A little action in Garden City

This blog is normally reserved for thoughts and observations, not purely events, so, if you’d like to read about our
rather interesting weekend click here. (It’s a great read, I highly recommend it.)

My Head Even Tilts to the Left

When I was in 3rd grade, we had this project in art class. The assignment (at least as far as I understood it) was to pick a picture out of a magazine and paint the picture. So, I did. I was pretty happy with my painting. When I got done, the art teacher looked at the painting and said rather brazenly “well, that’s not really what I had in mind”.

I blame this one incident for my lack of creativity. (Screw genetics—when you’ve got an event like that to use as an excuse, run with it, right?)

My husband thinks I’m creative, and for this I’m grateful. I’m glad I’ve got him tricked—what he doesn’t realize is that every single creative idea I’ve ever exuded was an act of desperation—a survival technique which exists only when I’ve made a mistake. Basically, I’m only creative when I’ve screwed up and don’t have the time or resources to start over.
Sometimes, this means that we buy pizza instead of eating my mistakes, and other times, things turn out incredibly well. I just wish there was some consistency.

I want to be more creative, so I’ve decided to go on a sabbatical from responsibility. No more grocery lists. No more making lunch ahead of time. No more measuring the fabric I buy, or writing things down, and no more instruction manuals. Ultimately, I am going to create as many panic situations as possible, thereby optimizing my creative genius. I see this going really well…watch out world, here I come.

Have you ever seen such a sight in your life?

I haven’t blogged in several months now, mostly because I only write when something really interesting happens. I’ve been so absorbed by school that nothing has struck me as intriguing enough to actually put my mind to work on anything else. Now that school is over, the fates have sent me something interesting about which to blog.

I like my job. I work in the newspaper industry which is particularly interesting right now because first—the economy sucks all across the board, and second—newspapers are going through a…how should I say this—a transitional period.

As a result, we’ve had to get creative and ultimately spend less money. This has meant wage freezes, reduction in hours, layoffs, leaky ceilings, combination of departments so that we can turn the lights off in half of the building, really slow computers, 1 ply toilet paper, outsourcing, outsourcing and more outsourcing. (Oh, and newsflash to whoever the whiny Micron workers were—we’ve NEVER had company provided Kleenex.) All of this, I’ve tolerated with a good attitude because, well, I still have a job.

Oh, also, it is really cold in our building. I don’t think this has anything to do with the economy—I think this is just how “The Man” keeps us alert. The constant cold breeze flowing by my desk has taught me to keep a hearty supply of sweaters at my desk.

One such sweater sits inside a drawer in my desk. It is lovely and soft and blue and I keep it folded in my desk drawer because that is the best place for it. I haven’t worn this sweater in a month or so because I have others and I like to rotate. (Don’t lose interest yet—I’m telling you this for a reason.)

I opened up my desk drawer this morning and noticed that there was a little unraveled piece of blue string Upon further examination, I found LOTS of unraveled fuzzy blue strings all over the sweater. I proceeded to notice little tiny pieces of brown…something. I haven’t touched the brown things, I haven’t run scientific examinations on them, nor do I plan to, and I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got mice in my desk.

Here’s the fun part. I talked to our maintenance department about this problem and they assured me that they would be calling the exterminator and ordering another (I guess this isn’t a new problem) mousetrap…to be put IN MY DESK! Huh. A mousetrap in my desk. How lovely.
Craig and I had a mouse in our house one time. It scared the *$*# out of me. We caught it in a trap which was horrifying. It was so horrifying in fact, that I bought two cats in order to prevent mouse encounters from EVER happening again.

I am frankly dreading the day that I come into work, open up my desk drawer and find a decapitated mouse corpse in my desk. This doesn’t appeal to me. On the upside—I’ve been trying to find an excuse to bring Otto—my kitten—to work, maybe now they’ll let me.

Where's Waldo?

I grew up in a house where we have had only two family pictures taken since I was born and these were only to prove that we were capable of having family pictures taken. I used to ask my mom why she didn't have any wedding photos on their walls or mantel or anything. She would tell me that she didn't see the point--she saw herself and my dad every day. After we moved into our house, Craig said he wanted to put a wedding picture on our mantel. Ooookaaaayyy..sure hun--wedding picture on the mantel. I guess that's a very normal thing to do. I put it up and I leave it there because I love my husband like crazy and it would be a stupid thing to argue about. Long story short, or perhaps short story long...I'm not sure which--I have a somewhat sickened perspective on family pictures.

I believe I mentioned previously that Craig's family had pictures taken a few weeks ago. We got a disc on Sunday containing all of the photos. There were several really good ones but this one is my personal favorite. I'm not even going to say anything about this picture, but I'd love to hear whether any of my readers find it as amusing as I do. I'll give you a couple of hints as to what I'm talking about. 1) the three 20-something aged women are all daughters-in-law 2) notice the lighting...whose faces are lit and whose are...well--as my mom put it "really easy to Photoshop out".

