Lucky Friday?

Yesterday a colleague who, like me, works in client service for our finance firm incited a lively workplace discussion by suggesting a work pool for the $540 million (and counting) MegaMillions Jackpot:  chip in 1 to 5 dollars apiece and he'll buy as many tickets as he has cash for by 1 p.m. today.

"Regardless if you put in $1 or $5 the winnings will be divided amongst everyone evenly."

This is finance: we're all about return on investment.  One of the Investment Managers naturally replied: "Good idea! However, the line highlighted is a bit troubling for us investment minded folks. Shouldn’t the winnings be proportional to your contribution?"

Client Service: "I figured the investment people would have questions..."

Investment Manager: "Someone has to keep the sales/marketing folks in check!!"

Client Service: "You can trust us Client Service folks, we are known for our GREAT ETHICS!!!"

Compliance Rep: "I thought that was what compliance was here for. :-)"

Operations Rep: "If it was proportional rather than equal would you put more in the pool? If the answer is yes, then go proportional and buy more tickets. If we win, I’ll put together the spreadsheet to divvy it up ;)"

At the end of it all, the pool was my CS colleague's baby, so he kept the (in the words of another colleague) "quasi-socialist" equal-share rule despite the protests of others.  About 25 of us have put in....which means about $27 million pre-tax apiece.  He's getting the tickets this afternoon and will give everyone copies so we can follow the 11 p.m. drawing tonight, ourselves. 

The last couple hours we've been klatching informally about the future of our lives and our firm should the odds fall in our favor....the joke being that if we win, will anyone remain at the firm at all, or will we all put the winnings into accounts that could be managed by each other.

Me?  I might just buy a new car.  And a cabin in the hills of Vermont.  And a condo in Seattle.  And a grand piano and a 'cello and the services of Yo-Yo Ma to teach me to make it sing. And unlimited airfare to Minneapolis from anywhere else in the country so I can see my grandma and play with my nephews more than 3 times a year.  And a guru to meditate with me every morning and lead me through 2 hours of power yoga every night.   And all the Pretty Things Baby Tree Quadruple in stock in Greater Boston, with which I would throw a block party to rival that of the Southie St. Paddy's Day parade.

Crossing fingers, y'all.  Crossing fingers.

Progress (?)

I just spent my morning pushing the browser "Refresh" on a client page at a bank website, waiting for 2 trades to settle to cash so I could then wire the proceeds to another account for a time-sensitive real estate closing. It took substantially longer than I thought. In fact, just all I did between 8:30 and 12:30 today was call the bank to expedite, refresh, refresh, call the bank again, refresh, refresh, placate client with a call saying we'd get back as soon as we knew more, refresh, explain to my manager what was happening and ask for opinion on next steps, call the bank for an update, refresh two more times, pace around my chair trying to decide if I can afford to leave to go to the bathroom, call the bank to make, sure they were expediting, refresh, refresh, and finally, breathe out.

A small error (not mine) accounted for this last-minute tomfoolery under deadline; while I paid the ulcer-inducing time-suck price, the client got the money eventually. I'm not mad....these things happen from time-to-time. Although I do wish if an ulcer were to be induced it would be for a reason involving money that was actually mine....

Several times during this period I was tempted to come on here, or to log onto Facebook, and proclaim that I was good and ready for Happy Hour. Or a Makers Mark & ginger. Or a Guinness. Knowing that saying "it's time for a drink" is one of the great cliches in response to stressful situations kept me from doing so.

In the meantime, two things happened:

1) I remembered I need to run 5 miles today, and I could do that now instead of later. I am now sitting in my tennies and shorts and leaving in 5 minutes

2) I remembered that Julie Andrews sings this song from The Sound of Music:

With each step I am more certain
Everything will turn out fine
I have confidence the world can all be mine
They'll have to agree I have confidence in me


I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
Besides which you see I have confidence in me Strength doesn't lie in numbers

Strength doesn't lie in wealth
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers
When you wake up -- Wake Up!


It tells me all I trust I lead my heart to
All I trust becomes my own
I have confidence in confidence alone
(Oh help!)
I have confidence in confidence alone
Besides which you see I have confidence in me!

I'd say there could be worse things than turning to running and self-empowerment before drink.

