A little run down.

Yes, as a matter of fact I am. I'm tired of many things at this job and so I will double entrendre my way into a little run down of what is making me so:

1.) My boss: his little disapproving noises, "mmm, hmmmm, ehhh" I hope he gets some sort of sickness and looses his ability to produce sound.

2.)The Cafe: the meat has this iridescent sheen. Nice on nail polish, gross on cold cuts.

3.) The Bathroom I DON'T have: I have to walk to another building to tinkle. I'm all for exercise, but sometimes when nature calls, it does not want to wait for you to run down the stairs and across the parking lot and down the hallway to answer.

4.)Status Meetings: What I affectionally refer to as the "My boss is selfish and sneaky" meeting where he gathers everyone together and we tell him what we're doing so he doesn't have to spend time actually doing his job keeping track of what we're doing.

5.) Me getting NO raise: Zero, nada, squat. I mean, I wasn't expecting to be showered with praise or even mildly appreciated, but 1% cost of living would have been the decent, honorable thing to do. Then again, I work here, so this makes perfect sense.

I could go on, but I'd rather spend my time on the company's dollar looking for new, pleasant sounding, fresh tasting, generous places to work, with conveniently located bathrooms and an understanding of inflation.

So bored I actually wrote a review of the cake I just ate

******* College caters to connosieus of both overpriced education as well as overpriced food. Fortunutely what takes place
inside the classroom and inside the oven is of a generally good quality.

Take, for instance, the cafe's chocolate mocha cake (featured on Thursdays), which rings in at a whopping $3.75 for a slice so meager that even two small japanese women would have trouble splitting it. Perhaps we're charged extra for the strawberry that accompanies it in its cube-shaped plastic chamber? In any case, when the fork find its way past the light coffee-flavored frosting and delves into the dark and bouncy devils food cake, you realize you may not have been led astray. The lightness and softness of the texture is impressively good. Silky, delicated and very satisfyling. Soooooo light and airy that it would definitely benefit from a larger helping.

A excellent choice if you have some extra change to spend (that you really shouldn't be spending on dessert) after a fully expensed departmental meal where your lunch tasted like cardboard.

What goes up must come back to work. :-(

Yep, that's me and my boyfriend swaying 700 ft high with our heads in the clouds. Lovely as that was, I am now back down to earth and securely seated at my desk writing conference schedules and speakers profiles and all the content writing reality has to offer. I'm a bit surprised at how easy it was to transition back to work. But it's true. I guess as much as I bitch about my lame job, it's pretty palatable, not great, not bad. Just "fine." Like going to dinner at Marie Calendars. How's that chicken dinner? Oh, it's fine . . .

This complacency makes me nervous though. The last thing I want to do is wake up 5 years from now and still be eating the same chicken dinner at Marie Calendars, when I could be eating steak at Spago. Why am I always thinking in terms of food? I should not write posts when I'm hungry.

Aint it funny . . .

That over a month ago I posted a big rant about lame vacation spoils from Hawaii and tomorrow I am leaving to go there myself. I have not been in a writerly mood until now, when I am overjoyed to get some time off and leave this HELL HOLE for which I have been working.

A lot has gone down since August 15th.

I lost my boss.

I lost any shred of respect I had for my direct superiors and there direct superiors and so on.

And in turn, I lost my will care about what I'm doing here; I failed to care enought to write about it. Sad but true.

All the relentless stupidy will be written down one day when the time is right. It will be ridicuous and it will be fantastically funny. Luckily time does that to snivelling comments and passive aggressive work environments.

But all in good time. Right now I have shuttle reservations to make. :-)

See you in a few weeks!

Post Vacation Gifting

When you go on vacation why is it obligatory to buy something for every person in your office, whether you like them or know them or not, that is dumb and less than a dollar (or the value of such in some foreign currency)? Whatever joker started this must be laughing their fucking head off.

My vacation spoils so far, and remember I'm knew to my current boat of corporate crazies, are a mini rubber cow and a Hawaiian pencil. Yay. My life is now complete.

It's just one more layer of bullshit, like the forced "Oh how are you?" someone asks while speeding past you hoping you don't want to actually answer. Wouldn't words and actions and mini rubber cows mean a little more if we really wanted them to?

When I go on vacation, I'm bringing something back for my boss (maybe) and for my editor friend here that I adore and love to talk to every day. That's it. And it's gonna be something cool (not from my vacation spot's 99 cent only store) and everyone else can go shove their brand new Hawaiian pencils up their butts. :-)

Felons, Cousins and Radicals Beware!

