oh mr. coffee...

A few months ago, our old coffee maker decided to spaz out on us at work. I had noticed that we had Mrs. Tea sitting on the shelf in a very lonely condition, so I suggested that we replace our broken coffee maker (which was not a Mr. Coffee...) with a Mr. Coffee.

I felt that the previous situation was mildly adulterous.

So, our office manager went out and, upon my suggestion, picked up our new coffee maker: a genuine Mr. Coffee.

Unfortunately, though the thing makes a nice cup of java, the carafe is prone to spills. Doesn't matter how you hold the thing, or how slowly you pour; inevitably, while preparing a cup of coffee or filling up the machine, you will create a large puddle on the counter top.

I recently went in the kitchen to find that my coworker, Chris, had aptly renamed and relabeled the machine: Mr. Spilly.

I should add that shortly after we brought in Mr. Spilly, we threw out Mrs. Tea. This could be the reason for his unsavory behavior...but I digress.

the plan

Here's the plan for tonight:

1.) Leave work by 10pm

2.) Drive home--remember to enjoy Lake Shore Drive at night...it'll make the drive feel shorter.

3.) Arrive home, check for spiders near the front door, struggle with key---all the while fearing that a face-eating spider is slowly creeping up behind you, next to you, above you (cripes! They're EVERYWHERE!).

4.) Frustratedly open the door. Let out a huff. Probably say "Jeebus Chrisssssse..." under breath (but loud enough to really express discontent).

5.) Fumble through the dark to find the light switch, any light switch, all the while carefully avoiding glass coffee table.

6.) Flip on dining room light, although actually wanting to flip on the kitchen light. Remind self of which switch is which. Forget which switch is which in about 5 minutes.

7.) Plop purse on counter/chair/table/floor---whichever's closest.

8.) Pee. This is inevitable after the amount of water and coffee consumed today.

9.) Come up with ways to justify that the pizza you ate for dinner (Hey. It was free Lou Mal's...), does not count as cheating on your diet. Remember that you only had one piece...even though you thought you wanted two.

10.) Turn on radio. Probably something AM. Remember how fast 30 is approaching.

11.) Walk into kitchen. Pour a glass of wine, wait, no, have a beer. Wait. A margarita. Go to computer, check which option will be less detrimental to your diet. Choose that one, all the while knowing you'll still have a margarita, too.

12. Fill up bath tub. Use Jeff's shampoo to make bubbles.

13. Top off wine glass.

14. Soak in a nice, relaxing bath.

15. Towel off, put on pj's, have a cigarette on the back porch. (There are no spiders out there. Well, none that I can see, at least.)

16. If Jeff's home, give him a big kiss. If he's not; try to stay awake just a little bit longer.

17. Get some much-needed (and well-deserved) sleep...

...start all over in the morning.

(Podcast coming shortly.)

fridays, roof tops, and why are the blue angels so late?!

Last Friday, the Chicago Air and Water show kicked off. Luckily, at work we had access to the building's rooftop. So at around 3pm, we decided to take a little break from our busy schedules and catch the Blue Angels' portion of the show. Love those freaking Blue Angels!

Unfortunately, the Blue Angels were a tad bit late. But as we waited we were able to see 15 people jump out of a plane with red smoke shooting from their shoes.

I snapped a lot of cool photos that afternoon. As you can see, in this one Chris is explaining something important via the use of jazz hands.

Either that or he was trying to high-five one of the Blue Angel pilots. (I mean, they were close...but not that close.)

I was just trying not to fall off the building.

new digs

The games division at work moved upstairs, which resulted in a mass migration downstairs where I'm stationed with the other writer/directors. So here's my new desk.

And yes...that is, in fact, a gigantic Twinkie.

you don't know jack

Check it out:

You Don't Know Jack firm relaunched for the casual era

abundance of energy?

A funny thing happened on the way to work this morning. I decided to take the Chicago Skyway to save a few minutes. Although I work in the city now, I still haven't purchased an IPass or an IZoom or whatever other tolling product is available.

I mean, I need one but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. So I always have to use the cash lanes and pay my $3.00. Recently, the Skyway made all of the lanes--even cash lanes--accept IPass.

