Tag: Humor

Humor, Husband, School

Higher. Education.

“Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it sure has earned a lot of people graduate degrees.”
– Robyn Irving quotes

Yesterday was a big day, my loves.  Huge. Well, maybe just for us, but still.  Gargantuan.

And he's brilliant too!

We received word back from the last of the grad schools J. applied to, and he got in to all but one – which is completely fine because it’s their loss apparently.  He’s into two of the top ten schools for his program in the country, including the number one, and one of the best schools in the world!  I’m so ridiculously proud of him it’s a little dizzying.

Now, the fun bit.  I thought the hurry-up-and-wait period after submitting the applications was bad, but now we have to make a decision.  And after that we have to make a plan that includes a move, financing this adventure, maybe visas, and selling our soul (and possibly our firstborn child) to banks and governments to afford it.  That’s all a bit nerve-wracking.

But also incredibly exciting.

Humor, Office, Work

Hot. Mess.

“I’m at my best in a messy, middle-of-the-road muddle.”
– Harold Wilson quotes

If I were a superhero, pumpkins, my skill would be earthquake-causing klutziness coupled with a magnetic attraction to things that stain.

Oh, you're no help!

Yesterday I barely left my desk due to working on a particularly patience-shattering project (Susie, Hennessy, Wise, and I all tried several times, but Mail Merge simply would not work for over an hour), which meant I took breaks at my desk.  In a four hour period I spilled salad dressing, orange juice, copious amounts of water, and an open ink pad on my newish trousers.  The true miracle is that nothing stained it!

Fail, Food, Humor, Office, Work

Primordial. Soup.

“That’s disgusting…thanks for taking one for the team.”
“But I don’t want to take one for the team.  I want to leave the team to its moldy fate.”
– Student employee, C.

Hm, a nice little murder. Or maybe a drug bust? Heck, just a lost textbook!

One of the downsides of working at a university is that everything is time is cyclical.  The wheel of life and work turns by semesters and even though you are out of school, you are directly affected by this fact.  For example, I do most of my hiring and firing of students at the beginning of new semesters – kids graduate, have tough schedules, or sometimes even drop out and have to be terminated or replaced.  During Fall and Winter terms I’m involved with projects related to various athletic seasons.  When Spring and Summer terms roll around I, and others, will be beating our heads on our desks for whole weeks at a time for lack of work – you can only reorganize the supply closet, update your all of your forms, and rearrange your staplers so many times before you’re quite longing for heinous crimes to be committed.

But there is a sneaky week or two in the middle of every semester, after you’ve finished hiring all of your new students and finished your major projects, and just before you have to start ordering next month’s supplies and prep next term’s spreadsheets, that you are stuck.

It is at this soul numbing point that I start wandering about the office begging for work.  Susie is usually pretty good at giving me some filing or shredding, or handing one of her own projects over to me if she is swamped, but even her ideas can give out.  And so it proved this mid-Winter.

I had my annual employee evaluation and told her that since I began working here I’ve tried to streamline and improve processes and I’ve been successful – to the point that I regularly don’t have enough to do, especially during mid-term deadlock.  When she asked what sort of small project ideas I’ve come up with, I listed the various tasks I’ve given myself over the past year and declared without guilt that the idea well has run dry.  After a moment she said she had a job that needed doing but didn’t want to offend me by asking.  I told her I didn’t mind.

So today I spent an hour on hand and knees cleaning out the two refrigerators in the break area.

And let me just state for the record, there are mothers all over the United States today, wringing their hands and weeping as they try to figure out where they went wrong.

I pulled seven one litre bottles of soda that were up to a year old (and fermenting), three packages of cream cheese that had turned teal (and grown eyes), almost an entire pizza that had dried out months ago (and fossilized), and several tupperware filled with various rotting mush (that had apparently evolved highly enough to invent a rudimentary form of communication).  Let us not speak of the fish I found.  Really.  Let’s not.

Friends, Humor, Life

A Typical Atypical Thursday Evening
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I did a weekend soundoff a while back, but even with my assortment of friends (the lot of which easily form the Who’s Who of intriguing people) this was a bit much for a weeknight.  While on the way to see a friend starring in another play, the following sentence was uttered verbatim:
“So.  Margot.  There you were in a strange city staying with a toxic couple who have gotten drunk and the wife – who is currently having an affair with a French street performer named Andre – is starting to come on to you in a desperate bid to end her marriage…what do you do now?”
Yes, there is a story behind this.  All true.  Sadly, it’s not mine to tell.  Some of my single friends wonder why I like to stay home most weekends these days, I just can’t keep up!
Humor, PBS

To Arms, Citizens!

