Irritable1

I think you should've received at least a fancy Band-Aid.

Drinking and reading go together a tiny bit for me, but not nearly as well as eating and reading do. I can hardly sit down to a meal without a book in hand.

Calle tells it like it is! And to think I was dubious of her common sense just because she gave her kids into the care of some dude they met in the park...

A foodie friend explained to me that it's good to know how to kill things because he was once required to slaughter a lobster at table in a fancy restaurant, surrounded by freaking-out coworkers. Something about them serving it wiggling to prove it was fresh, a degree of certainty no one at table had been expecting.

This definitely sounds like the place in the coming-of-age story where the earnest reflection and self-evaluation takes place... ;-)

Talk about kicking things off in style! I love the humor and the weirdness.

Many congratulations!

Sorry

Oh man, "I used to be a smart kid," have got to be among the saddest words ever spoken by anyone, werewolf or not. I hate hearing them so much. Poor Boris! As for the rest, hopelessly sweet, like Timothy said, and I hope not sweetly hopeless?

I'm so sorry.

One strong syrupy coffee. Not to Vietnamese-iced strength because then I get the shakes. But approaching that. And cold water.

Excellent chapter! Really tight and believable... Though Erin was totally goading Luke at the end... But even that is believable given all the stress.

I'm afraid there's really no way to break up with someone that leaves them feeling too great. You'll need to accept that he may feel sad and that you may feel guilty. Doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do, just that there's a strong likelihood that it'll be uncomfortable.

Wow, this is an amazing story. You convey so many events, and so much emotion. The inarticulate bond between this father and son is depicted so powerfully.

Happy birthday Mike!

Happy anniversary!

So hey, I have a spider tale to tell. In Amsterdam we stayed in a house boat. The house boat had not been tenanted for quite a while. So it was dusty and all the windows were closed. And there were spiders EVERYWHERE. We managed to free ourselves of the inside spiders. That left the outside ones, several of which were ENORMOUS. And lots and lots of mosquitoes, which would come in because there were no window screens. So we did various things to keep out the mosquitoes. But here's the thing. By the fourth or fifth day, the outside spiders had all respun their webs across the windows. Like a vile sort of natural screen. And we had many fewer mosquitoes inside. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Awwww Just when I think I can't take any more sappiness...

Wow. I'd quibble a little bit with the shortness of the sentence, but its really, really good.

I'm finding the transposition of human and dog absolutely hilarious, specially the return home. I cringed a tiny bit every time Oli's dad was mentioned, but then so does he, I'm sure...

I disagree Westie. A manager has a responsibility to provide timely, accurate, and documented feedback to an employee, precisely because they have power over that person's continued employment. It sounds like that didn't happen here. New managers do tend to have trouble with negative feedback, especially if they have become close to a report. One way in which method could do better in the future is to ask for assessments proactively, and ask specifically for ways in which he could improve his performance. That'd be taking responsibility for himself. Another way in which he can improve is to monitor the professionalism of his relationship with his manager so that it does not become intimate to such an extent that it interferes with proper business communication, and it sounds like he's doing so.

Yeah, it does sound as though the supervisor behaved inappropriately, and that's probably going to have been noticed also. Once a manager oversteps into too much closeness, it's hard to come back from that. Some people want to please and be nice to everyone and it's hard for them to be negative, especially to someone perceived as a peer. She should at least have tried, though. It may well bite her in the butt again later. I'm in a sometimes-similar position with my own manager right now. We both have dark senses of humor and we get too informal kind of suddenly. I deal with it by often addressing him as "Boss," to sort of remind him that we need to keep things professional.

You know, mw, those are valuable lessons, and there are much older people, well into their careers, who are still shooting themselves in the foot at each new job because they never learned them. You'll do ok.

Didn't Cipel accuse McGreevey of sexual harassment, though? Based on the little I've read, it all sounded pretty messy, not like it was just an affair.