Absolute crazy by the dashboard light

Unfortunately I am still at my job. But to celebrate Will no longer being at his (I have to tell you, this kid’s ability to work -no pun intended- the corporate severance system is legendary), I thought the least I could do was start blogging under the Live from the Home Office pretense once again!

I figure a  good segue in is this year’s rendition of Celebrity Apprentice.* This show has long fallen off of our TV radar, until I  came across the press release for the current season when it was first announced. I called Will from my desk immediately. I believe the call went like this:

“Hi.  DVR. Celebrity Apprentice. LaToya Jackson. Star Jones. Little John. Meat Loaf. And… wait for it… Gary F’n Busey.**

Anywho, it’s been amazing. But the breakout star has to be Meat Loaf. Is Meat Load two words? I dunno, and i don’t care enough to google it. Every week, he is an absolute disaster. He has ridiculous ideas that he can’t articulate. He cries 3-4 times. He screams at coworkers with veins bulging out of his head.   And then, I had an epiphany a couple sundays ago:

Oh my God, my working style is just like that of Meat Loaf, my coworkers must hate me!

I won’t even get into how Meat Loaf himself has ruined Meat Loaf songs for us for the rest of our lives. But, the next time I went to scream aloud in our oh-so-trendy open office plans, I stopped and really, honestly said to myself, “Imagine how Little John would react to your actions.”

*I’ve been urged by many to document the horrific wedding planning experience I had ,  but I need to go under far, deep cover and to be honest, too soon, too soon.

** We have been diligently searching for I’m with Busey on DVD to no avail. Hopefully we can find it before our vacation in a couple weeks.

iDad

My Dad just retired this week.  Congrats to him for a long, distinguished career! Now, with all of that free time – what to do? We overheard him talking about the endless possibilities:

- clean out every room in the house
- organize his coffee K cups
- get a haircut in the middle of the afternoon if he wants

To help further occupy him, we got him an iPad. Yesterday he was asking about Twitter and I think he just unlocked the ravioli badge at his favorite Italian restaurant.
uummm… #creatingdigitalmonster

move over Justin Bieber, Dad is trending!

Serving up Home Office fun

It’s been while since we’ve written but there are too many wonderfully ridiculous and mundane details of home office life that we can’t keep to ourselves.

The home office is back and fully (dys)functional.  There have been some changes in the past 6 months but we’ll catch you up.  Stay tuned.

yes, we got married and I got a new job, but
the big news is my improved forehand!
(my new office is living like it is 1999 –  ping pong table, kegerator and a sweet odor in the hallways at 420, daily)

Look at me, I’m sailing

During a videochat with a friend this evening, Will declared that there is a potential flaw with taking a cruise out of brooklyn (as we were all collaborating to do, on a whim):

"Imagine thinking that you're on a cruise ship to the Caribbean only to realize you got on the Ikea shuttle ferry instead!"

He then added, “I’m standing there in my straw hat and Hawaiian shirt, and the guy next to me is holding up his Förlåt”

Do you ever accidentally leave the stopwatch on on your cellphone, and then you check it one day and 302:759:20 seconds have passed and you get depressed because so much time… gone… like that?  That just happened to me and that’s how I feel. WILL WRITE!

Fake Easter

My sister was all proud of herself, thinking she’d be able to show some authority and independence to my mother by informing her that “No, Mom, me and my family are going away in the Spring and will not be here for Easter.”  My sister is sick of me casually avoiding holidays and family events: “oh, I’ll be in South America for Christmas; ”  ”Oh no! Too bad I’m in Australia during Grandma’s funeral!!”, all the while she feels like she can offer no shock value, no controversy, no “muahahahahah, I’m getting out of this one!”

So it was with equal part glee and malevolence with which she said, “Guess what, Hol?  I get to tell Mommy that we’re not going to be here for Easter.”  Not my sister Joy!  Not the bearer of my Mom’s only Grandchildren!! But oh yes, the beach house had been booked, and Easter would go on sans kids, sans Joy, both  literally and figuratively.

A foreshadowing of a miserable Easter passed before my eyes. What to do without my sister to laugh with! What to do without my sister elbowing me while trying to get to an egg before me in the Easter egg hunt! Who would help take any passive aggressive blows from my mother?!! I quickly identified with how she felt every time I proudly announced that sorry, I can’t make it. I’M the one who is supposed to miss holidays, but oh so how I’ve taken my older sister, my best friend, for granted!

My only solace was in the impending giddiness when my mom would hear that Easter would be Minus my sister’s family of 4. I even asked if I could be conferenced in when Joy delivered the news! Finally, it would not be me who is the disappointing child!

