Come Midnight

Sometime Saturday, I will sleep.  And I will sleep for all of Saturday, and perhaps all of Sunday as well--except for when the grocery delivery guy shows up, at which time I will amble down to the front door in my jammie pants and an old radio station t-shirt, to verify that he didn't forget the beer.  Then back to bed.

Until then...

• Because it is the longest day, EVER, at the end of the longest week, EVER, what better way to start it off than by spending an HOUR sitting in traffic for a trip that normally takes 15 minutes?  Meanwhile, my car hovered dangerously close to running out of gas and the clock ticked closer and closer to me being late for work.  My God I miss smoking!  It's just so much better to be waving a cig when you're screaming expletives at random, ridiculously stupid people who are not helping the situation when they drive like assholes.  You really can't beat a cigarette as a prop when you're completely stressed.
• I finally got off the Crosstown, dropped off the kid and DING! The "Yer Outta Gas" light lit up, so I hit the nearest gas station, and they were charging at least 20 cents more per gallon than any station anywhere near my house.  Their "cheap" gas was literally 6 cents more per gallon than mid grade at the BP by my house.  Which means that they SUCK.  So, in an effort to say exactly what I mean, and mean what I say, what I'm saying is:  The Shell Station off Highway 100 at 77th is insultingly expensive.
• And yes, I did say "BP".  Interesting point brought up on Facebook, and maybe you've seen it floating around--where are the benefit concerts for the Gulf Coast?  Where are the fundraising efforts to help those who will be affected by the devastation there?  We can raise money for Haiti, but not for Orange Beach?  Why sit around and complain about BP not doing anything?  I mean, we already know that they're not going to do enough, so why not just do it ourselves?  Just sayin'.
• No, I didn't just pick Orange Beach out of a hat--my dog lives there. ;-)
• Random delicious thing I read today..."Don't dirty your hands with idle, trendy or high maintenance indulgences like lovers who don't give back."   Isn't that glorious?  I f*cking love that.
• P.S. about the traffic thing--my boss dinged me!  Can you believe that?  I'm a freaking half hour early every stupid day, and the one day I'm stuck in Bizarro World traffic, I'm "unexcused"?  What is this, high school?  I could have sworn I was a grown up.
• Strike that....I'm not really a grown-up.  I have some "grown-up" tendencies, but for the most part, I'm still socially unacceptable to most "adults".
• Job interview today.  It's for a promotion in the same department.  I wish I could express how very little I care about this.  I'm not gonna lie....I'm still a little pissed about the unexcused absence thing.  Then again, if I am to be saddled with unexcused absences, somebody better throw money.
• Justin Currie tonight, and I've been very nervous that with this week being so long, and so utterly dumb at every turn that I might be placing too much faith in the notion that a night out will undo all of the stupid crap that precedes it.  I'm sure he'll be lovely...I just have to remember to have no expectation other than that for the price of a ticket, he and I should be both standing in the same room at the same time.  Anything beyond that is a bonus. 
• I'll be going to this shin-dig with my best girl friend, and we'll be talking about boys pretty much the entire time that Justin isn't actively doing something for which I think I need to watch to get my money's worth.  We will come to no conclusions and we will solve none of our "boy problems", but I can assure you, we'll both feel much better come midnight.

What A Minute--What Just Happened?

My entire week thus far has been a series of "Did that just happen?" events, some of which were on the news (did you SEE that unbelievable crash on the Crosstown??  CARS ON TOP OF CARS, people!  At 4:30 in the afternoon.  How in the hell did that even happen?  Traffic was slowed not just because of the crash, but because of all the people with camera phones snapping pictures as they rolled past the crash.  This was not the one with the bees, by the way, it was on 62 right at the Penn overpass.  I am happy to report that I was not one of those people snapping pictures...at the same time, WOW, I wish I had a picture!)

 

 

Everything else that's going on, I'm going to credit to a crazy week and some specific planets lining up--really too much stuff going on to go into any detail at the moment, but I promise if anything entertaining is to be gleened from this week, and it's not going to ruin somebody's day to share (especially mine), we'll turn it into some kind of inflated and ridiculously exaggerated story for your entertainment. 

