Monthly Archive

It’s been a looooooooooong day, always, ain’t that right…

Today was a long day at the office.  About a 12 hour day, which used to be the average for me in my prior work life.  But here?  Its been 8:30-5:30 on the dot.  This was the latest I have worked in 1.5 years.  And I left at about 8.

The hours I have here would have been laughable to me at EY.  I remember my first day in DC, I asked what the hours were, just so I could know what to expect, and they were 9-7 on a good day.  A good day.  It didn’t take long to get used to that because leaving at 7 was a treat.  Most days were 8, 9, 10…or later, depending on what the client wanted.  This is where I developed a distaste for being in the client serving world.  What the client wants, the client gets.  Even if that meant us sitting around piddling our thumbs because we had to maintain a presence at the client site until a certain time in the evening.  We had to at least look like we were working.  This is more frustrating that you think. 

But, sometimes we worked late because there was actually work to do.  Surprise!  I remember it being a bad sign when a meeting was called around 7 or 8, just as we were waiting to be excused, and a request came up.  It was even worse when they were giving us time to go home, change and come back.  Thats when work would go into the wee hours of the morning.

And then many a night on Nortel, twenty of us would sit in a small conference room huddled shoulder to shoulder around a table staring intently at our tiny laptops.  I could lean 2 inches to the right and have a full view of my neighbors screen.  Unless they had a privacy screen.  God Bless the privacy screen.  I remember usually hitting a wall about 8 and not having the motivation to keep working.  Was it because I had already been there 12 hours?  Or that reviewing contracts is extremely boring stuff?  Or, maybe it was because the client didn’t really believe in working past 7 (more like 5) and so at that time every night the lights would automatically shut off.  And we’d work in the dark.  The only light coming from our laptop screens.  The sound of furious typing would then ensue, all of us IMing each other from across the table about how pissed we were to still be there.  We hadn’t been “released” yet.  Then at about 9, the decision would be made to either keep working or order dinner.  Even though I’d stopped working and started surfing sometime between 7 and 8, I was still there.  Maintaining a presence to no one.  And the fact that an hour commute home awaited me, only made me more jazzed to be there.

So, I really can’t complain because the hours here are cake.  One time Jamila and I were returning to Nortel from lunch around 2ish and as we were passing the security guard, a Nortel employee was leaving and said to him “goodnight”.  Goodnight?  It was 2pm!  We used to dream everyday about having a normal job where we could roll out at 5 and hit the gym.  Well, 5:30 is close to 5, so I guess I can’t complain.  I am now livin’ the dream.  The only thing is, when I roll out of here I won’t be rolling into the Oceanaire, Legal Seafoods, or Smith & Wollensky’s for a 75+ dollar meal that I get to enjoy for free.

After a weekend trip to New Braunfels to visit Gamma, I am back home with my little friend.  He spent the weekend at the Pooch Patio and I can’t tell if he’s tired because he had that much fun or if he’s depressed because I left him behind.  Whatever the case, he’s happy to be home and be able to enjoy consecutive naps on the couch.

NB was fun when I finally got there. Its always a nice feeling visiting your grandparent’s house.  Something about it reminds you of your childhood and its a comforting feeling.  Its also nice to be waited on hand and foot!  We enjoyed going out to breakfast both mornings, doing a little shopping, taking a couple naps, yours truly enjoyed a facial compliments of G, and we made it to church this morning.  Last night, the whole family came down to eat dinner and it was a typical Griswold outing.  I would expect no less.  It began raining cats and dogs as we were getting ready to go eat, Mamacita’s fails to remember our reservations and its a musical chair contest to get settled in the bar while we wait for our table.  And then another musical chair dance when we finally did get to our table.  Gamma also prepared gifts for everyone, which ranged from a jar of pickles to kitchen towels.  

As we were finishing up our meals, ESM (Laurie, my “excellent” step mother…well, she is only excellent on her birthday and on Mother’s Day, the rest of the year “E” stands for evil, muahahaha), well she was curious about the extra large pepper that was on the fajita platter Dad and I were sharing.  We aren’t pepper experts, especially not myself, and we were taking guesses at its level of hotness.  My theory is that since it was rather large it had to be less potent.  For some reason I was under the impression that the tiny ones were the ones that were on fire.  So, ESM takes one of the peppers and cuts of a tiny piece from the tip and tries it.  Not hot at all.  I decide I’d like to try it also, since I love the grilled bell peppers that come with fajitas.  I’m a little bit more ambitious and cut off about 1/3 of the pepper and pop it in my mouth.  Within about 3 seconds tears start rolling down my face and I immediately press my tongue to a flour tortilla like its frozen to an icy flag pole in the middle of winter.  Apparently, the portion I cut off had about a million seeds in it, whereas ESM (EVIL, EVIL, EVIL) probably didn’t consume a seed.  I spent about 5 minutes experiencing an emotional hot flash before starting to believe I am going to be ok.  This of course reminded me of when I was in London I was dared to eat a slice of a jalapeno in order to earn a dollar.  A dollar.  Luckily my friends picked the slice with the most seeds.  What a good deal!!!  Jerks.  You can see how ridiculously large this pepper was…

