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!