Post-Humous

Funny story: I was going to delete all my bookmarks and the files and photos I had saved on my work computer before I left, to both protect my privacy and hide my slacking. And I forgot! I also forgot to give my key back. Hmmmm... Maybe I'll break in and destroy the evidence?

Also, life as an apprentice has begun. Still no word on the impact on this here blog.

I'm writing a post about DC Talk? Weird.

I have "Coloured People" by DC Talk stuck in my head. Why, you ask? Why on earth would I have a song that I obsessed over for a summer when I was 12 because they were the coolest Christian band (and thus an acceptable CD purchase in my home) on the block that I have since completely forgotten about and laughed involuntarily about whenever I thought of? (Whew! Run-on-THAT!) Because I was doing a sudoku puzzle (PS: Pet Peeve: when people pronounce "sudoku" "soodookoo" or "sodakoo". It's freaking SUDOKU people -soodohkoo- not hard to say!) and methodically going through the numbers I was looking for, starting with one. Then all of a sudden my thoughts of "one... one... one..." became rhythmic, just like the echoed counting that starts off "Coloured People." GEEZ. This is kind of an annoying way to end my gloriously last day as The Receptionist!

PS (or should I say PPS, since I incorrectly used a PS in the body of my paragraph?): I've used way too many quotation marks, parantheses, and now, post-scripts in this posting. I apologize. It's DC Talk, they do this to me! Although I do still think that they rocked it with Free at Last, pulling the old trickeroo, making us think it was old people singing a hymn and then rapping it out.

*the tone shifts to witty sarcasm*

Oh, and thanks a lot for not stocking enough toilet paper in the office to last us through your absence. Also, thanks for not leaving any cheques so your cleaning guy won't get paid.

PS: That last post was my 200th post! Woo! A tribute to the intense boredom of being a receptionist.

An open letter to my boss

*Disclaimer: these really are more like friendly suggestions than angry rants for the most part. I promise.*

Dear Boss,

You are a Very Busy Man who runs a few businesses and does a lot. The occasional false expectation or forgetting of something is expected and okay, especially because you generally deal with these issues in a friendly, efficient way. Well, maybe not always efficient, but friendly at the very least. I do have a few pointers for you though:

-Try to keep names straight. In this office there are 3 people working for you (formerly 4), and then you've got a kazillion other businesses with other people working for you. Mix-ups are understandable, but I do like it if you call me by my name and not that of the manager of your pub.

-Try to keep an eye on the clock. You are a very busy, workaholic type who is in every weekend and every evening. I don't know if you ever see your family except when you take them on too-expensive vacations. Whatever, your wife probably knew what she was getting into. However, I signed on for 8:30-5 (or 4:30 in summer months). When you print off 3 tax returns for me to put together 15 minutes before I'm set to leave, please tell me if they're urgent and need to get done tonight, in which case I'll cushion my lunch tomorrow with the extra time I took today to finish, or if they can wait until tomorrow, in which case they will. I don't like rushing to finish a job, and then coming in the next morning to have it still sitting on top of my desk waiting for you to put in the mail... and then to see it there for three days after that.

-If you want me to file something, just tell me! Leaving random documents around the office will not lead to them being put away because I don't know if you're using them or not.

-If you want me to file something and you have the file it goes in, please mention that.

-This job has been done in the learn-as-you-go style, which suits me fine. I was taught the basics when I arrived, and then taught specific tasks, programs, whatever, as the need arose. Great! But try to teach me everything I'm supposed to do at the same time. If you don't tell me that I'm supposed to print off legal-sized copies of the GL and trial balance whenever a tax return is done, I won't. Then after three months when you ask my why it's not there, I won't know what you're talking about. Just the way it works. Thanks for not getting mad at me for not doing things I wasn't told to do though, my old boss used to do that a lot.

That's about it! Today is my last day working for you, and even though you're on a far-too-expensive vacation with your family, I just wanted to say thanks that these are my only complaints about you (the Lord of Accounting on the other hand... oh MAN you've got a rant coming!). I've had a lot of bosses and you rank right up there with the good ones. Not that I'm not incredibly excited to be leaving this horribly boring job behind. Let's be honest.

Sincerely,

The Receptionist

A funny thing happened on the way to the office.

Funny story yesterday: I came to work but I didn't work. The sequence of events (written in the third person, because I've already told this story a few times and am kind of bored with it so this should shake things up a bit):

-Andrea arrives to the office, reaches into her purse for keys to open up, and can't find them.
-After some frantic digging, she sits down and goes through her purse more carefully.
-Still no keys.
-Andrea sits down beside the office door and starts reading her book (BREAKING DAWN!!!) while she waits.
-She expects someone to show up within an hour-they don't.
-Not knowing what exactly to do, she sticks a note on the door asking whoever gets in to phone her when they arrive and waits by the coffee shop down the street.
-She buys an over-priced tea ($3.05? Are they serious? For TEA???) and reads her book more.
-She barely notices when over an hour passes.
-She goes back to the office to make sure her note's still there-it is.
-She goes back to the coffee shop.
-The last two steps are repeated twice more, except that the third time she goes to the diner next to the coffee shop and buys a cookie, as it's almost lunch time and she's hungry.
-Andrea sighs several times, unsure of what to do, in between getting lost in her book.
-She goes back to the office one last time, around 12:30, and waits a little longer and then goes home.
-20 minutes after she gets home she gets a message saying that someone's finally arrived but that Andrea should probably just take the day off. No kidding.

The end.

*ugh*

I wonder if everyone else here gets as bored as I do, or if they get personal satisfaction from this work. I wouldn't put it past them, I know that there are people in the world that enjoy numbers and spreadsheets and adding up columns to make things work and cheating the CRA however they can (just KIDDING, no one here actually enjoys spreadsheets, that's just crazy talk). I just find it so hard to imagine, not because someone enjoying those things is unimagineable (like I said, I know they're out there), but because it's so dang QUIET and we've been sitting here for such a ridiculously LONG TIME that I just feel like SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE.

Apparently that something is my brain. Goodbye brain.

*meh*

So.... I don't really have anything left to say here... I've only got three days left as The Receptionist, and my spirit's been pretty crushed by the boredom lately. I'm pretty sure that if this wasn't my last three days and I actually had to keep working here indefinitely after this I would become a willing pawn for the Lord of Accounting. So it's pretty good that I'll be escaping that fate (although I'm too bored to care, let's be honest).

I just realized that after this post I'll be three posts away from 200. If I were a TV series this would be a big deal. I'm just a blog, so it's really not that big of a deal, but I decided to stick with it and carry through to 200 anyways. Who knows, maybe by that point I'll get inspired to rant or inform you of wacky news again?

Small observations

Two things I've noticed since my boss left:

I am the only one still wearing "office clothes"

Also, I am very accurate at the data entry these days. This is wonderful, especially 4 days before I never come here ever again.

And so this is my workplace...

So.... being at work while my boss is out of town... It's, well, pretty much exactly the same. Minus my boss running around in a panic trying to find things. So basically it's quieter. And I'm here on my own quite a bit more. In fact, I really don't know what to do with myself these days, so if anyone has a good time-wasting website that doesn't involve the need for sound, please let me know! Otherwise I'd just be watching Flight of the Conchords music videos all the time.

When the cat's away...

Today my boss leaves for two weeks of vacation. I have no idea what this means for the working environment here, but I'm eager to find out...

An Open Letter to People Who Use the Phone

Dear Clients, the CRA, and others who call my office,

It's true, I have only been a receptionist for about 6 months, so my beefs can in no way rival those of lifelong receptionists (or even those who do it for a couple of years), but I do have a few suggestions for those calling in:

1. I know, your call is urgent. You're calling your accountant, which means it's about money, which means it's important to you. However, your whiny, panicked voice will not make me transfer the call any faster. I won't do it slower just to spite you, I'm not that bitter yet, but I already transfer calls at a normal, efficient, human speed, and that's about as fast as it's going to happen without me becoming the office spazz.

2. I understand that some consider it more polite, but when you either a) slowly and methodically or b) in your quick, whiny, panicked voice, tell me your full name and the company your calling from and then ask for my boss using his full name and asking if you can please talk to him, you're wasting a lot of time. You're also annoying me.

3. Thank you to those of you who are quick and to the point: "Joe there please?" or even "Jim calling for Joe." Then I can put you on hold much quicker than the nimwits from number 2 and not waste anyone's time.

4. If you get my boss' name wrong when you're calling, I don't really care. But don't try to pretend I'm wrong. I know my boss' name, as well as the names of everyone else in the office because a) that's my job and b) there are currently 3 other people in this office so any dimwit would know their names. Just acknowledge your mistake and let me transfer your call instead of arguing with me (or apologizing profusely as if I'm going to tell on you-I won't!).

5. If you try to get ahold of someone and they're on the phone, please just leave a message with me or on their voicemail. When you say "oh no, I'll just call back" that inevitably means that you'll call again while they're busy and I'll have to deal with you many more times. Just leave a message! It's what I'm here for.

6. On that note, you also don't need to ask permission to leave a message. Especially if you're whiny/panicked guy. Just tell me your name and number and I'll write it down. It's my job.

Sincerely,

The Receptionist

Harry POTTER!

I just watched the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince online (without sound, which really doesn't matter because I know it all too well) and I am so excited I think my stomach will eat my heart, just because it doesn't know what to do with itself.

A pet peeve

I dislike it when people come into the office and while they're waiting for my boss chat with me incessently (and awkwardly). Don't they know I have work to do? I mean, I don't, but theoretically they should assume I do, right? I mean, it's kind of disrespectful. And it interrupts my entertainment.

