Thinking of Seattle...

I won’t whine about the rain anymore. Granted, it’s raining again but I’ve convinced myself that this is what it’s like to live in Seattle and to celebrate, I drank a lot of coffee.

I’ve actually always quite fancied going to Seattle. It just seems like an interesting place. I think it might be because it’s supposed to be a lot like England but, also, it just seems to be pretty nifty. Plus, my good friend Saz was there on a business trip last week and she said they have an awesome market called Pikes’ Place Market where you can pretty much buy every ingredient known to man.

Also, I like coffee. Seattle has coffee. I think that means I should go there someday.

I used to travel a lot more when I was a bit younger. This is partly because I had a job as an International Market Research Analyst so I got to travel. I didn’t do too much international travel there. This was because when we had to do an international market research study, we’d figure out what country we needed to do our study in and then hire another market research company to do all the work. Then we’d slap our logo and label on the report and give it to our client. I did get to go to twice though. Since I was the token British person, my boss would send me. I liked that. I was supposed to go to Paris once because I’d sort of exaggerated the fact that I spoke French when I’d applied for that job. Fortunately, it fell through and I went to London instead. I was relived. I had been studying French by using tapes but I hadn’t progressed much past the “Where are the toilets?” and “Where is the wine?” stage of my education.

I also travelled a bit with my family. When I was in college, my dad went through a road warrior phase and bought an RV. My younger siblings and I would go with him and mum on trips down south. My older brother never went because he didn’t want to and my parents thought he was responsible enough to stay home alone. Since he was over 18 at this point, it made sense.

Still, I got to go. Mostly, it was quite fun at first. There was the time when we got stuck in an RV park in Alabama during a minor hurricane. That was a wee bit alarming because an RV isn’t exactly the most sturdy and weatherproof place to be. However, by the time we got to Alabama, we were told that it was too late to miss the hurricane so the best thing to do would be batten down the hatches and wait it out.

We did. It was very windy and rainy and loud. Fortunately, we didn’t blow away. I’m glad it was just a minor hurricane.

Then there was the time we went to Texas and didn’t get to the RV until after dark. When we woke up the next day and went outside, there were these sand dunes all over the place and lots of scorpions and scary spiders.

Then there was the time when I was interning in Maine during my college years and my family went camping in the RV to Florida without me. They went to Disneyworld. Naturally, I wasn’t there for that trip even though I had been wanting to go there for years. It’s ok mum, I’ve mostly forgiven you all for that. I mean just because when I went in the RV with you and the rest of the family, we went to Florida but didn’t go to Disney World, it’s ok.

Just kidding. I’m over it. Besides, I moved to L.A. and got to go to Disneyland a lot. It wasn’t quite the same but it did make up for it.

Then, of course, there was the time I actually did move to L.A. and my parents and I drove out there and then, when I came home, my friend and I drove back to Indiana. This means I saw a lot of the U.S. I had never seen before. Combined with my internships in Maine, one to which I drove rather than flew, I’ve pretty much seen most of the country.

Except Seattle. Which is the whole point of this blog today. Actually, I’ve never seen the Pacific Northwest at all. When I was actually working for the market research company, my friend Saz had to do a report on the Salmon of the Pacific Northwest for a legislative-y type of job she had and it inspired me to write a story about the Salmon of the Pacific Northwest but, well, that’s pretty much the closest I’ve come.

Although I’ve eaten plenty of salmon since then. I’m a big fan of salmon.

I also watch “Grey’s Anatomy” which is set in Seattle. However, watching “Grey’s” doesn’t exactly inspire you to live there because if you believed that show, it would be the single most important place for rare medical events ever. Just to name a few: trees growing in lungs, babies that grow in intestines without any fluid, men who eat doll heads, people who get little fishes that swim up their penises and live inside the human body, people who literally turn into fossilized trees and people who a) get impaled by a tree, b) fall out of trees or c) get knocked out of trees because they’re staging a protest. In the world of “Grey’s Anatomy,” trees are evil.

So, I’ll ignore the “Grey’s” take on Seattle and just keep it on my list of places to go to someday. After all, I’m experienced with rain and I drink coffee. I drink a lot of coffee.

