felt good that my score wasn’t in the low 20s. But after we hung up, my thought process went like this. Let’s say, just for sake of example, that she said I’d scored in the “high 30’s.”
Well, the implication of that, in terms of the “lowest” people “going,” means one thing if the department scores fell like this:
as opposed to this:
Games.
I had a fun meeting with Fran this afternoon. Fran is a pleasure to work with, and always fun.
He had a cool map on his wall — one of those huge wall maps. I noted that I liked how well-delineated the countries were.
He said, “Actually, that’s a special map. I used to use it when I taught sixth graders. What’s different about it is that it represents the countries relative to their actual size. Notice how huge Africa is. And Asia. Most maps are very Eurocentric, and a lot of the times, the U.S. usually looks the biggest — or at least bigger than it is compared to the other countries.”
Right before leaving the office, Joe and I had a phone call to catch up before he headed to Pennsylvania. We’ve both completed our registration for Bikefest 2006 now. I see my name has made the official list of registrants.
After some heavy traffic due to an accident on the ramp to 540, the rest of the way was clear sailing.
Once home, I took a two-hour nap.
I made spaghetti for dinner, and thought it would be a good idea to chop up my leftover breakfast sausage and add it to the sauce. It wasn’t.
I started what was to be a 30-minute walk at 9:52 (who’s counting), doing the Kaplan > Merwin > Merrie > Octavia > Gorman > Kaplan route, but for the second time in a row now, I’ve gotten lost in the podcasts I was listening to, and missed the Merrie turn.
The last time, I just kept going, and ended up taking a 45-minute walk. This time, when I realized I’d done it again, I remembered a turn for Barbara that was coming up, took it, and got back on track, finishing in just a little over 30 minutes.
I showered, and got to Flex at just a little past 11:30.
I’m quite sure I passed Geromy’s Bryan walking along Hillsborough Street. It was drizzling, and I debated pulling over to ask him if he wanted a ride, but in the end, didn’t.
After I paid at the door, and turned around to open the door, I found Kevin behind me. Good timing.
Busted Cherry emceed Trailer Park Prize Night tonight. ‘Nuff said. No sense 