A Dress Too Far

Me: Ugh, I have to dress up on Friday.

StereoNinja: Why?

Me: Oh, our biggest client is coming in and apparently they want to sit with our department and see what we do, so we've been asked to look presentable.

StereoNinja: HAHAHA "presentable"?

Me: Yeah, [Captain Lego] told the guys to wear trousers and then he looked at me and said "I don't know what you're going to do. Do you have any nice jeans?" I was like "SHUT UP I have trousers!" I think I might wear a tie to make a point.

StereoNinja: You should throw everyone off and wear a nice dress...

Me (cutting him off): Whoa whoa whoa, let's not get fucking carried away.

Stay At Home Mehs

I've been home for the entire day and holy mouse balls I miss my job. Basil, my beautiful MINI Cooper, is not feeling very well in second and third gear and is essentially undrivable at speeds less than 40 mph which makes it a no-go for driving to work at rush hour. The garage can't look at it until Monday and trying to rent an automatic transmission car here is like trying to buy a winter coat in Bermuda - nearly impossible to find and prohibitively expensive when you do. I did finally get my hands on one for tomorrow that will not cost me more money than I would earn over the time I'll have it, but that was not at all helpful to me as far as getting to work today. I don't even know how I did this for months. I mean, sure, I had school work to do and everything (not to mention a car so I could actually leave the island if I wanted to) but Jesus Ka-rihst is it boring to be in your house alone all day long with nothing going on except folding laundry and internet research on visas. The most exciting thing of the day was watching my neighbor power wash the walkway around the marina (this seemed to me the most exciting thing in everyone's day here on Rich-old-people-with-nothing-to-do Island: two other neighbors came over to his place to watch him. Seriously.) I can't wait to go back to work tomorrow.

Obligatory NaBloPoMo Post

Today my former roommate passive-aggressively blamed me for my cat's illness for which she will need surgery and went on to complain the the vet is deliberately running up costs (they're not) and he "can't afford this shit" (it's being paid for by my cat's health insurance). At work, I got out of a meeting over an hour early, which sounds good, but the reason was that the presenter fainted and slammed his head into the podium so hard it will be a miracle if he walks away without a concussion, which was scary as all fuck. And then it took me two hours to get home because I spent the entire first hour stuck in a traffic jam in the car park, whilst watching my fuel consumption in a panic because I was so close to being out of petrol I wasn't sure how long I could actually afford to sit there idling.

My point is, I've had a rough day, I'm in a crappy mood, and I don't feel like being funny at the moment.

Please enjoy this picture of a duck being an asshole to another duck in lieu of me entertaining you.

Unintentional Hiatus FAQ

Were you kidnapped and killed at the 50 Shades meet up?

No, no one has been kidnapped and nobody died. Unless you mean OF LAUGHTER. We had an absolutely awesome time, once we completely abandoned the 50 Shades party game, which sucked horse cadaver balls, and switched to Cards Against Humanity (which is also when we found out that we are all terrible people). I am excited about the real post when I will actually tell you about it.

In that case, where the hell have you been?

All over the place, both mentally and figuratively. I was in England and in France for a good while, during which I was somehow remarkably busy, and then I came back to Chicago to an unbelievable amount of crap going on. I have so much to do that sometimes I get overwhelmed and I call up StereoNinja and cry at him. Not to him. AT him.

What kind of crap?

Oh well, let's see...there's the part where I'm losing my job at the end of this month and I'm frantically putting together notes for the handover to the people who are going to start doing my job and also my boss is panicking and making me INSANE and also BrownsFan is already gone and I CANNOT COPE WITHOUT HER. There's also the thing where I spent Sunday to Wednesday of this week systematically calling everyone in my family and telling them that a) I am leaving forever in a few months, and b) I have been hiding information and/or lying to them for MONTHS now, for a very good reason but lying nonetheless, which fortunately they were all really, really, REALLY understanding and very nice about. And let's not forget the part where I'm making up a dance and a costume and a new name so I can get on stage in less than three months and take my clothes of to music, which reminds me...in related news, I seem to have become involved with a group of very nice people who spend their Tuesday nights drawing pictures of a naked person for two hours. (The naked person is me.)

What ever happened to that thing where you claimed you were moving to England?

Well, that's actually the thing that is taking up all of my time and energy and preventing me from blogging. I can tell you now that I have been accepted into my first choice of graduate school, which is in London, and will be starting my program in October. Which means that in between now and then I have to get rid of 95% of my earthly belongings, sort out shipping and/or storage for the other 5%, gather all the cash up front that I will need for both tuition and living expenses and then prove to both the school and the British government that I have it just sitting there in cash and that they won't have to support my freeloading American ass through social services, apply for a visa, go to an interview for said visa, buy a plane ticket, and literally dozens of other tasks both big and small that come with the decision to move to a different country.

Are you ever going to blog again?

