Wednesday, April 22, 2009

At Least it Wasn't Woody Paige.

I'm reading Will Leitch's God Save the Fan and really liking it. Will is the founder of Deadspin, one of my favorite sports blogs. The book is perfect business trip reading: funny, interesting, and most importantly for my ADD tendencies, written in easily-digestible essays so I can flit in and out of the book as needed.

But his book took me to an uncomfortable place. A place I had tried to ignore for a long time.

In a few of his essays he mentions crusty old-school sportswriters and how they've brought themselves over to a variety of ESPN's shows, most notably Around the Horn. Leitch can't stand AtH and talks about how many of the panelists went from engaging (or at least half-interesting) in print to scripted, screaming banshees on TV.

I used to watch Around the Horn almost every evening - my husband likes the show and again, it had that great ADD-friendly format. The point-keeping, yelling, and Tony Reali were tangential to the whole point for me: finding out, in a nutshell, what's up with sports for the day. At some point, we stopped watching because now my son is obsessed with Yo Gabba Gabba! and now that's the way we roll with our evening programming.

So anyway I'm reading this book and something popped into my head that I had kind of forgotten - but was no less embarrassed to remember. When we used to watch AtH, I kind of sort of had a tiny crush on Tim Cowlishaw.

I KNOW.

But he was so rumpled, and he had the salt and pepper hair thing going, and he wasn't as loud as the others, and he kind of looked like your friend's rumpled and kind of cute Dad. I couldn't help it. So I'd watch AtH and while other women my age were probably liking that little slice of intern Tony R., or that nice boy J.A. Adande, I was thinking that Tim was cute. Yeah, I'm not proud of it.

But hey, in order to make myself feel better, I read the title of this post. Repeatedly.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Leavin' on a Jet Plane

Today's my last day in the office this week, for I am about to embark on that most hallowed of working rituals: The Business Trip. To Chicago, quite possibly one of my favorite cities ever.

I seriously love business trips, y'all. They've made me a better traveller (a little more calm and a little less paranoid) and let's face it -- a little me time never hurt a girl. I have my own random/indulgent rituals:

  1. When at the airport I buy the latest Us Magazine and InStyle. This ritual used to incude Domino but sadly, Domino is now in that great magazine resting place in the sky. RIP Domino. I loved your mostly transitional focus and more importantly, your pretty pictures and dedication to Thomas O'Brien. Anyway.

  2. If there is a Potbelly at the airport, I will eat there. It's a compulsion - when you go from having one in the ground floor of your apartment building to absolutely none in your current town, you have to have it.

  3. I bring enough books to get me through a month of solitude. Even though I usually only get through one or two of them, I like having backups in case the book I'm reading is boring or sucks. I learned this lesson after getting stuck with some book about Hamptons people and their abodes, with no back up. On a cross-country flight. Man, the writing was so awful I had to see what publishing house allowed this crap. Turn the book over--self-published?! WTF?

  4. I take a cab from the airport to my hotel (unless there's a shuttle). Public transportation, especially in a new city while bearing luggage, is not for me. I'm too much of a spaz.

  5. I order room service, at least once. Especially at the Ritz, where their room service actually tastes good.

  6. I try to get out and do something exclusively related to the city. It's just fun, and makes the trip more interesting than "I flew in, did what I needed to, then I flew out."

  7. Try to have at least one meal or drinks with any coworkers who are also on the trip. I learn the most about people I work with when we're relaxed and not entertaining a client.
Of course the best ritual is that little flutter I get in my stomach on the morning of my return date. It stays with me until I touch down at home and see my husband and son again.

Speaking of returning home - business travel is great for a marriage. Missing someone and then reuniting ... it's a beautiful thing. Just sayin'.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

File Under Duh.

While watching a preview of The Real Housewives of New Jersey:

Me: "Whaaaaat? Did that chick just flip over a table?"

Him: "Yeah. You gotta go to the suburbs to get the good stuff."

Thursday, April 16, 2009

On Dropping Hints

A friend of mine just mentioned that the people included in her nanny share have a filthy house and while she's kind of appalled about it, she doesn't want to be a total bitch and tell them their house is funkay. She jokingly said she might drop a hint about how her cleaning service is so awesome.

