The Marci Rating System

1. I had no idea I could become so frustrated by the DMV when I WASN’T EVEN AT THE DMV.

2. I heard a song on the radio today with only three lines. They went like this, repeated in various combinations.

I could sleep
When I lived alone
Is there a ghost in my house

Apparently, this is a real song, or so the internet informs me. It’s called “Is There A Ghost” by Band of Horses. Naturally, there’s a youtube video. (I didn’t get it.) It’s three minutes long. Inexplicably, I kind of like the song.

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I can’t believe I spent 11 hours at work today having an awesome day (for real!), and then in the last five minutes my boss questioned whether I was “stressed” based on a secondhand account of an interaction I had with a customer today and I’ve spent the last two and a half hours mentally defending myself. Gah! (Hence the fist shake.)

On the plus side, *Andrea is back from SDCC, and I have a Grumpy Bear*!

[*Yes, Grumpy Bear has always been my favorite, followed by Bedtime Bear (the words to BB's song were easier to remember).]

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Ah, the monthly staff meeting. Or every other monthly. This is our third this year, so I would call it a bi-monthly staff meeting except that gets confusing — is it once every two months, or twice every one month?

Anyway, the staff meeting is required. Back when I was staff, I loved staff meetings. An hour’s pay, free food, and all you had to do was sit around and fidget less than the person next to you. Now I’m supposed to run the staff meeting, and it is ridiculousness from start to finish.

So far: 2 definite ‘I’m not comings’ and 1 ‘maybe (but don’t count on it)’ To be updated as the day in question approaches…

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STAR TREK INTO WTF WAS THAT BUT I LIKED IT ANYWAY!

Okay, so first things first — I can’t explain it at all, but there is something magical and amazing to me about sitting in a theater, hearing the opening music, and thinking, ‘I am at a Star Trek movie.’ (It’s like how some people can sit through all eight thousand hours of Lord of the Rings — inexplicable to me, yet somehow true!)

So I was predisposed to like this movie. And I did! (More on this later.)

But…

1. IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO GET PLACES IN SPACE. Like, you can’t just warp over to, say, the Klingon home world in a few hours. (They would have conquered us ages ago if that was the case.) And you definitely can’t go to warp for not even five minutes, get knocked out of warp, and somehow be BACK AT EARTH. This really pissed me off, not even because of the crummy science, but because of the implications.

2. LIKE THE IMPLICATION THAT IT WOULD HAVE APPARENTLY TAKEN LITERALLY TWO SECONDS TO GET SOME FREAKIN’ HELP UP HERE, HELLO EARTH, WE’VE GOT A BIG PROBLEM HERE AND OUR SHIP MAY POSSIBLY CAREEN TO FIERY DEATH INTO THE SIDE OF YOU, PLEASE SEND BACKUP ASAP. That close to Earth, there should have been dozens of spacecraft around. And hey, how about that massive spacedock where the Enterprise hangs out in orbit? (Spock had time to call New Vulcan, and I get that he wanted to bro it up and get some super!secret intel, but couldn’t someone else have taken that same time to CALL EARTH FOR HELP?) For that matter, step up, Earth — what happened to planetary defense? How could you possibly have failed to notice the massive starships fighting at your doorstep and then CRASHING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE?

Having said all that, I loved it!

1. I could watch these characters ALL DAY LONG. Like, even if Peter Jackson decided to film an eight and a half thousand hour epic of the Enterprise crew walking around the ship, I would watch the whole thing.

2. This movie answered so many awesome fandom questions about the reboot!verse! Is the new Vulcan planet going to be called New Vulcan? (Signs point to yes.) Are Spock and Uhura still together? (Yes!) Are we worried about war with the Romulans? (Apparently not?!) Will there be a five year mission? (Absolutely!)

3. FANFIC

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Someone posted a sign today at work — taped to the mirror in the bathroom. “All staff must wash hands before returning to the floor.”

Basically, signs with this message really irritate me, and I’m not entirely sure why. Is it their condescending nature? Is it just that I have issues with the employee in question?

The way I see it, everyone who uses that bathroom is well aware that the accepted social convention is that washing your hands is the step between using the toilet and leaving the room. No one is going to read the sign and say, “Oh gee, I knew I was forgetting something! Silly me!”

Though I personally wash my hands because it extends my zen break in the room of solitude, I can understand that some people might not. At my workplace, we do not serve food, nor do we work with people who are very young, very old, or very ill. And there are SO MANY gross things in the world. (SO MANY!) We touch money — super gross. We touch the floor, and plants and dirt outside — super gross also. We pat dogs that come to visit — cute, but kind of gross too.

I should note that a similar sign was posted a few years back. (Pretty sure it was the same employee. The boss never uses the staff bathroom, so it’s definitely not from him.) That sign stayed up until it was my week to clean, and then I accidentally-on-purpose destroyed it by spraying cleaner on it and threw it away. I am thinking this sign may suffer a similar unfortunate fate.

