La Bohème, Moulin Rouge, Love Story… One day, there will be a great romance where the man falls sick and dies.

I went hardware shopping at Big W today. My shopping list included a stanley knife, rake, metal ruler, spray paint, toolbox and gardening gloves.

While shopping, I walked by a stack of colourful clear plastic storage bins, about 55 L in size. There were purple ones, pink ones, green ones, blue ones… They sure were real pretty.

It is traditional for field personnel in my company have one of these kind of boxes to keep their tools in. Since I have started accumulating tools, I thought it was about time I obtained a container.

I wanted a green one, of course. And all my colleauges had white ones so mine would be the prettiest in the store room — AND the only one with wheels.

The green one was in the middle of the stack. I lifted the purple, pink and blue ones out of the way, and as I was extracting my chosen green box, the box at the bottom of the pile decided to exercise its wheeling power. It rolled away away me, carrying along with it all the boxes on top! The stack collided into three adjacent stacks and everything went rolling, toppling, and crashing.

“Oh!” I thought.

I looked around. No store assistants.

I put down my toolbox so that I had my hands free to reassemble the display but the display platform was small and the boxes kept wheeling off. I really don’t know how the store assistants managed to balance four stacks on it in the first place!

I put my shopping items into my green box, found the right size lid and wheeled it away from the chaos to look for some professional help.

Like this one but greener and with more wheels.

I have an important meeting. My company’s biggest client is in serious negotiations with the EPA tomorrow morning. This client brings in millions of dollars into the company each year. The auditor can’t make it to the meeting. The job manager can’t make it. So it’s all come down to me, little Joan, Environmental Engineer. Not Auditor, not Principal, not Senior Professional. Just Environmental Engineer.

1. I started on Flinders Lane this morning. This gave me an extra ten minutes to sleep on my train as it went all the way through the Loop.
2. By midday, I was at Lonsdale Street. Vera visited me and left with two mini muffin trays.
3. After work, I bought a green tea red bean bun ($1.60) and a teriyaki sushi roll ($2.20).
4. I picked up tickets for the MSO Pops concerts for next year at the Arts Centre ($860.88).
5. I ventured into new territory going to NewQuay at the Docklands. It’s a very nice place. I went to a Christmas function ($0) and treated Miriam and myself to gelati ($4.50).
6. Back to Flinders Street Station. I cheated a little and took the tram partway ($ running after the tram, while wearing heels).

I’ve been wearing my pedometer all week. On a normal day, I walk 15 000 steps. On a lazy day, I walk about 9 000. Apparently, 10 000 each day is the target.

The Christmas season means a few things. In the business world, it means parties. “Parties?” you say. “Parties are fun! Especially parties thrown to impress clients and competitors. Especially when you get to go for free because your company has paid for you.”

I’m going to a cocktail party at the Docklands tonight. It’s being run by the Property Council of Australia for young professionals. A few of us at the environment group are going, while others are going to a Christmas party hosted by one of the environmental lab companies.

There is a reason why my boss paid for my ticket. It’s unstated but the hope is that I will charm my way into the inner circle of property lawyers, architects, developers and construction managers, throw my business card around, and one day, when these people need an environmental assessment of a property done, they’ll think of Joan.

*ka-ching!*

Good thing I’m extroverted.

I hope the function is populated by interesting and intelligent people. A good cocktail would go down all right, too.

A woman at work here was asked to help me with a project. It’s a project that has been giving me grief. I sense a week or two coming up where I will be slaving away at a computer to get the report out.

She’s come up to help me and I wish I could use her help but at the moment, I have everything, everything, under control. So thanks, but no thanks, not right now. But I didn’t say that, you see. I said, “Mmm, that’s good. Here’s what the project’s about. I’ll need your help when the data comes in. I’m also going to Brisbane in a week so you can champion the project then.” (“Champion” is corporate-speak for “progress” (verb), which is corporate speak for “do”.)

And she’s still trying to be helpful and I honestly don’t know what to do with her. I answer her questions, make encouraging noises but inside I’m thinking, “Please don’t spend too much time on this project yet. I don’t know how the budget is going!”

Look! She’s come back from lunch and, hesitant, has asked, “Joan, are you okay if I work on this project too? I’m not going to take over or anything.”

“Oh!” Somewhat flummoxed. “No, of course you’re not going to take over. You’re being helpful. No, I’m just waiting for more information to come back then we can get stuck into it.”

“Okay,” (looking uncertain) “I just wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”

I felt bad because despite my efforts, I must have been giving out “You’re annoying, go away” vibes.

This has caught me a few times in the past too. Here I am, thinking that I’m doing a good job of hiding my feelings, yet they seem to leak out and affect other people. People can tell. Either I’m not very good at pretending or people just understand human nature.

Edit 1:46PM: I sent her an email explaining what I’ve written here. It made me feel better.