“You will still find more hours of in-depth news programming, investigative journalism and analysis on PBS than on any other outlet.”
– Gwen Ifill

Minions, I’m stepping away from my daily dose of snark, personal injury, and tales of life as an office gopher to incite you all to violence.  Or at least activism in the political process.  You know, whichever comes first.

Wait!  Come back!  This isn’t about abortion, gay marriage, immigration, or any of those screaming match inducing topics, all of which I myself have complex opinions about that – happily – I won’t inflict on you.  See?  It’s perfectly safe.

No, I want to talk about the upcoming debate in Congress on whether or not they are going to pull the plug on funding public broadcasting.  Which means NPR and PBS stations would not receive any federal funding whatsoever.  I’m sure we’ve all rolled our eyes at the inconvenience of having our programing interrupted by biannual membership drives, but let me tell you what, even those drives don’t fully fund public broadcasting stations.  My local PBS station is supported by federal funding by 25%, other stations need much more than that.  Without federal funding many of these stations will not be able to support themselves, and I don’t think losing them should be an option.

I can hear you asking why I’m jumping up on this particular soapbox.  Well, like I said, I’m not going to dump my political rantings on anyone (J. gets that delight), but I’m always going to fight tooth and nail for the humanities.  To say nothing of the other genres of fantastic programing that PBS and NPR offer.

President Obama recently bemoaned the lack of future scientists in the US (a report I listened to on NPR, incidentally).  I submit that more kids of my generation were inclined to the sciences thanks to Bill Nye the Science Guy than the average elementary school science teacher.  And what about programs like Nova and Nature for practical biology, geology, geography, and conservation – and photography and cinematography come to think of it!

My love for Masterpiece Classic, Mystery, and Contemporary are already well documented but just so we’re clear, Masterpiece has showcased the work of some of the greatest artists who ever lived, be they actors, playwrights, or novelists.  Often to viewers who would never have been exposed to these works otherwise.  I grew up in a house that loved the humanities and wasn’t short of opportunities to take advantage of them, but I saw my first opera, symphony performance, and ballet on PBS, and have many friends who have never seen these sorts of performances except on PBS due to lack of opportunity.

And as for children’s programing!  Hands up anyone who has never, in their entire life, seen an episode or even a video clip from Sesame Street?  Not many of you.  What about Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood?  The Magic Schoolbus?  Reading Rainbow?  Programs that supplement early childhood education and engage developing cognitive skills and should not be thrown aside.

Now on to NPR which preserves the radio show tradition with A Prairie Home Companion and Selected Shorts, to say nothing of phenomenal journalism which provides a nice supplement to either CNN or FOX when you want to form a more thorough opinion.

I don’t think anyone denies that we need to find ways to trim the federal budget and that sacrifices will need to be made.  But I also believe there are dozens if not hundreds of other initiatives, earmarks, pet projects, and other all around badly spent monies that could be cut before funding to the National Endowment for the Arts!  Public broadcasting is not a great money maker, it doesn’t produce thousands of manufacturing jobs, it doesn’t impact our competition with China…

But it is important.

Please check your local PBS and NPR websites for contact information for your representatives in Congress, and make your voice heard.

History, Holidays, Humor

Happy V-Day, Kittens

“It is plain that men are in charge of making saints.”
– Karen Cushman, Catherine Called Birdy

How to properly celebrate St. Valentine’s Day:

Also, build yourself a cathedral if you can, it adds swagger points.

1) Be a Roman priest during the reign of the Emperor Claudius Gothicus (because that name definitely belongs to a benevolent, wise, un-tyrannical autocrat), perform marriage ceremonies for Christians, get caught, and when on trial foolishly try to convert said unfortunately named emperor.  Survive a terrific beating, stoning, and finally die when guards run out of ideas and behead you.

1a) Or maybe be an early Christian convert who gets martyred (like they tended to do), but be fuzzy on the actual death details (also like they tended to do).

1b) Or finally be an obscure early Christian hermit who, neglecting utterly to conform to the social expectations of the time, failed to be martyred at all.

2) Fade into even more complete obscurity

3) Have Chaucer casually mention the tradition that February 14th is the day that birds choose their mates and forever after be associated with romance and love.

4) Stew for nearly another 700 years and enjoy the romance, kids!

Health, Humor, Working Out

Just Roll With It

“And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter.”
– Judges 15:8

Within our front closet lurks a hateful device: The Foam Roll.  The purpose of this thing is to use pressure to stretch and loosen tight muscles, which is all very nice in theory, but when one has an extremely short iliotibial band in one’s right leg that has caused all manner of physiological problems, the Foam Roll becomes an instrument of Dante-esque torture.

To such a person, the Foam Roll combines some of the most horrid ways human beings have come up with to kill one another throughout our creatively violent history.