YES OH MY GOD YES. I miss it so, so much, I can't even describe it. But seriously, I am completely wiped out right now. I think if you guys can just give me til the end of April, I can get back to more regular posting and shenanigans. I'll still have all this moving and dance stuff to do, but I won't have a job anymore starting May 1, so that should free up some time, stress, and brain space for the shit I actually LIKE doing.
Don't get me wrong - everything is GREAT right now and I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life. It's just that there's TONS of work involved with my life being this great, and a looming deadline to get all of that work done. I'm trying really hard to get back here, I really miss you guys.

Birthday Wrap Up

HOLY CRIZAPPLE YOU GUYS. Thank you SO MUCH for all the amazing birthday wishes here and on Twitter, especially since I barely reminded anyone about it this year! And also greetings to my birthday twins Lola Cherry Cola and Cat Spinster - I hope you both had as wonderful of a day as I did. Because I did. You know why? Because StereoNinja bought me the stupid Fifty Shades party game we're going to be playing at the UK meet ups and you guys, YOU GUYS, it is FUCKING TERRIBLE. I made a video for you of me opening and examining the contents of the box. Let me tell you something, it is a fucking scene inside that box. Unfortunately it won't be ready for a few days because my esteemed video editor is doing actual work that he gets paid for, but that and the spare notes from 11-13 will be up soon.

Other things I got for my birthday:

• Books (good ones, not this "erotic" novel crap)
• Dalek socks (which I hope won't exterminate my toes)
• A giant Reese's peanut butter heart that I plan to crack open and eat the peanut butter out of with a spoon (THERE'S NO WRONG WAY TO EAT A REESE'S DAMN IT)
• A pirate Santa (I'll say that again. Pirate. Santa.)
• Drunk with my coworkers Thursday night, a night that culminated in my patented sleeping on the bathroom floor move, a raging hangover all day Friday, exactly zero desire to drink on my birthday, and no posts over the weekend (sorry). Also there were feathers EVERYWHERE.

The Final Frontier

Me: [My boss] just gave me a model NCC-1701 to build.

StereoNinja: and that is????

Me: The Enterprise. You lose 5 nerd points for that question.

Apologies And Recommendations

I seem to be having something of a motivational problem at the moment. Partly this is due to the increasing obviousness that I am in the wrong country and partly because I seem to have come back to a crap ton of actual work to do whilst at work. Mostly, though, it's because I read books that I actually enjoyed when I was abroad, and then another one when I got home (I had been waiting for its publication for YEARS, or so it seemed) and, you guys, it is SO HARD to look at that third book sitting on my dresser, knowing the atrocities that await me, and have ANY DESIRE to actually pick it up and look at it. I promise you I will. And I also promise you I will write about those awesome bits of my trip that can actually be shared here. I'm just not sure when. I haven't forgotten you, I swear.

In case you are looking for something hilarious to read (which many of you have complained that you are), the book I just finished is brilliant. It is called This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude Don't Touch It, and if that sounds like an incredibly stupid book for me to be reading, don't worry. The book doesn't contain any actual spiders. Yes, I know that's what it says. Rule number one about David Wong: he lies. His name isn't even David Wong. This book is the sequel to his previous motherfucking amazing book John Dies at the End, which was originally published on his blog as a web series. Both books are the greatest mashup of horror/sci-fi and dick/fart jokes to have ever been penned.

I can also recommend the book Micro, which I absolutely inhaled on the flight home. It's the piece Michael Crichton was working on when he died, and was finished by Richard Preston. But be warned: Unlike This Book Is Full of Spiders, Micro actually has a spider in it. And a centipede. Also, you'll never look at ants the same way again. But it's good.

Speaking of spiders, last night one of them decided to zip line himself down from the ceiling in the bathroom just as I was about to wash me hands. He was two inches from my shoulder before I saw him. Luckily, the bartender knows a spider emergency based on the tone of my voice screams and he came in and rescued me pretty quickly, but we only have the one bathroom in our apartment and I have NO IDEA where I'm supposed to pee now.

Real posts from me are coming, I SWEAR TO XENU.

Damn World Leaders, Get Off My Lawn

In case you are reading this and you are not from Chicago, this past weekend was the NATO summit and it was held right here in the second city for some reason (despite the fact that the G8 summit was like THE DAY BEFORE and half the people attending were already at Camp David for that and why couldn't you just have it there you dicks?). If you ARE from Chicago you are certain to already know this because OH MY FUCK what a shit farming nightmare.

There are two elements to hosting a NATO summit: visiting dignitaries and visiting protesters. The dignitaries fuck up traffic because god forbid they use the same roads as the lowly vassals who live here, so all the roads anywhere near where they currently are or might be going in the future are closed to the unwashed public. The protesters fuck up traffic by standing in the middle of the fucking street as close as they can get to where ever the dignitaries currently are or might be going in the future, or that they aren't going to at all but there was a rumor started that they might, or near any building that houses any company large enough that you've heard of them, or anywhere else they might suspect of quartering The Man.

