Smarty pants

You scored as Verbal/Linguistic. You have highly developed auditory skills, enjoy reading and writing and telling stories, and are good at getting your point across. You learn best by saying and hearing words. People like you include poets, authors, speakers, attorneys, politicians, lecturers and teachers. </td> Verbal/Linguistic 100% Intrapersonal 89% Musical/Rhythmic 82% Visual/Spatial 79% Interpersonal 71% Bodily/Kinesthetic 43% Logical/Mathematical 32% The Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences created with QuizFarm.com

No, we did not see this coming. No, not in the slightest. We are all utterly surprised, right? Actually, I'm just surprised at how far maths came below the physical.

Right. Best be off for work now.

Clerks

Barbara is one of the ward clerks. Barbara has taken to whingeing about her station in life, particularly with regard to how she has to "crawl around on the floor" looking for notes and how it's unacceptable that I don't get these things filed quickly. Barbara is apparently going to be suggesting that shelves be built in my office to hold these notes.

First of all, there is no space. The only bits of wall I have that aren't already covered by full shelves are covered by cork board and coat hooks respectively. Besides, if you built shelves over the coat racks or the pinboard, it would be construed as a fire hazard. So no.

Secondly, we're moving offices in a month or so. Which means that it's not fucking likely that anyone's going to shell out for office improvement with that on the boards. (Fine, this also means that even if we don't wind up moving for another year or so, the move is still 'on the boards' and it's a perfect excuse to maintain the status quo.) So I don't know why she's wasting her breath.

Third, if she really didn't want to "grub around on the floor for notes", she should ask me to do it. I'd prefer that to the knowledge that she's going to fuck up what little organisational system I have. She goes through my stuff like a bull through a china shop and I really, really resent it. Probably as much as she resents having to do anything more taxing than shuffle paper.

Fourth, most of the files she was talking about arrived this morning. The rest were dropped there yesterday afternoon. That does not, in my opinion, constitute an unreasonable delay in getting the notes to file. *sigh* I'd like to see her do my job for one week and see how easy it is to get the notes to file immediately after use. Besides, the ones that are currently on the floor? Got them very recently. Still using them. Ditz.

And I just got a phone call from someone who's been trying to reach this woman's ward for an hour and getting no reply on the phones. Cluebat, Barbara -- if you're going on a long-term note-hunt, get someone to cover the phones for you! *sigh* I just hope the patient gets someone at the alternate number, poor thing.

Another day on the job. Isn't it grand?

Appreciation

The consultant I work for who vanishes to Harley Street for most of the week and mainly needs me around to keep a constant flow of coffee coming has now left for the week. His parting shot as he went, though, was the following:

"I just wanted to say that your typing is excellent. We've [meaning the other consultants] have agreed that you are the best medical typist we've ever had."

Yeah, sometimes this job is a psycho-bitch from hell. (Okay, fine, mostly this job is a psycho-bitch from hell.) But it is so nice to actually be in a position where what I do is actually acknowledged and appreciated, even if it's only once in a blue moon. Besides, any more than once in awhile would just give me a swelled head, and we couldn't have that.

The Age of Aquarius

I suddenly have a not-so-vague memory of cholten99 reminding me that Kat's birthday is coming up. His, of course, is directly behind.

I haven't got them anything. I have no idea what to get them. In any case, I would like to have more disposable income than end-of-month normally allows so that my options for what to get them are not so limited. In short, their presents are going to be late.

Arrrrrrrrgh.

I should have remembered this a couple of weeks ago, at the very least when I was having that conversation with Kat about the trials and tribulations of being an Aquarian and trying to date an Aquarian. Okay, fine, work hell and after-Christmas shopping shock. I'm still hacked off with myself. I should have bloody well remembered sooner. The only reason I remembered now is because I was thinking about the paperwork necessary to book the week of my own birthday off. Bleh. Oh well; they say better late than never.

Winter birthdays seem to proliferate in my immediate circle. One in November, one in December, three in January, three in February ... that makes for one Scorpio, a Sagittarius, a Capricorn, four Aquarians and a Pisces. Is it a springtime rutting thing? I didn't think humans went on heat at specific times of year. Then again, we're all just animals with clothes on. Like those pathetic little mop-dogs whose owners put them in tartan jacket things. Okay, maybe not so much like that, because with the weather we've been having lately, even I'd get a bit nippy if I went around starkers and the pathetic little mop-dogs have fur to keep themselves warm and aren't subject to indecent exposure laws. And now I'm just babbling to distract my brain from the forgotten-birthday-related guilt.

In other news, Violet seems astounded and displeased that one of my consultants expects me to make him coffee. Apparently, her days of making coffee are behind her; she's above it. Suggesting, apparently, that if you are still flexible enough in your view of your place in the workplace to see making coffee for your boss as a) an excuse to make a cup for yourself and b) an excuse to get away from the constantly ringing phone and uncomfortable chair, you are somehow more subordinate than the average secretary. Oh, please. I just laugh now about my first day, when Dr Slevin sent his coffee back three times because there wasn't enough milk in it (if he'd just said "cafe au lait", we wouldn't have had the problem, but there you go; he couldn't have known I was very briefly a barista). She takes it as some kind of affront. If only she took all aspects of the job that seriously.

The Block

In the immortal words of everybody's favourite weaselbitch, "Argh! Ack! Fppttt!" (She sounds like Bill the Cat; I expect tongue-twanging any time now.)

Writer's block. Fucking writer's block!

I hate it when this happens. I write a beginning, decide it sucks, delete. Lather, rinse, repeat. Arrrrrrrgh. It's a fairly simple thing; I know the story I want to tell, and I will be fine if I can ever settle on a starting point, but it's all so bloody sucky! And I'm supposed to be a writer. Feh.

The first thing I am going to do is step away from the computer. Have a shower, wash my hair, calm down. Then I have choices:

1) Give the whole thing up as a bad job and spend the rest of the evening throwing my plush echidna at one of the walls while kicking myself for not even being able to write a fucking paragraph without screwing it up;
2) Consume caffeine until I either deplete the house's resources entirely or edge into minimum lethal dose territory, then just write any goddamn thing (the NaNoWriMo approach); or
3) Start from any point I can think of, remembering that the beauty of computers is the ability to add things at any point in the text you want without mass overuse of erasers, carets or loose sheets of paper.

So now I'm going to do the first thing. I'm open to suggestions about the next step.

One good thing, though. There's been this piece of grit in my left eye since this morning and I think I've finally dislodged it. It's hard to tell, though, as it's been scraping around in there all day so I think my eye's going to be a bit sore for a little while. You'd think that as a specs wearer -- and someone with long eyelashes -- I wouldn't have to deal with this kind of crap so much.

State of mental health

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Low
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

On the one hand, the questions were far too black-and-white to be any kind of gauge, so I feel perfectly justified in saying that the whole thing's full of crap. On the other hand, it came out a hell of a lot better than it did the last time I took this test. So it balances. ^_^

Screw this. I'm going to bed. Writing isn't going to happen and I might as well accept it. Though I might throw the plush echidna at the wall once, just for kicks.