Almost Sunshine

I think I might have seen the sun today. It was brief and it was filtered but, for a few brief minutes, I think the gloom tried to go away.

Of course, it didn't go away. Instead, the sun went away. Then it rained. The end.

Just kidding. If I ended the blog there, anyone who is even a slightly regular reader would probably fall off their chair in shock at the mere fact that I wasn't rambling.

Tomorrow, we're supposed to actually see the sun for real. I'm holding out a little hope, I must admit. This lack of sunshine is making everyone crotchety and cranky...not just me.

I suppose I could argue that maybe I really am the crotchety cranky one and I'm projecting but, well, for once, that's not true. My entire office has been bickering all week. Case in point- our youngest account manager was yelling at our branch administrator to buy chewing gum with sugar in it. She usually buys sugar free gum. She was getting rather angry with him about it. Of course, I helpfully stepped in and told our young 'un that there was a nice cannister of sugar in the kitchen and perhaps he should stick some of that in his mouth when he chews the gum but that didn't go over very well.

We don't seriously bicker in our office. It's actually quite like sibling bickering. Mostly, it's sort of endearing although sometimes, as in the case of siblings, there are times when I'd quite like to throw something at someone elses' head but it's all done with fondness.

Actually, we're a little spoiled in our office anyway. I mean, not only does our branch administrator provide gum for us but she also buys Coke and Diet Coke and Mountain Dew for the boys as well as microwave popcorn, large pretzels and Cheeze Nips.

I find this all rather nice. The 'boys' in the office tend to take it for granted. When I explain that at my last job we had to pay 35 cents for a can of drink, they think my old office was cheap. I'm not going to say they weren't but, honestly, I didn't mind having to pay. For one thing, when something isn't free, you tend to think before you indulge. Because I get Diet Coke for free at work, I drink it almost every day.

All in all, my office is a good place to work. Even on days like today where two of my candidates decided to quit their jobs and another one turned down a position we were offering him, I like my job. Granted, it would be nicer if everyone stayed in the jobs I found for them forever and people were lining up in the street to work with me but, being a realist, I celebrate the small triumphs such as finding someone a job who really needs it and being able to make sure that someone's contract is extended.

As I always say, it's the small things in life that make it worth celebrating. On gloomy days like today, yesterday, the day before that and the day before that, I find that finding something to celebrate is necessary. In my case, it's that I had a productive day even if it wasn't the most successful. One of my 'quitters' is a man who's finally found a permanent job and though I'll be sad not to work with him anymore, I can't help but be thrilled for him that he's going to have some stability. That's something I think worth celebrating even if its not really a triumph for me.

I'm hoping that tomorrow, I'll be able to celebrate seeing some real, live sunshine. If not...I'll try to find the silver lining on the rather heavy cloud deck that never seems to go away.

But I'd rather it was sunny. Even for a little while.

Happy Thursday

The Visitors Are Coming!

Today was most definitely a Monday. I got to work and started a project that I thought would be simple. Alas, being Monday, nothing is ever simple. It turns out that even though I knew for certain that I'd updated a web page a few months ago, my changes were gone and I had to start from scratch. This realization came after quite a few attempts to find my edits which took up rather a lot of time. By the time I realized I had no choice but to start all over again, I had wasted valuable minutes trying to undo the undo-able error.

Still, even though it was Monday, I was in a scarily chipper mood. I have no idea why. It's remarkably easy to alarm people when they ask you how you are and you say enthusiastically, "It's Monday! YAY!"

I think that enthusiasm from me at work is always sort of a shock to most people. On a Monday, it's just plain alarming. I exacerabated the alarm by reading the motivation poster in the kitchen aloud to anyone who dared seem un-perky. I did not win a lot of fans. In fact, one of my coworkers even swore at me.

I think the saddest part is the more I alarm people with my perkiness, the more it encourages me. In our department staff meeting today, my manager told us we all had to download an application for our computers. When he realized they had to create a download just for little old me, the lone PC user in a sea of Macs, he stared at me and said, "you're really the only one?"

I beamed at him and said, "yup." He stared some more. "Really? Well, aren't you special?"

I merely smiled in my slightly loony way and said, "why yes, I always thought so." He didn't say much more on the subject. I think the fact that he acknowledged that I am the lone banana in a sea of Apple's was enough for the day. It's the teeny, tiny victories that really count, even if they only last a couple of hours.