Which, actually, you can probably tell from reading this blog. Note to Captain Monkeypants: Do not drink so much coffee when blogging, it inspires randomness.

However, at least I’m not complaining about the rain.

Still...maybe I do need more coffee.

Happy Wednesday!

Dreary Weather Mondays...

Is it redundant to say that today was another True Monday? I say that every week but today, it was especially true. I woke up to the sound of pouring rain. It was dark outside whereas even at our early 6:03 a.m. wake-up time, it's usually starting to get light by now. The puppies needed to go out and let me know quite clearly that there would be no laying in for me today. After we'd taken our morning jaunt outside in the wet yard, they decided they wanted to go back to bed. I would have loved to have given in to them and climbed back into my toasty nest but, alas, my precious PTO is low at work and I couldn't justify it.

I was the first one in the office. It was deadly silent when I went into Cubicle Land. They've taken to turning off the air conditioning/heat at night and so the absence of the hum made it seem even quieter.

Everyone seemed to be getting a late start today as I remained the only one in the office for at least 20 minutes longer. Even though I take in a travel mug of tea each morning, I like to get the coffee rolling for those who aren't as caffeine-prepared in the mornings as I am. However, today, I went to make coffee and discovered that only the decaf pot remained. Someone had taken the regular coffee. Not sure whether it was intention, I decided not to make coffee until the pot returned. Normally, someone removes it over a weekend to run vinegar through it- our water in this area is the type that creates a lot of build-up over time and makes us have to clean the coffee pot to make it drip more quickly.

Anyway, it turned out that there was some kind of disaster with the coffee pot and it was NOT coming back so someone braver than me decided to confiscate the decaf pot and convert it to the True Ways of Coffee. We no longer have a decaf pot, at least for the time being. We only have two decaf drinkers in the office most days anyway. Besides if they really want their decaf, they can always confiscate the hot water coffee pot. Yes, we have a hot water coffee pot for the tea drinkers. Of course, it doesn't really boil the water but it gets it hot. We also have a water cooler that dispenses boiling hot water and there's no waiting for it to heat up. So, you can see why I found it a little strange that the decaf drinkers got bumped but, well, office politics are everywhere, even with the priority of the hot-beverage drinkers.

The rain stopped but the whole day passed in a dreary fog. I had a chat with my boss on Friday and felt quite good about telling him in a polite way that I felt like Harry Potter. Today, however, I was back to being Harry Potter which, while not unexpected, was slightly disappointing. The project I'm working on is currently at a standstill because it just won't run through the database. I've tried all the fixes I know how to apply and nothing is working. I know it's not me. My boss thinks it's me. Thus, when I ask him for assistance, he dismisses me with one of those vague, 'try this' solutions that I've already tried and when I ask him for help, he forgets I asked five minutes later.

Still, I have other work to do in the meantime. It's just not the type of work that makes you want to sit up, punch the air and say "YAY! TODAY I GET TO TRY TO TRANSLATE TECHNICAL JARGON INTO ENGLISH AGAIN! HURRAH!"

I've been working on this project for a while. It's not moving very quickly. It's necessary but boring. It's not a good 'rainy Monday' project either so you can imagine that by 4:15 p.m., I was ready to come home to the puppies.

They seem to be in crabby moods too. Rory keeps biting at my feet. Sookie keeps following me, giving me sad, sulky looks. They both want to sit on my lap and then, when they do, decide they want to get off again and start squabbling.

Still, now we're home and the only thing to do on an evening like this is to sit down and let the day pass quietly while watching some Jack Bauer. He puts it all into perspective, really: A rainy, dreary Monday is hardly a bad day when you're dealing with terrorists or nuclear bombs or betraying women or crazy women or women you have to shoot or best friends who betray you to the the-almost death....you get the idea. So, really, this day hasn't been so bad. It's just been a bad mood day.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. I hope it either rains or is sunny. I hate this dreary, nothing type of weather that won't really do anything except hang around, not making up its mind if it wants to rain or clear up. However, even if it is like this tomorrow, at least it's not a Monday. Something about that makes the day already better. I wonder why that is.

