That’s Why It’s Called Work

So, I got a day job, and I have a bad attitude about it. The ultra-abbreviated version is that between when I interviewed and when I started, Giant Camel got fired over some bullshit. (He worked at the same place.) Aside from my natural partisanship, the whole situation was objectively bullshit, so by the time I started at – let’s call it CompuCom – I was already tired of it. I was genuinely going to try to be thankful and have a good attitude, because I’d needed a job for a while and because so many other people need work, but – fuck it.

I hit my first personal hurdle before I even technically started. There were four of us in the orientation group, and wouldn’t you know it? We got The Office Conversation Guy. You know that guy who insists on having a conversation during lag time instead of letting everyone sit quietly with their own thoughts? He’s sitting there just going on about operating systems, and how no one makes palm pilots anymore, and he has two monitors on his home computer, and “the cloud,” and data encryption… I can’t add to any of this, but since I’m in the room, I’m In The Conversation, and for some reason it’s rude to say “I’d rather dread orientation in silence, please.” Then the office manager comes in and – lo and behold! – Office Conversation Guy reveals his other personality, Office Humor Guy. You know that person you work with who constantly makes “jokes” using one of the four work punchlines: “Is it Friday yet?” “That’s above my pay grade!” “Coffee break!” or, sarcastically, “I love work!”? Him. So not only are we filling out paperwork about how CompuCom owes us nothing, but if we invent something, they own it, and don’t nickname your coworkers things like “Tits” or “Towelhead Dennis,” we have to have it narrated by this guy whose sense of humor is the result of Cathy getting knocked up by Dilbert and then drinking during the pregnancy.

Of course, my name was wrong on the paperwork: “Oh, we have you down as Chris Turner, is that fine?”

No, it’s not fine. My full name is right there on all the paperwork I filled out. Do you just quit typing in the middle of other words because you feel like it, as in “Fou sco a seve year ag, ou forefat…” Can I call you “Mary Smith” because it’s simpler? People never realize that – just maybe – my full, hyphenated name is, I don’t know, on my Social Security card, birth certificate, and bank account and maybe it would be nice to, I don’t know, have my actual name on my paycheck? After trying to make this point politely, I was treated to a short holier-than-thou lecture about how someone else in the office has an apostrophe in her name and she just omits it because it makes everything easier. Had I not needed the job, I would have shouted “I’ll omit you!”

Do you think that being given three PowerPoint lectures to read on your own counts as training? Me neither.

About this time, I started thinking, “Wow, I need a new spirit animal for this job. Someone who scowls. Someone who doesn’t take bullshit.”

Ladies and gentlemen, my spirit animal for the duration of this temp job… Dawn Davenport, central character of John Waters’ film Female Trouble.

Dawn Davenport knocks down the Christmas tree when she doesn’t get what she wants. Dawn Davenport eats meatball sandwiches in class. Dawn Davenport screams obscenities because it makes her feel strong. Dawn Davenport will cut you.

 Something about the stance – the fat-and-angry posture of her – really speaks to how I feel about things right now, probably because I’m fat and angry.

So now, whenever I’m annoyed at work, I ask myself, “What would Dawn Davenport do?” So far, what I’ve decided Dawn Davenport would do has included:

-       Taking extra pastries every time they appear in the break room

-       Going ahead and gnawing on the bone of the pork chop I brought for lunch, because who the fuck am I trying to impress, whereas an animal died so I could eat that meat

-       Smoking clove cigarettes right by the door

-       Not washing my hands after I pee, so everyone I touch is, in some small way, touching my penis

-       Refusing to make small talk with a coworker who wanted to talk about his pirated DVDs (let me tell you, you feel differently about intellectual property once you have some)

-       Refusing to pretend to be sympathetic when the above coworker was laid off

-       Refusing to give a flying fuck about long-term corporate goals

-       And I ALMOST talked myself into licking the office doorknob of someone I don’t like when I had a cold, but I was afraid I’d be seen

So, of course, my plan has succeeded too well, since now I really like work because I spend all day imagining that Divine is sitting next to me, keeping up an extremely foul-mouthed commentary about my workday.

Which brings me to my appeal. If any of you readers still know how to make this little woven string “WWJD” bracelets, I will pay you a modest sum to make one that says “WWDDD?”* I’ll wear it next time I don’t give a fuck.

*I’m totally serious. I really want one.

Help control the pet population. Have your white trash spayed or neutered.

[Quick note from Meg: Not to break the fourth-wall or anything, but I'd like to share with you the email Tulane Chris sent me with his post for today:

I almost asked you to see if you thought this post was too coarse, and then I read your post about suicide and asking readers for recreational drugs.

HAH! It's funny because it's true. Ok, sorry, I'm done now. Back to Chris!]

Being friends with Meg is stressful because she’s so funny. Having an attractive friend sucks, but at least you can claim to fall back on your personality. Meg has a much better personality than I do, so I have to fall back on my SAT scores. (Those of you who were at the bar meet-up will remember me as the person behind Meg to the left, wearing a sandwich board that read “750 Verbal, 720 Math.”) I was reading Meg’s archives at work the other day – because Thursday is “File Your Own Damn Paperwork Day” – and I found her post about having to clean up blood with post-its at work. The wackiest thing that ever happened to me at my current job was when one of my co-workers gave me a Xeroxed Reader’s Digest vocabulary quiz and I got a perfect score, and so I put it on the fridge and everyone thought I was an asshole. (They were right, but they based it on the wrong evidence.)

