Largely because "Bullshit - God has horns!" was actually a line from last night's show.
And also Lafayette delivering the line, "Jesus and me agree to see other people but that don't mean we don't talk every now and then." And Terry's "We will un-fuck this situation later on!"...oh wee, this show is fun.
This show is so made of win in about 50 different ways, the writing and the acting by an ensemble cast is just incredible, but I am clearly obssessed. Any other True Blood fans out there?
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
God Wants You to Know; Or, How FB Has Jumped the Shark
Ok, if God really wants me to know something, I sure as hell hope he picks a better vehicle to communicate with me than a daily posting on Facebook.
What is with all the hyper-religious schill on FB all of a sudden? I think in the past two months, either FB in general or my (long-lost, distant) friends from high school have become religious zealots.
Ick.
What is with all the hyper-religious schill on FB all of a sudden? I think in the past two months, either FB in general or my (long-lost, distant) friends from high school have become religious zealots.
Ick.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Lingering Numbness; Or, How Novacaine + Beer = Bad Idea
As is usual with me, I found myself getting upsold at the dentist recently. So after wasting one afternoon not getting the regular teeth cleaning I was scheduled to get, I got to waste another morning on a deep scale cleansing of my "near bone-loss levels" of "under the gum plaque buildup."
Now as someone who suffered the massive indignity of wearing braces in my thirties (cut to scene of Sara on a date with Merlot-stained formerly clear brackets...hello lovely!), I want to take care of my teeth, and so if my dentist told me he needed to scrape my teeth with a razor blade and charge me $500 for the pleasure, I'd probably do some mental gymnastics to think it was worth it since I'd already sunk so much time, money, and personal embarrassment into my teeth.
So they could only do 1/2 of my mouth at a time - and yesterday was the right side of my mouth. Four shots of novacaine later, I left the office looking and feeling sort stroke-victimish. And I mean no disrespect to anyone who has had or has had a loved one suffer a stroke - I know the horrors of this first-hand, and I am not making light of that condition. But when I tell you from my eyebrows to my neck were numb on the right side of my face....all day long...well, this was a weird situation.
I decided to stop feeling sorry for my numb face and agreed with my husband we'd still go to Trivia Night. Two beers later, and only slightly more feeling in my face than when I arrived, I had a bit of a headache on top of enormous jaw pain.
Drug and alcohol intake aside, we still managed to win Trivia Night!
ps - Despite our winning streak, we may opt out for a few weeks. We really don't want to become those asses who come each week to show off how geeky and useless their trivia knowledge is.
Now as someone who suffered the massive indignity of wearing braces in my thirties (cut to scene of Sara on a date with Merlot-stained formerly clear brackets...hello lovely!), I want to take care of my teeth, and so if my dentist told me he needed to scrape my teeth with a razor blade and charge me $500 for the pleasure, I'd probably do some mental gymnastics to think it was worth it since I'd already sunk so much time, money, and personal embarrassment into my teeth.
So they could only do 1/2 of my mouth at a time - and yesterday was the right side of my mouth. Four shots of novacaine later, I left the office looking and feeling sort stroke-victimish. And I mean no disrespect to anyone who has had or has had a loved one suffer a stroke - I know the horrors of this first-hand, and I am not making light of that condition. But when I tell you from my eyebrows to my neck were numb on the right side of my face....all day long...well, this was a weird situation.
I decided to stop feeling sorry for my numb face and agreed with my husband we'd still go to Trivia Night. Two beers later, and only slightly more feeling in my face than when I arrived, I had a bit of a headache on top of enormous jaw pain.
Drug and alcohol intake aside, we still managed to win Trivia Night!
ps - Despite our winning streak, we may opt out for a few weeks. We really don't want to become those asses who come each week to show off how geeky and useless their trivia knowledge is.
Revolving Doors; Or, How I Keep Losing Employees
I know the fact I have attrition on my team isn't going to require any sort of quantum leap in thinking since I've complained about my employees (mainly their ridiculous attitudes), our co-workers, and the general nimrodery of our workplace. But I lost another one today, and while it wasn't totally surprising, it's sort of rocked me a bit and I've been left wondering what it is I am doing to drive employees away.
