As I think I blogged a few weeks ago, they got rid of my direct superior boss, the one in my office. She had stopped talking to me, really, about the time I became a real employee, which was weird. Anyway, that is not what is important. My new direct superior works remotely and lives in Las Vegas. She seems like one of the saner people in the organization, and I like her, and don't mind having a relationship with a boss that is mostly over the phone or by email with a few visits when she shows up in Boston. She is competant and nice and is good at thinking in organized ways, and never winds up trying to translate tech-speak into normal English, with English being a second language.

However, she is due to pop out a baby on Monday, and apparently she has a doctor's appointment on Tuesday to induce if there is no baby yet. So she will then be out until the end of September. I have received rather haphazard training, and there's new software to do important stuff that they are working hard to get me using this summer, and I have to learn how to use it before Friday. It's more than a little intimidating. We have consultants who are totally happy to assist me as necessary, but it has been decided that 1 hour of their time is worth 5 hours of mine. We spent this afternoon with me remotely watching her do things on her computer teaching me how to do it. She was actually remotely accessing a computer in my office, while I was remotely watching her computer in Las Vegas, which we both found to be amusing.

Talking to our DOO today, she was like "well, you won't have Devra after Monday." And I said "well, yes, I knew that, but it was going to happen anyway, because I am out next week too." She sort of shuddered, and said she might have to come up with a reason to not come into work herself. It's going to be mad.

Whoa, I guess I just broke my "don't blog about work" rule again. Whoops.

Also, unrelated to my boss living in Las Vegas, I was able to get out of doing a telethon yesterday, but said I'd enter all the updates people learned about on the phone. So a few people wrote down lists to hand me aftewards, but most people sent me every change as they got them. I learned at the end of the day that they had been sending them to everyone. Actually, when I say everyone, I'm not counting the admin assistants, because they are sane and normal and not computer phobic and made the changes as they got them, because they figured it would be more work to send me an email. _

Yesterday, I saw people with "Impeach the British Puppet" signs with Obama's face on them. They were handing out flyers. I...looked the other way and turned my iPod up louder. I don't know which side the people who want to impeach Obama because of the BP thing are on. They seem like they are probably environmental people, and my default is to assume that I am on the same side as environmental activists. On the other hand, I like Obama and I don't think it's his fault the oil rig exploded. Considering they were activists with signs, they probably feel very strongly (possibly irrationally) about this, and I feel kind of incoherant about it, so despite feeling cowardly about it, not engaging was probably best for me. _