She's so descriptive and uses analogies so perfectly. She can't talk in a normal voice, she almost always screeches or hollers. I found out a couple of weeks ago that she has like 5 dogs and 2 cats, or 5 cats and 3 dogs or something. She was describing one of her dogs as geriatric and piddles all the time - and she was regretting having to put the dog down because she couldn't leave it outside this winter, but yet she couldn't leave it in the house with this problem either. I recommended a kennel - our dogs love their kennel - it's their little den and dogs are by nature denning animals. This Gem said that her dog is too sensitive and there's no way that she would be able to get her to go in a kennel forcefully. Gem said that you can't even raise your voice at this dog. This was hard for me to visualize, Gem talking sweetly to a dog. She screeches and swears at everybody else, EVERYBODY ELSE, all the time.

I found out that next week I have to travel to one of our remote sites. One of my peers is having surgery and I need to cover for her. The last time I covered for her I cleaned out her pigpen office. She (and I'm totally serious here) had like 8 years of papers covering her desk and every other horizontal space in her office. Shit was piled every where and this place has a 'fly' season meaning those black flies. Dispersed through the paperwork probably by each fly season there were dead fly carcasses. It was disgusting. I probably shouldn't complain too much - I'm sure that if somebody had to come in behind me - they would probably never get my filing system if you could call it a system.