Of Cats and Work and Things (The Year of...)

Cat integration, further update: we have achieved proximity.

It isn't happy proximity, but they were like this for at least five minutes, no hissing or chasing, which is something.

I was imagining George saying,"No, dude, seriously, I'm not your enemy. I'm not your enemy, dude, seriously, chill out! Don't you want to play?"

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I actually felt sorry for my boss today. She is so over her head in a managerial role, and while most of the time I blow that off (it's neither my fault nor my problem, callous as that sounds, and if her inability to do her job makes my job harder, then I feel callous), today she was talking about how she's supposed to do my review and the other editor's and doesn't have a clue how to, which while it doesn't bode well for me is kind of pitiable. And then her boss asked her for some stats that she hadn't been keeping track of, that her boss apparently told her she should have been, and that's the sort of thing that's much clearer in retrospect than prospectively.

It also turned out that she's highly leery of Microsoft Excel, and at first I was kind of taken aback by that. She almost seemed scared to create a spreadsheet, and while I am far from a high-level user, I prefer Excel to Word for tracking things, so I was surprised. Still, what she said about it (that she's worked with what others have created, but not created much herself) is basically identical to what I could say of myself and PowerPoint, so perhaps it's just my perception that Excel is a more common program than PP. I mean, you can't be an editor these days without using Word*, and you can be one without using Excel, it's just ... it's just that it's so useful for certain things, and I don't think of them as complicated. What do you think?
*Or another word-processing program, but I haven't had a job that doesn't use Word.

I started one for her. We went through a few iterations, but it seemed better than leaving it to her. We'll see if that comes back to bite me in the butt.

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You know, of course, that I am emphatically not excited about the prospect of another snowstorm, as is coming in overnight. There is a bit of a silver lining this time, though. Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, I will be sleeping a little later, then continuing to edit a report on schizophrenia on the couch in my sweats, using the laptop that I brought home tonight, that supposedly works, instead of shoveling and struggling into the office through the mess. Hooray for small victories! I'm quite ridiculously pleased to neither have to ford the storm, nor feel guilt for deciding not to try. Decision: made.

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So you all know about my new-job search, as well as the new-cat search. In addition, there are some other things, bigger and smaller, that 2014 may be The Year of, for me:

• new computer. I bought mine in 2008! It is slow! Should I get another desktop, or a laptop? I'm leaning toward a laptop, but undecided.
• new TV. I bought mine in college, which means it's from around 1990. I will pause for laughter. The idea of choosing a new one is deeply disturbing; tell me what to get. My living room is not that large, so I don't want to go as big as they come, but I am excited for bigger than I currently have, and letterboxed to align with how shows and channels are these days. Meaning this century. Ahem.
• new car. I kind of hope not, it's such a big decision, but I have less confidence in my current car, and how much money is going into it for repairs, than I would like to have. Sigh.
• new cat tree/scratching post. The one I have, I bought when Pan and Harold outgrew the short one they had as kittens. So, probably 1999? It was a good quality one, clearly, but it's kind of worn out now, and most of the rope is shredded and shedding.

Want to weigh in on any of those? I filed my taxes last night, so I have a refund to anticipate spending.