If I am going to be out of the office entirely, I put a message on voice mail, put an out of office email, and put a note on my door saying I'm not there (or have one of the secretaries put one up for me if I am out unexpectedly).

If I am in the SF office, the door note is up and the voice mail is on, so that people don't email me and say "I just left something on your chair you need to do right away". Again.

Plus a ton of phone conferences. Do they not happen in your culture? We have very few meetings set up without a dialup and LiveMeeting option.

Rarely. I'll dial into meetings when I'm stuck at home, and on rare occasions if they're cross-campus and I have one in a different building right before that, but they're far less productive than meetings when you're there in the room.

Snowpocalypse has commenced in B'more. Batten the hatches.

Looks like there's about an inch of so of snow here in DC so far.

It looks like two feet of snow here (Western Virginia) (not West Virginia) (although it's probably there too). Stray Cat is still doing her usual taunt-Leo-from-the-patio, so I guess she's okay.

How does one tip one's garbagemen? Taping an envelope to the top of the trash bin seems ridic. Can I just mail it to them c/o the disposal company which has kindly provided their names?

Goat Eye Syndrome is characterized by eyes afflicted with horrific horizontal pupils

Now that didn't bother me, but this:

There are other ungulates, such as antelopes (fairly closely related to goats) whose eyes have horizontal pupils, and they actually swivel in the sockets to stay horizontal even when the animal puts its head down to graze.

swivel in the sockets? Aaaaaahhhhh!

In my family, the nativity scene is a moving thing -- at this point, no one's near the manger except for the donkey, and Jesus isn't there. Everyone moves toward their spots, with M&J getting there Christmas Eve, the baby showing up that night, and the Wise Men still travelling through the 12 days.

Jesse, that's wonderful.

We didn't get to go to the team lunch or the office lunch, because the vendors were in and we were squeezing and working through lunch. Which, illegal, but I do it most days anyway.

Working through lunch hour is illegal?

Speaking of Out of Office, please update your voicemail, people,

Have never seen OOO used. They put in a new phone system after I left, and didn't tell me how it works. Though I've asked, several times, it's been a year and my boss has yet to realize that I have 75 messages because she hasn't sent me the documentation. I've just taken my phone number out of my email signature. I don't want calls anyway.

Potatoes are the holy spirit, transcendant and everywhere (on my thighs). Cheese is the Almighty, making everything better. I guess that means Bacon is the Savior.

I am intrigued by this bacony religion and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter, Connie.

Ok, shut up, I should be asleep. But Loki is on a tear and it is cracking me up. I tossed him out on the snow covered deck. Oh HELLS NO. He bolted inside and is going crackers up and down the stairs, into the cat toyhousese, around and around and around. Guess my boy doesn't like snow, but it makes him craxier.

Working through lunch hour is illegal?

It is in California, apparently. I have to fudge my timesheets to insert 30 minutes of lunch a day or my contracting company won't accept them due to legal reasons.

Hm. My company told us to just fill in 40 hours a week regardless of how much we actually worked. We're on salary, though. They don't care if we take lunch or not.

Wow. Speaking of gifts, my boss gave me a pound of assorted Wockenfuss candy. Unexpected. (I didn't open it until now.)

For non-exempt, employers are required to provide at least one (unpaid) meal break in any shift longer than four hours. I'm not sure if or how that applies if you're on salary.