During a videochat with a friend this evening, W declared that there is a potential flaw with taking a cruise out of Brooklyn (as we were all collaborating to do, on a whim):
“Imagine thinking that you’re on a cruise ship to the Caribbean only to realize you got on the Ikea shuttle ferry instead!”
He then added, “I’m standing there in my straw hat and Hawaiian shirt, and the guy next to me is holding up his Förlåt”
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I’ve been out of commission on a business trip that required 16 hour days. I’m back, and went to grab some money from the change jar to buy myself a cup of coffee this morning since I’m back to being office-level addicted to the stuff. Why buy coffee? Did the Home Office decide to throw the budget out the window because there is a steady paycheck? Hell no, it’s just that someone broke the coffee pot*
The change jar is always magically full of quarters. However, on this morning…
WTF, nothin but copper!
Looks like someone has been dipping into petty cash while I’ve been away. Investigation is pending.
* When I heard the coffee pot drop, my thought wasn’t “Oh no, the coffee pot!” or “I hope no one got hurt in there”, but rather “Thank god it wasn’t me.” Also, now we are faced with buying a new pot even though we are going to register for a new coffee machine. If anyone wants to step up and get us a preemtive new coffee maker, stainless steel with a decanter that keeps it warm, give a shout out hehe
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FACT: H is 5’7″, with red hair and fair skin. She also drove our tiny rental car around the small towns in Mexico.
FACT: The average height of a Mexican woman is 5’1″ . During our journey we didn’t witness one other woman driving.
For much of our time exploring Mayan Mexico, locals (mostly children) stared at us. They were particularly awestruck by H. I nicknamed her La Roja Diabla.
the legend grows of the 7 foot tall Ginger who drove Senor W across the Yucatan!
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I figure we’ll do a recap of the Mexico trip in drips and drabs. It was pretty great, and a good blend of “real” Mexico and swim up bars.
One of the reoccurring vacation arguments pertained to our individual choices in beach reading:
I read the latest issues of People and Us Weekly (or “the news” as I like to call it) and W read Blackwater . Look at him, does he look relaxed? He kept trying to give me updates, too. “Do you know that the parents of the soldiers dragged through the streets in Fallujah had to sue Blackwater to get information…” I was like, can we please stick to more vacation level conversation, like how the Duggar baby is doing?
So for every horrific mercenary story I gave him a gossip magazine story. He eventually stopped. He better hope what Heidi Montag’s mother thinks about her plastic surgery doesn’t come up in dinner party conversation, he’ll be woefully unprepared.
I start a new job tomorrow. Kinda. In that I’ve worked there before.
Earning me the new Home Office nickname “Grover Cleveland” in reference to his nonconsecutive reigns of presidency
It’s a bit of a different role so I’m not completely reliving the past. And I’ll be already established socially, so I hear there is already a Happy Hour planned on my behalf for my first day to help me ease myself back into the day to day.
W and I were laughing anticipating IT telling me I’ll have to change my email address to say something like ‘2’ at the end because my original email address was deactivated in the system. “I’m sorry, there could only be one email address for each particular name, and yours is deactivated. What, would you like us to change our whole IT system to accommodate you leaving the company then coming back?”
This should be somethin!
I miss my dogs! kinda.
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Hello. You’ve reached Live From the Home Office. We can’t take your call right now because we are redeeming Starwood points.
A la piscina at the hacienda. I will wax poetic about the Starwood Preferred Guest program another time.
In a classic white trashy move, at first hint of us having a regular income we are hightailing it to Mexico or a last chance time out. W asked if I was going to cash the first paycheck and buy a pinball machine. So los perros estan con nuestra familia and we are outie 5.
We are interested in testing out the Espanol– we have continued to take lessons with our teacher from Argentina via web cam. In a great obnoxious side note, we therefore speak our limited spanish with an Argentine accent. So no one will really understand what the F we’re saying. The first half will be spent in a hacienda in a remote area. We are counterbalancing that with a few days in Cancun, where W is hoping to watch the Superbowl at Senor Frogs or in the comfort of our swim up bar of the good ol Westin.
I also have to do a fair amount of driving, since SOME PEOPLE never bothered to learn how to drive stick.
OK, better go before the health insurance runs out.
Leave a message at the beep.
I love how tech savy CNN has become. They want to be so hip with their Twitter pie charts and their Facebook polls. They are so in your face about how “with it” they are – it’s uncomfortable.
hey Glenn Beck: interviewing people via satellite is so 2006
During the post State of the Union coverage, there were blackberries, multiple laptops, giant touch screens and a sensory overload of flashing images and graphics. I am sure in 2 weeks, Larry King will be casually thumbing through his interview notes on an iPad.
Amongst this three ring circus of dynamic technology, there stood the ringleader – Wolf Blitzer -kicking it old school, trusty white legal pad in hand.
screw the netbook, i got me a new Trapper Keeper and some looseleaf paper
So, for example, his screen is here. But closer. And bigger. How about a LiveFromTheHomeOffice.com shout out?
This is an official lobby for it. You’ll get the title of VP, Marketing, LiveFromTheHomeOffice.com.
We told him that his desk placement gives him perfect opportunity to become a cult Internet hero. How about dressing in a different color cape every day? Wacky hat? Just sitting there, doing your job as usual, but wearing a funny message on your back during the podcast taping. The Buzz would propel those podcasts further than any New Media discusssion ever would! If I had a choice between watching people debate the iPad from a site with just two guys on a set, or two guys on a set with the wacky Internet Marketer in the background, I’m choosing the latter.
Cmon!
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And then one day I decided to visit Dave in his office since he had been avoiding my calls about a partcular project. He motioned me to have a seat while he finished his call. As I’m looking around at the photos and office paraphenalia my eye catches something on the book case.
A series of binders labelled “Six Sigma Training.” Six Sigma* is a business managment strategy that “seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes” per wikipedia, “blah blah blah blah blah” per me.
In a flash my head swirled to the framed certificates on the wall. There it was.
“Dave Douchebag completed the Black Belt-level Six Sigma training on [this date] at [this company].”
My head spun and I started replaying conversations in my head, realizing that at no time when he referenced his black belt training did it have anything to do with martial arts or patience, or quiet strength, but rather some business situation that required some efficient processes. It was kinda like that reveal scene in The Sixth Sense when you are shown all those scenes and are like, “Holy shit… no one every interacted with him, no one can see him, oh my god, he’s DEAD!”
I know people say LOL a lot, but when I say I Laughed Out Loud, I Laughed Out Loud. Right there, in his office, after making this discovery and realizing my stupidity and the hilarity of the situation, I started laughing so hard I was shaking trying to hold it in.
And then I took a deep breathe as he got off the phone, accredited my laughter to a funny story my sister told me, and took solace in the fact that there really was nothing deeper to this guy… he was just a regular ol run of the mill office asshole.
* Yes, even though Six Sigma has saved Fortune 500 companies hundreds of billions of dollars since its inception, I’m still categorizing this post under “Ridiculous company initiatives”
Live from the Home Office 