Wow

Today I quite unexpectedly received a certificate of appreciation from a customer for being a team player and helping them out with certain needs. Included with the award was $50 in AMEX gift certificates! Well, color me completely amazed! How sweet of them.

(of course I was so surprised and stunned that I proceeded to turn into some strange person's cubicle while reading the award, instead of making the turn down the aisle that I was supposed to be aiming for. doh!)

Nicolas Sparks Sucks

This post contains spoilers for a couple of sucky movies, so if you care about that, you might not want to read on.

I've read only one Nicolas Sparks book, "Message in a Bottle" -- that was more than enough for me. Sentimental, trite, maudlin crap! And I occasionally like sentimental stuff, but this was too much, even for me. Since then, I've now seen three movies made from his books, "Message in a Bottle", "The Notebook" and (just last night), "Nights in Rodanthe". In every. single. movie. we are treated to a melodramatic death of one (or more!) of the main characters, always in a way that is exploited for maximum emotional impact. As soon as I realized this was a Nicolas Sparks movie, I should have known better and refused to watch. Did I follow my instincts? Not on your life. I thought to myself, 'surely, ALL of his stories can't end the same way?' But no, predictably again, main character: DEAD. Just when the movie has reached it's romantic crescendo too. Whatever. Nicolas Sparks, I am done with you. Done! What amazes me also is that all these relatively good and popular actors continue to agree to be in these crappy movies. I mean, "Nights in Rodanthe" had Diane Lane, Richard Gere and Scott Glenn for chrissakes. What were they thinking???

Things I Will Never Understand

Why I always feel immediately guilty whenever I see a police car, even though I'm not doing anything wrong. (Well, I'm almost never doing anything wrong anyway.)

Note to Self:

When you're browsing around the company cafeteria and nothing really appeals, and you look at something in particular and think to yourself, 'I'll bet that's not very good.' Do yourself a favor and trust your instincts and get a simple salad, or a chicken sandwich, or a yogurt. Because otherwise you might end up throwing that lunch away and end up with something inappropriate like, oh I don't know, a brownie and a Diet Coke, or something. Not that I would know anything about this from experience or anything.

Observations from a Week

You wonder what the grocery clerk REALLY thinks when all that you are buying are a bag of giant carrots, greek yogurt and beer.

It’s shocking what some people consider appropriate work wear on a Friday.

Self-Important-Meeting-Hijack-Guy (SIMHG) being out on vacation = good mood.

SIMHG back in the office = bad mood.

Being stuck on endless meetings with SIMHG = foul mood.

Arriving to work at 7:50 AM on an otherwise quiet Friday to find SIMHG already there = despair.

How many forced security patch install/reboots in a week are necessary and prudent and how many are approaching ridiculous?

Who knew horse chiropractors / vets could be so cute?

You have to question your skills as an equestrian when you jump, not once, but three times into the jump standards in the course of one hour.

Your social life has reached an all-time low, when the high-point of your week is the “special extended” episode of the “Real Housewives of Atlanta”.

You refer to a colleague on a meeting that you are running for a customer by the wrong last name. (You know for a FACT that you did this once, but suspect and fear that it may have actually been twice).

Dogs are very forgiving.

Being able to go to bed early one night and read for a solid hour = complete luxury.

Realizing as you walk around the office one day that your eyes have not stopped rolling once.

Wondering why some women wear so much perfume.

Laughing at how some people love to charge down the hallway to the cafeteria, like there is a prize involved for getting there first or something.

With a hurricane bearing down on New England, the biggest concern on all the news channels is how this will effect the Red Sox schedule.

When a building in Boston needs to be evacuated, it makes the local news. This never happened in NYC. Well, except for on 9/11/2001.

After a week of muttering to your laptop, you expect it to answer.

You’ve spent so much time during the week muttering and cursing under your breath. In. Your. Cubicle. That the intern who sits across the aisle is seriously afraid of you (and finally admits on Friday that he next expects your laptop to come flying his way).