I'm taking a long lunch today and it couldn't come a moment too soon. I'm actually having heart palpitations at work. This hasn't happened to me in a very long time. And it's not caused by my work, but rather by my work environment. Specifically, one person in my work environment who is driving me batty. Seriously. I need to bring in some soothing music or burn a candle or something before I go insane.

Marv told me that according to someone who did some study on annoying cubemates, I'm letting my reptilian brain control me, rather than using my higher functions like emotional brain or...I don't know what. Something that would make me NOT want to build a wall between my cube and hers.

She's loud. But she's not JUST loud. She talks to her self NON-stop in a loud voice. From the moment she enters the cube to the minute she leaves for one of her four hundred smoke breaks (each at 10 minutes), she TALKS. "Let's see...it's 2:30. So I just need to get this email set up and then..." ON AND ON.

But wait, there's more! She also coughs (because she smokes like a chimney - though according to her she smokes less...less than WHAT? I want to ask, but don't), she clears her throat (loudly), she blows her nose (loudly) all the time. She has this barking laugh that drives me insane, mostly because it's LOUD.

I try to separate out what she can control (loud talking) from what she can't (nose blowing?) and mitigate my irritation that way, but it's a losing battle.

This woman has it all. She's the total Annoying Cube Mate package. I was wracking my brain yesterday trying to think of something that she could add to her repertoire that would make her more annoying, but I failed. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's someone out there who is more annoying. But I can't imagine it any more than I could imagine what it would be like to sky dive out of a rocket ship.

But what can I do? So she takes long breaks - frequently. Does it bother me that she is essentially giving her self an extra 80 minutes a day not working? yes. But would it bother me MORE if she were sitting there making loud noises for that 80 minutes? Immensely! So I say, Smoke 'em if you got 'em! Let's see if we can't make that three pack a day habit four. I know it seems like a lot, but in this life, you have to push to reach that next level of achievement! Don't rest on your laurels!

I could go on with the annoying habits, but it's enough to just vent. And I have just spent 15 minutes of my break thinking and talking about her, so that seems like enough as well.

Soon enough I will be doing my version of Pee Wee Herman in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure." You know at the end where they are showing the movie of his life and he says, in response to his girlfriend who wants to watch the movie, "I don't have to watch it...I LIVED it." That's me. I don't have to write about it, I'm LIVING it.