We went back to Gamma’s house to hang for a bit and look through pictures of my darling niece, Halle.  Who is for sure destined to be the “Class Clown” and it makes Auntie Em so ridiculously proud.  Her new thing is trying on shoes.  She decided to give ESM’s sandals a go while we were debating pictures.  She had no problem walking around in these suckers, which is probably because she could walk flat because her tiny feet fit in the top half of the shoe and the heels just drug along behind as she walked. Isn’t she cute?

I’m not really sure what my Dad is doing to Gamma in the first picture, but it looks kinda painful.

All in all a pretty good weekend!  Lesson learned about the jalapenos.  You can fool me once, you can fool me twice, but I’ll be darned if I get fooled three times.

Clearly it doesn’t take a day like today for me to think of the King. For those unaware, it’s the 31st anniversary of his death. I think about Elvis on a daily basis. Although I never got to meet him, I still feel like I knew him. Maybe it’s because I’ve been to Graceland 12 times. Or that from the time I was 6 I’ve listened to his music. Maybe it’s because I had an Elvis impersonator at my 7th birthday. Or that I’ve watched the crap out of his 33 movies I taped on VHS growing up. Yes, he did have 33 movies. Whatever it may be, it’s a fact he’s been a large part of my life.

So, it’s today that I reflect on his life and everything he accomplished. This could include eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich. They are delicious. I invite you to try one. It’s really easy to pay your respects to him today… just turn on the radio or TV and you’re surely to find him.

I decided to start a blog routine for this day and his birthday. I’ll come up with a new Top 10 Things Elvis each time. So, drumroll, please, for the first one………..

Top 10 Reasons I Love Visiting Graceland:
10. The 30 second bus drive we take from the ticket office across the street to the mansion while hearing “Welcome to My World” sung by Elvis on our headsets
9. The 22ft. long sofa in the living room
8. The secret window upstairs that if you peak your neck up the stairwell you can see. It leads to Elvis’ bedroom where he could always spy on who was coming up to see him
7. The stairwell to the basement that’s covered in mirrors on the sides and ceiling.
6. The “Takin’ Care of Business” room it’s it’s 3 TVs side by side, so he could watch multiple football games and the news at one time.
5. The Jungle Room and it’s contents which were purchased during a 30 minute shopping spree in Hawaii during the 70′s. And the inside waterfall.
4. The Raquetball building which has now been converted to a shrine for all of his fabulous jumpsuits. This is also where he sat down and played two songs at the piano for the last time the day that he died.
3. The Meditation Garden and being able to pay my respects to the King since he’s buried in the back yard.
2. Visiting between the day after Thanksgiving and Elvis’ birthday and getting to see all of the Christmas lights and decorations. It’s magical.
1. And last but not least, the hours of tacky souvenier shopping that await once the tour is complete.

Thank ya, thank ya very much.

[YouTube=http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=_mgtKKjVotM]

This morning I went to my usual Spin class at Bally’s.  It starts at 6am and while that requires me to get up at 5:30 in order to get ready and let the Rock out, I like it because I still have time to come back to the casa and have my breakfast and dilly dally for a while before going to work.  I like my mornings that way.  Lately, we’ve have a sub instructor because the main instructor, Joe, has been out recovering from a stroke.  The new guys is more than I can handle that early in the morning.  Or ever.  He’s a tall, slender version of Richard Simmons who has the amount of energy one would have after stopping at Starbucks and being injected with an venti IV of espresso followed by 12 orange mocha frappachino’s.  He could easily have been in the gas station scene in Zoolander.  And for those that haven’t heard me describe the majority population at Bally’s, well I think he plays for the other team. 