Happy Tuesday!

Ice Storm Watch 2008

We were supposed to have an ice-storm last night. It was one of those things that sent the weather people scurrying around like squirrels, interrupting TV, reporting on "Ice Storm Watch 2008," and having that banner flash across the TV every five minutes to tell which counties would be affected.

We never got the ice. We had nothing. It's cold. There are patches of ice where the puddles were yesterday but no ice storm. Supposedly, it may hit today but there was definitely an air of disappointment in the weather people this morning. I, for one, am not too disappointed. I did, however, discover an area of my parking lot that could be compared to an ice rink. It's where the storm drain sits below a slight incline. It also happens to be in the main traffic area. I'll have to remember to watch out for that. I'll also keep an eye out for my stray there; maybe he'd like to use those ice-skating skills for which he was so eager to hitch a ride.

It is cold though, so cold that my window on my car freezes shut and going to the drive-by mailboxes at the post office isn't so simple. I had to open my door to mail my letters since my window wouldn't budge. Now I'm in the office and people are being very...ominous. Several people have walked by my cubicle and said, "No snow....yet." They say it in this tone that implies dark and shady happenings are afoot. Personally, I'd rather like some dark and shady happenings, nothing too depressing but something to liven up my day.

Then again, maybe I have enough dark and shady happenings in my dream life to fill the quota. I've been having weird dreams. A couple of nights again, Keanu Reeves was an alien, just like he was in "The Day The Earth Stood Still." I haven't seen the film but I did see the preview. Anyway, Keanu was going to kill us all. We had to run. I ended up in a house that was filled with frozen food. Not sure why. The night after that, I dreamed Heath Ledger was talking to me. Given that he passed away, that was a shade creepy. Last night, I dreamed a high school classroom had caught on fire, killing everyone. I know why that one happened- I was editing too much. I have a scene in which that happens in Rainlight.

I did mention that I wasn't into sparkles and rainbows in my novels, right?

So maybe I don't really want dark and shady happenings. I wouldn't mind some snow though. Just a dusting would be fine. It is coming up on Christmas. I have my decorations up, my lights glowing. I even have a little electric fireplace that simulates dancing flames on logs. I love it. It's not like I can roast chestnuts on it because it's not an open fire. Besides, roasting chestnuts on an open fire is a bit dangerous anyway- those things can shoot right out like bullets if they get hot enough.

But I have my apartment set up and I'm ready for a little more snow now. I'm a traditionalist: Firmly believing that Christmases should be white. That's one of the problems I had when living in L.A. Granted, I spent the actual holiday with my family in Indiana so I often got snow but the preparations for the holiday were all done in L.A. It's not easy to be festive when it's 80 degrees and sunny. The campiness of palm trees with lights on it wears off fairly quickly. That's why I loved our annual trip to Disneyland; the might fake it but at least it snows there. It's hard to hear "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" in L.A. Sure, you can drive to the mountains but it's not always possible.

I'm rambling. I'm a rambler. By now, you'll know that's normal. Blame it on my dark and shady dreams from last night; my brain feels a little mushy this morning. I'm surprised I can form a complete sentence. More people are trickling into the office now; the first pot of coffee has been emptied, more is made, steadily growing in vileness so that this afternoon's pot will be disgusting. I usually skip the afternoon coffee these days.

Another person just said "The storm is coming!" It makes me smile at how dramatic it is. If we have a storm, I'll let you know. In the mean time, I'll just sit back and see what happens. There's no controlling nature; if she wants to be dark, shady and stormy, she will. If not, we always had "Ice Storm Watch 2008".

Happy Tuesday.

Captain Monkeypants and the Art of the Calamity

I'm very sleepy this morning. It was one of those mornings where I debated staying in bed for another half-hour and going in late, making up the time this evening. Yet I got up anyway. I never get much benefit out of lying in bed for another half-hour unless I'm actually sleeping. Mostly, it's spent hiding my head under the covers and thinking about how much I don't want to get up which leads me to constantly check the clock to see how much time I have left rather than actually sleeping. If I actually do get up, it's just easier.

