i dislike shrill people, especially men.

Yesterday my boss yelled directly into my ear. he wasn't yelling at me. he had decided while talking to me that the name of one of our modules needed to be changed. i told him that the sitemap of our webpage was probably not the ideal place to make that change, since we'd just printed up 200 spec sheets that we're handing out at a trade show in three days with the old name, and if people come to the website from that spec sheet looking for the module and it's not there, they're going to think we're morons.
The boss went off and I heard him discussing the name of the module with our sales and support staff. They agreed that the name was misleading.
About an hour later, he came back to me. A little setting: I sit in the corner of a cubicle. There's an entryway, and a narrow cubicle; from the first narrow cubicle there's a narrow opening into a second narrow cubicle, and I'm in the corner formed by the wall between the first opening and the second opening. So, I'm in a very small corner of the second narrow little cubicle.
I sit in a desk chair with little arms. It's a little desk chair. My 150-pounds-overweight colleague barely fits into hers. She's the kind of overweight where the weight is concentrated in front, so it's not like her ass is that wide, either. I have a little room in my chair, but not a lot.
The boss came back, leaned both hands on the arm of my little chair, and leaned towards me, and literally shouted into my ear the name of the new module.
I leaned as far away as I could, actually hitting my head on my cubicle wall, my torso pressed against the other arm of my chair, and made a big show of writing down the new name. I couldn't sit up straight to reach my mouse or keyboard without physically pushing my boss away.
He routinely invades my personal space like this, though he doesn't usually lean into my face to shout at me. I really don't think he was annoyed with me, so he didn't do it on purpose.
He corners me all the time, and I don't know how to tell him to get the hell away from me without offending him. He doesn't do it on purpose. I'm sure he has different standards of physical closeness. But I don't get that close to anyone I'm not intimate with. I'm not a physical prude; I'll even touch total strangers if I have to. I sit on my friends and relatives all the time at the slightest provocation.
But I don't like being cornered unless it's some kinky game or snuggle time or something. I'm not claustrophobic, but...
I don't know. I'm debating whether I should casually arrange a number of obstacles to gently encourage my boss to stay a little bit back. Like, my garbage can could be moved a few centimeters, or the chair I often put my feet on could be pulled out a bit, and my backpack could be nonchalantly left so that the chair can't easily be moved. (That's another thing that annoys me. It's a broken chair, and I use it to put my feet up when I injure them, which I do mildly and frequently on my somewhat strenuous hike. I also use it to keep my purse on. The boss comes, pulls the chair out, and will turn it backwards and sit on it, putting his crotch right on my sweater or my purse if I haven't moved it for him. He seems to think I've put it there just so he can sit on it when he comes to check on me.
I need to get something more uncomfortable to put there. I thought a chair with a broken seat might do it, but I was apparently wrong.)
And it's especially gross when the boss corners me and stands over me when he's eating, because he doesn't stop talking when he's eating. I end up with spittle and crumbs on my arms and, if I look up, my face. UGH.
So.
I'm still feeling a bit ill, so I might tell him to keep his distance because I think I'm getting strep throat or tonsilitis. But he'll forget, and I'll have to tell him every time.
Sigh.
Ah well. The travails of being newly half-deaf... I should claim workman's comp.

Time for a cheerier update.