Let me just stop for a second and remind everyone that I have no real political leanings whatsoever and whether you think NATO is good or bad does not interest me - I just wanted them to go somewhere fucking else. Similarly, I have no problem in principle with protesting about anything a group of people believes to be unjust - you are just in my fucking way. (Although when asked by a WGN reporter on the street what message they wanted to send to NATO, a disturbingly large proportion of them said that America doesn't spend enough money on education, which is true but leads me to believe they don't really understand what NATO does.)

Anyway, back to my entirely apolitical rant: NATO and angry college students fucked up my entire weekend. On Saturday I stayed in, being unwilling to deal with the mania any more than I had to, but even this couldn't be done undisturbed because every helicopter in Illinois was hovering over the city making it completely impossible to sleep or watch television. It was also the day I found out that Sunday was going to be completely ruined. There was SUPPOSED to be a nipple tassel making and twirling workshop at Studio L'Amour that I had been looking forward to for weeks. Alas, NATO struck again and I got an e-mail from Michelle herself that the workshop was cancelled because you couldn't get anywhere near the studio because the roads all around it were closed. Worse than that, it's been rescheduled for June 23, which means I can't go to it at all now because I'll be in Indianapolis that weekend for the 5K. I took my frustrations to Facebook, as one does, and wrote the following status: "And now NATO has fucked up my nipple tassel making class tomorrow and it's been rescheduled for the day I'll be getting chased by zombies. This weekend keeps getting worse!" Now, because I am me instead of someone with a life that remotely resembles some standard of normal, that first sentence seemed to me like a regular "People are fucking up my shit" rant. It wasn't until people started leaving comments that it dawned on me that making nipple tassels and running zombie races are not run of the mill every day things for most people, or that to have them ruined by NATO was at all unusual. Once I realized that, I was sorry that I didn't add "At least I don't have to leave trapeze class early now" because, you see, trapeze class slightly overlapped my nipple tassel class, a problem we've all run into at some point I'm sure.

It was rumored late in the previous week that the Occupy movement might try to shut down Boeing because they do evil things when they aren't busy making planes or something. Because our offices are in close proximity to Boeing, and also because Metra had restricted anyone from bring anything besides basically the clothes they were wearing (and even then you shouldn't be wearing too much clothes) on any trains, it was decided that we would close the office for the day and work from home. At that point, thinking I was smart, I decided that I was going to make a doctor's appointment for Monday afternoon and that way not have to schedule time off for it. One problem: my doctor is in a town that is 45 minutes to an hour away at the best of times. I decided to give that commute an hour and a half just in case. I got in my car and started driving sitting in traffic. It took me 45 minutes to go a distance that generally takes 10 at rush hour. Approaching the entrance to the highway I discovered why: the Kennedy was closed because OH MY GOD IMPORTANT PEOPLE ARE HEADED FOR THE AIRPORT AT VARIOUS TIMES FOR THE NEXT SIX HOURS. It wasn't hard to figure out that since it took me 45 minutes to travel 2 miles, it was unlikely I'd have time to cover the other 30 miles in time for my appointment, so I called (a terrifying experience all by itself!) to reschedule for a time when I AM supposed to be in the office, and then sat in traffic for ANOTHER 45 minutes to get back to where I started.

I cannot be happier right now that we lost our Olympic bid, or that the G8 moved to Camp David (it was originally supposed to be here too), and if we never host anything here ever again I will not be sad about it at all.

If we DO, well, I just fucking won't be here that weekend because FUCK. THAT.

My Reputation Preceeds Me

Me: How was your Easter?

PCA: Good. How was yours?

Me: Also good.

PCA: What did you...?

Me: We had ham.

PCA: Oh. Ok. Good.

Me: Why do you look so relieved?

PCA: Well, I thought you might say something about...

Me: They don't LIVE HERE.

Office Manager: I can leave if you guys want to...

PCA: It's ok, she said ham.

There's Not Enough Nerds At Work To Fill A Space Cruiser

By tomorrow afternoon I will have been home from my latest trip to England for an entire week. I haven't posted about it yet, and it's not because I'm lazy (though I am), nor is it because I didn't do anything worth writing about (because I did). It's mostly because I'm struggling with the format for writing it. Normally I would write it up chronologically, you see, but in this case, my activities for all of both Mondays, Tuesday afternoon, most of Wednesday, the second half of Friday, a good portion of Saturday and the following Wednesday morning are the kinds of things better covered on an entirely different sort of blog (and they will be as soon as I remember to do some blogging at a time that I'm not at work). Anyway, recaps of the best trip anyone has ever taken to England ever will be along shortly.