I tend to be the sort of manager I think I'd want - I am utterly hands-off unless I really need to be in your business about something. And I think most of the team seems to thrive in that. But managing people, by definition, means you do occasionally have to get in their business and get into the details of how they're doing (or not doing) their jobs, how they're scheduling (or not scheduling) their time, and how they're making progress (or not making progress) towards hitting their utilization numbers (yes, we are a services organization, and so we actually have to record down to the .25 hour our billable time...and you start to understand the fun that is my job). I actually really quite passionately hate these aspects of my job. I hate being the process-Nazi who insists people follow rules, adhere to procedures, and fill out forms. I'm quite sure people probably call me "Lumberg" behind my back and think I get my jollies off of TPS reports. But if they don't follow these rules, then I can't do my job. And since I control a big pool of resources, there are all sorts of repurcussions to me not doing my job for a lot of people.
But I would be happiest if I could just go work in a little cubicle each day, be responsible for my own little piece of work, have no responsibility to or for anyone else, and promptly clock out at 5pm.
Or, you know what, I'd be happy if I had a job that had some semblance of meaning or value to the world and not just to the private equity firm that owns my company. I used to be a teacher...of literature...to students who actually cared about reading and what they thought about what they read and how it made them feel and how it opened them up to some new way of looking at the world or themselves. Those days feel like they were about a million lifetimes ago.
Now I'm just too busy trying to find replacements for the people on my team who leave and who I, quite possibly, have driven to do so.
I tend to be the sort of manager I think I'd want - I am utterly hands-off unless I really need to be in your business about something. And I think most of the team seems to thrive in that. But managing people, by definition, means you do occasionally have to get in their business and get into the details of how they're doing (or not doing) their jobs, how they're scheduling (or not scheduling) their time, and how they're making progress (or not making progress) towards hitting their utilization numbers (yes, we are a services organization, and so we actually have to record down to the .25 hour our billable time...and you start to understand the fun that is my job). I actually really quite passionately hate these aspects of my job. I hate being the process-Nazi who insists people follow rules, adhere to procedures, and fill out forms. I'm quite sure people probably call me "Lumberg" behind my back and think I get my jollies off of TPS reports. But if they don't follow these rules, then I can't do my job. And since I control a big pool of resources, there are all sorts of repurcussions to me not doing my job for a lot of people.
But I would be happiest if I could just go work in a little cubicle each day, be responsible for my own little piece of work, have no responsibility to or for anyone else, and promptly clock out at 5pm.
Or, you know what, I'd be happy if I had a job that had some semblance of meaning or value to the world and not just to the private equity firm that owns my company. I used to be a teacher...of literature...to students who actually cared about reading and what they thought about what they read and how it made them feel and how it opened them up to some new way of looking at the world or themselves. Those days feel like they were about a million lifetimes ago.
Now I'm just too busy trying to find replacements for the people on my team who leave and who I, quite possibly, have driven to do so.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Smells like Home; Or, How Scents Trigger Memory
My husband and I tend to be wine drinkers. He knows a lot about wine, but that's a story for another post. I glom onto his wine knowledge and derive the benefit of his study.
But lately life has been such that I am often in need of a drink to calm down, settle my nerves, forget about my day, what have you. Given that my husband does not always want to have a drink when I do, I suggested getting some box wine - that way I could partake as often as I wanted without the waste of opening a whole bottle if he wasn't drinking any. My husband picked out what he found to be the best respected box wine (I don't believe there was a long list here...but I give him credit for looking into this on my behalf).
That swill was undrinkable.
So apparently over the past couple of years my wine palate has developed enough that I can't drink the box wine anymore. I'm guessing I shouldn't even bother with Charles Shaw ever again. Mind you, these were my staples about 3 years ago, so it's not as if I've been some wine snob my entire legally-able-to-drink life. Hardly.
But I have so digressed.
After the box wine failure, my husband suggested I find a cocktail I like and just recreate that at home for nights when I want a drink. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to drink-fixing (not so when it comes to food fixing, paradoxically). So gin and tonic it was! I made one a short while ago and in lifting the drink to my lips, I was almost overcome with the scent of the sweet tonic, the tart lime, and the fizzy wonderfulness popping and crackling in front of me. But what hit me like a ton of bricks in that moment was the memory of the smell - a scent I smelled so often around an aunt who played a significant role in raising me. I can't say I saw her drink many gin and tonics in her day (though surely she must have); I just recall her sister drank them like water, and so whenever we were all together, my aunt made them, and she had the limes at the ready, and the smell, the smell - it was like I was 10 years old again, looking at my aunt and her sister and thinking how cool and sophisticated it must be to be able to drink such a drink and how much fun they seemed to have while drinking them....always laughing, forever smiling and giggling with one another.
