How to Ship Small Objects: Dropout's Mom Style

Step 1: Take your small object, say, for example, a necklace, and place inside a little drawstring bag.

 

Step 2: Place drawstring bag within a padded, mailable envelope.

 

Step 3: Place mailable envelope within a much larger box.

 

Step 3.5: Throw in some packing peanuts, just for the heck of it.

 

Step 4: Ship.

 

Step 5: Call Dropout the same day to inform her that she's going to be getting a box and to call you when she gets it.

 

Step 6: Email Dropout to inform her that she's going to be getting a box and to call you when she gets it.

 

Step 7-n*: Repeat Steps 5 and/or 6 every day until Dropout actually gets the box.

 

Step n+1 (Recommended):  Take a Xanax. Seriously.

How to Celebrate Thanksgiving: Dropout Style

Part 1: Spread holiday cheer early.

 

Begin by going to work as usual the day before Thanksgiving. Only tell people to have a happy Thanksgiving if they say it first, and then only begrudgingly. Go home early.

 

Walk into apartment building, exhausted from your early departure. Briefly raise eyes from floor to smile weakly at random worker. When he brightly grins and wishes you a happy Thanksgiving, lower your eyes again and mumble, "Thanksgiving…"

 

Part 2: Be surrounded by friends and family.

 

Begin by accidentally/on-purpose delaying buying a plane ticket until it's too late. Finish by spending Thanksgiving with the best company of all: hours and hours of DVR.

 

Part 3: Enjoy a delicious turkey dinner.

 

Begin preparations the day before. During your lunch break on Wednesday, go to Subway and buy a foot-long turkey sub. And remember-it's the holidays, so don't scrimp! Splurge on double turkey!

 

Eat half of the sub at work and bring the uneaten half home. Refrigerate.

 

Wake up the next morning and sniff the turkey-air: it's Thanksgiving! Go to the gym to work up an appetite for your delicious turkey dinner, nay, turkey feast! Come home and shower. Take sandwich out of fridge. Dress it up on a fancy ceramic plate. Sit on couch and enjoy!

 

Part 4: Entertainment!

 

While enjoying scrumptious turkey feast, watch your recording of Stranger than Fiction. Briefly wonder if opening sequence, describing in repetitive detail just how lonely Harold Crick's life is, is trying to tell you something, as you sit on your couch, alone, eating a cold turkey sandwich off of a tea tray on Thanksgiving. Dismiss the idea because hey, at least you've caught up on your DVR!

Why I will never work in HR

123 I Love You: He, um, mentions his job. He also seems like the kind of person who would do this.

The guy at the (ex-)company store started saying hi and making small talk with me this past week. I thought, "Huh, that's weird," since there didn't seem to be any reason for it. I figured he had simply started recognizing me from my multiple trips.

 

Thursday I went in for the last time to stock up on cheap products, and when he said hi, it hit me.

 

He's my boss's brother. I met him last week. He told me he worked in the store. I said "Oh, cool." That's the reason he went from acting like a stranger to acting like he knew me: he went from being a stranger to knowing me.

More proof I do not belong in HR: A few weeks ago I walked right past a guy from my building before he said "yo." On Friday I stepped into the elevator in my building, glanced at the same guy, looked down, and then freaked out when he asked, "So you don't talk to people on the elevator?" See, when I look at people, I don't actually look at them. That's normal, right? Right.

I'm Listening To: Your MOM

You know how some people include their current reading material or music in their sidebars? I never understood that-do they really think people care? I suppose I can forgive people who indulge in that way, because it's unobtrusive and doesn't clutter up Google Reader, but did you know that some people make weekly posts out of their music? Not only that, but some people also make weekly posts out of the search terms used to find their blogs! If that isn't the height of laziness and narcissism, I don't know what is. Get over yourself, Anonymous Blogger!

 

(This post was in no way inspired by the vehement hatred I feel towards Grant Miller Media, I mean Anonymous Blogger, for crashing my computer with his music viruses.)

**This came close to being the shortest ever pledge to write something every day, didn't it? Told ya so.**

This is the first day of the rest of your life, and other cliches.

Charming, but Single: Coming out of the closet of never having seen The Princess Bride.

You know another way you could blow people's minds? Tell them you've never read any Harry Potter. And by "you" I mean my sister, and by "them" I mean me.