I should probably post something cheerful here. Because my life is not all getting yelled at and having personal space invaded and all. I've built myself a little barricade of junk to prevent my personal space from being casually, unknowingly invaded-- my garbage can, my backpack, my shoes, my sneakers, and the chair is wedged into place and I've got my feet on it. So...
Last night was actually a lot of fun. We had German meatballs, we played with StrongBad on Dave's computer (it really, really improves Mondays to have new StrongBad emails on them. Really it does.) and then I went and played on my computer, which I hadn't done in a long time.
I decided to come up with a title and design for my website, which Dave has mentioned he might start working on again. I've settled at least for now on Inscrutable Toaster, after the story I never found a plot for. I had a setting, a wonderful character, and several wonderful atmospheric scenes. And, a title I was thoroughly pleased with. But...
No plot. So sad.
So it's a decent blog title. I mean... "slumbering lungfish" is the title of Lore Sjoberg (formerly of Brunching Shuttlecocks)'s blog, which is a pretty funny one. He has a whole explanation of it, too. Hm.
Anyhow. I was playing with designs for it, and mostly Dave and i ended up screwing around (not that way, you sickos), being really silly and tickling each other and so on. We ended up surfing a webring, which neither of us had done in a while-- starting at toaster.org (i was seeing how google-able my Inscrutable Toaster idea was), we followed the Ring of Unusual Museums on the Internet. There was some really, really, truly, genuinely terrible webdesign, such as I had not seen in some time. It was genuinely horrific.
I did get a wonderful awful dancing animated .gif of a banana, that prompted Dave to make up a song that went "I am a banana, I am a banana" which he continued to sing even after he was theoretically asleep.
So, a very silly evening, and a welcome interlude of nonsense and joviality after a long time of not doing much. I need a lot of nonsense in my life. Dave's also much more fun when he's full of nonsense. He's quite good at nonsense, for someone as logical as he is. I like it. ^.^
I'm a little stuck today; I need my co-worker T's input to finish the project-- I mean, she has to edit each page before I can submit it to our manager and to the CEO for approval. But... yesterday morning, she was out walking her dog in high heels on her lawn, and she turned her ankle. She showed up for work with an Ace bandage on it and when I asked if she'd iced it, she said she'd taken Motrin which was just as good. Fortunately we have RN's working here, and they forced her to go to the hospital and get it X-rayed. For the second time in two months, she had a foot injury like that.
Last time, it was a little bone in her foot that was broken.
This time, a major ankle bone is snapped in two places.

Well. So she's not in today. I think this might be some motivation for her-- she has to either get serious with her diet and actually lose the 150 pounds she's been wanting to, or she's going to have to give up every one of her cute but slightly impractical pairs of shoes. Mobility, or food? One's going to get sacrificed. She's the type who goes on a diet and the moment she hits a snag of stress, will go eat four Twix bars and have a six-pack of Coke.
Which means that while I turned my ankle the other day and managed to get home on it, took the weekend off, and was right as rain by Tuesday, she turned her ankle and the force of the ligament separating pulled the bone with it in two different directions.
So there's an incentive to me to keep up with this attempt at fitness. I may not care that much about a dress size, but please God, don't make me so immobile. Another coworker has started dieting because her blood pressure is dangerously high and the pressure in her eyes is giving her glaucoma. So...
A general slimming of this part of the office will have to ensue, I think. I'm making miniscule progress-- I lost ten pounds by the end of last month, but gained 5 back. They appear and disappear every day-- in the morning before I shower, I'm all nice and light, but at night after dinner, I'm 5 pounds heavier, no matter what I eat or do during the day. So...
I'm going to try to eat a little bit less, and maybe work in a little more exercise-- perhaps something intensive on the weekends, or possibly a regimen of calisthenics in the morning before I leave. I just have so much trouble being interested enough to actually do it. Sigh. How much do I want washboard abs? Especially given that no matter what I do, my abs will never washboard, and the best I can hope for is gently squishy as opposed to the violently wobbly that i have now.
Ah well. My motivation is to not ever, ever, ever have trouble climbing a flight of stairs simply because I'm fat. If I'm sick, or weary, or hurt, or drunk, or it's a big flight of stairs, sure whatever. But I do not want my fat ass to actively impede my life. No. That's just... gross. T is so gross-- it's all fat hanging from her belly. That's just not right. it's just not. I can't let that happen to me. Ew.\

So anyhow. I'm looking forward to a relaxed night tonight, perhaps eating some more meatballs, perhaps being silly again, or perhaps actually getting work done.

By the way, they've lowered the price of the Powerbooks. So tantalizingly close to the amount I have in my bank account that unfortunately needs to be spent on, oh, bills and the like.
So mean.
Drooooool.