In the meantime, this just happened:

BrownsFan (to the new guy): You're not into Star Wars at all, are you?

New guy: I wouldn't say not at all, but no, not really. (pause) This has something to do with Amber, doesn't it?

As he said this, I was standing in the hallway of my office holding up a massive sleeping bag shaped like a tauntaun that I bought from Thinkgeek late last week and had shipped to the office because it's where I tell people to ship things. It is the single greatest stupid-ass thing I have ever bought in my life and I was determined to force everyone to observe my joy, so I dragged the entire box into BrownsFan's office where she was suitably impressed because she is fucking awesome. New guy, on the other hand, was spectacularly disappointing. He only had a vague idea what the hell we were talking about, but not only that, he has no recollection AT ALL of Princess Leia's metal bikini (which was brought up by BrownsFan who wanted to know why, if I was such a big Star Wars fan (I had just announced that no one is a bigger Star Wars fan than me which is probably bullshit but whatever) I had done a photo shoot in a Star TREK costume instead of a Star WARS costume, an argument I totally won by pointing out that the only reason I didn't have a Star Wars costume for that shoot is that the metal bikini I am having custom made for me at a cost of literally hundreds of real American dollars wasn't ready at the time of that particular shoot. OBVIOUSLY.). And then I described it to him, and the fact that she clearly had no underwear on, and then openly speculated about how they kept her cooch from popping out when she went flying through the air hanging onto Luke. And then I sat down to write this and re-read that last sentence and was as surprised as ever that I remain both gainfully employed and free of sexual harassment charges.

And Yet I Continue To Have A Job

BrownsFan: So where are you off to?

Me: Oh, I thought I'd head over to Charlotte Russe and see if they had any cheap underwear people can rip.

BrownsFan: You realize you're at work, right?

Me: Well, but...I mean, it's not like it's a real company.

Less than one minute later...

PCA: Have you ever been to see Buckingham Palace?

Me: Yeah, lots of times.

PCA: Do those guys really not move?

Me: They just stand there.

PCA: Could I dare you to show them something?

Me: You mean *show them something*?

PCA: Yes.

Me: .....You realize I'm a stripper for a hobby, right? Just saying, that's not much of a dare.

Note: Technically this is a real company, I just have a hard time believing that anyone willing to employ me could possibly be running a serious enterprise.

Amberance: Camera Whore

So waaaaay back in August I did a calendar shoot at VaVoom Pinups. I had originally scheduled it for a project that had to be cancelled (email!), but I decided to keep the appointment anyway, mainly because I am a massive narcissist of long standing. I sincerely mean that. Where almost every other woman on the planet is ducking out of candid photographs telling you how hideous she is, I have never met a camera in my entire life that I didn't immediately jump in front of. I have loved having my photo taken from birth, which is obvious to anyone who has seen any childhood photos of me as I am standing in some sort of ridiculous pose in Every. Single. One. I have never outgrown this habit.

Me at age 7 posing in lingerie and a stupid hat.

Me at age 33 posing in lingerie and a stupid hat.

I obviously enjoy being looked at. In related news, I am now immortal: my amazing friend Charlie so loved the photos from the shoot I did prior to this one, he went and had one of them tattooed on his arm two weeks ago:

IMMORTALITY. Unless Charlie dies, that is.

That's beside the point really, I just felt like mentioning that I AM A TATTOO YOU GUYS.

But back to the story: for the more recent shoot I'd done 14 outfit changes, mostly based on suggestions from those of my friends who are known to be perverts. This made for photos that were a little more risque than the results of the the first photo shoot I did. When I got the proofs I sent them out to a handful of trusted advisers, among them MrTrivia. When I saw him the next day, I asked him what he thought of the photos. He looked uncomfortable. "Ummm...you know there's, like, full frontal in some of those photos, right?"

"Yes. I was there."

"Ok. I just, you know, wanted to make sure you meant to send me that."

I pointed out that my current aspiration was to take all my clothes off on stage in front of strangers and he conceded that I had a point.

I had the whole finished package shipped to me at work because I am ridiculous and because it's now almost a game to see how much I can get away with before they fire me (a couple months ago the CEO mentioned he was tired and I offered him the pillow from under my desk so he could take a nap. I still work here). BrownsFan suggested I put Post-it notes over the bad parts before she looked at it, by which she meant specifically my belly button because she thinks they're gross. Tits and ass, no problem. Navel, GTFO. She's awesome.

This is not the going to be the end of the "take awesome shiny photos of me" thing and here's why: one of the outfits I'd planned to wear for this shoot was Leia's metal bikini from Jabba's palace. There's a guy on the internet that custom makes them for way more money than any sane person would spend on a costume, but they are excellent and so I am getting one, but I didn't have time to get the order in before the shoot so OH WELL I GUESS I WILL JUST HAVE TO GO BACK AND DO IT AGAIN. I really, really, REALLY like having my picture taken you guys.