I spent the better part of my morning proofreading a new version of the 2007 health insurance coverage policy. We all get these when we start new jobs, but do we ever read the fine print? Well, it's my job now to read ALL fine print and, to my surprise, there was actually some vital and mildy entertaining information about health insurance coverage that most of us probably don't realize.

Did you know that the following are not covered?

1.) If you hurt yourself while parachuting or flying an "aerial vehicle"

2.) If you hurt yoursef while committing a felony or participating in a "riotous insurrection"

3.) If you hurt yourself and are the supposed spouse or domestic partner of the insured individual, when in actuality, you are a blood relative and involved in an incestuous relationship with the insured individual


Assuming that most coverage policies have similar guidelines, please be mindful folks and check to see whether you can parachute, rob an ice cream truck or storm the Bastille with a little peace of mind that your own medical coverage is intact.

My Boss Likes My Shoes

After a particularly grueling week of work 2 weeks ago, last week left me a little drained, so even without much work to do, I didn't feel much like posting. Now, with lots of fodder from last week and a 20 oz. iced mocha under my belt, I feel rested as well as rejuventated (and by "rejuventated" I mean hyped up on caffiene, wheeeeeeee!)

I might have mentioned that I don't really hang out with a lot of people at work or have a "flourishing garden of friends" or whatever. I'm like one of those house plants in its own pot, or I'm in a window box with a couple other colorful varieties that keep to themselves and don't need much water, i.e. my boss and the senior editor - basically the only people with whom I care to have non-work related conversations. So that's why you only hear about them unless I'm bashing upper management yet again. And since the senior editor was out sick most of last week most of this is boss related material.

And with that long winded botanical preface, here's all the fun stuff you missed due to my posting ennui:

1.) Singing - My boss and our graphic designer, who seem to be the same age and thus grew up watching the same TV shows, apparently have a thing for theme songs. I listened to several lovely duets from two middle-aged men humming and singing Starsky and Hutch, The Jeffersons, and Get Smart.

2.) Zodiac Signs - Not only do my boss and I share the same sign, Aries, we share the same birthday. No wonder we get along! Turns out the graphic designer who sits right in front of my boss is also an Aries, which promted my boss to exclaim with an unusual amount of enthusiasm, "I now call this corner, THE RING OF FIRE!" Who says things like that?

3.) The knowledge that I am merely a pawn in this game I call "my job" - No matter how well, or expeditiously I perform my job duties, I must always rememeber, that there will be someone who's being paid bundles more than me to take what I've written and turn it back into shit and call it better.

4.) The title of this post -

Gullwing Tretorns were first introduced to me as a little kiddie. My mom dabbled in college tennis and back in the 70's tretorns were all the rage. So I bought my first pair when I was 13 and have been a convert ever since. Luckily few people like them so you can find them ridiculously cheap, if you can find them at all. What makes them SO great is that they are lined with terry cloth so it's bascically like a shoe that comes with its own sock. BAD ASS.

My Boss is a squash player and when I walked in the door this morning he immediately spotted my shoes and and began to explain the evolution of "old skool" tennis shoes. He even runs his own blog about the sport called www.squashlord.com or something.

That's it.

I've also been writing this post for an extremely long amount of time because the Senior Editor stopped by to bitch about how crazy, scandalous and devious upper management is here which took up a solid 45 minutes. God I love her. :-)

Artsy Photo Montages on Blogger? Who knew!

Such an apt description of what I do, that I just had to quote it . . .

The following is an email chat I had with my coworker and fellow editor this morning after she was out of the office yesterday.


-----Original Message-----
From: E
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:42 AM
To: Sarah
Subject: Good Morning

Did I miss anything yesterday?


-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:44 AM
To: E
Subject: Good Morning

Nope, you didn't miss much. I had lunch with Matt, Iris and Erica. That
was,
eh.

-----Original Message-----
From: E
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:50 AM
To: Sarah
Subject: Good Morning


Whoa! Lunch with Iris and Erica? Was it a working lunch?


-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:53 AM
To: E
Subject: Re: Good Morning

Yeah, we had to discuss the 08 Conference brochure, which I'm writing and apparently it's a BFD (big f-ing deal). Matt said this will basically absorb all of my time.

It's just a brochure people! It's really small, so I'm kinda worried that I'm not worried about it. Y'know?