And then… the phone call. Joy was barely audible;l something was wrong. I hurriedly asked, “well, how did she take it?!!!” How would my mother respond to her prize child-bearing daughter skipping— GASP– A HOLIDAY??

"Oh don't worry... we'll have Easter the next week," my Mom calmly said, without skipping a beat

Before laughing for a minute straight, I congratulated my sister on being able to postpone the celebration of the rising of our Lord and Saviour. Easter Sunday, Easter Schmunday.

Jesus can wait a week.

And so Fake Easter is born.

Pot O Gold!

I’ve been out of commission on a business trip that required 16 hour days. I’m back, and went to grab some money from the change jar to buy myself a cup of coffee this morning since I’m back to being office-level addicted to the stuff.  Why buy coffee?  Did the Home Office decide to throw the budget out the window because there is a steady paycheck?  Hell no, it’s just that someone broke the coffee pot*

The change jar is always magically full of quarters. However, on this morning…

WTF, nothin but copper!

Looks like someone has been dipping into petty cash while I’ve been away.  Investigation is pending.

* When I heard the coffee pot drop, my thought wasn’t “Oh no, the coffee pot!” or “I hope no one got hurt in there”, but rather “Thank god it wasn’t me.” Also, now we are faced with buying a new pot even though we are going to register for a new coffee machine. If anyone wants to step up and get us a preemtive new coffee maker, stainless steel with a decanter that keeps it warm, give a shout out hehe

Dios Mio!

FACT: Hollie ’s is 5’7″, with red hair and fair skin. She also drove our tiny rental car around the small towns in Mexico*.  

FACT: The average height of a Mexican woman is 5’1″  . During our journey we didn’t witness one other woman driving. 

For much of our time exploring Mayan Mexico, locals (mostly children) stared at us. They were particularly awestruck by Hollie. I nicknamed her La Roja Diabla.

the legend grows of the 7 foot tall Ginger who drove Senor William across the Yucatan!

 *The car was manual and while I can try to drive stick shift on empty roads, I was not about to test my luck on one lane highways. I actually enjoyed being chauffered around for a change. We were curious as to what the hotel staff thought everytime they pulled the car around and gave me the keys – which I promptly handed to Hollie.  “Senor William has a personal female driver – who is this guy?????”

Mexcellent beach reading

 

I figure we’ll do a recap of the Mexico trip in drips and drabs.  It was pretty great, and a good blend of “real” Mexico and swim up bars.

One of the reoccurring vacation arguments pertained to our individual choices in beach reading:

 Normal beach reading: People magazine

 

How about some Blackwater for your beach reading? Relaxing and uplifting!

 

Yes, Will read Blackwater while in Mexico. Look at him, does he look relaxed?  He kept trying to give me updates, too.  “Do you know that the parents of the soldiers dragged through the streets in Fallujah had to sue Blackwater to get information…”  I was like, can we please stick to more vacation level conversation, like how the Duggar baby is doing?

So for every horrific mercenary story I gave him a gossip magazine story. He eventually stopped.  He better hope what Heidi Montag’s mother thinks about her plastic surgery doesn’t come up in dinner party conversation, he’ll be woefully unprepared.

Moooooove

I start a new job tomorrow. Kinda. In that I’ve worked there before. 

Earning me the new Home Office nickname "Grover Cleveland" in reference to his nonconsecutive reigns of presidency

It’s a bit of a different role so I’m not completely reliving the past. And I’ll be already established socially, so I hear there is already a Happy Hour planned on my behalf for my first day to help me ease myself back into the day to day.

Will and I were laughing anticipating IT telling me I’ll have to change my email address to say something like ’2′ at the end because my original email address was deactivated in the system.  “I’m sorry, there could only be one email address for each particular name, and yours is deactivated. What, would you like us to change our whole IT system to accommodate you leaving the  company then coming back?”

This should be somethin!

Uno mas cerveza por favor

Thanks to the snowstorm, the staff of the Home Office is stuck in Mexico!  We’re glad we had the foresight to change our flight yesterday, as per the flight tracker we would have been at the Charlotte, NC Sheraton instead of the Westin Cancun.

 

 

It’s actually a bit stormy here too, but I was warned not to complain at all given what we’re missing at home and since I spent the day on an island drinking beer and eating seafood caught that morning under a palapa hut. In fact, i’m working on a blog post of Most Obnoxious Facebook Status Updates I could have Posted During Vacation if I had Access to Internet While being the Only Guest at a Remote Mexican Hacienda

 I miss my dogs!  kinda.