marcicat | Entries tagged with unexpected awesome

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Things that are driving me nuts at work this week:

*my chair squeaking

*my neighbor's chair squeaking

*my neighbor's ridiculously loud keyboard

*people talking near me

*people talking to me

ANYWAY! It's reached a point of humor, at least, and luckily I now have a desk where no one can tell when I roll my eyes, so that's been to my benefit.

Basically my week so far:

Work: ::happens::
Me: "Can't you see I'm trying to WRITE?! This is IMPORTANT!"

Spending time on the balcony after work is always an adventure. From last night:

*A bunch of kids yelling for Daniel. I don’t know who Daniel is. Sibling? Cat? New meme** I’ve never heard of?

(**Duolingo offered me this gem recently: “I like that tall boy.” I’d like to place my vote now to see this become a future meme. So much potential!)

*A minivan with all the windows down, blasting that”splish splash I was taking a bath” song.

*Very impressive and instantly recognizable partial singalong to ‘I am Moana.’ I wish she’d kept going!

*One of the upstairs neighbors arrived with groceries, then left again, and came back with kitty litter. Can’t forget the essentials!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

ELECTRIC BILL: PAID

Now that I’ve achieved one thing today, I’m ready to relax! Or go to work, I guess. That should probably be step one.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Yesterday I ventured out to tromp around the forest for a while, which was about as muddy as I expected, but significantly less buggy than I feared, so that was a net win. (And I saw a goose! Not too close up, though, because geese are fierce. And loud!)

I saw a few other people out and about. The best, the ultimate, the gold standard, was the three joggers I saw early on. I stepped off the trail, waves and greetings were exchanged all around, and as they jogged on, I heard the first one utter this gem:

“I was reading The Economist last night in bed.”

(And then something about inflation, and Honduras, but to be honest I was lol’ing at that point and pulling out my phone so I could write it down.)

I understand that objectively, there’s nothing all that humorous about the statement. But taken in a complete context, it was just — super great. I’m still laughing.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

(It was yesterday. Today it’s raining. Plus, work.)

Anyway, it’s April and that means that I did the 3rd annual April hike along the high ground at the local park.

*Ground conditions: One tiny patch of snow. Some mud and standing water, which could be avoided with minor-to-moderate effort. Better than expected!

*Bug level: Some flying insects, not enough to warrant pulling out the bug repellent. No ticks spotted.

*Weather: Cool enough that I was happy to have long sleeves, balmy enough that I rolled up my pant cuffs and daringly flashed some ankle.

*Seen on the trail: Did not actually find the mullein plants I went looking for, but I did find the spot where I wiped out on the ice in the winter. Also, saw some ducks and geese!

*Community interaction: Took a picture for a family, AND offered a time estimate to some people looking to go fishing (even though I’m, uh, still not entirely sure we were talking about the same lake — look, the park is basically 80% wetlands, there’s a lot of bodies of water — but they decided to stay at the pond we were all looking right at, so at least I know they didn’t get lost).

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

My workplace has been encouraging (read: it’s mandatory but there’s no consequences for not doing it? work is weird, idk) everyone to set goals for 2019. Which honestly seems ::cough:: a little late? Given that 25% of the year is now over. But that’s work for you!

Anyway, it seemed much easier (and more fun) to set a goal for the week that had nothing to do with work, so here it is: this week my goal is to get the yard expansion in neko atsume. As of this morning I have 160 gold fish, and I need 180. Adorable indoor space, coming soon!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Yesterday I was reading about the ‘let’s get this bread’ meme (because I derive great joy from confusing my boss with stuff like that, but figured I should make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding it completely before tossing it out in a work setting).

And this led to trying to explain to someone (not my boss) why I don’t think it’s that important (or possible, sometimes) to actually understand memes (except as far as it’s necessary to make sure it’s not going to get me in trouble at work). It’s really all about the feeling they convey. But I didn’t feel like I was explaining very well, so I found this article instead.

Why is millennial humor so weird? by Elizabeth Bruenig (written in 2017)

Albert Camus! Absurdism! The “creeping suspicion that the world just doesn’t make sense”! This article has it all.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I have a coworker with a habit of disagreeing with everything, and it brings me immense joy when I can completely baffle them (speechless being typically the closest thing to consensus we ever reach) with some statement about my life.

Last week it was “I eat breakfast sitting on the floor,” which makes perfect sense in the context of my life, but was apparently inconceivable to them. (It’s great cat bonding time! I’m just eating a bar!)

