ooh i'm getting really bad at keeping up with this. i blame the winter. by the time i get home every night, it's dark and cold and all i want to do is put on my sweats and go to bed.
i don't really remember ever hating winter - except for junior year of college, when i had 10-minute walks to campus at 7:45 a.m. in the freeeeeeeezing cold - but this year, i think i've officially had enough. i love snow, but frankly, i don't know if it's worth it anymore. the real world doesn't grant snow days, i no longer have the energy/time to go sledding or play in the snow (also i'm not sure when it stops becoming socially-acceptable to play in the snow - so many "kid" things become OK again in college, but then after college? i think it's time to stop), and i don't live near any good skiing places. so, basically, i get nothing out of snow. my usual 30-minute drive from work took an hour today. i had to boil a pot of water and then pour it on my car to get my door to unfreeze yesterday. so, i am taking suggestions of places to move to that AREN'T miserable from december-march.
so today at work, we had an external evaluator come to... evaluate things, i guess. i wasn't directly involved (or so i thought). i did, however, have to dress up for the event, as i have to do tomorrow and thursday, too. dangit. first of all, can i say that my workplace dresscode is pretty casual (like, a former employee often wore sweatpants. granted they looked like regular black pants at a distance, but... sweatpants). anyway, so this summer when i started working, i enjoyed wearing cute summery dresses to work. coming from a college lifestyle of wearing jeans all the time, it was nice to dress up a little bit every day. but then... it just got annoying. i used to go to bed so early because i wasn't used to waking up at 7 a.m., but now that i'm used to working and i don't go to bed at 9 p.m. every night, i am not getting as much sleep so am consequently less willing to wake up in time to shower, put make-up on, do my hair, pick out a cute outfit, etc... many mornings i wake up 15 minutes before i have to leave, brush my teeth, wash my face, throw on the first nice-ish, semi-matching outfit i can find, and leave the house. but today, since we had a special visitor, i thought i should make a bigger effort than usual. so, i looked very professional and nice and be-make-upped. like, i'm talking button-down shirt, sweater, tights, heels (HEELS!), and jewelry that cost more than $4. but then, of course, one of the buttons on my skirt fell off which created a higher-than-"office-appropriate" slit in my skirt. and do i carry a sewing kit? of course not. also, i realized that i forgot to take off my extremely chipped navy-blue nail polish, so that's not super professional. i was trying to hide my hands during our staff meeting w/ our special guest, but when i'm in professional settings, i tend to talk with my hands A LOT, so that didn't work. so there were some small failures.
anyway, it was interesting meeting with this guy, because i feel like work can be pretty ho-hum. you just sort of get into a routine and just do your work. but this guy was very... umm kind of like a business hippie or something. he just kept talking about how he wanted to be a "critical friend" and he didn't want to get into specific objectives - he just wanted to talk about big-picture stuff like goals and missions and dreams and hopes and whatnot. of course, later he threw me off guard when he started grilling me about stats and facts and figures and i was like WHOA curvelball i'm not prepared. but for the most part, he was very relaxed and calm and non-threatening. we did this exercise where he asked us to draw 3 circles - signifying the organization's past, present and future - however we envisioned the organization. and it was a little bit uncomfortable because we just don't really do things like that. it was really cool though. i wish we just had a full-time "critical friend" who wandered the office and asked us how things were going and challenged us to think about things in new ways. not like, "well could you find a faster way to seal those envelopes?" but actual, real issues that go deeper than surface-level task-y things. and maybe someone who would just encourage us to talk about serious issues and go play a game when we all need something to pep us up for the afternoon. maybe that place is called kindergarten? or google? they've got it right, i think. so, i'm trying to be pro-active. the longer i've been working, the more i realize you have little-to-no control over how other people act, but you can shape the way you approach your job. that's an outlook that i definitely don't have all the time, but i need to.
anyway... i'm watching anderson cooper right now - and you know, he just seems like a fascinating person. and also, he's a very attractive older man. not that that's why i watch him. but i just feel like, what a fascinating job it must be to just be in the middle of stuff. to witness things (as we all do) but have the platform to just question and discuss and get people interested in big issues. and just randomly go places and live with different people and hear their stories. and i love him because he seems so much more honest than typical newspeople.
also, i love that the two stories coming up after the break are 1. the madoff fraud situation and 2. what kind of puppy will the obama girls get? my vote is for a boxer, but seriously? how do you talk about those two stories in the same breath? how does number 2 even mean anything to anyone besides those 2 girls (and granted, it will be their most loyal/least judgmental friend, but come on - who else even needs to know this?)
i don't know why i'm on this topic.
so i shouldn't brag, but i have to share yet another reason why our landlady is the most amazing person ever. today, after my awful drive home from work, i was very annoyed. i hated snow and driving. but THEN as i was walking up the steps, i saw a box addressed to my roommates and myself. what could this be?? of just a box of GOURMET BROWNIES from our landlady! do landlords generally buy christmas present for their tenants? i'm pretty sure they don't, but then, our anita is no ordinary home-renter. she is fantastic. and also, there is an actual company called "Fairytale Brownies." so, look into that. they're amazing.
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