It was either no post (again) or a tripped out NyQuil post. Today, you get the latter.

WHO DAT say they gonna beat my immune system?? Ah yes, this cold. And it has done so successfully. So...sucks to be me. (By the way, in that last sentence, I spelled the word "taken" as "tacken" and couldn't understand why blogger was telling me it was spelled incorrectly for quite some time.) It's currently Sunday night, I just gathered up every ounce of strength I have to take a shower and I'm now lying in bed wearing an American Apparel Afrika patterned dress that I bought and never wore once because it's an American Apparel Afrika patterned dress and a pair of bona fide granny panties because I don't have any clean clothes left. Currently I'm building adrenaline to email my bosses and ask them if our office is open tomorrow; an act I feel torn about. On one hand, our building is primarily DOJ, so if the federal government is closed, the building closes. And the federal government is indeed closed tomorrow. But, I haven't been contacted by Boss #1 or Boss #2 yet...which could mean they're just not that into me a.k.a. I have to work tomorrow OR that they forgot I existed over the weekend. Considering when I called out sick last Friday Boss #2 said, and I quote, "Oh yeah, you don't have to come in today. I thought about emailing you that last night. Guess I should have," I'm apt to think it's the latter. So here I go. I'm going to email them to ask if we're open tomorrow. IS THAT TOO FORWARD? Do I care? No. Ok. Here I go. Another shot of NyQuil for courage. BOOM. Sent.

Oh god. I'm nervous.

So. I promised you the details of last week's conference this morning. Yeah. I'm not going to lie to you, I really did take a Christ ton of NyQuil about 20 minutes ago and writing this post is going to be unique. Normally my personal mantra is "I don't fuck with the Quils" because they make me feel like I'm about to have a heart attack and/or learn to fly, but I've reached that point of being sick where I'm physically tired of being tired but I can't sleep anymore because all I've been doing is sleeping, so now I'm just kind of writhing around in bed obsessively checking twitter every ten seconds to hear news of the outside world. So I thought I'd give The Quil another go. But I can't just not give you the details of the conference because I promised them last week like and I feel an incredible amount of pressure to deliver on that promise, NOT TO MENTION make it amazingly well-written ever since that mind-fuck of an anonymous comment said I never write anymore and even when I do it's not funny and my blog is full of empty promises. So deliver I shall! But I'm slightly worried I'm going to pass out before I finish this post. So now it's DOUBLE the pressure. This is competitive blogging at it's best—me vs. the manifestation of all of my insecurities in one anonymous blog comment vs. the clock VS. MYSELF. And we all know that I have the grace and composure of a fat kid slipping in a communal shower under pressure, so this post is going to be written in an unedited stream of consciousness style. And if you have a problem with that, well then you can go hang out with some other blog. Like LookAtThisFuckingHipster. They got a book deal. Clearly they're doing something right. Go ruin their day with your e-Meekness. (I swear I'm going to let go of that comment in like two days, I promise. EXCEPT ALL OF MY PROMISES ARE EMPTY APPARENTLY, SO WHO KNOWS?!?!!?)

I keep wasting precious blogging time by refreshing my work e-mail. Stop that. There was no need to type that. I'm wasting time again. Oh my god, just tell the story. SO! Last Monday morning I rolled into work assuring myself that the conference probably wasn't going to be as bad as I was expecting. I mean nothing's ever really as bad as you think it's going to be right? Well, wrong. Not 30 minutes after arriving at work (at 6:30, mind you) shenanigans were under way. As previously mentioned, the conference was full of gross, old, dirty VPs from corporate who individually breeze in and out of the office all the time but had never been there en masse before. Apparently when they get together, they like to play adorable pranks on each other. And that's cool, because I get that. Alex and I have a long-running joke of stealing each other's iphones and putting a picture of a cat penis as the wallpaper. Shit gets goofy sometimes; I get it. However, I don't really want to be involved with their shenanigans. Especially at 7 o'clock in the morning. It's an inside joke between the VPs that I make terrible coffee. Which actually doesn't offend me at all. I'm not a Starbuck's barista and between me and you, I haven't washed that coffee maker since the early days of '09, so I'd be more concerned if they did like my coffee. First thing Monday morning after I begrudgingly made a pot of coffee, Head VP of Sales came up to me all giggles and grins and hands me a cup of coffee. "HEHEHEHEE! MEGHAN! After we go into our meeting, come in, interrupt and say that you made this cup of coffee especially for Frank [VP of Government Sales.]" "Uhhh...why?" I asked. "I put four heaping tablespoons of raw coffee grinds and a shot of soy sauce I found in the fridge in there!"