It's freezing out this morning. The snow patches are still clustered in the shadows and my car was iced-over. I'm too lazy to scrape: I've taken to starting my car ten minutes before I want to leave. It's SO much easier and, I find, actually safer because even when you scrape, you never clear your windows completely. I saw a girl driving an identical car to mine this morning but she'd only managed to scrape a little hole on her windshield. She practically had her nose against the glass, trying to see out. The rest of her car was so frozen that there was no way she could see out of her windows. This is why I start my car early. Also, having just got my car fixed from my last accident, I do not want another one, thank you very much.

So, now I'm at work. It's quiet in the office. I'm sipping vile coffee again because I cannot get my act together enough to make a pot at home. I'm really only capable in the mornings of getting ready for work, starting my car early and then a maximum of one non-routine task. Often, it involves putting things in my crockpot to cook for dinner. I do the preparation for this the night before. Other times, if I'm REALLY ambitious, it involves making toast. I adore toast. It's a joy in my life. I do not, however, really enjoy my toaster. It was one of those $7 deals from Walmart. It's a two-slot toaster but it's not deep enough to toast the very top of the bread so by the time it pops up, the top of the bread is still soft and untoasted while the rest is fine. Also, it does not have one of those nifty buttons to hit to make the toast pop up on your command. You have to turn the dial to the lowest setting and then it pops up. This is great except I like my toast dark and I inevitably forget I turned the dial to low until my toast pops up and it's still white. I need a new toaster.

This morning, I decided to try my new bread maker. It was actually my parent's but it's new to me. There was no instruction book. My mother provided instructions on how to put the ingredients in which was very helpful. There's a lot of buttons though. I like hitting buttons. I think I might have set the timer right on it since it was counting down as I left the apartment. If all goes well, I should be greeted with the scent of fresh baked, yeasty bread when I get home from work. Either that or it's The Breadmaker of Doom and is counting down for more ominous reasons. I prefer to think positively, however.

Aside from adoring fresh bread, I decided it might be a good idea to introduce a new smell to my apartment other than rather-cheap-wine-covered-up-by-Christmas-candle. You see, last night, I had a rather large accident. I have this wine rack that is very pretty but the bottles aren't terribly secure. They sit on a rather thin ledge and are easily dislodged. I bumped the rack last night causing the top layer of bottles to fall onto the ones below. You wouldn't think this had much effect but I am Captain Monkeypants, Mistress of the Calamity. No, this top level bottle shattered the bottle beneath which lead to a nasty mess. I try to keep my good wine on the top rack, the Two Buck Chuck on the bottom. I should probably explain that the difference between the Two Buck Chuck and the Top Level wine is about $3. I like good wine. If I had a nice fat income, I'd probably splurge. However, for now, Sutter Home is my friend. Not that it isn't good wine. It's just not good wine, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, so, I stood there, taking in the sudden and unexpected calamity, I realized I had to Act Now or Forever Lose The Newness of my Carpet. So I flew into action, sopping up the worst of the spill and reading on the internet the best way to remove wine stains. Did you know everyone says white wine works as a stain lifter? I did not. I also prefer red wine and so I lacked white wine. Also, I would have felt rather cross if I'd hate to waste more wine like that. So I ran to the store, purchased some Oxy Deep Cleaner and went back to work on the carpet. Fortunately, I managed to remove the stain, I think. The carpet looked ok in the pretty lights of my Christmas tree and my not-so-bright lamp. I'm hoping that in the light of day, it'll look fine too.

So, by the time my scrubbing was done, my apartment smelled a bit more like Oxy Clean and a little less like Two Buck Chuck. I lit my Glade Gingerbread candle. It seemed to help except somehow the smells seemed to combine and now my flat smells like a Christmas pudding. For all you non-Brits, a Christmas pudding is a very dark, raisin-y, rum-my, fruity concoction that is steamed and served with brandy butter. I just like the brandy butter, truth be told. Though when I was little, the tradition was to hide money in the Christmas pudding for the children so that when you'd get your piece, you'd find a nice 5 pence piece, usually when you'd bite into the pudding. Yes, that was back before people were quite so germaphobic. Which was probably not a good thing, now that I think about it. I didn't realize that my parents were the one putting the money into the pudding until I was quite old. Yes, I really thought it came that way, ok?