She’s not even a bitch about it. If she were, I could just hate her in the face and be done with it, but she’s all gracious and says things like, “Oh, thank you for saying I’m funny. You’re funny too, and I mean that” and then makes a joke about a Llama Adoption Robot that kills the room. Sharing friends with her is like being her parasitic twin. She gets to be the funny one, and I get to be the one Bawbawa Wawtews says is “so brave to keep going on with his one kidney and control only over a vestigial flipper.”

So now I share a blog with her, and it’s a whole new level of crisis. Meg has a more interesting life AND tells stories better than I do, so here I sit trying to even FIND a sow’s ear to try to make into a silk purse. I got lucky last week because EVERYONE apparently has some emotion or other about widescreen movies, and so if I haven’t touched hearts, I’ve at least touched nerves.

So, things around the apartment I could

—BREAKING NEWS—

I heard a fight out in the street just now, so we’ll be talking about white trash. You know how some parents have weird hobbies like model trains or swinging? My mother’s was hanging out with white trash. To wit:

When I was about eight, my mother once took an about-to-be-homeless woman in “for a few days” for eight months. “Bev” had an unusual relationship with the Lord. The Lord had gotten her a job as a topless waitress once (“I was pregnant and even breastfed, and I’m 41, but look!” she said as she whipped up her T-shirt. “Still firm!”) and they continued a lively correspondence. Regularly, Bev would go onto the front porch and have a cigarette while staring into space, and then come in and say “I was out having a smoke and talking to God, and do you know what he said?” Invariably, he told her to go ahead and do what she had already decided to do. Bev was an “artist” and custom-painted two and a half cement Virgins for our house. I say “and a half” because she never finished the one she made for me. An attempt to paint over a red dress with yellow had left her with a bloody-looking dress, and an ill-timed distraction while Bev was painting the face left her with a twisted, angry, stroke-victim mouth. This statue stayed in my room for five years, which I think gives me a good all-purpose excuse. Did Mom consider using one of these statues to make a “shrine for travelers” in our front yard? Is the sky blue?

“Hattie” had been raised on Guam by Satanists. She taught water aerobics, which is how she met Mom. Both of her children had spent time in the state mental hospital, and who had to go on play dates with them? Now, I was a really, really weird kid and at any given time had, at best, one friend, so I was fairly lonely, but even I straight-up could not stand these kids. After a few forced playdates and one nightmarish sleepover (“No, pants on, I think. Thanks, though”) they started just showing up at our house all the time. By now Mom had changed her mind and thought they were going to do a school shooting and wanted them to have a COMPLETELY NEUTRAL attitude toward me, so she’d go out and give them weird excuses about why I couldn’t play. Last I heard, one had gone into a home, and the other after MICROWAVING A CAT (who lived, thankfully, since it’s the only sympathetic character in this whole post) went into the Army. This scares me more than a thousand thousand Russian soldiers, probably because “A Thousand Thousand Russian Soldiers” sounds like a low-budget porno. The United Nations needs to close its hole about the damn climate and outlaw lunatics as weapons.

“Vance” sold reptiles, so of course Mom got on him like a hen on a junebug. He sold her a Bearded Dragon (doesn’t that sound like a middle school sex joke, like Cleveland Steamer?) and she’d go out there every so often to buy mealworms or, on one memorable occasion, biker do-rags with a sewn-in change pocket. She bought herself one with skulls on it and called herself “Big Momma Bones,” and wore it to a poetry slam (yes.) She gave me one with dice on it, which, full disclosure, I may or may not have worn to the same poetry slam. Anyway, years later, she ran into that guy again and went out to his house, and someone put meth in her Diet Coke without her looking and she was up for three days. Yes.

“Doris” thought her husband was trying to kill her by leaving rakes in the yard. She divorced him and moved to the country, and for fun she’d get drunk on wine coolers, put on a ballgown and dance around the house. She and Mom were planning to leave on a road trip to the mountains once, and Doris showed up in an evening dress. She had a mail-order degree from Antigua or somewhere, and we’re 90% sure she had sex with her cousin.

Technically, “Ross” wasn’t white trash, but he was a stray Mom picked up. He had been in the Peace Corps in Bingo-Bango-Bongo or somewhere until he had a malaria-provoked nervous breakdown. He lived with us for about six months. This was mostly weird because he was my teacher at the time. If you think you were weird in school, be the Kid Who Lives with the Awkward Teacher. The kid with the glass eye was way, way cooler than me. He also grew up to better looking, but I can gauge distance, so I feel like it’s a draw.

“Gwen,” Bev’s sister-in-law, married a man who thought he was a prophet. “Angelica” “Bernice”I Dream of Jeannie.) “Lana” had very widely spaced teeth that were a) brown and b) not remotely of a uniform length. “Royce” and “Deeann” lived with us one Christmas when it froze and then left with the VCR.

So, again, I’m at the end of a post with no clear closing. I guess the moral is “My Mom Can Probably Out-Weird Meg’s Mom.” I thought the slumming gene had skipped a generation since I’m an elitist loner, and then I got a call from my best friend from high school. She’s marrying an inmate live on the radio next month.

YOUR MOM IS SORR ABOUT THE BAG

$1,699. How many make out sessions is that?

