Donde esta El Home Office?

Hello. You’ve reached Live From the Home Office. We can’t take your call right now because we are redeeming Starwood points.

A la piscina at the hacienda. I will wax poetic about the Starwood Preferred Guest program another time.

In a classic white trashy move, at first hint of us having a regular income we are hightailing it to Mexico or a last chance time out. Will asked if I was going to cash the first paycheck and buy a pinball machine. So los perros estan con nuestra familia and we are outie 5.

We are interested in testing out the Espanol– we have continued to take lessons with our teacher from Argentina via web cam.  In a great obnoxious side note, we therefore speak our limited spanish with an Argentine accent.  So no one will really understand what the F we’re saying.  The first half will be spent in a hacienda in a remote area. We are counterbalancing that with a few days in Cancun, where Will is hoping to watch the Superbowl at Senor Frogs or in the comfort of our swim up bar of the good ol Westin.

I also have to do a fair amount of driving, since SOME PEOPLE never bothered to learn how to drive stick.

OK, better go before the health insurance runs out.

Leave a message at the beep.

Lone Wolf

I love how tech savy CNN has become. They want to be so hip with their Twitter pie charts and their Facebook polls. They are so in your face about how “with it” they are –  it’s uncomfortable.

hey Glenn Beck: interviewing people via satellite is so 2006

During the post State of the Union coverage, there were blackberries, multiple laptops, giant touch screens and a sensory overload of flashing images and graphics.  I am sure in 2 weeks, Larry King will be casually thumbing through his interview notes on an iPad.

Amongst this three ring circus of dynamic technology, there stood the ringleader – Wolf Blitzer -kicking it old school,  trusty white legal pad in hand.

screw the netbook, i got me a new Trapper Keeper and some looseleaf paper

Home Office VP Marketing

There is a Live From the Home Office #1 Fan who has a new job at a media company.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s the new guy, but his desk is immediately behind the chairs where they record the daily podcasts.  Meaning the whole world can see his computer screen.  It’s pretty funny, and we check it out to see what he’s up to, always hoping to catch him on ESPN.com.

 

So, for example, his screen is here. But closer. And bigger. How about a LiveFromTheHomeOffice.com shout out?

This is an official lobby for it. You’ll get the title of VP, Marketing, LiveFromTheHomeOffice.com. 

We told him that his desk placement gives him perfect opportunity to become a cult Internet hero.  How about dressing in a different color cape every day?  Wacky hat?  Just sitting there, doing your job as usual, but wearing a funny message on your back during the podcast taping.  The Buzz would propel those podcasts further than any New Media discusssion ever would!  If I had a choice between watching people debate the iPad from a site with just two guys on a set, or two guys on a set with the wacky Internet Marketer in the background, I’m choosing the latter.

Cmon!

Puttin on the ritz

 

Just because this is dated a few weeks now does not change the fact that I share the same sequined vest as one of the American Idol rejects from the first episode

Me in my sequined vest on new year's eve...

…And Noberto Guerrero in his sequined vest during his American Idol audition

I shouted “THAT GUY IS WEARING MY VEST!!”   Sadly enough, that vest was the only article of clothing I bought myself in the past year, to everyone’s dismay. It now shines brightly in my closet and makes me smile when I see it.

I was excited to find my sequined vest for $8 2 hours before the party on 5th Avenue in South Slope. If you ever need to look like a Russian House DJ (thanks “The League” for the reference), 5th Ave Brooklyn is your place.

Let me dust off my desktop Dilbert calendar

I went outside the home office today to interview. Nice enough company with some good people but I am not certain if I am ready to re-enter this kind of world.

As I was walked through the maze of 6 foot high gray cubicles, I overheard someone talking about fixing their PTO reports. Then the HR woman I was speaking to was interrupted by someone who wanted to clarify their use of floating holidays.

whatever a PTO report is, surely it requires a specific format & cover sheet

Not sure if they liked me or I liked them but I am too tired to think about it right now.

TGIF!

Here I come to save the day…

After reading the comment from my friend Colleen about how a focus group screener asked her what super power she’d like to have, I felt compelled to write about my own super power of choice, which I’ve been wishing for for about a solid 15 years now*

Duh duh-duh-duh---- It's Diarrhea Finger Man!

That’s right, my super power of choice is to be able to give someone diarrhea with just the point of the finger. It’s really the perfect power. Think about it:

• It fights the bad guys: If someone is attacking you, robbing a bank, in a fight…  they’re going to have to stop whatever they’re doing because they just got a really bad case of diarrhea.  You really can’t do anything else if you know you’re about to crap your shorts.
• It’s just the perfect level of evil to get back at someone who’s pissing you off: Your boss is making you stay at work late, that a-hole in the deli cut the line and is now being rude to the deli man,  that girl won’t get off of her cell phone, your boyfriend just cheated on you– with THAT bitch… GIVE EM ALL DIARRHEA!  It’s not going to kill them. But it’s really going to ruin their night.
• It’s just funny.