As I drove through today, I handed the toll booth operator a five-dollar bill. He started handing me my change and then stopped and said, "You have an IPass?"

I thought he was making a sales pitch.

"No, I don't." I said politely, still waiting for my change.

Then he mumbled something about the IPass again and started to hand me back my $5. The way it was going, it seemed like I was in the wrong lane and needed an IPass to get through. I told him, "Look, this is a cash lane? Why do I need an IPass to get through?"

He told me he knew that, and that all lanes accept IPass. I told him that I understood that, but that I don't have an IPass.

Then he said, "But it's saying that you do have an IPass."

I looked around my car and assured him that I didn't have an IPass and begged him to take my money. I think my exact words were, "It might be saying that I have an IPass, but I don't. Take my money because I don't want you to get screwed. Really. Take it."

He did, but he looked really confused.

I don't know if he was more confused about the fact that the sensors detected a non-existent IPass, or that I didn't take advantage of the fact that they had made a $3.00 mistake.

fun with coworkers and jell-o

On my last day at the theater (Friday, 5-30-08), Patty and I decided to pull an office prank on one of our coworkers, Chuck.

Unfortunately, some of the Jell-O didn't make it and we could only encase his computer mouse.

I think it's glorious.

I especially like the candy cigarettes...(Great idea, Patty.)

We also made a trail of candy that led from Charlie's desk (another coworker) into Chuck's office, to try and make it look like it was all Charlie's doing. Unfortunately, we ran out before I could take a picture of that. Oh well.

attack of the ceramic clown from cyberspace

Just before I left my last job, I decided to leave this as the desktop for the new assistant...whenever they find one.

My old boss ended up taking his clowns home...so it was the least I could do.

introducing: charles leonard

This is Charles Leonard at my old desk, at my old job.

He now sits on my new desk, at my new job.

I think he likes it a lot.

i am sooooo not a murderer

So today the power went out at work. There were some guys in hard hats outside the building, so I'm assuming that it was their doing.

Unfortunately, I was recording some audio in a room with no windows at the time of the outage. And wouldn't you figure, I was learning how to use the program and the equipment. Of course, the power cut out at the exact same time I hit a button.

There I was, in a soundproof box, in complete darkness, thinking that I had just caused the power failure myself.

When I opened the booth door, I made my way (very slowly...) to the door, to hear my friends downstairs discussing the power failure. Phew. It wasn't me. Which was fortunate. What was unfortunate was that half of my audio was lost. Crap.

To pass the time, and to introduce us newbies to the rest of the team, we played a few rounds of Murderer. I was a freaking Townsperson EVERY TIME. However, I was unfairly accused a fair number of times. It was hilarious.

During the final round, it was down to me, Arnie, and Bob. I accused Bob because I was right next to Arnie and he never made a peep the entire time during the "murders." But I DID hear noise from Bob's area.

Bob, went next and after hearing my accusation, immediately pointed the finger at me.

It was all up to Arnie.

Now, I don't blame him, because well, I'm sure not knowing much about me there wasn't a whole lot of trust. I also didn't have any good defense besides, "It was totally Bob!"

In the end, Arnie chose me. And Bob had successfully massacred our "town" of 16 people.

Then the power came on and we all went back to work.

My first week at JV was awesome.

take one for the team

So today was my first JV softball game.

It was super fun, although I was full of super suck. Which is fine. I gave it my all.

Actually, as I tried to field a grounder to the outfield (I was right center), I ended up sliding, rolling over my left shoulder and pulling God knows what.

I'm a bit sore, however, I'm fine. All I know is that one of my teammates informed me that my attempt at a save looked really cool.

Which was all part of the initial plan.

And even though I won in that respect...the Yahooligans spanked us...something like 439743897 to 6.

We'll get 'em next time...

charles leonard

My friend Erica reminded me that the pink stapler I talked about yesterday was picked out by her.

So, technically it is her stapler. She's since moved...to Arizona...and I will be leaving my current job very soon, so I figured she'd want me to take good care of the stapler that she so obviously was once very closely connected to.