Ok, so I'm having some money issues. I'm having a fiscal moment, if you will. The extreme delay of yesterday's post proved that I really need to man-up and find a way to get myself a new laptop. I can't operate to the best of my ability on this abacus, bless it's pre-Colonial heart. A few kind souls have suggested that I get a PayPal account and put up a donate button on the blog, but I just genuinely don't feel comfortable doing that. Let's not pretend I don't communicate with you people all day and know you like the back of my hand; you're just as broke as I am, if not more. I don't want your money. I just want your votes. That's right, I need you to vote 2birds1blog for another competition. IT'S IRRITATING AND SELF-SERVING, I KNOW! But follow my logic:

2b1b gets featured on a "Best Of" list or wins a competition —> more readers and more publicity —> odds increase that the blog will land in the lap of someone who can pay me —> money —> purchase new laptop/able to pay Comcast bill/buy Adobe Creative Suite/buy podcasting tools —> more blog posts, website upgrade, weekly podcast (2birds1podcast WILL happen this year, god damnit. It has to. Creating it was my New Year's Resolution. Oh shit, am I not supposed to say what my New Year's Resolution was? Are resolutions like birthday wishes? Did I just ruin everything? Damnit...) = YOU ARE A HAPPY LITTLE CAMPER ENTERTAINED IN YOUR CUBICLE ALL DAY! So really, your happiness is my end game here. I'm just thinking of you, baby.

So if you could be a lamb and go here (Washingtonian magazine's Best of Washington 2010), scroll down to the bottom and fill in 2birds1blog for #52: Best Blogger, I would appreciate it immensely. I swear it'll take two shakes and you'll be automatically entered to win tickets to the Best Of party and dinner for two at one of Washingtonian's 100 Very Best Restaurants. Which is actually pretty cool. It's like Washingtonian bribed you for me! That was awfully nice of them. I'll still go into the woods tomorrow and ask the Jäger Deer if we can do another giveaway Friday though. Just in case dinner and a cocktail party is too classy to get you to vote; Jäger and I got you covered.

Oh! And speaking of me and Jäger and my money woes! You know what is incredibly irritating? I got a copy of my letter of termination in the mail the other week (after I left it on my desk while trying not to pee my pants the day I got fired) and one of the official reasons I got fired was: "Working for other companies while employed by us including Jager."


That fucking gets my goat for so many reasons. Reasons that I will share with you now:

1.) That is the most bullshit reason to fire someone I have ever heard in my entire life. I mean, the entire firing was kind of bullshit, of course, but that specifically is the most bullshittiest reason of them all. I wasn't allowed to work for another company while working for them? Oh, REALLY? I don't remember signing anything. I call shenanigans. Also, do you know how many people in this world have second jobs? A shit ton. You can't fire someone for having a second job. And if you want someone to just work for you, you need to pay them more than 32 cotton swabs a year with no benefits, for Christ's sake.

2.) I never had a second job! I worked for them and only them. Granted, I didn't work very hard, but that's not what's being argued here. That was argued about two lines down.

3.) It's Jäger, not Jager. If you're going to take the time to draft an adorable little professional-looking letter of termination, at least take the time to find the umlaut. It just shows that you give a fuck. And I assume they do give a fuck or else they wouldn't have slaughtered an entire forest printing out the blog to slam on my desk for dramatic effect, fired me or threatened legal action in the first place. Insert —> Symbol —> ä. God, I even have to show them how to fire me correctly. That office must be a mess without me.

4.) Most importantly: I DON'T WORK FOR JÄGER! That's the entire fucking problem! I have worked my ass off trying to show Jäger what an asset our community would be to them and I haven't seen a single penny as a result of it. So the fact that I got fired for being on their payroll makes me want to fill a swimming pool with the resulting irony and drown myself in it. Now, I realize I could possibly solve my fiscal problems by suing them for wrongful termination, but alas—I'm not white trash and my answer to everything isn't to sue everyone. In the immortal words of Destiny's Child: "My momma taught me better than that."

So. I already work and write. I can't do freelance design because I don't have the necessary design programs on my abacus. There has to be an additional way to get $1,699 fast. Here are my ideas thus far:

- Hooking. OK, HEAR ME OUT! Blow jobs? Hand jobs? Ugh, no thank you. I barely do that for love, nevertheless money. I'd consider having sex for money. At least with sex I get something in return. But sex for money with strangers? 'Eh...it's a bit much. I'd totally make out with someone for money and maybe have sex with them if they're attractive and we get along. I'm pretty sure that's just called "hooking up with someone," but either way, I'm into it. You could just take the money you'd spend buying me drinks and hand it directly over to me in cold hard cash. And shit—if there's a connection between us, there's always the chance I might blow you! A black man is President; anything's possible! So what I'm trying to say is, option #1: become a make out hooker.

- Before you suggest it, stripping is out. I can barely do 30 minutes on the elliptical, I'm not physically grinding a pole all night for all the tea in China.

- Also selling my eggs is out. I looked into it. You have to do five months of daily hormone injection shots first. Uh, no thanks. Sometimes when I'm at my parents house, I'll stick one of my mom's disposable insulin pen needles in my arm to get attention and I seriously have to psych myself up for like a solid five minutes first to do it. Then once I do it my mom's never impressed because she has to do it in her stomach, so I try to stick it in my stomach and puss out every single time and then get yelled at for wasting another needle without even injecting myself with it. Oh well. At least I get the maternal attention I so desperately crave. (This isn't an adorable Meglet story, by the way. The last time I did this was in February. Yeah, I'm 25. What of it?)

