{"id":8,"date":"2006-07-28T22:27:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-28T22:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=8"},"modified":"2006-07-28T22:27:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-28T22:27:00","slug":"the-tanned-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"The Tanned Ones&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=Indent>OK, so, I went to the teleconference. Joy of joys, of course, as all teleconferences are, only this one&#8217;s better: it&#8217;s a video conference! And it&#8217;s being held in the Personnel department&#8217;s video-conference room, which means I get to shuffle off to the side while the <em>tanned ones<\/em> focus the camera on themselves.  As if anybody&#8217;s looking?  Is anybody looking at the tanned ones? I think not, but I got a <strong>look<\/strong>, just &#8217;cause of the hair, no doubt, and because I wasn&#8217;t wearing my name-badge. Or maybe it was because they weren&#8217;t included in the primary conference, but had to watch from afar. Sigh.<\/p>\n<p class=Indent>In any event, I left just when the tanned ones were starting to feel most comfortable: that&#8217;d be the point at which the consultant who was to have evaluated certain pieces of the organization&#8217;s workings said that she &#8220;just wanted the staff to have that spark that they had when they first started working here, you know&#8230;?&#8221; That was enough for me, so I bailed in time to get home to actually, maybe, knit or something? Something which wouldn&#8217;t involve my soul being drained out my ears. This is <strong>so<\/strong> much the reason I left the corporate world &#8211; well, that and the severance package.<\/p>\n<p class=Indent>But still: bread. Some day, a bakery. A <em>vegan<\/em> bakery, just because 1) I&#8217;m already mostly there, so what&#8217;s the difference, 2) honey&#8217;s <strong>expensive<\/strong> and doesn&#8217;t really add all that much to the bread, and 3) have you ever been to a dairy? Eew.<\/p>\n<p class=Indent>Unfortunately, I was just told that I could spend $100,000 re-doing my kitchen if I wanted to. But that I should probably expect to spend about $20K on it, especially because if you touch the kitchen, you have to upgrade the circuits, and if we touch the circuits, we&#8217;ve got to upgrade the circuit box because it&#8217;s in a closet, which isn&#8217;t allowed, and it doesn&#8217;t have enough circuits in it anyway. So, California, thanks a bunch for the extra $4K of mine you just spent. But don&#8217;t worry &#8211; I&#8217;m a consultant currently working for the state. I&#8217;ll get it back, and then some, because I know that you won&#8217;t take my advice, and I&#8217;ll need to hang around for that much longer. Sigh.<\/p>\n<p class=Indent>What does this have to do with bread? Well, ever tried baking in an oven which heats up whatever&#8217;s on the stove, just &#8217;cause you&#8217;re baking? Not <span style=\"color:#cc0000;\">heat<\/span>, as in stuff gets warm: <strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000;\">HEAT<\/span><\/strong> as in you slap a pot on the burner &amp; it boils after a while, just &#8217;cause the oven doesn&#8217;t quite insulate right. So, because you like to cook\/eat you decide to replace the stupid oven. With maybe one that works? And, since you&#8217;re there, you decide that it&#8217;d be a good idea to use the boxed-in space beside the dishwasher, which is now just empty and inaccessible, which means you need to revamp the whole layout. Which means at least $20K. Oy.<\/p>\n<p class=Indent>So, as I&#8217;m not baking much bread these days, much less eating it, I&#8217;ll be knitting for a while.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/3.0\/\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"http:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-nc-nd\/3.0\/80x15.png\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>This work is licensed under a<br \/>\n<a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/3.0\/\">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, so, I went to the teleconference. Joy of joys, of course, as all teleconferences are, only this one&#8217;s better: it&#8217;s a video conference! And it&#8217;s being held in the Personnel department&#8217;s video-conference room, which means I get to shuffle off to the side while the tanned ones focus the camera on themselves. As if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}