2-day weeks can be hell ....

...as I discovered today. 

Even on a Friday, with the sun shining.

Some work got done.  (I could not in good conscience or in deference to my employers say otherwise in a public forum. :-)  But body and mind generally resisted all attempts to be motivated.  Apples & pb, my (boyfriend) Ben Folds' Pandora channel, strategic Tetris breaks ....  eh.   It could be that I scheduled my weekly long run of 11 miles tonight after work and ain't really feeling it.  It could be that all of my wearable clothes are dirty.  Or that tomorrow, the snow comes ....  and on Sunday, ostensibly, the cold.

It was a godsend, then, that Student Driver showed up in Gmail chat about 5:30, because she saved me from having nothing to blog about with the following:

Student Driver: OMG
Karin: ....
SD: I'm sitting across from this girl at [local coffee shop]
     for hours
     she needed a seat and
     I said she could share my booth
     barely chat
     then, somewhere, towards the end, we start chatting
     and it comes out that I date men, but used to be gay
     and she vice versa
     and she says....
     (you'll love this)
     ( ...)
     I read this great blog by this girl who was gay
     for 10 years and now only dates men
     LMFAO
     so, I reached my hand across the table
     and introduced myself
     then she .... freaked out
     she said that she always thought I lived in NYC
 K: Well, you have a new blog entry, I guess....;)
     Fun stuff.

Even though I have some good deja vu scenarios because of this blog-- my favorite being when a date I didn't hit it off with went on to use his knowledge of my blog to pick up his subsequent OKC date, not to mention that Student Driver and I share unfortunate carnal knowledge of a certain scraggly Somervillian -- I can't stress how unlikely it is that, as one of this city's thousands of bloggers, Student Driver would be sharing a table at a coffee shop, one of this city's bajillion, with a regular, previously unknown reader .... who would know enough about it to bring it up in conversation with anyone, much less the author.

Worth mentioning, methinks.

Dateline 1/26/12: E St & W Broadway, Southie

Morning watch -- 7:22 a.m.:   

In one swoop

confirms

I was asleep last night by 11:30

and

up this morning by 6:40

 and

the #9 bus driver did brake

halfway between G Street and Dorchester

to pick me up

as I sprinted to catch the 7:20

which got me to Copley by 7:37

(because crowds on the 9

and E. Berkeley Street drivers 

don't seem to get going until 7:45,

 I learned)

and in the office

(after a Starbucks stop)

by 7:51,

and

while I know this indeed is not early

for most normal folks

I am not most normal folks,

 and

 I don't think I've been either

in bed by midnight

 or

 in the office before 8

 on any day in the last year

 and,

 well,

 it just seemed worth noting

in case it never happens again.

(Late at) the office

It is rare for me
to be not upset
at still being
in the office
at 10:30 on the
Friday night of a
3-day weekend.

But then again.

It is rare for me
to have finished
2-years-worth of
back-filing and
be able to
start the new work week
(and the new work year)
with a clean desktop.

Stiff legs,
sore back,
crunchy neck,
weary fingers,
get me home.

There's a glass
of Pinot Gris
(and a jar of peanut butter)
(and a down comforter)
(and a hot bath)
with my name on it.

Friends Who Are Boys: Shameless Plug

Alan has now written his first book.  He started forecasting the October 11 launch date months ago, when turning in final edits to his publisher, then a few weeks ago began plugging kick-off parties in New York and DC.  

So I bought a couple copies to help with the initial sales push, and they arrived today at the office.  They're currently sitting my desk counter so all the managers walking by would be tempted to look and wonder if knowing more about the world commodities market would help their investment choices.

I still feel too young to have a friend who has a publication for sale on Amazon.com and at Wal-Mart.  Much less someone who has kick-off parties in New York and DC and whose book jacket has a quote from George McGovern, calling it "essential reading."  Or being described in promotional copy as such:

"To understand the growing international food crisis, readers need an expert they can rely on. One of the most widely acclaimed journalists on food security, Alan Bjerga is up to the task, taking readers from the trading floor of Chicago to the highlands of East Africa to the rice paddies of Thailand on a global trek to find the causes of the food-price crisis—and the solutions."