Having A Social Life Makes It Really Hard To Blog Sometimes

I was told this morning by StereoNinja that I am being a shitty blogger in 2012 so far. Which I know, but see, there's this thing where I'm busy at my job and travelling and other excuses both legit and complete and utter bullshit. One of them is that I went on an epic trip to Austin last weekend. And I really want to tell you all about it, but chronologically it doesn't make sense if I skip over all of December and my birthday. Also, personally it doesn't make sense either. I have never skipped December or my birthday, they are my favorite things. So herein I will attempt to briefly recap the last month and a half so that in the next post I can describe the most epic reunion of my entire life. Cool? Cool.

A Brief Recap of What Amberance Has Been Up To Since Early December, Minus The Parts That Are None of Your Business and You Don't Want to Know About Anyway (Trust Me)

• On December 10th, as advertised, I walked onto a stage at Martyr's with 16 other women and took off all my clothes in front of hundreds of strangers and it. was. AWESOME. Despite it being oddly disconcerting to be walking around in a bar all night in a nightie and a robe while everyone else around me was dressed, but whatever. The show on the whole was excellent. The girls graduating were amazingly talented and creative and their acts included a girl who stripped to the Imperial March as Darth Vader and left the mask on the entire time, two girls who did a number together to Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" in which one of them was the cowboy and the other one was her horse, and a girl who according to Michelle L'Amour said that she wanted to do a number in which "I do all of the things you always tell us we should never do", and so did a completely disinterested strip tease dressed in a ratty house coat with her hair a complete mess and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, then finished with taking her bra off to reveal another flesh colored bra underneath to which she had sewn baggy tits that hung down to her knees and when she couldn't get the nipple tassels to twirl she just picked them up in her hand with a shrug and juggled them. It was the most hilarious strip tease I have ever seen.
• The bartender bought me an auto hammer for Christmas and I was filled with joy. I am a tool for tools. And puns.
• The next day I flew to Cleveland for two days because something is seriously wrong with me. I packed a backpack for the trip. My brother had also come to town, for four days, and had brought three huge suitcases and a garment bag, prompting me to ask my dad if it was weird for him that his son is his daughter and his daughter is his son (I did, after all, get an auto hammer for Christmas).
• I saw my brother again the following weekend when he came to town for the annual New Year's Eve party thrown by some friends of ours. My loving brother greeted me with a loud "Fuck you," when I walked in, due to my having worn an amazing tank top with chains and tiny handcuffs for straps that everybody but him loved, including all the women who were pregnant which was ALL OF THEM.
• The following week we had our work holiday party, to which I took the gorilla after giving me his word that he would behave himself. I shouldn't have worried, he was absolutely fine. It was me and my coworkers who were out of control, but it wasn't our fault - someone had brought a Shake Weight to the gift exchange which we were inappropriate about, and then we were under the minimum for the contract we'd signed, so the obvious thing to do was to order lots more booze which led to me teaching everyone how to twirl nipple tassels and shouting "It's PHYSICS" at everyone who tried to object.
• The following Monday I flew to Portland and didn't even try to kill my boss once!
• Which leads us to my Amber's Super Ultra Fantabulous Birthtacular Celebration Extravaganza: Now With MORE KELLY! weekend. This did not start out well. El Nino or whatever the hell the weather is doing had kept things pleasantly warm and dry in Chicago this winter, right up until the night of my birthday when it decided to drop 8 inches of snow on us overnight. This meant that only Charlie and Mrs. Sizemore showed up to my party at Tai's and got to see my Epic Cake which depicted me in not a whole lot of clothing.

  

  So hot it is literally on fire.

  This gave me the opportunity, after we had partially eaten it, to yell "WHO IS GOING TO EAT MY CROTCH?" at some innocent strangers for a totally legitimate reason. Earlier in the day, I had taken my pink princess wand to work with me in order to command people to do my bidding, such as wear hats and sing to me, and had ended up using it help my co-worker figure out what NOT to get his wife for her birthday by waving it at him after every suggestion and saying "No, that's stupid." Because of this, I decided to name it the Wand of Truth and then brought it to the bar and had a duel with the bartender and his magic wand because his Schwartz was as big as mine. The next day, Kelly and Mike showed up and we spent the weekend playing Pulse on our respective iPads and eating/drinking our faces off. Kelly ate some caterpillars. Lots more awesome things happened, but that is the thing that stands out - Kelly eating her way through a plate of caterpillars at Sticky Rice.

So that about brings us up to speed, and though I've missed some major things out (see bolded header), I feel better about blogging the Epic Austin Trip. Which I will do shortly to avoid further admonishments from StereoNinja. You don't want to piss off a ninja*.

*he is not a real ninja**.
*OR IS HE?

