NOAA Meets Noah

So, we've had some weather lately.

Well, we have weather every day, I imagine. But lately, it's been, like, more than just weather. It's been weather!

Mutha Nature has been nice this spring and summer so far. Temps haven't been crazy and we've had no big storms. But this week, well, she's a bit more nasty.

Like two nights ago, I woke up to what I could only describe as the belief that paparazzi were outside my window snapping photos of me in bed. Don't ask why I decided to pose and pout. My motives are my own. But what it actually ended up being was a lightning light show akin to Laser Floyd or something. And then the wall of water came down.

And more downpours last night. I half-expected Noah to row by, and in fact thought I saw an elephant lounging upon an arc, but it was just a big dude in a moving truck. Mistakes.

And then there was the hail storm. Which literally came on the heels of a discussion at work in which I expressed I didn't believe in the tenants of Christianity and shared my general displeasure with organized religion. Like part of the discussion, the heavens opened up, and it was almost End Times. I had my eye out for Kirk Cameron to show up, but bullet dodged.

Speaking of bullets, the onslaught of marble sized hail was pounding against our House of Cards, which we expected to cave in at any second. Worst of all, my dear Andrew was helplessly left to his own devices in the Shuttle Parking Lot on the Other Side of the World. I was fretting that I'd find him to be a pile of scrap metal, but nary a ding or dent. Every cloud, a silver lining.

Then again, Andrew recently received a safety recall in which the car could quite literally lose control at any given moment, so that's fun. I'm motoring in a zoom-zoom deathtrap until next Wednesday. Perhaps I could make it death proof?

This post has no structure whatsoever. Last bit -- the National Weather Service would do well to issue storm warnings and watches before they occur, not so much after. Just a thought, NOAA. Take it as you will...

A Golden Age?

In many ways, I believe my workplace is in the middle of a Golden Age. It’s a time on the precipice of exciting changes: a new building, a new name, our own offices, additions to our staff, a chance to make our own template for helping (truly helping) our students, and creating an environment where students can get the services they need and not feel like they are in the realm of the forgotten.

We have been recognized officially by the university for what we do so well, and we are being rewarded for that. It all started with sweeping change on our campus: a new president, chancellor, provost, and college dean within a year’s time. It was an unprecedented opportunity and the new state of things was – let’s shake things up and do it right. The old ways of budgets and priorities won’t fly; unless you can prove what you do is crucial to the strategic plan. It was our time to be noticed. And that is what we did. Our years of profound impact on student success with the meager resources we had at our disposal had a payoff.

There is a kinetic energy about the place. With three wonderful people joining our staff, our veterans became rejuvenated. Old factions broke down and a new sense of working together was born. The buzz of leaving behind The House is both exciting and saddening. True, it was condemned. True, we have to share offices while discussing sensitive and confidential information with out students. True, we could never hire someone who is in a wheelchair. And true, we have strange phenomena like odd sound tunnels, close encounters with bathroom follies, and fuses blowing out when we turn on two space heaters at the same time. But we’ll also be leaving something behind.

We will be leaving behind little things, like having our own building, plenty of metered parking out front, and the “warmth” that being in a house connotes. Most importantly, we’ll be leaving behind the closeness that our space has created. We have been forced, in a sense, to work side by side, and that proximity has branded a kind of camaraderie that a suite of offices cannot forge. While we will carry that spirit over with us, will it persist in the same way with our new staff?

The very thing that is so wrong about our office makes things work so right for us. Therein lay the most fascinating duality I think that we encounter in this world. The House, with all its bitter faults, sustains our spirit. Without it, can we be the same? The new familiarity will create a new dynamic, so the question remains:

Is this the beginning of our Golden Age, or are we at the end? No one can say until it is in retrospect. The very idea of a Golden Age is a mythology of life that is recognized only by peering backward and remembering that feeling in the air that we mistook once as our daily life. Never noticing that those days were laced together by a sense that everything has a pattern, that life was good, and that energy and creativity could build anything that wasn’t limited by imagination. Possibilities dangled all around. An ideal work world was on the cusp of discovery. Nothing could stop us.

