LMNOP

This picture could have been good if it wasn't cut off.  Or blurry.  Or crooked.

Maybe for my next pet I will choose something easier to photograph, like a turtle.  Or a fish.  Or an ear of corn.

You know that movie from a few months back where that guy knows he's dying, so he writes his wife all these letters and instructions and she's not allowed to look at them until he's gone, and then he dies and she reads the letters and does all these little activities that he designed to get her to heal herself and become a better person?  Preparing to leave a job is like that, except instead of lovingly writing instructions for a person you know and love, you are blindly trying to document the procedures of a job you already checked out of for a replacement you met a week ago.  And you get the feeling that instead of finding herself magically a better person at the end of it all, the person replacing you is going to feel screwed and lost.

That's not to say I'm not trying to be helpful; I've been going in early and staying late all week trying to make sure my files are transferred to the right people and my responsibilities are covered and primed for transition.  Still, it's really hard to anticipate what someone's going to need to know, and some of it you can't really explain anyway.  Otherwise, I would need to make the following instructional documents:

• Powerpoint presentation entitled, "How to play along with the client-site Office Supervisor's borderline-racist jokes without actually appearing racist yourself"
• A copy of the Weekly Status Meeting agenda, annotated to show which segments are ideal times for bathroom breaks and which topics must be paid attention to "for real for real"
• Org Chart identifying the various people whose authorization you will need for certain tasks, as well as the people along the way you have to pretend to ask first so you don't look like you're hassling someone important
• Treasure Map leading to the supply cabinet with the good folders (the ones in the bright colors)

I feel bad that the new person will have to figure these things out for herself, but only to an extent.  After all, aren't I going to be in the exact same position on Monday when I start my new job?  I highly doubt I will arrive my desk and find a neat stack of papers explaining who's cool, who's mean, and who's the office perv.  I will have to find that out for myself as the weeks go by, and maybe if I am lucky when it's over I'll be happy and fulfilled and living the kind of life where it never occurs to me to make analogies based on romantic comedies I never saw.

MAYBE.

My friends Ashley and Matt got married Sunday in an unbelievably pretty ceremony on the Chesapeake Bay.  It was actually really, really annoying, because they are our first friends to get married and they had the perfect ceremony and location, so now the rest of us are screwed and no matter what we do it's going to look about as glamorous as Senior Night at the bowling alley in comparison.  Here's what we we're up against:

Yeah.  Oh well. 

There were some great perks of attending a wedding on the Chesapeake Bay though, the first of which was that every picture looked like a promo from some new CW show about 20somethings in a marina town. 

Secondly, the favors were Old Bay seasoning, which is really clever and Maryand-y.  It's also great news to me because having a tin of Old Bay actually doubles my spice collection.  That's good news; my Season-All was getting lonely.

A third great thing about the wedding was that Kelly was ALWAYS crying.  Girl just could not keep it together.  This has less to do with the location/theme and more to do with the fact that she is basically made up of 99% feelings and 1% texturizing hair products, but it was still funny.  Every time I turned around she was on the verge of crying again.

Even I teared up at one point, though, so I guess I can't really blame her.

There are many more pictures of the wedding here, and I keep looking at them and marveling at the fact that we are all becoming such grown-ups.  However, when that happens I simply refer to these pictures of the party the night before and think OK, maybe we're not that old yet.  Otherwise, how could you explain this:

Seriously, I havent been this busy in I dont know how long.  (Also, the cat knocked water onto my keyboard and now the apostrophe doesnt work.)  There is so much to be done--people to inform, duties to transition, desks to clean out--and just one more week to finish it all.

People, please take care of the Internet while Im doing all this crap.

SERIOUSLY, CHILD.  IF YOU KEEP BEING THIS CUTE I WILL BE FORCED TO EAT YOU.

Here are a few links to review if you're bored because you didn't get Mario Kart for your birthday.

• Friday's Dictionary.com Word of the Day was a cool one: subfusc.
• Did you hear about this teacher who sued her students?
• Umm, hopefully this umbrella is bulletproof too because I think people will want to shoot you if you wear it.
• Quiz: Can you name all the Presidents in 10 minutes?
• MacGyver movie on the way?
• For the record, I will always link to any story I find about orphaned baby animals doing cute things.
• Awesome SNL skit about The Office.

VRRRRROOOM!!

Some pictures of Pancake and Ben from yesterday's trip to the dog park.

So I turn 25 this weekend, which means my car insurance rates will go down and, oh yeah, I'm that much closer to being an old, old lady who hoards cats and spies on the neighbors with binoculars.  In other words, things are only going to get more AWESOME from here on out.

I'm thinking 25 is going to feel pretty different from 24, if only because I also start a new job in two weeks.  It's actually pretty similar to the old one, communications-y stuff, but a little more money and a lot less of a commute.  I will also be abandoning my current title of "Consultant" in favor of the snazzy title of "Senior Analyst."  Seeing as how I am hitting the big 2-5, I think the Senior ranking is certainly in order.

If you read yesterday's post you know that this job change is only one big thing that happened to me this week; so, what was the other? Well, apparently I might be narcoleptic.  I did a sleep study last month at the recommendation of my mother, and on Wednesday when I discussed the results with a doctor he was very, very excited about the results.  My case, he enthusiastically told me, is very interesting and unique because thanks to some recent breakthroughs in the study of different sleep disorders, the criteria for narcolepsy have been revised and I seem to fit the profile.

I was quite confused at this prospect, because narcolepsy does not seem to be the kind of condition you have without knowing.  Wouldn't I have noticed if I had suddenly fallen asleep while doing something? Apparently though, that only happens to extreme narcoleptics; the average narcolepsy sufferer only has symptoms of excessive daytime fatigue, cataplexy, occasional sleep paralysis and something called "hypnogogic hallucinations."

Now, I don't know why I was so surprised that my understanding of narcolepsy--which had been primarily derived from the movie Deuce Bigelow--was faulty, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when this all happened. 

(Resolved: From now on I am not coming to any medical or scientific conclusions based on Rob Schneider movies.)

I'm going to do another sleep study on Monday because the doc's not entirely sure if the narcolepsy is what's causing me problems or not--my sleep study also indicated that I averaged about 25 "respiratory-related arousals" per hour, which meant that I don't technically have sleep apnea, but I may be experiencing the same effects as a person with that condition.  The results showed that out of the eight hours I was being monitored, I only entered REM twice--once around 4 a.m. for 20 minutes, and once at 6 a.m. for 30 minutes.  During the next study I will try sleeping with a CPAP machine to see if it lets me get more REM sleep.  If that helps, I might sleep with a CPAP from now on instead of taking the narcolepsy meds.

All of that might sound a little disturbing, but honestly I'm very excited that I may have narcolepsy and/or an apnea-type condition because I always just assumed I was really, really, unbelievably lazy. It turns out I might just be a little lazy, and the rest of it is not my fault!