Ah, holiday season in the office. Every afternoon the mail guy makes his round and delivers a bevy of DHL and FedEx packages for the Easys. On Friday it was a set of ugly pens that weigh approximately ten pounds each and a food basket. Today, Easy received an iPod shuffle (I totally considered pocketing that sucker), a Zagat’s guide, a book about Spanish wines that he’ll never read, and one very peculiar packet accompanied by a note:
Dear [Easy],
Enclosed please find our holiday gift: a mesh bag.
WARNING: DO NOT USE WITH LIQUIDS.
Pencils are fine, however.
All the best,
[Redacted]
Um, wtf? We’re not talking just any mesh bag. It was a mesh bag with a smaller mesh bag inside it, with an even smaller mesh bag inside of that. Three mesh bags! And good thing that warning was there, because for a second I considered pouring my Perrier into it and saving it for later! Let’s re-imagine this letter:
Dear [Moron Clients],
Enclosed please find our thoughtless/lame holiday gift: a mesh bag. Yes, I’ve already fired the idiot who thought this was a good idea. Did you get an iPod too? That would have been a better idea.
WARNING: DO NOT USE WITH LIQUIDS. THEY’RE MESH, NOT ZIPLOCK, DUMBASS.
Pencils are fine, however. And mascara, a little rouge, and some powder for your nose, you saucy minx. We know what you do on weekends.
All the worst,
[Redacted]
Only 7 shopping days left until Christmas!
Monday, December 17, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
I Don't Want A Lot For Christmas
What…what is this feeling? Where is the hangover, the nausea, the thick lump of regret in my throat? Last night was Nice Hedge Fund’s holiday party, so one might easily assume that I’d be a greasy food-craving mess today, but I’m not! I’m alert! I’m happy! I had a great time at the party without falling down or deeply embarrassing myself in front of my coworkers!
Weird.
Seriously, the holiday party was so much fun. Delicious food, a cool downtown hotel venue, and plenty of sweet, glorious champagne to go around. I was pretty nervous when we first arrived, but I warmed up once we found C and D and I had a drink in my hand. C and I dominated the pool table, kicking our boyfriends’ asses and proving once and for all that we are the greatest duo in the history of cubicle assignments. But the real entertainment of the night was a flipbook station set up next to the dance floor. Couples or groups of people took turns dancing/generally making fools of themselves in front of digital video camera, and then each frame was printed out and stapled together into a little flipbook the size of business cards, old school movie style. My favorites are the one of R and me dancing together (he dances!) and with C and some other girls doing a conga line. So fun.
I realize that companies have their holiday party mid-week to discourage extremely bad behavior, but really, today was such a wash. Even those of us who weren’t hurting this morning spent the day looking at pictures instead of working. Easy strolled in wearing jeans, loafers and cufflinks, prompting Easier to give him hell (“They let you out of the Upper East Side dressed like that?”) while C’s boss greeted her with a “Morning, hustler,” when he arrived. I took advantage of the no-work attitude and went out after lunch to do some Christmas shopping in Columbus Circle. The only people left on my gift list are DadOh (always impossible) and SisterOh (I’ve got some ideas). Ten days until Christmas!
When I got home tonight, Roommate M was completely moved out, her keys on the kitchen table. Alone, again. My apartment needs a serious cleaning, but I couldn’t really face it tonight – the emptiness was palpable, creepy even. I usually like living alone, especially here in my small place, but between the gray winter chill that has seeped into me from outside and the general uncertainty of my current life plan, it’s a less-than-ideal situation. Craigslist, here I come.
I’m responding to the solitude by blasting Mariah Carey’s Christmas album. All I want for Christmas is you, okay?
Weird.
Seriously, the holiday party was so much fun. Delicious food, a cool downtown hotel venue, and plenty of sweet, glorious champagne to go around. I was pretty nervous when we first arrived, but I warmed up once we found C and D and I had a drink in my hand. C and I dominated the pool table, kicking our boyfriends’ asses and proving once and for all that we are the greatest duo in the history of cubicle assignments. But the real entertainment of the night was a flipbook station set up next to the dance floor. Couples or groups of people took turns dancing/generally making fools of themselves in front of digital video camera, and then each frame was printed out and stapled together into a little flipbook the size of business cards, old school movie style. My favorites are the one of R and me dancing together (he dances!) and with C and some other girls doing a conga line. So fun.
I realize that companies have their holiday party mid-week to discourage extremely bad behavior, but really, today was such a wash. Even those of us who weren’t hurting this morning spent the day looking at pictures instead of working. Easy strolled in wearing jeans, loafers and cufflinks, prompting Easier to give him hell (“They let you out of the Upper East Side dressed like that?”) while C’s boss greeted her with a “Morning, hustler,” when he arrived. I took advantage of the no-work attitude and went out after lunch to do some Christmas shopping in Columbus Circle. The only people left on my gift list are DadOh (always impossible) and SisterOh (I’ve got some ideas). Ten days until Christmas!
