Chump Day

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Ah, Wednesday, we meet again.  I rarely think of you when you're not here, harbor no dread of you as I do with your colleague Monday, associate you with no joy as I do with your cohort Friday.  But maybe that's how you got me, Wednesday.  Maybe you've been lying in wait all these years so that toady, in my 27th year, you would rear your ugly day head and show me that you are a force, a terror, that I've been wrong to ignore you all this time.  Let's review, Wednesday, what we've already been through in my five waking hours with you.

- I got up early to move my car out of the driveway so that I could move my boyfriend's car in.  It's street cleaning day, and my boyfriend's out of town, so I thought I would try to get things in order before the construction guys working in the back house- who block me in every day- got in my way.  But their truck was already there, directly in my car's path out of the driveway.  They, however, were nowhere to be found, and I could do not one thing with either car.  You got off to a quick start, Wednesday.  Bold.

- Because of a number of crazy scheduling things that have to do with the out-of-town boyfriend, work starting an hour early (well, we'll get to that, right Wednesday?), a friend taking my dog for the day because I'll be gone forever, and my desire that my dog not destroy her house- It was imperative that I go to the dog park this morning, but also necessary that I be dressed in my work clothes when I went there, rather than my usual grubby morning-walk clothes.  So of course I rushed to the dog park, and it was closed.  Closed.  Men were working in it, and I was at a complete loss to do anything active in my dumb office flats except let my dog loose on a baseball field and hope that he would chase after a bird and then, at some tired point, agree to come back to me.

- Since I chased the dog through that baseball field in an effort to tire him, when I dropped him at my friend's house he thought, I guess, that we were still playing that game and ran away from me over and over again when I needed to bring him inside.  Also I almost fell when I finally did catch him, which is only important in that I looked stupid which was annoying.

- After rushing to work to do a quick assignment I didn't know how to do before our meeting an hour earlier than we usually meet, I sat at my desk for an hour waiting for the meeting to start.  At least that gave me a chance to take the slowest elevator on earth back down to the parking garage to get my lunch that I left in my car.

- When the meeting was finally over, I dashed to the break room to get the morning bagels that they always put out on Thursdays.  Because, as our show usually tapes on Thursdays, but this week is taping today, Wednesday, I got confused.  And thought it was Thursday.  Bagel day.  I was starving, and there were no bagels because today is... well... I think you know.

Haikus Are For Busy Days

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Still at work at ten

Wishing that I were at home

Where the dog is boss

Key to What?

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

In addition to the glamorous tasks of my production job detailed right here in this very blog, I also sometimes drive around Los Angeles like a crazy person in business casual/young and hip outfits hoping someone will pay me lots of money because they like the way that I eat a hamburger/pretend to pay money to an imaginary cashier.  That's right- I don't limit my humiliations to my office, but instead regularly sneak out to take them on the road and audition for commercials!  Because I don't like to push it by asking for permission every time I need to leave my desk to go pass an hour in a casting office before I can  take my turn to say, "Here's your popcorn shrimp," I've gotten pretty good at sneaking out of my office.  The other day I realized my true minimalist escape potential when I made it out of the building with just my phone and my driver's license in my pocket and my ticket to retrieve my keys wadded up in my hand.  If I'm not carrying a purse full of things like Visine and Target gift cards, then how could I reasonably be going anywhere for any length of time, coworker I might possibly run into in the hall?

Today I got a call once I was already at my office that I had a call back tonight, this very evening.  Because no one could possibly remember/imagine/move on from what an actor wore to their initial audition, you're supposed to wear the exact same thing to the call back.  But here I was at my office with no blue mock turtleneck and no black pencil skirt in sight!  I decided to use my most low profile sneak-outery to run home and get them.  My method was just was just the same as the first time- Phone and license in my pocket, parking ticket in hand... Except last time I tried it I was going to an audition, which- unlike my house- does not require my house key to get in.  The problem is that I don't leave my house keys with my car keys when I give them to the parking guy, a consideration that didn't strike me until I was all the way home with no house key and no fake rock with an extra one (as any reasonable person should have).  I got kind of excited at the idea of breaking into my own house (which, incidentally, is directly across the street from a police station) but couldn't even get the dog to pull his end of the bargain as the guy on the inside who pops out the screen so I can hoist myself through the window.  Cursing the well-functioning security that protects me and my possessions, I headed back to my office empty-handed, wearing what I will be wearing tonight for my call back: A shamefully different colored sweater and- my god will they even recognize me?- jeans.

Bill Nye I'm Coming for You

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Though I would not call myself a scientist per se, I did conduct a serious experiment this past weekend as a group of friends and I celebrated my boyfriend's birthday.  I set out to discover if one weekend can contain all the beer I would like to drink, all the ice cream I want to eat, and all the playing with Woody the Pup I can muster OR if one weekend can only contain so much fun (which could be a real property of, um, science).  Because if one weekend can't hold it all, a good amount of the buzz and the yum and the fun won't have anywhere to go but into Monday.  That's the simple principle of the conservation of liquid, the conservation of matter, and the conservation of delight.  I took physics in high school in the nineties.  I know what I'm saying.

