Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Work Related Angst
In the not so recent past I was re-orged at work. Meaning I was put into a new group and given a new boss. And my new boss was given a new boss. I like my new boss. His boss is a pain in the butt. We’ll call my boss “Mr. Nice Guy” and his boss “Mr. Pissy Pants”. Honestly, it fits. He is Mr. Pissy Pants.
So, Mr. Pissy Pants has not been a good team player. He refuses to work with our former team and has created a barrier between people that formerly worked very well together. In a matter of weeks squabbles about cubes and who “owns” what broke out. We’ve been attempting to recover ever since.
Mr. Pissy Pants (that’s just so fun to type) has also been trying to buy our love. We now celebrate birthdays with extravagant birthday cakes. Attendance is mandatory – unless you have a really good reason why you didn’t show up. Mr. Pissy Pants takes mental attendance and if you aren’t there, he notes it.
Mr. Pissy Pants asked my boss, Mr. Nice Guy, if we would figure out what to do for the summer event. Mr. Nice Guy asked me to set up an internal survey to find out what people were interested in doing. So I did. After the results came back I let them both know what the group would like to do.
As a side, Mr. Pissy Pants’ other group is as painful as he is. I got several messages asking why I didn’t include things like indoor rock climbing and jet skis in my options. When I replied that we have varying ages and physical abilities and we need to include everyone the answer was, “Well if people don’t want to participate they can watch.” Yeah, real inclusive.
Mr. Pissy Pants then requested estimates. After finding out the cost of the first choice, I got estimates for the second choice. I figure we have a budget (and I kind of know that is) and the first choice of the group would go over that budget pretty quickly. So I sent off the estimates to see what he would say. He chooses the most expensive option I gave him.
Mr. Pissy Pants said I should plan the event, so I started working on it. It immediately started falling apart. The place we were planning on going to has closed. Now Mr. Pissy Pants wants me to look into chartering a bus to take people to the event. I am not kidding. Who charters buses anymore? How is that cost effective? Shouldn’t we go with choice number 2, which is cheaper and timely?
I know that I am irritated with Mr. Pissy Pants because he’s such an arrogant bastard and even though he is shorter than me he still manages to look down his nose at me. I am also irritated because he treats all of us like his minions and cannot seem to allow us any dignity in any area. He assumes we’re all stupid idiots that can’t accomplish crap.
I’m trying to figure out who I can pass this particular assignment off to. I’m doing it for three reasons. 1. I want to work on my work. 2. I don’t want to work with Mr. Pissy Pants. 3. I don’t want to be able to say I know how much this little excursion cost. I don’t think it’s cool to overspend in an attempt to please your employees. Being a good manager on a regular basis and treating people with respect goes a lot further than a day of fun.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Ouch
My bachorlette party was this weekend. As was F’s bachelor party. I think our parties very much suited each of us.
The “girls” took me out to dinner and then we hit the clubs. I can honestly say that I have never talked to so many guys, or people, in one night. Women were happy with that sad tinge of jealousy that they were actually there to meet a man instead of celebrating having found one. The men were funny too. Re-actions ran the gamut, though I have a couple of favorites.
My all time favorite was at the first bar we went to, this guy walked up and said, “are you sure you want to get married?” I answered in the affirmative and he replied, “But there are so many good looking men out there, I mean, I’m not one of them, but still they are out there…” I almost fell off my stool from laughter. He had a friend with him as well, a very nice man who was gorgeous when he took off his silly bucket hat. He really wanted to wear the hat and I told him it wasn’t doing him any favors. He laughed at me. I’d had 7 drinks at this point; I was telling people all kinds of things…like how great their shoes were, how pretty their hair was, all kinds of things.
My second favorite reaction was pretty simple. This guy noticed my veil (yes I was wearing a veil) asked me if I was getting married. When I said yes he simply turned my head and gave me a kiss on my check and told me “good luck” and walked away. It was so sweet and simple.
At the second place we went, we ran into Dario. Ha! He’s from England and is here working. I guess he’s been here for years, though I don’t remember hearing that. He was a lovely person who bought me a drink and flirted with all the girls. At one point Maggie asked him to give me reasons not to get married, he looked at me and asked me if it was true love and to look him in the eyes when I answered. I thought of my fiancé, thought about my love for him and answered. He said there was no way he could argue with the look on my face and I had best get married.
At the end of the night he decided we were too drunk to go home and took us to his place. Two of my party passed out while attempting to watch an old episode of Knight Rider. I’d forgotten what Knight Rider was all about. We didn’t make it to the exciting part of the show before I asked Dario to get us a cab. We arrived safely home about 3:30 Sunday morning.
I wasn’t doing too bad yesterday – I did everything I had to do and with pretty high spirits. Today I feel like crap. The lights are too bright and I have a feeling it’s going to be a long one. I had a great time though – wouldn’t trade it!