This week it was when we (somehow?!) got talking about the 5 cent bottle refund in Maine. And I said I didn’t know much about it, because I don’t buy anything that comes in a refundable can or a bottle (which I think is just beverages, like soda and bottled water and stuff?).

Speechless. Finally I got a “Really?” (Really. I’m not sure what it was they imagined I was purchasing, but I am not.) Sometimes work is one of those ‘it’s going to be either laughing or crying: pick one’ experiences, and moments like this help me come down on the laughing side.

It’s been a month since Christmas! (I mean, approximately. The 25th just seems like a good anniversary marker.)

So far all four contestants are still going strong in the ‘whose Christmas door decoration will stay up longest’ contest. Two of them are at opposite ends of the hall, so in theory (depending on which door they come in, and what route they take from the mailboxes), they might never see each other’s doors. The other two are directly across the hall from each other, and they would have to walk by one of the other remaining decorations any time they left the building.

(For a short time, I thought I was going to add a fifth contestant, because one apartment had a Christmas doormat (a first!), but it’s already been replaced by a non-seasonal doormat.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Time for an exciting Christmas Conundrum! I have posted many times about my neighbors and their Christmas Bear Wreath door decoration. It was not present when the rest of the door decorations were showing up along the hall (welcome back, ‘Tis the Season’ sign and red berry wreath!).

In fact, when starandrea visited on Christmas Eve, I *specifically* mentioned that it was too bad the Christmas bear wreath wasn’t up, since I talked about it so much. Even on Christmas day itself — no wreath.

AND YET! Off I went to work on December 26th, and when I got back in the evening, what to my wondering eyes should appear??? The Christmas bear wreath is BACK! (I was so excited I almost took a picture, and then I thought that would be weird, so I didn’t.)

Is it the same wreath, and they didn’t find it in their decorations until after Christmas? Did they lose the old one and this is a new (identical) wreath that was gifted to them? And the Most Important Question of all: how long will they leave it up? It’s a mystery!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

*Rangerstop! Citywalk! We saw a snake! (It was small.) Day 3 was an array of excitement, much different than last year, when I pretty much slept all day.

*Met noxelementalist, which was fun! Hi nox!

*It occurs to me that I eat a lot of bacon when I’m on vacation. Maybe just because it’s easily available? Also I like food I can eat with my fingers. (It is entirely possible that living alone has ruined any table manners I might once have had.)

*We used the stairs a lot this year, which was great. I am terrible at waiting, and also not fantastic about interacting with other people on an elevator, so stairs are an A+ choice always. (Why am I such a disaster human? I do not understand elevator rules of engagement. To be fair, there are no elevators in my day-to-day life, so I have very little practice at them.)

*I took approximately a million awesome pictures of *Andrea taking pictures.

*Pro-tip re: Citywalk: They say there is a restroom by guest services, which there is! But there is also a much nicer, quieter, and cleaner restroom waaaaaay on the other side by the Islands of Adventure entrance area. Also it’s just fun to wander around that area when it’s mostly empty.

*Looking back through our pictures, I’m very impressed that *Andrea and I basically managed to accidentally color-coordinate almost every day of the trip.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

You know what’s great about October? CANDY. There’s candy everywhere, and it’s suddenly more acceptable than ever to just snack on it all the time. I took a peanut butter cup to my super special meeting training last week, and it was excellent.

Things I’ve said to explain all the candy:

*”There’s just so much of it this time of year.”

*”It’s leftover Halloween candy.”

*”If you can’t indulge now, when can you?”

Note: Still can’t believe I got away with the “leftover Halloween candy” one, since Halloween hasn’t even happened yet. But maybe they thought it was leftover from last year? Or they just weren’t paying any attention to what I said, which I find is very common where I work.

Note2: I’m extra curious if I’m going to be able to re-use all of those phrases in December. Pretty sure the answer is yes.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

At my workplace, we have a cursed project. It’s crazy to even have to say that, but I feel it’s reached that point. Every day, some new crisis comes to light. I’ve been tempted (oh, so many times) to ask if there’s a mercy rule. At what point do we get to just cut our losses and be done with this? Apparently the answer is never — we will carry on until the work is done, or until every person involved with the project quits, gets fired, or has to take medical leave.

Here’s the silver lining to the whole thing: it’s so ridiculously tiny. It’s an amazing distraction from the *other* daily crisis report, aka the news. ‘What fresh hell is this?’ we all mutter amongst ourselves, secretly relieved that we can stop worrying about the fate of the nation for ten minutes.