Somehow my gin and tonic experience wasn't quite so exuberant as all that. But having the drink sure brought back a flood of happy memories about my aunt and my uncle who loved us so much. They're both gone now, and my life is less for it.
What scents trigger memories for you?
But lately life has been such that I am often in need of a drink to calm down, settle my nerves, forget about my day, what have you. Given that my husband does not always want to have a drink when I do, I suggested getting some box wine - that way I could partake as often as I wanted without the waste of opening a whole bottle if he wasn't drinking any. My husband picked out what he found to be the best respected box wine (I don't believe there was a long list here...but I give him credit for looking into this on my behalf).
That swill was undrinkable.
So apparently over the past couple of years my wine palate has developed enough that I can't drink the box wine anymore. I'm guessing I shouldn't even bother with Charles Shaw ever again. Mind you, these were my staples about 3 years ago, so it's not as if I've been some wine snob my entire legally-able-to-drink life. Hardly.
But I have so digressed.
After the box wine failure, my husband suggested I find a cocktail I like and just recreate that at home for nights when I want a drink. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to drink-fixing (not so when it comes to food fixing, paradoxically). So gin and tonic it was! I made one a short while ago and in lifting the drink to my lips, I was almost overcome with the scent of the sweet tonic, the tart lime, and the fizzy wonderfulness popping and crackling in front of me. But what hit me like a ton of bricks in that moment was the memory of the smell - a scent I smelled so often around an aunt who played a significant role in raising me. I can't say I saw her drink many gin and tonics in her day (though surely she must have); I just recall her sister drank them like water, and so whenever we were all together, my aunt made them, and she had the limes at the ready, and the smell, the smell - it was like I was 10 years old again, looking at my aunt and her sister and thinking how cool and sophisticated it must be to be able to drink such a drink and how much fun they seemed to have while drinking them....always laughing, forever smiling and giggling with one another.
Somehow my gin and tonic experience wasn't quite so exuberant as all that. But having the drink sure brought back a flood of happy memories about my aunt and my uncle who loved us so much. They're both gone now, and my life is less for it.
What scents trigger memories for you?
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Ruminations on Blogging; Or, How I Screwed Up Facebook and Wound Up Here
I tend to be one of those people who simply must unload when I'm irritated by something (which, unfortunately for people who know me, tends to happen about 99 44/100th percent of the time). I generally avoid direct confrontation as much as possible - which is extremely difficult given I work with the largest group of nincompoops ever assembled in one company. So whenever I'm frustrated, I feel compelled to update my status on Facebook.
Sara is: wondering why English proves so challenging to native speakers.
Sara is: not suffering fools gladly.
Sara is: sitting at CVG about to get bumped from my flight.
Sara is: sitting in PHL waiting on a delayed US Airways flight. Quelle surprise.
Sara is: still not suffering fools gladly.
Just a few recent samples of FB statuses. Seeing the theme? Only there's a meta-theme to my theme. I actually can't say what I want to say in my status...because I was stupid enough to let work people friend me on FB. This was back in my early days of FB, back before everyone and his mom (literally) got on, so I didn't have a well thought out strategy on using the tool. And even my company has really gotten into FB...during our big annual user conference, there were fan pages and status updates and blast messages each and every day for the 5 days of the conference. Don't get me started (no really, don't, because they jumped right on Twitter too...and so that's forever ruined for me too).
Worse though - many people who actually work for me are friends with me on FB. So even though at least 5 times a day I am left, mouth hanging agape, wondering how some people could be both simultaneously utterly needy and entirely self-righteous, I sure can't comment about anything very directly on FB, or else I'd soon have a mutiny on my hands. And the icing on the cake was when one of my employees actually de-friended me when she was angry someone else in the department got the promotion she thought she deserved (despite being in her current position a whole 7 months...what was I saying about self-righteous? Oh, I digress...).
My point is this - I think I've utterly ruined FB for myself, and so I sit fairly dormant on it most days. I might put up a bland update like "Sara is going to dinner at Nicola's for Restaurant Week," or I become a fan of Domo-kun, or something equally titilating. But essentially, it's a useless tool for me because I can't really be me on there, and I actually wish I could exclude a huge part of my life from my profile. I've read about people who have a personal FB page and a professional FB page...but frankly, that seems like an awful lot of work, and I think I'm either FB lazy or disinterested or maybe both.
So a blog it is - and it will be here that I spout off about what I'm thinking, what may be causing the latest angst, or what I'm trying to do to work through any of it. But I'm curious if anyone else has sorted out this particular circumstance or if FB has become so passe as to not even bother worrying with it.
