Day Off My Rocker

From an unnamed bed in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

That's right, bed. It's my first Friday off from work and I am not out of bed yet. I win! I did go downstairs to get a piece of cold pizza to eat while watching last night's Community on Hulu, but it's been all bed, all the time otherwise.

But I'm still doing some work. Not for my real job, oh no, for a side project, helping my uncle with this book he's writing about technology's role (or lack thereof really) in school law. Did you fall asleep just now? Well guess what: you're not editing an entire book on the subject! What the hell was I thinking?

I was thinking I like my uncle a lot (it's hard to say I love him because he married my aunt when I was in my early 20s and I have met him maybe five times. But he's a very nice man and I definitely prefer him to at least two, and up to four of my other uncles). I was thinking this could be good experience if I ever want to write/edit/somehow make my own book someday. I was thinking working in public education doesn't pay very well, so a little side cash never hurts, especially in these days of pay cuts and furloughs.

I was not thinking I'd be spending my first Friday off attached to my laptop wondering if we've already used the word "precedent" too many times and what's a good synonym for "precedent" and good lord my uncle likes semicolons even more than I do! I thought that was impossible but he used four, four, in his opening paragraph.

Time for another slice of pizza.

Day of Stressed

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

Yesterday was the first day since the beginning of Job Slobs that I didn't post anything.  You might think that it was because everything was so slow, relaxing, and jovial at the office that I just forgot.  Or maybe you imagine that I was so distracted all day by my exceptional physical health, my ache-less head, and remarkably un-runny nose.  Or perhaps you envision me in my own office all day just doing a great job rather than being called in to the big boss' office to hear that I'm not.  Alternatively you might picture that, after not hearing that I was doing a not great job, I would never have dared to sneak out of the office for an hour on a day that we tape our show because I had an audition that I really wanted to make it to, and that the reason I didn't post was because I was so dutifully at my desk not doing that.  On all these points you would be wrong.  Like, super wrong.  But I do appreciate your optimism and good faith.

Up on the I Wish

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

You know, it's pretty rare to have a moment of clarity so profound as I have had this week.  A truth has become so magically clear that I can't believe I didn't see it before.  What have I realized?  What has this great and powerful universe shown to me this week?  The universe has shown me that the reason that no part of my employee orientation included directions to the roof of my office building was because my boss was going to tempt me so enticingly to jump off of it as a pleasant alternative to dealing with her and the inane assignments that she creates that- could I find my way there and were my shoes comfortable enough- leaping from five stories would seem a pretty great option.  Now I'm not saying that I want to end it all- don't read me wrong- I'd just really like to get out of doing some dumb stuff.  And prove a point.  And take some sick days.  But alas.

The assignment that I'm dealing with this week that has me wanting to play failed Superman so badly is actually too boring to describe in words that anyone would be able to read without their face falling asleep, but I believe that it can be communicated in metaphor... 

It's as though the big boss of our show said off-handedly at a meeting last week that he would like a couple grains of sand for a show we've got coming up.  Then my immediate boss tasked my office mates and me with a job similar to going to the beach and bringing back, one by one, each individual grain of sand that the big boss ever stepped on.  And when the big boss got wind of this assignment he did not assign, he clarified and said the equivalent of, "No, no... Just take a quick trip down to the shore with your pails and shovels and bring me enough sand to make a small sand castle."  And then it was like my immediate boss ignored him, and insisted we keep gathering sand no one wants in a crushingly tedious way.  As if she sucked at life.  (She sucks at life).

But it must be done, and so I will do it.  At least until I figure out how to open a window.  (Note: That almost sounded like that optimistic expression about doors closing and windows opening.  Any allusion to a positive, reasonable attitude is unintentional.  I was talking about jumping.)

Full Bodied

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

 

Well look who got some little arms and legs and other stuff today!  Wax cheese person did!  With just one more Babel cheese round, I was able to really put together a nice little desk tchotchke.  It was also a great project in that I could have an appropriate screen up on my computer (as in something that relates to my job) while still not paying it any attention.  This was useful because here's something stupid I've been doing lately: When I have a window open on my computer for my Scrabble game or Facebook or Old Navy (girl's gotta get a swimsuit, am I right?) and someone comes up behind me, I jump in my seat and- as they watch- pull up a work-related window.  I do this as if the person has either lost their power of sight, or could somehow be convinced to believe that everyone keeps up a decoy window and their real focus is on the minimized one.  This is ridiculous.  I cannot stop doing it.

Another trick I've been pulling that is fooling no one but... no one... is that I hold my purse low by my side- instead of putting it over my shoulder- to be less conspicuous when I'm sneaking out of the office early.  This would make sense if my coworkers were unable to look down, or if a reasonable thought pattern was: "Oh- It's only 5:30.  Is Katie leaving this early?  She's headed towards the elevator and her computer is shut down, but no... no... She's holding her purse down low which means she's not really holding it.  It's not over her shoulder, so it isn't her real purse and she isn't carrying it in earnest.  She must just be walking somewhere to work harder."  That is not reasonable at all.  Unlike Wax Cheese person.  

