I found out last night that all summer student employment officially ends on August 12, which means that to carry out my current plan of working at my job right up until school starts, I have to fill out a new set of employment forms, as if I were working for the entire school year.

Since I'm going on vacation the week of the 12th, this would be for one week of work. And while I could theoretically justify it by continuing to work part-time during the school year, I'm already running out of things to do - I'm just preparing papers and presentations at this point, the project will effectively be dead by the school year. Plus, I already have the TA job for the fall (at least).

Whatever, Gus. Suck it up and fill out the stupid forms.

The best part of the e-mail is this:

3. Employment forms are available in my office, and can be obtained anytime between the hours of 9am-11am or 2pm-5pm, Monday through Friday.

This woman takes a three hour lunch break? Good Lord.

One of the most insidious problems in any kind of relationship, and the one that I've always had the most trouble with, is not knowing when to back off. It's hard, often impossible, to tell someone "you need to back off" without feeling like you've hurt their feelings, and lacking this direct feedback, I'm left to rely on my intuition. Unfortunately, my intuition, while pretty accurate, is quite vague, and usually just tells me, "Something is wrong," at which point I default to fix-it mode. And obviously, that just makes the problem worse. This is, perhaps, why I often befriend people who have the capacity for brutal honesty - because I know that I need them to be able to say, "You know what? You're bugging the crap out of me. Don't you have something better to do?"

And while I usually respond to this with an involuntary puppy-dog-face, I know that, in the long run, it's for the best.