Thanks. I'd be happy to take one!

Craigslist ad: HENCHMEN NEEDED (London, but planned worldwide expansion)

20-30 henchmen needed for moderately-sized supervillain organisation with large expansion potential (fortresses built into geological structures, corruption of government officials, possible genesis of 'nemesis' vigilante). Electrical theme.

Applicants must be willing to learn new skills, including but not limited to operation of specialised 'lightning guns'. Applicants will also be required to wear specialised uniform when at work (functional rubber suits with my logo on front), except in cases where deception is required (posing as hostages in order to ambush vigilantes, etc).

"You've ruined everything that matters to me, so I only do my best to return the favor." (plural you)

That’s a lot of idioms! It would be helpful to know the exact nuance of “ruin” that you are going for. Otherwise, the closest I can come up with is:

"Vous avez ruiné tout ce qui m’est cher, alors je ferai de mon mieux pour vous le revaloir." (revaloir=to pay back)

"Ruined" in the sense of "taken everything away," I guess. The speaker spent years pulling himself up from relative poverty to a position of wealth and influence, but now all that's gone and he's a wanted fugitive trying to survive on the run. Oh, and his country has been overrun by its oldest enemy and is under martial law, which he's patriotic enough to consider worse than anything that's happened to him personally.

I need to join sara in finding a new zen. I'm tired of the rut of a moodstate I am in.

lisa, you [Edit: both singular as well as plural] look both pretty and fun-having. Yay!

thank you! We were having fun! Too much fun.

I've decided referring to it as a new zen is a lot better than the other way I could look at it. Heh. But really, when the skin on my back starts crawling halfway into work (stress,) I need to just chill and find a better view of the situation. Badly.

Lisa, the pics are great!

sara, is there an end in sight to this round of stress?

I get used to it and am not so freaked by everything that's going on all at once on a tight schedule?

Thanks, Kat!

I get used to it and am not so freaked by everything that's going on all at once on a tight schedule?

Is this a never ending thing? Just the way things are at your work now for the forseeable future? If so, then, yes with any luck you can just get used to it and things will go well and allow you to relax a bit (if that's just mentally, psychologically or whatever even if the intensity of the work doesn't let up).

I get used to it and am not so freaked by everything that's going on all at once on a tight schedule?

sara, please tell my to shove my foot deeply in my mouth and have a fine meal of shoes in sand sauce if I'm overstepping my bounds here, but I'm not sure I understand - is it that the newness of all those going-at-once things and their tight schedule is what's so stressful, and therefore time and getting-used-to-things are pretty much the best things to help getting over this newness and getting things on a better track, or are the very things themselves (which are new and tightly-scheduled) tense-making by nature, and no amount of time and getting-used-to is therefore helpful and a whole new whatever-it-may be is required, preferably with chocolate (which, um you may have already started doing, what with directing the way you try to think about matters and all)?

(Sorry for the messy phrasing. Apparently, not-enough-sleep makes me even wordier than usual. By this time next week, I'll probably need three posts, seventeen parentheses and I have no idea how many typos, just in order to type "timelies".)