ut you have said lots of times that you're ambivalent about the jobs you're interviewing for. Do you think maybe your hesitation or ambivalence shows during the talks?

Possibly. I've tried not to be, but who knows. A couple of the interviews I have been pretty enthusiastic about, until they were bizarre (one time the interview seemed to be going ok, I met with a few people...and then I met with the head of the department who was like "I don't even know why you're here, you have no experience with this!" It was odd, because...I DO. And I tried to keep my cool and be like "Well, perhaps you didn't have a chance to look at my resume, if you do you'll see..." but dang, it was over right then)

You are uber charming. Who wouldn't love you?

Hot ladies? :)

My latest online dating issue: I keep getting emails from strange women. Like, someone in Nebraska (who is significantly older than me, not hot, and a Republican. A gay republican. A BUTCH gay republican). Or someone I have actually met in person and turned down but I don't think she remembers it. BUT, on OKCupid when you are looking at people, it tells you if they reply "often" or "selectively" or whatever (I think there's a few different categories). And I worry that if I ignore all the messages I'm uninterested in, then I will look bitchy and someone awesome won't want to email me. But I don't want to encourage the weirdos. What to do, what to do?

P-C, actually your company has tried several times to recruit me. :)

Clearly you must be awesome! That's cool.

You are uber charming. Who wouldn't love you?

Hot ladies? :)

Oh, we are as one.

Clearly you must be awesome! That's cool.

Heh. I'm good at what I do, but I'm totally stagnating at current place. Anyway, I'd hate the commute to SSF so I'm putting it off as long as possible.

meara, I think the NE Pride scene is pretty small; I bet my cousin Buffy totally knows whomever it was who hit on your Cupid.

Have you tried the newer ones in warm white? Warm white is very close to incandescent light, and the new bulbs are close to instant on.

I haven't heard of them before. I'll try them.

I'm waiting for LEDs to come down in price.

LEDs are SO bright and SO white, I think I'd find them painful in a light fixture.

CFLs are a transitional technology, but incandescent bulbs are such a waste of energy.

I like how incandescent bulbs warm up a room! I know, I know... bad me, no planet.

There's also a daylight CFL which is quite close to real daylight, but it turns out that most people don't really like the way they look in daylight.

I like how I look in daylight... hell of a lot better than how I look under the CFL in my downstairs bathroom.

Okay, I'm done hating on CFLs. Maybe they'll get better.

I'd like to find the sadistic sumbitch who invented "self-evaluations" and punch him in the liver.

(Copying myself from Twitter, because it's so true I needed to say it again. Anxiety-born rant ahead.)

I've been up since way-too-early in the morning because the self-evals are due today and I still haven't done it, and I HATE IT. It's basically a guessing game: What does my boss want me to say? How does she want me to say it? What is she going to use to screw me over this year? This makes me very anxious and angry. I'm having kind of a meltdown.

I think this is why, tangentially, I'm having trouble re-doing my resume. It feels like the same thing: being called to account for what I've done and what I haven't done, and no matter what, I'm wrong and not good enough.

And of course, I can't tell my boss that I'm freaking out over self-evals because it hits ancient trigger points of self-hate and ACOA impossible people-pleasing.

edited to tone down the rant a little

I've never had the experience of doing a self eval but it sounds like torture. Advice is likely more helpful from the experienced, but I do offer my sympathy. Is there anyway to step outside yourself and do this more objectively? Help your friend Zen with this arduous task?

I've reminded my friend Zen that we have copies of this crap from previous years. We're C&Ping right now. We'll update things a bit and hope Boss doesn't ask for documentation.

You are a good friend. I think Zen should pamper you later as a reward.

Indeed! Chocolates and wine, all around.

I've tried to switch over to mostly CFL bulbs, but I'm a little irked that they aren't lasting as long as advertised. If I'm going to fork over $2-5 per bulb, they damn well better last the 5 years they advertise. Instead, I'm got one lamp that eats them up as fast as incandescent so I've gone back to putting those in that particular lamp at least. Room overheads are still CFL and hanging in there pretty good. I think I'm going to start looking for the daylight ones, I don't think any of mine are.

I like the warm white ones myself. To me, the daylight bulbs are a little stark.

CFLs don't last as long if they're turned on and off a lot.