I wouldn't say I'm *missing* it, Bob

Over at Kazoofus they're talking office talk. My company is big enough to have some of everybody's favorite corporate mainstays (pre-meeting meetings), yet small enough to be quirky as hell (the receptionist emails everyone in the building when BMoss is having a special sale - even the 65 yr old male CEO).

1. At any given time you can find enough "free for the taking" stuff in the kitchen to make a 4 course meal.
   
2. We are waging the Battle of the Thermostat in my department. One of the men (surprise!) turns the thermostat down to 70, which pushes the temp in several of the offices (mine included) down to, oh, 50 degrees or so, then one of the women turns it up to 73, which then (you guessed it), jacks it up to about 90. On any given day I'll be so cold my teeth will be chattering, then 20 minutes later I'll be droopy and limp from the heat. I want to break both of their fingers.
   
3. We have a racquetball court and workout equipment in our office building. It's right beside the kitchen, where you can always find donuts, pizza, cake, etc.
   
4. Our building has restrooms with stalls AND 2 "private" bathrooms for those times when you may prefer a little more privacy. By silent agreement between us all, they have become "The Bathrooms Where You Go When You Must Take a Dump." The problem is that they are at the front of the building, right behind the receptionist, and the fans in the bathrooms are connected to the lightswitch, so if one happens to switch out the light upon vacating the room before complete ventilation has taken place, the entire front half of the building will smell like ass. Very Bad Ass.
   
5. My computer has a subwoofer bigger than my head.
   

Analyze This

So the elevator dreams...
Some things are almost always the same: I'm with someone I know. The building is always dorm-like. I'm not necessarily in college, but we're in a dorm. We get separated, and I always end up riding the elevator (up, always ride the elevator up) to our destination by myself. There may be other people in the elevator, but not the person I'm supposed to be with.

In this latest dream, I am with a friend and we are heading to the 4th floor of a dorm (room 415 to be exact) to move our stuff in. We're not college students, but we are going to live in this room with some people I work with. My friend is carrying a, uh, well, a swimming pool. One of those great big above ground jobbies - 4 feet deep and maybe 24 feet across when assembled. The pool now, though, is all folded up and in a big box about the size of a stove. The box is old and worn and bulging - the pool wasn't boxed up very neatly. My friend is struggling with the box, and I'm not carrying anything. I ask several times if I can help her, but she always says no.

"But what you CAN do," she says, "is run upstairs and make sure we have the right room. I don't want to have to carry this box back down."

So I go check room 415. I don't ride the elevator yet. In the dream, I'm just suddenly there, and yes, it's the right room. Back to my friend on the first floor, tell her that yes, the room is ours, and yes, it's ready to go. We head to the elevator.

When the doors open, we aren't able to manuever the big box into the elevator quick enough. The doors closed before we get on.

I suggest we walk up the steps to the next floor and catch the elevator there.

Same thing happens on the second floor - still can't get it together enough to get in the elevator.

I suggest we try it again on the third floor. "No" she says, "I'm tired of wasting time trying to get on the elevator, I'm going to just walk up to the fourth floor."

So I go to the third floor elevator alone. When the doors open, I step right on with no problems. Just as the doors are closing I think, "Well this is stupid. I've already walked up three flights of stairs, I might as well have just walked the final flight. How silly to ride the elevator for just one floor."

But I did.

Then I headed to room 415 and waited for my friend and the pool.

Strange. Very strange.

This Weekend I

• got about 8 inches cut off of my hair on the spur of the moment.
  
• realized that I run best when it's just a little bit humid (what the hell is wrong with me???).
  
• learned that I can sweat so much that the red dye in my shorts will bleed the entire way up to the neck of my white shirt.
  
• ate the best corn on the cob I've ever had.
  
• learned what a Pig Nose Amp is.
  
• did not get a satisfactory answer to why it's not called a Snout Amp instead. Who the hell calls a pig's nose a Pig Nose? It's a snout.
  
• cooked a hot meal for myself AND did the dishes before the food dried on them. Neither one of those things happens very often.
  
• dreamed about elevators again. I have recurring elevator dreams. Always different, but always the same, you know?
  

My weekend work here is complete. Now I'm going to shower, put on flowy, comfy summer clothes, and head to the VIMs for an evening of food, fellowship, and hopefully an hour or two of Halo.

Perfect Weekend gods - if you're out there listening: Thanks for another great one.

The Countdown Begins

Two days ago the VIM handed me a piece of paper and an envelope. The paper was a blank registration form for a 5K race coming up in September. In the envelope was his completed registration and a check already written out for the cost of both registrations.

"All you have to do is fill out your form, put it in the envelope and drop it in the mail."

Sly Bastard.

He removed about 4 different obstacles I would have found to put off doing this.

It didn't stop me from trying, though.

"I can't do this. I'm not ready."

"You've been doing it for the past month. You'll just be doing it with a lot more people."

"But I'll be the last one done. Even the 10k people will be done before me. People will be milling around the parking lot waiting for me to cross the finish line."

"Do you care?"

I had to stop and think about that for a second (because when I get on a roll finding ways to convince myself I can't do something the last thing I'm doing is thinking.)

"No. I don't care. I'm not competing against anyone else. I'm competing against the nasty little bad-tempered couch potato in my head."

"And we'll get free t-shirts too."

"Really? Cool. I'm in."

Dear Men,

Say after 18 months or so of keen observation, that you've realized that your girlfriend gets "a little cranky and testy" the week before her period.

The time to announce to her this shocking and startling discovery - this piece of scientific research that is sure to rock the scientific world - is not the week before her period.