Anyway, once more, I digress. Back to my point: Fresh Bread. I'm hoping that the bread maker works and that I have nice crusty bread waiting for me and that my apartment smells just like fresh bread rather than Christmas pudding flavoured bread because that would be a bit vile. I'll keep you posted on that.

So, the moral of this story is really Don't Spill Wine on the Carpet. It is a bad thing. However, if you do, may I recommend Oxy Clean and Glade Candles to alleviate the disaster a little. As long as you don't mind the smell of Christmas pudding. Also, as an added side bonus, Sutter Home crushes Two Buck Chuck. Literally.

Happy Wednesday

By the Power of Giftcards! (And yes, say it just like He-Man did.)

Triumph of triumphs today: I have succeeded in being the first one in the office and thus got to make the first pot of coffee. I'm hoping this means it won't be vile. Though I'm growing accustomed to vile coffee. I know I bought a coffeemaker so I could make coffee in the mornings but making a pot of coffee for ones lone self seems a little extravagent. I suppose I could measure it out so that there's just enough for me but so far, I haven't quite done that. I drive by a Starbucks every morning. I have a Starbucks gift card that will buy me at least 3 cups of coffee depending on if I decided to go premium or whether I stick to the plain old coffee that they put in those pumpy things at the front of the store when they hand you an empty cup.

Speaking of Starbucks, here's a question for you. I get that using their fancy words for sizes, they set themselves up as a 'fancy' coffee chain. There's short, tall, grande and venti. But doesn't it sound like grande is the biggest? Every time I go in there and I'm craving mass amounts of caffeine and coffee, I plan on ordering the largest. So, without thinking, I generally order a grande. And then I realize, "Oh, wait, it's the venti size I wanted." Grande sounds like a big one. Venti doesn't. Venti actually sounds like a coffee cup with holes in it (if you're me). Like it's trying to air out the coffee or something.

However, since I'm not a frequent Starbucks goer because fancy coffee is a luxury and I don't like to spend almost $5 on a fancy cup of coffee so driving by the coffee shop daily isn't too much of a temptation. Usually.

Except at this time of year. They're tempting me with their pumpkin spice lattes, starting to make me rethink that Christmas doesn't begin until after Thanksgiving because I really love their peppermint mocha, their eggnog lattes and sometimes, even, their gingerbread latte though that one is very sickly and rich and should only be consumed in a tall size. Which again, sounds a bit odd because tall sounds...well....tall and if you just want a small cup of coffee, do you really want it to be tall?

I'm overthinking that. I know.

So far, I haven't succumbed to the call of my Starbucks gift card. I'm notoriously stingy when it comes to spending gift cards in general though. To me, a gift card is a form of power. Whenever you go into the store, browse the website or even smell the coffee of the place for which you have a giftcard, it means you have the power to buy whatever you like. You aren't held back by pesky finances. You don't have to say, "Well, I could buy this new Neil Gaiman collection of short stories but it's $14.99 and I really should save that money for Christmas gifts." You can say "Ha! I have a $25 gift card and a coupon. I can own you, Neil Gaiman...well, at least your short stories...." (then again, I wouldn't mind owning my own Neil Gaiman. He's really funny and charismatic (especially for a writer) and he's got a lovely reading-stories voice. But that would be weird because I'd have nowhere to keep him at the moment and, well, now that I think about it, having a pet Neil Gaiman probably isn't the done thing within society, is it? It'd probably be considered a bit Misery-esque. Ok. Forget I said that.)

The thing is, I don't usually end up buying the Neil Gaiman book or whatever else I had in mind to buy. It's not easy to give up that power that you have in the gift card. I may finally succumb but it takes a few store visits before I decide what I want.

I know, you're probably saying "but you could just as easily buy people gifts with your gift card-isn't that the same concept as spending cash?". My answer is "NO!!!!!". In the immortal words of Mr. Bean "These are MINE!".