Day 30 And We Made It, Dammit, We Made It

I would like to have written something brilliantly profound or hilarious for the last day of NaBloPoMo, but unfortunately I went to Victoria's Secret at lunch because I needed a nice nightie and robe for my show.

I don't know if it's like this at every Victoria's Secret, but the one on Michigan Avenue has some crazy-attentive sales associates. Five, count them, FIVE different people came up to me inside the first five minutes I was there. It was an insane parade of helpfulness that was not helpful at all. "Zomigod, hi! Welcome to Victoria's Secret! Can I help you find something? Did you know this whole thing right here is on sale? Do you know what size you are? I can totally measure your boobs right now in the middle of the store! We have a new perfume! All of our whatever-the-shit collection is buy two get one free! Do you want to get discounts in your e-mail because we will totally send you coupons! How about a new bra? Do you need a new bra? Because we TOTALLY sell bras here!" The thing they all seemed the most excited about was this t-shirt* they were "giving" away: "If you spend $75 in the store today you get this free t-shirt THAT PREMIERED AT OUR FASHION SHOW!" Four out of five helpful associates pointed this out. I ended up getting one because let's face it, you buy a lipstick in there it's going to cost you $75. It is awful. It is some kind of slate color and has metallic/sparkly writing on it that says something like "HOLY FUCK WE HAD A FASHION SHOW AGAIN". It's as thin as a piece of paper, has a seam up the middle of the back (ok I don't know a lot about clothes, but I do know that is not how you sew a t-shirt) and they only had mediums left, which is interesting because the medium could fit on an elephant.

I came back to the office and rushed into BrownsFan's office to show her my new underpants (as I'm sure you do with coworkers at your job, right?) and also try to pawn off the train wreck of a shirt on her. She didn't bite, though she did sit there helping me make fun of it and pointing out other problems with it I hadn't even noticed, like how the neck is all stretched out weird and it has some sort of bizarre flap hanging down in the back. And that is when she showed me the link to the fine gentlemen over at Project Rungay who have kindly reviewed the Victoria's Secret Fashion show, starting with the brilliant line "Your heterosexual mating rituals are just so darn hilarious and confusing to us." This entire blog post is really just a set up to the link for their two part review, which you can find here and here. Enjoy.

Thus ends NaBloPoMo 2011.

Fin.
*I wanted to put a link here to this absolute piece of shit of a shirt, but I can't find it on the VS website anywhere, not even under "Supermodel Essentials", a heading that pissed me off in a major way, in large part because it's a bunch of fucking sweatpants. In fact, the whole website seems like it's designed to make me angry. There's a section called "Very Sexy Seduction" which I guess is as opposed to the other kind of seduction that isn't sexy at all. Also, underneath a giant banner ad for free slippers is a note that reads "Watch the supermodel slipper video, then meet the matching pajamas" (emphasis mine). Meet them? MEET the pajamas? Oh my god, go fuck yourself, I am not watching a video of goddamn slippers and I certainly don't want to have a fucking conversation with any pajamas. What is wrong with you, seriously?

UPDATE: BrownsFan read that I couldn't find the shirt on the website and thought to herself "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" It's this one, except mine is grey rather than black. This piece of crap apparently retails for 45 real fucking American dollars. They have got to be kidding.

Day 28 And It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like They Shouldn't Have Given Me An Office

The CEO came in my office last week asking where all the Christmas decorations were. I told him it would be a motherfucking Christmas wonderland in here if it were up to me, but that if I started decorating the office before Thanksgiving there is a good chance that someone might stab me. He agreed that this was a legitimate concern.

Today, though, it is officially the first office day after Thanksgiving, so my first order of business was to start setting up the few things I already had left over from my Cave of Wonders days (this is what I called my cubicle at the old office space, but only in my head - they know I am crazy but it's fun to keep them guessing just how much): little felt stockings were tacked to the wall, my somewhat sparse Christmas village was arranged on top of my overhead cabinets and three wire trees covered in glitter were placed on a shelf (and now everything in my office is covered in glitter because glitter is the herpes of craft supplies). It wasn't nearly enough crap. Emergency decoration shopping was in order.

The nearest place where I knew there to be Christmas swag was downstairs at the CVS, so I headed down and grabbed the first few random things I saw, bagged them up and came back upstairs. COO and BrownsFan were sitting in the conference room when I came in, so I stopped to show BrownsFan what I'd gotten - a nutcracker, an old style German Santa, and a mealy little two foot "lighted" (in quotes, because lighted usually means the lights are already on the tree when you buy it. Not this time, they were just shoved in the box with the tree and a bunch of shitty plastic ornaments, but what do you want for $9?) tree. BrownsFan and I then briefly discussed potential wiring configurations for the various things I was planning to set up that would require a flow of electricity. This was the point at which COO finally realized what was actually happening. "Wait, so some of those things are going in your office?" he asked me, gesturing to the two GIANT bags I was struggling not to drop.