Here's my current problem:

I've got an hour and a half left to go sitting at this desk, and because I've had some tasks to complete all day (for the hugest part non-work related) I'm not in the state of boredom where I start wondering if I can use sheer will to pluck out arm hair or something. But now I've realized that I've exhausted all possible things to do, and that the only thing left to do (check facebook again, skim news sites, etc etc) will undoubtably leave me in the aforementioned state. This is undersirable and I must think of a way to avoid it, which means creating some kind of a mini-project for myself for the rest of the day. But what can it be? I guess I could fall back on trying to plan my future. That generally takes up a little time and some brain energy before exhaustion/disollustionment set in.

Couch potato needs to win marathon to get girl back? Try these!

So they've finally done it. A pill to make you more fit. Weird. Icky. Good for some?

This is kind of pointless.

It's as if the back alley behind my office is considered a personal driveway, except to several people instead of just one. It's the quickest route for me to get to Broadway or the coffee shop behind my work where I often sit and read without buying anything on my lunches. It's also frequently blocked by moving trucks, garbage trucks, sewage trucks (seriously, what kind of things are people around there doing that there are so many of these things that I've noticed it?), or some kind of construction materials. Or today, when I was walking from the bus, a giant tarp. Yes, a tarp. I don't know why, but two men were spreading a huge tarp across the alley.

Anyways, it's kind of annoying and often kind of smelly. But I'm actually not that upset about it, so it doesn't amount to much of a rant.

*muffled cries*

Ugh, I am BORED! Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored. In such a way that mindless (or mindful) forms of online entertainment are unable to quench. BORED!

Oh, and I gave my 2 weeks notice as el receptionista today. I have yet to decide what will become of this little baby, since I will (theoretically) no longer be in the realm of the boring office job but instead in the poverty-stricken-yet-interesting theatre job. Woo!

But I'm still borrrrrrred.

More creepiness at the Olympics...

Seriously, when will it end? Now they're testing "suspect" female athletes to make sure they're actually women! Because that wouldn't be insulting at all: "excuse me 'miss', but we think you look a little mannish and so we just need you to pee in this cup..."

EDIT: Actually, I take this back. It's not creepy, it's disgusting.


This makes me happy.

More Olympic Fiascos

Does no one else see a problem with this? I can't believe the things the Chinese government is doing to "improve" Beijing for the Olympics. As if the hush money given to parents who have legitimate concerns over why their children were crushed in the earthquakes wasn't bad enough.

DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE CONDONING THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOUR? By allowing all these things to be done for the Olympics and then supporting said Olympics (or doing little more to decry them than, perhaps, posting an outraged blog), what's the international community saying besides "do whatever you want and we will reward you with tourism and prestige."

SERIOUSLY PEOPLE! Would you raise a child this way?

Solo

After a couple of days off I am back in the office, and I feel strange. Partially because after four days of not working, working is weird, and partially because I've been here for about an hour and I'm still the only one in the office! Is anyone else coming in? Is the office closed today and no one told me? This is strangeness... Strangeness.
Now I've printed an E-Filing authorization form and an envelope with an address on it.

She works hard for her money.

Literally all I've done for work today is send a fax.

Tidbits to pass the time

We all remember portables, yes? I mean the ones in school, not portable music players or portable snacks or whatever else that word has been usurped for by marketers. The stuffy, uncomfortable, ugly portables we all had at least one class in (if not most). Well here's the portable of the future!

Make your baby glow.

I want to go HERE!

And, of course, to bring some eco-ness into the mix: portable solar energy.

whispered judgements

*whispers* I think one of the girls I works with has a Webkinz account/toy. The site is now on my computer after I was absent Monday and someone was working here. If you don't know what Webkinz is, I found out from my 9 year old cousin, which should be explanation enough, dont' you think?
Why are the creepies, hos, and crazies always named Andrea?

*sigh*

Tuesday/Monday

While I was gone yesterday someone sat at my desk and moved stuff. This rankles me, but I feel like I don't have the right to get too upset since they were just filling in for me. I'm so CONFLICTED!

Also, this is absolutely amazing.

Sad and startling news

I have a terrible, terrible confession to make: I think the Lord of Accounting may have a foothold in my soul. Really. As soon as I arrive at the office every day I feel my brain deaden slightly. I no longer become rankled by the minor annoyances of office life. My vent-drive is down (vent-drive, for those of you who do not know, is comparable to a sex-drive, but with venting, not sexing). I am afeared of what might happen if I stick around here much longer.

Luckily, I have a long weekend ahead of me (I'm taking Monday off!) and another long weekend after that, so while I know your lives will be empty without the dwindling-off posts I make once and a while during my work day, I thought it best to tell you now and save you from frantically checking and rechecking the blog, wondering frantically if I'm okay and WHERE IS THE RECEPTIONIST!!???!

Oh, it felt good to yell a little there. I may not be lost to the Lord of Accounting yet.

I want to get away, I want to fly away... (yeah yeah yeah)

We have received about 6 faxes this morning advertising travel deals. Cancun, London, cruises, tours, resorts, seat sales, ARGH! I am falling prey to these advertisers. They know exactly what they're doing. They know that their faxes will get deleted/thrown out immediately, but that the person who will do that (and thus read them) is the receptionist. The bored, underpaid receptionist who dreams of a chance to get away, who will one day snap and actually take on of these travel deals, leaving immediately without notice or a phone call, despite the fact that they're likely actually horrible resorts and have all these strings attached and extra fees.

They're breaking me! And maybe, just maybe, I want to be broken.

well EF that!

Did you know that if you want to be a big nerd and read the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology at your leasure, it'll cost you over $400US?!?!! Egads, people! Nerdiness is not worth this, no matter how fascinating it may be.

*goes back to work*

Today's Confession

When I'm entering a company's financial info for the year into one program or another, I always get kind of excited when I get to whatever month it currently is. I also enjoy entering financial info for the month of my birthday, espcially if they made transactions on my birthday.

"Oh look, they took out $3,000 on my birthday! I wonder if they meant to buy me a present?"

La la laaaa...

A day's work

Dear me. I have been doing data entry all day*. Lord of Accounting-style data entry which means that I'm adding up long long lists of numbers and then entering them into a system and then going over the lists again and again and again to figure out how to make them balance, which never happens on the first try because either a) I missed a number/entered it wrong at some point (I am, of course, the picture of perfection, but it does happen once and a while...) or b) the client didn't fill in their spreadsheet properly and so the numbers are out of whack.

BOO!

*By "all day" of course I mean interspersed with my other online activities, as well as READING because today I was alone in the office for a good chunk of the day! Yip-pee! But still, the data-entering has been torment. I swear.

Stupid printer shrinking the type to the point of illegibility!

Who has two thumbs and hates the office printer? (Points to self with thumbs in an obnoxious kind of way) THIS GIRL.

"A case of the Mondays"

Someone stole my STAPLER!

Oh wow... okay, as I was typing that (after looking what I thought was everywhere for it), I looked up and saw my stapler. Right in front of me. Wow.

Blame Monday?

Speaking of alcohol...

Here's one that's got antioxidants in it!

Drinky drinky!

And more news from the New York Times...

It looks like research has not shown that the pesky (for Americans or 20 year old Canadians visiting the States) drinking age of 21 is actually decreasing the number of drunk driving accidents. While it's true that I found 19 years old to be an annoying drinking age, mostly because I couldn't get into a lot of concerts I wanted to see that were in alcohol-laden venues, and it's true that I still do think that at the age of 18 you should be able to order a beer with your lunch, it is also true that young people are stupid. This makes them much less likely to use alcohol-purchasing power to order a beer with lunch and much more likely to get ridiculously drunk and do stupid things, like drive their cars.

So I cringe to say that... I agree with the idea of slightly older drinking ages (although 21 might be a little extra-old? And kind of arbitrary if you ask me.) But only because we live in a society that has a very disfunctional relationship with alcohol in the first place.

Well that was quick.

Ooooh la la! Already I have found some excellent sustainability-improving, waste-reducing news bits care of the BBC:

A Zero Waste town in Japan!

A new way to use solar energy, by coating windows in a special dye. Can you imagine if our dear City of Glass implemented this? (Consequently, like a good little annoying citizen, I emailed this article to the city's sustainability division.)
Two whole days with no posts! Oh, dear readers (all 1 or 2 of you), I am truly truly sorry. I have been exhuasted (thus not caring about anything that goes on around me enough to rant about) and/or out of the office. Now I am back and possibly getting a wee bit ill. Alas! I will try to spur my energies into a ball of flaming annoyance at something to motivate a post. Or at the very least find something interesting online to comment on.

Turns out it's not too difficult to change who you are.

More psych-research news! Did you know that thinking about your parents will change the way you view yourself? I think everyone knows that everyone has at least a little bit of a double-life when it comes to their parents, from the movies you actually like to watch, to how much drinking you actually do, to the sex you're actually having (or the gender you're having it with), to the fact that you actually paid your way through law school stripping, not waiting tables.

Looks like all that lying (or "protecting" or "hiding" or whatever) is taking its toll on how we view ourselves: when asked to picture their parents and then fill out personality profiles, subjects saw themselves as less wild, adventurous, sensual (etc.), and more docile and submissive, like good little children. Well, I guess there's no harm in that.

Unless you have low self-esteem. Then thinking about anyone, from your partner to your friend makes you feel worse about yourself. Sucky.

Headlines

Three cheers to the Church of England for catching on that women can be bishops without everyone going to hell in the process! (And three boos to the 1,300 clergy members who have threatened to quit if women are allowed in.)

Imagine living in a world where tug-of-war was an Olympic sport. We're all winners!
Don't they teach logic in accounting school?