NB: I like FB mainly for one thing these days - all kinds of crazy updates and sneak peeks of True Blood. And I would fan that stuff to death on FB, except that it would make all of my employees think I'm some vampire-obssessed weirdo. Which I probably am. But they don't need to know that.
Sara is: wondering why English proves so challenging to native speakers.
Sara is: not suffering fools gladly.
Sara is: sitting at CVG about to get bumped from my flight.
Sara is: sitting in PHL waiting on a delayed US Airways flight. Quelle surprise.
Sara is: still not suffering fools gladly.
Just a few recent samples of FB statuses. Seeing the theme? Only there's a meta-theme to my theme. I actually can't say what I want to say in my status...because I was stupid enough to let work people friend me on FB. This was back in my early days of FB, back before everyone and his mom (literally) got on, so I didn't have a well thought out strategy on using the tool. And even my company has really gotten into FB...during our big annual user conference, there were fan pages and status updates and blast messages each and every day for the 5 days of the conference. Don't get me started (no really, don't, because they jumped right on Twitter too...and so that's forever ruined for me too).
Worse though - many people who actually work for me are friends with me on FB. So even though at least 5 times a day I am left, mouth hanging agape, wondering how some people could be both simultaneously utterly needy and entirely self-righteous, I sure can't comment about anything very directly on FB, or else I'd soon have a mutiny on my hands. And the icing on the cake was when one of my employees actually de-friended me when she was angry someone else in the department got the promotion she thought she deserved (despite being in her current position a whole 7 months...what was I saying about self-righteous? Oh, I digress...).
My point is this - I think I've utterly ruined FB for myself, and so I sit fairly dormant on it most days. I might put up a bland update like "Sara is going to dinner at Nicola's for Restaurant Week," or I become a fan of Domo-kun, or something equally titilating. But essentially, it's a useless tool for me because I can't really be me on there, and I actually wish I could exclude a huge part of my life from my profile. I've read about people who have a personal FB page and a professional FB page...but frankly, that seems like an awful lot of work, and I think I'm either FB lazy or disinterested or maybe both.
So a blog it is - and it will be here that I spout off about what I'm thinking, what may be causing the latest angst, or what I'm trying to do to work through any of it. But I'm curious if anyone else has sorted out this particular circumstance or if FB has become so passe as to not even bother worrying with it.
NB: I like FB mainly for one thing these days - all kinds of crazy updates and sneak peeks of True Blood. And I would fan that stuff to death on FB, except that it would make all of my employees think I'm some vampire-obssessed weirdo. Which I probably am. But they don't need to know that.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sloth Love Chalk: Or, How to Win in Trivia without Really Trying
So I am not clever enough to come up with this name. There has to be a story.
The ever-present and (I predict) overused "we" that will find its way into this blog will refer to me and my husband. I am a middle-management wonk, alternating between hating and just mildly loathing my job, and I work from a home office (translation: I actually do work each and every day, though I do not actually get up, dress in nice business clothes, and go into an office like most normal adults...and yes, working from home has most definitely lost its novelty after doing it for over 6 years). My husband is a new lawyer still looking for a job. My cat is kind of crazy and fairly reclusive. But enough about us.
Given our current professional ennui (heh!), we look for various things to do at night that are neither extremely expensive nor that require a lot of effort. Trivia night it was since that amounts to walking about two blocks down the street from our apartment, plopping ourselves into a booth, and ordering some tasty drinks.
We've done the Trivia Night at Nicholson's before - we lost, and we hung our heads in shame because we fancy ourselves quite snappy people who know lots of useless information (and we've been banned from ever playing as a team in family Trivial Pursuit challenges since we so unmercilessly whipped every other team each time we've played). But we gave it another go tonight.
Who painted the Sistine Chapel? Please.
What state are you in when visiting Martha's Vineyard? Can we get some real questions here?
Who said "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" in Apocalypse Now? Ok, now we're talking.
What is the deepest lake in Russia, which also happens to be the deepest lake in the world? Ruh roh.
We missed at least one gimme - Who starred opposite Audrey Heburn in Funny Face?...don't get me wrong. This was not a "gimme" to me because I am woefully ignorant about movies not made in the mid-80's. But my husband is a film connoisseur. The man went to film school at USC for Christ's sake, so he knows his stuff. But we blew that one.
So Nicholson's trivia night always has a "speed round" of music clips...this is totally where we lost it in our previous attempt. Tonight's music was focused on contemporary female singers.