His music selection this morning included “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”, during which he started riding his stationary bike like a horse, making the air calf roping gestures.  THIS IS AT 6 AM!!  I have to sit in the back in order to be distanced from this as much as I can.  I go to the class because its early, I need motivation getting up early to work out and having people there helps, and I am trying to branch out on my workout regime.  I don’t want to hear little jokes that insight into his lifestyle (not that I have a problem with his lifestyle, whatever floats your boat), and I most definitely don’t want to have to “partner up” with another stranger in the class so we can take turns where one person goes at full speed while the other person cheers them on.  If I got out of bed at 5:30 to workout, I am pretty sure I can push myself without someone else faking excitement at how fast I’m going!

The highlight to this morning, yes I promise there was one, was that Joe stopped by to say hi.  He is the reason I started going to the spin class in the first place.  He’s laid back, he leaves the lights off while we workout, he barely talks and he plays good music.  I was really sad when they said he had a stroke about a month or two ago (I think it was pretty minor).  But, he was there this morning and he will be back next week for good!  The new guy is dunzo.

You are probably going to think that I don’t actually have a job by the a) frequenticity (a word?) of my blogging and b) amount of online shopping that I do.  I’ve made three purchases in the last week and its not even close to Christmas yet.  Today I received in the mail my environmentally friendly new water bottle.  Its actually a canteen.  Its awesome.  And green.  In more ways than one.  Its called a Klean Kanteen.  They sell them at Whole Foods, but in order to get a colored one (dark green… wink wink) I bought mine online.  I’ll go ahead and note that these are not cheap water bottles.  They go for 20+ buckaroos.  But, when you consider that by filling it up 20 times, you will have just saved the amount of money you could have easily spent buying Ozarka bottles.  And you helped the environment.  That, my friends, is what they call two birds, one stone.

My canteen arrived about an hour ago.  Its been sitting on my desk for me to admire, because I can’t use it yet.  I need to wash it first.  So, I’ve been glancing over at it periodically and I just noticed something.  The name “Klean Kanteen” goes against everything I stand for when it comes to company names.  I’ve always had a pet peeve when a company will misspell its name in order to be cute (for lack of another word).  For example, “Darque Tan” and “Kum and Go”.  What purpose does it serve to misspell the names like that?  None, other than to annoy me.  I’ve always chosen not to support these companies, based on their name choice, but I guess I will have to make an acception to the rule.  Cause I really like this canteen.  Excuse me, kanteen.

This leads me to my next pet peeve.  IM/Text message abbreviations.  You know… lol, rotfl, brb, g2g, ttyl etc etc.  Sometimes its just as easy to type out the whole word than spend 2 seconds thinking about how to abbreviate it.  Just spell it out.  I’ve come to grips with lol.  I don’t use it, I prefer “haha”.  But, since everyone in the world uses it, I’ve made peace with it.  However, when you are at work addressing people in emails and IM’s, don’t refer to a group of individuals as “ppl” and when you want to speak to me first thing in the morning, don’t say “gud” morning.  “Good” has one more letter in it, make the effort. 

There are actually two exceptions to the above pet peeves.  One is the title of this blog… I think that abbrieviation is funny.  The second is a light bulb/light store in Kansas City that I’ve never been to, I just always remember seeing the sign on the way to my grandmother’s house.  Its name is ”Watts Up?”.  Lol, thats kute.

I decided to treat myself to a pair of Tom’s Shoes today. Suz introduced me to these guys back in March, but I hadn’t been able to decide on a color/design. Until today. Miraculously, I was able to be decisive and make a decision. I realized that I should pick a neutral colored pair that I (in all of my fashionably challenged glory) could work into an outfit. I think the color will go with lots of things and really well with jeans. Score.

Not only did I just get a pair of new shoes, but so did a child in need. Because every pair of Toms you buy, then give another pair to a kid who needs them for free.

This reminds me of when I sponsored a child back when I was a child. I used to watch TV a lot as a kid and would always get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when those commercials came on.. “even YOU can sponsor a child by giving only $15 a month”. Then they would display pictures of poverty stricken children. And here I was eating bon bon’s watching TV all day long. At the time I was raking in $15 a week for my allowance (hey – I washed the windows, cleaned my room before the maid came and took the trash/recycling out). Being the little accountant that I was destined to be, I figured I could give up 1/4 of my allowance and still be ok. After all it could feed a child for an entire month. I don’t know if they were feeding these kids ramen noodles or just plain dirt, but at least I was doing my part. About twice a year they would send me a picture of my child and sometimes a little drawing they had done for me. It was touching. I used to keep them tacked up on my bulletin board with my other pictures of Elvis and NKOTB. Friends would come over to hang out and always inquire about this little foreign boy I had a picture of. I felt proud when I told them it was a child I was sponsoring.

