Eff you, "Today!"

Ready to beat my head against a wall because my officemate talked nonstop for FOUR HOURS this morning, I was happy to have a reason to leave -- so I programmed Ferdinand and drove across town to the meeting site. Then I spent 40 minutes trying to find the damn conference room, eventually giving up and driving back to my site.

Then I was trying to prepare for my first ever meeting with one of the big director people, and could not focus because of the obnoxiously loud jibber jabber going on in my office.

I just decided, just now, that I am going to start blogging about this woman in my office. She is obnoxious. She makes loud, often emotional personal phone calls at work. There are 3 other people in our office, yet she lacks discretion of any kind. She is loud. I cannot function when she is in there.

Her nose whistles.

She sighs habitually.

She is stressful.

I have recently identified her as having a complex about needing others to notice that she works hard. There are several techniques she has perfected to communicate her hard work to the officemates.

If people aren't paying attention to her, she sighs more frequently and repeatedly picks up her mouse and sets it down, as if to say, "Do you all hear me fervidly mousing?" If people are holding a brief meeting in the office that doesn't involve her, she sits at her computer humming and muttering to herself. As if to say, "I'm not working with you but, please note, I am working."

At 5:00 pm, when the last of the hourly peeps have just about all gone home, she feels like it's okay to begin her customer service and/or personal phone calls. Last week she was having a heated argument with her ex-husband. Tonight she was fighting with the cable company.

She sits about 8 ft. away from me.

So anyway, I finally leave work after all this bullshit today to volunteer at this big event they were having in town, only to show up and learn that they were finished with the job I volunteered to do.

So I drove back to work. I don't know why I went back to work. I just did.

And I went to put my bag in my trunk and noticed that a bottle of power steering fluid had erupted, most likely due to the heat, and saturated the carpeting in my trunk with flammable gunk which is probably impossible to clean off.

I'm done.

I Had Our Perfect Weekend, John!

JR and I used to joke about our Perfect Weekend. One of these weeks, it was just bound to happen. The chores would get done. We'd see the people we wanted to see. We'd feel good. We'd sleep enough. No catastrophes. No worries. No speeding tickets, bad weather, car problems, heartbreaks, disappointments. No lame friends bailing out at the last minute. No wardrobe malfunctions, cover charges, or lost luggage. The more weekends we were alive, the greater the probability we'd experience The Perfect Weekend.

I almost feel guilty for having two of these in 2008. With starving children in Africa, for crying out loud. And I had two just this summer.

The first happened by accident. I was so fed up with work, with the I-can't-take-this-for-another-day mentality that I spent one of my (5!) precious vacation days one Friday driving back to Bloomington. We pissed around, polished off a bottle, spent Saturday afternoon at a crappy lakefront beach, and just slept. It was amazing, ca. summer vacation 1995.

This past weekend was unreal, though. It was the 10 year high school reunion. So strange, being grown, dragging luggage into my parents' house, scanning my bedroom walls covered with Tiger Beat cut-outs of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jared Leto, and then joining my parents on the deck for dinner and drinks. But we talked, all four adults, and it was fun! And the reunion was even better than I imagined, the birthday party for two-year-old little S was hilarious, and the housewarming party for J&C was comforting. The relaxing, love-filled conversation during the trek back to the Midwest, and the falling asleep on Sunday night, feeling worn-out, feeling sleepy, feeling loved, feeling close to family even though I'm far away... It felt so much like being a little kid again. And I guess that's what The Perfect Weekend is, that we're always striving for.

I guess the Olympics are over.

Now what am I supposed to watch?

Chemists walk fast.

And I mean, really, really fast. Like, we almost run. And I feel like I'm trying to keep up with the dude walking with me, but he probably also feels like he's trying to keep up with me.

Maybe it's about competition.

But my new shoes are beat to hell and I walk alone most of the time. When no one's looking I secretly jog.

Maybe it's more about not wasting time.

Most Uncomfortable Moment of the Day

I decided to get a trim even though it would delay my hair donation thingy, because I just can't deal with these split ends. I found a coupon for a free haircut at one of those scary strip-mall chain haircut places, so I went there after work.

I took a seat in the waiting area, and they called one of the two women sitting next to me and led her into the back for her haircut.

She came out a few minutes later and told her friend, "She can't cut my hair. It's because I'm black." The employee came out behind her and said, "I told you I don't have a lot of experience but I am willing to try to cut it if you don't mind me practicing on you."

The woman asked for the corporate phone number and for the employee's name.

I felt so bad for both of them.

Olympics

I'm waiting to see Men's Beach Volleyball. Is there such an event?

The years go fast and the days go so slow.

I need vacation.

I'm going to be old soon, and I'll look back at this whole "work" thing and regret how much time it took away from my youth.

The Ladies' Bathroom at Work

... very often smells so, so unladylike.

Memory of Pamela I just had on the drive home from work

When she was like 10 she got a pet mouse and named it Monie. After Monie Love. Because she really liked that song Monie in the Middle. That mouse got a strange skin disease that we thought was fleas, and Mom and I would take it out of the cage and douse it in flea bath with Q-tips and cotton balls every couple of days. In retrospect, that was really gross. After months of scratching and biting bumps on its skin, the mouse had hardly any fur left.

Then it died, so Pamela told the kid she babysat to bury it. The kid buried it in Mom's flower bed and left its rigor-mortis tail sticking up out of the mulch.

Dirty Old Men

When I think hard, I get hot. And I sweat a lot. And when I work, I am thinking a lot and therefore sweating a lot. So I wear sleeveless shirts at work. Not all women wears sleeveless shirts at work, and I realize I'm pushing the limits of our dress code ("Business Appropriate") but I do wear nice pants, dress shoes and earrings and makeup and everything. So I feel quite appropriate with my appearance every morning when I walk out the door.

I have a mock turtle sleeveless red polka-dot top that I absolutely adore. I've been complimented on this shirt several times. I actually bought a red polka-dot bra to wear with the shirt (same shades of red and white, same sized polka dots, even!), to be conservative so that if anyone ever got an accidental peep into my shirt hole, they wouldn't be able to differentiate between shirt and bra.

I work with a dirty old man. This dirty white-haired 47-year-old man is on his second wife, having dated a 21-year-old coworker between marriages. He has offended me several times by what he's said and where he's looked in the 4 months I've worked at this job.

Said man and I were participating with several other coworkers in a fun, building-wide event. I was wearing my festive red polka-dot top. We were all standing in a crowd in the lobby, waiting for winning raffle numbers to be chosen, when he touched my bare shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Your bra matches your shirt nicely." I paused, and said, "Don't look at my bra." Then I turned and walked away. I didn't wait to hear who'd won the raffle.

He didn't speak to me the rest of that day and called in sick for the past two days. I think I've gotten my point across -- the point being that I don't want him looking at my boobs.

I don't know if I should tell HR.

If a female coworker would've approached me in the bathroom and said the same exact thing to me, I would've thanked her. But seriously, why the hell do older men think that compliments about a boob-holders are even marginally appropriate?