I really miss it today.

2 Reasons why I love my work and 1 why I hate it.



Let's get the negative nelly (and I'm not) reason out of the way first. Guess who I haven't seen in three weeks. Yeah, that's right. This guy. WTF, mate? I'm sitting at reception for the next three weeks, 'cept one of the Thursdays is Xmas and the other is New Years Day and after that I am unemployed, so way to suck, Tightpants, and yeah, I realize that he'll just come on another day of the week and I'll see him then but I didn't think of that when I started this rant so just shut up.



*Goes to time out chair*



...



*Comes back*



Oh, hai. I'm better.



So the two good things!

I. Internet Security
As with most (if not all) places of employment, there is a filter placed on websites that the corporate lackey may peruse. My work blocks the basic biggies like Facebook and Youtube, but also any personal e-mail accounts and streaming media. In layman's terms, these laymen are hardcore. The reason for the blocking always flashes across the screen, like "Sex" or "Offensive Material". The other day I was surfing around and came across some Top 10 list of Things That Would Distract David At Work hosted by the website cracked.com . It was blocked, which was not a huge deal, but you wanna know the banner that flashed on the screen as the reason for the filter? "Tasteless". I just thought that this was hilarious, as if a utilities company was a proper Victorian lady who had had her high tea ruined by her guest's farting Welsh terrier.


II. Goodie Day
Yesterday was Goodie Day at work. I was not a stranger to the concept of the corporate potluck, as it happened several time during my tenure with the government, but nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. By the end of Wednesday, a grand total of 11 out of the 40 employees had signed up to bring various items of varying degrees of interest from veggies & dip (psssh) to Amish friendship bread (hate the baker, love the bread). I brought my steadily-increasing-in-street-cred chocolate chip cookies (I predict that they will become so adored that I shall overtake Famous Amos. Spackle a 'V' on that shiat, yo).



Was there any way of knowing into what strange wonderland I would be walking the next day? No, there was not. It turns out that signing up what you were to bring was just for n00bs so the entire lunch room was packed with edibles.


Now, the government, not the classiest place. David at the government? Even less classy. On one particular Food Day, I forgot about it completely so I ran across and bought two large Greek salads at the shiatty food court just so I could participate. They were barely touched as everyone was too busy with the sludgey 7-layer dip, coca-cola chicken wings, two-bite brownies (one-bite for the fatty in the mail room) and sticks of butter the other employees had brought. Homemade! My current job though...o...m...g...



TOP 5 DISHES


(Don't you hate it when they put #1 first? No? Just me then.)

5. That Veggie Platter I Just Bashed - uh, yeah, that shit was awesome. I thought it was totally going to be one of those moldy Safeway platters, but it had really good quality stuff. Fresh cukes, bell peppers, grape tomatoes. It was brought'en.


4. Homemade Spinach Dip with Crazy-Ass Herb Crackers - Put the 'crack' in crackers.


3.Skor Bar Bars - I was so impressed with these only to discover that it was just Saltines coated in caramel and topped with chocolate and Skor bits. Whatever. I had 4.


2. Piazza De Nardi Chocolate Zuccotto - The fact that someone brought pretty much the best dessert you can buy in this city should tell you why I am so glad to be working at this place. The fact that I was pretty much the only one with the good sense to have any should tell you why I am so glad that it's temporary.


1. Baked Brie - Not, like, a little round about 4 inches in diameter. We're talking a round roughly the size of a dinner plate. $25, easy. And like the zuccotto before it, barely anyone touched it, which allowed me to not only suckle at its creamy teat all day, but also the following two mornings on bagels. You know, just so that they knew that they were Chanukah chocolate chip cookies.

If this made me sad, it would be a problem. If I still derived anger and hurt and all those Twilight emotions, then yes, there would be words. The fact that avoidance is the chosen recourse instead is very telling though. It speaks volumes about the things we won't utter out loud for lack of energy. The sleeping dogs have been euthanized. It isn't a slight to the past, as no one would doubt that it was formidable, laced with ideals and their inevitable fall-outs, but the path just kind of died. There was no cliff, no epic Disney battle on a parapet or an African mountain. Just a slow dissolution of gravel into dirt. To continue at this point would be akin to a heroin addict constantly chasing the dragon, the time that it was good. Not a good plan. And as with addiction, there was never any stability here. Not really. A grouping of months here and there, yes. But by and large, we were two separate bodies in anamorphosis whose cells aligned at times in complimentary states of personal evolution. Declarations of who belonged in whose world were largely ignored by me, though I suppose they were ultimately a pretty great forecasting of the storm clouds clearing to a void. Is it too petty to say well done? I certainly never would have called it. I never saw us in perpetuity but I always thought that we had the makings of a massive blowout. I don't come by anger honestly but you bring it out like no other. I assumed there would be a shouting match with words that went so far past healing that neither would dare utter an apology. I've visualized it time and time again, but not lately. Now there's not even sadness. No problem.