Purpose: to stretch you. To death.
Purpose: to pressure you. To death.
Purpose: to make you spill your guts. To death.

How does the last one apply, you ask?  Because every time I’ve used the blasted thing I’ve been swamped by waves of nausea and/or actual vomiting.  Admittedly it’s a creative stretch, just go with it.

J. can use this device without so much as a wince whereas there are days that even a light tough on my right leg (to say nothing of putting all of my body weight onto it) hurts like the bleeding devil.  Nevertheless whenever I get a pain flare up or overextend myself exercising, J. will smugly point at the Foam Roll and declare it my only chance at salvation.

He did this the night before last when I limped into the flat after work.  My mature response was a feral snarl and an attempt at a quick escape, which looked more or less like a Quasimodo lurch at a snail’s pace towards our office.
“It’ll be good for you,” he insisting, picking up the hated thing and following.
“Don’t come after me!  It’s not fair, you can out-run me,” I gasped, thumping faster.
“I can out-walk you,” he retorted and thrust the roll at me.  “Use it.”

So I did.  And since he found me five minutes later, clutching the toilet with mascara running down my face, I’m choosing to hate him for it.

Any less immediately painful solutions, ducklings?

Health, Humor, Working Out

She Who Limps Is Still Walking

“The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.”
– Aristotle

I have problems with my iliotibial band in my right leg.  The band is too short which therefore pulls my leg bones and muscles in all sorts of directions, which therefore makes my whole leg turn outward, which therefore pulls my spine out of alignment fairly consistently, which therefore causes various problems.  Notably, chronic back and leg pain, particularly in my right hip joint.  I walk with a slight limp, virtually impossible to detect unless something is inflamed and then virtually impossible to ignore.  The upside?  My turnout in ballet was extraordinary!

Kind of like this. With pointe shoes.

Aggravating?  Yes.  Anything to be done?  No.  Any chance it will keep me from wearing heels?  Don’t you know me at all?!

Anyway, the only real help is to keep the muscles and joints strong with decent exercise.  Sometimes, though, I overdo it.  Like on Tuesday.

I did some lunges with those dinky little five pound hand weights while J. was bench pressing far more than I weigh (which is just fine as I find this – and his broad shoulders – all sorts of fascinating, but I digress).  Then I did some other leg exercises and strength training and left feeling tired and pretty pleased with myself.

Yesterday I woke up almost unable to move my right leg.  Bending my knee nearly put me on the floor as my inflamed and shaking thigh muscles wouldn’t hold me.  And as for that hip joint, holy mother of torture! J. tried to help by massaging my calf muscle but after approximately two seconds I beat him off with a pillow and bellows of pain.

“You know what you need,” he said in a firm voice and emphatically raised eyebrows.
Slowly, evilly he gestured towards the closet.

Wherein resides the most exquisitely vile torture known to man…

Next time: Just Roll With It

Fashion, Humor, Office, Work

Ready To Run

“Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”
— Marilyn Monroe

It’s official, poodles, winter turns your friendly household C. into a blithering idiot.  I suspect I have a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder – come the cold and dark I get moodier, need to sleep longer, and can stay on the sofa for hours doing nothing and seemingly only half awake.  And my brain turns to mush.  I am sure of it.

We got another coat of snow last night so when I finally managed to pull myself out of bed (which is not exactly an easy feat when your SAD-affected mind and body are yelling at you, “If you’d just give in you could have a nice little bout of depression and not have to go into work today.  Come on, just because it takes you months to pull yourself out of it doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.  Give in just a little…”), I reached for my trusty Hunter boots.

Stuffing legs and trousers into them haphazardly, I clumped about the flat grabbing fruit and granola bars (and maybe a couple of chocolate chip cookies) before J. and I dashed out into the cold to scrape off the car and gun it for work.

Pictured: said evil Being.

But midway to the office, I was hit with the nagging, suspicious feeling that somewhere in the vastness of the universe there was a Being chuckling at my expense.

I cataloged myself.  Something was missing.  Bag, phone, wallet, all present.  Gym bag complete with gym clothes, check.  Water bottle, snacks, diary, all in their proper places.  My hair was done, I had no bra straps on display, I was even sporting a pretty new cardigan and fabulous bright red lipstick.  What was it?

Bending down to rummage in my bag again, I glanced at my boots.  The nagging, chuckling feeling got stronger.  It became downright malicious in fact.  Boots, I thought, why would that…drat! Because, naturally, I had not grabbed actual shoes to change into.

Thus, here I sit in sharp black trousers, red lipstick, freshly painted nails, lovely cardigan…and my old running trainers – which squeak badly when I walk.  Much to the amusement of my co-workers.