- Sell my plasma. You can get $36 a trip for selling plasma x the twice a week donation cap = $72 a week x 4 weeks = $288 a month; $1,699 ÷ $288 = 5.8 months. Psh, that's actually not that good. Plus I'd have to pass a drug test which is just laughable. Sigh. I just really wish I had sperm. I'd hit up every single fertility clinic on the eastern seaboard and jizz my way to MacBook Pro victory. But plasma's a start, I guess.

- This next idea is Helena's and I think it's fucking genius: Stay at Helena's house or, ideally, house sit for someone loaded and rent out my apartment. I'm not going to lie to you, my studio is fucking sweet and I'll pimp her out to the highest bidder. I mean, hi, I was at the Cherry Blossom Festival last Friday; this town is fucking packed to it's Dockers wearing balls with tourists this time of year. Why stay at a cold, informal hotel when you can stay in someone's sweet and incredibly well decorated (if I may say so myself. My friend Jenna also once described it as a "museum of cool." HER WORDS, NOT MINE.) studio?? We're talkin' luxury bathroom, full kitchen, a bed nicknamed "Operation Max Comfort" because I have designed it specifically to be the most comfortable place on the fucking planet, fully stocked bar AND refrigerated Jäger machine, cable, DVD player, wi-fi, rooftop pool with amazing view, security and most importantly, located AN single block away from Dupont Circle and the metro. I mean, please. I don't think I'm asking for a lot when I say I want $150/night. Splitting it between four people to make it cheaper? I don't give a shit as long as I get my money. Put two in the bed, one on the couch and bring an air mattress. There, I just solved that for you. And you're welcome. (As are tips.)

The only problem with this, of course, is the moral and ethical questions it raises as this is technically my sister's apartment. Technically, meaning that she out-right owns it. 100%. But Becca knows what a wile, shifty little character I am, right? She finds it charming! Right?...RIGHT?!

- Get a development deal for my own reality show. I'm actually not sure if having your own reality show pays monetarily, but it certainly pays in product placement. People throw free shit at those reality ho-bags all the time hoping it'll show up on TV and I will gladly use anything Apple throws my way. Perhaps a new 15" MacBook Pro? Oh, hey thanks! Just what I needed! Getting a reality show can't be that hard, right? It seems like everybody has their own reality show these days. (Side note: remember when Nick Hogan was shopping around a reality show about getting out of prison and he wanted to call it Real Ality? That never fails to make me laugh-out-loud every single time I think about it. It's like Old Faithful.) Plus, nobody can seem to make a reality show about living in DC that doesn't either get canceled before it even airs (Blonde Charity Mafia—R.I.P.) or make people want to stick freshly sharpened pencils directly into their eyeballs. (Real World DC. You tried. You tried real hard.) I've got this, right?

Although Helena raised the good point of what would they show when I watch TV all day? My idea:


- Find an eccentric millionaire to fund my blog, buy me all of my technological needs and in turn become the Patron Saint of 2birds1blog. I'm over finding corporate sponsorship. OVER IT, I say. Corporations aren't hip to the fact that blogs are a good investment and nuts to them for it. Thus, I just need to find a good-old fashioned patron of the arts to keep us afloat. A patron of the boner-joke arts, true, but that's an art. Right?

Oh my god I'm so fucking screwed. This is never going to happen, is it? But like, ever. Like in the greater scheme of things. I'm so depressed. I'll be passing out fliers about my make out services in the greater Dupont/K Street area if you need me.

Tips for assimilating back into society

UGHHHHHHHHHHHH AND AN INCONVENIENCED SIGH. Welp. Here I am. Back in this dump show of an office after seven glorious days of being curled up in my bed with nary a worry or pair of pants in sight for miles. I knew the dream couldn't last forever, but that doesn't mean I'm not bitter about it.

HOWEVER! I have three items of good news:

1.) It's T.G.I. Hagman. And how bad can life really be when it's T.G.I.-fuckin'-Hagman, am I right or am I right??



As of 1:16pm on Friday, February 12, 2010, Larry Hagman is...............alive! God is good all of the time, and all of the time, God is good.

2.) I got the following email the other day from 2b reader Aline:

Hi Meg,
I was reading gawker, and it said something about omegle.com. I'm not usually up for chatting with strangers, but I was bored, and 'tis the snowpocalypse (read: there is nothing better to do), so why not?

Anyway, the first person signed in, said "I'm sad" and left.

The second person, signed in and only said "2birds1blog.com. Read it." and then they left (Convo log below). I think that you should get all of your readers to do that. Hi-Larious. Well that's it. I'm headed out into the snow to go to CVS :( Hope you get to feeling better!

Cheers,
Aline

___

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: hi

You: hi!

Stranger: 2birds1blog.com. Read it.

You: Really? I already do-isn't it funny?

Your conversational partner has disconnected.

I. LOVE. IT. Mostly because that stranger wasn't me and it makes me excited when people besides myself pimp out the blog like a small Mexican boy with chicle on the 'nets. So to whoever is going on ohmegle.com to promote the blog, I have a gift for you. And that gift is in my pants and rhymes with "schot schmex."

3.) According to an unconfirmed rumor circulating via Laura, Luke and The Tranny from More to Love BROKE UP!!!!!1 Initially I was heart-broken when I heard this because if two people could ever make it in this crazy, mixed-up world, it was them. BUT! This does open the door for a More to Love 2. And you know I'm crossing my fingers that it's called, More to Love 2: Back for Seconds.

So there. Life is good. And as bitter as I am that I have to be back in this shanty town, I am slightly psyched to not be holed up in my apartment anymore. Cabin Fever was starting to set in big time and things were getting..."unique." But slowly, DC is digging itself out it's snow coffin and getting back to real life (until next week's Snowpocalypse, that is.) I thought instead of giving you a drinking game this week, I'd be helpful and share with all of you cracked-out snowy Washingtonians a few tips I've found helpful for assimilating back into society. Enjoy.

