This entry shouldn�t be very long and it might be a little goofy because I took some Nyquil. I�ve had a bad cold this week. It seems like it�s always something with me.

I feel like I need to get something off my chest, but I can�t think of a way to keep it succinct, and not pass out in the middle of writing it.

In a previous entry, I mentioned that I work with someone I went to college with, and she showed me a picture from then. Anyway, today was a social day, at work. It was one of those once or twice a year office parties where you drink and play lawn games in the hallways. Well, they drink. I don�t drink.

I was a little messed up in the beginning because I took some Dayquil. I didn�t want my nose running all over my game pieces.

Today, during this party, my friend produced an entire of stack of pictures, most of which were embarrassing, and not something that one would want displayed in a professional setting. I found out about it after my boss came up to me and commented to me about them.

While I�m not necessarily a huge fan of what I must do to make a living, I do take my job seriously, because I take most things in my life pretty seriously. I�m not flipping-out upset about it, either. I can usually take things in stride, and be fairly level-headed. I�d like to think that I generally have a decent amount of perspective, too.

There was no time to discuss it during the day, so after I got home from work, I sent her an email asking her to not show them to anyone else, as a favor to me. No, �Hey, Moron�� or anything like that. That would not garnered the desired result. Also, she wasn�t intentionally being malicious, nor can I say that she was totally inconsiderate.

Her people skills are not over-the-top stellar, nor is her ability to communicate. Later in the evening, when I recounted the story to Adam, he said that he couldn�t believe that she would show any pictures of me at work, without checking with me first, let alone pictures of an embarrassing nature.

It occurred to me that when she showed me the one picture last week, that was her way of checking with me. She didn�t explicitly say, �I�m planning to show these to people at work, so if you have a problem with it, speak now.� She came up to me and handed it to me, while I was in the middle of dealing with two managers, three clients and the IT department because there was a full-blown, real-life crisis going on, since literally millions of dollars are riding on my ability to send out data, and I couldn�t, because my computer was down.

I think my reaction was something along the lines of �Oh my god!� I shook my head, and handed it back to her quickly. I already had one hand on my phone, and my dialing finger poised over the keypad. I honestly don�t remember what transpired at that moment, except that, when I didn�t say much about the picture, she said, �Your computer is down?� I probably responded with a very quick summary of the consequences, followed by some urgency about needing to make a phone call. She�s not psychic, the fact that I was without a computer was the talk of the office, at that moment, because a very big client had already made a very big complaint.

I guess since I didn�t drop everything, and have a serious discussion with her about how I was uncomfortable with embarrassing college photos being shown at work, in her mind, that was permission to come back with a whole stack.

That morning, my direct manager had already tried to send me home a few times, but I was still fielding phone calls, and making sure that I could leave, from the clients perspective.

Before I left, it did occur to me to go back to my friend and ask her to not show the picture to anyone else, but I had already become the office spectacle that morning. My nerves were shot, and last thing I wanted to do was attempt to have a discreet conversation, when I knew people were watching and waiting for me to leave.

I also decided to trust her judgment. At the time, I had a feeling that would be a mistake, but I went with it.

In my email to her tonight, beyond just saying, �Hey, this is the kind of thing that could hurt someone professionally.� I also reminded her that my ex-boyfriend, who now runs an IT business in a major unnamed city, probably would not appreciate it, either, seeing as in some of photos, he�s dressed in drag. Even if it never comes back to haunt him, it�s just not nice to take evidence of some silly thing that someone did nearly twenty years ago, and pass it around as a joke.

He�s not my favorite guy in the world, and we did NOT end on good terms, but he�s still a person.

So, anyway, she and I obviously go way back, but I wouldn�t say that we know each other very well. We haven�t spoken much in the past decade or so, and I�ve definitely changed quite a bit in that amount of time. I don�t know anything about who she has become, but I hope that my appeal to humanity means something to her.

I tried to be very succinct in my communications, and not go into much depth about it, but invited her to talk more about it face-to-face, if she felt it was necessary. I figured that if there is anything that we need to hash out, this is the best way.

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