Other good ideas for blowing people's minds: Tell them you're the president of Burundi.

Tell them that you like your women like you like your coffee: covered in bees!

Prove to them that ManBearPig exists fer serial.

Blow their minds out with a bazooka.

I'll write your MOM every day!

Apparently there's some sort of "Write Every Day of the Month" contest/bet/punishment going on. I assume it must be a bet or punishment of some sort because why else would someone subject themselves to writing every day of a month?

I used to, on occasion. Remember January? You probably don't because I don't write often enough to sustain readers for that long, but you can see in the sidebar that January was good for the blog. My life was incredibly boring and so I had lots of free time to pontificate for hours on the low-talking sandwich guy or chocolate cake zombies. Now when I start writing I feel obligated to include Important Events, and then it takes so long to get it all down that I eventually give up and nothing gets posted. EVER. Do you know how many Gmail drafts I have, the overwhelming majority of which are unfinished posts? 92. That's, like, 70 more posts I could have on here. I am depriving the world of my shining light!

I have decided to make amends. I will post something every day for the rest of this month. Consider it self-inflicted punishment for not doing jack shit during all of those Days of Atonement I have lived through as a "Jew," mixed with my usual talent for procrastination.

Since I'm not crazy, or crazily optimistic about my follow-through, each post will be no longer than fifteen sentences or two paragraphs, depending on which limit I decide to follow or ignore that day. I will not spend more than fifteen minutes on each post, and probably closer to three. Also, I may not get around to posting every day of next week since my new job starts Monday, and this weekend... Well, I'll provide more excuses when I need to, but you have been warned. Two weeks from now, when people start yelling at me and smashing pumpkins on my window for not living up to my potential, I'm going to whine, "Whatever, MOM, I told you I wasn't going to do it in the first place." Then I'm going to marvel at how someone threw a pumpkin all the way to the 21st floor. Nice arm! You could be a discus thrower, imaginary future pumpkin smasher!

Anyhoo, I have decided on a nice little theme that will hopefully help me stay away from Important Events. When I read another person's post and can connect something in it to my life, or your life, or something I heard happened in someone else's life, I will then toss off a quick post of my own. No detail is too irrelevant, no connection too tenuous, no truth too fake.

I shall of course link to the original inspiration, which, when you don't think about it, provides a valuable public service. To wit: I will help inspire a sense of community and sharing among online weblog writers, and other writers will gain access to my impressive readership. Not impressive because of the number of people who read, but because I read my blog and I am an impressive person. Some have even called me "special" and "mildly artistic."

You ready? Let's do iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!

Three Little Words

It's amazing how much can change when a man says three little words to you. You can go from being happy about the future of your relationship to frantically wondering about what's going to change. Something that seemed relatively stable can be thrown into disarray. You can reach the highest highs, the lowest lows. Ah, emotional turbulence, how I loathe you.

 

And no, I'm not talking about "I love you." I'm talking about "for a bit." As in, "So you're going to come work with us FOR A BIT?"

 

I should probably back up here and explain my job situation. A few weeks after ending my last temp job, I took on a super-long-term temp position since I hadn't heard about the permanent job I interviewed for. I figured I was out of the running due to my non-experience and non-degree (wow, am I an attractive candidate or what?!) and chalked it up to interview experience. Then last week I heard from AwesomeBoss that I could have the job, but as an independent contractor for the first few months, after which they would decide whether or not to hire me full-time. The possibility of a "real" job that could lead to a real career outweighed the security of my current job, which doesn't offer any chance of advancement. (And is teee-dee-us.) And so, mostly because I was under the impression I would have a good chance of getting hired full-time, I accepted.

 

And then. I called Cute British Future Boss to finalize my start date, and while preparing to hang up, he casually tossed out the "So you're going to come work with us for a bit?" line. He even added a jaunty "Cheers!" at the end, as if to further showcase his savage indifference.

 

To borrow a line from Michelle Tanner: Excuuuuse me? What is this "for a bit" bullshit? I mean, yes, technically it could end up being only for a bit, but hopefully NOT, you gorgeous devil. I do not want to go into a temp-to-perm job where my boss has very little intention of it becoming the latter.

 

Shitballs. I hope this decision doesn't fuck me in the ass. After all, fucking people in the ass is my job.