Supervising the design department meant that I had contact with just about everyone in our office building at one time or another, and I had many interactions with this consultant. She was fairly high-level (think: group leader), but she submitted a lot of her own work, instead of sending in an intern or a jr. consultant for her.

One of the ways I judge people is by how they treat the folks they don't necessarily need to be nice to. If you're routinely mean or dismissive of waitstaff, sales clerks, strangers on the street, or administrative professionals, I don't hold you in very high regard. Sometimes people don't garner much kindness from me (if they're rude to me for no reason whatsoever, or if they're totally incompetent and have an attitude), but I've been in service-oriented positions all my life, and I think there's an inherent character flaw in anyone who thinks of people with jobs like mine as unworthy of respect.

The consultant who died was unfailingly polite to me and to anyone working on her documents. She was a cheerful, determined, very smart woman who I always liked talking to on the phone. We never joked or shared personal stories, but that's not at all necessary for me to like someone. All it takes is a little effort to be nice and respectful of the job someone does for me to think kindly of you.

At any rate, I was very sad to hear of her untimely death. I don't think she was even my age.

There's a wake tomorrow, but I won't be attending. I didn't know her well enough for that, and don't know her husband at all. Wakes are for friends and family, not for co-workers who just know each other by sight. If I can get an address, I'll send a note to her family, just to say that I'll miss her as a bright presence in the office.

What an awful week this has been. Please, no sympathy notes for me. It's not my loss, I just wanted to make sure I remembered her today.

I got to thinking about work, and remembered something that Jan had said to me when I was interviewing for my new position. She told me that most of the knowledge officers she would consider hiring would need to be bilingual, since so much of our information is sent in by folks in other countries.

Since I'm mainly in an administrative role right now, that doesn't apply to me, but I'd like to work my way up in the department, and if another language is required, I have two to choose from that I used to know quite well: French and German.

I knew both languages well enough through college to read textbooks in French or German for Art History assignments. In film class, I didn't need to read the subtitles for Hiroshima Mon Amour, which made me very proud. Even as late as when I was working for the publishing company, I could still hold a relatively simple conversation in French with a woman in my department who was from France.

However, we only have one office in France, and two in Germany, and I always liked the German language more than French. (For some reason, it makes more sense to me, even though English feels closer to the Romance languages.)

I had some time to kill today after I bought some more book binding supplies (they're going out soon, I promise! I'm sorry to everyone who's been waiting for books), so I stopped by Barnes & Noble and picked up an immersion-style set of CDs for German, as well as a beginner's workbook.

I also picked up Run Lola Run and The Princess and the Warrior; films I really liked when they came out in the theater (Run Lola Run is one of my favorite films, period). I figured I'd ease myself back into the idea of re-learning a new language, and if I liked it, I'd take formal courses.

Barnes & Noble didn't have all that many German language films, however. I've been thinking of joining Netflix for some time, and this might just be the time to do it. However, I don't know what good, contemporary German films are out there. Some folks on The Usual Suspects recommended Goodbye, Lenin! and Mostly Martha, since I'm looking for comedies or romances or thrillers. I've never liked war films, so anything to do with WWII isn't going to be enjoyable for me to watch, but if you have any other suggestions, let me know.

I'm also going to see if there's any source for German-language children's books, since the CDs I've been listening to have brought back a lot more of the language than I thought I had retained.

It was really dumb of me to stop studying German and French after my first few semesters of college. I didn't think they'd ever come in handy (sort of the way I never thought that computer programming would ever come in handy), so I lost something that would have been very valuable to me. I hope that the encouraging results of knowing the simple phrases I've been listening to means that somewhere, lodged deep in my brain, is a lot of what I learned so many years ago.

If nothing else, it'll help if I ever go to Germany on vacation or for business.

Before I left for therapy today, I opened a card that was addressed to the Cleary Family. There was no return address.

I opened it up, and saw a picture of dogs and cats and birds and turtles, all looking skyward. Inside was a beautiful message from Dr. K., who took the time to write a very long note about how special she thought Trooper was, and how much she is going to miss having him as a patient.

I called Mom and told her to be prepared to cry when she got home. I had planned on writing Dr. K. a note to thank her for being so kind to us and to Trooper, and now I have to make sure I do so first thing tomorrow, because she really went above and beyond.

I'm also going to write to the red-haired receptionist who always knew Trooper on sight, and is always very kind and talkative and generally nice to us when we come in with either dog.

It's the little things that mean so much.

After therapy (which was very cathartic today, instead of the usual "everything's pretty good" sessions we've been having), I went to Laurie's house to pick her up and go to our friend Val's.

Val's husband Stephen is at a convention this weekend, so Val was alone. Of course, the best thing to do for someone staying home alone is bring over a gory horror flick!

I bought Saw during a frenzy of DVD purchases at Best Buy the other week. It looked like an intriguing premise for a horror film, and it was on sale, so I figured I might as well add to my collection.

Saw starts out incredibly creepy, then loses itself a bit in the middle, but makes up for it in the final reel. The premise is that a serial killer sets up elaborate scenarios that force his victims to kill themselves, or other people, or usually both.

It opens in a filthy, unused public bathroom in the middle of nowhere, with two of the killer's victims chained to pipes across the room from one another. Neither one knows what he is doing there, or why he was picked to be there. The killer taunts them into trying to escape by giving them both hacksaws which aren't sharp enough to cut through their chains, but are sharp enough to cut through their own legs.

The horror of it comes from wondering just when one of them will crack and take the step of severing his own limb to save his own life. Just knowing that the hacksaws are there is enough to keep the tension high, and the elaborate scenarios that the villian uses to force folks to kill or commit suicide are surprisingly believable (for a horror movie).

The premise would have made an absolutely terrifying 45-minute film, but since it's a full-length feature, I found there to be too much padding and backstory to keep me on the edge of my seat. Danny Glover is underutilized, as is Monica Potter, who does the best she can with what she's given.

Laurie figured out what was happening from the first five minutes of the film, and only doubted herself once towards the middle. She's a lot better at figuring out plot twists than I am.

We left Val right after the movie (so that all the scary sounds of an empty house could get to her with maximum effect...or just because we were both tired), and I dropped off Laurie at her house.

Tomorrow, we've decided to do a movie marathon. We'll hit the theater early and see as many films as we can stand. There are a bunch of films on my list, and a couple more are opening tomorrow, so I expect I'll feel like a mole-person by the end of the day; blinking in the sunlight.

This vacation is going by so fast! I got an e-mail from Jan today, asking if I was ready for my "new Consulting Company adventure". I really am, and I'm looking forward to whatever challenge it brings.

But I still have three days of nothing work-related to do, and hopefully all the tragedies for this vacation are over.

Knock wood.