Now that I think back on it, I spent a lot of money on this kid. My guess is I sponsored him for at least 4 years. 48 months times 15 equals… yeah, lets not talk about it. I’m just hoping it wasn’t a fraud. The artwork did look genuine.

When I was working on the Big N (and I do mean Nortel) I got really “into” tea.  Lauren and I would take a 10 a.m. trip downstairs to the little convenience store and get our morning cup.  The lady who worked the register was cra-zy.  She would sing to us or make random inquiries into our lives.  For example, one morning I was buying a cup of Earl Grey, as usual, and upon check out she looks at me and asks, “do you watch a lot of sci-fi”?  Do I look like I watch a lot of sci-fi?  Apparently I do.  After quickly telling her no, I asked why she asked me that.  She didn’t really have a reason for asking, like I was wearing an “I heart Sci-fi” t-shirt or anything.  She just thought I looked like I did.  Truth be told I hate science fiction.  I think I’d rather spend 3 days trapped in the new American Girl store than watch a 30 minute TV show about sci-fi.  Another time she began singing to us as we were brewing our tea.  “Just tea for two and two for tea, just me for you and you for me”.  And now, every time I make tea I sing this song in my head.  Thank you, Tea Lady.

My obsession with tea has taken a new level.  I few months ago, a coworker of mine introduced me to Yogi Teas.  I’d always seen them at Whole Foods, but there were SO many flavors/remedies to choose from.  I didn’t know where to start.  He introduced me to “Breathe Deep”.  It is like the best tea ever.   I’m actually about to order a case of it online to save some mulah.  If you like tea, check it out.  And if you have another flavor to recommend, bring it.  Each tea bag has its own piece of wisdom, which is an added bonus.  I taped one of my favorites to my computer screen as a daily reminder type thing: 

“May this day bring you peace, tranquility and harmony”.  Thank you, Yogi.

P.S. Santa, if you are listening, I’d really like my stockings to be overflowing with boxes of this tea this year.

Its funny that just yesterday I was going on about how Elvis is the god in my music religion.  My Mom just sent me an email with a link to a story about how this carved marble head that was the corner of a sarcophagus in Roman times is about to be up for auction for $2 million.  Is it proof that Elvis really is a god?  I choose to believe so, but think I’ll stick to my $10 Elvis bust that I got at a market in Wimberly.

This just in… Super Bowl XLIII will feature Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, sources have confirmed.   Now, there’s a reason to actually watch the game!

The Olympics and a nap… can’t really complain.

I went to church this morning with Amy.  We listened to the minster talk about heaven on Earth and we sang about the Promised Land.  As we sang, the song immediately reminded me of one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen’s songs… ‘The Promised Land’, of course. 

WARNING: I’m about to get on my Bruce Springsteen soapbox.  

I came home from church and as I sat down to eat lunch and surf the internet, I came across an article on the Yahoo homepage.  It was about a preacher in Massachusetts who has recently written a book titled “The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen”.  My eyes and ears perked up.  I clicked to read the article and I connected with it immediately.  This guy has been a fan of Bruce since Bruce’s career began.  And he always incorporates Bruce’s music in with his sermons.  I NEED to go to this church.  I’ve always felt a strong spiritual connection to Bruce and his music.  Going to see him in concert is a religious experience for me.  I come away feeling more in touch with God and life than going to a Sunday church service.  Music is part of my religion.  Elvis is my music god and Bruce is his disciple, spreading the message.  I know I sound crazy, but at least there is another person out there who feels the same way I do.

The biggest thing I take away from Bruce’s music is his declaration of hope in this world.  He isn’t a romantic, he sings of pain, troubles and how tough living in this world can be.  But, just as he brings you down singing about such honest things, he picks you right back up singing about hope, faith and love.  And he ends up leaving you feeling that you are in a higher place than before you listened to him.  Thats the best way I can explain it.  I’ve seen him three times live and each time he has literally moved me to tears.  How many people cry at a rock concert?  Its his presence, his energy and all of the emotions he brings to the surface through his music.  Its one of the best feelings I’ve ever had and one I can always go back to at any time.  I just have to turn him on.  Here’s a sample of the lyrics from ‘The Promised Land’:

“I’ve done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on Main Street howl
’cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land

There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted”

Here’s a link to the NPR website with a 10 minute clip of the interview.  Give it a listen, its possible you may understand more of this crazy talk by hearing how the preacher explains it.  I’m heading out to buy the book.  I’ll let you know what I think…

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93437259