But I'm very proud of my old bike-riding buddy ...  and have no problem making a shameless plug on his behalf.

Fri-day Par-tay

What
with
more market tanking (hooray!)
and
more obstinate political discord (no way!)
and
more flooding (damn hurricane season)
and
more terrorist threats (anniversaries, schmaniversaries),

it's
a relief
to see
the sun
and some
blue-sky
relief
this afternoon.

Seems appropriate that came
just as I'm
to get on a plane to MSP
and hang with
Cousin J
in celebration of her
wedding-to-be.

(She and I have always been
great partiers, natch.)
 


Oct 2002 -- Minneapolis
Red Zin in HS prom goblets 

Jan 2009 -- Washington DC
Inauguration meltdown

May 2011 - Columbia Heights, MN
Afternoon delight (w/Kristin & Missy)

Besides.

Haven't been to a
bachelorette party
in ages.

See ya on the other side...

Deep Thought: More chaos, please

So, let's review recent happenings, in order of happening:

Nothing.

Stock market drops.

More nothing.

Stock market drops more.

Rebel forces storm Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli

Hurricane Irene forecast to reach Category 4 and head for North Carolina.

5.9 Earthquake hits the East Coast, evacuating DC and NY high rises, felt in Boston and beyond.

US Commerce Department releases poor housing numbers; survey from the Richmond Federal Reserve bank shows a drop in manufacturing activity; economists pare back on economic growth forecasts

Stock market has best day in 2 weeks.

Popular opinion is that today's 3% rise came because bargain hunters were picking up under-priced offerings due to the crappy conditions of the last month.

Eh. I'd say we just need more chaos.

Early anniversary

Tonight over happy hour cocktails, I asked my manager if he thought the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks would cause the financial markets to panic (like they did, screamingly, again today, natch) and he suggested most likely not because a) the markets of recent years have not been reacting to terrorist activity like they used to and b) the markets already have enough to be panicky about (or think they do, anyway), but by bringing up the topic I was reminded I'll be returning to BOS via an AirTran flight from MSP on that anniversary, which caused me to declare in a beer voice that I was not going to fall into the trap of thinking bad thoughts about doing so, which led him to tell me what it was like to be in midtown Manhattan at a conference on that morning in 2001 and watch Broadway go empty and traffic cease and ash-covered people stumble past his hotel and how no one could reach him because cell phone service was overloaded and how his hotel wouldn't let him leave town until the next day because the roads were closed down, and I was reminded of that same day in the town the planes came from, of walking through the Back Bay only to encounter Copley Square doing the same as Times Square and getting to work only to get sent home and sitting on a bench in the deserted Common under the bluest (and most deserted) sky ever and hearing the birds chirp because cars had deserted the city and that it was that silence I can't forget, more than the potential panic of not being able to imagine what was going to happen next, and as we were discussing these things I realized these kinds of stories are going to fill the air for the next 24 days, and that I found it a relief to get my reminiscing out of the way early so I can get on to enjoying the rest of my summer without fear.

Market basket (o' quotables)

Even if you're weary of reading about it, it's hard to avoid the screaming headlines on the recent stock market gyrations: down 600 points, up 400, down 400 again, up 400 again.  After today's improbable uptick, no surprise that (even the) New York Times compared this week to (the obvious metaphor of) riding a yo-yo.

I myself am seasick here at the OK Finance Corral.  It's the stomach-churn of 2 NFL teams in overtime: one offense driving 80 yards, then missing a field goal; the other driving 40 yards before turning it over; the other team reaching the one-yard line and not converting a third down; and so on.

But the day ended up.  Not complaining about that.  Also, since I don't have much choice but to read things online all day at work, I've come to cherish the rare brilliance of certain bloggers, friends and journalists whose quotes cut through the millions.

My favorites ... because it's an up day:

Nico Muhly, writing today on his eponymous blog:

"I had a crazy thing where I got back from London and immediately flew to Iceland and then flew home, and all the while, this debt ceiling thing has been raging. I got kind of obsessed with it, because it seems like both sides are working with entirely different sets of facts, rather than interpretations of the facts. I have never seen so many people shout at each other, “that’s just not true!” on television before! We are having a problem of definitions. I am normally used to arguments being about interpretation ... "

Joe Nocera, yesterday in his Times column "When the Markets Swoon":

"I know that there are limits to what any government can do to create jobs. But what one yearns for is a little imagination from this White House. Someone suggested to me recently that the government could create a $50 billion fund for small business, and use it to pay, say, 20 percent of the wages of new hires for two years — first come, first served. Why doesn’t Obama suggest something like that?"