5 Tips For Assimilating Back Into Society After The Snowpocalypse

1.) Listening in on other people's conversions is not appropriate because they are not on TV.
Surprising! I know. Halfway through dinner at James Hoban's the other night, Helena realized she had zoned out and was awkwardly staring at the people sitting next to us and blatantly listening to their conversation. Apparently in a post-Snowpocalypto society, this is not "appropriate," as other people do not exist solely for our own entertainment. Don't worry, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it too, but together we can get through this.

2.) A two year old box of Zattaran's Dirty Rice, a bag of confectioner's sugar and a Black and Mild does not a meal make.
Nothing makes you think outside of the culinary box like being confined to the contents of your own dusty kitchen for days on end. I never have food in my apartment to begin with, so this past week has been particularly interesting for me. One time Anna unexpectedly crashed at my place for a weekend in college and she compared the experience to living in Communist Russia. While I was working on a paper one night, she started to complain that she was starving. I promised we'd order food as soon as I was done, but hours later when I was still writing and she was still starving, she ventured into my kitchen to see what she could find. Five minutes later, she returned and put the following on my desk: a box of Goldfish crackers, a jar of cloves and AN single Busch Light. "This is literally all you have in your kitchen," she said weakly. With a shaking little hand, she slowly put the jar of cloves on top of the box of Goldfish, cracked open the Busch Light, pointed to it and asked, ".....Cook it for me?" Shortly after, I gave in and we ordered out.

In the past week, I have consumed every single Goldfish cracker and every random Holiday spice hidden in my kitchen. I ate vintage pizza from 1994. I drank a bottle of Manischewitz wine I found behind a bunch of DVD's, covered in an inch of dust. I don't remember what "vegetables" taste like.

I'm genuinely nervous about the weight I'm going to gain this weekend because I don't know how to handle all of the food options that are now open to me. I hoofed it to Baja Fresh yesterday, patiently waited in line and proceeded to ask them to take the contents of their kitchen, put it in one of those sour cream gun dispensers and inject it directly into my stomach. Just because the option was open to me. And they did. And it was wonderful.

3.) Chugging from a half-empty bottle of Captain Morgan's at 11am while wearing loose fitting clothing is called being homeless.
If this were Snowpocalypse: you'd be drunk by now.

4.) Your life is not a Bravo reality TV show, so stop narrating it to the wall when you're on the john.
Something tells me this might only be applicable to me...so I will move on.

5.) Jokes that were funny when stuck in your house and incredibly cracked out might not translate to the real world.
My prime example of this is Seanvote.

Over the course of Snowpocalypse, I played a lot of Words With Friends (iphone Srabble app. Username: Meg4lYfe. No big deal.) with Helena's boyfriend, Jonathan. At one point, he was absolutely destroying me. Like, embarrassingly so. I needed to pull out a big gun, but the letters were not on my side. Round after round, I played words like "AN," 'HI" and "AT" while thinking, "If only SEANVOTE were a real word, I could turn this fucking game around right here and right now!" Helena then pointed out that that's the benefit of real scrabble: if you're convincing enough, any word can be a real word. Thus, we set out to make Seanvote "happen." We decided Seanvote is a substitute for the word "shit" and can have both positive and negative connotations. For example, "Dude, that band is the fucking seanvote." Or, "Fuck that guy. He's just a worthless pile of seanvote." Or, "Oh man, pull over, I gotta take the biggest seanvote."

Believe it or not, this was incredibly funny to us at the time. So much so that when we met up with Jenna and Laura for drinks last night, we shamelessly continued to substitute it for the word "shit" until it caught on. And I don't know if it was because Jenna and Laura were just as cracked out as we were or if it was because there was alcohol involved, but it totally did:


So, really, I amend this tip to: Jokes that were funny when stuck in your house and cracked out might not translate to the real world. Unless it's the word SEANVOTE. In which case you should totally spread it around like wild fire.

Welp, that's gonna do it for us here this week! WAIT, NEVER MIND. I just checked my email and got this amazing Winter Olympics Drinking Game from 2b reader Veronica, written by her friend Chelsea. And frankly, it's too good not to share. So I bid you adieu and leave you with Chelsea's Winter Olympics Drinking Game! As always, thank you so much for reading and spreading the 2b1b word. Hope you don't have a seanvotty weekend (bahaha...see what I did there?!) and we'll see you back here Monday morning when hopefully I'm less cracked out, have done something more blog-worthy than napped pantsless and have regained my sense of humor. Buh-bye!


Rules:
- Drink when a figure skater is shown
- Drink twice if it's Johnny Weir
- Finish your drink if he's referred to as "controversial"
- Finish your drink whenever someone triumphs over adversity
- Drink when "the native people" perform a traditional dance
- Drink when someone mentions the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team
- Drink twice if a member of the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team is shown
- Drink when you see a mountie
- Drink when someone says "aboot"
- Drink when someone mentions the Jamaican Bobsled Team
- Finish your drink if the Jamaican Bobsled Team is there
- Finish your drink when the country you are representing enters the arena
- Drink when someone says "curling"
- Drink when someone says "luge"
- Drink when someone is referred to as a "gold medal favorite"
- Drink whenever someone says, "I'm just happy to be here"
- Do a shot if someone is "not expected to place well but just here for the experience,"(see above re: Jamaican Bobsled Team)
- Do a shot when the US Team enters the arena
- Do a shot when the torch is lit

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!