I only have your best interests in mind,


Elle

Gary

Several years ago I was the receptionist for the company I work for. Overall, not a bad job at all. The worst part of the job was when guests had to wait for long periods of time in the little reception area. I never knew what to do. I can make small talk and smile for a few minutes, but on the fairly often occasions when people had to wait and wait (and wait) I got uncomfortable. Do I continue making small talk? Do I go back to what I was doing and ignore them? Do I (shudder) ask them if it's really as beautiful outside as it looks through the front window?

Eventually, I'd start getting pissed at the co-worker the guest was there to see. Ok, so the guest is 15 minutes early for the meeting. Is it really necessary to make him wait just to prove a point? Ok, so this guy doesn't have an appointment. Have some balls and come out and tell him that you don't have time to meet with him right now and set up an appointment. Please, for the love of God, don't have him sit in the reception area for 40 minutes while you stand back in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking about your golf game, then saunter out and graciously say, "I can squeeze you in for about 5 minutes."

Rude. And bad karma to boot.

Gary was the exception. He was a freelance artist who did a lot of work for our marketing department. I can guarantee that Gary never had to wait in the reception area because he was 15 minutes early for a meeting. No. Gary was always late. At least once a week, marketing would let me know that Gary was coming in for a 2pm meeting, and that I could send him right back to the marketing area. He didn't need to wait for someone to escort him.

2pm - no Gary
2:15pm - no Gary
3pm - marketing would call and ask if he had called in
3:15pm - no Gary
3:30pm - Marketing would call up front and say "ok, this is pissing us off. We're going into a meeting, so when Gary shows up he's going to have to wait for us. That'll teach him."

And around 4:10pm or so, Gary would finally roar into the parking lot - in a beat up old van in the wintertime, and a beautiful shiny big ass motorcycle in the summertime - and rush through the door with the look. It was a little boy expression of "I'm trying so hard to be an adult, but I Just Can't Help It" and dammit, how could you not forgive him?

The days that he had to wait in the little reception area where my best days. He would pull out the work that he was doing for marketing and show it off. He would tell me about his motorcycle and ask me about my hobbies. Basically he was just downright nice and friendly. Nothing special. Just genuinely nice. Also, genuinely hot. He stood out from a crowd - tall, long hair, edgy clothes. At first glance he looked like the motorcycle dude that he was. Or at first glance, he looked like the artist that he was. With either of those stereotypes, I would expect aloofness. He wasn't aloof. He was anti-aloof. You couldn't shut him up. For many months, he was my perfect man. Except for the lateness thing.

Right after I moved from receptionist into another department, marketing finally got tired of the lateness too, and started using Gary for less and less jobs. Over the past few years, I've only seen him a handful of times.

Gary was killed in a car accident earlier this week. It was one of those accidents that was so horrific that even if I didn't know the person involved, I would read the news article, then play out the whole scene in my head over and over - the little morbid director in my head saying "ok, one more time, and THIS time, do the part where the car flips over in slow motion and get a nice tight close up on the driver's face." He was 33 years old.

I don't know Gary well enough to know what he accomplished in his 33 years. He had his own business. That's pretty impressive. His artwork was amazing. Also impressive. My guess is that there was a lot more he didn't get accomplished (like licking that lateness thing.) When I see a news story where someone has died young I always think, "Did they get done what they were here to do?"

I don't know what Gary was here to do, but I know what he did.

He made me comfortable by ignoring my shyness.
He never, EVER failed to smile.
He was different, but he was true to himself.
He didn't have to go out of his way to make my day brighter. He just made sure he was THERE, ENGAGED when he was talking to me.

If I can do those things too. If, after I'm gone, I'm remembered as being genuinely nice - I'm remembered by one person as making them feel comfortable, I will totally have been a good person.

The world is less one Really Good Person.

Bye Gary.
-----------------------------
Saturday, August 7

This was the Quote of the Day on my browser homepage this morning:

The best portion of a good man's life are the little, nameless,
unremembered acts of kindness and love.- William Wordsworth

Old Bill Wordsworth summed up a whole jumble of my feelings in eighteen words.

The VIM has been on the lookout for a suitcase. An old suitcase. To replace the old, beatup suitcase that he stores his guitar cords in. After many unsuccessful yardsale drivebys, I headed to a local antique mall. I have a love/hate relationship with the antique mall. Every visit is filled with tension. I constantly have to balance the natural urge to touch everything (I'm a toucher - a hand-runner-overer. I'm all about texture.) with the knowledge that everything I touch is dusty, and the knowledge that the dust will eventually find it's way from my fingers to my eyes and nose, and the knowledge that I will spend the next 6 hours sneezing and weepy-eyed.

I try to keep my hands in my pockets, but it never works. Before I know it I catch myself caressing a moth-eaten velvet divan. Or thumbing through a musty church hymnal. Or buying an old suitcase.

I was so proud of myself for finding the suitcase. It was perfect. Hard case, smooth surface, big. Smelly. Extremely smelly. Mildewy, even. I have tried everything - Putting it in the sun. Putting it in front of a fan. Gallons of Febreeze. Cans of Air Freshner. No luck. It still smells, and it makes me sneeze. A lot. Thankfully the VIMs birthday is approaching and I can soon be rid of the monstrosity I've grown to hate (not only does it smell, but the inside has that old-fashioned satiny material lining. Pink old-fashioned satiny material. It looks like a tiny coffin).

Aren't I a great girlfriend? "Happy Birthday honey! Here's a used smelly dirty little coffin with Bounce sheets tucked into every nook and cranny to cover the underlying smell of dirt, mildew, Febreeze, and Glade. Hope you like it. Better store it in the garage."