Hell Yeah!

Work Lessons

My boss has a bottle of Jack Daniels that he keeps in his desk drawer. Next to the bottle is a hammer. Every time I see the two together I have to fight the temptation to snatch the hammer and take a big swing at that pristine glass. I think it’s the blend of fragility and destructiveness in such close proximity that brings about this urge, but it could just be that I hate whiskey…not sure which. Regardless of where this desire is rooted, I can’t help but think how satisfying it would be to crush the glass and watch it give way like an ice pond in Spring holding up a nearing-death-individual. Good times.

Anyway, I came to that inevitable question today… the question that had always been there but was never paid any attention. You know, like the middle child. I found myself harboring a little extra time and—what better way to use it—I decided to stop and really consider this eclectic combo. Hammer. Jack. Jack Hammer? I got a nice private chuckle out of this, but was still unsatisfied. Could be that The Boss just needed a place to put the hammer and the size and dimensions fit well against his whiskey. That just wasn’t fun enough though and severely lacked creativity such that I was accustomed to bringing to the table at a puzzler like this.

So here is what I came up with. Bossman, with his great foresight and wisdom, must have known that when the time came to ‘crack’ this bottle open, it would be a get-this-in-my-system-NOW sort of situation. Everything that could possibly go wrong, will have gone wrong. If he could shoot the stuff, he would. He will need escape quickly and without hindrance. He won’t have time to fiddle with petty devices that keep things in bottles. No, a hammer is what he’ll need. Take that metal to the neck of the glass and you have an instant, handy, wide mouthed opening ready to drain out all contents. Just pound it back and watch reality do a fade to black. Now THAT is setting up your environment for success.

I’m learning a lot at work.

Trashy Photos

Tonight is trash night, which means that tomorrow will enter in by way of a thundering, rumbling garbage truck. When I was a kid I always envied the garbage men that got to ride the side of that truck, jumping off at each house to heave another tin can of excess and waste. Not the highest of career aspirations, mine. Now, of course, they have that handy mechanical arm that I swear is almost a spot on replica of the arm that is constantly dropping stuffed animals at Chuck E Cheese’s. Luckily Mr. Garbage Truck’s arm is a little more efficient.

The recycling people have also become quite efficient in their processes. Eerily efficient in fact… Not too long ago Ty and I got notice that we were being charged $75 for putting Styrofoam in our recycling bin (a bold faced lie, of course…). Beyond that, however, they went on to state that there was photographic evidence of this infringement. Yes, the recycling folks are now taking pictures of your trash. I’m thinking it must be some sort of job creation strategy—after all, someone had to take in all of the unemployed garbage men once the mechanical arm came into play. But still—photos? Really? Someone is taking their job way too seriously. I’m just betting there is someone praying for the day that someone contests an item found in their recycling…

Sweat traces a trail down the female’s face, pooling at her jaw and dropping on the stainless steel table. Her new highlights are dulled in this gritty, cold room, and even her ruby red nail polish looks dull and lifeless on her numb fingers laid out before her. It is the perfect size for an interrogation room, confining as if to squeeze the truth from your inner most self. Stick to the story. Stick to the story.

A door opens and a figure enters, smoke swirls and twists from his hand and he raises his cigarette to his lips for one last drag. The burning ember of the butt bursts through the grey of the smoke, of the room, for a split second before it is stamped out at his heel. He drags the wooden chair at the corner over to the table and sits down on it backwards, with his chest leaning on the back. She shifts her hands nervously to her lap, wiping the sweat from her palms as she watches her hands evaporate from the table. A hanging light bulb barely swings above them, waiting for the scene to unveil. He eyes her, trying to weigh the strength of her resolve. She stares back; expectant and dreading.

“Do you know why you’ve been called here Ms. Fisher?”

“Not really, no. I have done nothing wrong to warrant this sort of treatment. And it is Mrs. Fisher.” Her voice shakes despite her willing it otherwise.

“So you deny the charges?” He says, putting another cigarette to his lips and pulling out his lighter.

“That I put Styrofoam in with my recycling? Yes! I absolutely have no idea what you are talking about. I haven’t even bought anything in the last six months with Styrofoam packaging!” She turns down his offer of a cigarette with only the slightest bit of hesitation.

He lights his Winston and takes a drag, never taking his eyes off her. The smoke drifts up toward the light bulb and envelopes it.

“So, you deny it then. That’s curious.” He rises from his chair. He begins to pace. “That is very interesting Ms. Fisher, you know why?” He stops pacing for a second. She contemplates correcting him again, but does not trust her voice.
“How many children do you have Ms. Fisher?”

“Three.”

“Three children. Do you love your children Ms. Fisher?”

“Well, yes of course. And it’s Mrs—“

“And you want them to grow up in a clean world, right Ms. Fisher?”

“Yes, of course.”

“See, now THAT is interesting. You want them to inherit a clean Earth and yet you try to dodge around laws designed to do just that! Amazing.” He goes to his shirt pocket and pulls out a photo.

“Ms. Fisher, what is the number on your recycling bin?”