This Week, Part 1: Hi. I am not a morning person.

[A note from Co-Blogger Chris: I just wanted to thank everyone who was encouraging/proud/excited/helpful in response to my post yesterday. I didn't really intend for you all to actually help me find a job, of course you all stepped up to the proverbial plate and offered your assistance. Because you're amazing. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. If things get super bleak, I will literally show up at your door begging for work (or a free sandwich). In the meantime, please just sit back and enjoy our blog. You do enough by just being you. Thanks again!]

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Well, well, well...if it isn't my old friend—The Business Conference. How are you, Business Conference? BESIDES HORRIBLE AND SOUL-SUCKING. As you may have been able to tell from my emo tweets and lack of posting this week, I've been busy with a customer service conference. All week. I wasn't really dreading this week's conference as much as July's sales conference though, as it's being held in our studio and I don't have to travel anywhere. How bad could it be, right? Wrong. This has been just as painful as Baby's First Business Trip. True I get to come home and sleep in my own bed at the end of the night, far away from the menstrual cramps and midnight bikinix waxing sessions waiting for me in a hotel room with Boss #1, but hosting the conference in our space means just that; we have to host the conference. And what I didn't realize until Monday morning was that we means me. Me. Meghan McBlogger. The same girl who shakily puts a letter opener to her own throat at the thought of having to update the mailing list. A task done sitting down. Do you know how time consuming hosting a conference is? Very. There's your answer. First let's talk about the act of "hosting a conference." Because planning/executing a conference and "hosting" a conference are two very different things. Last week I planned the conference. Which was fine. It was a concept I could wrap my head around. I made hotel reservations, ordered catering, emailed and answered a lot of questions; basically I was useful. It was kind of a nice change of pace. Then there was the actual setting up of the conference, which thankfully went off without a hitch. But then I had to host the conference every day this week. What does that job entail? It entails stepping into a time machine, going back to 1962 and being the personal bitch-slave for 25 disguising, lecherous, old men for a week. And what was that like? Well, here's a little action shot I took with my iphone:


IT WAS HELL! Hell on earth! (Hell on earth. Kell on Earth. I don't remember TV before it. What? Goulet.) First and foremost, I have to be in the office at 6:30 every morning this week. Let me repeat that: six thirty in the god-damned morning. Be there at. To say "I'm not a morning person" is such a gross understatement that it's almost laughable. Doing anything before noon is a challenge for me. And I am in no way just saying that for effect. During summer break from college, my friends from home and I would meet up at our local diner for breakfast every Saturday morning at 10am. To make this happen, not only would I have to set a series of alarms to wake myself up from my disturbingly deep slumber, my friends would have to take turns deciding who would be the one to repeatedly call my cell phone to get me out of bed and then call my house phone and ask my parents to physically remove me from bed when I inevitably stopped answering their calls and/or turned off my phone so I could go back to sleep. Again, that was to go eat an omelet in my pajamas five minutes away from my bed at the completely reasonable hour of 10 o'clock in the morning. And I had to be at work this week at 6:30am. SHIT. BE. LOLZ.

This got me thinking about how it was genuinely a miracle that I even graduated high school at all. Because what time did that shit start? Like 6:40am? The fuck was that about? Like high school wasn't hard enough, it had to start at the witching hour to ensure extra uncomfortableness. First period was always notoriously rough for me. I got through four years worth of first periods like I get through everything else in life: just barely. I'd worked my schedule like a rubix cube to try and figure out what combination of classes I needed to take to make sure I had some bullshit class first period I could zone out in, like gym. Unfortunately that didn't always work out. One year I had Spanish first period but, thankfully my teacher was strangely susceptible to the old Meg McBlogger awkward charm. I don't know why Ms. Cuadrado liked me so much; lord knows I didn't speak a word of Spanish, but every morning I'd wake up late, leisurely get ready, watch The Today Show, enjoy a cup of coffee, read the paper, catch a ride with my dad whenever he happened to be ready (don't rush!) and breeze into class ten minutes before it was dismissed. I'm not kidding; I didn't learn a fucking thing in that class because I genuinely wasn't there for three-quarters of it. But all I had to do was bust out a little charm at the door and old Ms. Cuadrero would let me off the hook. I took this class with Jen and it drove her insane. Rightfully so, of course. Jen would get to class maybe five minutes late and Ms. Cuadrero showed her no mercy. I, however, would stroll in 40 minutes late wearing a t-shirt that said "I'M HERE" on the front and "YOU'RE WELCOME" on the back, Ms. Cuadrero would say, "AYE YAY AYE! LOOK AT THE TIME MEG-HAAAN!" and I'd say "The time, Ms. Cuadrero? Don't you mean the...tiempo? A-HAHAHAHA!" and she'd be like "Oh...YOU!!!", wag her finger at me and that would be the end of it. Meanwhile, if memory serves correctly, Jen got automatically bumped down a letter grade for being late more than five times throughout the course of the entire semester. It was one of those situations where I knew it wasn't fair and I knew I was benefiting from it and my best friend wasn't...but I was in no way willing do something to change it because the alternative was too grim. I'm sorry Jen. It was high school: every lazy girl for herself. Of all people, I know you understand.

