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January 31, 2008

At the Office

I'm working on site with a local client today and it's a surreal experience. Waking up at 7:30 a.m., getting dressed in professional clothes, taking the metro downtown, signing in at the front desk, sitting down to work in an office, scoring a cup of coffee from the communal kitchen, looking periodically at the clock to see when 5 pm rolls around—it's just too weird. Or, maybe too normal.

It's been almost four years since I've worked in an office setting. In the interim, the normal workday routine has become completely foreign to me. These days, when I'm not traveling, I wake up about 9 am, make a cup of tea and sit down to work at the computer for a couple of hours in my pajamas. Sometime around lunch, I take a shower and put on jeans and a sweater—but never shoes,my feet must be free to express themselves.

I continue to work throughout the afternoon and into the evening, usually sitting at my desk but sometimes taking my laptop over to the couch. On rare occasions I have even taken my laptop into bed with me, to take advantage of my electric blanket during the cold winter months.

My dry cleaning bill has dropped to nothing, I spend more hours in pajamas than I do in “real clothes”. I have been known to take conference calls wearing nothing more than a towel—and sometimes that towel is wrapped around my head.

I go to the gym in the middle of the day, and make a point to swing by the local coffee shop at some point. I often run across the street to Whole Foods right at 5 pm to pick up a baguette straight out of the oven.

In some ways, it's bliss. It's especially nice when I'm doing a lot of traveling—when I need the opportunity to do a couple loads of laundry in between meetings so that I can be prepared to catch a flight a mere 24 hours after returning home from the last trip. And it makes those times when I do dress up and put on my “professional persona” a bit of a treat.

On the other hand, I love sitting in a “real” office. I love the personal connection with employees who are able to walk down the hall to each other's offices. I love grabbing a coffee with people and sharing the water cooler gossip. I love picking up at 6 p.m. and going home to a real, separate personal life.

On the whole though, I think I prefer wearing slippers most days, and just dabbling in normal office life.

January 24, 2008

My Life in Numbers

21 – days I will be away from home in February.

3.7 – miles I covered on the treadmill today, meandering at a mellow speed since the bronchitis has not yet totally subsided.

73,141 – miles I flew in an airplane last year on Big Idea assignments.

0 – items I've checked off of my 50 Things to Do Before I Die list in the past 14 months.

1,881 – eHarmony matches I've gone through in the last few years. Guess we weren't compatible on 29 dimensions after all.

3.5 – books I've read this month.

6 – books sitting on my nightstand, yet to be read.

12 – dollars I spent on a key lime pie last week—a pie that I never got to taste because I was distracted by illicit activities.

7 – things I wrote down and then erased because they were deemed to lurid/depressing/mean to force upon humanity.

January 23, 2008

Reasons You Piss Me Off

Because you run your mouth when you should just learn to shut up. No really, just close your mouth and enjoy the breath of fresh air that is sound of you not blathering on about something you know nothing about.

Because you blatantly plagiarized my Big Idea website, mimicking the layout and lifting entire paragraphs for your own use. And this after just two weeks ago paying for my advice on how to get started in your business! [Note: did I ever recommend stealing from me? I thought not…] Now that I've threatened you with legal action, I hope you will learn to think twice before you rip someone off.

Because for a twenty pound cat it seems obvious to me that you shouldn't throw up EVERY SINGLE DAY. I mean, really, how are you able to keep your weight up when it seems like everywhere I turn is the evidence of your bulimia?

Because you expect me to be at your beck and call at all hours of the day. Do you understand that we are on opposite sides of the continent? Do you understand that wanting to wrap up at the end of the day with a quick conference call means me sitting at my desk at 10 p.m.? Do you get how disrespectful it is to blow off meetings at the last minute when I have rearranged my schedule to suit you?

Phew…that makes me feel better. Now back to our normal chirpy, syrupy-sweet musings…

January 19, 2008

A Tale of Three Movies

I will go for months at a time without stepping foot into a movie theater. And since I don't own a television I rarely get to watch movies on the small screen. But then…everyone once in a while (usually when I start dating someone new) there will be a flurry of movie-going activity.