Uh, yeah. Generally, I like to think I'm quite generous. But if someone gives me a gift card as, you know, a gift, it's mine. I will spend every cent in my checking account on gifts but that $25 Border's gift card? That. Is. Mine.

There are some exceptions to the "Gift card is power and should not be spent easily" motto I live by. When I was moving from L.A. to Ohio, I received some Shell gas station gift cards from some good friends. Those were very, very useful particularly when you have to fill up your little gas tank every 463 miles or so. I also had a Target gift card from another good friend which is how I bought my coffee maker and blender.

(Speaking of the blender: It scares me. It likes to take walks. It's ok when it's on low but if I press that 'high' button and then try to blend....it just starts to move really fast from one side of the counter to the other. If I hold onto it, pressing down, I tend to move with it rather than stop it from walking. There's nothing more alarming than seeing your curried parsnip soup flying across the counter and having to make a dive to hit the 'off' button before it hits the floor.)

But aside from making a big move into a new place, I hoard my giftcards until it's time to spend them. Sometimes that time comes when you just need to shop. Sometimes a book comes out that you really, really want to own in hardcover even though you just read it from the library. With the Power of the Giftcard, the guilt is gone. That book can be yours for the low price of whatever Borders is charging, minus the nifty 30% off coupon you-printed-from-your-email-because-they-stopped-sending-the-even-niftier-text-messages-with-the-coupon-code-attached.

As far as my Starbucks giftcard goes, I'm ok with sharing that one. I mean, if you say "I'll buy you a cup of coffee" and you have a giftcard, that's very cool. Generosity AND smart spending. Nothing wrong with that one. But the Borders one I still have is mine. That's my power. That's my ticket to wandering around the bookstacks of Borders, smelling the new paper and the cellophane of the DVD and CD wrappers and feeling completely and utterly at home. It's my ticket to knowing that I can buy whatever I want (as long as it's not over $25).

So, that's my random musing for the day. And, by the way, the office coffee isn't vile today. It's still Maxwell House which is FAR inferior to Folgers but it's better. I used a lot of coffee though. Strong coffee is good coffee. It may not be good coffee here but, today, at least, it's not vile. Triumph is mine!

Happy Wednesday.

The Monkeypants Guide to Surviving Meetings

I'm going to try to attempt to blog in the evenings this week due to the fact that I have a conference training thingy at work that is going to eat my life away for a week. On the plus side, I've been told that the food is good and I get fed, at least for lunch, every day. The downside is that I've also been told the training is boring and dry. So...while I will try to be a good little new employee, I have a feeling that my mind is going to start to wander as it always does when it's not terribly thrilled with paying attention, most commonly occuring during meetings.

Work meetings have always been hard for me. I usually like my actual job. I just despise meetings. Very rarely does anything actually get accomplished in a meeting. Instead, people talk about what should be accomplished but, inevitably, the people they will have to talk to to do any accomplishing aren't at the meeting. Which means another meeting will have to be set up to include that person. And then, sometimes, that person needs to talk to another person and so on and so forth. It ends up being a vicious cycle of meetings.

The worst are phone meetings. I hate phone meetings. I've sat through many a phone meeting in which we all have to dial a special number, go to a web page and then wait until everyone else arrives. Then the host of the meeting hits a magic button and all 'attendees' can see his or her computer screen. Sometimes, they were interesting. For about five minutes. The rest of the time, I would try very hard to pay attention but when the host of the meeting is spending fifteen minutes tweaking his screen so the program he's demonstrating runs right, it's quite understandable, I think, that I zone out. Sometimes I surf the internet. The bad part about this is that occasionally the host of the meeting will switch the setup so that my screen is the one everyone can see. I've had some near misses with those. Emailing with a friend in which you're mocking the host of the meeting is not a good idea if there's a chance everyone could read your screen. However, after a particularly near miss of getting caught being a naughty Monkeypants in a phone meeting, I took up other hobbies like paperclip sculpting, drawing with crayons and sudoku. Generally speaking, I was still quite able to get the gist of the meeting and find out what I was supposed to do in the last five minutes of the meeting so, you see, it all worked out.

