Dear Steve - thank you for stopping in, and for the advice - in future i may have to look into protected categories to get the kind of accomodation you suggest. sometimes folks are just nice, other times you have to make them play nice by sticking a bunch of rules around them. and then they still not nice but tolerable is what i'd be shooting for.

Dear Di. i am sorry to disappoint you. i am sorry, i am not a trouper.

i know i don't have the best solutions right now. the good solutions are not working and "bad solutions" are... well if something is a "solution" then bad becomes quickly relative. how bad. least of all evils. do i leave work at 3, drink and go home, or do i leave work at 2, drink some, go back, work the rest of my 8 hours (producing stuff - that is still "right" the next day), and drink the rest of my quota?

you might think alcohol renders me dysfunctional and i am just unaware. i don't drink enough to get drunk - just to barely feel it. but you'd be surprised how adaptive one can get, and others adapt too. later things start to degrade. no i don't want them to degrade... and i do put that pressure on myself, i do not need others too. i am afraid and when others tell me these thing s i grow more afraid and just want to *drop everything* and hole up.

there isn't any agency that is going to write me up. they might not give me the months pay and waggle a finger. it isn't illegal. i'm protected by very few rules. but i'm also not bound by the rules that bind "employees."

i am not justifying the amount i drink - it is a net "too much." just saying there isn't a disciplinary issue. where i lived before they could kick you off the grounds same day, but that is not here.

btw, the employee cafeteria serves beer ... a few have it.

i am not doing it for taste... (only rarely, with pizza.)

if i can say something to help reassure... it is not something i desire or miss on weekends. we didn't even have it with the crepes coz we ended up only having the salty kind.

~ waves ~