Every Golden Age ends, as is the cycle of order. We ourselves cannot control it, as it exists beyond any one of us. Nor we can force it to remain. We can only experience it as a moment of transition, something fleeting, that we were fortunate to be a part of, and hope that what we do in this high time will persist beyond our reach.

“Put your hands on the wheel, let the Golden Age begin.” ~ Beck

Dirty Bomber

Picture it…

You're an academic advisor sitting with a student, discussing his major interests, having a candid conversation, and suddenly…

A dirty bomb goes off. From all the way down the hall. In the bathroom. Behind a closed door. And you can hear it loud and clear from 30 feet away. It sounds like pthpthfppthfh-pthfpthpfhttthhhfpffth-pfphfphfpfhffffhthtph. That's right. Explosive, uncontrollable, jackhammer diarrhea.

You continue your conversation with the student, hoping he didn't notice the sound or perhaps, if lucky, misinterpreted it for a nominal intermittent office noise. You try your hardest not to crack a smile. Fortunately, the conversation is lively, so you can slip in a misdirected grin and get away with it.

Until the unseen wall of stench attacks and slowly strangles you. Is it possible this student has a poor sense of smell? A stuffy nose? At this point, ignoring the stank elephant in the room is the only option. It's too late to address the issue. But the gas bomb continues its effects with dire consequences. Mouth breathing is your life preserver.

That happened to me on Tuesday. As if our office, the Condemned House of Shat, needs any other reasons to be loathed. Some random guy dropped by, sh*t out his a$$hole, and quietly left. The dirty bomber has escaped and is loose. There's no telling where he'll drop in (literally) next. My sources tell me it was the father of a student. He was either totally embarrassed or completely without shame.

Everyone on the second floor heard it. Every single one of us. And apparently the stench crawled down the stairs and into the garage (yes, some of us work in the garage). The worst part of it is that Mulva's office is right next door. She was at ground zero. She literally repressed the event. Once we talked her to a safe emotional place, she was like, "If that was me, I would have jumped out the window rather than step foot out that door." Tell me about it!

Blurt McLoud and Mama Bean were in the kitchen, so I waved them over in a way that connoted I had a story to share. Blurt's all, "Ahh, you got a juicy tale for us?"
Mwuahahahahhaa! "How true your words are!" I quipped back.

Advaganoush was lucky - she was home sick.

When I told Feyonce about it, she pontificated that mass quantities of Taco Bell were involved. I added White Castle slyders into the suspect line-up, too.

Clockwork was trumped once and for all in the epic game of Battleshits. Dirty Bomber sank her entire fleet.

None of us want to set foot in that bathroom again. It's like an altar has been desecrated. And that's saying quite a bit, considering where we work.

P.S. This whole scenario reminded me of a funny SNL skit involving Robert DiNero.

Clockwork

It's time for me to release a burden by grumbling about another of my kooky coworkers. This go around, I'll introduce you to the one and only Clockwork!

Clockwork earned her name because she is a robot. I think. I suspect if I was to open her up, I'd find at least a circuit chip in her brain keeping her on a routine. That's her speciality -- routine. She's even been on the verge of tears when asked to change a simple thing, like, no longer keeping the soda in the fridge in this annoying wooden crate. I told her we could fit half as many cans in there if we just took this thing out. And I did. And it lasted for about two days. Then it magically appeared in the fridge. She tells me, the plastic shelf was cracking under the weight of the cans... Yes, she said that. Solution? Put the heavy-ass wooden 5 lb. crate back in there because "it disperses the weight!" Full-on genius, I say! I'm all for people supporting their own disorders, but at least fess up to your craziness.

