apropos of anything

Only 30 hours late and mildly sick. I consider that quite impressive.

In lieu of a real substantive post, I’m going to post a picture for the moment. My boss snapped this one of me yesterday during a mini staff meeting in his office. I didn’t realize just how tired I was until he showed me the image:

My cousins’ kids did the henna. It’s actually better on the palms, but the color there has faded, so Joey chose to shoot the back of my hands instead. Shortly afterwards, he told me to go home early if I could (because obviously I needed some sleep).

My company has two campuses in this city, and lately my time has been split between both of them. I don’t yet have a desk at the second campus though, so I either squat in an open conference room, or if it’s not going to be too long, in <name redacted because I didn’t ask permission first> massive cube (now with slidey door!).

Sometimes I have a rough day, and sometimes she does, and sometimes we both do, and if that day happens to be one of the times when I have staked out a corner of her cube… well, let’s just say if you could bottle the bitchiness in that small six foot by four foot space, you’d have enough vitriol to power a small but potent explosive device.

It’s tempered by how giggly we get when we realized we’ve reached atom bomb proportions of volatility, so fear not, fellow colleagues. Your desks and your persons are in no danger. For now.

I was going to write this post a week ago, but I’ve been going through a kind of writer’s block which, mixed with my work and family schedule of late, has resulted in me writing a dozen posts in my head and none on my computer.

But anyway. Baseball owners approved Liberty Media’s purchase of the Braves this month. The official word is that the sale won’t affect the fans at all, but it will. Liberty’s buying the team as a tax write-off. They have no incentive to put money into the team, so our already dwindling payroll might soon rival the Marlins for puniness. And still, baseball is baseball, and the Braves are the Braves, and I have no plans to stop cheering for them. I’m just a little sad that they’re finally parting ways with Turner the company, given their past history with Turner the man.

The CW cancelled Gilmore Girls this month. I didn’t watch this show from the pilot, but the one-two combo of “Rory’s Dance” and “Forgiveness and Stuff” grabbed me, hook, line, sinker. Pamie’s recaps didn’t hurt either. I was obsessively in love with this show at the beginning. I loved the dialogue, the characters, the relationships — the Girls with the townies, the Girls with the Chiltonites, the townies with each other, and especially the Girls with the elder Gilmores. Gilmore Girls did complex familial relationships better than anyone. Season seven wasn’t as glorious as season one, but I’m going to miss my weekly dose of the Lorelais.

The CW also cancelled Veronica Mars this month. This one I did watch from the beginning, and it was awesome. So awesome that when the first season came out on DVD, I sent copies to anyone who had a birthday, anniversary, or holiday within a three month range of the release date. Like GG, VM at the end was not quite up to the standards of VM at the beginning, but it always had so much potential. Veronica Mars, she’s a marshmallow, you know.

And finally, Ken resigned this month. Our visits to the Summit Cafetaria or to get our MARTA passes will now always feel just a little bit incomplete, and the 3:00 p.m. hour will never be the same again. I also won’t have any more Ken and Ivan stories for the blog, which just makes me want to weep with sadness for all of y’all. He has good reasons for leaving, but we miss him in the office, accidentally going to http://www.man.com (instead of www.msn.com) and taking ketchup packets for the team.

I don’t like change.

There, I said it. I prefer things to be the way I know them. It’s not like I’m going to eat mac and cheese for dinner every night for six weeks, or never change up my hairstyle, or always listen to the same album as I drive to work; that gets old and tired, and I’m all for a little variety in my life. When it comes to the big things, though, I like some consistency. Some reliability.

But sometimes it’s good to mix things up a bit.

A few weeks ago I began a blog entry (that I never actually posted) about whether I could give up something I loved, something I could accurately credit as having once saved me, if that same something was now turning me into a shrill, bitter, shrieking harridan. It turns out I can, at least partly, with a little help from my friends.

I’m slightly sad when I think about it, but things were changing without me anyway, so I’d be sad regardless. I will miss people. I will miss them very much, miss confusing Exlax with Maalox, miss feigning outrage over a slight to my plum crisp, miss laughing myself silly that anyone could not know his own pant size, or that an American might need subtitles for a British film. And I’m excited too, because things could be changing way for the better (or not, but I’d rather be a glass half-full kind of gal), and the people that I will miss, they will still be around.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse, and that’s where I’ve been for the past few weeks, trapped in that minute, deciding and revising, treading back and forth upon the stairs, finally realizing that no matter how much it’s going to hurt, I can do this, and I should do this.

