Oct/090
Overheard #1
A little birdie told me...
Me: “Hey, have you read my blog lately?”
Wife: “What? No. I didn’t know you were even updating it.”
Me: “Well I am. Spitzfire.com. Want to read it?”
Wife: “Oh God, is it just you whining about work?”
Me: “…no.”
Wife: [checks it out, and sees the last two posts are me whining about work]
Me: “…well okay maybe a little bit.”
Wife: [closes laptop] “God you’re boring.”
Me: [agrees]
Oct/092
Surviving
Talking about work online is a dangerous proposition, but I’m going to risk it because if I don’t talk about it, I’m going to die.
“Surviving” is definitely the right word to describe my work life right now. I’m not so much ready for these two weeks to be done as I am spending my days envying dead people and hoping for an asteroid collision to spare me from yet another 286-slide PowerPoint presentation.
Can I have his stapler?
You know that feeling you get when you’re with a group of people and they’re quoting movies you haven’t seen? Everyone is laughing at lines that don’t seem to make any sense, and you’re standing there wondering what they heck everyone is talking about?
Imagine having to stand there for 8 hours a day for 8 days in a row.
Now imagine having to take notes on the quotes from the movies you haven’t seen, notes like, “In the line, ‘Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun,’ change the word ‘gun’ to ’shotgun’.”
That, Dear Reader, is what the past two weeks have been like for me.
That said, I’ve learned that if you haven’t yet experienced in-person a 20-minute nerd battle about whether the regional value codes for elastomaric fabrics fall under subheading 9208.00.11 or subheading 9208.00.13 in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, you haven’t truly lived. I’ve also learned that “truly living” is highly overrated.
On Monday, the client asked me if I’d “just gotten off the 5AM train” because I had a little scruff on my face. As the French say, charmant. Apparently, in addition to working, I’m also starring in a soap-opera called “The Bored and the Beautiful.” I came in Tuesday with a haircut and a baby-smooth chin. The director of photography was thrilled.
Oct/090
Nightmares From the Edge of Oblivion
The edge is pretty, but desolate.
It’s a miracle I’m still alive to type this to you.
I can say, without hyperbole, that I just had the most boring day anyone has ever had in the history of Planet Earth. Honest to God, I would have rather been tending the sunburnt fields of Hell if it meant I could have left the carpeted-and-comfortably-cool prison in which I had to sit and suffer today. 8 hours (eight hours!) of my life was spent making notes like, “In slide 2-4, add a period to the end of the sentence, “‘Welcome students to Module 2: Overview of the Textile Import Industry,’” and observing a course on Trade Preference Agreements. Ever heard of NAFTA? Yes, well, for the foreseeable future I am in a room with 25 accountants, 10 observers, and 7 instructors who get their rocks off debating the finer points of the Singapore Free Trade Agreement.
I regained consciousness sometime around lunch, and managed to rise from my chair only to see a luminescent silver fluid glimmering on the armrest. I guess I now know what color my soul is.
I manged to continue breathing until I stumbled home at 5:30 PM and tore the clothes from my body. With my last bit of strength I clawed off the patterned noose around my neck, shed the striped dress shirt, discarded the pleated pants and ditched the brown leather shoes, and just stood in the sunlit bedroom, swaying listlessly, before collapsing into bed and sleeping until 8 PM.
I awoke, but I’m not sure why, because my first thought was, “Why bother?”
Welcome
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