Bob Collins, posting on (the severely down) Monday morning, for MPR:

Market Meltdown: Traders Looking Worried
"One question: If the stock market is so all-fire important to everyone, how come news organizations can only figure out one kind of photograph when covering it?"

Albert Einstein, via my friend Thea's Facebook wall today:

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

And finally, San Francisco Man, via G-chat last night:

K: Since I've seen you, though, work has also been crazy for me. F***ing politicians....European and American both! The upside is that the drama is kind of adrenalizing.

SFM: Oh dear... financials. Ooogg.

K: My managers and I are jacked, running around, trying to solve problems.

SFM: I've been trying to ignore what's been going on in the stock market et al.

K: Yeah, me too. Today, particularly. The NYT likes to do these big shouting headlines and a minute-by-minute Dow Jones tally. I can't watch it or follow it.

SFM: sensationalism isn't all that sensual.

PS:  I myself am rather chuffed to have thought of

putting all these related/not-related quotes in one handy locale.

Just saying.

20-Minute Monday: Trust

Had to stay late at the gym tonight -- extra yoga, extra cardio -- because work today ran late, because it became one of those days that makes me not want to go in tomorrow.

FYI - needed the extra exercise to forcibly chill out.

I think about how I have these new found powers of relaxation ... calm ... the power to control my own actions and thoughts in a positive way.  And then comes yet another market crash of a day, on top of an already bad market week. To compound: my portfolio-manager boss is mid-vacation, and though he's dialing in non-stop from the Cape (in what I see as a noble, with young daughters and the beach in August), I'm still on the front line to field calls from the people -- our shared clients -- in panic over an irrational panic.

So here I sit, again in Copley, this time on the steps of the library, trying to stay focused on controlling what I can control ... and I can't control another human's choice to panic.

This afternoon at 3:30, as the market kept ticking downward and I kept ticking down every minute to the closing bell, I kept thinking ..... oh, for another bad day to just be over.  To hand a deep breath and a pleasant, self-serving memory to every investor dumping a portfolio at the worst possible moment over things he, too, can't control.  To send those investors into 5 minutes of the Relaxation Response!  To make every cable news anchor close her eyes and envision climbing to the top of a mountain to find wisdom ... instead of provoking her listeners to go up there with her and jump off the cliff.

But of course, right, I can only control myself and my own calm.

Can only force myself to get up tomorrow morning, go in to my desk with strong coffee, deep breathe, and not let the bile rise at every phone ring. Make my clients feel as watched-over as my manager and I can manage.  I mean, if we've been trusted by them for, say, the last 5 years, why not make them keep trusting us now?  For 5 years I've worked hard to build this trust .... an investment I myself should learn to trust.

-- Monday, August 8 (9:42-10:02 p.m.)

Boston Public Library, Copley Square

Self-Portrait (Redux)

Chaos, all is chaos.

(And this without even getting into the stock market's demise. Yuck.  Don't anyone say "2008" to me.  Ever again.)

A bustling Boston is especially odd for a random Thursday in August before the college students return. I've rarely felt the uncertainty biking city streets the way I did today, both morning commute and crossing downtown just before noon for a doctor's appointment.  It was relentless ...

....day-camp teenagers in matching t-shirts, crossing en masse against lights.

.... a beer-delivery truck double-parked behind a bottled-water delivery truck double-parked behind an MBTA van discharging passengers double-parked behind a UPS truck double-parked behind a ....

.... Duck Boats doing 40 mph down the one-lane cow path known as School Street.

.... tourists, tourists, tourists in packs in pairs on steps on corners in jaywalking mode.

.... if a corner had room for a jackhammer, utility truck and police detail, it had all 3.

.... if a block was solid with cars, it had an ambulance stuck at the back of it.

As I dodged and dodged and dodged, I forced my brain to repeat the mantra, "Be the island of calm in the midst of chaos.  Be the island of calm in the midst of chaos."