"What do you mean 'some'? ALL OF THESE THINGS are going in my office. Plus more things. I'm going to turn the air vent into a giant candy cane, and an office that size needs at least two trees. This is just what I managed to find at CVS."

BrownsFan turned to the now gaping at me in shock COO and told him what she'd known in her heart all along: "We never should have given her so much space."

Day 16 And It's The Best Day Yet

Hey, do you know who wore a tartan plaid skirt, white blouse, red fencenet stockings, gold sequin ballet slippers, a white fur hat, snowflake earrings and 25 (I counted them) red and green bracelets to the office today? This girl:

Waddup.

FYI, that's me.

BrownsFan caught a glimpse of me when I walked past her office this morning and demanded that I come back and show her what I was wearing, as if this was something I needed to be told. "It's the first day!" I announced, even though everyone knew from my outfit what day it was. Everyone but one person, that is. "It's the first day of the 40 Days of Christmas!"

"The 40 Days of Christmas?" asked the new guy incredulously. "It seems like it's early for that. It's not even Thanksgiving."

"It isn't. It's the 40 Days. It's a real thing. I didn't even make it up."

"There's a website," BrownsFan added.

At this point, COO looked up from his desk at me, so I curtsied. He shook his head at me and addressed new guy. "I'm glad you're getting to see this now, before you've had a chance to work together," he said. "I don't want you to think that you caused it somehow. She's always like this."

BrownsFan went on to explain to him that soon I would start dressing in appliqued corduroy dresses with snowmen on them like a kindergarten teacher and needlework shirts that I designed and stitched myself because I'm fucking crafty like that (she did not say "because she's fucking crafty like that."). He looked slightly baffled. There is no way he's prepared.

I need to go tree shopping for my office this weekend. I think I can probably keep it down to two trees if I choose the ornaments carefully and fill in the blank spaces on the countertop with nutcrackers and Santas, maybe a little train. And a wreath, my door will need a wreath, certainly. Oh and some thick red ribbon I can wrap around that weird diagonal airvent to make it look like a massive candy cane. They really should never have given me so much space.

Learning Curve

My company moved our offices last week, which has been quite educational as far as getting to know my co-workers and finding out which of them are crazy and which are not, something I will not go into here, less out of privacy issues than out of my not wanting to relive the experience because, seriously, oh my god.

On the whole this has been good. I now have an office of my very own with an actual door and a window and a desk made out of wood. Also I have a weird diagonal beam in the back of my office that half covers the windows and truncates the usable space. Obviously I requested this particular office because I thought it was awesome, not to mention the fact that it is also the last one on the far end of the space, meaning that anyone coming this way is doing so on purpose to see me rather than walking by on their way to somewhere else, thus retaining my status of having the most private space of anyone here, which is good because I take naps under my desk Costanza style on a semi-regular basis (I have a pillow and everything). It is also gloriously RIGHT NEXT TO BROWNSFAN'S OFFICE. On moving in, I promptly tacked up a paper ceiling cat to watch me calculate because the CEO thinks it's really stupid. On the other side of BrownsFan is the CEO's office, in which he has laid out his furniture in a way that causes there to be a long alleyway of empty space to one side of his desk that everyone has had a suggestion as far as how to fill. Bowling alley was an idea. I went pinball machine after learning that he has a Star Trek one IN HIS HOME which he should obviously bring here so that I can play it. He has boringly gone with his own idea: tree. I was disappointed until he told me I could decorate it for Christmas at which point I started jumping up and down and squealing. I WILL DECORATE THE CRAP OUT OF THAT TREE FOR CHRISTMAS. WATCH ME.

Our new offices are located in the office tower portion of a train station, which I explored last week in an attempt to educate myself about my new surroundings. Here's what I've learned:

• There are no less than three Hudson News stores in this one train station (that I've found so far), two of which are directly across from one another. I bought a 20 oz. Coke Zero and a small bag of Chex Mix in there for over $7. It would have cost me less than $3 if I'd walked a few more feet to the CVS. I learned not to shop at Hudson News.
• There is also an Auntie Anne's Pretzels in here. Dangerous this may become. I am trying to forget that I know that.
• The trek to and from the office level floors involves a ride on the escalator. It is a huge pet peeve of mine when people get on an escalator and then just stand there, particularly when it's going down. People: The escalator is NOT A RIDE. Please either walk your lazy ass down the magical moving staircase or move the fuck over so I don't have to kill you.
• There is one major drawback to working in a commuter train station, which I discovered almost immediately: at quittin' time, absolutely everyone in the world is trying to get into the place you are trying to leave. And since it's the end of the day and everybody just wants to go home, they will mow you the hell down if you get in their way. Since I am leaving the train station I am, by definition, in their way, and getting home for me is now similar to a very frustrated salmon getting pelted with massive rocks on its way to spawn, except at the end I don't get to spawn. This strikes me as a very cruel joke. 

