Okay, je suis revenue aus Etats Unis, but I think I’ll have one
more Gratitude Monday for my trip to France.
WRT my work
situation, I don’t believe I’ve reached any Big Conclusions. I have some
ideas about the women in cybersecurity remit, which I’ll have to pull out of my
journal, organize and put into action. I rather get the sense that my
dotted-line manager would prefer me to tell her what I’m going to do instead of
me consulting her on what she’d like done.
We shall see, I guess.
WRT Megalithic Software Company, I have about half a squillion
emails involving onboarding in my inbox, which I’ll have to start sorting
today. Also, I need to really read all the Teams chats from my colleagues in
various groups to distil all the pitfalls and hacks they discovered to do with
onboarding. There might be a quarter-squillion of those.
I also need to reconnect with the MSC recruiter and follow up on
any leads she has with the Greater Group. I’m sending her some pix of France.
Like:
Whaddaya think? Will they impress her?
I mean—I’ve got options, n’est-ce pas? So, that’s good.
I’m grateful for that.
And I’m also grateful that—even though my French has atrophied,
I still get along. (It’s a bit of a curse that the quality of my accent implies
that my overall mastery is better than it actually is. This gives people the
impression that they can lay complicated histoires on me and it discombobulates
them when they notice my blank stare of desperation.)
Also—since the whole EU thing, English is the second language of
every nation, and overall, French folk of all ages are remarkably fluent in
English.
I’m profoundly grateful to have been able to take this trip,
because France speaks to me like no other country. Except, possibly, my own.
It’s been that way since my very first trip, done on
not even a full shoestring. It’s changed a lot since that journey—which is
a good thing, because failure to change is essentially death. There are things
that piss me off, but it’s like family: I still love it.
I’m grateful that my knees made it through this trip. I’ll be
candid: there were a couple of times I wasn’t sure they would. Either the
latest cortisone injections aren’t really getting it done, or my knees have
just had it. I’ll be calling my orthopod this coming week to set up The
Surgery, since there’s a lead time of a couple of months.
I’m grateful I have that option, too. And that I have health
insurance.
There was one potentially major kerfuffle on this trip: as the taxi
was taking me out to Charles de Galle, I reached for my mobile phone to take
some pix of Paris-by-auto and realized I did not have it with me. Just
as I was telling the driver that my phone was missing and ohmygod, the hotel
concierge rang him and told him they had it. He swung back, parked on Boulevard
Saint Germain while he popped back to the hotel (it’s a whole one-way street
situation) and came back with it. I may have to have the bloody thing stapled
to me.
The porter and reception person took a selfie for me:
(I tipped him €10 for the above-and-beyond. He totally earned
it.)
And, finally, I’m grateful that the three bottles of eaux-de-vie
made it back with me.
I was really worried because it turns out that Air France views the PRIORITY baggage tags as suitcase ornaments. You can’t buy them in the Old Dominion, and they’re my
new go-tos for kir royale.
Oh—one more thing: that Red Wave the Rs were touting turned out
to be more like light spotting. We are not out of the woods, but I feel better
about the near-term future of my country and its place in the world.
On the whole—a gracious plenty of Gratitude Monday.