Could this be my new Zenness from 8 weeks of BHI class, completed last night?  Might that be why, at my doctor's office, the blood-pressure tech commented on my 90/40 reading with, "Hm, a bit low."

Cool. And weird.

Speaking of, you might recall my Self-Portrait from the start of things;  here is the post-course attempt:

(Let's all agree 1:05 is an improvement....)

So for the record, I DID make more toned legs .... and shoulders and arms. 

Evidently my blood pressure was low enough -- yesterday too -- that I didn't press hard enough with my apricot-colored crayon.

A girl could have worse problems.

Faith, fearlessness

Yesterday at work was ... a day.

The kind where you're doing your job the best you know how, all is well. 

Then at 4:30 something (out of your control, you might add) goes off-kilter, so someone in position of power who likes to yell decides to yell at you and demand action, so in frustration you make snide remarks across the file cabinet at the marketing rep, who gives it back as good as (if not better than) you, and by the time everyone chills it is 5:30 and the folks at Schwab have gone home and can't solve the problem anyway, and you're going to have to deal with it in the morning because you were the one who got yelled at in the first place.

I love waking up knowing the first thing I must do is solve the issue I didn't solve yesterday. It made me not want to get out of bed. In fact, I lay there an extra 15 minutes, praying for patience.
(Really. That's exactly what I prayed for. Perhaps God listens to whiners, because I eventually pried myself off the mattress.)

It was only as I stood in the shower, staring at the tile with deadened eyes, that the revelation came:

I'm decent at my job.  I've solved 100,000 problems while at it.  I must have faith that I will also solve this one. Neither my co-workers nor my clients need to see my fear.

(There's this great pose in yoga called Natarajasana, or dancer's pose, where you grab the foot of your back leg with one hand and lean forward so your back foot arches up over your head, while you thrust your front hand forward with fingers stretched.   In the class I currently take, the teacher works us into this pose and, as we're balancing and leaning, murmurs in a way that makes you want to giggle and lose it, "Natarajasana ... the pose of fearlessness!" Although I don't lose it.)

Well, that thought got me out of the shower, anyway.  It did also get me into the kitchen to make coffee.  And onto my bike alongside the dozens of UPS vans and MBTA buses heading full-speed into the Back Bay on East Berkeley .... another balancing act that requires some fearlessness.

And I realized I had that, too.

Let's see how these two qualities get me through this day.

Heartbreaker alert

Because there can never be too many pictures of a smiling baby.

Anyone want to conjecture if Henry is exclaiming joyfully over the third straight Big Up Day on the NYSE?

(Kudos to Molly at Paper Lemon Photography for capturing the expression.)

Monday at the OK Corral

So........Monday.

Market tanked hard. Seven inches of snow with a nice breeze to whip it around in.

Let's talk about online dating, shall we?

1) First, the morning....

....as I recovered from date #1 Sunday night with the young scientist. Who indeed is young, but tall. Ivy League undergrad on his way to Ivy League PhD. Spends his days manipulating strands of DNA in search of vaccines.

He evidently spends all other waking moments running. As in 110 or so miles a week of running, very quickly, several times a day. As in.....for fun, he jogged the Boston Marathon one year just to pace his brother.

Ergo, Young Scientist very much likes the fact that I run. Even moreso marathons.

Our primary difference:

He: Focussed solely on his research and running (with sidetracks to women). Perplexed how I pursue multiple interests... play piano for musicals, write, go to church, train.....spending so much time on things not remotely related to my full-time job.

Me: still trying to compute how one runs 110 miles in 7 days and otherwise has a life.

Nonetheless, good chemistry. The date was dinner in Chinatown, followed by a long walk in the cold and some making out (post-Benadryl by necessity, FYI....) at my apartment. He took the bus home in the blizzard. And we talked online today about getting together again.

I'm pleased to report all this.

2) Then, the evening.....

...where the fun never ends. As you might recall, the drywalling canoer and I enjoyed 1, brief, enthusiastic date on February 11. He was allergic to my cats. He didn't understand why anyone would ever write a blog. It was OK. But that was that, and that was OK, and there was no more.

