the ocean

My new assistant is kind of fascinating. She is perhaps the bossiest person I have ever met; she spent my first week on the job telling me how I should set up my office, what office supplies I should want, how I should enter my time, and where I should go for lunch. She is obsessed with the hot breakfast our office cafeteria serves on Thursdays; she refers to it as "bacon day" and emails me about it on a bi-weekly basis. She likes to pop into my office to "chat" without regard to whether I'm on the phone or halfway into a $5 footlong or hosting a meeting with the prime minister of Bulgaria. Last week she spent twenty minutes telling me stories about her cats. And she is vehemently opposed to our upcoming office move, as though that accomplishes anything. She primarily seems to be upset that her new cubicle space won't have a shelf. I try to commiserate, but I frankly have no idea what she is talking about.

A few weeks ago, after striding into my office unannounced to look at protesters in the plaza below, she exclaimed "Geez, I guess they don't have anything better to do. I mean, he won, support him." And last week she popped in and asked, without preamble, "are you a popcorn guy? Like a guy who likes really good popcorn?" I had to admit that I was not.

She does know how to format a Word doc like nobody's business, though, I have to give her that.