Sometimes while driving I will actually go to give the guy who cut me off diarrhea finger*, and I get frustrated when I remember I don’t really have the power. Many have witnessed me curse the gods for not giving me the power when the situation is just so perfect for it. Did I ever wish diarrhea on you?  Hmmmm….. Maybe one day it just might work.

*Diarrhea finger was first conceptualized when I began driving and started learning about road rage. “OOOOOOH you A-hole, you just cut me the F off!  grrrrrrrr…. I hope you  get diarrhea…… NOW!”  [point finger]

This post is sounding very familiar, I think I blogged about it before. you know you’re old when.

Open invitation to join the Home Office

Conan’s severance package is a joke.

Really? A "you can't work for 9 months" clause? Really?

Now me and Will are pretty skilled at stretching our severance/ buy out/ “please take this and stop F-ing everything up” money. In a country of 2 weeks of vacation a year, time off is the most valuable thing to us. We need very little to live  and have zero debt. If we had more manageable dogs that people actually wanted to watch for extended periods of time, I’d be writing you from a hut in Mexico.

What I’m trying to say is that if I had $32 M, you could insert a “don’t work for 25 years” clause into my contract. Just saying.

I guess getting a $32 M payout and wanting to work again is the definition of liking your job!!

Leaving the (Home) Office Early Today

I have a bad cough and a headache so I am just gonna take off a bit early.

(or i am going to a JETS pep rally in Times Square)

Weird Science

Hollie’s niece and nephew are participating in a school science fair. We here at the home office are big supporters of the scientific method, so as any good aunt and almost-uncle would do, we agreed to participate in the “how many pounds of recycling does a family generate each week” study.

After sending in this week (week 3)s’ data,  I was informed that the study was in fact over.

We are appalled at the methodology being used.

- 2 weeks? really? is that really enough to go on? really? (one big football game and a load of  Sports Illustrateds could easily skew this experiment)
- where’s the hypothesis? I didn’t hear any hypothesis?
-  What measuring methods were used, exactly? I stepped on a 15 year old radial bathroom scale holding a garbage pail full of newspapers and Bud Lite empties while Hollie stuffed the remaining discarded dog food cans and bottles of $8 wine in my arms…then i deducted my body weight.  When we saw the other 2 families’ to-the-hundreth-of-a-pound weigh ins conducted with fancy new scales, eyebrows were raised.

Hollie has suggested that I go the elementary school science fair and ask pointed questions to find out if the experiment would hold up to the standards of Galileo, Aristotle and Descartes.  Hollie also wants me to drill 8 year old nephew on the specifics of his “evaporation” experiment. bogus.

I don’t think parents would send their teenagers over to an old man’s house after school any more for some “experimenting” –Hollie
(Hollie requested that her caption be credited appropriately)

Cart Fail

I was so so excited to take my new cart out for a spin in Park Slope. And the fridge was empty, and some shopping needed to be done, so tonight was the night. You know, one of those old lady/ homeless lady carts that everyone has in Brooklyn

you know.... however, mine is the deluxe with swivel wheels, sucka

Will was skeptical.  It was already 7:30 pm when I was able to go.  And I was going to the food coop, 18 blocks away.  ”Don’t walk back, I’ll pick you up in the car when you’re done,” he said.  But persistent me* insisted that no, I was going to use my new cart.

Going there, with the cart folded was no sweat. Will escorted me, using the walk as the dogs’ nighttime poop excursion. But coming back…

I didn’t even make it to the number streets before the cell phone was out calling my car service. That’s a bit park slope insidery, but trust me, no more than 2 blocks. There were a few reasons why I needed the bailout:

• Swivel wheels or no, sidewalks are bumpy.  I lost a 9-grain organic baguette before I got to the first corner
• Oh crap, is it really 9:30 pm? Looks like someone spent too much time shoveling bulk organic israeli cous cous into her parchment bags
• Cart driving is not as easy as it looks, especially weighed down. Damn you swivel wheels!!
• At the pace I was going, the 15 minute walk would have been 40
• There’s  nothing like walking down the street in Brooklyn at 9:30 pm with $125 worth of groceries in a slow moving cumbersome cart, without seeing any of the usual crowds of nannies/ hyper moms/ hipsters (Brooklyn closes early!), and having just finished novel set in Park Slope that had a continuous theme that gentrified, schmentrified, you’re still in Brooklyn, to remind you that — holy shit, I’m going to get mugged, aren’t I.
• The few people I did pass were laughing at me

So I parked my cart in front of the closed but well lit hardware store. Out came the iPhone and I dialed my knight in shining armour, and by knight I mean a guy nice enough to pause the Islander game, and by shining armour I mean ’99 Accord (it is silver).

There is little more humiliating than standing on an empty sidewalk in front of a gated up hardware store with a cart filled with organic produce and having your boyfriend pull over, get out of the car, put the groceries in the trunk… and then fold up your sorry cart and put it in the backseat. FAIL.

* I’m actually one of the least persistent people you’ll ever meet. I typically give up quite easily. would have served me well, yet again.