-----Original Message-----
From: E
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:57 AM
To: Sarah
Subject: Good Morning

Yes, I totally know what you mean. When they ask you to "work your magic" on copy I always cringe.


-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:59 AM
To: E
Subject: Re: Good Morning

Haha, you know those women VERY well. That was pretty much exactly what they told me to do, "just use your strengths to dazzle us" or something ridiculous.

I'm supposed to talk to some lady named Chee today or Monday


-----Original Message-----
From: E
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 11:03 AM
To: Sarah
Subject: Re: Good Morning

It's almost as if they are setting you up with all that "dazzle us," "work your magic," "weave your words into a beautiful tapestry" b.s. that they do, because I never really feel I know how to make something BORING interesting.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 11:03 AM
To: E
Subject: Re: Good Morning

It's all pretty damn funny how seriously these people take themselves.

-----Original Message-----
From: E
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 11:05 AM
To: Sarah
Subject: Re: Good Morning

Oh yeah. It's a good thing to know the Conference is going to rival the second coming of Jesus.

My Inner Artist Emerges In Push Pins

I call it Post-Postmodern Contemporary Pointilism

Why I simply MUST clean my car more often . . .

Below is the assembly of stuff strewn about my car when asked to provide transportation to both boss and cowoker for our team lunch:

1.) Leftover giftwrap from friend's b-day gift
2.) Cycling cleats
3.) Miscellaneous receipts dating back to 2006
4.) Tupperware container from two days ago
5.) Empty toilet paper roll . . . I seriously have no idea why
6.) Star Magazine (VERY bad form)
7.)Deflated soccer ball


Don't let this happen to you.

Office Monkey See, Office Sea Monkeys Do (exist!)

Don't try making sense of this post's title. That's like trying to justify the existence of Sea Monkeys, which (as we all know is the case with mystical beings like Fairies and Mermaids and Elvis) you must believe in, in order to see them, unless you're instructed by a coworker to to sprinkle nanoteaspoons of yellow sea monkey food into a "seamokarium" every other day so that they won't starve to death, or, better yet the fear that their possible existence partnered with your forgetfulness might result in dead mystical creatures floating around in a misty yellow monkey broth on aforementioned coworker's desk upon her return. Yup. That'll do the trick too.

I fed them yesterday. I'm covered till tomorrow.

Our "Process"

My boss created this work of art in order to describe for us the inner workings of our department. After a 35 minute lecture, I still have no idea what's is going on.

Note the impregnable "Walls of Separation" both major and minor. Those are my favorite. What they are separating exactly is still very much in question.

I HIGHLY recommend clicking on this picture to enlarge it and "appreciate" its bepuzzling intricacies.

I REALLY need to decorate . . .

That's all there is to say.

First week

Normaly, this is the anomoly week. Work is light, your disoriented, and you don't get paid. I don't think this is the anomoly week this time around.

Light work load: NO. I hit the ground running. Lot's of proofing and 6 campaigns that involved 3 aspects and they needed copy in wireframe format for all of them = 18 little projects in 1.5 days. Yowsers. I finished it but was concerned initially.

Disoriented: Not really. I'm used to confusing buildings (um Dwinelle anyone?, Lauel will know), but I have an almost freakishly normal schedule. I get in around 9 I eat lunch with my book in the courtyard from 12:45 to 1:45 I get a free cookie in the break room at 2:30. I leave around 5. I feel pretty comfortable.

Don't get paid: NOPE I do!!!!! They were able to get me into the system just under the wire. Like I've said, I'm lucky.

So now that the mystery is gone and most of the stress has abated. You can say goodbye to those morose pensive things I've been writing and look forward to some peppier prose. :-)

Me: To be continued

Next time I write here, I will be somewhere else. I might even be someone else. A new home, and a new job, and lots of things I don't even know I will have and be. Behavioral psychologists claim that your outside actions influence the inner self? Say you want to quit smoking and you always smoke after work in one particular coffee shop, behaviorists will tell to you stop going to the coffee shop altogether so that you disassociate with the behaviors you had there. To take yourself away from yourself.

Change happens from outside and travels inward. Pretty simple idea. So my environment here is part of my identity. When I leave, I will eventually center myself around different things and different places. Things and places that will become the everyday fabric of my life. Patterns and people will work their way into me and slowly I will be a corner at 7:45 am with a sharp turn, and a long walk from a parking lot across campus, a local park, a late night haunt with live music and a little perch on which to sit and watch, to absorb the life into me.