ARGH!

Work?

This morning I was asked to enter the bank transaction info for one of our clients into a spreadsheet. It's one month's worth, so about 3 pages of transactions, which if I was to work at it straight without sanity breaks would take about 15-20 minutes. Then my boss, relieved that I had something to do, told me I was just told to take my time with it. Then it was pointed out that, well, it does need to be done by the end of the week. So does this mean that I actually should be stretching 20 minutes of work across several days? Is that possible? Even for a pro time-waster like myself?

I'm taking this as a challenge against the Lord of Accounting. So far I've managed to make it last about an hour. Let's see where this goes!

Privacy? Schmivacy.

Watch out! A US judge ordered Google to give up viewer information- the usernames and IP addresses for people who watched every single video ever posted on YouTube since it began. Looks like this might break a privacy law put in place a loooong time ago that makes peoples video rental habits private (after some senator's porno-renting habits were published in a paper).

I skimmed to Canadian Privacy Act to find out what we'd have to say about all this, and while I got bored before I got to anything relevant, I did find that there is an interested clause in the "knowledge and consent" section. Basically, you need someone's knowledge and consent to access their personal information unless you're investigating their crime and they'll destroy it before you get there or other such legal/emergency situations. OR you can access personal information without knowlege or consent if you're using it for journalistic, artistic, or literary purposes. I may be misunderstanding this, but it sounds to me like in Canada it's illegal to access someone's personal information without their consent, unless you're going to publish it in a paper or use it in art (that will, theoretically, be viewed publicly). Awesome.

Spread the Good News

Today I received the best news yet since working here. Well, potentially aside from learning on April 30 that the office would be closed for the next two days to recouperate from tax season. This news has much longer-lasting effects though: we've moved into summer hours! That means I get to go home at 4:30pm every day. Oh happiness abounds!

Maybe I'll stop being so careful about catching the bus that gets me here right at 8:30am from now on too...
Oh man, the potheads of the world are going to love this. Our skin makes cannaboids, similar to THC. And it's got protective/healing properties (for our skin, not other ailments).

Maybe I'm just going through peri-menopause...

I just read a Craigslist posting that made me cry because it was so sweet. I'm becoming my Mom (which is actually kind of awesome if you think about it, because my Mom rocks. But she does cry easily, which could be detrimental to the cold-hearted cynicism I've been working so hard at lately), pretty soon I'll be crying at that old Folger's Christma ad where Peter comes home and surprises his family for the holidays... (If my sister happens to read this, she'll find this reference humorous.)

It was really sweet though. See for yourself.

I see your true colours shining through...

Aw man! The True Colours Tour was today! Not that I really would have been able to go anyways, but think about it: Cyndi Lauper and The B-52's (as well as a bunch of other people like Rosie O'Donnell... yeah, I don't know either) in ONE DAY.

Maybe it's good that I missed it, I probably would have been so overcome with wonder that I would have started to glow an etherial yellow light. It would be cool, for sure, but then I wouldn't be able to sleep because I would close my eyes but my eyelids would be glowing and thus incapable of blocking out the light and then I would have gone all wild-eyed and crazy-like with branches, vines, and cats growing out of my hair. Not pretty.

....Although if yellow was my true colour, and it was shining through, would that be why you love me? Could I become a shocking yet beautiful personalization of one of Cyndi's best songs?

They don't call it a "bumper sticker" for nothin'

Research has shown* that people with bumper stickers on their car are more likely to get road rage and drive aggressively than people who don't. It doesn't even matter what kind of stickers they have, so the dude with the "my other ride is a skateboard" sticker is just as likely to ram you as the old lady with the "Jesus loves you" bumper sticker.

*I love those three words: "research has shown". They have authority and let you get away with making the wackiest observations at the same time!
Today has been strange... I had to come in, even though pretty much every other office in the world is closed today for the Day Before Canada Day, Let's Not Have An Awkward Middle of the Week But Take a 4 Day Weekend Instead day, because today's a big deadline for us. Lots of corporate tax returns due. Usually on deadline days I'm almost busy almost all day. Today I've had almost nothing to do. It's weird. I'm just sitting here waiting for my boss to burst out of his office with the seven tax returns he told me needed to go out today, but so far only three have emerged, and not quite ready to go either. So I sit.... and I wait, knowing that the day is waining and if indeed there are 7 tax returns to go out today, I may end up having to stay late. That would break commandment number 7 for fighing the Lord of Accounting! (Thou shalt leave prompltly at 5 no matter what needs to be done.)

They're called underthings for a reason!

Once AGAIN I find myself suddenly aware of the fact that my bra is completely visible through my shirt. This has happened multiple times in the past month or so. Too many to really be comfortable with. I think I've come up with some possible explanations:

-The lighting in my bedroom is kind of weak, so when I mirror-check after getting dressed, the headlights don't shine through
-I used to often wear a nude-coloured bra, but my most recent bra purchase was pure white, and apparently I need to learn how much that shows under many many fabrics (even though it's supposed to be not-so-visible, isn't it? And this explanation only partially works because it's not like I've never had white unmentionables before and I do not remember having this many problems.)
-Many of my shirts are very very very old and edging towards threadbare, so shirts that I'm sure I wore with white underthings a few years ago with no problems are becoming more problematic
-In the past when I wore opted constantly for the white brassiere, I was also less observant and just plain didn't notice the twin white beacons that were there.
-All of the above.

Did I just write a whole blog entry about my underwear? Ew.

It outta be a LAW!

It feels criminal that on a beautiful, sunny, actually pleasantly warm Friday afternoon such as this, I am not only stuck in an office, but stuck in an office for no reason. It just makes it so much more painful to justify my existence here when, once again, there's literally nothing for me to do except answer the phones (machines can do it!), print a fax if it comes in (I'm sure someone can do it!), and pretend that it's taking me over an hour to put away 7 files.

So this is where the day goes...

Sometimes I wonder how my coworkers judge me based on the snippets of non-work I do on my computer all day. I'm guessing this is what they see (in order from most likely or frequent, to least likely or frequent):

-Facebook
-Scrabulous
-news sites (NY Times, BBC, CBC)
-blog (that hopefully they think is just some other email and they don't know where to find my blog because, well, awkward)
-Go Fug Yourself
-webcomics: Fart Party, xkcd, Toothpaste for Dinner, and now (NEW!!!) Jessica McLeod's comics
-Craigslist
-Gmail (only ranks so low only because it's more of a passing-through point with notifications for things like Facebook and the news updates I subscribe to)
-spider solitaire
-psych research news sites
-Post Secret
-DIY/how to websites
-Blackle searches (Blackle is the new Google y'all!)
-money making schemes
-various song lyrics I've looked up
-guitar chords for pop songs (very useful to look up at work, obviously, because I can practice right now)
-Wiki
-university grad school programs
-A Softer World
-recipes for things with vegetables

I guess there's not much to make of it... except I have a feeling they're baffled by the web comics.

A cry from the suffering

I am SO BORED of all my little time-wasting devices. News websites? BORING! Gossip websites? BORING! Spider solitaire? BORING! The internet? BORING! I need something new! Help me pleeeeeeeease!

To sleeve or not to sleeve

Today I am adventuring into the world of sleeveless shirts at work... I know! I know. It's dangerous. And exciting. And unplanned. I was going to wear a little sweatery thing over my top, but it's just so ridiculously HOT already today and it's only 8:40am. What else could I do?!???

The Mystery of the Lesser-Sisters

Okay, since when did we live in a world where Jamie Lynn Spears gets an entire blog dedicated just to her? I mean, I guess she did something on TV or something, so maybe she has a fan base? To me it's just weird, because of all the lesser-sisters in the various sister-showbiz duos, she seems pretty low down there. Above Solange Knowles definitely. Maybe on par with Haylie Duff? I mean, can you imagine an entire blog devoted to Haylie Duff?

Wait, there probably is one
...[pause for googling]...

Results: Besides her "official" page and the requisite "official fan page" that all lesser celebrities have (you know, the one "official fan page" made by some "hardcore fan" who is likely her "manager" and has nothing more than some photos, a filmography, and a bio likely stolen off the actual official page), she does not appear to have a blog devoted to all things Haylie! She does appear to have her own Star Doll, which is really kind of creepy. But no blog.

So who wins this battle then? Jamie-Lynn for having at least one fan devoted enough to research her every move, search out faux-baby pictures, and make multiple daily posts, or Haylie for having a creepy Star Doll where her cartoon face is on a cartoon underwear-clad body to be dressed by "fans"... I'm not sure to what end.

Having to do things over, part infinity

This lesson seems to be taking me a while to learn. When I get asked to do something, unless it's time sensitive, don't to it right away. Today, for the bajillionth time, I was told after completing a task to "hold off" on it because changes were on they way. THEN WHY DO THEY ASK ME TO DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE????!??!!!? Geez.

Today it was payroll. My boss isn't in this morning but he called and asked me to do the payroll for one of our clients. Now he just called and said some hours will be changing and I should wait. Well guess what? You asked me to do it TWO HOURS ago and it only takes 10 minutes to do so I ALREADY DID IT!!!! And why does he always seem so surprised that I've done things? I'm either much more incompetent than I think I am (or maybe I've given the impression of incompetence because I always stretch things out so much), or they all slack off even more than I do (or possibly are more incompetent than me) and either way they all seem really surprised when I finish tasks in the same half of the day I was given them, even though they must all know I have nothing else to do. Don't they?

