Drive-by updating

Goodies that cost me money I don't really have:
I have a new couch! It even has arms and can seat more than two people and is made of a material that... Well, it resembles corduroy, which if you knew me ten years ago would amuse you to no end as I used to villify the stuff as a concoction of Satan. I HATED the stuff. The texture, the sound it made when you walked in it, it even came in crappy colors.

Now I have a couch made of it. Consistency is the defense of small minds. Like many things, I'm learning to let it go.

Work:
The Mid-Boss has arrived and, well, not much else so far as I can see. I met him when the Overboss brought him along on a checking-up trip. Since then, I haven't really seen, heard or sopke to him since. Hopefully he's busy elsewhere and will leave us alone.
Also, I lost my Minion. I really liked having a Minion, I was able to focus on helping the Bosses get stuff out the door, now I'm back to focusing on keeping enough space on my desk clear for my coffee mug.

Play:
The show's going, um, well I suppose. Dress rehearsals are going to be REALLY rough. And somewhere along the way I made the mistake of volunteering to make stuffed mushrooms for our little buffet...
The real hell of this is that it's been basically three (occasionally four) of us putting this together. The rest of the production team's been in/out of town and hasn't really been there, and most won't be there for the performances.
Next show I think we're setting some ground rules.

Ramdomness:
Outside of the office building there is a cricket (not this one) that keeps jumping into the glass and bouncing off.
Jump. Bounce. Jump. Bounce.
I don't know if it's the heat on the sidewalk (as I imagine the hedge it was living in was much cooler), the reflection in the glass, or just a short circuit in the lil' guy's insectile excuse for a brain, but it was really pathetic to watch.
Jump. Bounce. Jump. Bounce.
Really pathetic to watch, actually.
Jump. Bounce. Jump. Bounce.
And kinda boring, too, come to think of it.
Jump. Bounce. Jump. Bounce.
And because I'm just hypnotized enough by the incessant hopping to form paltry excuses for philosophical metaphors, I thought, "Sometimes you're the cricket, sometimes you're the glass."
Photo from Hampshire Hippy via flickr

New Show! New Show!

It's official, we've got a cast, we have a nifty poster and tix should be on sale soon. (Or just contact me and I can hook you up.) Tix will be $15 and will include snaks and beverages.

Official title: The Muses: Memories of a House
Location: The Muses, a beautiful home off of 2222.
What is it: A collection of short scenes and monologues performed in and around the home.
Warning: We will be walking the audience from location to location, some of which are outdoors- wear comfy shoes.

Hope you get a good lawyer...

Just when you think your bosses are counter-intuitive asses, you find out it's still better than working for the US Gov't.

Seriously, I hope this guy finds a good lawyer. Or several. Dozen.

conrats

Evidently I'm having one of those days. You know the ones I mean, the ones where little things that you normally just shrug off get stuck in your head. Like a festering wound, oozing and burning, these little things just sit there eating at your very sanity. And you'd chew your own arm off to stop them from bugging you.

I mean, I spent about half an hour sitting at my desk irritated at the font the new LadyBoss has chosen for her e-mails. It's not hard to read, it's not blinky or overly stylized, I just don't like it. So every time I got an e-mail from her I had one of those gut "grrrrr" reactions and I had to repress the urge to just delete it to get it out of my inbox.

But I digress. It's a font, I'm letting it go.

Then "conrats" happened. And my world collapsed into a fuming pile of inconsolable irritation the likes of which my cat can't even replicate on her worst day. (And those of you who know, realize that's quite an accomplishment.)

"But who the what where and why?" you ask. Let me break my irritation down.

First, the initial salvo. Apparently there's a new Manager in another division, and someone thought everyone needed to know. So this nifty little "please welcome so-and-so," e-mail goes out to the entire company. Name, rank, and mini bio follow (mourners please omit flowers would probably be a little overdramatic, no?), and my irritating sh*%-o-meter goes up a notch.

Because I know they're coming. Its inevitable. They can't be stopped and one must endure the painful platitudes of... The "Reply To All" Addicts. All companies have them, all companies mock them, and yet they still exist.

Now my company, in the last six months or so, has had three separate training memos sent out about abusing the RTA button, but still I start getting the little e-mails. "Congratulations!" "Welcome!" "Glad to have you!" And so on, and so on, and so on. All the while the meter's climbing.

And then it came. The one-word, RTA message that had me halfway into a scathing e-mail on proper account usage before I deleted it.

"conrats"

This sent me over the top. How many e-etiquette rules have we broken? Let's find out.

1. Misuse of the "reply to all" button.
2. Spelling counts. The word is "congrats," and that's not even a word, it's an abbreviation.
3. While the usage of punctuation is debatable in one-word e-mails, I'm already irritated, so here we are.
4. It's called capitalization, look into it.

Now I'm as guilty as the rest of you when it comes to the last two, and I have my spell-check set to 11 to keep me from flubbing #2, but that's not my point. This is:

If you're sending an e-mail to a co-worker you have never met, how do you want to present yourself? As a professional, courteous, and intelligent resource, or as a lazy, ignorant, and inattentive slacker who tosses off an e-mail with the forethought of a drunk Hollywood Celebrity. Whoops! Maybe that's not the impression we're trying to make...

But enough with the rant. Its quiltin' tme

Liam the Lonely; a Little Lost Lizard

My good deed for the day. I don't know how (and I'm not sure I want to) but one of the lizards that live in the bushes outside my office building ended up in the hall. On the third floor. I thought he was dead, but he did this little skitter move when I went past him...

Tell you the truth, I felt pretty sorry for the guy. They keep the AC so cranked in this building that his little cold-blooded toes must've been numb.

So I picked him up, he really didn't protest too much and he was only half the size of my pinkie, so I kinda had him beat in the size dept. And I carried him downstairs and out the door. He perked right up in the sunlight, and when I set him down, he scuttled off into the bushes like he belonged there.

Well he did belong there, but you get what I mean.

Nice little interlude to an otherwise blah day....