I was always going to. It just took me a while to realize that.

So that’s why the radio silence for so long. I had stuff to figure out. I hope to be posting more regularly, and less cryptically, soon.

KEN IS QUITTING.

I… I just don’t know what to say. Who is going to threaten Burger Kings with me now? Do jumping jacks to distract the guy at the Bistro? Tell me I’m a dropout? Ask Dominique Wilkins embarrassing questions? Take my DVD player apart and try to put it back together? Call the NOC to turn off the light on my fishtank? Offer Ivan his spare longjohns when it’s cold outside? Discuss Speedos with Ivan and Carlos at lunch while I valiantly try not to hurl?

It’s just… very sad. We’re all very sad. And we’re channeling that sadness by telling Ken every five minutes just how much he sucks for leaving us.

The Burger King is disturbing. Very, very disturbing. Apparently, that’s the point (and apparently it works). Except me, I am not an 18- to 35-year-old male, so my characterization of this plastic-faced mascot ends with “disturbing” and never progresses to “cool.” I am not, nor will I ever be, a “superfan.” I’m totally okay with that.

What I’m not okay with is a gaggle of Burger King bobbleheads staring up at me from a desktop like a chillingly psychotic bobblehead army. When one of those shows up in your workplace, it is time to take action, my friends. It is time to form your own army.

The bobbleheads, they have been captured. They are currently being held in an undisclosed location, but we are happy to provide pictures as proof of their existence:

Only our strong moral sense kept us from crushing
these maniacal sociopaths into plastic smithereens.
Even sociopaths deserve a chance to defend themselves.

However, if our terms are not met immediately and without protest, we will have no choice but to dispose of the bobbleheads on our own terms… and I promise you, Unnamed Person Who Brought Bobblehead Army Into the Office, it will not be pretty. A taste, if you will, of what’s to come (clicking on the pictures will show you larger versions):

Meet our demands, or the King gets sucked into the Pipeline

The Burger King is pinned after receiving the
smackdown of his short plastic life.

One of his bobblehead buddies attempts a rescue…

…only to discover first-hand what happens to the
foolish figurine who attempts THAT course of action.

Hanging by a precarious slink.

If we have to, we WILL break out the big guns.

We are obviously not kidding around. One false move, and the Kings get it. If the Kings are to be returned unharmed, they must be disbanded. They cannot form groups of more than two Kings at a time. They can no longer grin maniacally at everyone who passes by. They must change expressions every once in a while.

We feel these terms are reasonable. We await your response.

KEN SPIT ON SUPERMAN!

HE. SPIT. ON. SUPERMAN!!!!

I think I may have to find a new job now, or at least make Ivan be the buffer at all times. Of course, Ivan is so offended by the spittle that he might not want to take on that role, and we’ll both have to find new jobs.

Hmm. I suppose that’s not entirely true, but close enough.

Tomorrow is Ice Cream Friday at work. I have been looking forward to this ALL WEEK. They bring in a Ben and Jerry’s man, and he has six or seven tubs of B&J ice cream, and there are toppings, but I so rarely get them because the ice cream is too good to pollute with sprinkles and crushed Oreos.

Tomorrow I’m also going to Chicago for the weekend because Rashaad has graduated from college, so of course we all have to show up in the same place and have a party. There was a suitcase issue (namely that I didn’t have one, as my gargantuan suiter that I took to India is still in Augusta), but that’s happily been resolved by me borrowing Mansoor’s carry-on for the weekend. Now I’m having a packing issue as I realized halfway through, while on the phone because I like to multitask, that everything I’d packed was either black, white, or denim. I know this season is all about the monochromatic, but I think that’s taking it a bit far.

There’s a possibility my plane reading material is going to be my hardback copy of Jonathan Strange, which is also monochromatic, and that’s no end of funny to me. And possibly only me.

(Also, y’all will be proud of me for going to Borders purposely to buy plane reading and walking out with nothing because I have several books at home that work perfectly well as plane reading. I almost caved on In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, which Doppelganger loved so much, but I decided I had to start at the beginning of the series, and The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was only available in hardback.)

I was going to take a laptop and work on the blog somewhat, and work on work somewhat, and catch up on my email a little, but now I think a few days away from the computer will be good for my carpal tunnel and for me, too.