*awkward*

It gets a little disheartening to listen day after day to a coworker being berated for not doing things right. Especially since she's easily the nicest person in the office, and I don't want to see her spirit broken and/or her quit (oh no! If she quits they might try to convince me to take her spot! No no no no NO!). The criticisms are harsh and I can hear that she has trouble getting a word in edgewise to explain/defend her actions. On the flipside, it seems like the same things are being corrected over and over, so I would think it would be nice if it would sink in sometime soon. If for no other (purely selfish) reason than the fact that I need to get some letters signed so I can get out of here on time, and it's really really awkward to go in there in the middle of one of these sessions, I would like to see her figure out either a) what she's doing and do it right or b) how to stand up to el bosso and show him where it's at.

Also, she's the only one in the office who can see my computer and all the non-work I do all day. Normally I wouldn't worry about it (like I said, nicest person in the office), except I fear that one day she'll get sick of always getting in trouble and point out my habits to deflect the spotlight a little. Eep.

Set me free, why dontcha babe?

The last five minutes before I get to lunch are like death. Like little, slow moving, sticky balls of death being poured out of a bottle. Of sorts.

Gender mcgenderson

This is fascinating! In Albania, up until very recently, if the man of the house died and there were no male heirs to take over the position, a female daughter would become a man and take over as head of household! They wouldn't have a sex change, but would cut their hair off, wear pants (but keep their female names) and take a vow of lifelong virginity. From then on, they are men. Everyone treats them as men and they have all the authority and power men have. There's no stigma, everyone respects the sacrifice these women have made and considers them men from that point on. Goes to show that culture really does have a thing or two to do with gender constructs, eh?

An open apology to my coworkers (and anyone I pass on the street)

I'm kind of stinky today. I'm sorry. It's just that for the past week my deoderant has been down to the level where anyone else in the world would have bought a new one, but I have been living in denial and smooshing the last little scrapings onto my underarms. Until this morning. This morning my denial was met with cold, hard reality, and I was no longer able to smoosh any deoderant into my skin. Alas! Today also turned out to be rather sunny, which exponentially increases the muggy heat of my office making sweating all the more likely.

I apologize.

I apologize even more sincerely to those I will be rehearsing with after work, because I don't have time to go home and change or buy & apply new deoderant. This is just the way it's gotta be, kids. Please don't judge me too harshly. Couldn't this happen to anyone? (Or at least anyone who is both cheap and lazy?)

Hola

Lalalaaaaa... Isn't it great when your Tuesday is actually a Monday? Took the day off yesterday for a bit of Island-trippin', hope you survived without me! I'll be back in good annoyed-yet-pleasant (the demeanor of all receptionists worldwide) ranting form soon.

Advice: Don't be an A-Hole!

To whoever sent out the hoax foot: next time you think of a "funny" prank, stop for a moment, think about it, and realize that you're a huge a-hole and that anything you think is funny is actual cruel (or at the very least, a huge waste of time and money for a lot of people).

Remember the golden rule of pranking: it's all fun and games until someone stuffs a shoe with an animal foot.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/06/19/bc-foot-no-human.html

Sunny days... sunny sunny sunny days...

I think one of my coworkers just put sunscreen on in the office. I can smell it from here. I'm not necessarily complaining, after all, who doesn't love the smell of sunscreen and all the happy memories of beach-dwelling times it brings? But it's just kind of strange. I know it's suddenly sunny again, but we are inside and will be for at least a few hours until lunch, so.... what's with the sunscreen?

eep.

I just realized that you can totally see my bra through the shirt I wore today.

Tres embarrassant!

"That is IT" she yells as she throws her gloves to the floor

I just wrote a really long post that was all angry and ranty, and then BLOGGER errored OUT before POSTING IT!

I AM ALREADY ANNOYED, BLOGGER. DON'T MESS WITH ME RIGHT NOW!!!

Rants for yesterday

Note: This post is the one that I tried to post and errored out on me. Turns out it was saved as a draft and I can still put it up. How's about that? Consider this me being humbled.

Oh, poor little bloggy, I didn’t write in you at all yesterday! I’m sorry to be all neglectful-like, but I did think about you. I was just so busy… So busy I barely even had time to keep up with my Scrabulous games! (Yes, I’m afraid that’s the way things are now, bloggy, Scrabulous is a top priority these days.) Not that I was busy doing lots of different things all day. Busy doing the same thing over and OVER again because my boss kept changing things! I know, I know I should be understanding of all this, sometimes I make mistakes and have to fix things, so sometimes he will too, but COME ON.

Okay, here’s what happened: when I got in there were a whole bunch of tax returns waiting for me to put together (I have to write/print a bunch of letters and stuff to go with each one). I was feeling a little guilty about being late the day before, as well as the fact that I’ll be off all day Monday (I know I haven’t told you about this yet, I’m sorry! We have so much to catch up on, sweet bloggy!) that I decided to be a good little worker-bee and start working right away. Then my boss got in and proceeded to spend the entire day changing little parts of the things I did so that I had to redo them.

First, he put down a bunch of files and said "here, this one's ready to go!", and I had already done it because he had left the tax return on my desk, which he always does with ones he wants me to put together. So then I had to take it all apart and reprint all the financial statements.

Then, after I'd done 6, spend the whole morning and part of the afternoon getting them ready, he comes through and just starts crossing things out and adding things to the letters and invoices so that I get to do those. Again. As well. (Not bitter about that at all.)

Anyways, needless to say I was busy all day with all that crap, even though I had done everything exactly the way I always do and exactly the way he told me to! GEEZ! I've had it up to HERE with these accountants always changing their freaking MINDS about EVERYTHING!

(Note: when I said "I've had it up to HERE" my hand was reaching far far far above my head)

Stupid science.

I just took a personality test online to see where I stand on the "Big 5" (the "main" personality factors in psychology): extraversion, oppenness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism.

I scored pretty much how I expected on extraversion (high), openness to experience (high), and neuroticism (high), and conscientiousness (middle), but low on agreeableness. People who score high on agreeableness tend to be good natured, forgiving, sympathetic, and courteous and those who score low are critical, rude, harsh, and callous! Now I didn't score bottom or the barrel here, but in the 44th percentile, which makes me definitely on the negative side of all this. I'm disagreeable! Boo! I always knew I was kind of neurotic, but disagreeable too? I don't like this very much.

F this!

Facebook is trying to F with me! This morning when I tried to log in it said my account was under maintenance and wouldn't be available for several hours. Several hours!??!! I almost had a panic attack! Luckily it worked immediately after that. (Or so I thought).

It keeps timing out on me! Seriously, it's really annoying. I'll go to check a message and it times out. Then I start all over again and it times out one step closer to getting the message. And again, and again! Eventually I do get to where I want to go, but not without considerable effort extreme annoyance.

Maybe this is some scheme facebook has to deal with its over-active users to help keep us in check? Slowly degenerate in service until we give up and only check once a day, if that, so that we can go back to being productive members of society? No, that can't be it. Maybe it's really some kind of reverse psychology to increase our addiction. Make us want it more by making us work for it until we can't have enough and start rolling around on our computer screens to soak in as much precious facebook energy as we possibly can.

That must be it!

A brush with.... douchiness?

Today, while I was walking back to the office from my lunch (because I have NEVER FORGOTTEN the number one rule for defeating the Lord of Accounting in his quest to destroy my soul and turn me into an actual, real, eerily silent and obedient accountant is to always leave the office for your lunch break no matter what) I swear I saw K-Fed. Really. The K-Fed. It was crazy! Okay, he was walking by himself down 4th, so he probably wasn't K-Fed and just some douchey looking guy. But can you blame me for getting them mixed up? K-Fed's only defining characteristic is douchiness, if you ask me (that and surprisingly responsible fathering that only emerges when absolutely necessary [aka: when the momma stops noticing the kids between party binges] and not a second earlier), so really, isn't every douchy guy just Kevin Federline?

I think it's dangerous to go to far with logic like that. Too many Kevin Federlines and the earth will be knocked off its axis.

(oops)

I just reread my last post and realized how clunky its composition is. Sorry about that. Just try to read it with a lot of dramatic flair and pausing, and I'm sure it will sound better.

Oh, and PS: This is totally unrelated, but last week (Friday, I believe) in my time-wasting, I came across a report of a study that came out saying that babies whose mothers receive postpartum home visits have a lower mortality rate. Now I can't find it but my mummy wants me to send it to her (she's a public health nurse). Have you seen it? I generally get this kind of stuff from the BBC, New York Times, or sciencedaily.com, but I couldn't find it at any of those sites!

One battle won.

Something unfathomable happened today! My issues with people stealing my pens have been well documented on this blog. It happens a lot. People need a pen, my desk is just sitting here, and they take it. I'm sure they think of it as "borrowing" or something lame like that, but I never get it back. Stolen. Gone. With me left pen-less once again.

But not today.

Today my boss gave back the mechanical pencil he took sometime last week.

Victory!

Apparely

Today my boss is wearing shorts and flip-flops to work. It's strange and off-putting.

One more for the road. Happy weekend everyone!

I love wikihow.com. It's a wikipedia for how-tos, and I love how-tos and DIY and all those other catch phrases for doing things that people normally pay other people for. The best think about wikihow, however, is not the excellent crafty advice it gives, but the other advice. There's a relationships section with how-tos for dating and getting a boy to kiss you and other such things. Then there's this: how to vomit politely. Wow. I didn't realize that advice was needed in this area. I also didn't realize that people are so often struck with the need to vomit that carrying tissues around just to wipe the vomit off your face is useful to them. I also didn't realize that if you lean over too far while vomitting, it can come out your nose.

Huh.

Twists of fate

For one sweet second I thought I was being told to go home early today. It was startling, but blissfully startling. My quasi-supervisor (or the girl who trained me anyways and who seems to be second in command around here) said what sounded to me like "do you have a lot of work to do?" to which I said "not really", to which she replied what sounded to me like "okay, see you Monday."