Sir. I am not the Dax Shepard to your Ashton Kutcher. It is not my job to help you punk an honest to god 78-year-old man with a rancid cup of coffee at 7 o'clock in the morning. The problem, however, is that VP of Sales is Boss #1 and Boss #2's boss, so what he says pretty much goes. "Do......do......I don't.....Do I have to?" I stammered awkwardly. "THIS IS GOING TO BE A RIOT!!!!!!" VP of Sales said as he handed me the cup of coffee and scampered into the board room.

I awkwardly waited a few minutes and opened the door to the conference room. The room fell silent and 25 people looked up at me. "Meghan, can we help you?" VP of Sales, at the head podium, asked. "Yeah....I ah. I made this cup of coffee. [Sigh] And I made it especially for Frank. I guess." "Well aren't you a sweetheart!" Frank said as I ushered the coffee over to him. "Yeah. No problem." I stood there as Frank took his first sip, ready for him to spit it across the table and VP of Sales to let him in on the joke. But something even more awkward happened instead: he liked it. "Mmm, thanks again!" Frank said. I looked up at VPoS, expecting him burst into laughter, but instead, he looked back at me and matter-of-factly said, "Thank you Meghan, that will be all." HE LET THAT POOR OLD MAN DRINK THE ENTIRE CUP OF RANCID SOY GROUND WATER! I felt awful. I wanted to throw myself across the table in slow motion while shouting, "NOOOOOOOO" and whap the cup out of Frank's hand before he took another sip, but knowing where my paycheck comes from, I just said "Oh...ok" and walked out of the room like a little bitch.

An hour later, the boardroom adjourned for a quick break and Frank came up to my desk to thank me again for the coffee. Suddenly VPoS came up, grabbed Frank by the shoulders and said, "You know what was in that coffee right??" "No..." Frank said suspiciously. VPoS broke out into a fit of laughter and said, "Meghan put coffee grounds and soy sauce in there Frank! AND YOU LIKED IT!" Frank looked around, laughed a little, looked at me and said, "Meghan, did you really do that?" It was at this moment that my heart broke into 10,000 distinct little pieces. I looked up at VPoS with pleading eyes waiting for him to fess up, but he just continued cackling like a jackass. "I...I.........VPoS made me!!!!" I said pointing directly to VPoS' face. Yep. I sold that bitch out. And by bitch, I mean the man who signs my paychecks. Was it "the smartest decision"? Probably not. Do I value my job enough to take the fall for poisoning the coffee of a 78-year-old man with an Asian condiment? Definitely not. "Oh Meghan, you killjoy!" VPoS said. "We're just having some fun with you Frank! Come on, let's go get more coffee—but keep Meghan away from the soy sauce. A-HAHAHA!" The two then proceeded to walk away arm-in-arm, Frank glaring at me the entire way.

And that was Monday morning at 9 o'clock in the morning. MONDAY. MORNING. I decided then and there that the only solution to the week of problems lying ahead of me was to get fired. I put something up on my gchat status to that effect, which caught my mom's eye and in response she sent me an email that essentially said, "AWWWWW, HELL NAW." In that moment, that just wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. I felt incredibly frustrated and trapped and what I didn't need was an email saying "BLALRIGHT! Just blew up the opening of the cave! Shit's blocked with a boulder! Six more weeks of winter! BYEEEEE!" Thus, I sent her back an equally obnoxious email. Which she responded in kind with. And we're still not talking. Which is incredibly irritating and inconvenient when you're having a god awful week and you think you're coming down with a cold and you don't know if you refrigerate chicken sausage or put it in the freezer. Because what's a mom for if not times like those?