Remember when I said I wasn't going to talk about my co-workers at the beginning? I lied. Back in our old space, all of the offices had glass walls and the rest of the space was a sort of open architecture dealy-o, meaning everyone was pretty much all up in each other's business because you could hear and see everything that was happening. If you wanted to have a private conversation or scratch your ass this was not a good thing, but if you wanted to get someone's attention three desks away you could just call to them whatever it is you wanted. Apparently after 20 some odd years, this practice is a hard one for a few people to break. Despite the fact that we have these amazing walls now and that the layout is not at all designed for line of site to anyone else in the place, there are a few people who continue to yell into the hallway when they want to talk to someone. This is usually met with a yelled back "What?" which in turn leads to louder hallway screaming. BrownsFan and I have been supporting one another in our attempts not to strangle the others, who have not yet noticed, despite our reminders, that we have these amazing inventions called "telephones" and that proper usage of said "phones" would allow one to speak in a regular tone of voice whilst still being heard by the person five rooms away one would like to speak to without disrupting everyone else by screaming at the top of one's lungs. The technology is amazing, it's way beyond our time.

More on this later, and photos when I remember to take some. Currently it is time for my desk nap.

They Came Through!

So this ought to be a challenging post, because I'm super excited about something that happened at work today and I can't wait to tell you about it, but I have to be a lil sneaky and talk around a couple things to avoid breaches of confidentiality about where I work, what I do, and whom we do business with, partly because it might be in violation of the company privacy policy (I have perhaps ill-advisedly given the address to this blog to our compliance maven, but I had to - she's my best friend here and also she's on it a lot. OK, fine, it's BrownsFan) but mostly because I love you guys, but only in an anonymous internety sort of way and don't want to provide anyone with enough details to track me down in real life.

ANYWAY, long story even longer, the pistachios are here (BrownsFan, where the hell are you? The pistachios are here!). And I know you're thinking "Yeah, big deal" and normally you would be right, but no, this time you are wrong. Way wrong. These are special pistachios. They come from a company that does things related to what my company does and they send them out every year in a big tin as a holiday gift. If you know or think you may have guessed what I do and you work at a company that does a similar thing and does business with this company, then you already know the exact tin of pistachios I am talking about because they are legendary. Also they are magical. They are gigantic by the standards of a normal pistachio and more importantly THERE ARE NEVER ANY BAD ONES. You know the bad ones: they look like a normal pistachio but when you eat them your face goes all Emperor Palpatine because they taste like all of nature just died inside your mouth. There's a few in every package, it's part of the pistachio eating experience. Pistachio roulette if you will. Well, in the whole history of getting these specific pistachios (nigh going on nine years now because we also got them at the place I worked in Cleveland) I have never had a bad one or even heard of anyone else having a bad one. Each and every pistachio is pristine of flavor (and massive). They are grown on trees made of gold in a land of perpetual rainbows and picked by angels Victoria's Secret could never hope to surpass in beauty or quality of underwear. And I am eating them right now.

I was concerned that maybe they weren't coming this year. Last week I had marched into BrownsFan's office demanding to know "Where the fuck are the pistachios?" (or more likely a similar question with less of the word "fuck" but an equal amount of inappropriateness) and she had pointed out that the big leader guy was going through some personal Scariness and sending out pistachios may not be at the top of his to do list, and also there's that whole thing where the economy is maybe not so good right now. I went away and sulked. But then! Today at precisely 3:24 p.m. Central Standard Time, Parent Company Accountant messaged me with one concise and glorious word: "pistachios!" and all the pieces of my life fell back into place.

Welcome back, magic pistachios. Please make yourself at home in my mouth.

My Hair is Sometimes Misleading

Co-worker: So what's happening?
me: Very little. I lead a boring life.
Co-worker: Yeah right.
me: No, I'm serious! I don't do anything, ever.
Co-worker: Yeah, but you don't do it with flair.

Slide, Slide, Slippity-Slide

Apparently Coolio has been doing what he does just to survive, because today is his birthday. He is 44. I find this amusing because I sincerely thought he was younger, and also because I feel like he shouldn't even have a birthday at all because he doesn't seem like a real person.

I learned this startling piece of information on the Captivate Network, which for the non modern high rise working set, is a news service that appears on tiny screens inside of elevators. It struck me funny that Coolio's birthday was included as a piece of news today: Is today a slow birthday day and that's the only celebrity they could find, or is the programmer stuck in a time warp, still listening to Coolio albums unironically more than halfway through 2007? It's a mystery.

As usual, the best part is the thing that is happening in my head. Because I keep imagining people coming up to Coolio yelling "Happy Birthday!" and reaching to give him a nice birthday hug...but his hair keeps poking everyone in the eye.

Happy birthday, Coolio. I hope you are still having a fantastic voyage through gangster's paradise.