More happened over the weekend – I’ll write more later…
Friday, July 28, 2006
Cant…Sit…Still
Today work is throwing The Man and I a wedding shower. I’m so excited I can’t sit still. We’ve invited almost 90 people from work. Between the two of us we know a lot of people at work. It’s pretty cool.
We also got two new wedding gifts last night. An atomic wall clock and a crock pot! I am VERY excited about both. I did a little dance around the living room while F laughed hysterically at me. I guess he’s never seen someone so excited about a clock and crock pot before. What can I say?
I have been feeling all kinds of crazy feelings this week, I’ve been hovering on the edge of depression and then swinging into crazy happiness, so I figured I should wait to blog till I was back on even keel again. So I didn’t mention last weekend’s festivities.
Last weekend mom and her neighbor Jean threw me a bridal shower. I have only been a couple bridal showers so I had no idea what to expect. I remember a friend’s in CO where we played pin the penis on the man…I happened to win that particular game (and I was blindfolded!) In another shower I went to, the only thing I really remember is my friend getting a Costco sized package of TP. My shower was somewhere in-between those two – right where it should have been!
We played this game, it was pretty unfair actually, but fun none-the-less, where everyone brought a pair of undies and I had to guess who brought which pair. The variety in styles, shapes and sizes was pretty amazing. I made it through the game, but just barely. Hehe
The best part though, were the cream puffs. Yummy yummy cream puffs that tasted so delicious in their puffy creaminess. Oh, they were fantastic.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Avoiding Temptation and other Notes
Tuesday:
- I saw RisibleGirl in a skirt. (She’s one of my favorite people and definitely my favorite blogger) I’ve never seen her in one before. She looked fabulous. She said to mark it on my calendar because it’s such a rare occurrence. I was going to blog about it Tuesday and forgot. Bad Me.
- My gym, for some unknown reason, decided it would be a good idea to give away ice cream to members. Yes ICE CREAM. There were signs everywhere about it. Also included were signs stating how long a person would have to work out to make up for a serving of ice cream. That’s what did it for me. I was not spending an extra hour in the gym to make up for a serving of ice cream. I resisted the temptation and did not partake.
- We received a letter in the mail with a “gift check” in it. Turns out I messed up in my wedding spreadsheet somewhere and accidentally sent people a thank you card for a gift I hadn’t gotten yet. Fortunately the gift was received on the same day I sent the thank you note (and the note was generic enough that they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.) Now I look extra competent rather than like a screw up! Now I just need to send a note to the people who ACTUALLY sent the original check.
Wednesday:
- I went shopping for a Rehearsal Dinner dress yesterday. Not finding anything and feeling slightly put out by the selections I was finding, I headed to the book store. Where I always find something that fits. I can’t wear it, but it fits! I was searching the shelves, browsing away, when I saw a package of crumpets. Someone left a perfectly good package of crumpets on the shelf. Being a good citizen, I marched them over to a staff person. She looked at them with this expression of, “what the heck are these?” when I told her someone left them on a shelf. I then explained that they were crumpets. The whole thing left me feeling rather sad. Sad because the staff member had no idea what they were, sad because someone left perfectly good crumpets sitting on a shelf, and sad because I wasn’t taking crumpets home with me. I could go and get them at any time, but I don’t because I have a good breakfast thing going on right now. But tomorrow IS Friday and I’ll get my crumpet fix then. A yummy crumpet with cream cheese, ham, egg and tomato. Yum! Pair that with a Carmel Latte and I will be in heaven tomorrow.
Thursday – today:
Hmmm…well…hmmm. I learned a couple of things today.
1. one of the women from my writing group won 3rd place in a writing contest. I’m slightly jealous, only because I wish I had written something in time and been able to attend the conference where she won. I do not think I am more deserving. No way. She is a fabulous writer and I’m very excited for her. Only jealous of her ambition and dedication.
2. my writing group is falling apart. One of the women is moving to another state. One of the men just broke up with his significant other and, well, that doesn’t help with the whole writing thing. Another woman has a sick puppy and cannot leave him. Since the puppy is often sick…well…yeah.
3. people at my work are stupid. They don’t pay attention to what’s happening around them. I don’t know what they do all day, but it makes me very afraid for the future of my group and my company. And it shines light on why we are where we are, as a company. These same stupid people make up answers to things they don’t know. They don’t even bother to ask the person in charge, they just make it up. It is very disconcerting. I don’t like it.
4. 22 days till the wedding.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Taking it Home
I’ve been watching too much TLC, specifically the “Take Home Chef” with cute Curtis Stone. The premise is this, he walks into a grocery store, find a person shopping for groceries and asks them if they are cooking a meal for someone that night. Then he offers to go home with them and cook a gourmet meal.
After watching too many episodes, I decided I could be my own take home chef and cook a great meal for someone. Someone being F and his friend who just happened to call that day. I decided on a three course meal, something pretty simple but delicious looking.
