Don’t laugh, but I read books. I know that’s passé and that none of the cool kids are reading books these days (other than Harry Potter and Twilight, of course). Of course, periodicals are OK, even better if you read them on your phone, but bust out a classic by Jane Austin and prepare to be emasculated, even if you’re a chick.
Every year, full time employees at Circuit City would receive three new shirts. I worked there for four years, though I was not technically full time for that first year, so I only got two shirts then. I also got some other shirts when I was promoted, and again when I began my management training.
In all, I have about 22 Circuit City polo shirts. I’ve just had them in a trashbag in my closet for the last three years, not really wanting to let go of them, but not knowing exactly what to do with them.
I recently organized my closet and added in some more shelf space, and in the process decided that I finally needed to let go of the shirts – they were out of business, if I couldn’t get rid of the shirts now, I would never be able to get rid of them. Read the rest of this entry »
In psychology you learn that attention is a finite resource. There is only a limited amount of attention that any single person can give to any particular stimulus. You can pay a little attention to multiple things or you can give all of your attention to one thing. For instance, right now you are reading this, but not with all of your attention, most likely because you are listening for your boss to walk up behind you and you want to be able to close the browser before they realize you’re reading a site about drunken debacles instead of doing whatever it is you do so that your boss can afford an $85,000 rug in his office.
It’s that time of year again… Bells are ringing, lights are being hung and thousands are invading the malls, prepared for epic battle, in search of the perfect gift. No, it’s not wedding season… It’s Christmas. And with it comes those perfect occasions we all dread, at least in some small capacity, in the deepest recesses in the pits of our stomachs: The Christmas Party. Be it at home with our relatives or at the office with the co-workers, it’s go time for awkwardness.
You probably thought it couldn’t get much worse than Thanksgiving… But it can… And it will. Family gatherings can be a lot like a bad relationship after you’re out of it… You look back and remember the good parts with complete amnesia about all the bad parts. But then, as soon as you walk back in the door, it all comes flooding back to you. And all of a sudden, you want out. Where’s my jacket? “I think someone has $#!% on the coats!” Office parties aren’t any better. What’s worse than being paid to spend all day with people you can barely stand in the first place? Not being paid to spend a night with people you can barely stand in the first place. You might be thinking right now “No way. I love my family and I have great co-workers.” But deep down, you know it’s true. And so, in the spirit of giving, in this episode I will share with you some tips for surviving those maladroit moments. Read the rest of this entry »
So, I know what you’re thinking. It’s been a while. And I apologize. Allow me to explain. You see, I’ve been away. Far away. On the other side of the world, in fact. I spent the last year in the Oriental paradise known as South Korea. What can I say? My job takes me crazy places sometimes. And I know what you’re thinking, now. What more interesting to blog about than living abroad? Well, to be honest, the majority of my time there was spent working… not sightseeing. So, I figured I would spare us both the effort and avoid the exercise in futility.
Now, I’ve been trying to decide an appropriate topic for my anticipated return (well… anticipated by one or two people, anyway). There are plenty of blog-worthy topics out there right now just waiting to be expounded upon. But none were grand enough an entrance. Then, finally, it hit me. What better topic for a new beginning… than the end? The end of the world.
I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer. At least, my mom has always wanted me to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an astronaut, or the President. I guess that’s what mom’s do, hope that their children take up amazing professions and make lots of money so that the parents will be taken care of in their old age. Well, I considered being a lawyer, I even took the LSAT, which is the admittance test for law school.
The LSAT, as it tends to do, didn’t even have the common decency to lube up before it had its way with me. It was not a pleasant experience. And yet, I’m still considering going into law school, and I have several friends who agree with that notion. It would fit in well with my current career, but of course, it’s expensive and takes a lot of time.
And why bother going to law school when you can sue somebody without going? You just have to make sure you sue somebody for less than $5000, which is what I’m doing.
Have you ever heard a phrase, most likely carelessly juxtaposed, and thought, “that needs to be the title for something – I don’t know what; I don’t know why, but it must be.” A quick Google search tells me that apparently I am unique in this thought.
One would think in the seemingly infinite amount of Simpson’s episodes that Homer would have inexplicably muttered the phrase, though I imagine that “sex”, for the sake of appeasement, would have been replaced with “Mmm” (my book antiqua font doesn’t do the word justice, but pretend it is moaned in a sexy woman’s voice) and French toast with “beer” and you’ll see that, in fact, Homer has been saying this phrase for year – they just haven’t named any episodes after it.
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Does that make me unpatriotic?
[update: the picture wasn’t showing in IE for some reason, I have obviously fixed it, but sorry for any confusion.]
I work in one of the main buildings for a rather large consulting firm. We don’t have the entire building, but we do have our name on the outside of it, which means that we pay the most rent and have the majority of the building. There are 18 floors and I work on the fifth.
Now, I mentioned that I work for a consulting firm, but just like any other consulting firm, they do other things as well. But the fact that we are mainly consultants makes for a certain work environment. Most of the people working here are young professionals, recently graduated from college and pretty bright. The problem is, all of these cats work on the client site as opposed to the home office. That means that all of the kids my age don’t actually work in my building, for the most part.
The people that work in my building are generally accountants, HR, senior executives, etc. Basically an older crowd; a crowd you would expect to be more professional than the young guns going out getting plastered every night and crawling their way into work the next day. The people that you see around the office are pretty much the stereotypical people you would expect to see when you think of “the business world”.
Super Bowls hardly ever interest me. The Redskins haven’t made it to one in over 15 years and the way they are playing it looks like it will be another 15 years before they make it back to one. The commercials are getting worse and worse (though this year was a marked improvement over last year), and generally I could care less about the teams involved.
This year was different. The Patriots went into the game 18-0, all they needed to do was win one more game to make meaning of their undefeated season up to that point. With every fiber of my being I wanted the Patriots to lose. Normally I wouldn’t care about an AFC team, and as much as I like the ’72 Dolphins, I don’t really care about their record remaining intact. But after what the Patriots did to the Redskins, running up the score 52-7, converting twice on fourth down when they were already up by 20+ points, I lost all respect for Bill Belichick and wanted nothing more than to see the Patriots go down.
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