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. Read the rest of this entry »
[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. Read the rest of this entry »
I would hardly call my self a philanthropist; I hardly have enough money to be a me-anthropist, but I like to give when I can. So on MLK day my work sponsored a company wide day of service. Their pitch was “Make it a day on, not a day off.” Of course, the option was to do my normal job for the day or do the volunteer work. Although, I’m hesitant to even call it volunteer work, since I was paid my normal rate for it.
The day of service began with a four hour brainwashing meeting to get us in the mood for the day. We basically learned how good MLK was and how good my company is, then we learned how good we all could be if we just did more things for our community. Read the rest of this entry »
I know my mom reads my blog, but I don’t think my grandma does, so I should be OK in writing this. This past weekend (please note, this was originally written back in August) it was my grandfather’s 80th birthday, which means that his children and grandchildren from across the country congregated to celebrate this calculated event. But as with most birthday parties, there was an ulterior motive for their gathering – deciding whether or not my grandmother (who divorced my grandfather years and years ago) and who lives alone, should continue to live alone, or if they should put her in a home.
I was in DC recently for Lisa’s birthday party. The plan initially was to start at Rumor’s and barhop. I had a feeling the barhopping wouldn’t happen because it’s hard to coordinate a large group of people leaving one bar and going to another bar.
We stayed at Rumor’s the entire night, and through the process I become somewhat intoxicated, so much so, in fact, that I decided to lower my standards. I spotted two girls that weren’t ugly by any means, but they weren’t exactly Perfect 10s, and they might have been a bit on the “meatier” side, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call them fat, despite the fact that I called one of them “Fat Tina Fey.”
I got Will to come with me, since there were two of them and we started dancing. The one girl didn’t want anything to do with Will, which was odd, since Will was out of her league. But I continued dancing with my girl, who I quickly dubbed Fat Tina Fey. Tina Fey, of course, was one of the lead writers for SNL, she also did the Daily Update, and most recently she is on the show 30 Rock, which happens to be one of my favorites. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
