Dear God, It's Me David James ....

You know it's been a long time since you've blogged when you can't remember your own blog address. Seriously, I should be fired from this job. Oh wait, I'm not paid. Yet. Never mind.

I won't post again about the cool aspects of my new job because, quite frankly, it's not that interesting and is repetitious (as most of this blog is, I guess). I will return to work snark, since most people can relate and, quite frankly, I am better at snarkiness than sycophantic commentary.

So I've started to work one day a week from the San Francisco office, which is huge because there is very little commute involved and the city is great. Nothing against Palo Alto, but it's not like I work near the cool area and there are only so many times that I can go to the same taqueria for lunch.

So I'm working from San Francisco, where we share a floor with some other tenants. Actual office space is at a premium and everyone shares offices, so I don't have any reserved or exclusive space based on my periodic visits.

This morning I had a conference call which began at 8:30 and, as always, I got to the office minutes beforehand. Scrambling to find some space other than the kitchen to take the call, the receptionist opened one of the shared offices and assured me that the people had been out all week.

As is always my luck, one of the true office holders shows up about 30 minutes into the call. Since all the offices are shared, it's not a big deal and we each settle into our own work areas.

I go back to focusing on my call when I start to notice that my office worker is wearing perfume. A lot of it. And it's not a soft, subtle perfume. Rather, it's a fairly potent old lady perfume which, evidently, is sold by the pint. It's a cross between Bloomingdale's fragrance section and a convalescent home.

Bless her heart, she's a very nice person but I find myself getting somewhat dizzy by the fumes. And every time she moves even slightly, the odor quickly spreads again through the 8'x10' office. Ugh.

I keep holding the coffee cup up to my face, pretending to take a sip but I'm really using it as a masking agent. It's akin to how drug smugglers use coffee beans to throw off drug-sniffing dogs by disguising the scent of cocaine, except in this case it's keeping me from going blind. Oh well, if I never post again you all will know what happened to me.

It's not me, it's her.