At the risk of sounding like a gosh darn Readers' Digest article, I really should not have gotten out of bed yesterday. Oddly enough, my new "Action is lord of all!" mantra hasn't quite got me to Nirvana yet and I am still highly (highly) susceptible to all the crap the universe has to offer. For newer readers (hey, you two), I suffer from mild seasonal insomnia. I've tried to analyze why this developed and epiphanized that it was because I have gotten too good at striving for the ideal. Well aware of my character flaws, I can confidently state that my biggest one is attempting to a render a situation as close to perfection as possible, usually with hilarious results. I'm the guy constantly fidgeting in movies to get more comfortable; the guy who says delightfully cinematic lines on the first date to which the response is usually, "Huh?"; the guy whose order at Starbucks requires several legal pads, 3 sharpies and a shift change to process. Yes, I am that guy. High maintenance? Perhaps, but really it's only when it comes to my own environment and hopefully I do not inflict this burden on others.

Getting back to the matter at hand, I have so perfected the art of conditioned sleep that when something is awry, it just doesn't happen. I have to be tired, but not over-tired as that leads to restlessness and Facebook; it has to be cold, with my feet outside of the covers; has to have a little background noise (a fan, wave machine, some guy I hired to sit beside my bed to read me stories). I'm not sure if it was too hot or too dry or that Rick (the reader) was a little throaty, but it wasn't happening. I would get close to falling asleep, think, "Heck yes! I'm almost asleep!" and wake up. So much fail. The failure was so great, in fact, that I slept through my alarm and had to leave a voicemail for my supervisor 5 minutes before I was supposed to be there. All this would have been bad enough if it was not for the fact that she was out of the office that morning so no one knew where I was. Her supervisor called the staffing agency who called me: "Hi, David. This is Jen...Great, how's it going?...Good. So I'm just wondering if you're going into work today."

Nothing makes me feel I'm 10 years old again like someone putting forth a rhetorical question about my ineptitude. It just makes me feel like such a failure at life. "Why, yes, Jen. Just after I've finished huffing some hairspray, having unprotected sex with this here hooker and shooting an orphan, I absolutely plan on making an appearance." Really, I don't feel that it's Jen's fault. She probably deals with a lot of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells over at The Agency and these phone calls are a pretty routine necessity. I just felt so shamed, like a puppy who crapped on the carpet. There's so much more dignity in intentionally being badass and crapping on the carpet. Like, FUCK YES! I CRAPPED ON THIS CARPET! BEHOLD: CRAP! LO: CARPET! As it was, I didn't really do either. If anything, I kinda gave a heads-up that I was gonna crap on the carpet: "Just to warn you, I had some bad paella last night and crap on the carpet is hiiiiighly likely. We cool? Great. Kthxbai."

"I should never have gotten out of bed this morning..."

There are so many instances and varieties thereupon for this phrase.

"I should never have gotten out of bed this morning...because I have no arms or legs. Rolling onto the ground was not smart." Waramps Champ.

"I should never have gotten out of bed this morning...cause my pimp still had one more guy lined up." Epic fail: prostitution. That's, like, your crack money for a couple days. Way to go.

"I should have gotten out of bed this morning. Instead, I died peacefully in my sleep." Wow. Um. That's sad.

"I should have gotten out of bed, just someone else's." The great thing about sleeping with someone (in the literal sense) is that even if you can't quite manage the sleep, that is hours of bankable cuddle time. Plus, if they are asleep, you can totally manipulate the positions. These are the things I think about. And look, I'm not advocating promiscuity but honestly, it can really inspire fatigue, especially for guys. When I'm done, it's like, "Ok, now let's do y-Zzzzzz..." Occasionally, I'll have a sandwich first, but really that's it. And when it doesn't happen for a long time *cough*three months*cough*, there are consequences. Personally, I over-love my pillows. It's serious. I have done things to those pillows in my sleep that will require years of therapy. For them. Cause let me tell you, Tide can erase many a blotch, but the stain of my loving is just too tough a job.

I think I intended that last sentence to be far less disturbing than it actually turned out to be. Oh what the hell, I already referenced Waramps falling out bed. My gondola to Hell is under construction.

Hehe, cause they don't have limbs...

Um, this.

When I was 17, I was set up on a date at the Red River Ex. Freshly out of my first relationship (for anyone out there wondering this very same thing, dating a boy who becomes born again after 6 weeks of dating and tells you that you're going to hell is a really fantastic first outing into romance), I decided to let a friend set me up. (Note: this is the only time a friend has offered to set me up. Thanks a lot, Mennos.) The girl doing the matchmaking was not a particularly close friend, but she was nice enough, very bubbly and looked not unlike this. 'Cept with brown hair. That's irrelevant. Anyway, she offered to set me up with her friend Joshua and what better way to make a good first impression than with your lips peeled back over your face whilst on the Gravitron. If nothing else, it's demonstrative of a certain dexterity that could come in handy later.

I had never really been to the Ex before (though I've occasionally been to the Y) but was fully confident that I would be a superstar on the rides. This...was not to be. My stomach can handle pretty much anything that I throw in it, from Indian food to quintuple espressos, but on the first ride it took one look up at me, put it's little tummy hands in the air and said, "I'm out." I did not actually vomit, but unless you're trying to date Miss Piggy, green is not the best look for a first date.