There is nothing more embarrassing (yes, I'm being a bit dramatic) than being overweight and saying that you love to watch The Biggest Loser. Because inevitably, the person you're talking to raises their eyebrow like "Oh yeah? Gathered any tips on how to deal with your chunky ass?" And the hints, they come a-droppin'.

How do you tell someone that you've been in a life-long battle and right now, with a crazy job, a toddler, and a husband you're trying not to forget in the shuffle that you're just TIRED? I mean, without unloading some seriously raw shit to someone with whom you're just casually chatting.

I've been fat since I was 8 years old. I was a skinny, skinny kid and then around third grade, I just got HUNGRY. I was 131 pounds when I was 10 years old. Although compared to TBL's Ron who just admitted that he was 200 pounds when he was 9, I guess I was pretty svelte, but not compared to my skinnier classmates back in 1988. And it just roller-coastered from there: Fatty-fat until age 15 when I went on Jenny Craig and lost a bunch of weight and was finally "normal"; developed a bit of a bulimia habit in my last year of HS and early college years; gained later in college and the first years in the workforce; lost a bunch before my wedding on Weight Watchers; gained; lost; got pregnant (at my heaviest weight ever, fun!) but had an awesome pregnancy and dropped the weight pretty quickly (about 9 months); now I'm working on my fat girl weight. 70 pounds to go.

But I've been working on those 70 pounds for a long time and I'm stalled right now. Not sure if it's the big drop in weight over the last year (about 60 pounds of both pregnancy weight and fat girl weight) or what. With so far to go it can get frustrating.

Until those mofos on TBL get on their scales every season and blow away past numbers of being huge. Even after losing 115 pounds, this season's Kristen is still heavier than I am. Granted, she will be a stick by the finale and I'll probably still be at my weight, but for now, this is solace. Yeah, it's inspirational that they are changing their lives and yay isn't that awesome, but some of my pleasure in watching TBL is in the small vindication I get when people have basically killed themselves and my ass is on the couch eating a cookie and we're the same. For one brief moment, we're same.

And I got to have cookies.

What I'd love to tell Kristen, though, is that I follow her because we are now very similar in weight and I do find inspiration in her--her efforts do push me to maybe eat one less cookie while parked on the couch. If nothing else, she's inspiration to stay at least a few pounds below her so I can continue my smugfest. Hey, it's inspiration nonetheless.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Putting the Oy in Employee

So I have this employee. She takes up a lot of my time, including yesterday where I had to drive down to our sales office (a number of hrs away), solely to have a meeting with her about how to be professional and do her job, then drive back home (I work in a different office than my staff - yes it can be awkward at times, but for the most part I make it work - and it's fairly temporary).

Have I mentioned that she has been doing her job for almost 3 years and should already know how to do it? And that she is in her late 30s and has been working for a while, so she should already know how to be professional?

Yeah. Yesterday was a long day.

Here are my personal tips for being professional, gleaned from my experience with this employee:

  1. Do not get drunk at a company event and become sexually suggestive to your male coworkers. Also, please don't do this three times in one year.

  2. Do not air your personal dirty laundry about your divorce drama, your custody battle, what a bastard your ex is, and how lonely and (and sexless) you are.

  3. Do not tell your new boss she seems cold and now that you have figured out that she is "warm" you can work with her. Thanks?

  4. Do not email and go to your boss's superiors and tell them you want to work for someone else. Your boss will find out, roll her eyes, and then tell you you're stuck with her. Sorry.

  5. When your boss is frantically trying to get a vendor paid because YOU spaced, do not come in late that day, then go out to lunch and be unavailable while your boss runs around begging Finance to cut a check for the expense. Then REALLY don't send your boss an email telling her that you came in late, went out to lunch, and the boss should have simply called your cell to get a hold of you.

  6. Stop making your boss's work life so frigging hard. PLEASE.
So anyway, that was my day yesterday. The meeting will either work or it won't - I think I'm so numb to dealing with this person that I've come around to a state of zen. Om.

Monday, April 13, 2009

The First Thing.

The first thing is ... this is the first entry of my first blog ever. I know - try to contain yourselves!

A bit about me: I'm a wife, a mom, a working chick, a daughter, a pain in the ass at times, a loyal friend, a snarky bitch at times, and as you'll shortly see, a rambler.

I've started this as a lark, a whim, a possible way to break out of a rut. Let's see where it goes.