Where Did November Go?

Hellllllooooooo out theeeeeeeeere....

Good lord, it has been forever and three days since I last wrote. Where the hell did November go? It's gone. We are inching closer and closer to the holidays, and therefore to the end of the year, and therefore to my birthday and therefore to my 30’s. It’s all too much.
Nola is in the holiday spirit though:

I bought him a Christmas thing too, but he LOVES the dradle (sp?). I have a little Jewish dog, it seems. Although I don’t think he’d be down with the yamikah, he doesn’t like things on his head. I know because I tried to put antlers on there. He wasn’t having it. Of course maybe that has more to do with his Jewishness than his dislike of things on his head? I must respect his religion.

So then. I’ve been gone for so long, I feel like I should have a lot to say. Sadly I really don’t. You see, here’s the thing. Remember when I used to support myself doing freelance work? I was doing so much that I was paying all of my bills and traveling the world to boot? Well, I’m still doing all that work. And I went ahead and added in a full-time job to that. So there you go. The math on that addition equation leaves very little in the way of actual blog-worthy-incidents-time. I do apologize.

I haven’t even remembered to post the dog pictures for the past couple of months. My bad.
Here they are:

This was October. It doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween, but it does have everything to do with the Red Hat Ladies and my mom was hosting Halloween Bunco at her house so we decided that her group of friends would appreciate the Red Hat Fido. Unfortunately Fido looked a little naked with just his red hat, so we found a scarf and threw it around him for Bunco night. He’s shy like that.

On a side note, have you guys ever played Bunco? It’s a dice game that is played around the country by groups of ladies who want and excuse to get together and eat and chat. You play by, “Rolling the dice, then you count the numbers and you want them or you don’t, but if you get three you get a bunco, and then someone rings the bell and you get up and you move to the other table, depending on if you won or lost. It’s REALLY easy!” Uh, okay. I crashed October’s game because they needed a sub and I’ve been hearing about these games for 25 years now, and I wanted to check them out.

The night began with everyone gathering around my mom’s new oven and oooo-ing and aaaah-ing. They must have talked for 20 minutes about this oven. A couple hours earlier, when my dad was over at my house (to seek refuge from the women by watching my big screen TV), it took me a good 20 minutes to figure out how to turn my oven ON when he needed to keep his Chinese Food warm. In my mom’s kitchen I stood in the back and ate dip while my mom’s friends went on and on about the oven. None of them even noted the microwave, so I had nothing to contribute to the conversation…

Anywho, here is November’s dog:

He’s a gambler! Good times.

And beside the dog?

The Thanksgiving Turkey.

Uh, Fido, I’m pretty sure when a turkey swaggers up beside you, it might be time to fold ‘em. I’m just saying.

So that’s all I got for now. Hopefully I’ll check in a little more often. I will do my best to put myself in situations that require a blog post. Tomorrow I head off to a bored meeting. I’m sure the excitement that ensues will result in all sorts of posts…ahhhh Corporate America.

The Radio Show

You'll see, and hear the stuff I added to the right hand side of the blog. It is clips from our radio show. Good times. We have been doing it for a month or so now and we are having fun. If you want to stop the fun from coming out of your computer speakers, just push the pause button on the player to the right.

We are at a little public access station in town, talking into the darkness about whatever pops into our heads. We decided to call the show "TBA". Mostly because we didn't have a name, or a theme, or any idea whatsoever what we were going to be talking about every time. We walked in on our first night and the radio dude there said, "Well, you are in the computer as TBA right now." And so we stayed in the computer that way. Plus we think that's a pretty accurate name for us.

We are having a good time mostly because we get to ramble on and on and don't really have to worry about anyone actually listening. The other night Shane, our Radio Dude, came running into the studio with a piece of paper in his hand. He had written on it, in thick sharpie, "You have 19 listeners!!!" We were so excited. Then he came running in AGAIN and flashes 22 of his fingers at me to let me know that we now had 22 listeners. Again, so very exciting. Then. He came in at the break and said, "Well, they are doing some maintenance on the site, to make it better, you know? And well, you DID have 22 listeners, but we sorta kicked them all off with the maintenance."

Oh, how fleeting fame is.

Come back dear listeners!

We are working on a podcast that we hope to get up and running by the end of the week, we'll post shorter versions of the show. We'll cut out all the crappy stuff and just give you the gold. They are going to be VERY short versions of the show.

Random

This entertains me way more than it probably should. God I love the Japanese. They know how to make a television program.

Sad Cubes

I saw this online today and it made me laugh. Apparently my cubicle is luxurious compared to some of these poor workstations:

"Saddest Cubicle Contest"

The winner -- if you can call it winning -- of the Wired News saddest-cubicles contest is David Gunnells, an IT guy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His desk is penned in by heavily used filing cabinets in a windowless conference room, near a poorly ventilated bathroom and a microwave. The overhead light doesn't work -- his mother-in-law was so saddened by his cube that she gave him a lamp -- and the other side of the wall is a parking garage. Gunnells recalls a day when one co-worker reheated catfish in the microwave, while another used the bathroom and covered the smell with a stinky air freshener. Lovely.

Other favs of mine:

This dude doesn't even have the three half walls that usually surround the cubicle dwellers. I thought the three walls were bad, but it turns out not having them (or a desk for that matter (notice the desk drawer that is being used to hold up his work)) is pretty bad too. This can't be an ergonomically correct workstation.

This is actually my favorite. Look, they put the guy in a cargo container. Ha! I guess the half walls aren't that bad. The only good thing about this workstation is that there is the possibility that you might accidently be shipped somewhere cool on a boat. Who knows where you might end up. Hopefully not too far away, as I imagine you only have so much air in those things before you sufficate. And yet, it would still probably be a better way to travel than most airlines...

Retirement

I got a retirement notice in the mail awhile back. I hadn’t been at my job very long when the quarter ended, so my retirement account is a little lacking:

Almost $400 bucks! Sweet. I’m planning my lap of luxury right now. You know, the first day I was in at my job I had to fill out retirement stuff and I was flipping through the retirement book and it had like 5 different lifestyles and how much money you need to have saved up in order to retire and still live the lifestyle that you are used to. My lifestyle was the highest. They asked me if I use coupons, if I like to travel, if I like to eat out, if I like to read instead of doing expensive entertainment options. Hmph. I’m never going to retire. I will have to work till the day I die in order to continue living my damn lifestyle. Whatever.

Here is more depressing news from my retirement account:

They don’t think I’m going to retire till I’m 67? Screw that. And holy crap 2045 sounds like a long time away.

But don’t worry, if I don’t touch my $400 bucks till then I’m all set:

By 2045 that $400 bucks will be $2000 bucks! Hot damn! And look – when I retire in 2045 I can expect to make $12 a month from that $2000. Man, my future looks bright.

I might want to start clipping coupons.

I think that’s the moral of the story.