This week is very special in our office. We have outsiders coming in to be trained on our software. It's very exciting, at least that's what I'm being told. This means for my area that we might be paraded out on a break just to prove that we exist. We also must dress nicely each day. For me, this isn't exactly an issue. I like to dress nicely for work. However, I do find it slightly ironic that we have to dress up to impress the visitors who most likely won't see us. I suppose we're supposed to give the impression that we're highly professional. Given that we actually are quite professional and still manage to be that way in jeans and t-shirts, it's rather interesting that we have to pretend that we dress nice every day.

I'm not against dressing nice for work as I've stated many times. Normally, I get odd looks and questions when I wear something other than jeans to work. It's just that we're pretending. The construction on our building has been working top speed to be done by tomorrow so that the visitors think we're perfect. It's still not done though Neon Einstein and the Motivational Bathroom Pictures are hung so that our guests know we're all perky and upbeat. Of course, given that there are only two bathroom stalls in our entire building and we're going to have quite a few women in for the training, I'm not quite sure how upbeat you can remain when you really need to go and there's a line but, well, they didn't think of that when they gave us our two bathroom stalls.

It's all a charade, really. I suppose any workplace is when you look at it. I watch The Office regularly and I have to say, though we don't have a supervisor quite as incompetant as Michael Scott, some of the events on that show are a little too familiar. I think every workplace is the same. You have to be on your best behaviour when outsiders are in the building to make them think you're perfect. When they leave, then you can start acting crazy and breaking out the jeans. One of the reasons I'll probably never be a boss is that I tend to think the output and work product is one of the things to look at, not what the workers look like who get it there. Also, if you're nice to the workers, they might output a little more, up that ratio of work to salary. My office isn't mean to us per se but, well, they don't exactly have staff appreciation days or parties. Even our Christmas party didn't happen this year because no one could be bothered to plan it. Also, I suspect we had no budget. I don't see why we couldn't have turned on the flat screens, cranked up the popcorn maker and had a party in our little Cubicle Land but no one seemed to go for that.

Now the time for holiday parties has passed. A President's Day party just didn't seem to appeal to anyone. Still, at lunch, we've taken to having little parties in the kitchen area. I think we might have to close the doors when the visitors are in the building; my perkiness might really frighten them. It's one thing to unleash a loony grin on your coworkers but I'm not mean enough to do it to complete strangers.

Of course, it's only Tuesday. By Friday, I might feel differently. I'll let you know.

Happy Monday!

James Bond in a Small Town...

It's almost Friday. I say almost because it's still Thursday which is the danger day. It's the danger day because it's so close to the weekend that it's very easy to rationalize that it is the weekend. This can range from staying up too late to going out and having fun and then realizing that you still have to get up in the morning for work because, after all, it isn't quite the weekend yet.

You see that in a little college town like the one in which I live. Thursday nights are lively. You see a lot of packs of students bar hopping and dawdling in traffic. Because it's a small town, students seem to think they're immune to being hit by a car, that everyone will stop. Unfortunately, since I've already been rear-ended this year, I can't mow them down like sometimes I'd like to do. The worst ones are the text-messagers. They actually cross the street while trying to text. They don't actually look to see if anything's coming. They get to a crosswork, get wrapped up in their texting and bam! A sometimes too near miss. The really annoying thing is they barely notice that the driver actually has smoke coming from beneath his tires because he had to stop so quickly. That driver almost had a heart attack, the student is to busy LOL'ing or TTYL'ing to notice.

Last night, I actually got to explore the town a bit by having dinner and seeing a movie with some coworkers. It was a lot of fun and considering it's a small town, there's some great places to eat and drink here. I tried a key-lime martini, just for the experience and because it came highly recommended by my coworkers. Well, it tasted like key lime pie in a glass which was the point, I suppose. It even had pie crust crumbs dusted on the glass. Personally, I've decided that key lime pie is better as a pie because it sort of freaked me out a little that I was drinking a pie. Which is strange given that I don't like pumpkin pie but am more than happy to scarf down a pumpkin-pie latte. But then, that has no pie crust in it which is definitely for the best. I do not like crumbs in my drink. It's revolting

I did have the experience of going to a small town movie theatre, something I haven't done in a long time. I just moved from L.A. Not to sound pretentious but, well, it's the lands on which Hollywood sits. This is a fancy way of saying I've been spoiled rotten when it comes to seeing a movie.

