Irrelevant Cheetah

I emailed this to my boss today. I hope she says yes.

Jan,

Now that the backlog is gone and things should settle down a bit around here, I have a question for you: Would it be possible for me to make a visit to the North Slope? Just for a day or so?

No, there’s absolutely no professional reason for me to go up there, unless you count me wanting to see the tools I’ve been cursing for the past few months. No, it makes no business sense whatsoever, and my time would probably be better served learning MCNL edits and training ferrets to do the Macarena. But visiting the North Slope of Alaska (particularly the oilfields) is something that not many people in the world ever get to do, and I’d like to take my camera. Since I’m a writer, perhaps I could get an article out of it as well (minus any proprietary information, of course.)

I am aware that I would need an escort unless I take the training class. If there are no XXX* employees available for escort duty I would be willing to take that class - once again, not the most efficient use of XXX’s* dime, I know. However, I happen to know that XXX* has lots of dimes - far more than I do, as a matter of fact, and most of mine are earmarked for silly things like bills and whatnot.

I know, it’s a tall order, and if it’s totally impossible, I understand. But I wanted to ask. The worst that can happen is that you say no. (Actually, I suppose the worst that could happen is that you forward this email to one or more Big Cheeses in Houston and elsewhere, and you all have a big laugh, and then they tell you to get rid of “that damn dreamer who should be doing edits, not thinking about traveling and writing long emails.” But I don’t see that happening.)

Thanks for reading this, either way.

wolf

* This would be my company name, hidden here to protect the innocent. It has nothing to do with XXX movies. Pervs.