Okay, to keep from crying (more) at work*, here are the good things about not getting the job here I really wanted.

1. No new learning curve.
2. Don't have to take a pay cut.
3. Not having to clean out my desk yet.
4. There are no exciting new cities for stores planned yet anyway (Milwaukee and Indianapolis don't do much for me).
5. Don't have to dress up to impress a new boss.
6. My schedule won't be altered.
7.

Okay, I've run out. But at least I'm trying.

*I did it in a private phone booth, don't worry. I'm not that bad.

Too tired to really blog and I'm hopelessly behind in annoying everyone with the tedious details of my life, but we did go to the movies last night (and even grabbed a bite and Noodle & Co or something like that beforehand). I wanted to see HGTTG, but sadly it was replaced at the Evanston Century by yet another screen of Star Wars. So we succumbed.

JT's Impressions:

1. My G-d, George Lucas needs to be beaten severely for writing that dialogue.
2. Digital effects, no matter how expensively created, suck my ass.
3. John Williams can use a beating, too.
4. James Earl Jones has the coolest fucking voice on the planet.
5. shark boy*
6. I never before noticed that Ewan McGregor has these really major moles on his face. They're extremely disturbing, considering how handsome he usually is.
7. No, really. The dialogue is just so fucking bad.
8. The story, however, stands pretty strong.
9. I slept through some of the battle scenes. Really, the digital crap is so irritating that it was like my whole system shut down. I'm also pregnant, so I am so tired...
10. Lucas' direction to the actors must have sounded like "now, say it as though you're (insert bad porn star name here)." You know, if you can't make Samuel L. Jackson sound tough, you really aren't all that good with actors.

Sorry, I wanted to like it more....

* To be explained later, if I remember. Pregnancy brain's a .....
....Huh? Did I say something?

DH and I talked about it last night and he's supporting me, even if I take our family to the brink of financial ruin (again).... Okay, it's not THAT bad a cut. I turned in my app this morning to my direct report manager, and he was nice about it (which I expected, because he's a nice, laid-back kinda guy). He just gave it to our dept manager at their 1 pm meeting. I e-mailed him asking just "was she mad?" and he stuck his head around the door and shook his head like "naaah."

Perhaps they'll be glad to be rid of me? [snort]

In the meantime, I'm doing my best to keep my mouth shut and my head into my work. The manager hasn't said anything to me yet.

Let us pray, or send out vibes, or whatever. I'd really, really like this job.

And now for something completely different.....
The marvelous DH sent me a birthday present here at work, and I got it today. I was completely not expecting anything, since I asked for new bed linens as my present, and had already been given the go-ahead to order them. But DH pulled the movies "Dummy" and "Totally Confused" off my wish list and sent them. (Both movies were written and directed by my high-school-mate Greg Pritikin, and the great songs in Dummy were written by HS pal Mike Ruekberg.)

Thanks, (insert gushingly personal nickname here). Your support means the world to me. 

It's established that I don't like my job. You know it, I know it, my fucking cats know it.

Now you know that I might be able to get a different job within my company. The only open question was whether I could keep my current salary.

The answer is no, I can't. I'd have to take about a 12 percent pay cut. The upsides are:

1. More creative job
2. Chance for advancement within dept
3. Chance to move into Store Operations, my own personal mecca
4. Work for a nicer/cooler boss
5. Work with friendlier people
6. More visibility
7. Opportunity for travel

The downsides:
1. Less money
2. Have to work my way back up to my current salary

Can we afford the pay cut? Probably not well, but we could squeak by. However, is that worth it as I embark on having another baby? On the other hand, is the continued sacrifice of my emotional well-being worth the extra $6k a year?

I'm extremely depressed.

Well, the project I've been QA-ing for the last five months went live two days ago. I'm the "junior" on the project -- the woman I worked with is considered the "Web QA," and she had primary responsibility. My main focus was order processing -- making sure that orders placed on our web site came down to the AS400 properly. She handled stuff like browsing, gift registry, and XML code.

We always launch new software and system upgrades in the middle of the night, to limit interference with business activity. So the site was suspended at like 2 am, and the web team and the QA were brought in to install and test. I was told not to bother coming in for the launch; they'd have me work on any post-launch issues after the QA was gone for the day.

When I got to work yesterday morning, I brought fresh donuts for the launch team and checked in -- everything seemed to be going smoothly. They didn't have anything for me to do. I was then assigned to my new project.

Today, the senior director of development came in and grabbed my boss. Apparently, gift registry transactions were suspended starting around noon today, when someone in our direct marketing center noticed that GR orders were coming through with the receipient's name concatenated into the first name field.

Immediately, my boss wanted answers. Let's call the Web QA Jane for the sake of the situation. GR was Jane's job. As a QA, she should know how to check the back end of sales. However, she never talked much about it, and nobody asked me to check her sales. I had done some GR orders as tests and never saw anything like this come up. So I told my boss I didn't know what had happened, but that I would take responsibility for not knowing to check Jane's tests, and that it probably came down to poor communication on our part.

Frankly, I don't think this is my fault, but hey.

