Off and Running

It's an illness, perhaps an addiction, mebbe a fetish. Yes, I am talking about my love affair with shoes. There is something magical about footwear. I can be dressed in faded once-were-black yoga pants that anyone with half a brain would have tossed out years ago, and as long as I have nifty shoes on my feet I feel well dressed.

Right now, I'm thinking that's a good thing.

In my new job, smart people dress for comfort. I spend my day running around with folks, helping them in various ways, some of which are pretty physical. It is not a pointy toe three inch heels kind of job. It is, instead, a running shoe situation. Ahhhh, running shoes, so many colours, so many styles!

When I lost weight, my shoe size changed. One of the big joys last year was replacing all my size 8.5 and 9s with 7.5 and 8s. And although I managed to buy about 15 pairs of shoes, I never quite made it to the running shoes/sneakers category.

Now one of the opportunities smaller feet present is that I can buy either women's runners, or shoes made for kids. Yes, a size 5.5 kids runner fits me just fine. Oh, the possibilities.

RT, after seven years together, understands that resistance is futile, though he is the first to admit that he doesn't understand why a rainbow selection is a necessity. I suppose he is also very glad that this particular addiction can be fed in $30 increments when one shops in the kids' department.

In any case, the search is on. I figure I can sneak one pair into the house every three weeks or so without either blowing the budget or ending up in divorce court. I may need a new shoe rack, but I'm up for the challenge of sneaking one of those into the house as well.

 

posted by taming at 05:24 | link | comments (7)|
motimers subscribe to taming
  Del.icio.us  Mo'Tags: work, homelife, girlie-girl

Yes, I'm Still Here Drinking Coffee

It's dreadful, truly dreadful. No, not the job, the coffee there. I'm keeping it to myself and bringing 500 ml of my home brew to work in a thermos. When I figure out how much time I will actually spend in the office, I may decide to bring in a decent coffee set-up, but for now, I'm keeping my mouth shut.

I'm drinking Sweet Maria's Yirgacheffe I roasted on Sunday. It's truly lovely this morning. I roasted a pound or so of Sidamo when I got home from work last night. It was too warm to pass up the opportunity.

Because of the nature of my work, I can't talk about it very much, well, except to my co-workers, but it's safe to say that helping folks who run out of money before they run out of month isn't much different in Canada than it was in the US. It's also safe to say that mental health issues are not always the most pressing concerns/needs for people even if the reason for being "in the system" is based on having a diagnosis or mental health related disability.

Tomorrow RT and I are driving to The Big City to pick up my poor, broken coffee grinder. At last, I will have espresso with properly ground beans. Hummmm, better do some decaf roasting, I have a feeling I will be pulling a whole lot of shots.

 

posted by taming at 05:28 | link | comments (4)|
motimers subscribe to taming
  Del.icio.us  Mo'Tags: work, coffee, mental health

Salad Days

There are probably a bazillion things I should be worried about today, it being my first day at the new job and all, but I have decided to obsess about only one: lunch. More specifically, I am worried about making room in the fridge for my huge lunch box.

I am a salad junky. We go through two of those big tubs of greens each week, and RT eats only a tiny bit of it, mostly as a sandwich thing. This particular predilection means that carrying a regular lunch sack is out of the question. Instead I have what someone might call a lunch suitcase.

My plan is to leave my lunch in the car, scope out the refrigerator, and if it appears there is room for my valise, I will go to the car and retrieve it. If there is not quite enough space, I will start small, mebbe with the mini can of tuna and the cottage cheese that are meant to go into the salad, and slowly, day-by-day, claim ever increasing amounts of fridge territory until no one questions my shelf-space entitlement.

OK, I know I'm busted. No one really thinks this is about my big salads, do they?

In truth, I am making peace with something else, using lunch as a metaphor. I can deal with the problem of introducing my noon meal into the mix, but what I am really concerned about is introducing myself. I'm told I can be a bit overwhelming. Imagine that?

Actually, this is not the problem it used to be. I am considerably less flamboyant that I was earlier in my career. I also don't look particularly threatening, oldish lady that I am. Folks may marvel at my kelly green runners (not sure if they are a Day 1 item, yet) but I can pass for sorta smart and sorta nice, well, most of the time.

