Ah, but the important bit is being able to keep that on your pad and out of your voice.

98% of the time I can. If I couldn't connect into their computers and take over, I'd go mad.

So far the only time I snapped at Liz was when she started lecturing me for shifting her car from 2nd into 3rd at 250 rpms when I should have done it at 300 rpms. It was 6:30 in the morning. I still feel justified for having snapped back at her.

That sounds about right, Burrell.

As it was my birthday staff meeting, I was a little more free with my opinions. (Actually, I was literally biting my thumb to keep my mouth shut, which caused the ED to demand what I was refraining from saying). I got across quite explicitly that I thought the board member in charge of metrics needed to attend the Excel classes the ED was attending (and bravo for him!). The unspoken was that she needed to do so before she started blaming staff members for her not understanding how a spread sheet worked. Much less that, when sharing a document, you work off the SAME DOCUMENT, and not keep saving your own and then blaming the second person for making changes that you don't understand and don't fit into the document that you've made your own changes in. Also, one of you should be inputting, and one of you should be outputting, so whyTF is this an issue? Otherwise, googledoc it! Or whatever else pros do. Then there doesn't need to be multiple copies of various iterations of the same document.

Hence me biting my hand at a staff meeting, but I'm cute so I get away with it.

And by cute I mean chubby and harmless-looking.

Oh man -- I just re-read the reading I picked to do for my grandmother's funeral, and there had better be a lot of people there, or I will just cry and cry. If there is enough of an audience, I think I can get into performance mode.

Oh man, when I was first learning how to drive I had a friend who was psychotic about the rpms I shifted at. The guy who let me drive his street legal racer I listened to his prefences, otherwise, I listened to the engine, which was generally just under 300 rpms, but varied.

It's okay to cry at your grandmother's funeral, Jesse. But I know you know that. I cried when I read my mother's eulogy, but I just kept on reading.

Oh, I know -- it just seems cheesy to cry during the reading!

People keep telling me I'm insanely patient. I don't think I am. If I was, I wouldn't have a steno pad covered in scrawls of "You are such a moron!" next to me.

Yeah, if you aren't explicitly telling them this? You are patient. And good at your job.

It's okay to cry at your grandmother's funeral, Jesse.

It is. And people routinely cry through readings and eulogies. So if you cry, people are not going to be shocked or think you were unprepared or something. They'll think you love your grandmother. Which is true.

My mom did fine at Uncle Frank's memorial until she read the note I'd sent Aunt Sue (she was tasked with reading some of the stories everyone had sent in about Frank.) Sue had a few hard moments, but purposely included funny/exasperating stuff at the points she knew she'd lose it. Frank's brother Wayne really choked up, but managed. We're typically stoic midwestern stock.