Today he marshalled his powers and re-entered my life, via e-mail, with his charming entreaty:

DC: "Tonight?"

Hmmm. How to reply to someone physically attractive but who, in all other ways, has little idea how to butter my bread.

Ambiguously. Sure.

K: "Hey blast from the past! Tonight not ideal. Rain check?"

DC: "Rain check would be great.... I'm not sure how tonight is very realistic for me either... So, how's the boy search going?"

I tell him about my recent dates...briefly. The conversations that never turned into dates....more briefly. I joke about his silly made-up screen name and how it makes me want to remember him as that, rather than by his given name. Tell him how I enjoy learning a lot about the mix of folks one meets here.

He continues the charm offensive.

DC: "Why do I have a feeling you are having all these experiences to fill the pages of the book!? ...You may hate me, but I actually forgot your name / Nonetheless / i think i would like it if you made one up too ;-)"

Loverly.

All that and a slice of baloney to sleep on.

Trends

Yesterday was a very bad stock market day. So was last Friday, and so was last Thursday.

Yesterday started to feel like October all over again.....down 200 points one day, down another 200 points the next. A third day of down is a sucker punch. Except that it feels crunchier because the Dow Jones Index itself is worth 4000 points less than October. 200 points is now a much larger percentage of the whole.

My office is not in a panic, so much as a state of confused optimism. That is the mood an investment management firm works to project: Something will eventually, again, go up instead of down. Because something will. I admire this. Although I'm relieved I'm pushing paper, not trying to figure out what companies (if any) have northward momentum in the near future.

The online dating world seems immune to economic turmoil. This morning as I checked my OKC inbox and responded to a couple messages, 3 different men sent IM chat requests. So you might see how OKC can be an ADD addiction during the workday if I let it. Often I am faced with this choice of keeping busy:

a) creating new-account-paperwork flow spreadsheets for the marketing department;

b) clicking refresh every 10 seconds on the Yahoo! Finance screen to see just how quickly the Dow is falling, and yelling at the screen when it does;

c) responding to the invitation of a 25-year-old man, who has the day off from work, whose opening line is "you are very, very hot!"

Of course, yes, I know. Technically I am only getting paid for a).

But what can I say? If the # of hits on my OKC profile is trending upwards....shouldn't I be riding it?

(Setting a good example for my company, in theory, say.....?)

Update, 1:31 p.m. As of this hour the Dow has gained back 153 points today. It might be Ben Bernanke talking and raising confidence. Or it might be that analysts have started checking me out on OKC.

Stay tuned.

Tuesday chronicles

Yesterday was one of Those Days at work. Not awful for any one reason. Not even awful at all. Honestly, not a thing to complain about.

But wow, was I cranky.

1) True response to e-mail from client requesting statement:

"What the F#$%?!"

2) True response to an e-mail from a co-worker asking the status of an account opening:

"What the F#$%?!"

3) True (muttered under breath) response to boss, asking when I was going to send out the client Christmas cards:

"What the F#$%?!"

I wanted to write a blog entry, and then realized that it would be one big whine. So I didn't write anything. This resulted in more crankiness...for leading such a blah existence. At least 15 times I thought: "I so wish I had a story about randomly making-out in the men's bathroom with someone I shouldn't be making out with."

(Tomorrow: the company Christmas party. Always a ripe field for such possibilities...)

While in Manhattan with Joshua on Sunday, I spent $4 at the Strand Bookstore's half-price table on Fifth Avenue for The Final Days, Woodward & Bernstein's blow-by-blow of Watergate, told from inside President Nixon's circle. I've been devouring it ever since.....on the Greyhound back to Boston, on the #9 to work, in the bathtub, while falling asleep on my sofa last night after a very full glass of merlot.

Which leads to the other prevailing thought I also thought (more than) 15 times yesterday:

"So.. this is a bad day. But hell. Richard Nixon had like 638 bad days....in a row.....and every one containing a special prosecutor and a Congressional committee and the Vietnam Conflict and inflation and a sense that he was being tormented by his enemies. He even had to quit the presidency....

...and still he managed to smile."

Sign o' the (market) times

I know today if I'm going to jest about the economy, it should be earlier than later. A potentially tanking market day is in process.

