another skill for the resume

Today my boss sent me an email (in reply to an Excel file I had sent her) that cracked me up. Here's the first sentence:

"Nice matrix!"

Whatever the hell is going on with my life, at least I've got that going for me.

the obligatory "my vacation was fun" post

Top Ten Things I Loved About My Vacation at Otakon, in Baltimore:

10. The drive was about an hour and a half shorter than I thought it would be. Aside from a long detour in Delaware in search of alcohol, the ride was fast.

9. Crab chips. I always forget these exist until I go to Maryland, and then I remember I love 'em. I was both amused and disappointed to find that dehydrated crab is not an ingredient in crab chips.

8. Seeing a seahorse, sharks, dolphins, and jellyfish at the aquarium.

7. All you can eat seafood at Phillip's. Shrimp, mussels, crayfish (which Alton Brown informs me I didn't eat right, like, at all), and plate after plate of crab legs. Yum.

6. Raymond, our waiter the second time we visited Phillip's. He came up twice and slid a plate onto the table filled with things we wanted. He also asked us about the convention and recommended another one we should go to. Also, he was cute and Jen totally embarrassed herself by asking if she should put a heart by his name on the comment card when he was standing right next to her.

5. Discovering Sergeant Frog. Kero!

4. Fan parodies. Fans splice scenes from various anime together and dub it over with a song, the audio from a commercial, etc. Especially funny was the "That's What She Said" spot, set to the audio from a commercial for "The Office."

3. Cosplay. I would say at least a third of the people attending the convention came in costume. We saw some really great ones, including an Optimus Prime who was at least ten feet tall, and a couple of girls wearing glorified underwear or less (in the case of one girl, tissue paper crossed around her chest). We would love to bring Andy and Daniel next time and dress as the characters from Sergeant Frog.

2. A workshop where we learned how to draw chibis. Also, laughing at Michael's chibis. (I'm sorry, but seriously.)

1. I wasn't at work! Thank you God!

lady, you have no idea

This morning, one of my coworkers was describing to another what happens when you have an MRI. She described how they slide something over your face, and how it made her really claustrophobic, so she kept her eyes closed the whole time. "And then they pulled me out of the tube to inject the dye, and I thought they'd taken the head thing off, and I opened my eyes, and oh my God!"

And I wanted to add:

Yeah, and then your eyes got all scratchy and bloodshot
and your nose and throat and chest suddenly fill up
and it's kind of hard to breathe
and you can't help but sneeze, but you still try to stay as still as you can
and your right eye gets all purple and swollen and shiny
and when they say your name you think they're talking about you, not to you, because you're all disoriented, and they come running in thinking you're not breathing...

or maybe that's just me?

Yes, MRI's can be really scary, but yours sounds like it was pretty normal, so maybe you should quit your whining.

a post that's not about birthday presents of the netbook variety

Today a vendor asked me which name he should put on my order, since my email address and my signature don't match. Which reminded me of something funny that happened when I got back to work from my honeymoon.

One of the first emails I sent with my new married name was to someone named Jean-Philippe in Canada. He wrote back:

"Did someone give you a new name for Christmas?"

I replied: "Sort of. I got married on New Year's Eve."

His question was cute, it made me smile. It also gave me a really evil idea. JP doesn't know how old I am, and I was really tempted to write back, "I got a divorce. That's my maiden name. Thanks for rubbing it in."

what i do with my brain while i work

Sometimes, my job doesn't take up a lot of mental space. While my body is scanning, renaming files, typing in spreadsheets, etc, my mind tends to wander. I hear songs in my head over and over and over, make budgets and resolutions, and daydream about the strangest things.

Like what to name my netbook. You know, the one everyone I know is going in on for my birthday.

Ideas:

1. George. Because I will love him and hug him and ... call him George.
2. Giorgio. Because if I call him George, my mom will say "when you say George, all I can think of is your uncle George, and ew." It'll be a little in joke and won't work my mom's gag reflex.
3. Gigi. Because Giorgio is getting too masculine. Why couldn't the netbook be a girl? But wait, not Gigi, because I want to name my daughter Julia, and Gigi is actually a really really cute nickname for Julia (especially since one of my nicknames is Kiki). And if I name my computer Gigi, then I won't want to call my daughter Gigi, just like I can't name my son Gabriel because I named a cat Gabriel.
4. Sammy. Short for Samsung. Cute, simple, androgenous. I like it.

So actually, I spent the last hour of work 1) doing work, 2) naming my netbook and 3) nicknaming my as-yet-unconceived daughter. That's what I call productivity.

i will hug him and squeeze him and call him george

My birthday is still 3 months away, but I know exactly what I want. No need to create a wishlist, because I only want one little thing: a Samsung NC-10 netbook.

My laptop is currently unusable because of battery issues. Sure, I could solve that problem for $80, but my laptop would still be big, heavy, five years old, and weighed down with a ton of stuff I never use.

I've had a netbook revelation: I am the user for whom the netbook was invented. I want small, light, simple, and fast. Thanks to Google Docs, I can perform every function I want to with only a web browser. I'm a "coffeehouse user" as one reviewer put it, and the netbook is the perfect computer for me.

And the Samsung NC-10 is the perfect netbook for me. It's compact and light, but still sports a 10" screen. The keyboard is 92% of standard size and comfortably laid out. The battery life is great at 6+ hours.

Also, it matches my phone. Sold!

P.S. The picture is a link, for your convenience. :)

hi canadians!

I finished preparing the rent for all of our US locations, got the Treasurer to sign it, and went into Excel to send the spreadsheet to Accounts Payable.

And then I saw this folder: Canada Rent.

To which I said: "Oh, oops!" And then laughed hysterically, because forgetting to pay the rent for our Canada locations is kind of more than an oops.

I'm sure you're really super important to our business, Canadians! I'll try hard not to get you evicted!

know your place, huffpo!

Dear huffpo (Huffington Post),

Love your site! The Daily Show recaps are brilliant, and I love love love the photo galleries of Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy! Your style section is where it's at.

But, umm, we need to talk. During my lunch today I innocently opened your site, and you hit me in the face with this headline: "Jobless Numbers 'Devestating,' Worse Than Expected." The thing is, sweetie, this is not what I come to you for. Unless you want to tell me about something ridiculous Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin did, I don't want "news."

I clicked away to the Style section, and you showed me three pictures: Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama, and Robert Gibbs with their "manbags," Obama and Bobby Flay grilling, and Hillary Clinton makin' it work with her arm cast. Yes, this is the light entertainment I was going for.

So I'll make you a deal. I'll start opening your website using this URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/style/ And you keep anything "devestating" away from me.

Love you to pieces!

Kiki

my stomach has a guardian angel

I had just sent my mom a text message when my boss asked me to do something for her.

The text message read: "Omg starving!"

My boss's request? Move the chips, cookies, and drinks from the conference room to the break room "so that people can eat them."

What's the opposite of FML?

high-octane typing

Yesterday, I was assigned 500 lines of data entry to complete. The person who was assigning it kept 500 lines to complete herself, and gave 500 lines to the receptionist. She told us that she would check with us this afternoon to see whether it seemed like we would be able to finish by the end of the day Thursday.

I scoffed. I vowed that I would be completely done before she asked this afternoon.

Right now, I'm looking at line 314. Despite the cramps in my shoulder from sitting in the same position and hitting the same keys over and over for hours, I may not finish today.

But I saw something at lunch that tempered my disappointment. The receptionist is on line 84.

Okay, she probably had a ton more distractions than I did, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, blah blah blah I win!