At this point I froze awkwardly. Was she telling me to go home? What was going on? Why was I abruptly being allowed a long weekend, when last week everyone seemed very off-put by me skipping lunch to leave an hour early (and thus working equal hours). The confusion grew when she said something about finishing the work I had, which I thought I had just told her didn't exist. I said many things that probably made me sound very confused (which I was) and slightly dumb (which I like to think I'm not) to figure out what was going on and eventually realized that what actually had been said was something like this: "are you looking for work?", "not really", "okay, this can wait for Monday."

Turns out she just had something for me to do. She wasn't telling me to go home early, she was giving me data entry to do that involved calculating GST. Which is almost as good as going home early on a Friday, right? (I'm trying to harness the power of positive thinking here, people! Don't spoil it for me!)

Now let's teach it to fly!

Today is clearly my day for linking to other sites, because, well, just look at this thing!

Eff, that's gotta be funny looking driving down the highway. And scary to drive near any normal-sized vehicles that won't be able to see you in their mirrors because you're so freaking small!

Time to get spooky.

Hey, I jsut realized it's Friday the 13th! Wooooooooooo... (long, drawn out, haunting 'woo' sound)

More from the NY Times

Will it never stop? California is finally getting on board with gay marriage and now conservative county clerks (such as Ms. Ann K. Barnett) are refusing to perform wedding ceremonies -for anyone. There are a few of them, and they're all claiming budget cuts as the issue, but is the timing not at least a little foul here?

This is a long article, and I'll admit I didn't read the whole thing, but it puts forward an interesting idea: gender not dictating roles in parenting. An interesting alongside-read is this one about gender roles and anger in marriage.

Hooray for 5 judges standing up to 4 in Supreme Court and making Guantanemo Bay a place where people have rights!

That's it for now.

National Waist-Measurement Day

Another interesting diddy from the New York Times (I don't know why I didn't start reading this earlier! It's great!): Japan has imposed waistline measurements for its people. Anyone found exceeding the limit prescribed by the Japanese government (alongside their diabetes association) will be given a regimented diet if they can't lose the weight themselves in 3 months. And companies who fall short of targeted waistline measurements as a whole will be fined!

It all sounds a little harsh to me, even within the cultural framework that it's coming from. Especially since for men the maximum size a waist can be is 33.5", which is actually smaller than the recommended maximum size for women in the States. Not that we should necessarily be using the average American (or Canadian) waistline as a guide, but still. Those are some harsh restrictions to have to meet!

They did come up with a cute word for it though: metabo. Much nicer sounding than 'obese' or 'overweight', don't you think?

Deathmutters

Lately my boss has taken to calling everyone he talks to on the phone who doesn't know everything "useless" and "stupid." It's not in anger, it's more in the spirit of muttering to oneself. It's a little unsettling though. All of a sudden hearing "they don't know .... so stupid .... useless can't do any ...." coming from his office. Or, even more disturbing, when he's muttering these things to himself whilst pacing around the office. This means I'm sitting around, minding my own business, trying to surreptitiously play a little scrabulous, when all of a sudden behind me I hear [insert aforementioned quote here]. It's a little startling.

Come on everyone, let's get creepy and pander to stereotypes!

Is this creepy, or is this creepy? Cameras placed inside billboard advertisements that read your demographic information when you're looking at it and send it back to the advertisers. It also apparently shows you a different ad, based on that info, than it will show someone else. This reminds me of that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report (I think it was Minority Report), where advertisements are all digital and they do an automatic retina scan when you walk by so they're personalized to you. (Imagine a 3D digital ad saying "Hey, Jenni, want to lose that belly fat?" EW!)

I know this isn't quite so severe as all that, but still. Creepy. They claim that they don't actually take pictures of the people, so there's no personally identifying information. However, they are just a tweak away from doing so if the mood (or court order) strikes. Also a tweak away is targeting race on top of age and gender (which they are actually trying to do). Of course, all the advertising execs are giggling with glee and rubbing their hands together as we speak. Now not only can they track our every move online, but they can track us on the street as well.

One potentially entertaining aspect of all this is the fact that they use things like the cheekbone height and distance between nose and mouth to measure gender and age. For the more androgenous among us, it could be wildly entertaining to see what kind of "personally targeted" advertisements you get!

A brush with destiny

Today I nearly experienced a miracle. My boss realized, as occasionally he does, that I had nothing to do. After running around, asking everyone if they had work for me, and muttering to himself about finding me work, he actually admitted that there was nothing for me to do! And then (this is the amazing part) he said "This might be a reading day for you until I get my act together and have something for you to do"!!!! Can you imagine? The ability to read/slack off and not have to try to hide it? It would have been sanctioned!

But then he found work for me. So now I'm back to the usual routine of slogging through it slowly whilst playing scrabulous, and all the other distractions I love so dearly.

Scrabble - it's my good time game!

Also, I've been a little distracted lately because I've started playing scrabble on facebook. Do you have scrabulous? Want to play a game with me? I'm addicted! It's grand! And I try really really hard not to cheat.
Oh dear little bloggy, I didn't write to you at all yesterday! Can it be? Was I busy all day? Well, sort of. The morning was dastardly and slow, but my mind was empty and I had nothing quippy or ranty to say. Then in the afternoon I had to learn some bookkeeping. I know, I know. This is pushing me further and further down the dreaded path I have tried so hard to avoid my whole life. Before you know it I'll be enrolled in an intro to bookkeeping course. Then an accounting 101, and maybe a business course. And then I'll be applying to CA schools. NOOOOOOOOOO! NO! No no no no. No. I won't let it happen. I swear. I will find a new way.

Madonna and JT redux:

I've only got four minutes to save my soul!*

*Written exactly four minutes before 5pm and freedom.

argh.

This morning I got to print out a financial statement about 10 times because the two people working on it kept changing their minds as to formatting ("Does it look better to put the last column along the right margin or should we put it in a random place and have lots of empty space on one side of the page? I don't know! I'll keep changing my mind until I go back to what my receptionist did the very first time that looked the best but that I told her to change because I don't think things through! Oh, and it needs to have the draft watermark on it. No, not that draft watermark, the one you didn't know about.") and placement of some of the numbers ("Change this one digit. Wait, now the addition is off by $1. Add the dollar here. Wait, now that throws off my other work, take the dollar off there and add it here. Oh, I did this number wrong it needs to be fixed.") All the while interdispersed with "this needs to be done by 11am, is it done yet?!?" Which of course, it would be if they would just make their minds up FIRST and get me to print it SECOND. Also, we would waste a lot less paper.

argh.

Phone Etiquette?

My most recent phone conversation with a client who always sounds in a complete and total panic every time she calls (not to mention all whine-like):

Me: Good afternoon [my work's name]
Her: Hi this is [annoying client]! Is [your boss] there?!!?!
Me: No, sorry he's out right now, would you like me to tell him you called?
Her: Will he be ba-ack?!?!!??
Me: Yes, he will.
Her: Is it okay if I call him later?!??!!!?
Me: Yes.

Okay, when I write it out like that it doesn't sound so annoying. I tried to use excessive ?'s and !'s to show how annoying it was. Why the panic? Why the neediness? Why not just have me tell him you called and then he'll call you back when he's in instead of you calling back again in 20 minutes and me having to talk to you again? Why are you asking permission to call? I cannot stop you from doing it no matter how badly I want to!

More for me

I love how they completely and blatantly pawn off the crappy work on me here. Just today a bunch of stuff came in, and right in front of me (well, technically right behind me since my back is to everyone, but still I was right there) my boss said to my coworker "Oh, look it's your favorite thing to do!" (sarcastic voice not quite translating into the typing) "Just give it to Andrea. Show her how and you don't have to do it."

Sweet. Whatever it is, who wants to make a bet that it involves a lot of data entry and/or cross-checking of information?

My legs are in prison.

I am wearing tights today. This, I am not pleased about this. It was so cold and wet this morning that I was forced to forsake the carefree bare legs of summer for the shackles of thick, black tights. This is not RIGHT! First it snows in April and then it's all cold and rainy almost all through June! I say "booooo!" like the old lady in The Princess Bride who boos at the girl in her nightmare about marrying the gross prince-type guy. BOOOOOOOOOOO!

Notes on Filing

Hey, guess what? It's almost the end of the day. That means it's time for me to do all the filing I've been putting off all day. That means that once again I'll get to wade through the sea of UN-ALPHABETIZED FILING! Okay, so it's technically all alphabetized, but everyone else in the office seems to have some trouble with the basic concepts. A refresher:

Go by the first letter of the first word (unless it's 'the', etc). If two words have the same first letter, look at the second letter, and so on.

A shorter word does not make it go before a longer one automatically, you still have to look at the letters and see which one comes first in the alphabet. So "Woo" comes after "Wong", no matter how much you may think otherwise.

If it's a person's name, general protocol says you go by the last name. Unless their name is the name of the company (eg: Jane Smith Inc.), then you put it under 'J'.

The prefix 'Dr.' is not used for alphabetizing. Sort of like how we don't use 'the'. Remember, just because they're a doctor doesn't mean it's not a normal name, so you use the first letter of the last name.

Just because a number starts with a 6 doesn't automatically make it bigger than one that starts with a 3. For example, 34565 is bigger than 651. If it's easier to file by the first number (sort of like alphabetizing) then that's okay, but do it consistently.

Geez!

At least it's Wednesday

I wonder how many of the receptionists I used to look up to as a child were bored and dissatisfied with their lives? It's kind of sad when you think about it, because it seemed like to coolest job and they all seemed so happy, but if I think about it, most of them were probably about my age and probably meant to do something else with themselves. Just like me. Alas.

