HR

OK. So I was offered the new position on a different program for a different client. Wednesday.

HR calls me Thursday, 4:25pm, rightza before I leave the office, to sign the new offer-sheet. Ain't no deal. But when I stop at HR on my way out, all the numbers are wrong. Not what I had discussed with the Program Director. Especially the base pay numbers.

... and especially since I am well beyond season four. So I have a conference with the Program Manager.... then the Business Director.... and then back to HR, who adamantly will not change the SPR-11 form, which is basically the offer sheet, until the Bizzynuts Director rescinds the original offer (which they missed typed) by emailing an EF form, signed. So I pick up the phone on the HR Dimwitty's Desk, very not appreciated by Ms. Dimwitty, and call the BD direct, who instructs me to just tear up the SPR-11, which I do, which really sends Ms. Dimwitty into a dim-tizzy. Which breaks me up, but I really am a nice guy, so I don't laugh and just tell her to pull up a copy of the old one and change the numbers so we can all move beyond this bullshit.

Reminds me of a Neil Young song...

Every time I think aboutback home

It's cool and breezy

I wish that I could be thereright now

Just passing time.

Everybody seems to wonder

What it's like down here

I gotta get awayfrom this day-to-dayrunning around,

Everybody knows

this is nowhere.

Which isn't the song that sticks in my head long...

....cause I'm still in the office.... have virtually nothing to do but pack up my shit and get ready to move to the fourth floor on tuesday. And I got a phone call last night...... from someone I was very connected with a long time ago. And with whom I would reconnect with every so often.... and whom I haven't heard from in awhile... and I get this Joan Baez song buzzing in my ear, in my heart...

Well, I'll be damned

Here comes your ghost again

But that's not unusual

It's just that the moon is full

And you happened to call

And here I sit Hand on the telephone

Hearing a voice I'd known

A couple of light years ago

Heading straight for a fall

.... She invariably asks how my kids are and gives me the latest rundown on her husband. Just trading pages. Asked if I remember the cottage we went to in Eagle River ten years ago or the time in college when she got up in the middle of the night and stepped on my glasses that had fallen on the floor and was so afraid to tell me.

As I remember your eyes

Were bluer than robin's eggs

My poetry was lousy you said

Where are you calling from?

A booth in the Midwest

Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks

You brought me something

We both know what memories can bring

They bring diamonds and rust

oh.... there had been trips to the zoo in Milwaukee, plays, concerts. Things had been good. But never seemed to be good enough. There was something about my distinct sense of disorder that bothered her. and her sense of neat, tidy, clean, ordered.... were always more that I could handle. But I did love her dearly. So we talked. A long time. Without a mention of a next call or a cup of coffee...... just a talk.

Now I see you standing with brown leaves falling around

And snow in your hair

Now you're smiling out the window of that crummy hotel

Over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds

Mingles and hangs in the air

Speaking strictly for me

We both could have died then and there

Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic

Then give me another word for it

You who are so good with words

And at keeping things vague

'Cause I need some of that vagueness now

It's all come back too clearly

Yes, I loved you dearly

And if you're offering me diamonds and rust

I've already paid

Maybe it all failed, so long ago, because I didn't fill out the proper SPR-11 form.