signing ceremony

Signing Ceremony
Hotel Timeo, Taormina

The lilac peak of Etna dribbles pink,
Visibly seething in the politest way.
The shallow vodka cocktails that we sink
Here on the terrace at the close of day

Are spreading numb delight as they go down.
Their syrup mirrors the way lava flows:
It’s just a show, it might take over town,
Sometimes the Cyclops, from his foxhole, throws

Rocks at Ulysses. But regard the lake
Of moonlight on the water, stretching east
Almost to Italy. The love we make
Tonight might be our last, but this, at least,

Is one romantic setting, am I right?
Cypresses draped in bougainvillea,
The massed petunias, the soft, warm night,
That streak of candy floss. And you, my star,

Still walking the stone alleys with the grace
Of forty years ago. Don’t laugh at me
For saying dumb things. Just look at this place.
Time was more friend to us than enemy,

And soon enough this backdrop will go dark
Again. The spill of neon cream will cool,
The crater waiting years for the next spark
Of inspiration, since the only rule

Governing history is that it goes on:
There is no rhythm of events, they just
Succeed each other. Soon, we will be gone,
And that volcano, if and when it must,

Will flood the slope with lip gloss brought to boil
For other lovers who come here to spend
One last, late, slap-up week in suntan oil,
Their years together winding to an end.

With any luck, they’ll see what we have seen:
Not just the picture postcard, but the splash
Of fire, and know this flowering soil has been
Made rich by an inheritance of ash.

Only because it’s violent to the core
The world grows gardens. Out of earth we came,
To earth we shall return. But first, one more
Of these, delicious echoes of the flame

That drives the long life all should have, yet few
Are granted as we were. It wasn’t fair?
Of course it wasn’t. But which of us knew,
To start with, that the other would be there,

One step away, for all the time it took
To come this far and see a mountain cry
Hot tears, as if our names, signed in the book
Of marriage, were still burning in the sky?

-Clive James

Natalie's Cooking Show

excess email charge

I regret to inform you that, due to the current economy, I am going to have to start charging a fee for every email unless you are a gold member of our frequent emailer club (that would be my dad, Hilton Hotels, David Cseke a.k.a. Daffy Duck, and that guy from Ethiopia who claims he's going to give me a million dollars).

The fee will be $15 for every email, unless it is over sized, in which case you will have to pay $75. If your email weighs over 50 pounds you will be charged $45.

It's quite possible that, with these new fees in place, people who are not frequent emailers will stop sending me email. It's hoped that, with the over sized email fee in place, people will stop forwarding their junk mail to me, which includes shit I read back in 1996 (the Smithsonian letter comes to mind), those stupid chain letters, or emails with pictures of soldiers, hearts, or puppies.

I accept cash only, preferably a currency that's not depressed.

and just when things seemed to be calming down...

This evening at my client site, just when I thought things couldn't get worse, a bitter male employee took down all of the company's servers. I heard the sys admins over the cube wall (from my new cube, which is the old cube of the brawler, who keeps walking by glaring at me because he thinks that I asked for his cube forcing him to be moved, great, guess I'm next on the hit list) tracking the employee trying to figure out what he was doing. Then everyone started yelling "we're going down!" like we were on the fucking Titanic or something.



All hell broke loose and I realized sitting next to the lead sys admin was a bad thing. The web site went down and there were about 20 people in my cube area. The CIO came running in, pointed at me, and yelled "get her the FUCK out of here!"

The network take down was poorly timed since auditors were at the site to give a rating on their network reliability. The good part is the models I've been working on out here could be used to show what applications were critical and which servers needed to be brought up first. Though, my customer just looked at me when I told him that.

So I went on mandatory break outside by request of my customer POC, who promised to come get me and let me back in when things calmed down. It was about to rain. And me without my umbrella, in a white shirt. It did start raining so I sat down on a table that had an umbrella on it. The customer came out 15 minutes later and said "you need to take your things and leave - just work from your hotel". I was like whatever bitch, 9 hours in this looney bin is enough for me, and I headed home. Did I just say that? I meant, I headed to the hotel.