(Although. An hour ago I overheard someone comment that, based on how the market could have reacted to last night's Senate rejection of the auto industry bailout bill: "I thought we were going to open down 5 or 6 percent. It could be a lot worse.")

Meanwhile, one of our company head honchos e-mailed an invite about the holiday party next week. To no surprise, the annual bash---last year at Icarus with free drinks and a raw bar the size of the Charles River Basin---is scaled back to in-house employees-only. Wine and beer is provided. Food is potluck. The theme: White Elephant Gift Exchange.

A friend, Eric, was employed at a large Wall Street firm in a previous career. He knows finance houses. He knows financiers and how they like to party. I forwarded him my boss' invite, somehow sobered by the swapping of used gifts instead of receiving expensive free ones from management.

E: That has to be one of the signs of the apocalypse.

K: Yes. Did you notice it is also a potluck? Is there a way to go one step beyond the apocalypse?

E: I did. Weird.

One of the things I admire most about my company is its belief in morale. And when the market is down and profits are down, they could have cut out a social gathering altogether and did not.

Although I will gladly take portfolio manager gift ideas. Scary.

Damn straight, you can flirt in a recession

I spend several hours a day on the phone with people who work for banks. I flirt with very few of them. Not that no one is flirtable.....it's just difficult to work up the energy when a) there are no visuals; b) the state of most of our client accounts these days is just not that libido-raising for anyone.

Occasionally, I hit up someone in a good mood with a sexy voice.

Just got off with a rep from Charles Schwab I've never before spoken with. Don't even recall his name.....just that he's in Orlando with all the service team reps and works for the Southern Region. We only connected because my own New England team tried to send me into Vanessa's voicemail and hit a wrong button.

Therefore, I needed to ask Schwab Man to send me back to New England and Vanessa's voicemail. He didn't know Vanessa, so we had to brainstorm other folks he might know and could connect me with.

Five minutes later Schwab Man and I were still talking about how he had to work until 6 o'clock, about how I could find service team folks on the photo section of the Schwab website, and how Schwab should be so kind and also post pictures of investment advisor personnel so we could all see each other, which would be kind of like an institutional finance Facebook and promote social networking, although that might bring up some issues with compliance and conflict of interest, and....

Anyway, it went on for a bit and was fun. Probably evolved because I had only just downed a grande Starbucks Red-Eye and had the juice in my veins.

Oh, hell. Whatever it takes. If all that's required to get me in the mood is coffee, life is good.

Anger (Warning: adult content)*

Somedays I get angry at my feet for hurting. Last night I ran hills, and today my feet just hurt all day.

Then I get more angry when clients take their accounts away from our firm, and I have to help them do it. I helped millions of dollars of assets move today.

And then Damien Rice, my favorite Irish boy, comes on the iPod with *(warning: adult content) "Woman Like a Man". Wicked guitar riff to start. D minor. Sassy. I'm sitting at the computer, closing accounts and icing my feet, grooving to the walking bass, getting by. Damien wails. The chorus is a relentless chant. I'm thinking

this is my song today. It is angry. It is me. I need to be this song.

I play it many, many times, maybe 20 or 30, which is what I do some days to distract myself. Not so much listening to the lyrics. Then, perhaps on the 10th go-round, I clearly recognize a phrase: "wanna get f***ed inside-out." And then again.

I listen more closely. Damien's got a mouth on him, to be sure. Lots of metaphors, but between the lines, clearly an angry song about sex. Definitely not your father's Marvin Gaye put-on-the-moves song.

Reminded of something the CFO said when we were dating, after I'd send him snippets of blog entries that were, as any good date story should be, edited for public consumption:

"I do like reading how you view me and us in our time together, knowing Grandma might read it, and as I've said, I wonder how you'd paint the picture if (you had) complete anonymity...."

This is not an anonymous blog. I wanted to write about this song's effect on my mood today, and I did work pretty assiduously to not offend people....Grandma and otherwise.

And am generally not a fan of angry songs about sex. (Really. Play me the Cranberries singing about lingering if you want to woo me.) Before today, I really didn't know any angry songs about sex. But today I spent most of the workday listening to an angry song about sex. It did help me corral my anger. Go figure.

It would have been more interesting, probably, to paint the picture according to the CFO's wonderings.