So I really went for it, in the name of the birthday and in the name of science.  And I'm not sure if this crushingly strong body/stomach ache is from my hang-over, my sugar high come down, or all that jumping around with the dog, but I am sure that science ruins everything.  Stay out of school, kids.  And just say no to Mondays.

Pavlov's Assistant

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

As I've shared before, I have a dog.  Again, he is the cutest dog in America.  Something that I find interesting when I'm spooning him by force on a weekend afternoon as we watch "The Dog Whisperer" or "It's Me or the Dog" off the DVR because, let's be honest, anyone can record foreign films or enlightening documentaries, but watching pet shows requires the brain power of an elementary schooler- what I find interesting in all of that is seeing what weird phobias some dogs have about novel household items.  And I think it's funny to catalog what is and isn't shocking/fascinating/terrifying to my dog because of exposure or total absence.  I've seen dogs on those shows who are freaked out by the television.  My dog is more likely to be nervous if the TV is off.  I've seen dogs that are afraid of the vacuum cleaner, and by golly if a vacuum ever finds its way into my house I'm sure it will shock and awe Woody the Dog in much the same way that he was growling this morning at his first introduction- and mind you we've been sharing a home since September- to the iron.

So today when I was at a staff meeting, and my boss seemed to be looking down the table to the general area where my office mates and I were sitting, and he started to say, "Great job..." I felt as I imagine Woody would if I introduced a beef liver couch into our house (and, well, his birthday is coming up).  I sat up taller, my face took on a smile, and I felt my heart race with the newness of this praise- it was the human equivalent of wagging my tail and standing on my hind legs to get a better look.  "Great job," the big boss said, now looking unambiguously in our direction, "On getting all those chairs out last night."  Great job on getting all those chairs out last night.  Great job lifting some chairs from one place and setting them down in another.  Great job using your arms and also your feet not to mention your hands and eyes, guys.  Ugh.  Woof.      

Multi-Taskmaster

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

 I feel as though I am really getting this week of to a good start as far as productivity.  Look at that picture right up there!  Look at all those tabs.  That means I'm doing stuff.  As I type this, I am listening to a show that I need to watch for work, G-Chatting with S, playing Scrabble with my coworker, thinking critical thoughts about something I just read on Facebook because please- there is no reason to talk about peeing on a stick and other such personal things on a social networking site, counting down to when I am allowed to eat my lunch in 29 minutes, wondering if people are thinking that my hair looks weird today because I put it in bun even though I've never put my hair in a bun before but I did today because it's raining and my hair already has little hope of looking nice but once there's moisture in the air just absolutely forget it, closing my eyes for mini-naps, wondering if anyone can tell that I have had this sweater since 2001... oops- I just took a quick break to show a coworker an album of pictures of my dog in its entirety... and now I'm back and also eavesdropping on my coworkers' conversation about some bad decisions that they made over the weekend.  This is what employers are talking about when they say that they want attention to detail and the ability to multi-task, right?  Man.  I really am under-using my talents here.

Update: I just read this back after I posted it, and thought to myself, "Wait- Haven't I written this post before with just a slight variation in the details?"  And yes, I have.  Because all of my days are just a slight variation on this post, an endless string of pointless activities to distract me from the grand pointless activity that is my job, and when I stop crying into my leftovers about it I'll try to at least come up with a new way to complain about it.

St. Guiness' Day

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

I have a dog.  He is the cutest dog in America.

He had to go to the vet today unexpectedly.  So I came to work at 10:30, played my word in my ongoing Scrabble game with my coworker, and then left my office (I would have told my boss, but the most valuable workers' absences are never noticed, so I just pretended I was going to the bathroom and then ran to the elevator) to go home to pick the dog up.  When I got back to my office around 1 o'clock, I ran into three of my coworkers making good on our morning's genius idea: They were leaving to drink beer!  For St. Patrick's Day!  Because that makes it fully OK!  I mean- Two of them were wearing green shirts... and they're boys.  If participating in the color scheme of a holiday doesn't entitle a man to day-drink I don't know what does.  And I, too, felt entitled, having already logged a solid thirty minutes of desk time already for the day.  So we all set off across the street to a very famous Irish bar: Marie Callender's.

The beer on the right is my (first) Guiness.  The beer on the left is my coworker's.  He ordered a Corona, and then quickly added that he wanted the bartender to put green dye in it.  Because just drinking a Corona in the middle of a Wednesday would have been inappropriate.  This was a necessary and passionate celebration of snakes or clovers or recorder-like flutes or something.  Anyway, we drank until we all rushed back to get our things in order to go to a 3 o'clock meeting.  I got my things all in order.  If you consider my things to be giggling and not contributing.  And now I am sleeping.