More so than anyone, Talia really bore the brunt of my morning abuse. (Yeah. I don't know why I have any friends either.) Talia is the epitome of a morning person. By the time I'd drag myself out of bed and keel over onto my desk like a corpse, Talia had already gone for a run, taken a shower, watched a solid hour of TV, had a heart-to-heart with her mom, did the grocery shopping for the week, saved a Somalian orphan, performed open heart surgery and starred in a one-man off-off-Broadway hip-hop production of Titus Andronicus met with mixed reviews and ultimately judged as "too ahead of it's time." And I resented the hell out of her for this. She was everything I wasn't (awake) and everything I wanted to be (not part house cat.)

Talia and I had first period together twice and the results were disastrous. First we had pre-Calc together, a class I would show up on time to, but then proceed to completely zone out in and not listening to a damn thing our teacher said in for 40 minutes straight. Then the night before a unit exam, Talia would come over to "study" and I'd be all, "So...what did we learn this unit, buddy?!" and she'd teach me everything we learned in the past three weeks while I was sleeping with my eyes open. When we got our tests back, I'd hold up my A+ and give her a thumbs up and she'd look down at her B- start to sharpen her pencil into a stabbing mechanism. Teresa was the real badass in that class though. She'd roll up sunglasses still on, Redbull in hand right literally seconds before the bell rang and Mrs. Linthicum would be all, "Teresa! Where have you been??" and she'd be like, "NO DICE. Can't make it to your class; so don't ask." I was like, WOW, SHE'S LIKE THE JAMES DEAN OF MORNING HATERS! AND SHE'S SO DREAMY!!!1

I think I feel the worst about how I treated Talia when we took Ancient and Medieval History first period together. Before judging my actions, keep in mind this was second semester of senior year, a time in my life where a.) I was about to graduate and who gives a flying fuck anymore? and b.) I had just worked my entire high school career to get into NYU, only to be rejected due to an administrative error. The wounds were still fresh and I wasn't exactly "all there." I had to be on time to Ancient and Medieval History; there was no way around it. Not only did I actually respect the teacher, I had her later in the day again for AP Psych and her husband for Philosophy; two classes I couldn't exactly fuck up and charm my way out of. Every morning I'd painfully drag myself into class feeling like death warmed over only to find Talia already sitting at her desk (Lord knows she'd already been there for hours repainting the classroom with a toothbrush...) all bright-eyed and bushy tailed. This greatly offended me. I know she's my best friend, and I realize this sounds horrible, but I would just slump into my seat and glare at her with burning hatred in my bleary eyes as she'd talk a mile a minute and jump around her seat like she had just chugged four liters of Mountain Dew. "Hey Mayyyyyggles!" she'd chirp merrily as she grabbed my forearm in excitement. "SERIOUSLY TALIA, DON'T EVEN TOUCH ME RIGHT NOW," I'd growl back (eyes black, foaming at the mouth,) "YOUR HANDS ARE COVERED IN PANCAKE BATTER AND YOU SMELL LIKE SIMPLE SYRUP." "Oh...sorry, Meg. I just thought—" "I SAID DON'T TOUCH ME." I don't know why I did this. She's Talia. She'd been my best friend since seventh grade. She went on my family vacations. Sadly, at that ungodly hour her positive demeanor irritated the hell me and the fact that she had had breakfast and I hadn't might as well have made her Pol Pot in my eyes. Every morning she'd have to endure roughly 20 minutes of me manically ranting and raving about what various breakfast pastries were supposedly all over her hands and how she wasn't allowed to look at or touch me before I'd slowly wake up and return to my civilized self.

Somewhere into the semester, Talia figured out that if she gave me apple slices (mother nature's natural coffee,) it expedited this process and made both of our mornings considerably more tolerable. Our morning routine then became the following: I'd pout my way into class and unhappily plop down into my chair and without saying a word, Talia would reach into her bag, pull out a ziplock baggy of sliced apples and gingerly place them on my desk. Then, like a small child, I would num-num my apple slices in silence until the last one was gone, and we could finally begin a normal conversation like two normal human beings.

One of the more depressing moments of my life was the morning of my first college class—a 9:55am eastern religion class. As I sleepily sat at my desk waiting for class to start, I looked around the room full of strangers and it struck me that not only did nobody in this class have a ziplock baggy of apple slices for me, I might not ever meet anybody else willing to deal with my batshit crazy neuroses like Talia again. A knot formed in my stomach and my eyes welled up with tears. The second I got back to my dorm room I frantically IM'ed Talia all "I HAD A MORNING CLASS AND NOBODY HAD APPLE SLICES FOR ME AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!!!!1" Then, of course, Ex Co-Blogger Eddie knocked on my door all "Y'ALL TRYIN' TO HAUL OUR COMFORTERS INTO THE LOUNGE TO WATCH MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000?!?!!??!!?" and I knew that yes Virginia, there are people just as weird as you at college. But it's a lonely feeling to be surrounded by irritating morning people who don't tolerate or try to work with your anti-morning curmudgeonry. That's what I've felt like every morning this week at work. It's been cold, lonely, tiring and full of sexual harassment; the recap of which will come tomorrow. Right now I'm still in the thick of it. But if you'd like to bring me a baggy of sliced apples, I wouldn't refuse 'em.

The Resume Code

[Editor's note: Hi there. FYI: my Customer Relations Conference ends tomorrow and I'll be back a-bloggin' then, I swearz. In the mean time, thank you so much to Co-Blogger Chris for picking up my slack this week even though I gave him zero warning. And also thank you Chris for talking me off like 5,000 various ledges in the past three days alone. I'm not kidding. If Chris had a nickel for every time I threatened to quit my job, delete this blog or kill myself this week...well, he'd have a shit ton of nickels. In the words of Lou Reed: you keep me hanging on. You a beautiful little lamb, you. (My words, not Lou's.) Ok, back to the conference. SYNERGY, SYNERGY, SYNERGY!]

