150th Post Extravaganza!

Woo! Party!

And now I wish that I had a wonderful Geocities-esque blog page that would let me make things blink and where I could do 100 different types of fonts in all different sizes just to annoy the heck out of anyone who stumbles across this page. Of course, it would have a black background, just to make it that much more annoying, and I'd probably have to have something obscure and vaguely annoying yet addictive playing in the background, like Man-Man. So while you're reading this, occasionally close your eyes and imagine blinking font and manic gypsy music with a lead singer who sounds like Tom Waits, but if he went to a soccer game in Liverpool, got hammered, and started singing with his mates on the way home.

I've discovered recently that I'm incredibly talented at taking $10 and somehow producing enough food to feed me for a week at both lunch and dinner. Last week, it was beef stew - some of which, I confess, I tossed out today because I was afraid it would develop some sort of microwave-resistant bacteria and I'd die in my apartment alone. The remaining stew is frozen, waiting for the day when I pull it out of the freezer to eat it over the course of three days for both lunch and dinner.

This week - Monday, specifically - I made a ton of spaghetti sauce. I miscalculated how much ground beef I had to toss into the sauce, so I browned entirely too much, then realized that I could either waste the meat by pulling some of it out and making a poor imitation of sloppy joes or tacos, or I could just make a truckload of spaghetti sauce. I now have about 6 me-sized portions of spaghetti sauce in my freezer, not counting the spaghetti I'm eating for work tomorrow (which should be interesting and far from graceful).

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how my kitchen always manages to look like the site of a bloodbath whenever I cook something that has tomatoes in it. It took me a good ten minutes to clean up all the splotches I'd managed to fling, though none of them landed on me, in a departure from the norm. I had tomato sauce on the ceiling. It's like when I was little and I'd end up with spaghetti sauce on my forehead. It's funny, but at the same time, you're left wondering how the hell did that get up there?

How, indeed?

(Thanks to Flickr User jshj for the photo, which can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jshj/824608884/)

Thanksgiving Only Comes Twice a Year

Yes, that's right: twice. Friday is a Thanksgiving lunch of tacos, margaritas, and beer, courtesy of That Guy Down The Hall who has organized it every year for the past 12 years. Sure, it cost me $10, but they're Fuel City tacos and unlimited alcohol! Or at least unlimited until the supply runs out.

The second Thanksgiving feast will occur on Thanksgiving and will involve people I actually know (rather than TGDTH and the other people he's invited) and much better food. Unlike TGDTH's feast, however, I will not have a chance of meeting "my future ex-husband," which was the carrot held out as a way of persuading this stubborn mule to join the office-building lunch when I balked at its $10 price-tag. Combined with Trivia on Tuesday night - which takes place at a bar and which my team won - and Happy Hour, along with the need for a few new articles of clothing, this week is turning out to be more expensive than I'd previously planned. And yes, I did actually need the garments.

Money, whine whine whine, money, whine whine whine. Every so often, I freak out a bit about money, although I'm in perfectly fine financial condition. And, yes, I could have just said, "No, I'll pass on the tacos and booze and eat stew, thank you."

But, you know, then I might not meet my future ex-husband.

What a horrible thing to say to a girl.

A Project of My Very Own!

Yes, that's correct. I get my own project. Well, a mini-project. I'm designing an indoor-outdoor living space for a spec house. Yeah. Anti-climactic, I know, but it's still a project of my very own!

We finished our deadline Monday afternoon, only to discover that the interior designer had the foresight to pick faucets for the house that don't meet Dallas building code, so we're addressing that tomorrow at a meeting with said interior designer. Who would have thought that 0.2 gallons per minute could make or break your design's permit?

That's really all there is, today. Sorry, I know it's a bit boring.

Work Work Work Work Work Work Work Work: Part Deux

I will start off by saying that I am absolutely in love with our new receptionist. We ended up hiring the more matronly candidate - the peons overruled Oldsmobile and lobbied hard - and she began her first day of work by completely organizing our materials/products library.

Be still my heart!

She's amazing, and funny, and chatty - but not so much that I can't get any work done. She's the sort of person who will ask if we have anything we need her to do, which is wonderful, and she cheerfully performs any task we have.

L

O

V

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I ended up in the office Sunday for about 5 hours. Pacman and I missed our deadline Friday, so I went in to see if I could make sense of the bloodied pages he left on his desk. I picked up the red-lines I could comprehend - sorry, Pacman, but I don't know what squiggle-squiggle-circle means - and highlighted the ones I fixed so we won't waste time checking them.