I feel like the best way to adequately discuss the heinousness of the rest of the week is to introduce you to a few of the cast of characters I was working with:

- VPoSales. I believe you remember his work from the Oriental Java Express episode. Perhaps enough said.

- Frank. VPoS seriously did irrevocable damage to my relationship with Frank. Frank used to love me. But like...grossly love me. I hate to be That Guy who's like "Oh my gawd, my co-worker's keep hitting on me, life is so HARD when you're this attractive," but I think Frank lovin' him some Meg McBlogger had little to do with my mediocre looks and more to do with the fact that he's an old business man and I'm a young woman with giant tits. I could have a bag over my head and a stutter and I think he'd still want a hand full. Prior to The Coffee Incident, Frank exclusively referred to me as "Pretty," which I was kind of into only because the Indian woman who threads my eyebrows on L street's name actually is Pretty, so it made me feel kind of exotic and talented in hair removal. Every time Frank walked by me, he would extend his long Mr. Burns-esque forefinger, bring it to the top of my head and rub it back and forth in what I called a "finger noogie" while asking "And how's Pretty doing today?" Pretty is pretty impressed at how such a small part of your body could make me feel so entirely molested, sir. And how are you?

But after Monday's Coffee Incident, he never gave me a finger noogie or called me Pretty again. This could actually be chalked up to a small win on my part, except that The Incident had some negative ramifications as well. Prior to the incident, Frank and I had a nice little unspoken agreement: I'd let him call my Pretty and occasionally grab my ass as long as he didn't tell my bosses that I was rarely on time and did as much work as a tranquilized lemur. I kind of liked this dynamic. It felt sort of delightfully retro and Mad Men-ish. But when I was 10 minutes late Tuesday morning, Frank 100% ratted me out to Boss #1. I was shocked. I had been a half an hour late before and he'd patiently wait outside for me but I'm ten minutes late after giving him one little botched cup of coffee and he sends out a press release?? I think not! You can kiss this mediocre ass goodbye, sir.

(By the way, I foresee receiving emails from you kind-hearted readers being like, "Oh silly Meg! You should have gone to HR the second anyone was inappropriate!" To that, I remind you that I work every day with a man called Russell the Homophobic Co-Worker. Political Correctness isn't exactly in this company's mission statement.)

- Matt Hill. Ugh. Jesus. Matt is the VP of Marketing and he makes me so ungodly uncomfortable I don't even know where to begin. Whenever Matt's in town, I always have iced-tea and cookies on hand because it feels like an episode of To Catch a Predator could go down at any given moment. I feel like Matt could be attractive, but he's got one of those wispy facial hair situations going on where you don't know if it's hair or dirt or a shadow of a broken dream and the only thing that you are sure of is that you're incredibly creeped out. Here's a perfect Mike story that happened at some point during the week (the days started to blend together after a while...) while I was sitting in on a meeting. I was sitting across from Mike during said meeting and towards the end, I could tell he was fiddling with something under the table. As the meeting adjourned, Mike pulled his hand out from under the table and tossed a screw from under the table at me and said (and I am in NO WAY making this up,) "There. Now I can say I've screwed you," before dramatically walking away.

Now, not only is this irritating because being sexually harassed in the workplace is always irritating, it's irritating because that screw served a purpose; namely, to hold the fucking table together. So now not only do I have to dedicate time from my busy schedule to emotionally heal from the trauma of that sentence, I also have to add "put screw back in conference table" to my agenda for the day. So thanks a lot for making my job harder, asshole.