Live meetings are a little more fun though. I make sure to take paperclips so that I can sculpt and occupy my hands when I am ready to doze off. I realized one day I wasn't the only one who was a bit bored in a meeting after I had sculpted a particularly fine little paperclip man. My coworker reached over, quietly took my man and hung him from a rubberband noose he'd just finished making complete with a paperclip scaffold. And yes, that is a true story.

My other meeting pasttimes include looking at the attendees and figuring out one of the following:

• Which Harry Potter character would they be?
• If they were an animal, which animal would they be?
• What would be their karaoke song if criminals came in and held us at gunpoint, threatening to kill us if we didn't sing karaoke. (This, of course, would lead to the inevitable musings of what would cause the criminals would come into the meeting in the first place and what would they look like?)
• What would they do if I decided to dance on the conference table like Michael Flatley and his Riverdance chronies. (I can't actually Riverdance. I just like the idea).
• Who would I like to see naked? (Very cliche but it's SO hard to not go there when you're trying to NOT go there). The answer was usually a resounding no-one. I haven't had much luck in my offices where there is anyone I'd like to see naked or even just partially clothed. A sad fact, I know.

There were plenty of other daydreaming techniques I have. As a novelist/writer, meetings are an excellent way to solve writing dilemmas. More than one ephiphany has come during a meeting. In fact, I wrote the opening of my last novel while sitting through a particuarly boring meeting about hardware firewalls. My boss asked me to go in his place since he couldn't make it. He'd only signed up in the first place because there was a free lunch. Perfect place to start writing a new novel. I got a free Subway sandwich and chips, a break from work and a quiet place to write. And best of all, it looked like I was taking notes. Actually, that was a good meeting now that I think about it.

There are some tricks to being an effective meeting goer. Naturally, it involves looking like you're paying attention. This usually means you nod a lot at the speaker and make good eye contact. You look like you're taking notes, even if you're really making a shopping list for groceries to buy on the way home from work. Don't let your brain detach completely if there is a chance you will need to speak. This is tricky because sometimes you don't know when it will occur. If caught off guard, quickly glance down at the agenda to remind yourself what the meeting is about. Then look as though you're pondering something and drag yourself back to reality and find a way to pass the responsibility onto someone else. This is usually effective when you say something like, "Well, I know Frank was working on that and though I keep trying, he's reluctant to give me a response. I'll check with him as soon as I get back to the office." This not only buys you time but also has the bonus effect of making Frank look bad. Unfortunately, this sometimes means another meeting in your future to which Frank will be invited but, the general Monkeypants Rule of Meeting Survival is to always blame Frank. Or whoever your Frank might be.

Of course, there is another type of meeting- the motivational group meeting. My current job, so far, hasn't had any of these. My old job had yearly ones in which we'd be forced to get our entire department together and work in groups to promote unity, positivity and whatever slogans the managers had recently seen when browsing Successories for motivation. Personally, I prefer the demotivators but they didn't seem to go over so well with the managers.

And the problem with these motivational meetings is that no one really wants to be motivated. They want to continue to be bitter and angry because the managers are clueless as to the real problems they face on a daily basis. They don't want to get together in pre-arranged, specifically-manufactured-to-make-coworkers-who-are-enemies-get-along-for-an-hour groups to make up songs that are supposed to be funny, clever and gently mock the daily activities of the department. They don't want to sing Kumbaya for an hour together because after that hour is up, Coworker X will still be a pompous twit, Coworker Y a lazy but slick politician who manages to do nothing and still reap promotions and rewards and Coworker Z will still be playing computer games all day long while the rest of the office has to pick up the slack because everyone knows it's useless to say anything.

All in all, you probably figured out that I'm not a huge fan of The Meeting. I don't mind small meetings that have a point. I don't mind if there's a real, honest purpose to having a meeting. I especially don't mind if, at the end of the meeting, there is a cold, hard solution to a problem on the table, or, at the very least, a result that doesn't call for another meeting but gives the attendees a reason for being in that room for an hour.

Fortunately, I haven't had too many meetings lately. Instead, I've had training. At least with that, I learn something...theoretically. I'm hoping this week is educational, even if it is dry. At the very least, I'm looking for a new writing project so maybe I can come up with one. As long as the food is good and there's coffee, I can survive.