Coffee Slob

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

What with the joy of unemployment and devil-may-care sleep cycles woefully behind me, I have developed a fairly consistent morning routine to get me to my desk on time (read: progressively later each day since the day I started).  I wake up early, exercise the dog for an hour, drink coffee, get dressed and ready, drink coffee, cook up some breakfast and pack lunch, leave for the office, drink coffee in the car, arrive at the office, and drink coffee until the moment when I am certain I have had so much that my hands are going to fall off from the shakes and I'm going to toss my cookies (if I had cookies for breakfast- not an impossibility) all over my desk.

I mean- It all starts out normally enough, setting the coffee pot at home to make ten cups of coffee for two people.  But once it goes beyond that, once I get to the office and that little table in the common area with the microwave and the single-cup coffee maker starts calling out to me, asking me to forget a stomach so sensitive that coffee used to make me throw up with such consistency that my dad and I had to have a terrifically awkward conversation wherein I explained to him that, no, I wasn't pregnant just unwilling to forsake caffeine for health, that's when I'm in trouble.  And yet, as often as not, I go for it.  Like the girl you had to stop going out drinking with because she just got too cuh-razy all the time draping herself over the bar at the end of the night to slur an order for a tequila shot to close things down, I will drink that bad-choice cup of coffee.  And then I will pay for it.  And then I will do it again.  Kind of like an experiment.  Sort of like I'm a scientist.  Almost as if I had a job that real.

Mr. T Pities My Coworkers

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

As a way to lighten up our usually somber and antisocial work environment, playing an April Fool's joke really appealed to me this year.  "Hey," I typed in the chat box of a Scrabble game with one of my coworkers while other people actually did their jobs, "We should totally play a joke on someone tomorrow."  I was hoping he would have a killer idea and all the supplies for an epic prank that he'd been sitting on since pledge week in his frat 10 years ago.  He didn't.  I also don't think that he was ever in a frat.  Some dreams die young.

So next I did what all real pranksters do to come up with a moment of hilarity: Serious internet research.  I Googled "best office pranks" and "top ten April Fool's jokes."  Lots of them were too tech-heavy.  Like, if I knew how to override the network systems in my office to send messages as though from Microsoft itself and write a "pretty basic" code that would literally turn the internet upside down, then God help me if I were still sitting here in this office.  I would be running Apple if I could do that, friends.  Running it.  The iPad?  It would have come out five years ago under my stewardship in that sideways flash reality.

So what ended up happening?  This morning I came up with a really simple plan that couldn't have been easier to set up.  I removed the key to our office from its hiding place, went in and locked the door from the inside, and left a note for my office mates that there was an emergency meeting in Conference Room 2E (which doesn't even exist... Aaaaah hahahaha).  Unfortunately, I didn't get my office mate who arrived at the same time as me on board, so while he let me turn out the lights as a part of this most clever rouse, he- unlike me- didn't sit on the floor giggling out of view when the first victim arrived.  Our locked-out office-mate looked for the key for about ten seconds, and then said, "Hey- I can see you in there and I know there's not a meeting.  Open the door."  I opened the door.  April Fools!

To make up for this first failure, we did talk about ordering pizza to be delivered to the office-mate who'd triumphed so easily over the fake meeting situation, but the three of us planning it out couldn't come to a consensus on the toppings- which we realized was because we all secretly hoped that we would be the one who actually got to eat the joke pizza- and things pretty much fell apart from there.  And that- all the disagreement, whispering about someone while they were in the room, and general nefariousness- kind of made it feel like a real holiday, a family holiday, and so a success after all.   

Oakland is Proud

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

I am moving even slower than usual today. Why? Because yesterday I ran a half marathon. It was the Inaugural Oakland Running Festival. I learned about said festival when I was at the Runner's Expo for another local half marathon, because I'm dumb like that.

But not as dumb as the guy in the story I'm about to tell. When I was at the expo and saw the booth for the Oakland Running Festival, I thought 1) that would be cool! and 2) ooh, free water bottles! In order to get said free water bottle, you had to put your name on the email list to stay updated on the festival. Done.

The guy in front of me looked up when he was signing his name to ask the young girl at the booth "why is it called Inaugural?" The girl responded, "because...it's...the...first...one?" It's hard to convey via text that the timidity in her voice was not because she didn't know the answer, but she was trying hard not to sound condescending and seemed to hope that maybe she misunderstood the guy's question.

So anyway, yesterday's run was not that well-organized, but even though it was a little crazy and chaotic, the 13.1 miles was totally worth it for one reason: MR. COOPER WAS THERE! Yes from "Hanging with Mr. Cooper." Remember at the end of the opening credits, it said "Oakland is Proud"? Well it did. And Mark Cooper showed up to show his continuing pride in Oakland and us runners, both at the start AND the finish line. I even fist bumped him when I finished. And then promptly started cramping.