But they always do a little break between the first 20 questions and the music round, and it was then that we needed to decide our team name before turning in our answers. My husband suggested "SlothLoveChalk" after about 20 minutes of looking stumped and/or constipated about coming up with some clever name for us. So I wrote "SlothLoveChalk" all over our forms thinking it was a weird name, but he suggested it, so I was going with it.
He jerked the paper from me and laughed uproariously - "Sloth Love Chunk! From The Goonies!"....uh gee, what was I saying about mid-80's movies? Hmmm..."So am I Chunk in this team?" I asked. A look of fear washed over him and he insisted not, but I was caught between thinking it was funny and thinking it was totally not funny, and the music round started.
And I rocked that music round! I got all 10 pop songstresses without even having to think about it. Give me some Pink, and some Sara Barielles, and some Fergie, and some Adelle, Duffy, and Leona Lewis. So thanks to me and my bubble-gum taste in music (apparently), we won Trivia Night!
And when the winning team was announced, our name echoed through Nicholson's repeatedly - "Sloth and Chunk won! Sloth and Chunk are tonight's winners!"
The sweet victory was made all the funnier with "Sloth and Chunk" being bellowed through the place, but somehow I still wished I'd left it as Sloth and Chalk.
The ever-present and (I predict) overused "we" that will find its way into this blog will refer to me and my husband. I am a middle-management wonk, alternating between hating and just mildly loathing my job, and I work from a home office (translation: I actually do work each and every day, though I do not actually get up, dress in nice business clothes, and go into an office like most normal adults...and yes, working from home has most definitely lost its novelty after doing it for over 6 years). My husband is a new lawyer still looking for a job. My cat is kind of crazy and fairly reclusive. But enough about us.
Given our current professional ennui (heh!), we look for various things to do at night that are neither extremely expensive nor that require a lot of effort. Trivia night it was since that amounts to walking about two blocks down the street from our apartment, plopping ourselves into a booth, and ordering some tasty drinks.
We've done the Trivia Night at Nicholson's before - we lost, and we hung our heads in shame because we fancy ourselves quite snappy people who know lots of useless information (and we've been banned from ever playing as a team in family Trivial Pursuit challenges since we so unmercilessly whipped every other team each time we've played). But we gave it another go tonight.
Who painted the Sistine Chapel? Please.
What state are you in when visiting Martha's Vineyard? Can we get some real questions here?
Who said "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" in Apocalypse Now? Ok, now we're talking.
What is the deepest lake in Russia, which also happens to be the deepest lake in the world? Ruh roh.
We missed at least one gimme - Who starred opposite Audrey Heburn in Funny Face?...don't get me wrong. This was not a "gimme" to me because I am woefully ignorant about movies not made in the mid-80's. But my husband is a film connoisseur. The man went to film school at USC for Christ's sake, so he knows his stuff. But we blew that one.
So Nicholson's trivia night always has a "speed round" of music clips...this is totally where we lost it in our previous attempt. Tonight's music was focused on contemporary female singers.
But they always do a little break between the first 20 questions and the music round, and it was then that we needed to decide our team name before turning in our answers. My husband suggested "SlothLoveChalk" after about 20 minutes of looking stumped and/or constipated about coming up with some clever name for us. So I wrote "SlothLoveChalk" all over our forms thinking it was a weird name, but he suggested it, so I was going with it.
He jerked the paper from me and laughed uproariously - "Sloth Love Chunk! From The Goonies!"....uh gee, what was I saying about mid-80's movies? Hmmm..."So am I Chunk in this team?" I asked. A look of fear washed over him and he insisted not, but I was caught between thinking it was funny and thinking it was totally not funny, and the music round started.
And I rocked that music round! I got all 10 pop songstresses without even having to think about it. Give me some Pink, and some Sara Barielles, and some Fergie, and some Adelle, Duffy, and Leona Lewis. So thanks to me and my bubble-gum taste in music (apparently), we won Trivia Night!
And when the winning team was announced, our name echoed through Nicholson's repeatedly - "Sloth and Chunk won! Sloth and Chunk are tonight's winners!"
The sweet victory was made all the funnier with "Sloth and Chunk" being bellowed through the place, but somehow I still wished I'd left it as Sloth and Chalk.
Sloth Love Chunk
Feeling often dismayed about my life, disgusted with my job, or generally disgruntled about something, I figured I'd write about my life's adventures (or utter lack thereof). And off we go...
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