After dismounting this first ride and realigning my eyeballs, the girl gigglingly suggested that Josh and I ride together on this little Ferris wheel with closed-in carts. Sounds innocent enough, yes? No. No, it was not. These sadistic little cubby holes twirled with the motion of the wheel. Imagine those Spinning Apple rides in 3D. I could have punched her in the neck. The boy was not exactly an X/Y model, but he was cute enough, with this kind of dopey (perhaps stoned) bear look to him, and ralphing all over his black rayon Bootlegger pants wasn't reeeeeeally the way I wanted to exchange our bodily fluids for the first time. Fortunately, the ride didn't move quick enough to inspire any lurching, but the carts had a way of landing on their sides so that, while still held down by the bar across our laps, we were pretty much on top of one another. This might have been fine had I a) not been more nauseous than Estelle Getty in an Imax, b) not been 17 and very sweaty-palmed at this whole date situation (because I'm so much better at 24) and c) not had a metal pole sticking into my thigh every time Josh landed on me. Oh, Cupid, you shouldn't have.

I really don't remember anything about the rest of our night at the Ex, although I seem to remember him coming over to my house afterwards and us awkwardly making out in that divine 17 year old way. Remember when all you did was make out? Wasn't that better?! No, not for me either, BUT there was something lovely in the intimacy. For the next three weeks, we would make out some more, go to the zoo, get poison ivy from making out in Assiniboine Park (him) and be dumped (me). You know it's not going to work out when the guy asks you not to use such big words, meaning multi-syllables. Still, I remember trying to convince myself that it could still work.

I still do that, in some ways, try to compromise to get what I ultimately want; I've just learned how to gauge more quickly when the battle is lost. I think, to a certain degree, I still want to have a pole jabbed into me whilst at an amusement park *ahem* but I'm a bit pickier about the one sprawled out on top of me.

Hey, guess what? Today was the day.

I think that perhaps you can't see it when you're in it; the view is too cloudy, like trying to analyze a storm from within its eye. It's just that sometimes the world is viewed so much easier from a cubicle than from a stage. Glamorous, no, but that's hardly the point. You think more because there's nothing else to do. An iPod can only distract so much when doing tasks that could be easily prescribed to any other simian. The victories are more plentiful, if less grandiose, and the tragedies aren't quite so Greek. Perhaps it's a more cowardly or simply one that derives from fatigue and the subsiding of passion, but sometimes it is a relief to spend half your time on trivial things than every waking hour on the one meaningful thing to which you aspire. Lower those standards and you'll be amazed at how successful you can be!

Speaking of successful, I had a potential epiphany on the bus yesterday. Now, I know that the search for happiness has really come into itself in recent years with the boom of The Secret and self-help sections everywhere, and while they're all part myth and part useful information in a variety of ratios, here's what I got: it's all about actions.

Given the world economic situation, the price of talk is at an all-time low, but actions, not the things we do in a moment but rather the things we do before that moment, are really what decides things for us.

I'm still trying to work through this one, so just bear with me. I don't want to get all into the Laws of the Universe (capital L, capital U) because fuck if I know 'em. In fact, this might all be a bunch of hooey, but let's shelve the self-doubt for a minute (God knows I had enough of that on the weekend) and see what we can see. All of the happiness philosophies of recent memory have had to do with thought and the way that those thoughts draw things to you. I'm-a call bullshit. Certainly these thoughts inspire us, but it's the actions we take as a result that brings change. You don't win the lottery because you think you will. You win the lottery cause you bought the damn ticket. Some examples, like that lottery one, are just common sense: if you go to the gym, you will become fit; if read a book, you will acquire knowledge about something. Or Paris Hilton. Whatever. It's the more abstract things, those ideas and desires that we don't normally think of as in our control via previous actions that have piqued my interest.

I cleaned my house this weekend. I have no clue why. While I like neatness, my general laziness usually takes over and things pile up. Yet, something in my head said that I needed to clean my house. That night, a group of us wanted to go out but couldn't decide on a restaurant in a specifically suggested neighborhood that happened to be mine, so we went to my place and had a great night. It was a very "If you build it they will come"situation. My dishes were washed so they were used, my bed was made and, while it wasn't put to good use like the dishes, it got someone who I'd love to have use it a mere few feet away...for a total of 45 minutesBUTTHEPOINTIS...it happened. I'm starting to see if you put yourself in the right situations, things will happen. Look at all those women who can't have a baby so they adopt and then - boom - they get pregnant. They started acting like moms so they became them. Look at me, somewhat wanting to find a better place but not really caring enough to investigate. I started browsing Craigslist every day and within a couple weeks I found this amazing place. Look at girls that flit from one relationship to the next without any time pining over anyone. Well, they're just slutty, but still...they're ACTING like sluts. Huh? Right?

So I dunno. I'm going to experiment with this for a while. Make my bed so it will be slept in; wash the wineglasses so they'll be shared. Acting like how I want it to be rather than how it is. Chores do not a social life make but perhaps they'll result in something amazing. I'll let you know how it goes.