She knows how I feel about redheads. Well... I adore them. I don't know why, exactly - it's long been my belief that I like being emotionally abused by women, maybe. Or I like women that are diametrically opposed to me in attitude and personality. I'm not quite sure, actually.

She claims she was planning to do it before she even met me, and it has nothing to do with me. She just needs a change, she says. I feel bad because I feel like I've harangued her to the point of changing herself for me. It doesn't help that Hannah told me the only way she'd dye her hair for a guy was if she felt like she was unattractive to him as she was.

I liked her as a blonde. I really did. But I reserve judgement - I have yet to see this new color of hair. Anyway, Connie's so sweet and quiet and easygoing I doubt she can pull off red hair.

...but what if it's the hair that makes redheads flamboyant? Chicken and the egg. It'll be a good experiment.

Ben left the group here at work for management, and yesterday afternoon Karl was named acting team lead.

Much anger ensued.

You see, Karl has been with the group only a while longer than I have been, although he's been with this organization much longer than I've been with it. The other two members of the group are women. They're claiming favoritism and sexism.

I'm just keeping my head down and trying to keep from getting it taken off in the confusion.

So in the meantime, the women in the group tell me that they get the jobs that nobody else seems to want, and you can cut the tension with a knife.

I went with Janise (one of the aforementioned women in the group) to lunch at Pappa's Barbecue today, and after we got back we were standing outside my office, bathed in the glow of two monitors (it's Hell having a 21" and a 17" and two workstations on your desk, plus speakers, a CD-holder replica of the Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701D, thankyouverymuch), CDs, diskettes, keyboards, mouse, documentation, soda, tissues, phone, pens, pad...

Good lord, I feel like I'm at home. ...but I digress.

She said something that I realized was true. She said, "at least you get to do the things you like to do, because nobody can do what you do."

In a way, this is good, because I get to do the things that I like to do and am good at, and practice my skills in a commercial arena and pick up new skills to boot. I can develop myself and make myself more marketable.

In a way, this is bad, because they can see this as perpetuation - I don't get the crappy jobs because I'm always doing software development or web stuff, something that the other woman in the group, Jewel, wanted to be doing.

It's not really my fault, though - I was hired because I was so versatile and had this background. They've needed a developer for a while, and now that I'm here, there's a lot of backlog to clear up. (Actually, Randel, my boss, told me that I was basically hired because I had the hacker persona going on - I'm not a school-trained programmer in the most part (although my data structures class was pretty handy), I've got my background through hard knocks, experience and experiment.)

I just don't want the intrigue to spill over onto me. What are the odds?

She said one more interesting thing - that another group within the system may want to steal me away from Enterprise Solutions once some of my creations get out and get seen. That'd be uncool, but more money and working in an actual software or web development group... "I'd sell my soul for a donut" applies here, but then, I get an unusual measure of freedom while I'm in this group because Enterprise Solutions is supposed to be an "elite" group. It'd be a hard call.

My mother just told me on the phone that her doctor is sending her to a kidney specialist because of her diabetes being out of control.

I don't even know what to think about that. The libertarian in me says, "well, you did it to yourself, so you're getting what you should have expected." Just like, when my turn comes at the rate I'm going, I'll think the exact same thing about myself.

Then again, she's my mother. What a Mother's Day present for her. Fallout will no doubt ensue.

To top it off, Connie and Kimberly are getting a cat. Sneeze city for me, but I want Kimberly to have a pet, so I'll suffer through it and we'll see how it goes.

Have I ever mentioned that sometimes I hate my life?

restlessmind