So then I went into our development environments, and polled all my sales. I didn't see this happen, ever. I checked Jane's sales. Nothing. I went into the live environment to see what was going on. When I DBU'd the right file, I could see intermittent sales where the concatenation took place. It didn't affect anything other than the recipient name, on seemingly random GR orders. I let my boss know of my findings, and checked in with Jane.

The person who had written the GR code found something she had done, where she said she had "tried to get too fancy, which is what I get for not just doing it simply." Nobody on the web team seemed too upset about it, but I was concerned about taking the hit.

I went back to my research, and found a grand total of three orders, in one environment, with the same problem. Two were created by an outside partner in test, and one happened during load testing. There was basically no way I would have found these errors. I have no idea how to duplicate them, since they don't appear to have anything different going on than any other orders.

When I left today (late, from working on this), my boss seemed to have my back on it. I had sent her a spreadsheet with the screwy orders. She was going to query all the orders we had done during the QA phase and examine them. Out of 11,344 orders placed in test, a grand total of 40 appear to have the problem. It's completely random.

It's not my fault, but I feel like it's my fault. My boss sent an e-mail to the higher-ups with our collective findings, and basically offered a theory as to what the orders had in common (which is wrong) and then said "Jane and JT, I'm guessing you didn't test to this extent, please confirm."

For someone who dreads getting into any kind of trouble, this is not a fun night for me. Damn it.

1. How come it's called Jewsweek if it's only updated once a month?
2. Why doesn't anyone slap Lindsay, Mary-Kate, Ashley, Tara, and for G-d's sake, Paris Hilton?
3. Does anyone on this planet give two shits what Britney does?
4. How is it possible that Natalie Portman looks that beautiful bald?
5. Is there anyone left in the world whom Catherine Zeta-Jones hasn't yet sued? Why is such a pretty woman so freaking bitter?
6. Is Eva Longoria a slut, or what? (And yet, I still like her.)
7. Why oh why isn't anyone watching "The Office?"
8. How many more forensic crime and home/family makeover shows can this country possibly stand?
9. Seriously, why won't Paris go away? Nicky is cuter, anyway.

When I awoke, my voice had left me. Jacob asked how I lost my voice, and I whispered that I didn't know. "Maybe you left it in the living room," DH suggested. Isn't he helpful? My throat is scratchy, my eyes are dry, and I'm exhausted. Aren't we all ready to be shut of seasonal colds and allergies? Enough with this!

Our friends had to take their leave this morning, to pick up a few dogs they're babysitting and visit L's mom. DH strapped on his skates and bladed downtown to work all day (the whole team is being brought in; at least they'll get fed). I dragged the boys to Jewel, with the bribe that if we went early, they might get a "car cart." (The ones at Jewel are now animals, like the big blue whale cart, but the boys still call them car carts.)

Well, thank G-d and the store managers for the car carts. The boys happily steer their little steering wheels and Jacob makes his train conductor announcements, and I can spend a peaceful-ish 40 minutes shopping with little to worry about other than if Connie's natural frozen pizza is still on sale. In fact, the store manager sold me my laundry quarters, and I thanked him profusely for the new carts.

I played "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life" in the car three times going to the store and back. Each time, I made sure to talk to them over "life's a piece of shit/when you look at it." They were so cute and so well-behaved, and I felt so lousy, that I ran into Dunkin Donuts, bought them a bag of donut holes and myself a big hot chai tea, and settled them in the living room at home with the donuts, Ovaltine, and Thomas the Tank Engine.

Now it's almost lunchtime, and I've barely had to talk at all. I sipped my tea while reading some Grisham, and fell asleep once by accident. Danny woke me at the end of Thomas, asking to see another movie. I managed to change his diaper (without throwing up! Score!), and then he asked me for a quick snuggle before announcing that it was time for Daddy Day Care.

So I'm nursing my sore, sore throat in the bedroom, while the kids are in the living room around the corner. I can hear the TV, and the sounds of Jacob rearranging his train set. This should get me to their lunch, after which I can put Danny down for naptime and hopefully catch 40 winks myself....

Don't you all wish you had my thrilling life? If it weren't for being sick, though, I'd have to say this is much more of a peaceful Saturday morning than I'd ever expect to have alone with the boys. Sweet little things. Let's hope they keep this up!

I took today off. The highlights:

1. Despite a rough start to the day, I took Jacob to preschool for the Mother's Day Breakfast. He was thrilled to present me with a long-stemmed carnation cluster, have all of his friends jump on me, and dictate Chapter Two of Jacob's Very Long Chapter Book That He's Writing About Himself As Soccer Man to me so I could write the narrative to his drawings. At one point, I looked at the clock and quietly suggested I should take my leave, and Jacob whispered "Mommy, could you be the last mommy here?"

Damn straight, I can.

2. I had an incredibly painful ultrasound, but the end result is that Baby #3 is progressing well. The due date is officially December 20th, but all odds are actually on about four weeks before that date. After doing the measurements, the tech turned up the sound and I heard, for the first time, my baby's heartbeat. And while I did, I think my own heart stopped.