Apparently this is the morning for depressive dwelling on what may have been.

On a rainy Tuesday...

Little tidbits of facts and fun:

Sadness helps you pay attention to details more but happiness helps you be more creative, says some researcher dudes. Kind of flies in the face of the "creative people need to be depressed to be creative" theory, doesn't it? Along a similar vein, apparently sad people are more productive and do the job better. The theory goes that sad people focus more on the task to distract themselves from their sadness, whereas happy people don't pay as much attention to it to avoid being distracted from their happiness.

Turns out the looking at a woman in a bikini increases a man's desire for any kind of instant gratification (not just sexual). Straight fellahs who saw women in bikinis or lingerie were more impatient and would accept any reward offered (money, food, etc) no matter if they actually wanted it in the first place.

Yves Saint Laurent died. Sad.

If you are lazy, be glad you don't live in Canton, Ohio. You could go to jail for 30 days for not mowing your lawn.

Let's hear it for war! A British WWII bomb has been discovered under an airport runway in Amsterdam.

Oh yeah, and it looks like Barack Obama may be the next President.

Envirocouver!

Remember how I said a while ago that I was going to start writing letters to politicians about things I cared about with my spare time at work? Well after writing that letter about stupid Bill C-10, I kind of forgot to ever do it again. Until now!

I've been meaning to write to someone something to do with being more environmental/sustainable, etc. Well, yesterday at work I was doing a little research and I saw that Vancouver does have one good thing going for it: The Greener Homes Program. To my untrained-in-anything-scientific eye, this looks like a pretty good plan, if it gets approved. Right now it's all just recommended. It includes such awesomeness as improving insulation so less heating is required, requiring all new homes be built with the appropriate fixtures for solar energy, and requiring the installation of energy-star appliances, to name a few things. Oh, AND it requires the installation of dual-flush toilets so you use less water for the number ones!

I think this is rad, and if you get a chance PLEASE visit the link (look, there it is again!). There's a portion at the bottom of the page where you can express your support and give any suggestions you want. I suggested that these requirements be phased into older homes as well, especially multi-family homes with renters, because it sucks to be a renter and have no control over this stuff and pay out the wazoo for utilities.

How to beat the Monday blahs...

That headline was a ruse (did I spell that right? Rouse? Rousse? I'm feeling to lazy to check at dictionary.com), there is no way to beat the Monday blahs. Except maybe calling in sick, but it's bad form to do that two Mondays in a row, and I did it last week, so... here I am.

Actually, it's another installment of the entertaining yourself at work/looking busy series! This is another one that's quite obvious and that I was also already doing instinctively, but I figure it still deserves a mention for those who need it.

Save your work. I know, I know, obvious, but still. If you hardly have enough work to fill a day, don't do it all when you first get in in the morning. Space it out! Always have the window open with whatever it is, and then just work on it when people are around to notice. If your boss/coworkers who can check up on you aren't around, do NOT waste that time getting work done. Entertain yourself however you prefer, hopefully whilst staying dressed and near your desk (it's easy to close a window or put down a book if your boss suddenly bursts in. Not easy to put all your clothes back on or run back from the break room [if you have one]) and don't you DARE touch that work until someone comes through that door who a) has authority over you or b) doesn't have authority over you but could "check up on you" or "tattle." Not only does this save your work for when there's someone around you need to look busy for, but it saves your sanity by building up entertainment points in your brain to be slowly released during mind-numbing data entry sessions.

I'm back.

Feeling so much better now. Nothing like a lunch hour to clear your head. It also helps that I bought a bag of Crispy Minis and am almost done devouring them all 40 mins later. Not that I'm not still bored of course, I'm just not "so bored I'm going to die and no one in this office will save me because they're all under the thumb of the Lord of Accounting and thus live in and with boredom and this is all part of the master plan, isn't it?"

There is hope for distraction! Hooray!
I am so bored I don't even have the will to rant about anything. Or to make a title for this post. So bored.

So this is the way it's going to be?

I realized something about my dreaded 12:30pm imposed lunch time. Actually, technically a good friend of mine told me and I realized nothing on my own. Obviously the reason my boss told me (that it's less confusing for clients if I take my lunch at 12:30) is bull. Clients will call when they call and will use the automated voice thing if they get it and no one cares. Here's what it's really about (or so it seems): he couldn't keep track of how much break time I was using. I was going for my lunch at random times between 12:30-1:30, depending basically what I felt like doing and if I had to meet up with anyone. So it was much harder for him to know if I was taking long lunches. Now he can track me. Track me like a vampire tracks Bella Swan. *mutters something incoherent but disgruntled*

Etiquette Shmettiquette

Oh clothing, dear clothing... When I started working office jobs my mom took me shopping for appropriate clothing, and since my office is somewhat casual this wasn't the horrendous tailored jackets and colour coordinated slacks one might imagine, but consisted of a few collared shirts, some cute sweaters, and dressy t-shirts (that cover the tummy and cleavage areas of course), and of course some dress pants and skirts. I was instructed to never have bare legs in the office (tights/stockings under skirts or pants worn at all times), never wear jeans, keep my shoulders covered (no tank tops? Boo!), the crappy dirty old canvas flats I love so dearly, and to not at any time wear one of my home-made t-shirts. It was also suggested that part of office attire means wearing more make up than I tend to (meaning more than cover up under my eyes).

The make-up aside, I more or less abided by these rules except for one. As soon as the weather warmed up I shunned tights. I'm considering shunning sleeves too. It's just so warm and unnecessary! It's not like I'm planning on wearing a camisole to work, but come on, a wide-strapped tank top? Who cares? Maybe I'll just change my role here to be the "funky and slightly off-beat" receptionist.

At least I'm not wearing fuzzy yellow track pants, which is more than I can say for one of my coworkers. (HOW the Lord of Accounting let that slip I'll never know!)

Disasters averted

There's nothing more satisfying than a mistake averted. Like when you realize you missed something on a document that you left on your boss' desk to sign and then manage to print off a corrected copy and put it on their desk before they notice. Or, as happened to me just now, when it looks as though you made a huge mistake in invoicing a client, and your boss is the one who brings it up to you (no chance of fixing it without them knowing!) but then you find their file and along with it the evidence that there was no mistake and everything is according to procedure. PHEW! Relief. Satisfaction.

(A swift change in tone)

Hey, that last one was my 100th post! Would you look at that. If this was a network television show or real publication of any kind some sort of celebration would surely follow.

Once more and I'll burst!

Okay, I've tried THREE TIMES to post on here now and it keeps on not letting me! Come on, Blogger, what's your issue??? I'm not even going to try to make this a post of substance now, I am THAT frustrated! I'm not even going to loosely summarize what I tried to say before! Take THAT.

A new way to avoid work!

I've thought of a new way to not work without looking like you're slacking! I've actually been instinctively doing this for a while and just realized it. Eating. It's brilliant. If you've got nothing to do and you're slacking off, when someone is about to walk behind you and you have to go to your emergency "could be legitimate work" screen (you know, the spreadsheet, the Word document, whatever else it is that you do), instead of staring blank-eyed at the screen until they walk away, try a new approach: lean back casually and take a bite of your banana, a sip of your tea, or start snacking on chips.

Think about it! It's not slacking at all to take a moment's break from your work to nurse your hot tea in the morning or have a quick snack. You can lean back and enjoy your life, if only for a moment with this subversive act of resistance! Plus, it's way more interesting than pretending to figure out the numbers on a spreadsheet. It's also tastier.

She's back.

After a sudden onset of bussing-to-work-on-Monday-morning-I-swear-I-was-actually-sick-and-not-prolonging-the-weekend illness that has been remedied with hours of daytime sleep, internet episodes of Sex and the City and Friends, yoga, and (once the stomach settled) cookie dough, I am back! Being just sick enough to miss work but not so sick I was miserable in bed was lovely yesterday, and I highly recommend everyone tries it once and a while.

In my absence there has been one major change to the office: air conditioning! Well, sort of. We have one of those stand-alone air conditioners now and it kind of work except that it's not very strong and is in the corner of the office where the photocopier and fax machine lie (which will make the use of those machines slightly more bearable). But still, cool air is sort of being pumped into our stuffy office, and this is a nice thing.

Look at me, Ma, no wires!

Okay, so I've joined the marketing team for this new thing called Energi to Go, which is a battery-powered charger for your iPod that you can take with you wherever you go. If this is not self-explanatory, the idea is that when your battery dies on your commute or what-have-you, you won't be stuck with the horrors of no music/videos until you get home. You just flip on the Energi to Go and your iPod charges while it plays. Technology at its finest.

I just got mine in the mail. Actually, it got couriered to my office which made me feel really special because I never get anything couriered to me, let alone at the office. It came in this really big box too, which probably made me look very important (or wasteful of office space, but whatever).

First impressions: not very impressed with Energizer (makers of this product) for their packaging. The product's packaging is fine. It's a little box with barely any extraneous plastic used to hold the slightly-bigger-than-your-average-iPod-sized charger and batteries. But like I said, they sent it to me in this huge box. While there is the upside of looking impressive when I sign for it, it was so FREAKING wasteful. And why did they send it to me in a huge box? Because they gave me a ridiculous Energizer Bunny along with it. I seriously don't know what to do with this thing because I sure don't want it. They could have sent this thing in a shoebox for Pete's sake. I am rolling my eyes and wagging my finger at you, Energizer! I guess I'll wait and see how the product fares before final judgement, but so far, not so hot.

I just can't let it go.

Still annoyed.