- Young Kid. Shit if I know what his name was. I don't think we were ever formally introduced and I still don't know what his position in the company is. He's probably my age and not too horrible to look at. However, I lost interest in him completely after he came up to me and asked, "Do you know if there's an available bathroom nearby?" This question like, knocked my fucking socks off because it's the queerest way ask, "Where's the bathroom?" that I have ever heard of. Which is exactly what I told him. And I don't think he appreciated it. "Wait. Did you just ask where the bathroom was?" I asked after staring at him blankly for 20 seconds. "Um. Yeah..." he replied. "Oh. Wow. That was probably the weirdest way someone has ever asked me where the bathroom was in the history of ushering people to the bathroom. I'm almost impressed" "Oh," he deadpanned, "Well, Meghan. Where is the bathroom, then?" "......Pass the elevators and to the right." Honestly, there's a certain beauty in meeting someone, not liking them and having them not like you right back and then moving on. It's like reading the last page of a book first; it feels so wrong and yet cuts out some unnecessary effort.

- IT Guy. IT guy was my fucking JAM. I loved him. He was seriously the one person throughout the entire week who was nice to me and I'll never forget him for it. As his name implies, IT Guy is an IT Guy sent from Iowa to make sure things at the conference ran smoothly. I mean, what is there to say about IT Guy really? He's a portly gentleman, about 50-years-young who's ass broke two of our swivel chairs without a hint of remorse or embarrassment, which is the most hardcore thing I've seen in quite some time. Every morning we'd get coffee, sit at my desk and talk about macs vs. PCs and the details of his recent divorce, which I was more than up to. (So just to reiterate, when cornered by a fat person in IT who wanted to break chairs and talk about computer platforms and their divorce lawyer, I thought to myself, "Now this is a conversation that I can really sink my teeth into!" That's how dire times were.) IT Guy also warmed my heart when at a certain point he turned to me and asked, "So exactly how far away from The White House are we right now?" "Um, we are currently two blocks away," I answered. His little IT eyes widened and he said in the most heartfelt way, "Gosh. It just must be so cool to live somewhere so historic and important every single day of your life." I don't know dude. It touched me. And not in a Frank or Matt kind of way. I feel like everyone in this city (myself included) is busy being ironically detached and too cool or too connected and important to stop and be like, "Yeah. Shits kind of cool here." I literally opened my mouth to say "Meh, it gets old," realized what a giant schmuck I was about to sound like and instead said, "You know what? Yes. It is really, really cool, IT Guy." I felt good about myself until 2.2 hours later when I was back to thinking, "God, I hate this fucking city." But isn't that just the DC way?

[Ok. So that's as far as I made it last night. And I did get a snow day today! So, Becky, I will be coming over to your place to play with you and Cella shortly because if I have to hang out with myself for one more hour, I am going to go crazy.]

- Cris. Notice I'm spelling that as Cris and not Chris, as Cris was the only other female in the group. She's from the Midwest and was incredibly stuck up and demanding. I mean, I get that I was everyone's bitch for the week, but if you're going to send me out into the freezing cold at 7 o'clock in the morning to "fetch" name tags, it wouldn't kill you to say please. I thought people from the Midwest were supposed to be all nice and shit? At one point, Cris came up to me and asked if we could use a projector and move the conference to a smaller area of the studio that had better acoustics because someone in the group has a hearing problem. I set off to look for the projector and shortly discovered that Boss #1 was using it on a job site that day, so sucks to be you. I walked up to Cris, who was standing around with Young Kid, IT Guy and a few other random people and delivered this news. "BUT. BUT. BUT WE NEED THAT PROJECTOR." "Yeah. Well. Boss #1 has it so it looks like you'll have to stick with the conference room." "BUT WE NEED IT." "Tough titties ma'am. Let's all just speak slightly louder and move on." At this point IT Guy turned to me and said in a booming voice, "It's just that someone in the group has a hearing problem and it would make it easier for him if we could relocate." "SHHHHHH SHHH SHSH SHSH SH!!!!!" Cris hissed at IT Guy, "He's standing RIGHT behind us! That was so RUDE!" You could cut the tension with a knife. Everyone sort of stared at eachother awkwardly and I could tell that IT Guy was incredibly embarassed. It was clearly time for old Meg McBlogger to save the day:

"WELP! Good thing he's got a hearing problem. AM I RIGHT OR AM I RIGHT?!" I said.

