Do they specify what harassment they do permit?

Wrong opinions on cilantro and muffulettas, I assume. You know, the usual.

Technically we supposedly got that protection from the Supreme Court a couple years ago, but I would not count on that with todays courts, and yay for them putting it in there—I recall when I started at my company sexual orientation was NOT listed as protected. (I think it is now, especially since we merged with a larger company)

Why am I feeling SO nauseated today? Yay for having zofran on hand I hope (hasn’t kicked in yet). I have plenty of work to do and definitely don’t want to do it even though I took it pretty easy this past weekend for Pride.

Call with a lawyer later about mom’s estate—it seems they set up a trust but then never put any of their assets in it. So gotta figure out what we can do with anything with just moms name on it.

Timelies all!

Got back last night from Florida, a bit later than expected. There was a problem with communication with air traffic control in that there was none, which affected Maryland and part of Virginia. First they were going to land in Raleigh to await further details, but there were enough planes there already that it would have been hours before we could get a gate. We ended up at a gate in Charleston, where we sat for an hour and a half, at least, before we got the go-ahead to fly to Baltimore. Got home after 10:30.

Yikes, that sounds like no fun at all, Sheryl. How are your parents doing?

Laura, they're doing well. My mom is still in the wheelchair, getting PT and OT.

A little birdie whispered in my ear and asked me to share...

Today is the day we officially celebrate the birth of the phenomenal in myriad ways JZ. Only one official day? That doesn't seem like enough...

Happy Birthday, JZ! may you celebrate in all your favorite ways.

Happy Happy Birthday, JZ!!!

Jacqueline is currently managing her weekly Pediatric Heart Surgery Case Conference as all the heart surgeons who save babies get on a call together and go over the upcoming week of miracles.

It is a complicated process lining up all the cases for consideration and review and taking notes that go out to schedulers etc.

She's been doing it for many years now, but today is the last one as she's retired as of July 1st (when her COLA increases hit and raise the base level of her Pension payments one last time).

I saved the post she wrote describing her job because it was so beautifully written:

"Random notes, because I feel like I bitch a lot about work and I don't often (or ever) talk about the non-bitchery stuff. But...

The people I work for? The work they do is fascinating. Every week I have to drag myself out of bed at doom-thirty to set up the early AM weekly preop evaluation conference, and it's miserable but it's also riveting. Hearts like little boxes, like walnuts, like flapping hands and fluttering wings, sometimes with rows of Frankensteinian wires marching up and down one side or tiny bedspring coils looping through the veins or little mesh collars propping this or that valve open. Puffs of dye chugging through big sturdy passageways or spraying out into a thicket with too many tiny threadlike branches.

People whose hearts have been thrown together carelessly like the world's worst Lego set - everything connected wrong, pieces missing, sometimes the whole apparatus present and accounted for but completely backward. And, often, still striving and pumping and working despite the terrible construction: just so determined to keep living, keep being, all these wrong-way pipes and holes in the walls and solid walls where there were supposed to be holes, and yet the person containing them is often improbably up and mobile and out in the world; nothing should work, but it makes itself work as much as it possibly can.

And the plans they make are part engineering, part science, part art -- if this piece is missing, can we take that piece from somewhere else and sub it in? If this is too small, can we re-route the flow somewhere else and still get it back to where it needs to be? What are the stats on the last fifty times we had to do this? What are the probabilities if it hasn't even been done fifty times yet? What are all the options? Are there any options? Who is going to sit down and talk with the family?

There is a lot that's less than ideal about the job, but I can't imagine being an administrator and working anyplace half so interesting, and sad, and surprising."

Being involved in saving people's lives, even at a remove, has got to be a very profound work experience. Happy Birthday, JZ!