 

Cuz that's what it's all about around here: Point and laugh.

 

You know...You could be having the most boring week of your life and feel a lot like complaining, then suddenly become very inspired to give life your all, try new things, finally smile at that cute boy from the office, or eat your ice cream before dinner--all in the split second in between the moment you see the bus coming straight for you and the moment it hits you and stops you from complaining about anything, ever again.

 

Wouldn't it be better to just do all that stuff now, instead?

 

 

When something happens that makes you say, "I definitely did NOT see that coming!" and it wasn't a speeding bus, how can you not celebrate?

If You Knew All The Stuff I Got Paid To Do This Morning, You'd Be Sooooo Jealous....

Don't you love it when you have a meeting scheduled and it's the first and only thing on your schedule, an all day event, and you've been REMINDED TO DEATH about the meeting, and there has been a lot of "Make sure you bring ______ and _______ and _______ to the meeting!", and "Make sure your security badge works so you can get into the meeting!", and you're toting half your office around to some remote location a half-hour early because you have a meeting and when you get there, the meeting consists of someone rolling in 10 minutes late to tell you that the meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow?


One of my favorite things, why do you ask?

See, this is where that "phone" thing would have worked so nicely.  Phone, email....whatever.  If somebody wanted to stop by the house to mention that the meeting had been cancelled, I wouldn't have chased them off the lawn.

Luckily, the morning was destined for fun, so, a meeting would have just sucked the life out of it anyway.  It started off while I was waiting for the stupid non-meeting, with some Facebook hilarity, meaning, my friends and I were having grown-up humor time, which will likely cause one of my older relatives to either scold me outright or actually TELL ON ME to my mom and dad because FB is just "no place to talk about" that stuff, and isn't it weird that even when you're 43, you still don't want people to tell on you to your mom and dad?

Here's a small portion:

Me: California is putting together a referendum bill to legalize recreational pot use?  I know I don't watch the news, but I can't believe I was not aware of this!

Friend A: That's because they never report the GOOD news

Me: Yeah, but with the way the voters screwed up on Prop 8, I'm not holding my breath

And...that would be the natural place for someone to insert a joke about pot smoking and breath holding, right?  What did we get instead?

Friend B: (insert oral sex/breath holding innuendo)

Which is why I dearly love my friends.  Also why I'll probably be shunned at the next family reunion.


All on the clock, thank you.


Blip forward to meeting time, I'm dressed in my fabulous new dress and heels, and I've hauled the contents of my desk from one office to another, and Whoops! No meeting.  I haul it all back to my car, where I notice a missed call from GodBlessTexas that I had waited for all last week.  Yes.  I waited an entire week for that phone call, and, during the small window of time that I was unavailable...they called.  Recruiter.  I call back.

Me: Hi, you called?

They: Yes, I was wondering if we could schedule a phone call?

Me:  Is this not a phone call that we're on right now?

They:  Uh....yeah....I guess so.

Me: And...you wanted to talk to me about something?

They:  Yeah. 

Me:  OK...

They: Oh, you want to talk right now?

Me: Yeah...Just got a hole in the schedule...

The Recruiter proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions that anyone with access to my employment history, like, for example, a Recruiter who works for the same company, with my entire employee profile right in front of him, should know the answer to.  Stuff like, "Where do you work?"

Me: I work the same place you work.

They: Really?

Me:  Really-really

They: Wow....cool.

It's probably a bad idea to think too much about the fact that promotions at your job are largely in the hands of people with the attention span of a wren.

Still on the clock.


Co-workers and I agree to scoot back to the office rather than skip for the rest of the day, even though we know we could probably get away with it, so I take the long way and somehow find myself blasting down Highway 100 going 76 miles an hour through town in some kind of Zen driving, loud music thing for which I was also paid and miraculously not pulled over. 

If I could figure out a way to do that full-time, I would, in an instant.

I arrived safely, in time for my lunch break.



So tell me...how was your morning?