Lefthanded-Rightminded

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Do You Hear, Do You Hear The Thunder?

My office, the endless black nightmare I will henceforth refer to as "work," has a very difficult time regulating the temperature. The only system I have been able to decipher is that they follow the outside temperature changes. For example, last week, the outside temperatures dropped. Inside temperatures plummeted so as not to be left out, and I got to drape my coat over my shoulders while I sat at my computer. The outside weather got warmer yesterday, and today it is about one hundred degrees in here. I want to sit next to the water cooler, put my head under the nozzle and start singing drunken pirate songs.

I have to get through 16 more days of work before I get to fly back to California for Christmas vacation. I need to break it down in the most mentally helpful way. I think I will look at it as eight groups of two days. As of Thursday night, I will only have seven more groups of two days. And, assuming I am not feeling very well on Friday and call in sick, that gets me into next week pretty easily.

I think I am carb loading out of depression. For lunch, I had bread, cornbread and mashed potatos. My mood improved for a few minutes, but then for some strange reason it took a nosedive. A coworker made a comment about something called a sugar high, but I didn't hear the full explanation before I socked her in the face and threw her into a vending machine.

I am writing a press release right now. Well, not right now. But I do maximize the press release window whenever I hear footsteps behind me. Right now, my cheeks are turning pink, and I am about to sweat through my sweater. The hell references are rolling off my tongue, but I will have to keep them to myself. I hear that the Christmas bonuses are docked every time an audible laugh floats down the hallways.

Yesterday, I got to go out to New Jersey again for another document review. I had to give my copies of the documents to two of the representatives who had not brought their own, so suddenly I didn't have to do my one job of taking notes. It was awesome. The man who said "in toto" last week didn't have any gems for me this time, but I did get to see him shoot a lot of other people down. On the car ride back to the city, I fell asleep and started drooling. And that, my friends, is what professional looks like.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and anyway I told the truth

The server is down here at work! I can use the internet, but not the company email or hard drive. I am beaming. I appreciate the fact that I am being paid to blog right now. Katrina (you know who you are), don't get home late- I plan to sing about this and would like you to harmonize.

Hella and I went to a 99 cent store out in Prospect Park on Saturday, and we saw a play cell phone for kids. I think it is a little disturbing that kids are being conditioned to the slavery of technology so early on. I am a slave to my cell phone, as I knew I would be, but I consciously waited until I was about 21 to enter into that relationship. Anyway, that was not the point. The point is that the supposedly harmless little pink box had stickers all over it of a character called "Benign Girl." Is that supposed to be like "No Opinion Girl" or "Spineless Girl," or is the meaning more like "Tumors Are Not Spreading Girl"?

*Clear throat*

We thought it was a little strange.

Yesterday, I went out to Florham Park to sit in on a pharmaceutical review session of a few documents. The high points were 1) holding my phone under the table and texting my sister and 2) hearing the lawyer in the room say, "I don't know if I agree with the directive in toto." I liked the sound of toto so much.

Can I please have the toto for all the supplies? I can't pay until I have the toto.


In toto is Latin for "in its entirety," and the server is back up...

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Oh I, I Wonder What It's All About

This morning I had a meeting with the five other women on my account, and we were discussing things that we need from the client, Irene. My boss asked me if there was anything I needed from the client, and I said, "Yes, some affirmation."

And then the room became silent, and time stopped. A slight breeze blew, and somewhere, an old woman died.

My boss finally broke the silence and said, "We need Irene to reach out to Suzanne for us regarding the GCT materials." The woman next to me began breathing again.

Today I took myself out to lunch, even though I had a lot of projects waiting for me. Rebel? Well yes, I guess I am. I brought two magazines and enjoyed reading them, but I just kept smiling because I was so happy to 1) be out of the office for an hour and 2) be eating lunch by/with myself.

By the way, special thanks to my dad. We did have dinner last night, and he was able to provide answers to my life questions as well as just make me feel relaxed and happier in general.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Send down that cloud with that silvery lining. Lift me to paradise.

My dad comes into town tonight. I am hoping he gives me some answers for my life, because I am getting quite tired of thinking.

No Mom, I don't smoke! I don't! It's only because I had been drinking!

Thursday, November 10, 2005

"The collective call that I hear repeatedly these days is, 'yep, the 20's suck.'"

That quote is courtesy of my friend, the great Bradley Lansdell Craig.

