Schizohedron Bullet Points! for 8/30/06*

• IN ONE DAY FLAT, the HR person at my previous place of employment sent me a fat sheaf of forms to use for swapping my retirement funds from there to the 401(k) at my current job. I haven't dealt directly with her, so I don't know if this typical of her speed on such requests, or radically atypical, but I'll take it. The paperwork is a bit daunting, so I think I'll call her and ensure, 100%, that I am checking off the right boxes. It all seems simple, but fucking this up can have significant tax consequences. I've had the funds there for so long, and I intend to nurture them for at least another 30 years, so taking a day or so to get everything right is absolutely justifiable.
  

• THE DEPARTMENT IS MINE. Well, not quite. My immediate supervisor is off to Europe to attend a destination wedding, along with one of the other designers, a guy she's know since high school and a mutual friend of the couple. In a storm of mounting tension and frantic multitasking, she eventually disappeared sometime midafternoon, without leaving me anything from her desk to worry about. I will be the contact person for the printer, our mutual bosses, and the department leads in the editorial realm, but it's only until next Wednesday, with Labor Day coming in the middle. My absent coworkers have the "honor" of paying their full freight for the flight to Europe and the lodgings, to say nothing of tux rental for one of them, and any incidentals, all of which need to be paid in the robust euro. You want to get married in the land of your ancestors? Do me a favor and tell me you were conceived in Central Park, because that's a lot more reasonable than a transatlantic jaunt through paranoid security that, at least in one Euro airport, is now disallowing pens. Pens, for fuck's sake!
  

• LABOR DAY'S SWEET SONG: No huge plans coming up. I'm slated to see Snakes on a Plane this Friday, which if I'm lucky will set the tone for the rest of the weekend. The weather is supposed to be subpar as Labor Days go, with the leading edge of Tropical Gender Dysphoria Ernesto verging on our area. (Meanwhile, in the Pacific, according to The Weather Channel, Wake Islanders are bracing for the arrival of what sounds like an anime or trading-card character: Super Typhoon Ioke!) I do welcome the official end of the summer season, which will help clear out the Garden State Parkway traffic for my eventual return to Atlantic City and my scheduled trip to visit my parents at the shore, much like last year. More importantly, the heat of summer will yield before the glorious approach of autumn.
  

*Why yes, this is in fact my attempt to keep my hand moving, in the Natalie Goldberg sense, in lieu of a 1,000-word monstrosity of the type that loyal readers have come to expect, or perhaps to dread.