Why I thought that I, of all people, could make an awkward situation less awkward is beyond me, but I maintain that that was an incredibly funny joke. Cris, however, did not agree with me. "That was innapropriate, Meghan" she said in her obnoxious little Midwestern accent. I awkwardly shifted my eyes around and then proceeded to literally slink away back to my desk. Like, if you look up "slink away" in the dictionary, you will see an illustration of me awkwardly walking backwards and not making eye contact with anyone and trying really, really hard to dissapear.

So that, in a nutshell, was my week. It sort of blew. And then I immediatly got sick. WAMP, WAMP. But! I can only interpret how incredibly shitty (pun inteded!) the beginning of this year has been to mean that the rest of my year is going to be recockulously awesome. Right? RIGHT??!?! Because you can't just get repeatedly kicked in the groin for 12 months in a row. Right? RIGHT??!?! Right. Good. Well I'm off to do laundry and seek out people who aren't myself. If you're in DC, you should totally bring me a non-perishable item because, frankly, I'm out of food and too lazy to ski my way to Trader Joe's. KTHNX!

Tulane Chris Does Death: Part 2

My heaven post is going to be the first in a series called “Tulane Chris Does Death.” I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently. I flew at the beginning of November, and my left ear never popped back after the plane, and it annoyed me enough that I did something completely out of character: I went to the doctor. I hate going to the doctor. Either they find something wrong and I’m sick, or they don’t and I’ve wasted an afternoon. I especially hate going to a new doctor because I have to give a family medical history, and my genetic heritage is unenviable. I’m lucky I grew bones.

“Any illnesses in your immediate family?”

“High blood pressure, kidney stones, Alzheimer’s, costochondritis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, diabetes, stroke, heart attack, migraine, manic depression, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, premature dementia, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, blindness, psychosis, irritable bowel syndrome… a lot of female stuff I probably don’t have to worry about… that’s probably it. Jury’s still out on lupus. Oh, and my mother’s allergic to every single domestic animal except cows.” (Author’s note: Yes, really.) We can see color and our blood clots, but otherwise we’re rapidly turning into one of those European royal families that got so overbred they started producing kings called “the Mad,” “the Simple,” “the Unready” and “the Bewitched.” I lucked out by only getting ADHD and costochondritis, which is a painful but not dangerous inflammation of the chest cartilage, so if I were king all the histories would start “Christopher the Inattentive rubbed his chest and winced.”

Anyway, I didn’t go to the doctor because my chest hurt and I couldn’t pay attention. I’m used to that. I went because of my damn ear. Instead of completely ignoring the rest of my body like I wanted her to, she started looking in things and measuring things, and apparently I have something called “high blood pressure.” I blame American politics; our immigrant neighbors have heard me shout at the newspaper so much that they think every single politician’s name is pronounced “Oh-God-that-jackass,” and that the two major political parties are the Shitheads and the Shitforbrains. I’m supposed to take some expensive medicines called “exercise” and “not eating so much salt.”

Fuck that noise. I didn’t tell the doctor this, but I don’t want to live a terribly long time. Eddie Murphy keeps making movies, and I just am going to get Alzheimer’s. That is a fact. I carry that gene. Men in my family check out on their seventy-ninth birthdays. On November 25, 2063, I will start making even less sense than I do now, so if you want help with a crossword puzzle ask me before then. Now, I could stop eating salt and watching Murder, She Wrote for exercise and have my body live to be ninety-six, or I could keep pouring butterscotch into my bourbon and have my body and mind quit on the same day. The doctor thinks I should stop doing things I like so I can spend my last decade in a facility where occupational therapists named Tillie try to remind me how to do the Hokey Pokey. I think she should fix my ear. Her warnings have made me think about my eventual end, though, so check this space for the next episode of “Tulane Chris Does Death.”

P.S. Grammar check wants me to change “Fuck that noise” to either “Fuck that noises” or “Fuck those noise.”