Take care sumi.

My minion just kicked up a stink about answering the phones at lunch. I understand her position, (she's the only professional level person who regularly gets asked to sub on phone duty) but at the same time, I am @@. Of all the things that suck about where we work, getting asked to answer the phones once in a while is so not worth the grief.

Good luck on getting home, sumi!

We'd been having a drought, but we got several days of rain which may have alleviated it. I hope.

we got several days of rain

So did we, last night between 4 and 7 pm. I think your way is probably better.

All you Midwest-istas--let's be careful out there!

Yikes. Stay as dry as possible, folks.

Sumi- Be careful

Sue- did she move up to "professional" from "support staff". Because I get really cranky about substitute phone answering because of that sometimes.

I hope you get home all right, sumi!!

IcompletelyON, Jon likes carrots. Well, maybe not, but carrots likes Jon!

The drought level here has been declared "exceptional," which sounds much more fun than it is. Exceptional is meteorology-speak for 100-year drought. We're neck and neck with the worst recorded drought in Georgia. Weather records: never a good thing. It's already the hottest August on record, and we're looking forward to another extra-crispy day. The two things are apparently related; the system that's stuck over the southeast is blocking the rain from going anywhere, so the midwest gets floods and we get the surface of the moon.

When I was in Alabama earlier this month, it was above 100F every day I was there. I commented to my mom that I didn't think I'd experienced that much triple-digit heat in my entire 18 years growing up there in the 1970's and 80's, and she agreed. That kind of heat used to be almost unheard of. It was much more low to mid-90's with high humidity, which isn't exactly pleasant but also doesn't sap all your energy the instant you walk out the door. IIRC Birmingham has had less than half the average amount of rain for the year thus far. On top of the punishing heat, the air quality is terrible. So, yeah, I'd love to send some rain their way.

Oh dear. One of my supervisors just got in and informed me that his neighborhood was thrashed, and he doesn't live very far from me. I got lucky! I mean, at 1am last night it sounded like bombs were going off overhead, but my immediately neighborhood didn't take any real damage.

Sue- did she move up to "professional" from "support staff". Because I get really cranky about substitute phone answering because of that sometimes.

Yeah she did, and that's one of the reasons why she's still asked to answer phones. And I totally understand her frustration there. There's lots of crap going on there...like the secretaries often tell, not ask, people to cover phones. And a couple of sections have decided that their staff should not have to answer phones, and that sticks in her craw. (Our section, which is just the two of us, get dumped on most.) But at the same time, wigging on the secretary is not the greatest response to her frustration.