As long as they don't ask us to sing.

Monday mornings...

So it's Monday morning and it feels like a Monday morning. I always find it strange that Mondays have their own unique feel. Even when a Tuesday is a Monday, it never feels the same, probably because a long weekend manages to wring out the badness of a Monday by the sheer bliss of having an extra day to do whatever you like.

But there's something about Mondays. They loom over us on a Sunday evening, invading those last hours of freedom we have before we're back to the office or back to school. Even if we try to enjoy our Sunday night, there's a strange curfew on our freedom; we know we should go to bed earlier, not have that last glass of wine, not watch that episode of a TV show that we have on DVD that can really wait until the next day but is so tempting. I don't know about you but Sunday nights are the one evening where I stop myself from reading that extra chapter of book or watching that TV show episode because I know that when my alarm goes off on Monday morning, I will regret it. And why start off the week with regret?

It never matters though; the alarm still goes off too soon (when you actually remember to set the alarm: See below). It still is incredibly difficult to unbury yourself from the blankets and actually put your feet on the floor. I like it when there's good stuff on the radio that I can lie in bed and listen to for ten minutes. Unfortunately, here in Ohio, I haven't found a good radio show. I was spoiled by Kevin and Bean in L.A., two snarky, witty, smart men who have the same dry sense of humour as me and who never failed to make me gasp at some of their bluntness and snide remarks. They also often managed to tap into a part of my brain in which I agreed with them. They could be crude but they were usually funny and they played good music. Here, I'm stuck with "Two Angry Guys" from Cincinnati- which sounds mostly like 'One Angry Guy who really just likes the sound of his own voice and is NOT funny nor smart and really needs something other than sports and the election to babble about'. I keep flipping but there's no other channel that plays non-country music. I think Satellite Radio is in my future.

I digress. It's Monday morning...I'm allowed to digress. I'm already on my second cup of coffee.

So, here's my Monday so far....I forgot to set my alarm and though I was awake anyway, I didn't have the luxury of hitting the snooze button which, somehow, always makes me feel slightly better; it's like cheating the day or something, even for just nine more minutes. Then I discovered it had frosted overnight and though it meant the world outside my window was a glittery landscape of white and silver, it also meant my car was iced over. My car hasn't been iced over before. Ever. She's a car from Southern California and I feel a little guilty that she's been ripped from her nice balmy climate to one that can be slightly harsh. However, she's here and I'm here and that's that. I had to scrape. I might have an ice-scraper somewhere; I think I kept it for sentimental reasons when I moved to L.A. Now I need it again and I think it's in one of those boxes that I still haven't unpacked yet- one of those boxes with non-essential stuff in it that will get unpacked when I feel like it. So I used a piece of cardboard. It worked.

I made it to work and it definitely feels like a Monday. People are trickling in, sluggish, exchanging weekend stories when they run across another coworker. The coffee pot is already empty and I really want another cup. I really need my own coffee maker. The coffee in this office is a little vile. I drink it because, face it, when you need coffee, almost any coffee will do. But I quite fancy waking up to the smell of roasting coffee when the weather is cold outside and I know I'm going to have to throw my coat on, start my car, and then go back upstairs to get ready for work.

My coworkers are quietest on Mondays though- they have meetings to go to, projects to get moving because they didn't quite finish on Friday afternoon when the promise of two days of freedom loomed too brightly to finish up tidily. All things can wait until Monday...until Monday comes and you realize that you probably should have done it on Friday or, for the really ambitious, you probably should have done the work over the weekend like you promised yourself you would. I'm guilty. I like weekends...They're to get away from work, not take it with you.

I'm rambling...again. I blame it on the fact that it's a Monday morning. I don't know what the rest of the day holds but I do know that there's one nice thing about Mondays- they lead to Monday evenings...which means I can take a bath, make a nice dinner and watch some so-bad-it's-awesome TV in the form of "Prison Break" and know that there isn't another Monday morning for a week.

I can usually find the bright spot...unless it's hidden under a layer of frost. Then I just have to scrape to find it.

I need more coffee....Happy Monday.