Up and down and up again

Today is one of those days that foil all my attempts to feel sorry for myself.

But not for lack of trying. The old boss came back for our last "Transition Day", wherein the two new people and I get to ask our last desperate wild-eyed questions before the only people who truly know what's going on disappear from the radar screen altogether and we are left to fend for ourselves.

I still have a lot of questions (with varying desperation quotients). It's a pretty complex beast they've left me with, with a will of its own and plenty of momentum in several uncharted directions. Bossguy took a look at some of the projects I'd completed in the meantime, told me that I was asking all the right questions and that it showed that I really understood the nature of the beast and the whys and wherefores of our operation.

But really, I was just asking the questions because there is a hell of a lot of stuff I don't yet know. My dirty little secret: I wish I hadn't done quite such a good job of faking it. Now they think I can handle this when really every time I think about the big picture the bottom drops out of my stomach and my tear ducts switch to flood mode.

A lot of the little things I've been looking forward to lately got pulled out from under me today. Stammtisch is cancelled... again. We are now at the point of just having Stammtisch euthanized, to save us all the misery of canceling on each other every week. My one blissful day off that I have damn well earned is now to be marred by an unsavory meeting. And the task I was hoping to get out of on Sunday has reasserted itself, and instead of going to church I will be translating into German a speech by the Ethiopian Ambassador concerning the economic situation of his country. I am so inadequately prepared for this, it's not even funny.

But. I promised you that the feeling sorry for myself wasn't winning, and I don't think I was wantonly slinging untruths. Some days, though, it's hard to distinguish the self-pity from the just plain exhaustion.

I need a good transition here, but as I'm not finding one, I will go with unadorned abruptness in the hopes that you'll find dialectic an effective rhetorical device.

My life rocks, because I have good friends who love me (although they are all freaking far away) and Vreni's coming to visit me this weekend and she has promised to forgive the fact that I have to go to the unsavory meeting and pay my political respects. Actually, come to think of it, she is far more qualified than I for that particular diplomatic task and perhaps I can twist her arm just a little and convince her to don the mike. We'll see.

And Friendster is rocking my world lately. I have only registered one friend on it so far, but it has nevertheless shown me unswerving loyalty, giving me not one but TWO birthday prompts for her, with the effect that for the first time in... well, OK, ever, I did not forget Joanne's birthday. And she was, in her own words, "mightily impressed." I suck to the extreme at remembering birthdays, and I have always known that it hurts her feelings, resigned as she might be to my forgetfulness... and yet somehow the mental block has remained and I have failed, over and over again, to get it right. Until Friendster.

(Oh my gosh. A lightbulb just went on over the top of my head. Did you see it? It was the lightbulb of empathy. I think I just finally understood something and forgave someone... yeah. Lightbulb over head illuminates log in own eye. Ouch.)

And Friendster came through in a big way this week, too, delivering to me on a silver platter exactly that which has the power and charisma to turn this hellish week around: Sira. Sira is one of those people who increase the net wattage of the universe a little, who beam light and love and intensity and banish away the dusty dark corners where the evil thoughts gather. She's fiercely intelligent, unabashedly affectionate, unreservedly happy to be with you and prone to adorable turns of phrase. And we are sort of collectively ecstatic to have rediscovered our mutual whereabouts (though I am becoming more and more convinced that the "where" really doesn't matter as much as the "about"). I love it when you find out that instead of growing apart, your paths have taken you in reasonably compatible directions, so that picking up where you left off is made all the easier.

So, a shoutout to Friendster, and I would love to invite anyone who wants to join.