Getting by

Today was pretty much the ideal afternoon. I ate lunch while listening to the baseball game. Then I found a new hobby:

It may not look like a hobby, but it is. It’s called: Reading really funny things about people with plights similar to my own…and other funny stuff too. I came across someecards after we had a little passive aggressive mishap at the workplace watering hole. One day, in an effort to free my lunch from the grips of the fridge, I came across a conversation between Julia and Gulia in the kitchen. Gulia was wiping down our water cooler and going on and on about how she does so every two weeks because she sees people people’s water bottles touch the pouring mechanism on the water cooler (which is spreading the germs of said person to the entire staff), so she likes to wipe it down. Conversation:

Julia: Ohmygawd that’s ga-ross.

Gulia: Totally. I was totally thinking of putting up a sign that said, “Please do not let the mouth of your water bottle touch the water cooler.”

Julia: You totally should. That would be totally great.

Gulia: Yeah, you think so?

Me: (Totally. And we’ll just see how long that lasts before someone rips it down.)

Side note: Two months ago someone exploded their lunch in the microwave and someone else posted a note in the kitchen that said something like, “I am not your mother. Please clean up after yourself,” only much longer and much more condescending. That note lasted all of 35 minutes.

So about an hour later I went back into the kitchen to clean my lunch dishes and there it was on the water cooler: a note that smelled of someone in sales because it was chock full of grammatical errors and they’d thesaurused the shit out of it. I simply rolled my eyes and went about my merry way.

The next day I came in and what caught my eye?

taped over the old note.

After I was done choking on my own spit, I noted that I should check out this someecards. And finally, today, I got around to it. And I laughed the hardest I’ve laughed since the Unethicist was still up and running. It was one of those kinds of laughs where you have to put your head under your desk and pretend you’re picking something up off the floor because if someone walked into your office and saw the glee on your face they would know you weren’t doing work.

When I was done taking 15 minutes to pick that paper clip up off the floor, I played about 30 minutes of Spider (I’ve upgraded to four suits because it usually causes me to have a look of puzzlement on my face - which most closely resembles my expression while working on our books). And then, after doing that for an hour (which by then my boss had been gone for almost 90 minutes - just peaced right on out on a 3-day weekend. No free pass for me. Just, “I’m gonna go. See you next week.” Okay.) Right then I decided to get a little more work done before heading out myself. And just as I hit the X on my game, all the power went out.

Nothing can brighten the day of a cog in the machine like the darkness of your office…and the darkness of your officemates’ offices.

And the eventual sound of firetrucks rolling up to your office as you walk down the street toward home.