Watching her is amazing. Remember in Naked Gun when the ballplayer has the chip inserted in his head and the bad guy presses the remote control button, and the player instantly turns into this robotic slave mumbling "I must kill... the Queen." That's Clockwork. Remember Vickie the Robot from that sitcom Small Wonder? She'd be all "11:30 a.m. Vacuum under the sofa." That's Clockwork. 3:00 p.m. Click. She automatically goes into the kitchen to cook popcorn. 4:00 p.m. on Friday. Click. She grabs the can to water the flowers. It's like you can see the fuse pop and off she goes. Lunch time. Click. Off to McDonald's to get her giganti-soda. Click. Get huffy with her annoying family on the phone for all to hear. At least three times per day.


And the worst offense of them all: her daily dump. Yes, you read correctly. She number 2's in the house almost every day. What's the big whoop, Army? The big whoop is that we work in the House of Olden Days and you can smell it everywhere. Oh, and you don't just smell it, no. It's mixed with an aromatic cocktail of Cheap-As-Free Nast-o-Spray. The kind of stink spray that smells WORSE than the offensive odor it never covers up. That's the one. I'm getting all ill just thinking about it.

Deep down she's a nice person. But her inability to change even the smallest thing and her incessant routines drive me (and my sane coworkers) batty. I'll just have to love her for who she is. Well, as long as she goes next door to do her business from now on.

The Crew

I've been enjoying work very much lately, thanks to the addition of some hilarious jokester co-workers -- Watson and Toph. Watson is my new roomie since MamaBean left me for the sweet suite on the first floor of the House of Condemned Splinters. After a brief moment of seriousness (oh, it couldn't last for long), we fell into this step of bizarro humor that can best be described as askew.

Like we pretend to be really serious about something until one of us laughs. And we do it to this ridonkulous melodramatic level. We pretend to be offended by anything, like someone talking in the hall. Watson will say to me over the partition "Gosh, they don't have to scream at the top of their lungs." And I'll shoot back "They are always like that when their off their medication." It's so incredibly lame, it's funny!

Watson tripped a few times when we were walking on campus, and I accused her of being this histrionic belle who fakes accidents for the attention. We ran with that one for a while. We were talking about something once, and she bolted around the partition and said "if you ever say that again, I will slit your throat!" We're such dorks. I think I'm cheating on my Feyonce with another woman. Best keep this under wraps cuz she gets insanely jealous!

And I think my vocabulary is cancerous. Today Watson and I were getting soda-pops at The Mine and we were going on about something or other. Oh, we were talking about the giganti-soda for like, a nickel. And I said "Well if you haven't noticed, I'm trying to be a healthy purchase." LOL! What the fook does that mean?

And Ambiguously Straight Guy is mad jealous that I have an attractive young woman sharing my office. Of course, I'm not sure who he's jealous of... He's still giving me the mixed messages. When I told him about my new car, he didn't seem excited. I explained how much horsepower it had because I know he likes that kind of stuff. He says that's nothing and looks up his truck to show me how much more hp it has. So I'm all "I didn't realize this was a pissing contest." Last week, he invited me over to his place to watch Snakes on a Plane with him. Um, hidden meaning there? It's weird how I'm so put out by how un-complex and uncultured he can be, yet still find him (at times) quite smoochable that I want to pounce on him. Hhmm.

Which got me thinking... gay men have this way of bonding with straight women because we have no vested sexual interest in each other. But for me, it's more than that at times. I think it's easy to be myself and unfettered around friends (especially women) because nothing is at stake. In romantic scenarios, it's too easy to hold back because I don't want to show interest too soon. And there's the whole getting-to-know-you routine. If only I could parley that openness when it comes to potential romance... is that even possible without sending mixed messages of my own? Could it come off as interest when it isn't? It's worth investigating. I've got nothing to lose.

Well, I lost my writing steam, but there's plenty more to say about The Crew, including Toph, Advagounoush, MamaBean, Blurt McLoud, JP the British Boss, and the rest. I'll save it for a future installment.

Etymology of Inappropriate Things

If you haven't read on the news wire, my boss JP is a bit British. He's a Welshman actually. And as a result, he has a penchant for busting out the Britishism, often leaving us with contorted faces, sideways glances, and the proverbial scratched heads.