“Well, I’m not sure..” She says, looking nervously toward the photo in his hands. He looks at her, annoyed and obviously feeling she should know this information.

“Your recycling bin number is 15473. Check when you get home if you want. Ms. Fisher, can you describe the contents in this photograph?” He sets the photo in front of her like a man presenting a royal flush. Despair floods through her.

“Styrofoam.” A meek reply.

“And what is the number on this recycling bin Ms. Fisher?” But the pressure has overwhelmed her and she cannot reply. Tears form as she lowers her head to the table.

He looks up knowingly at the double paned mirror on the wall. “We’re done here.”

“Fine her.”

High Hopes

I think I have overestimated the power of Microsoft Excel.

Snugly faceted in between various megabites and an Intel chip or two lies an excel sheet proudly titled “Kristie’s Schedule.” It is a newer creation relative to the other Excel grids and Word documents between which it is sandwiched. So new to be forgotten, so young to be labeled a failure. But there it lies on the virtual shelves of my hard drive—a week old without a chance. It’s a bleak picture and a bleak future is included—no additional purchase necessary.

Here was the reasoning that led to its birth; ‘They say that if you write your goals down you have a 15% higher chance of achieving them than if pen never went to paper. If that is the stat for old fashioned paper, just think of how much more successful I would be if I set up my intended schedule on an Excel sheet! That must bump my chances for success by at least another 50-60%, and if I add in some color coding, I am essentially sealing my victory!’

Nice huh. No wonder the schedule didn’t work. The person who made it is a moron.

Fine. Here.

At the behest of a certain nagging commenter I am pulling out a blog from the vault. This was written in July on the first night of Annual Meeting. Annual Meeting is the Wood Stock of Northwestern Mutual.


I’m writing this from Milwaukee, Wisconsin—home of Miller Beer and Northwestern Mutual. Though slightly buzzed, I thought it appropriate to attempt a blog even though I have no flights of fancy as to its quality. My assumption is that it will be low. A full on headache will be coming on soon-I can feel its rumblings squeezing my temple like some huge alcohol derived vice. If I don’t ingest water soon this sensation will upgrade from vice to hammer and all fun will be lost.

A couple questions: Why when I drink do I get the sensation that I’m moving at an incredible speed? Everything is so sped up that the act of bending down to pick something up almost ends up in a front flip. Weird. My second question has to do with the word; blog. Why is that not a dictionary word yet? Some of the best blogs do the dictionary a huge service in using big words, which then prompts readers to access the almighty dictionary for understanding. And yet the dictionary won’t even afford the medium a proper place within its pages. Heresy. Not to mention that I am forced to look at a stupid red underlining line every time I use the word.

This trip will mark the longest time Ty and I have been apart since our marriage. Four nights away folks—that is a long ass time. I actually cried at the airport today when I was saying goodbye. To be honest I wasn’t expecting that—I didn’t even cry at our wedding! Since the separation I have been dealing ok—I’m not a total blubbering buffoon after all. I think drinking is helping with the distance although I am not entirely convinced that drinking should be my main channel with which to blanket my sadness. Probably that is the first step to alcoholism.

Right now I am waiting for my work crew to call me when they have finished dinner. Most likely they will be trashed. I had dinner with these two ladies that I didn’t know, talking about the reps that we work for (who are all in the same study group). It was minimally informative, mildly amusing and sprinkled with hints of depression. I’m not sure why, but I would be much more inclined to get drunk with someone and then discuss work than to try and discuss it sober. For one, the truth will come out a lot more freely and you will actually learn a lot more that way, for another, you’re bound to feel closer to the person after a few drinks and therefore awkwardness is reduced. It’s like that episode from The Office when Michael gets trashed with that one potential client and they end up sealing the deal once they’ve bonded. Then Mike gets some action with Jan and thus starts that whole dysfunctional fiasco. Anyway, I think its fair to say that Michael and I see eye to eye on this point.

So I’m waiting for them to call and actually wondering if they may have forgotten about me. That wouldn’t be so bad I suppose—sleep will be sounding good in about an hour (or now) and I really don’t want to bother with a taxi to where ever they are anyway. Not to mention I’ll have three more opportunities before this trip is over to hang out with them. No tears shed over missing one night.

I think I’m going to stop writing now. Getting a little tired and since I’m producing only petty babbling I don’t think stopping is going to cause too much of an uproar.


Needless to say my work crew did call and thus began a series of gregarious late nights sandwiched in between breakout sessions and dowsed in Miller Light.

Death Duo

I was taunted by a fly today. He ended up dead.

The conditions were perfect to write which is not to say that that is an odd thing. There are many times conditions have been perfect it’s just that they are not always pounced upon by yours truly. Often I end up getting distracted by internet searches leading to further internet searches leading to even further searches and suddenly what had started out as a search for DMV locations has inexplicably driven me into a bog of random facts about tracheotomies and how to perform them. I’m licensed now, by the way.

