Greetings from mostly sunny Asheville.  There's a little of this and a little of that going on here.

( The scoopage... )

Okay, back to work before the folks in the cube farm notice that I'm playing rather than working.  Hugs to everyone on my f-list!

Here at approximately 2200 feet elevation, Asheville's low temperature this morning was a balmy 5 degrees, the coldest reading in FIVE YEARS.  I'm really not used to this stuff anymore. Apparently tonight will be more of the same.  Oh joy.  The good news is that the temps will moderate after that.

Speaking of elevation, my new default icon, snagged from a picture in the local paper, is of the view from Mount Mitchell, which is not far from me and is the highest peak in the Eastern US, which is not to say that there aren't plenty of similar views all over the North Carolina mountains on clear days.  I have a habit of counting ridgelines whenever I see a good mountain vista.  I see 8 in this picture, but in the original (uncropped) picture there are 12 by my count.  If anyone is interested I'll be glad to link the picture, providing I can still find it on the website.

For my f-list: Plenty of rumbling and resentment going on around the office about the details of the meeting last night, which were incomplete when I posted them.  I'll share more when I get a chance.

Finally, a very happy birthday to my beloved Jose Alberto Pujols Alcantara, who turns 29 today.  Smooches to the big guy!

Back to work.  More later.  Hope everyone is having a fabulous day.

ETA: Pad thai makes the world go 'round.  Yes it does.

So the winter solstice is upon us. It's heartening to contemplate that the days will lengthen from here on out, but at the moment I really feel for my readers up in New England. I checked my favorite weather site and learned, to my astonishment, that today in Boston the sun sets around 4:15. I've been in North Carolina for so long that I had (mercifully) forgotten how very early northern nightfall really is this time of year. Asheville is so far south and west in the time zone that our solstice sunset is at 5:21, which is bad enough.

I haven't yet posted about my holiday-related woes and will do so a different time (I'm not yet ready to go all negative after a week of positivity posts), but for now I'll just say that I'm in an upsetting situation with regards to family Christmas plans, so I'm not much in the mood to adhere to my longtime holiday traditions. Instead, I want to honor this longest night and hope that the longer days will be better ones for me (other than baseball and LJ, 2008 was a tough year). So...I dug out a couple of little candles and holders, and at 5:21 I'm going to darken the house, light the candles, and sit here and contemplate for awhile.

( Food and music, what more could you want? )

Hope you enjoyed that. I'd better get cracking on things other than LJ if I'm gonna fire up those candles in...less than an hour. Happy solstice, everybody!

******

ETA: I was just looking at some articles on the solstice and noted that it actually occurs at 7:04 Eastern time.  No matter...the longest night begins in 5 minutes so I'm lighting the candles anyway.

Aaaahhhh. End of the work week, and I'm sitting here with a full tummy, listening to some pretty mellow music. Ginny Wilder is a local singer-songwriter who, as has been said in reviews of her CDs, sounds like the lovechild of Natalie Merchant and Tracy Chapman. Good enough for me!

( Today was a good day... )

I'm mighty glad it's almost Friday.  It's been a strenuous week and I'm very ready for a couple of days away from the office.  Today, like the rest of the week, was very much up and down.  I haven't had time to post in depth about the struggles within my immediate work group; the reasons for those struggles are a long story that I'll post another time.  For now, the scoop is that today the stony silence continued between me and the woman whose desk (sans cube) is across from my cube.  Last Thursday we chatted briefly when we sat at the same table during an appreciation lunch for the nursing staff, and I thought perhaps things were going to thaw, but I thought too soon.  By Friday she had blown up at me over nothing, and now we're back to not speaking to each other at all.  I can't wait until she retires, which will happen later this year.  On the bright side, by early this afternoon things had improved with the woman in the cube next to mine, who had totally pissed me off the other day when she released a host of venom in my direction that she apparently had been saving up for a long time.  Not that we're going to be chummy anytime soon, mind you, but I think maybe the worst is over there.

The big retirement bash for our senior faculty member was around cocktail hour.  I normally am still working at that time of day, and as "retirement roast and toast" events have ALWAYS been considered work time, I had assumed that this would still be the case,  Unfortunately, I hadn't stopped to consider that I now work for The Boss From Hell, or perhaps I should call her The Queen of Mean, as in Leona Helmsley, because that's exactly who she reminds me of.  In an effort to cover my butt just in case, I e-mailed her to make sure I could count Susan's retirement party towards my hours for today.  Nope, that's not work time.  I don't think she considers anything work that doesn't involve tedium and job-scaredness.  I wonder what she would think of the several hours I spent in uproarious laughter as I joined the "upstairs crew" from down the hall in rewriting five, count 'em, FIVE songs to perform as a parody medley at Susan's big bash?  Anyway...as a result of choosing to enjoy the event, I will be working late tomorrow.  When I told my pals in the "upstairs crew" they were appalled.  Only The Queen of Mean would demand that an official organizational event be off clock just because I'm not actively working at my computer.

At least the party was fabulous.  Great food...catered by one of the best in the area.  Salmon and herbed cream cheese sandwiches on artisan bread, other similar sandwiches, sumptuous and exotic fruit bowls, brie and crackers, and so on and so forth.  A bunch of ex-faculty and ex-employees were there; it was great to see them.  Several honchos from the organization spoke and then there followed presentations by the faculty, our "upstairs crew," and Susan's group (basically, the psychology staff).  Then Susan herself got up there and gave a lovely speech, followed by her singing (very badly) a medley of Patsy Cline songs, accompanied by a friend of hers from the medical school with which we are affiliated, and at the end her 92-year-old father got up there and sang with her.  He neither looks nor acts like he's 92.  What a strong voice!  After this there was general hobnobbing for awhile, and then I came home.

The evening was basically fine EXCEPT that (long story short) I got a notification from my health insurance company that they're disabling my flexible benefits spending card (will explain another time, it's something I use to pay for prescriptions) because a transaction "wasn't valid."  When I looked through my receipts, it turns out that my pharmacy screwed up, or at least their system didn't void a transaction that they rang up on that card by mistake, and now my health insurance company thinks that I tried to scam them by paying for something non-allowable with that card.  I called the pharmacy HQ customer service line and told them what happened (my local pharmacy was closed by then), and a higher up is supposed to get back to me.  I need to call the insurance company tomorrow to tell them what the problem is and see what I need to do to get my card reinstated.  Bah.

I'm so tired that I'm seeing double, and really that's all that happened today other than browsing a bit on line after I got home.  Looking forward to baseball tomorrow night.  I hope our guys can get it together!  Off to bed I go...