Welp, I've got big news. In a little under 8 weeks, I will be leaving New York City for greener, more governmental pastures. Where the skyline is restricted by security concerns and the taxis don't accept credit cards. Yours truly is leaving the Big Apple for the greater DC area. Ok, to be specific, I'm moving to Arlington, VA, but I'll be just a few short metro stops from Meg, which is really what I'm most concerned about. This is all very exciting/terrifying for a variety of reasons. But the overarching reason as to why I'm peeing my pants on a nightly basis is that I need to pack up from my secure, albeit irritating job, and head out into the hurricane that we know as a job market.

This does not bode well for me. As I've recently undergone a quarter-life crisis and have no idea what I want to do with my life, I don't even know the first place to start to look for a job. And the last thing I want to think about are cover letters. But first and foremost, I should probably update my resume. So let's see. Haven't looked at that gem since 2007. What marketable skills have I learned in the past two point five years at my job? Well let me think about how exactly I've spent those last two and half years.

I would be willing to venture I've spent at least two of the last 2.5 years on gmail (the remaining half a year is the time I'm not on my work computer). Do you blame me? When I have a deadline looming and my desk is piling up with papers, I can't possibly focus on work until I know what every single person that appears on my chat list has done over the weekend. That has to get done before everything else. I need to know when one of my friends stays in to watch a Weekend at Bernie's marathon. Oh don't worry, I'll get to that progress report, but first, I've got to hear about this weirdo guy my friend met at a bar who literally said they had "a cosmic connection". Psycho, am I right?! Sure, there's usually a weekly pang of regret that I spend so much time on gchat and I think "Man, I should probably do some real work and ditch this distraction." But then I get a frantic chat from Meg regarding the note Betty White left for Rue McClanahan after her stroke ("I hope you die, so I can be the last Golden Girl." Priceless.). Thanks to gchat and gmail, I'm able to stay in touch with infinitely more people that I would have completely forgotten about. So I guess that I can say I've:

• Maintained exceptional interpersonal communication skills

Ok, that's one bullet out of the way. Considering I spend so much time talking to friends at work, I hardly ever have time to actually work. This gets a little dicey when I'm supposed meet with my boss each week to discuss my progress that week and to plan for the upcoming week. Usually, in the hour between realizing we're supposed to meet that day and actually meeting, I'm able to find some small tasks to finish while simultaneously compiling a list of tasks I'm "working on" and another list of things I haven't quite started. It's like when your mom would ask you to clean your room and you'd throw everything under your bed, but organize your bookshelf. It gives the illusion of a clean room without actually doing much of merit. Therefore:

• Improved organizational skills
• Self-motivated to complete tasks of all priority levels
  

God forbid I run out of desk work and have to actually interact with the clowns in my office. I get an ulcer just thinking about having a conversation with any of them. My tactics for office conversation is the same tactic I use in a public bathroom: get in and out as quickly as possible without making eye contact with anyone. (And considering my coworkers' general lack of hygiene, the aroma of some office conversation is about the same as a public bathroom. Foul.) I'm mainly just frustrated when I ask them a simple yes or no question and I get War and Peace in response. When I first got this job, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I'd let them tucker themselves out. After two years, I've gotten a little jaded and will gladly cut in on their tangent about their acid reflux once I've gotten the answer to my question.

• Conducted interoffice relations in a professional and efficient manner

One thing I often take for granted is how lenient my job is. If I wanted to roll out of bed wearing a crushed velour Juicy Couture tracksuit and head to work, I most definitely could. Lord knows I shave maybe once every harvest moon. It's not like I'm interacting with any hot hotties I'd like to impress. Far from it. My unshaven, unshowered, rumpled-clothes look easily qualifies me as the most well-put together nerd in this office. Even when the occasional sales rep drops by my office, they have to trek through the human tragedy I call my co-workers to get to my office, so I'm fairly confident I'm not the fugliest thing they've seen in the past 30 seconds.

• Observed company policies regarding dress code
  

Then there are the times when I'm actually doing my job. And when it rains, it friggin Hurricane Katrinas at work. Believe it or not, the past two weeks have been hell on earth for me at work. As we speak I'm getting double-fisted by grant paperwork. These grants are dressing me up in women's clothing, calling me Kathy, and making me their bitch. But on top of all this, I'm able to still find time for you fine people. And work doesn't stop me from: gchatting, blogging, stifling laughter over ghetto Twitter trending topics, researching terms heard on last night's episode of Top Chef, photoshopping humorous pictures for Meg, wishing I was somewhere else entirely, or any number of equally productive personal projects I'm working on.

• Perfected ability to work on various projects simultaneously

All that being said, I do somehow manage to do my job well. During my annual review recently, my boss told me she was impressed with my time management skills and it took all that I had not to openly scoff, because I know how I spend the majority of my time at work. When she asked me how I do it, I didn't think "Well I put all tasks aside so I can gchat until I realize they are almost overdue, then work on them feverishly until they are finished," was the best answer to that question.

• Managed time at work wisely

My fear when it comes to applying for new jobs is that the HR person who sees my resume will know the code and realize that I haven't done anything of merit for the past two years. Let's just pray that won't happen.

That being said, anyone have a job they want to hire me for?