This cracks me up.

The end of March was my one-year review, and I met with my team leader. He gave me higher marks than I would’ve given myself, and while I was disappointed that the director of our department opted not to meet with me, I assumed that was her prerogative and put it out of mind.

So when I saw the notice in my Outlook this morning, that the director wanted to meet with me about my review, a full month after the fact, I thought my heart skipped a beat. I looked around my cube. I keep a Giant reusable bag under my file cart so that I can make quick trips to the grocery story a block away for Office food stuffs, but would all my personal belongings fit? 12-month calendar, Joe-the-Plumber signed poster from this, even though it’s coming down because of this, assorted doo-dads, boxes of Ritz snack packs and Easy Mac, framed final Calvin & Hobbes comic, Cookie Monster.

For four hours, I was pretty well convinced I was either going to get fired, or to be put on some sort of notice or work-probation. In person, she’s nice and jokes around a lot, but in e-mail, everything she writes comes across with this undercurrent of “YOU’RE IN SO MUCH DOG SHIT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.” I told her this once, and she was like, “Yeah, I can’t figure that out but apparently everyone thinks that.”

In any case, I did not get fired. I also didn’t get a raise — there’s a pay-raise freeze — but I’m okay with that, as I actually got one seven months ago, and was told then I wouldn’t get another for at least a year (we’ll see what happens in August). We actually spent about forty-minutes talking about, y’know, stuff: work, companies, the economy, our clients, and how to reconfigure the quarterly bonus plan to reward quality (and not quantity). Alas, there’s still a chance we won’t have a quarterly plan, as these actually are approved on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

In any case: hooray to being employed!

*UPDATE*

I went down to the cafe on the first floor, and the CEO was coming in. “Hey, you still working at the Bookstore?” I said yes, and asked him if he wanted me to pick up something for him. He said no, handed me a gift-card from the Bookstore, “Someone gave this to me and I’m never going to use it.” Awesome!

Edgar Mitchell — former astronaut — is front page news on CNN, asserting that “extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments.”

Right off the bat (since this is a UFO story):

1. I do believe there is extraterrestrial life.

2. I do not however (necessarily) believe that extraterrestrial life is in a routine habit of observing, visiting, or in any way giving a flying whozit about the planet Earth. I also do not (necessarily) believe that our government (or any other) is “guarding” the knowledge of their existence.

(I say “necessarily” because I do believe it is possibly in the realm of possibility, I would just need to be convinced.)

The Milky Way Galaxy — where our solar system is located — is estimated to contain two billion stars. That’s nine zeroes. 2,000,000,000. Our solar system has eight planets (sorry, Pluto). Assuming that eight is an average number, that means there are (give or take a few million), sixteen billion planets in this galaxy alone.

This is a photo of a galaxy cluster. See all those swirly things? Those are galaxies. Entire galaxies. I stopped counting at twenty. Assuming they’ve all got two billion stars and sixteen billion planets, well, shit, that’s a lot of fucking stars and planets.

As David Morse’s character said in Contact, “It’d be an awful waste of space if we’re alone out here.” (Paraphrased).

It’s kind of impossible, looking at that photo, to think only Earth developed sentient life. I mean, hell, we suspect there was simple life on Mars, and that’s our immediate neighbor. I think there are — or have been — civilizations considerably more advanced than ours. I don’t think it means that we’re being spied on or studied, and I don’t think it means that some sort of first contact will ever happen — it’s an awfully big universe, and with conventional technology, it would take one hundred and sixty-five thousand years to reach our nearest solar neighbor (Alpha Centauri).