Where, as I was smoking outside, I was invited to take an "exciting ride" on the Crowne Plaza Miami International Airport hotel shuttle's newly installed ramp for wheel chairs. I was told it was "free" and that I would "really enjoy it". So I stood on the ramp with a hotel employee and we were hoisted up into the bus. Then we pretended to be in a wheel chair so the guys could practice strapping the chair in. Then we were lowered off the lift. Whee.



Not the first time a man has promised me an exciting ride and failed to deliver.

Rough Neighborhood

I'm on a very weird engagement in Miami.

First, I was informed on Monday that I could only smoke in a certain area outside the building. The area literally is the Everglades. I was warned about alligators, and laughed, until I realized the guys were being serious. So now every time I smoke I have to keep an eye out for creatures that might want to eat or maim me.

Then, yesterday, there was a bomb threat on the building. I am not working for the government, I'm working for a small company in an industry that is not known for being dangerous. It's a phone shop. Ridiculous.

Now, today, I've been moved from my cube to a conference room across from my cube because a male employee physically assaulted a female employee. He was not fired because no one saw the incident. So they are moving him to my cube because my cube has two cameras trained on it (wish I had known that before - I probably wouldn't have eaten so many cookies yesterday - the guards were probably like "oh my god - she ate 5 cookies! Look, she's eating another one!"). Theoretically he could still hit someone off camera, like me, because the conference room does not have a camera and I'm in his line of sight, but try to tell the security here anything.

And, nice to know consultants are so trusted.

I won't even go into the shit show hotel IBM put me in, except to say the front desk called me because I left four pennies in the change tray in my rental car and they were worried someone would break in and take the change. So I had to go down the elevator, using my key to get access to the ground floor, and not taking the stairs because the stair well doors are all locked (ask me how I know that), and then walk through a gate to get to my car. Then repeat the process to get back into the hotel and up to my room. And the first night I was scolded by the parking lot guard for walking a mile down the street at 8 PM because "there are gangs!" and if I wanted to walk I was advised to use the gym facility in the hotel, which requires me to go through 3 key checkpoints to access, only to discover the treadmill isn't working right.

I need hazard pay...

snakes on a plane, on a train, the hotel must be next

I have had the worst nightmares about snakes (still) for the past three days. I thought by watching the darjeeling limited again I might get rid of my nightmares, which were caused by the scene where the snake gets loose in the brothers' train compartment (it suddenly occurred to me, after racking my brain, that the origin of the skinny cobra snake in a previously mentioned nightmare came from that movie - this was confirmed when I watched it again friday, or saturday, forget which day).

This morning I woke up at 3 am and was sure there was a snake in my hotel room. How could that be possible, you might ask. You're on the 5th fucking floor. But snakes are quite devious. I mean, if one of those little reptilian bastards could bring down the entire garden of eden (with Adam being all like "Yo, Eve, why were you talking to that snake? What's wrong with you?" and Eve being like "What ever Adam. All you do is golf. I needed someone to talk to and the snake was there." and then Adam being like "Oh, so you're saying it's all MY fault we have to wear clothes now. Next I guess you'll say that all future men will be obsessed with naked women and that there might even be a magazine showing them in lingerie." and then Eve saying "Shut up and go away asshole. I have cramps.").

So, humor me for a second. A snake gets a job working at a laundry. When he finds out I'm checking in he manages to conceal himself in my towels. After the maid does her normal shit show job of stacking my linens in the bathroom, not noticing the snake hidden in the billion towels she leaves for me even though I specifically requested only one towel, well, guess it's hard to count when you're taking crack cocaine like it's a cough drop, the snake makes himself comfortable in my bed. Watches something on TV, probably a movie that he charges to my room (causing my expense report to be rejected).

Then, when he hears me opening the door when I get home at night, he hides behind a pillow. As I am a creature of habit (sort of), he knows I'll be leaving in 15 minutes to go to the gym and then get food. When I return he strategically conceals himself as a wrinkle in the comforter.

I get into bed. He waits until I'm about to fall asleep and then sneaks out of the comforter right near my face. He opens up his hood and then sprays poison in my eyes. While I'm all like "Dammit, stop it! I just had an eye operation!" he bites me. Or worse, stabs me.

And that's why I checked every drawer in my room when I got home tonight. Took all the pillows off the bed. Put my suitcase against the door so he couldn't sneak under the gap. And am currently trying to figure out how to brush my teeth without putting my feet on the floor.

Fucking snakes...