Yeah--my office gets frosted glass, since sometimes folks cry in HR. The others are all glass.

I will confess, I've often thought about napping in the women's lounge. But I lack the excuse.

We had a nap room at Charles Schwab when I worked there in the early 90s! I napped there once for 5 hours when I was, evidently, very sick. Then they paid for a cab to take me home. Good times!

Today was kind of productive and also emotinally draining. The good thing was the dentist, they were very nice and it's been a long time since a cleaning so they did part of it and I go back first week in November (frist time it would work with my schedule).

But I have a lot of anxiety/shame/fear about dentists, mostly stuff from when I was a kid and I was shamed and dressed down and generally treated badly because I had chronic allergies and it was hard to breathe through my nose and my gums were always sensitive and the feel of the tooth polishing and the gritty toothpaste made me want to run screaming.

I think PMSing for several reasons but it all just flooded out, so I was in the exam, getting my teeth cleaned, and tears streaming down the sides of my head. The hygenist asked if I wanted to stop but I said no. I tried to distact myself but eventually I just let the thoughts bubble up and the float away.

I did some other errands and went home and took a nap but I almost feel like I do after therapy.

The hygenist and dentist were nice, they didn't say anything negative about how long it had been or make me feel bad about not going sooner. It was just a weird expeirence,

Other things I did were - drop stuff off at Goodwill (although I bought a few things including the gallery of Regretable food book) and called Comcast to come out and fix the problem I'm having with my internet. I think it's the splitter that's outside the house.

And I McGuyvered (or whatever the semi craft version of that is) away to put in some insulating material in one of the windows wihtout it looking like it's being insulated and without using tape. Becuase I couldn't find tape mor ethan anything. The window is an older style mobile home window, so there's a space between the interior and exterior according the management you can't have visible insulation. So I had some foam board I wrapped in fleece so it looks like a curtain.

At least I think , I haven't seen it from the outside yet, it's too dark,

And the completely open office concept with white noise generator sounds HORRIBLE. My sympathies JZ, I hope there's some sort of protest and fix even though there supposdely isn't any money,

askye, it's good you were able to let it happen without being mad at yourself for it. Sometimes that stuff just comes flooding up and you can't stop it.

JZ, good grief, that sounds hideous. I would be wearing a thick hoodie and sunglasses to work every day, I swear I would.

Wow, askye, gold star for pushing through your dentist anxiety and getting it done. I'm really glad your dental team was kind and cool and professional about it all.

Speaking of gold stars, after 10 years of procrastination, Tom and I finally got our wills drawn up, signed, and notarized, thanks to an awesome lawyer friend of ours. I am relieved and proud of myself and just generally giving myself a gold star for doing this instead of blowing it off like usual.

That's worth like 10 gold stars!

Nora, I actually think that any time any buffista publishes something it should be announced on the board. I had the impression that Press is more appropriate the Apocalypse if it is actually available and that Apocalypse is the place to post if it has been accepted or a contract signed, but is not actually available yet. However whether that was the original intent (and I'm not positive it was) these days it seems that either kind of announcement can go either place.

Does anyone here understand FMLA stuff? I'm very confused about my employer requiring me to get FMLA paperwork done. A few weeks ago I pulled a muscle in my lower back, tried to tough it out at work for a few days and someone convinced me I was never going to get better if I didn't take a couple days off to heal. So I did - policy is to find your own substitute, which I did, and then informed my supervisor of it. When I realized that I still was unable to really do my work so I went to see my primary care nurse practitioner who let me know that this kind of injury takes about 2 weeks to recover from. So she gave me an excuse/release stating I could return to work with no restrictions in a week. Our employee handbook does not specify when a doctor's excuse is needed or any other details about using FMLA. I just figured that 1-2 days of "I don't feel good" is ok but for more than that, I'd better have an official excuse. When my supervisor insisted on calling it FMLA leave I was confused, because I thought it specifically covers longer term illnesses. I've been back for two weeks, and suddenly got an email from HR essentially saying, "Here, get this FMLA certification form filled out by your medical professional." With the form is a thing saying what kinds of events qualify for FMLA leave; for "serious personal illness" it specifies needing to take time off work and at least two medical treatments. I only saw the nurse the one time. And I don't see what all the fuss is about, why am I being asked to get these forms filled out for such a short absence. (I can also say I'm a bit put out by the fact that this process is not transparent. The employee handbook should give more details other than "we expect employees to show up on time, every time, but if you can't get your own substitute, and if we think you are unreliable, we'll fire you.")

My knowledge on FMLA is patchy at best, but they might want the paperwork already in place in case the condition goes on life longer/recurs.

That or they're totally clueless and just doing it wrong :)