3. Our friends E & L came back into town for a visit. They met me at our apartment, and we met up with DH at the Cubs game. We had a great time, admiring in horror the enormous (and I do mean seriously-what-the-fuck-w ere-you-thinking-enormous ) fake tits of a woman a few rows down, marveling at the scary Fat Bastard in front of us who insisted on screaming that everyone was a "faggot," and eventually watching the Cubs lose the game in one horrid play.

4. We ordered Chinese food for dinner and I ate like a pig.

I must do a quickie shout-out to E&L, whose Puplife web site is garnering some serious buzz. Dog-lovers must check out their marvelous selection of personally selected canine treats and tools, and even their very special dogblog. As soon as I force DH or E to make me a pretty button, I'll link to them in the blog alley for your shopping convenience.

And now, I must return to the living room, where DH is subjecting our poor friends to Ali G. Indahouse, quite possibly the worst film by someone I actually really like, ever.

On the list of things that shouldn't bother me but do:

1. Ashlee Simpson has a music career and I don't.
2. Spam blogs get good ratings.
3. Kelly Ripa has three kids and a flat stomach. At least she admits it's mostly good genes.
4. The chef of our company cafeteria has terrible grammar. Example: "Banana's Foster and Banana's Split in the Cafe' Today."
5. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
6. Martin Short got a Jiminy Glick movie made.
7. Loews theaters will start printing notes on the fact that movie start times will be 10-15 minutes after their published times. Meaning more inconsiderate assholes will try to shove their way past me in a darkened theater, stepping on my toes and knocking over my popcorn.
8. That anybody cares who the fuck is sleeping or not sleeping with Paula Abdul.
9. Kerry Wood is injured again.
10. The Texas house of representatives spent a bunch of time, energy, and taxpayer money to pass a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. Oh, for crying out loud.

["The Song That Goes Like This," Spamalot Soundtrack]

ScubaDiva asked me in a previous post's comments why I had to cut my nails prior to using the mikvah. I started to write all of this in comments and it got away from me.

The mikvah bath (ritual bath, per Faye Kellerman) is a special thing that Orthodox Jews do to cleanse their souls. Women are to do it after having their periods every month so that they are reconnected with G-d prior to resuming marital relations. We're also supposed to do it before marriage.

I'd almost compare it to a confession, but without having to tell some guy in a collar all the naughty things you thought or did recently.

Basically, you completely groom yourself first. Shower, wash, comb EVERY hair on your body. Clip your nails. Essentially, the goal is to have absolutely nothing come between you and the purifying, holy waters of the mikvah, which is like a plunge bath. So long nails are a no-no, because dirt and other stuff could get trapped between the nail and the finger, obstructing the ability of the water to reach every molecule.

When you're ready, you present yourself, nude, to the mikvah lady. She checks to make sure there are no stray hairs or anything on your skin. When she's checked, she has you step down into the mikvah water. It's kept warm enough to be comfortable. You step in carefully, and the water is about shoulder height. The mikvah lady stands by discreetly, and you plunge completely underwater. You have to make sure you go down far enough and stay down long enough so that every part of you -- every hair, every limb -- goes under the water.

Then, after the plunge (-es, I think there are three but I can't remember), you say a prayer. Usually the prayer is painted in English and Hebrew on the wall. The mikvah lady will often help if you can't read (blind like me), or can't remember (nervous as hell, also like me). You then have a moment to yourself to pray, or think, or just float.

Then you're done. You go back into the nice bathroom and pretty yourself up.

It sounds a bit patriarchical. I was offended, as a feminist, by the idea that I needed to purify myself. However, I was suprised to be incredibly moved by the experience. Perhaps I'm just very suggestible, but something about the quiet purity of the mikvah made me really feel I had a pipeline to G-d, where I could pray directly to Him for a happy, healthy marriage. As DH taught me though, some of the things about Orthodoxy that seemed anti-feminist actually were because the Jewish faith considers women to be more spiritually enlightened than men, which explains why men have more requirements in Jewish education than do women.

The part about mikvah that bothered me was it's relation to the concept of "family purity." DH had me read a book prior to our wedding called Hedge of Roses. It talked about the rules of family purity, which essentially boil down to the husband and wife not touching each other for two weeks of each month surrounding and including the wife's period. Supposedly, once Wifey has been blood-free for seven days and does her mikvah, she returns to the marriage bed and fun can resume for two weeks. Some Orthodox couples maintain separate beds or even separate rooms. Some don't so much as kiss or hold hands during the period of impurity. I was as horrified by this concept as that of a prenuptual agreement; a relationship is hard enough without adding extra fences to jump. Besides, we were newlyweds -- how could we keep our paws off each other for that 26 weeks of impurity a year? Of course, I bet DH would now be thrilled to get 26 weeks a year of guaranteed bedtime fun. Too bad I'm too tired to contribute.

Anyway, I went to mikvah one more time, about a year after I got married. I met a girl named Sally through a friend we had in common. She was going to be married soon at the Four Seasons, and her family was all from Atlanta. Her rabbi and mother both wanted her to do the mikvah, but she was scared to go alone. I offered to go with her, and I was really glad I did.

--I am: 4% Republican.--

--"You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. (You hope.)"--