This time it has been less "dating new guys" and more "escaping from the black hole that is the BIg Idea" – but no less delightful. And so in the past two weeks I have seen three movies, which could not have been more different from each other.

Juno – my sister convinced me to try going to a movie alone ("it's so great—so relaxing, see whatever you want, sit wherever you want, etc.) and so one evening last week when I was at the end of my proverbial Big Idea rope I trotted over to the fancy art house theater across the street. Plunking down my $9.75 for a ticket, I also enjoyed the absurd luxury of a Diet Coke and Junior Mints, snuggled into the plush box seating area, and prepared myself. Many people had recommended Juno, and the movie did not disappoint. I laughed, I cried, I reveled in the dry, witty humor and the not-too-easy ending. I wish I had an extra set of arms so that I could give this movie four thumbs up.

No Country for Old Men – Mr. Pilot and I had been waiting for weeks to see this movie, which made an absurd number of "top 10 movies of 2007" critics' lists. I had read some Cormac McCarthy in the past (namely, All the Pretty Horses) and had not been particularly impressed. On the other hand, I love me some Javier Bardem. As the movie progressed, I realized that it suffered from the same issues (not flaws, since I think they were intentional) that made me dislike Dances with Wolves and Brokeback Mountain and the novels of T.C. Boyle (I'm thinking specifically The Tortilla Curtain). First, the plot moves at a

G

L

A

C

I

A

L

pace. It's not that lots of stuff doesn't happen, it's just that in between the action sequences there is an obscene amount of "man stares over the open plain" going on. And then, at the end there is less resolution than just…an ending. This definitely smacks of Cormac McCarthy, and if I had been reading the book instead of watching the movie I would have definitely thrown it across the room. It wasn't A Terrible Movie, just a disappointment.

Cloverfield – This was another movie that Mr. Pilot and I had been dying to see for months. We were all set to go to opening night when it turned out that he was going to be flying a plane to Charleston that day. We faced a conundrum—wait 4 days until he got back or see it separately. In the end, the desire to see it without preconceptions or knowledge of any secret twists won out, and we opted to see it individually and then reconvene over instant messenger later that evening. What to say about this movie? I thought it was GREAT for a monster movie, accurately portrayed how people would act in a similar situation, and made the Marines look great. (I'm not sure I believe that an entire battalion of Marines could be dispatched to mid-town in three hours, complete with everything needed to fight an alien monster, but I'd like to put that doubt aside.) There were moments that were a little too "Blair Witch Project" for my taste, and I did end up taking a brief hiatus in the middle to vomit up my dinner (oh the shaky camera work!)—but overall I thought it did its job well. And it was blessedly only 90 minutes long—any more and it would have gone downhill fast.

January 17, 2008

New Years Resolutions

I was relieved to see that it's apparently not too late to make New Year's Resolutions for 2008, even though we are well into the third week of the year. While I love the motto "More Sex, Less Financial Ruin", this year I'm going to take a more pragmatic approach and:

Read More Books

Through a combination of more frequent overnight guests, a lapse in my audiobook membership, countless weeks traveling for the Big Idea, and a bevy of magazine subscriptions, I have fallen off the book-reading bandwagon. (Spare me Mr. Bad Apologies--yes I know I've read more books in a year than you've read in your whole life.)

So my resolution for 2008 is to start reading again. Literary fiction, biographies, memoirs, mysteries, crime novels, police procedurals, churned out Dan Patterson and Danielle Steele tripe, historical romance, hell--even Harlequin romance. It's all up for grabs. Except maybe anime--I just don't get the cartoons.

Let the page-turning begin.

I made this resolution a couple weeks ago when I thought I might be dying of bubonic plague, and I'm happy to report that I've already completed one book and am well on my way through a second. But tonight I've learned an added lesson: when finding oneself suddenly alone after a night of adventure and excitement, when one expected to have an overnight guest but was instead merely dropped at the curb, it is a comforting thought indeed to say "I couldn't be bothered with you anyway, I have a book to get through."

Now let me see if I have any erotica laying around.

