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good enough for happy hour
Thursday, June 28 2018
My sleep, such as it was, had been a monotonous series of fever dreams, the sort that make tautological statements about where my coughs were coming from seem like pearls of hard-won wisdom. I'd drenched my clothes and the blankets in my sweat, which is something I reliably do every time I get very sick.
There had been fierce downpours throughout the night. But that's a sound I like, so it managed to make the night somewhat less horrible. That rain continued at times throughout the day.
By this morning, I was actually feeling like perhaps the worst of my illness was behind me. I still had the sore throat, but it wasn't as bad. As for my fever, it had completely evaporated. I actually able to get up and walk around. I even sat for a time at my desk in the laboratory getting work done. I had a bit of a headache from not having had any caffeine yesterday, though that was easily fixed with a cup (and then another) of Red Rose.
This evening, Nicole asked our alternative Slack if we were having happy hour tonight. She'd missed all the dialog from before in which we'd collectively decided to do happy hour last night so as not to conflict with real-life events happening at the 2018 Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles (which Dan and Allison would be attending). I'd been too sick to make last night's happy hour, but I told her that if she wanted to "happy hour now" I was willing to jump on. So we ended up having a pretty good happy hour, with Nicole, Cameron, Allison, and me. Those who are hunting talked about our job hunt, and those who are not talked about the precarious state of organizational technology since all the people who built and understand it were fired. There were, of course, other interesting and enlightening topics, at least one of which I have sworn never to retell. I was careful not to drink too much alcohol, because I could sense I was not completely recovered.
We learned that part of the reason Nicole had been MIA was that she too was in the process of recovering from some sort of head cold that sounded a lot like the one I had. It had started with the same broken-glass-in-the-sinuses symptom and proceeded in a manner similar to mine. At some point I referred to the disease as Coach Plague, implicitly blaming it (as Nicole definitely does) on air travel. She'd been in a plane most recently to attend the director's training thing in Petaluma (which Cameron had also gone to). Among the things that had happened in Petaluma and didn't stay in Petaluma was one of the staff lawyers (the one who'd cracked down on the posting of links to Youtube music videos in Slack) ran down an impossibly-steep hill and smashed his knee at the bottom, requiring crutches for the rest of the event. Originally Cameron and I had been set to room together at the Petaluma thing, and when Cameron arrived in his cabin, he found all my materials (complete with my name) arranged on the bed I was to occupy. Evidently the venue had not received the memo that I'd been fired. I don't know what became of Allison's room; I think she'd arranged to have it all to herself, so it probably remained unoccupied all weekend while others were doubled up like Cameron and I were supposed to have been.
Another topic of discussion was how fierce Gretchen has been in my defense since I was fired. For the amusement of the diaspora, I keep posting copies of her emails to our Slack channel. These emails are to the president, the founder, some combination of the two, the Director of Development, and bcc'd to various other parties. They're, as Dan has said, "hardcore." An as Allison somewhat-indelicately put it tonight, "I wish I was schtupping Gretchen." It seems Pickle Matt, Allison's boyfriend, has only been good as a drinking partner through this whole depressing aftermath.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180628 feedback
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