Also, it is *amazing* practice for finding humor in the ridiculousness of it all, because if I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying, and I guess that is considered poor workplace etiquette??? But everything is easier to laugh at now — memes are hilarious, especially the ones I don’t understand even a tiny bit. Even serious things — someone tried to steal my credit card number to place an order with edible arrangements, and if that’s not peak humor, I don’t know what is.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Today’s the day! It’s time for The Big Yard Sale. Treasures I have scored at Big Yard Sales past:

*a lamp
*curtains
*spring/fall jacket
*a recipe box with chickens on it
*2 Mary Chapin Carpenter cds

What lucky finds will be discovered today? It’s a mystery!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Quick thoughts upon my return:

*Stuff was a good amount of stuff.

*Snacks were a lot of extra snacks, just the way I like it.

*I really should have worn sunscreen today.

*It was very hot, even 4000 feet up.

*The stars last night were so, so beautiful. 10/10, would stargaze again.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

It was not exactly intentional to have the two hiking trips of the year be back to back weeks. I can’t say it wasn’t intentional at all, because I did check a calendar before agreeing to the second one, so it’s not like I didn’t know. But it wasn’t a situation where I sat down and said to myself, ‘hey, you know what would be great? back to back hiking trips!’

The awesome thing about it is that it made packing for the second trip super easy. Unloaded my stuff from the first trip, washed a bunch of it, re-loaded it into a slightly larger backpack — done!

It has also created back-to-back two-day work weeks, which are — not that productive, honestly. One person can get a lot done in two days, absolutely, but my job now is a lot of patiently (ha!) waiting to coordinate with other teams, which means a lot of finagling schedules until you can get a few key people who all have fifteen minutes free at the same time. (Or just politely freak out in the hallway and draw a crowd, which has been a surprisingly successful strategy thus far.)

But that is a problem for future me! Today is the day to make sure I remember to bring my hiking boots (again!) and pack plenty of snacks (plus some extra snacks, just in case), and get back on the trail!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Inflatable 5K: achieved! We’d made it back to the car and were having a snack (while reviewing the pictures and videos we took, as one does) when it started to absolutely pour. This was no little sprinkly rainstorm like we had before the race; no, this was a complete deluge. It didn’t last too long, but certainly plenty long enough to soak anyone and anything out in it.

The Inflatable 5K always has a slightly surreal feeling to it, and the weather certainly added to that this year. Big kudos to all the volunteers who showed up to help make it happen!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

This month marks four years in my apartment. (Yay!) Over the weekend, a new milestone: I washed the windows.

Yes, it took me four years. (I’m pretty sure I washed the insides of all of them back in year 1, but, uh, not the outsides? And one of them is an end window, which I don’t even know how I would get at the outside, but the others face the balcony, so there’s not really any good excuse there.)

Bright side: when you haven’t cleaned your windows for four years, it is shockingly impressive when you get it done. I feel like a cleaning wizard!

Best apartment window story: the windows have half-screens (the bottom has a screen, the top doesn’t). I had NO IDEA the screens moved up and down until I saw someone in a first floor apartment slide the screen up from the outside and start passing groceries in. THE MORE YOU KNOW!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Let’s talk about Fridays. My workplace does a thing where you can fiddle around with your schedule in the summer to take Friday afternoons off. I have mixed feelings about it, but it is what it is. I don’t do it, because I *really* don’t want to be at work for an extra hour the first four days of the week (aka the hard days), just to take off one afternoon on the fifth day (aka the easy day). But a lot of people do!

A short list of things that happen when all the salaried employees go home early, and it’s just the hourly employees left:

*Mostly we make a lot of jokes about work.

*We tell everyone who wasn’t there how great it is to be able to “really focus and get things done when it’s quiet.” Which is probably true, but I’m pretty sure most people are doing what I’m doing, which is slacking off.

*There’s no one left to answer the front door, so I really hope that pest control guy I let in wasn’t actually a corporate spy, or something.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

There are times when I miss the noon-to-8:30 shift. (Frequently when I’m trying to schedule any kind of appointment; never when I’m reminded of the pervasive workplace bias against non-standard shifts.) It’s not the work I miss, but the timing was occasionally convenient, and the company was often excellent. (I am okay at figuring out how to be friends with one person. Groups are much harder.)

But then there’s days when I wake up, and the cat encourages me to go out on the balcony, and the sun is just coming up, and there are some cool clouds and plane trails, and I just think, ‘yeah, that’s the good stuff.’

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

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