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.