I trundled off to the grocery stored armed with a rather long list of ingredients needed to fulfill my chef dreams. I spent 90 minutes at the store trying to find what I needed. Finding almost everything and substituting some other things, I headed home to start my cooking adventure.
I started off with the Braised Bison. Only my grocery store doesn’t have Bison, so I used Beef instead. I started chopping and slicing and dicing and searing and melting and tada! I had some stew like mixture that I put in the oven to cook for 4 hours. The stew was my main course, but would take the longest to cook. So, after finishing that off I started on the appetizer.
(As a side note, I decided to take a page from the chef book. I always see chefs enjoying a nice glass of wine while they are cooking. I had to use wine in the stew stuff I made, so I poured a glass for myself, and drank it.)
On to the appetizer! Stuffed artichokes. I’d never worked with artichokes before and have heard that they are difficult, but it looked easy on the show so I thought, what the heck? I’ll give it a whirl. I got my artichokes out and started chopping. I chopped, well sawed, off the tops like the instructions stated and then found myself facing off with the mysterious choke. Hmmm. There I am, standing in the kitchen with my spoon, ready to do battle. I’m holding the artichoke, searching for the mysterious hairs that I am supposed to be removing. I know they are somewhere in the middle, so I started poking away with my spoon. It wasn’t working – I couldn’t seem to find the stupid hairs. I set the artichoke down and drank some more wine, thinking ‘how hard can this be?’ I pick up a knife and attempt to cut the choke out – or at least cut until I find the hairs. I dig around with the knife for awhile, drink some more wine and then Jackpot! I’ve got hairs! Woohoo! I think, I am on my way! I have a celebratory half glass of wine to congratulate myself. Then I get back to digging. And digging. And digging. I think I’ve got it all out of the first one and look at the second artichoke.
I think to myself, well I have one down, I know what I am looking for this time, the second one should be easier. I drink a little wine to fortify myself for the battle ahead and start sawing away at the top. This artichoke is significantly different than the first. For one thing, I can’t seem to find the choke. I know it’s there, they all have them, but I can’t find it. After 5 or 10 minutes of digging, I finally take out my vegetable peeler and stab it into the center of the vegetable. I swirl it around and then pop it out sideways, using a digging motion. Jackpot! The digging worked, I am greeted by lots of little hairs! Woohoo! I drink a little more wine, thinking I am on my way again.
Half an hour later I have cleaned the artichokes, dug everything I can possibly dig out of the centers and put them in acidulated water (which I had to look up, why couldn’t they just say lemon water?)
At this point I get the stuffing ready for the little buggers. F’s friend calls, wondering if we need anything from the store. I glance over at the bottle of wine we were supposed to have with dinner, realize I have drunk almost all of it, and order another bottle. We should have plenty for dinner.
I get the artichokes stuffed and sit down on the couch with a glass of wine. I have half an hour or so before I have to start on the next course. While waiting I watch Take Home Chef. Feeling recharged, and drunk, I head back to the kitchen to make some mini potatoes with sour cream and chives to go with the stew stuff. The artichokes are cooking away and smelling wonderful. I follow the directions, get the potatoes in to cook and serve up the artichokes. First course done! I set the table, pour a little wine for everyone and call the guys into eat.
I have to say the artichokes turned out really nicely. At least the stuffing did. I’m not sure what part of the actual artichoke you are supposed to eat. I have a feeling I may have dug that part out…but the stuffing was delicious.
On to the stew! I pour a little more wine, and pull the stew out of the oven. I pulled the potatoes out as well. I cut the little crosses in them, but forget to let them cool, and attempt to push the centers out. It doesn’t work. Instead I burn my fingers on potatoes that aren’t done yet, but I don’t know they aren’t done. Giving up on the pushing part, I put the sour cream and chives on the table and served up the stew. The guys told me how good the stew was (though it needed salt) and attempted to eat the potatoes (though they weren’t done yet) and overall told me that it was a great meal. I had another glass of wine.
I then re-entered the kitchen to prepare dessert. After 3/4 of a bottle of wine I was feeling more confident and ready to make Apple and Vanilla Spring Rolls with Plain Yogurt. This was the best part of the entire meal. Really. Though I didn’t have a pastry brush to get the butter on, I did use a paint brush and that seemed to work okay. I hadn’t used the paint brush for painting, so no toxic stuff in the food. I popped them in the oven, finished the bottle of wine and waited. They were delicious. Something I will definitely make again.
Two bottles of wine later, the meal was finished. F, his friend and I were all stuffed. I’m declaring my experiment a success and not planning another one any time soon!
Thanks TLC! (Although next time I might just wait for Curtis to come to me...)
As you wake in the morning
What do you feel?
Does a rush of happiness
wash over you when,
Suddenly, you realize you are alive?