So I'm stealing it. Okay, not stealing. Rescuing it. Who knows what hands might rest upon its clear, pink plastic parts in the future?! I don't want to risk it. Erica is a dear friend, and I'm sure that she'd only want the best for Charles Leonard.

Yes, the stapler's name is Charles Leonard. It says so right on the bottom. Which made it much easier for me because that name is just brilliant, especially for a pink stapler. No time spent trying to come up with a suitable moniker. Nope. Charles Leonard was already bestowed upon this fine piece of office equipment.

I plan to take Charles Leonard to JV with me. It'll be a big move for him, but in the long run I think he'll be much happier.

my stapler is pink...

...which has nothing to do with this post. It's just, I can see it with my peripheral vision and I couldn't come up with anything catchier. (Haven't had ANY coffee yet...damn.)

So last night Jeff and I went to see Avenue Q.

Holy shit.

That was the best fucking thing I've seen in a while. I laughed so hard I nearly pissed the seat. It was great. I wanted to take a picture of the marquee to put on this blog, but I forgot to grab my camera out of my purse. I guess seeing puppet sex on stage stalled my synapses.

Afterwards, we went to eat. As we were walking, a bird just fell out of the sky and died. It was really strange. It was 10 at night. Don't birds sleep at night? But this one just fell out of the sky and died. Like that.

A few feet ahead of him there was another dead bird on the ground. What the fuck was going on? I wondered if there was some sort of bird cult at the top of the building and if they had just each had a drink laced with poison--ending it all in hopes of reaching some Mother Bird in an alien nest orbiting the moon.

Probably not, I guess. But still...two birds in one night? Just dropping dead out of the sky? I didn't like it.

This morning I woke up and headed into work from Chicago. I was thinking about how I can't wait until I start at JV on June 2nd. Mainly because I'm just really excited, but also because it would have been a lot closer than driving back into Indiana---only to sit at my desk and make sure that all of the check stubs from 1999 to present are in numerical order.

Yes. This is what I do currently. Crap.

As I drove down Foster, I noticed a man walking, hunched over himself, white hair spraying out of the sides of his scalp. He wore dingy jeans and an old blue sweatshirt. I couldn't tell if he was deep in thought or if life had just vacuumed out all of the hopes and dreams in his head. On the one hand, he looked as though he had quite a lot to think about, but on the other he just looked sort of empty. Talk about a walking contradiction.

But what really struck me was the bluish-purple bruise around his left eye. He didn't look like he would be a fighter. He actually looked brittle and frail. Who would punch this man? And why?

I remembered a friend of mine that used to hang out at Ravenswood Pub coming in with a black eye once. He was a really nice guy. He explained that he had been walking down the street when a guy came up to him, asked him for some change for the CTA, and when our friend told him he was broke, the man just punched him in the face and started running.

I wonder if he woke up from winter hibernation and is back on the streets, punching random people in the face again.

things i thought throughout the day...

So in between manually entering survey data...one survey at a time...my mind came up with a few different ways to keep from atrophying. They are as follows:

1.) In French 202, my last semester of French (which, by the way, was taught by a woman whose native language was Chinese...), my classmate and I drew dirty pictures to distract ourselves from learning how to say things like "cow" and "horse" in French. She reminded me of that today...and now I feel I must find them. We drew a large penis in vacation gear...and a very busty trailer house wife whose nightie was giving her equally as man-boob-busty and trailer-y hubby quite the two-dimensional boner.

2.) Apparently, to the senior citizen community, some of our theatre's past plays were dirty:



...either that, or they're referring to the fact that they don't use the Internet for porn...if only they had a computer...

3.) While getting coffee, I realized that my sugar has a first name, it's C-O-R-Y. Which immediately made me think of bologna, which also has a first name. It's O-S-C-A-R. Then I vaguely remembered dating a guy who called his schvanz "Oscar." I kicked myself for forgetting that one...

4.) The company that prints our letterheads gave us desk calendars. Their logo is a hot air balloon...and the guy riding in the basket really looks like Buddah.

5.) I hope the soap that I accidentally drank with my morning coffee (I rushed to wash my travel mug as I left the house...whoops) doesn't give me a raunchy case of gut rot later.

Back to the surveys...