I will still be me. Obviously. I will still be the same. But changing and different. I will be just like the word "still," which in one place can mean "to remain the same" and somewhere else can mean "to continue on." Still and still moving. Still and still changing. Still and still becoming. Still myself.

Last Words

Tomorrow is my final day here. I've packed up all my trinkets and taken all the personal and blackmail-worthy matieral off my office PC. I've started to do all the required motions but I just can't seem to write my office Farewell letter. They really just make me sick. So many people have left this place that I've become well-versed in the farewell epistle, that which chronicles the "valuable and unforgettable" experience each person has found here and how much "we will be truly missed" and yadayadahyadah. These "sincere" employment eulogies make my literary sensibilities wretch from sugared emotion overload and are the single last thing I want to leave here with my name attached to. I want to be truthful and direct and appreciative of all the time I've spent here expending this company's internet resources and free soft drinks.

I could be cheeky:

All good things must come to an end. And this my friends is the end.

I could be boring:

This is my last day. I wish you all the best.

I could be silly:

Sarah has left the building. I repeat. Sarah has just left the building.

Or I could be a bitch:

I'm getting out before the boat sinks. You best do the same.

All of which I will not (try to) be of course because I do want to leave a good impression here, and I have valued this experience, and I really and truly goddammit will miss working here. I just hate having to say it because it always sounds so lame and artificial since what I'm doing I'm announcing to every one of my coworkers that I am officially blowing this popsicle stand for supposedly bigger and better things and underneath whatever gobbeldey-gook I end with, what they hear is, I'm off to something better than what you have . . .

You know what, I really hope they're right.

I got it. I just don't want to think about it.

I really was job. A week later they offered it to me and I took it, and since then I have successfully signed a new employment contract, rented a new place, and started to move. I have also become one giant ball of nervous energy. I'm stressed and spastic and irritable. Why is it that I can be such and unstressy person about so many seemingly stressful things and then get all stressied up about about this junk, specifically all my junk, not in my "trunk" but scattered across my bedroom floor, that junk.

So I hired movers. Movers to move my junk. Does that help with stress, yes, but it's not enough. My solution - diversionary alternative stress therapy (should I copyright that phrase and send it to Websters?). What is DAST - In short, doing as much shit as I can to snap myself out of my stressfilled universe by throwing myself into another one of equal but opposite stresses. I started cycling with the LA Triclub (nerve-wracking cuz I suck as cycling) and swimming in the ocean (nerve-wracking cuz I suck at swimming). I was so nervous before getting into the open water that my hands were turning blue, but you know what - I sure as shit wasn't thinking about moving! And when I was floating in the water and diving under the waves I was feeling good, feeling like I was getting something done by putting myself out there and trying something new. Giving myself something to be proud of myself for, since the satisfaction of moving can oftentimes take months to finally settle in and satisfy. I'm sure it's the same reason we start alphabetizing our bookshelves and doing the dishes when we should really be writing a final paper, or doing our taxes -some little distraction that makes us feel "good" and productive while we are being "bad" and procrastinative (new word too?).

So there's my life for ya, one diversion after the next until I finally decide to look my move in the face and say, "You don't scare me anymore."

Next diversion: Cinco De Mayo in Sacramento with lots of drinks and wakeboarding. But I might need to throw something more stress-inducing into the mix to really get the job done. Blindfolds?

I AM JOB: The Epic Trilogy

Episode One: The phone interview, which was followed by a pleasant, face to face interview, followed by my polite check-in phone call, followed by silence.

Episode Two: Weeks later, a Spec Assignment is requested to prove my skills of writing and revision, followed by a second Interview with two more people and the request for a paper portfolio (and a thank you note to Interviewers). And a third interview a week later followed by a week of silence . . .

Episode Three: An email is recieved by yours truly commanding yet another spec assignment, a long and annoying one, to be completed over Easter/Spring break weekend, which, for good measure I complete very thoroughly, and return quite promptly. This is all, again, followed by silence.

And here I sit, waiting. If I don't get an offer, I'm gonna be royally pissed.

The Wonderful Thing About Birthdays is That Birthdays Are Wonderful Things

They give you excuses to goof off
And take breaks that last extra long,

so that you appear to have been lost
or just sit writing blogs that are songs.

I left I left I left at 4:15!!!!!!

The wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful thing about Birthdays . . .

is that Birthdays are wonderful things!


(to the "Tigger Song" Melody)