So the conditions were perfect. Ty was out riding, Thea was flopped on the cool kitchen tile, and I had officially recovered from my hangover. I opened my laptop on the kitchen table and settled myself on the chair. Okay, time to write. But no—some peon of a creature, which I’m sure serves no other purpose than to incite madness and butcher peace, had decided that I would not be writing that night. I don’t normally feel this strongly about flies, just so you know. Normally I find them only mildly annoying and thoroughly ignorable. In fact there is a fly by me right now that is not even close to igniting the amount of incredulous rage brought about by the first. (You must all be wondering at this point, just what sort of sty I inhabit. It’s summertime folks. Doors stay open, flies fly in—manure or not.)

Anyway, back to the waste of space transient that decided to my push buttons. I was being circled. Around and around and around. Soft buzz, loud buzz, soft buzz, loud buzz, soft buzz, loud buzz. There was no way I could do anything other than try to dispose of this distraction. Swatting wildly around my head anytime the fly zipped by only made me look like a comical lunatic. Trying to chart its trajectory in hopes of a surprise ambush also proved unsuccessful, and getting Thea to chase it was out of the question. This dog don’t hunt.

For my next trick I tried opening the garage door and gently wafting it out of the kitchen. Thea went, the fly stayed. I was going bonkers, getting desperate and only inches away from busting out the chopsticks and blindfold. The whole fly-in-my-ear canal bit was getting reeeaaallly old. Then, in a last ditch little tweak of my opened door attempt, I turned off the kitchen light and turned on the garage light, hoping that the fly would be attracted to the glorious yellow hue reaching out to it. But no, I had to get the fly that likes white light which I soon discovered when the buzzing stopped and I looked back from my perch at the door. There was the fly all stretched out on my hot white Mac, probably flipping me off from the very tool that he was keeping me from using.

Maybe it was the image of my defiled laptop, maybe it was the smugness with which he sat there, maybe it was the both, but something inside of me burst out quicker than Neo’s bullet limbo and bitch slapped that fly right off my computer. Down it went, wriggling on the ground and at the complete and utter mercy of Thea the dog. This is something she could hunt. There was no mercy for this fly; the last thing its eyes probably saw was a big bubble gum tongue flipping it straight down the throat. Good-bye fly—hello fly guts on my LCD screen. Yeah, there was that. A small price to pay, I suppose, for a little freakin peace and quiet

So that’s how the demon fly died—a tag team effort by my dog and me. With my quickness and her appetite, the fly community better stay clear. This is one duo that doesn’t just kill you. We kill you and write about it.

Why I Am Insane

The definition of insanity is a person who keeps doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. The reason I know I am insane is because I keep getting manicures with the expectation of fun and beauty. The fact that past manicures have only brought about one titanic nuisance after another does not seem to faze me in this belief.

The whole process starts out innocently enough. Some Asian lady who doesn’t speak a lick of English takes your hands and begins to lather you up, plying and pulling at your fingers. The movement brings about a looming sense that milk is going to start secreting out from your cuticles. (Okay, so maybe it doesn’t start out so innocent. Lets continue anyway). Those cuticles—milk or not—are then cut and disposed of, instantly vaporizing the barrier between your nail and skin. It’s so sudden—so revealing. You’re left with a nail standing in front of a barrage of skin, asking only to be loved.

Next there is some sort of buffing process at which time your smooth pearly nail gets transformed into Shredded Wheat courtesy of The File. It is an odd undoing, but not to worry, renovation comes in the form of a freakishly small finger spa located at each nail station which offers an anecdotal soak to any weary traveler within its vicinity.

A quick dry and you’re ready for the polish—pick out some paint and hope to God the color on the outside of the bottle is a true mirror of what is about to grace your nails. With any luck it will be close and you’ll only be marginally unsatisfied. Soon the polish is draping over the ends of your fingers while your Asian lady continues to chat foreignly on about who knows what. Probably she hates the color you picked out.

You are almost done when she finishes the last stroke—now comes the waiting process when your nails are placed under strange purple lights which I assume help them dry faster. Skate world for nails—I hope they have fun. After a stretch of twenty hours or so you decide to prod ever so slightly at your coating just to test. The surface feels slightly Gumby-ish, but close enough. Besides, people are waiting for their turn and its couples skate in purple light land.

Now comes the acrobatic feat of taking out your keys and starting the car without smudging the sacred colors. This is a very fragile time. I hate this part. Being so careful with every little move you make is like a heightened game of Operation only instead of a heart stopping zap you get a ruined manicure and 25 bucks down the drain.

If all goes well you end up with what seems like beautiful colored glass at the end of each finger. This effect lasts for about three or four days, at which time you begin to see cracks appearing in your polish like a frozen pond thawing in spring, returning to its natural state. These cracks are the birthing pains for what will be a good month of chipping and scraping. It signifies the end of your classy fingers, the end of your put togetherness. Say goodbye to peace and say hello to a stack of days wrought with nimieties of tiny paint chips bouncing off your fingertips every second of every minute. Not by nature’s intent does this happen, but rather by your own accord because you will not be able to stop chipping until every last infinitesimal spot of color is gone. I promise.

And so it is that after all this, I still will wake up on some random morning and decide that a manicure sounds fun. That a manicure is worth it. That is why I am insane.