January 16, 2008

Anthology of Demonology: My Night With Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie

Hello my little chickadees and welcome back to Write Again Soon. I realize I dropped off the map for a bit, so before delving in the scintillating events of my week, let's take a brief moment to review.

December 23 – December 30
Over the holidays I took a few days off from the Big Idea—the first time in 2007 that I had stepped away from the computer for more than 12 hours at a time. It was glorious, this long-forgotten ability to sleep several times during any 24 hour period, the delight of getting drunk on chocolate martinis, the sheer pleasure of doing laundry on a normal schedule and having a choice between THREE clean shirts.

New Years Eve
Mr. Pilot and I rang in the New Year at a swanky party in which I consumed a number (perhaps three, perhaps seven) alcoholic beverages, danced with sundry people until my feet ached, and managed to walk home in a huff more than half a mile to our hotel because of a shocking lack of cabs. Upon arriving in our room, Mr. Pilot did the manly thing in taking off my shoes, coaxing me out of my dress, and getting me a tissue when I burst into uncontrollable drunk sobbing. I think I made it up to him the next day, with 12 hours of watching football in bed and various other athletic activities.

January 1 – 10
Like all good things, my vacation had to end and rather than simply go back to the status quo I instead began 2008 with a progressively worsening cough. What was originally a small tickle at the back of my throat morphed into a hacking, braying commotion that suggested something was seriously amiss. I was sure it was tuberculosis; my sister thought it might be whooping cough—I believe the bubonic plague was even briefly considered. When I started coughing up blood I knew the time had come to see some uncovered-by-my-nonexistent-medical-insurance professional help. Turns out that I had bronchitis. The good news is that it is relatively easy to treat, the bad news is that it can last 4-5 weeks.

Smattering of Events in the Interim
But while all of this has been going on (including continuing sleepless nights—oh the coughing!), life has not stopped. No dear reader, I have made it a point to plunge ahead with life. Some of the recent highlights include:

-- My first heavy metal concert! I saw Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie at the Verizon Center with Mr. Pilot. I was filled with trepidation, but actually enjoyed myself in between coughing fits. A key to my contentment was the realization that Ozzy has greatly mellowed out in his old age. There was no spewing blood, no channeling Satan, no biting the head off a bat. Instead, it was a little "spray the front rows with foam" and "put lots of boobs up on the big screen during the guitar solo". In case you were wondering, my boobs stayed safely ensconced in their proper place.

-- Janie's basketball game! You haven't lived until you've seen twenty 6-year old girls play basketball in a tiny gym. There is a remarkable amount of crying, a strange "swarming" move around the ball that is unrecognizable as offense/defense, and at least one girl who simply cannot chuck the ball up to the rim. Ever.

-- Tap dancing class! Ok, the classes don't actually start until next week, but I'm all signed up with the community college and have even purchased some very fancy tap shoes. As far as I can tell, there is no recital, although I may end up scheduling my own little performance where all my local fans can come to appreciate my rhythm and moves. Brace yourselves now. (Note: this will be a family affair, as my sister—and possibly my mom—will be taking the class, and Janie is considering an age-appropriate class as well. If the Nazis try to invade, we can organize some sort of family tap dancing extravaganza to disguise our evacuation from the city and our escape over the Alps.)

-- Scary Big Idea stuff! The uncertainty in the economy has resulted in several large clients pulling out of their negotiations with me—leaving me in the lurch and not a little bitter about the proposal work I did that has all come to naught. I'm not panicking yet—but I'm definitely thinking about the coming months and my ability to sustain the business in the event that more clients don't come through.

So…that's about it. If you're wondering about the times when I wasn't at a concert or watching a child's basketball game or paying an exorbitant sum for tap shoes…well, I was napping. Or coughing. Or coughing during a nap. But now that I have finally caught up on my sleep, hauled myself back on the Big Idea bandwagon, caught up with my laundry, and even managed to go grocery shopping—the time has come to once again share my life with you dear reader.

We'll begin tomorrow with a rundown of the items in my refrigerator—also known as "how long can those two beers hold out all alone in there?"