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This week is the one week each year when both of the people who handle disasters at my workplace go on vacation at the same time. (It’s a problem.) Which makes it the one week each year when — if a disaster occurs — I end up being the one responsible for dealing with it. (Or ignoring it. There’s a lightbulb that I swear burns out EVERY TIME the boss goes away for more than a few days. We usually just wait till he gets back and let him replace it. It likes him best anyway.)

So each day this week I’ve gone in with my checklist, and slooooowly approached the building, with extreme caution.

1. is the building still there? yay!

2. does it look okay? not broken into, or missing shingles, or burnt down? yay!

3. (once inside) no signs of flooding? anywhere? yay!

4. does it feel like the heat is working right? refrigerators and freezers all working? yay!

5. do the lights turn on? computers? no messages of ominous import lurking in voicemail? yay!

ONE. MORE. DAY. (And then I can turn the disaster checklist over to my coworker and let her be in charge of it.)

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Thanks to copperbadge, I was thinking about the movie ‘What’s Your Number‘ tonight. I watched it all the way through once, and was reminded of my immense disappointment when I realized that Colin Shea was not actually Jake Adams.

Here’s how I wanted the movie to go:

-So Ally (main character) and Jake (‘the one that got away’) dated, or something, during high school. But Jake was the son of a rich famous mogul dude, and went off to study abroad or spring break or whatever and they lost touch.

-Fast forward a bunch of years, and Jake is all ‘being the son of a rich famous mogul dude is all well and good, but I want to be a musician and date people and buy lattes without everything being in the tabloids all the time.’ And his dad (probably with some serious eye-rolling going on) says something like ‘well, make a plan, son, have I taught you nothing?’

-So Jake gets an assistant to agree to basically impersonate him on a looooooong trip to Africa for philanthropic stuff. And Jake gets a haircut and a new wardrobe and snaps up an apartment in a building his dad owns and ‘rents’ it under the name Colin Shea. And he figures he’ll live undercover for a while, like a gap year, while he thinks about life, or whatever.

-But! Who would have expected that his high school girlfriend would be living across the hall, or that she wouldn’t recognize him at all? Or that she would ask him to help find her past boyfriends, with Jake Adams’ name at the top of her list?

-Seriously awkward. Naturally, he can’t help falling for her (again). He drops somewhat-subtle clues that he’s not just the unemployed womanizing musician he presents on the surface, but Ally’s really, really not subtle. Which is charming, and yet inconvenient.

-Ally figures out something’s up thanks to a well timed phone switching trope, and Colin (Jake) gets to say something like, “I couldn’t help you find Jake Adams, because I AM Jake Adams!”

-Then there is hand waving and everyone lives happily ever after.

-[NOTE: This would be Even More Awesome if Ally actually DID know the entire time, but didn't mention it for some reason, like she thought maybe Jake was hiding from the mob, or something.]

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Against all odds, I am apparently a manager at my workplace. Here, recorded for posterity and possibly as a warning for future generations, is my leadership style, encapsulated into one simple sentence:

THE ONLY THING I LIKE LESS THAN BEING IN CHARGE IS WHEN SOMEONE ELSE IS IN CHARGE.

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Movies I Want To See Before I See Avengers (in no particular order):

1. Star Trek Reboot
(because I keep meaning to rewatch — again — and I keep not doing it, and because it was epic on the big screen and I want Avengers to be that good, but maybe with a plot that makes more sense)

2. The Three Musketeers (2011 version)
(because netflix just sent it to me, so it makes sense to watch it so I can send it back and hopefully get…)

3. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
(because once you’ve read a bunch of Clint-undercover-as-Brandt fics, ‘Ghost Protocol’ starts to look more like an Avengers prequel)

4. Iron Man II
(because it’s still available for instant viewing on Netflix, and it actually *is* an Avengers prequel)

So basically it’s all Avengers, all the time right now for me, which is my way of distracting myself from my total inability to handle work right now. The good news is, it’s working. The bad news is, I need to keep my job so I can afford to go to the movies!

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First, when it comes to exercising (say, on a treadmill-like machine), the Spiderman animated series from 1994 is a much better choice than Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes or Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes. The sound level is more consistent, there’s less plot to follow, and it’s funny!

Second, I go back to work tomorrow, which is sort of — it’s been *five days.* What if I’ve forgotten how to do my job? I have been studiously reminding myself of my alarm code, computer login, and copier password (cleverly almost all identical), but I have concerns!

Third, and I blame the internet entirely for this — my mental narration really needs to get itself out of “I have had it with these motherfuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin’ plane!*” mode and back into something classier, preferably before I slip up at home or work and start interjecting profanity into every other sentence, Star Trek IV style.
(*From ‘Snakes on a Plane,’ of course.)

[3a. tumblr is not helping]

[3b. ...and then he said, 'And I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence.']

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