This is a classic little place. The concessions seller is the same person as the ticket taker. They just move desks quickly and efficiently to scoop out the popcorn and drinks. I didn't order popcorn because I'd just had sweet potato fries and a hamburger for dinner. (Which, by the way, I could write an entire blog about the deliciosness of sweet potato fries because, frankly, they're a little like crack and once I start, I cannot stop eating them. Not that I've tried crack, in case you were wondering...I just like saying "it's like crack".)

But the popcorn smelled nice which is a bonus. Although, since it was freezing outside, I think it had something to do with the fact that it represented something warm and toasty.

The theatre itself was...tiny. It had a screen that looked half the size of a stadium-style theatre's screen. The floor was sticky and it made that schloup-schloup sound when I lifted my feet. The chairs were wobbly and worn. But I loved it because places like that are so hard to find anymore. I loved it because there were only 12 people in the whole theatre. I loved it because you could hear the whirl of the projector. Mostly, it felt so comfortable and intimate that I knew that it's the type of place I can go to when I just need to escape from reality for a bit and get lost in the fakeness of the movie-world. I can bury myself in a movie, good or bad and duck out from life for a bit.

We saw "Quantum of Solace", the new James Bond. I love Daniel Craig as Bond. I love that hardness to his face, his flintlike eyes, the fact that he can convey emotion through those eyes without having to make a single facial expression. "Casino Royale" was an excellent film; it gave us a new Bond and a far less farcical take on the franchise. Ok, so Pierce Brosnan was nice to look at and he was funny but the movies had become ridiculous, almost spoofing the Bond of the former years.

Mr. Craig plays Bond with grit. His body is lean and hard and scarred. When he gets hurt, he has to clean himself up and he bears the injury for the rest of the movie. He doesn't miraculously escape unscathed in his tuxedo, he climbs out from the rubble, dusty, beaten but ready to fight again.

"Quantum of Solace" is interesting. While "Casino Royale" had great moments of dry and subtle humour, this movie doesn't. Bond is angry and he wants to bury his anger and pain in his work. And he does. A lot. He's ruthless, vicious and very deadly in his rage. I know some people have said this is a boring movie but I have a feeling it's one of those films that will improve on each watching. It's like "The Two Towers" in the Lord of the Rings series or "The Empire Strikes Back"- both were rather boring in some ways but they complete the series of movies and when you see the complete picture that the trilogies painted, those movies became the hinge for the entire set. I can't say it entertained me the way "Casino Royale" did but it was effective. My only complaint is that James Bond gets chased a lot in this one and he does a lot of chasing. In fact, in some ways, the movie is a series of a lot of people chasing each other with some dialogue thrown in. It's effective because it shows us that James Bond really is a human, his anger is for the death of a woman he actually loved but he masks it by being a robotlike-agent, efficient and brutal and wiping out all those who get in his way.

But there's a lot of chasing in this movie. There's a car chase, a rooftop chase of foot, a boat chase, a plane chase, another foot chase in a hotel, another footchase in an opera house, another car chase.....you sort of get the point. I suppose it's symbolic. Mr. Bond is chasing a peace and resolution to his grief and anger. Naturally, because, he's Bond, he wins in the end but he's still a man, chased by shadows and regret and scarred both on his body and in his soul.

To be honest though, I'm still not quite sure what a Quantum of Solace is. I mean, I know how it plays into the movie but I'm a little baffled by why any organization would name themselves that. Wouldn't something like "Circle of Baddies" or "Secret Traitors of the World" be a little easier to say?

Despite that, I enjoyed my evening. I ignored the giant "Twilight" poster in the lobby like a good Monkeypants. I may have irritated one of my coworkers because I snorted with disgust when they showed us a preview of "Angels and Demons" the new Dan Brown adapation. How was I supposed to know she's a huge Dan Brown fan? She loves that book. A lot. It's one of her favourites. Ooops.

But, in truth, it was my first evening out since I moved from the big city to a small town and it was fun. I love having a movie theatre that close, even if it is the size of a postage stamp. I love being able to walk from dinner to the movies, the frost starting to glitter around us, my gloves still in my pockets because somehow I ended up with two right gloves and no left glove (and wearing them upside down just doesn't work right). I love that a town like this changes with the seasons, that the summer will bring long, lazy days with concerts in the park and winter will bring hurried walks from one place to another. It's supposed to snow again today and if it settles as it's supposed to, the town will change again, dusty with snow and telling me that it might be ok to start thinking about Christmas now.

And, at the very least, it gives me an excuse to drink hot chocolate and think about my weekend which is only a day away.

Happy Thursday.