He'll toss in words/phrases like mollycoddled, dross, knackered, cocking a snoot, smarmy, and loads others I can't recall. JP is a nut, god bless him!

Today was an especially funny/dirtay circumstance involving such diction.

Backstory: I bought the new Staind DVD for Sylvia last night whilst out at Best Buy and dropped it in her work mailbox today.

Story: I am doing my job, walking through our kitchen (in the House That Asbestos Built) and overhear JP and Sylvia talking about the word buggery. Yes, most appropriate work chat, but that's JP for you. Apparently Sylvia asked him about it because he dropped a paper and called out "Bugger!" She thought he said "Fucker" which is quite hilarious itself. Sylvia asks what it means in jolly old England, as its connotation seems different in the States. So as is often the case, JP (with his masters in History) waxes over the origins of the word and its changed meaning through time. In a nutshell, it has to do with anal sex.

As he's finishing his diatribe, Sylvia looks at me and says "I'm so excited about what you put in my box."

To which I reply, "And I'm so excited about getting my $14 from you."

JP, with his typical gutter mind, says, "Wait a minute. You're talking about him putting something in your box and now you owe him $14. You have some explaining to do." LMAO

Dirty ol' git! Talk about smarmy! Sylvia and I bowed our heads in shame while laughing... because he wasn't exactly quiet about it... and he was standing by the doorway that leads into the lobby where the students are waiting!!

This is the man who got on some tangent a while back about Koko the gorilla and how she sexually harasses her female handlers. Then he makes a comment about her putting her breast on the plate glass like in some movie...

Oy! That's my crazy boss! A regular J. Peterman!

House of Cards

As some of you may recall, I work in a beat-down old house on our campus. Trashy fraternity houses have seen better days even. It is on the "condemned - do not repair" list on our campus. Yes, you read that correctly. It's a shitty place. Literally. We had a sewage leak at one point in our basement. Nothing says shitty like a wading pool of raw sewage.

We always joke that our house is a breeding ground for a new age plague. It sucks to be right sometimes. Almost everyone was out today because of illnesses. We have 13 employees and only 7 of us were there today (4 of which were sick or getting sick). I think I work in the Portal to the Nexus of Hell. Otherwise known as the White Sickly Elephant on Campus that No One Notices. My home away from home. It even has a tub in it. Yeah, a nasty old bath tub. Jealous?

I was talking with HH about The House one day. I was actually impressed that in my 2.5 years there, I'd never really noticed any bugs or spiders lurking. Seemed odd for an old house. She looks at me matter-of-factly and says "that's because they know better not to come in here." Wow. How true that is. Even the vermin have half a mind to steer clear. Who's the unevolved ones here?

There's also another mutation going on in our halls. The house breeds the contemptuous, the catty, and the eccentric. The exhaust of its furnace breath is a slow poison, and like the Joker villain, so do we have our own irradiated cadre of malcontents. You've already met Blurt McLoud. There's also Mean Face. She's like Two-Face, Jekyl and Hyde, and the borderline woman from Fatal Attraction rolled into one. Only she doesn't need to drink a potion to turn into Ms. Hyde. Oppositely, when she doesn't take her lithium, the Portal to the Nexus of Hell breaks loose. Her stare rivals Medusa. Her comments bite like serpetine hair. Her contempt for humanity is revealed. This woman can be a super beyotch, and her venomous strike comes from the shadows. She is a viper that cannot be charmed. I've tried to kill her with kindess. Her mutation is too evolved.

So I write this now from the throes of an illness that hath no name. I have blown my nose two thousand times and consumed eight gallons of orange juice. Between the two activities, I have likely killed and stripped more trees than a rain forest slasher. But I write this post to share the fruits of my labor with you -- and perhaps as my final entry, for I may in the middle of the night, sneeze my heart out. Literally.

And yet if I do survive another night, I must once again face down The House, that messy house of cards that, despite all of it flaws, just won't fall down.