Disclaimer: in writing this post I do not intend to offend anyone--especially not the lovely lady whose name I keep forgetting who took the family pictures. She did a wonderful job and the hilariously ironic lighting of this picture is just the kind of thing that it would be a shame to not laugh at.

I'm strong to the finich 'cause I eat my spinach.

The following photo is, arguably the worst photo ever taken of me. My husband, however, thought it hilarious and it is now the wallpaper on his double monitor computer at work. The true story is that I had two cavities filled this morning and this is my very best mid-anesthesia smile, but I'm also sending it in with my entry to the Popeye impersonator contest.

Enjoy.

Competition

Part of my job is maintaining the cars.com listings purchased by our customers. The cars.com salespeople make a habit of "stealing" our customers and essentially doing whatever they can to keep us from making money. It seems to pretty much be the way sales works. I tried to use cars.com yesterday and received the following message:

I don't know if you can read the words, but basically it is notifying me that I've done something harmful to cars.com. Huh. I think this is simply the ultimate in competitive sales. Just block 'em from your website. Either that or someone is trying to sabatoge my job. The second explanation sounds more fun...I think I'll go with that one.

Death by Construction Sign

Petra—this one goes out to you!

I don’t know how standardized construction signs are, so I’m hoping my fantastic illustrations will help show you what I’m talking about. (I have used a very sophisticated graphics program called “Paint” to create these images.)

The first image shows what a normal construction sign looks like.
The second image shows what construction workers do here in Idaho when a sign is no longer pertinent, but no one has taken time to pick up the sign yet. They fold the sign in half, leaving a bar protruding out from the side.

I have a history with construction signs. One time in high school, I was running and tripped over one of the bars on the ground leaving me with a nice scar on my left knee.

As a result I make a habitual point of avoiding construction signs. Unfortunately, there is a school under construction on my bike route to work. This construction site has been plaguing me for the past year. First the construction workers started parking their trucks in the bike lane. Then they started parking a little closer to the curb, but with big boards sticking out of their truck beds. Then they damaged the road, rendering the bike lane invisible. Then they put cones in the middle of the bike lane, followed by construction signs. This stretch of road has been a gauntlet for the past year.

Over the last couple of weeks, they’ve started finishing projects up. They’ve re-painted the bike lane, removed the cones, parked their trucks in the parking lot. Things have been getting much better. They’ve also started folding the construction signs in half.

This morning I was riding to work. I think I knew the sign was there, but I also knew it was folded in half and was therefore not in my way. I was thinking intently about the imminent trauma involved with family pictures when—THUNK. My head smacked that stupid post protruding out from the retired construction sign. I made that noise that you make when you are watching a blooper reel and a guy gets hit in the nuts with a baseball. I, rather fortunately, was wearing a helmet so it only hurt a little. I then started to laugh hysterically. It was one of those circumstances where I was completely humiliated, but at the same time, REALLY hope that someone saw my idiotic move of the morning, so that they could have a good laugh to start out their otherwise drab day.

A-sociality...it's addictive.

I just had the most humourous exchange with my boss. He called me into his office to ask an Excel question, which he frequently does. As I was pondering the answer we had the following conversation:

Boss: You know, our jobs would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to deal with people

Maryn laughs

Maryn: You mean like if we only had to deal with numbers and computers?

Boss: Yeah…I think I’m becoming you.

Maryn and Boss laugh rocously

Warm, long days=blog post inactivity

So, I've determined that blogging must be a seasonal illness...much like the flu. I say this because I check several blogs every morning. 1) my brother's, 2) my cousin Hannah's 3) Kerri Morrone Sparling (who I've never met and probably never will meet but she's diabetic and funny and has cats so I enjoy her blog) 4) Matt and Jacci Dare's and 5) my own...just to see if anyone has actually read it. Here's what I've discovered. Once the weather turns nice and people don't have to be locked up inside in the dark all of the time, they actually find other things to do besides write blog posts. This means that I have to find something to do besides read other people's blog posts. So, here's what I've been doing now that the weather is nice and I don't have time to post (oh, and I have a new job where I actually have work to do).
We went on a vacation, went camping, Craig graduated with his MBA and then got a new job (yea!), we planted some flowers (most of which I've managed to kill already because that's what I do), went to the YMCA today where Ali cracked her chin open, went to the ER where the doctor sewed it shut, we've gone mountain biking several times, and we've spent far too much time trying to find this outdoor bed that we saw at Home Depot last year and didn't buy because we didn't have the money and we knew we would be able to find it again this year (not the case). Anyway, it has been a fun Spring so far!

Isn't he hot?!

We discovered last week that Craig's photo is on the homepage for the College of Business and Economics at Boise State. Here you have my very innovative and opportunistic husband and I'm crazy about him!