It's not helping my state of annoyment that my current task is to enter the bank statements for my boss' other very profitable company. So I get to see another way he's just pulling in the cash, all while paying me a not-good wage and controlling when I take my lunch.

What-ever.

*grumble*

Just got back from break. Still annoyed. Stupid forced break times and stupid crowds on stupid Granville Island where I went to get greasy fries with which to drown my annoyed-ness and then got more annoyed because of the crowds and pigeons.

Break this!

Well, the Lord of Accounting has struck again. I'm peeved. One of the tiny bits of control I had over my life here at work is no longer. My boss told me that I always have to take my lunch at 12:30pm from now on. Boo! Why? Apparently he thinks it will be better for when clients call (because I'm sure it's very difficult for them to have to listen to the automated voice-thingy to get to his desk phone than to have me do it for them). I know this isn't necessarily a huge deal, and I am reacting far more negatively to it than maybe I should, but still, what the EF? Who really cares when I take my lunch? I just really liked taking my lunch later in the day. It was better. The afternoon went faster and I was getting to make a choice.

Stupid Lord of Accounting. Yes, you have won this one. My spirit has been crushed--but just a smidge. But I will find a way to get you back... Somehow!

My desk is nobodies desk but mine, you can touch your desk and I will touch mine!

Am I wrong in thinking that in an office your desk is your little domain? It's like your mini-home, right? It's personal property? You wouldn't just go rummaging around in someone's desk, just like you wouldn't rummage around their bedroom (unless of course you were looking for something that you were really sure was there and you put everything back so that they couldn't tell what you were doing), right? I understand that the reception desk is mildly less private than everyone else's desk, being that things are kept here that aren't kept elsewhere (stamps, scissors, the PENS EVERYONE STEALS)... But is it too much to ask that you put things back the way you found them? For example:

Stamps. We get them on those rolls of 50 and I am a little anal retentive and don't like having big loose rolls of stamps in my drawer. So I keep the little sticker thingy that the roll comes with and I use it. Proper use involves pulling the loose end of the roll until it's tight, wrapping the remnant around and affixing the sticker, possibly ripping off excess paper. Improper use involves not using the sticker at all or affixing it without tightening anything so it's still loose and useless! Come ON people!

Pens. We've all hear about the pens. They get stolen. I get angry.

Elastics. All the extra elastics from holding together files, etc., end up on my desk eventually. I put them in a drawer and keep them in a somewhat organized ball so they don't spill all over everything. When you take an elastic, is it really necessary to rip them all apart? Can't you just take one and leave the rest? Do you need therapy for your destructive tendencies?

My freaking STRAW. I feel like this has gone too far, because this is MY straw, not the company's straw. You see, I drink a Coke Zero (et al.) pretty much every day in warm weather. I need the caffeine and the bubbles make me feel like I can get through the day. However, to keep at least one part of my body (my teeth) from getting discoloured and corroded from this practice, I use a straw. I keep it here, I rinse it after use and once and a while replace it. Neurotic, sure. Mine, YES. Why would someone steal/throw this away? I had it tucked in my drawer, not lying out like a piece of trash!

Geez.

PS

I have also tried yogic chair-twists to no avail. Alas!

Back troubles

I think my back has started to protest my job. It's been agitated for two days now. I've tried every kind of sitting: straight as a board, slouching forward, leaning back, trying to find that neutral space following the natural curve of the spine, propped up on my sit-bones, sitting cross-legged, legs crossed, legs extended, legs resting on top of something, ankles crossed under the chair... to no avail! The soreness reigns supreme.

Maybe this is the final weapon in the Lord of Accounting's attempts to subdue/break me into a submissive machine of boringness.

Craigslisting

Lately I've taken to looking up stuff on Craigslist while at work. Mostly I look at the free stuff. It's really entertaining to see what kind of things people will try to use Craigslist to unload. Mostly it's couches and desks and TVs other such things that are old and crappy and not worth selling because back in the olden days you would have just dropped it in front of the nearest thrift store and walked away. But there are some fantastic gems and interesting contrasts between the stuff listed here.

For example:

-A set of martini glasses that you could probably get for a few dollars at Ikea
-Old, used plant pots
-A freaking FREE CAMPER!!! (I want this I really do, but there is the slight problem of having nothing to tow it with. But imagine owning a camper! How fun! How freeing! Drive wherever you want and sleep in parking lots!)
-Cloth diapers??? hmmmm... it says they're clean but I'm just mildly suspicious of this.
-a Brita container.
-and finally.... legal-sized file folders. Because it's just too hard to recycle those.

I just love that there are listings for items of true value like the camper (!!!), or the standard ugly-but-functional furniture that's always posted on here, next to a brita filter and file folders. I guess really it's somewhat kind-hearted of these people to want to give all this stuff away instead of disposing of it, and if someone actually does really need cloth diapers it would be nice for them to get them for free instead of buying new ones. Also, it is better for the environment. However, I just can't help but think that this is 90% laziness and that no one's going to drive out to Langley or Pitt Meadows for this stuff, free or not.

Except for the camper. That is awesome and I still want it.

Bring on the beasts!

I love this. I love it so much. I think all my friends know that I have a huge affinity for stories of the supernatural. I am hopelessly addicted to Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Golden Compass, and the Twilight Series, to name a few. So hopelessly addicted that when the 6th HP book came out and I was working as a housekeeper at UBC I actually would bring my book to work, put the "closed for cleaning" sign on the bathroom, and would sit in the bathroom almost all day to read it. So hopelessly addicted that I feel like I will burst with joy while literally going into convulsions of ecstacy sort of like a much less refined pageant contestant winning Miss America (the fanning of the hands, bouncing/shaking, wide open mouth and faint squeelish noises) when I discover a new installment/recreation of one of these items in book, television, or film form. I think I would pass out if I ever met anyone involved in the creation of these books/tv shows or the movies that are based on them in real life.

Anyways, that's all to say that I love the supernatural and I actually truly wish it were all real: vampires, werewolves, witches and wizards, and anything else you can dig up. Of course, I want it to be real so I can either go to a rad school and learn how to be an awesome witch and save the world, or become intrinsically tied to a benevolent form of one of these potentially monstrous creatures (and then save the world with them). All while getting involved in strange personal dramas, vendettas, and general tomfoolery of course. So local legends about mysterious creatures make me really happy. The Ogopogo is rad, I know someone who says he saw it and I believe him. So are the Loch Ness and the Sasquatch. Now, I have learned that in South Carolina there are Legends of the Lizard Man!

I am so happy.

I live to eat.

Lately I have taken to endlessly snacking at my desk. The current snack of choice is Wheat Thins, but the range goes from Sour Cream & Onion Chips to Sour Cream & Onion Crispy Minis to canned peaches (out of the container) to yogurt (out of the container) to actual fresh fruit to Coke Zero (et al.) to cashews to my lunch even though its not lunchtime to essentially anything else I can get my hands on.

I think it's mostly boredom eating, and I try to convince myself I'm being healthy by grazing throughout the day instead of eating large meals with nothing in between even though I'm probably consuming a whole meal's worth of calories each time I open my bag and fish out a snack.

There is, however, a whole extra side to this snacking thing. I'm not sure where this comes from, but it feels like a bit of a rebellion. Like a bit of a "take that Lord of Accounting! I may be at work but that doesn't mean I can't eat chips and dip as if I'm at home watching Buffy with my roommate! See how I flaunt it? See how I force pleasure into my meaningless workday? See how I eat when it's not my lunch break? SEE HOW I'M STILL HUMAN NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO DESTROY ME?!???!!!"

(At this point I generally breathe and take a break from the hysteria to swallow my food and answer the phone.)

OT

On a note completely unbusiness-related (because obviously otherwise everything around here is all professional all the time), I can finally wear my cute new black flats without pain and blistering! Hooray!

Today is a good day.

A battle is won.

Score one for me vs. the Lord of Accounting! After I got back from my lunch I realized that I had woefully forgotten to purchase my daily Coke Zero/Diet Pepsi Max/Diet Pepsi/Diet Coke (any of the above in that order of preference), which I only needed to purchase in the first place because I had forgotten to bring from home my daily Coke Zero (et al.)

This would have ensued in such horrible things as me being overly warm, less refreshed, and possibly slightly headache-y from lack of caffeine. Not acceptable, but what's a girl to do when her break has been over for 10 minutes already? I'll tell you what she does: she says "EF YOU!" to the Lord of Accounting and goes and gets one anyways! (Note: "EF YOU!" roughly translates into actual English as saying to the boss "Do you mind if I run to the store and get a drink? I forgot to on my lunch?" Asking this fully takes advantage of the fact that my boss has recently realized that it's summer and the tax season is over and he is a BOSS and thus not subject to the Lord of Accounting's direct rule, and so he can loosen up a bit and wear black jeans with a belt and tucked in polo shirt to work [ha!] and take an extra long-long weekend.)

Phew.

Anyways, I got 10 extra minutes of fabulous joy by being outside in the sun, and I got my Coke Zero. Score one!

A note to clients who call in:

If I've asked you to repeat yourself on the phone, it's because I didn't hear you, not because I am a developmentally disabled child. You don't have to talk to me like one.

Happy Hump-Day

So far today:

I spilled half my bowl of cereal on my lap this morning and had to change (especially awesome because I was having one of those "stare at all my clothes and can't think of a single way to put them together" mornings, so this took a while).

My bus was late, ergo I was late.

My legs got soaking wet because someone decided it was a good idea to leave their sprinklers running even though its raining out and their sprinklers spray not only their grass but the entire sidewalk. There was no where to go but through it. Sort of like that song from elementary school, "can't go under it, can't go over it, can't go around it, have to go through it!" Remember?