I am in a good mood today. Why? If I knew, I would tell you. I lost at Scrabble last night, so it is not because of that. I did get free lunch today at work. We had sandwiches while the head of the department discussed staffing. Everyone was laughing and telling funny stories near the end, and it was such a pleasant situation that it made me wonder, "Is it my problem that I hate this job? Am I wrong and everyone else is right?" I let that sit for about two minutes and then returned to my senses.

Let's imagine what it would be like if I had a baby and insisted on bringing her to the office every day. She could play in a playpen while I did media monitoring, and then she would hopefully go down for a mid-morning nap around 10. I would use that time to quickly prioritize my day, respond to emails and get started on a project. I assume I would have to take a lunch break because she would need some fresh air, so we would head to Sutton Place, where the rest of the babies hang out. I would invest in an office-appropriate baby carrier (the kind that you strap to your chest), so that she could come to my meetings. I do hope she wouldn't cry during the conference calls, but if she did, I would just excuse myself and walk her around the hallways. I would have to put baby gates on the stairways leading down to computer services and up to marketing. For some reason, all of the cabinets in the kitchen are already baby-proofed, so I guess that was easy.

I think this hypothetical would be more fun if I was trying to keep my office baby a secret. There is an empty cubicle next to me, so her crib could go there. I could try to have all the team meetings in my cubicle so that I didn't have to leave her alone. There is just no way around it: I would have to get a secret office baby-sitter. I am deciding between Tim from computer services, Stacy from maintenance or Saundra, a great admin.

No Mom, I am not pregnant. I am just playing with hypotheticals! She is a hypothetical baby! I haven't even named her!

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

In the Middle of the, I Go Walking in the, In the Middle of the, I Go Walking in the

Last night was the graduation show for my Upright Citizen's Brigade 201 class. I didn't leave feeling really embarrassed, which I guess makes the show a roaring success. The last few months, I have been pondering the idea of embarrassment. It is a concept that I would like to get over, but it is taking a lot longer than I would like it to.

Anyway, go with me for a minute. Let's say I was dating someone like Steve Urkel (I know- I should BE so lucky.) Suppose I bring him to my office, and he spills coffee on my boss and knocks over a row of book shelves, somehow starting a small kitchenette fire that destroys the large project that my boss had been working on for the last three weeks! I really think that I would not be able to show my face here again. It would be the same if I totally flipped out at a meeting. Nothing overly violent, but maybe just a coffee mug through the window or a grand sweep that pushes all my manager's papers onto the floor. The scene itself makes me laugh, but the thought of everyone's faces and the idea that I could never fully explain myself makes me quite agitated.

I think that if I received a memo saying that the company was out of money and would have to pay me with office supplies, I would request a large cardboard box, letter head, four boxes of ballpoint pens, good white out, and maybe a box of large paper clips. (I would normally choose yellow legal pads, but I overbought last winter when Staples had a sale, and now I cannot even give all those things away.) That would be fun for a little while, but then I think I would want something to eat. If they stipulated that I had to choose one item from the vending machine to eat for a few months, it would be the Nature Valley Granola Bars (the ones in the green wrappers.) If they said I could trade those in for one type of appetizer, I would choose chicken fingers. If I could trade my appetizers in for a casserole, I probably would not take the trade unless it was tuna casserole and my mom had made it. But if my mom is in New York making tuna casserole, then I think I would like to quit my job and return to California with her, since she is OBVIOUSLY just here on vacation.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

If I Go to a Pageant, I Expect to See Some Pretty Ladies

I apologize for not posting for the last few days. I actually died of boredom. I had always heard the expression and thought that people just used it for emphasis. Nope, it happens. One evening last week, I was sitting at my desk making edits to an itinerary in Excel, and next thing I knew, I had dropped dead. The doctor said that something occurs chemically when you simultaneously experience boredom and stress for prolonged periods of time- in my case, a year. He was speaking in Russian, but if I translated correctly, the problem comes from the adrenaline emission causing shock to the neuronal shutdown that is in process. His prescription for the problem loosely translated to "get the hell out of your job." I will probably go to a specialist before I make any decisions.

In other news, on the walls of my cubicle I have posted the emails in which people have misspelled my name. So far, I have been called:

Davis
Leigthon
Lieghton
Lei, and my personal favorite,
Lee

I can understand mistyping my name. God knows I do it daily. But Lee? Have I ever given myself any nickname of the sort? Don't I ALWAYS sign my name Leighton, followed by my email signature in green font, which says Leighton Davis?

You people.