These days, I'm a little softer around the edges. I've somehow learnt that it is a whole lot easier to start with cottage cheese and add the arugula and baby dill in later.

 

posted by taming at 05:29 | link | comments (5)|
motimers subscribe to taming
  Del.icio.us  Mo'Tags: work, ageing

(Not) Bringing Coffee to the Masses (Yet)

Tomorrow I start a job I'm pretty sure is just about perfect for me, and I am facing the usual return to work anxiety. Well, sorta. I'm not really concerned about learning to do the work, nor am I concerned about the "works and plays well with others" part, though maybe I should be. I'm not even worried about my wardrobe.

Nope, this stop-over in worry land is all about the coffee.

Now, if I actually worked in the office, my strategy would be straightforward. I would bring in some lovely home roasted beans, a small grinder, and a pour over. Then I would let nature take its course, until there was a general uprising focused on the need to replace the standard swill setup they currently have with something capable of producing coffee in the quantity needed to supply everyone with the good stuff.

However, I don't really work in the office, though I will be there every day for a little while. What to do, what to do?

I know that I can bring a thermos full of coffee for myself,  have a cup or two as I start my day, and then make the switch to water until quitting time. Heck, Tamingville is small enough so that I could come home for a refill on my lunch hour, if I felt the need.

This would work fine in terms of keeping myself satisfactorily caffeinated, but the issue is a bit more complex.

I know how work environments, urmmm, work. When the job is in the mental health arena, it is perfectly fine for workers to be a bit eccentric, just as it is perfectly fine to be a flaming lefty. There is, however, a line one must not cross. At no point can a worker's peculiarities stray over into what appears to be a diagnosable mental illness.

The DSM IV is the diagnostic bible of mental health. And I know there are no coffee-related categories, well, if you don't count the addiction shtuff. Still, if I talk too much about my coffee focused life, there is some amount of danger that people will start whispering behind my back and leaving pamphlets about drugs to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder next to the coffee maker (the machine that is, not me). 

And whilst I could probably convince folks that this is more in the nature of a hard core hobby than it is an obsession, chances are, the damage would be done already, and people would be on the lookout to make sure I wasn't pushing coffee to supplement my wages.

RT, in the meantime, knowing me as he does, is more concerned that in my zeal to make sure that everyone gets good coffee, every day, I will be spending my hard earned money on seeding the community with acceptable coffee pots, good grinders, and pound upon pound of freshly roasted beans. 

Silly boy. We've been married long enough to know that as math-impaired as I am, I've already figured out that spending 10% of my take home pay on a self-imposed coffee ministry is not in the cards.

Well, not yet.

 

posted by taming at 07:02 | link | comments |
motimers subscribe to taming
  Del.icio.us  Mo'Tags: work, coffee, mental health

Spaced in Space

I just read a report on CNN about how NASA will deal with unstable astronauts in space. I take some small amount of comfort in the fact that the spokesperson resisted the temptation to use a female pronoun.

It turns out NASA has detailed, written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The documents, obtained this week by The Associated Press, say the astronaut's crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary.

"Talk with the patient while you are restraining him," the instructions say. "Explain what you are doing, and that you are using a restraint to ensure that he is safe."

The instructions do not spell out what happens after that. But NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said the space agency, a flight surgeon on the ground and the commander in space would decide on a case-by-case basis whether to abort the flight, in the case of the shuttle, or send the astronaut home, if the episode took place on the international space station.

The crew members might have to rely in large part on brute strength to subdue an out-of-control astronaut, since there are no weapons on the space station or the shuttle. A gun would be out of the question; a bullet could pierce a spaceship and kill everyone.

I guess that means a gun would be an acceptable method if only the person identified as psychotic were killed or injured.

Now, it's actually a serious issue, and one for which there is no easy answer, though I'm somewhat surprised that given the nature of US politics, the solution doesn't involve prayer and the casting out of demons. 

 

posted by taming at 13:12 | link | comments (1)|
motimers subscribe to taming
  Del.icio.us  Mo'Tags: usa , mental health

Home   Blog   Roasting/Brewing   Resources/Links   About   Site Map 

Copyright © 2007 4cats2much

Web Counter