Ahem. Pacman does not highlight the things he has fixed. It's exasperating.

I bet our new receptionist would highlight changes she made.

And now I have to come up with a nickname for our receptionist. Hmmm...

We'll call her Mrs. Robinson.

Let the Interviews Begin

Our receptionist, Lola, gave notice Friday while I was on holiday. By "gave notice" I mean "informed us she's moving to Amarillo to join her boyfriend" and by "on holiday" I mean "recovering from an epic attack of claustrophobia despite a veritable mountain of Xanax ingested a full hour beforehand."

We had two interviews today with potential receptionists to replace Lola. The first was one of Lola's friends, two years younger than I am - way to go, Oldsmobile, asking illegal questions - and TINY. I can't imagine her reading the riot act to a call center representative because Oldsmobile's wife's phone isn't working, but I'm sure she has other qualities that are lovely. Like being tiny. She was perky, at least.

The second interviewee was a downright matronly woman who seems like a real go-getter, very professional, and with a nice pleasant voice. She also seems like she might be more thick-skinned, because Oldsmobile can get kind of cranky.

Okay, he gets really cranky.

He's 186 years old, what do you expect? If you'd lived through the American Civil War and survived World Wars I & II, you'd probably be pretty cranky, too.

We might interview a couple of other candidates, because we really don't want to jump the gun and hire someone who won't be the best person for the position. At present, though, we're split on who to hire: Oldsmobile likes the young bubbly candidate, and everyone else prefers the staid old maid. Who knows how this is going to end?

I certainly don't.

Get Back to Work!

I realized today just how tired I am. In college, I used to party hearty and go to class the next day, no problem. These days, it's not so easy. I have no idea how people my age manage to go out on weeknights and then go to work the next day: I can't even tear it up on Saturday and be ready to go to work on Monday for crying out loud.

I think that makes me officially old.

I spent most of the day detailing our clients' pool cabana and being amazed by the fact that the general contractor magically found $700,000 of cost he'd accidentally placed in his estimate of the building cost. Of course, he only found the $700,000 miscalculation after the project manager called him to ask how the heck the price went up by $100/S.F. in three months and to demand that he look over the numbers again. Amazing what a little impatience can do for your clients' bottom line.

The cabana is going to be a neat little building, not nearly as large as I'd initially imagined, but still a nice little place to use the loo and to store pool toys. So it's a big fancy port-o-potty, I guess, but with expensive tile and an outdoor shower.

Maybe they'll rent it out to me as a vacation spot?

Halloween!

I went out for Halloween, this year.

Last year, I stayed home, because I was tired and stressed and I just felt like being a contrarian when all my friends kept saying, "But you can come out with us! We're going to ." I smiled, thanked them, and spent the evening in my apartment drinking wine and resting. It was awesome.

Halloween 2009 was also awesome. I started the evening at a friend of a friend's house party, and wound up at the Slip Inn, to which I hadn't been in 10 months. I used to be something of a regular fixture at the Slip Inn, but then I guess I got old, so I stopped going as frequently. Also, my favorite bouncer left. Why go to a dance club if you can't flirt with your favorite bouncer? Really, there's absolutely no reason, right?

I was a tornado for Halloween. Yes, a tornado. That meant altering a cheap old black strapless dress by sewing a bunch of black tulle to it in big poufy swirls, then sewing plastic cars and farm animals onto the tulle. I wore black lipstick, crazy silver and black eyeshadow, and 5" black heels. Because all tornadoes wear stilettos. It's a requirement if your tornadic self ever wants to pass F2 on the Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale. I think I made it to F4.

The evening was fun, except for a blip of drama by one of the girls we went out with. I don't do girl-drama. I can be dramatic, yes. I can emote with the best of 'em. But I don't do drama. I mean the kind where everyone in the group wants to go somewhere else, and one girl wants to stay because she really likes a guy who's currently making out with another girl at the bar type of drama. Seriously, four people aren't having fun, so we should all stay where you want to stay because you're delusional?

We ended up at the Slip Inn after about 30 minutes of drama, where I had a fellow ask me if he could be in the eye of my storm. I was slightly horrified, but also kind of amused, because it was by far the most creative pick-up line I'd heard all evening.

I think the horrifying outweighs the creative though.