Meanwhile, at Work...

Well - the title is close. No hussies this week, but more than enough hissy fits at the office.  We moved, you see, and believe me, there is something about an office move that does not bring out the best in one's colleagues.

Between snits about the relative size of our new cubicles to drawn-out full-bore (emphasis, absolutely, on bore) battles about where supplies should be stored and who gets what chair, it was all remarkably tiresome.  I'm only glad that, as I'm still of limited use when it comes to lifting and carrying (we had to do a remarkable amount of the move ourselves, rather to the surprise of my more, um, sheltered colleagues), I took a few days off, and so simply appeared a day or two after the new offices opened and took my place.  I also held my tongue in regard to the various raging feuds I found in full swing, as I seem to have gotten, through no effort at all, a rather plum cubicle and a decent chair, which apparently puts me in a nearly unreachably lucky small percentile of us happy middle management there in recruiting and hiring.

Rising above it all, I have to say, was our doughty office manager, a wholly unflappable lady of infinite patience and more than a little bossiness vigor called Angela, who commanded the whole operation with a certain calm ferocity that did everything possible to keep even our most obstreperous complainers only moderately annoying. Myself, I'm a little scared of her, but as I'm not complaining, I'm out of the line of fire.

All of that drama aside, it's been a quiet enough week, one that makes one realize that there are, between the leaves changing and some unseasonably warm weather, many worse things than fine days in November. The new offices are far more central than the old, which means a slightly longer commute but many better opportunities for lunchtime walks, not least to a tempting array of the better men's shops. As I'm having essentially to replace my wardrobe, this is both timely and dangerous, and I'm only glad that, along with falling leaves, November does bring sales. I won't say I'm becoming dapper, exactly, but it is great fun to buy clothes that fit well and in brighter colors than I've assayed in recent years.

I'll be having the chance to wear some of the lighter and brighter of those choices in the near future, but for the moment that's news for another day.  In the meantime, on what distinctly third-tier leading man do you suppose the pulp-cover artist of the above based that leering gentleman? To me, he looks like the kind of slope-shouldered dope that someone like Sheree North would have had to fend off in what passed for a sex comedy during her brief heyday...