A Much-Needed Break

About an hour ago, I learned some new information from my boss that really pissed me off. I won't bore you with details, but the gist is that a conversation happened above our heads with one of *our* key constituents that has totally mucked up our year-in-the-making plan. It involves the possiblity of a lot of money, sorely needed, and a good relationship that we've worked hard to build. The big cheese at our place is not easily managed, and he has a sort of free-wheeling attitude about his ideas and getting what he wants, regardless of other factors. That's all fine and dandy if he does it in his own arena (we don't actually work for him, it's a partnership thing), but when he does it in our world it really gets ugly.

So I had just learned all this and ranted to my boss and to one of my colleagues. I came back to my desk and was fuming, thinking about whether any of my 3 usual confidantes were still here for the day. It's Friday and they often leave early for use-or-lose, so I couldn't find any of them. (I guess the Rock Star plan had already started -- hope it was fun!)

Before I had a chance to have a real explosion, though..... a red email popped up. We use Groupwise, where red emails = high priority. The subject line featured the two most beautiful words in the English language. ICE CREAM. Turns out that there was some leftover ice cream from our last monthly full staff meeting, and since it was Friday afternoon folks decided to clean out the freezer. So we just had a little impromptu ice cream social, complete with hot fudge, caramel sauce, and whipped cream. It was perfect!

And luckily, the ice cream not only literally cooled my jets, but if gave me a casual, social setting in which to touch base with one of my other colleagues where we agreed together to clean up this whole nasty situation, that was not of our making. Behold, the power of frozen dairy products.