Finally, I sit at my desk, different clothes than I intended to wear (which, I just noticed, don't match well), late (although I was still the first one here), wet-legged, and looking forward to a day of data entry.

Minute.

You know, it's kind of funny. While attempting to balance an account (which basically means going over spreadsheets of numbers and making sure they add up, all the fun of data-entry without the hassle of typing!) that's full of multi-thousand to multi-hundred thousand dollar purchases, a purchase for $2.94 just doesn't seem worth the bother. Why even record it? Don't you have at least a couple hundred dollars of error-margin with accounts this big? And if I think an amount of money is negligable, then it really must be, because I am a cheaperella, through and through.

Disastrous consequences approach

I get it. I get it now! Everyone else in the office is waiting to see what will crack the thin veneer of complacency I so desperately hold onto at this job by forcing me to use the crappiest pens in the office.

If this continues the result might be me explaining to a police officer in a desperate voice, "I was just trying to get my pen to work, I swear. Just trying... all I wanted was... penspensPENS!"

Ed. note: I found another good pen, for now disaster has been averted.

Phone Etiquette Follies

Today I decided to look up etiquette rules (after I decided to write to the government about stupid things they do), and I found something that must be a relic of an older generation... or something.

Telephone etiquette means being respectful to the person you are talking with, showing consideration for the other person's limitations, allowing that person time to speak, communicating clearly and much, much more.

Your voice must create a pleasant visual impression over the telephone. Good telephone etiquette is important because we cannot see the facial expressions and body language of the other person and they cannot see us.

We must compensate by choosing our words carefully and using much more tone inflection to convey our message than if we were face to face.

Yet billions of dollars are spent annually on the various means of excluding the human factor from communication.

We regularly have to deal with impersonal recorded messages on voice mail that direct us to select a number from a menu or to leave a recorded message.

This is becoming standard business practice and a challenge to good phone etiquette when we are finally able to talk to a person.

We also encounter an ever increasing number of answering machines. These are a useful adjunct to the telephone and used judiciously will enable us to augment our telephone manners.

We get desperate to talk to a real live person and when we do find a human being we are dismayed to find the person lacks the basics of good telephone manners.


Okay, so the first few paragraphs (and by the by, I think this author needed to learn "writing etiquette", because there's this whole idea that every sentence does not require its own paragraph, especially when they are continuations of the same thought) are no big deal, be polite and courteous, don't think the person can see you making air quotes with your hands while you say something sarcastic, etc. I can get behind that. However, what's all this business about the horrors of voicemail and answering machines.

Is this 1993? I do remember, circa that time, people making a big deal about how impersonal it is to have to deal with these phone trees (and yes, that is what it's called when you call a company and have to press numbers to get options you want, so you can stop laughing at the silly word now), but haven't we gotten over that now? Haven't we accepted that companies get a lot of phone calls and it's way cheaper for them to just have a machine filter out useless enquiries? Haven't many of us gotten to the point where we'd rather deal with a machine than a human because humans are awkward?

Oh, wait, maybe that's the bad thing that everyone was worried about?

Activist and Receptionist?

I've decided to start using some of my free time here at work to write letters (and by letters I mean email, because who writes letters anymore? .... *sigh* ... letters were nice, weren't they?) to government-types about issues. I figure, why not? I care about stuff and I've got loads of free time with a keyboard in front of me. Maybe this will be a better use of my time than reading about weird things that Koreans like that are only really weird because of our cultural perspective but still, weird right? Plus I keep getting invited to all these activist-y facebook groups, and I'm selective about which facebook groups I join because, you know, that says a lot about me as a person. But I still want Stephen Harper (and Gordo and everyone else) to stop being a-holes.

So I started today by writing to the senate and some Conservative people (got the email addresses from a facebook group, natch) about Bill C-10 which is stupid and I don't like it because it's basically censorship at the hands of the Conservatives. For a more concise and level-headed description, check here or here, or if you want to see it from another angle: try this.

Just so you know, I don't really want to pay for porn or excessive violence with my theoretical tax dollars (I haven't really paid taxes yet), however none of us have yet because there are already regulations in place by an independent third party (Telefilm) to prevent that undesirable event. Geez! Stop being an A-Hole and get it together Stepho!

It's Fan Time

Hey we're getting a new fan! Theoretically one that doesn't sound like a helicopter. So exciting!

Top 5 Awesome Things About Data Entry

I've been doing a lot of data entry for the past two days. And by "a lot", I don't really mean that I've had a lot of data to enter, but that it's all of done when I'm actually working. There are a few things that get me excited in a very nerdy way while I'm doing this.

-When the amount I'm entering has consecutive numbering. Eg: $123.64 (note how if you inversed the last two numbers it would just be missing the 5 for perfectness)

-When the amount I'm entering is similar to the number of the cheque it came from. Eg: $204.94 from cheque number 204!!!! It's insane!

-When consecutive amounts I enter are eerily similar. Eg: $148.49 $184.78 $184.78 $184.78 $184.96 $185.33 $208.08 $408.48 (Do you see it?!? DO YOU SEE IT??!!!?)

-When (as sort of seen in two of the numbers above) consecutive amounts are mirror images of each other. Eg: $148.39 $184.78

Do I need to get out more?

The correct answer is: yes.

Tech Support

One of my coworkers is in my boss' office trying to teach him how to use a new program. Excellent. They could be in there for hours!

*PS: Just realized how this post could be misconstrued in a horrible, sexual misconduct kind of way. Oops.

Blogger oddities

This has been kind of bugging me for a long time. Whenever I go to write a new post on here, the page to compose my post in doesn't fully load until I click in the text box. It's so weird. The toolbar (you know, with the bold, italics, add a link, etc. functions) is absent until the moment I click.

Maybe Blogger is trying to make me feel like I'm in control? Like it really is a completely user-activated tool? Maybe it's working? Maybe I'll soon get drunk off the modicum of power surrendered to me until I start showing up for work at erratic hours, wearing whatever clothes I darn-well want, and saying things like "Type that letter yourself, what's wrong, did you hurt your fingers as well as your foot?", or "I can't answer the phone right now, can't you see I'm Facebooking my cousin about the upcoming M-Dolla concert?" (This change, would of course be a stark contrast to my current "scuttle into work just barely on time, wearing the office-appropriate clothing my Mom bought me because I didn't have any of my own, spend half my day doing personal things online but quickly closing the window whenever someone walks by to avoid getting caught" attitude)

*read this whole blog in a whispered voice*

It's so quiet in here. So sooooooo quiet. My boss isn't in today, which I thought would be awesome and kind of is because I don't have to pretend to work quite as much, but seriously. It's really really really quiet. I think the silence is seeping into my brain. I think this is the kind of silence that drives people first to be overly irritable, and secondly to start twitchign, and thirdly to slowly poison their coworker's tea every time she goes to the bathroom. So now the real question is, do I bring my tea with me when I go to the bathroom?

Back to the grind

Now that the busy accounting season is over, I'm back to data entry. DATA ENTRY!!!! Sitting and entering numbers into spreadsheets and then checking to make sure that I entered all the numbers correctly and then spending hours going over every cell and every equation within every cell to find the one number I got wrong, even though it was in the 100th decimal space. It still matters. Yip-- oh I can't even muster a sarcastic "yipee." This is sad.

More funness!

Oh yes, and I've found another web comic to pass the time. Don't bother going to the beginning, it really sucks for the first while. But I guarantee some entertaining time-wasting if you start with the newest one and go backwards. It's called xycd.

*Note: Guarantee only applicable if you have a slightly twisty sense of humour like myself and at least 2 other people I can think of.

Superman does his taxes too.

We have a client who's name (which I won't actually reveal because I'm sure it would be some kind of confidentiality issue) sounds a lot like an actor who once played Superman's name. It's fun. I pretend I'm filing Superman's financial information, or that Superman just sent me a fax.

Oh Superman.

So cool.

When are they going to make another Superman movie? What with all the superhero movies being made and re-made, as well as the potential for awesome darkness to be woven into his tale (expelled from his home planet, mysterious adoptive parents who are really far too wholesome, all the broodiness that comes with keeping your impervious skin a secret, all the Buffy-like isolation that comes with constantly saving the world, there is SO MUCH potential for dark secrets in both his and Lois Lane's pasts!)

Revision: Okay, so a quick Google search has reminded me that they made Superman Returns in 2006. Which leads me to ask a new question: When are they going to make an AWESOME Superman movie that's not completely forgettable?

Faxed Time

Interesting. Recall, if you will, my Battle of the Dinosoars from a while back where I pitted the old, cronkly fax machine against the old, cronkly photocopier, and the fax won the honour of Worst and Most Freaking Annoying Piece of Office Equipment to Use, pushed over the edge mainly by its unbearable slowness that I had guesstimated at 1 minute per page where the user is forced to stand and watch to prevent paper jamming and fax lossages.

Well, today I had the pleasure of sending a few faxes, on 32 pages long and one 13 pages long. Oh yes. I timed them, just for fun. The 32 page fax took 17 minutes, a time well below my 1 min/pg estimation-of-pain, but still really really freaking long. Just to throw a loop in the whole thing, however, the 13 page fax ALSO TOOK 17 MINUTES! I am thrown. I am perplexed. I am grrrred. However, I am also slightly relieved. Now I understand. The fax machine will always take 17 minutes, no matter how many pages need be faxed (or maybe for faxes above the 5-page count, because I definitely would have noticed 17 minutes for 5 pages, as I've sent 5 pagers relatively frequently). Now I my seething anger and frustration need not mount to Level Red: Danger/Lethal because I now know what to expect.

*sigh*