When I got home tonight, Roommate M was completely moved out, her keys on the kitchen table. Alone, again. My apartment needs a serious cleaning, but I couldn’t really face it tonight – the emptiness was palpable, creepy even. I usually like living alone, especially here in my small place, but between the gray winter chill that has seeped into me from outside and the general uncertainty of my current life plan, it’s a less-than-ideal situation. Craigslist, here I come.
I’m responding to the solitude by blasting Mariah Carey’s Christmas album. All I want for Christmas is you, okay?
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Bikram Yoga is Hell on Earth in Midtown
Happy Hump Day! You know what I could really go for right now? A sexy massage. I’m going to have to start paying R for them at the rate I’m begging. Next week I have to face another Great Midtown Roommate Hunt and I may have to revisit my original roommate criteria. Anyway.
So on Monday I tried Bikram yoga with my friend DC, hence the sore lower back. She’s been doing it for like, six years or so, but it was my first yoga experience. Ever. And while I put a lot of faith in astrology (THE STARS KNOW THINGS!), I’m really not into the whole New Age-y, “this pose will cleanse your soul” baloney. I don’t even know what “namaste” means. (Okay, Wikipedia tells me it’s an Indian greeting and parting phrase that means literally, “I bow to you.”) DC has been inviting me to join her for a class for about two months now, and I kept finding excuses until now.
I hated it. Bikram is about as close to hell as I imagine it: they crank the heat up to about 105, you’re surrounded by ugly, mostly-naked people, and a wiry gray-haired lady who looks better suited for an artist colony in New Mexico than a studio in Midtown Manhattan forces your body into unnatural poses. Also, yoga makes me fart a lot, apparently, but the room smelled like sweat and ass so badly already that my contributions didn’t make a significant impact. Occasionally the instructor would totally call me out for not having my legs spread far enough apart (heh) or tell me to not look so sad/worried/about to fall over. Then I’d get all red and even HOTTER than I was before. Sweet. I mean, I tried hard to do everything right and get into it and make funny noises when I breathed, but really I just felt foolish and even more ungraceful than usual, if you can imagine. I’ll stick to running and cycling and being entirely unstretchy, thanks.
I’ll probably go back.
Here at Nice Hedge Fund, we have these nifty little portable phones that interact with our regular phones so you can walk around the building and not miss phone calls. It’s pretty useful, and I definitely wish I had one when I worked for ARM and felt chained to the desk. However. Invariably, the portable phone rings the second you plunk your butt down in the bathroom. I mean, every freaking time. My guys generally answer their phones themselves, but I cover when they step away from their desks, which they seem to do whenever I need the restroom. So there you are, sitting on the toilet with a ringing telephone and a great debate. Answer it? Ignore it? Take down a name and number on a piece of toilet paper?
Speaking of ARM, the Queen of Darkness emailed me this week. She was looking for last year’s list of how much money ARM gave each doorman as a holiday gift. I haven’t worked there for SEVEN MONTHS but do I know where a single piece of paper is? The assistant before me attempted sabotage by stealing documents, but I didn’t even have to make that much effort. That’s quite an operation they’ve got going over there.
Stay tuned, lovers! Tomorrow is the Nice Hedge Fund holiday party!
So on Monday I tried Bikram yoga with my friend DC, hence the sore lower back. She’s been doing it for like, six years or so, but it was my first yoga experience. Ever. And while I put a lot of faith in astrology (THE STARS KNOW THINGS!), I’m really not into the whole New Age-y, “this pose will cleanse your soul” baloney. I don’t even know what “namaste” means. (Okay, Wikipedia tells me it’s an Indian greeting and parting phrase that means literally, “I bow to you.”) DC has been inviting me to join her for a class for about two months now, and I kept finding excuses until now.
I hated it. Bikram is about as close to hell as I imagine it: they crank the heat up to about 105, you’re surrounded by ugly, mostly-naked people, and a wiry gray-haired lady who looks better suited for an artist colony in New Mexico than a studio in Midtown Manhattan forces your body into unnatural poses. Also, yoga makes me fart a lot, apparently, but the room smelled like sweat and ass so badly already that my contributions didn’t make a significant impact. Occasionally the instructor would totally call me out for not having my legs spread far enough apart (heh) or tell me to not look so sad/worried/about to fall over. Then I’d get all red and even HOTTER than I was before. Sweet. I mean, I tried hard to do everything right and get into it and make funny noises when I breathed, but really I just felt foolish and even more ungraceful than usual, if you can imagine. I’ll stick to running and cycling and being entirely unstretchy, thanks.
I’ll probably go back.
Here at Nice Hedge Fund, we have these nifty little portable phones that interact with our regular phones so you can walk around the building and not miss phone calls. It’s pretty useful, and I definitely wish I had one when I worked for ARM and felt chained to the desk. However. Invariably, the portable phone rings the second you plunk your butt down in the bathroom. I mean, every freaking time. My guys generally answer their phones themselves, but I cover when they step away from their desks, which they seem to do whenever I need the restroom. So there you are, sitting on the toilet with a ringing telephone and a great debate. Answer it? Ignore it? Take down a name and number on a piece of toilet paper?
Speaking of ARM, the Queen of Darkness emailed me this week. She was looking for last year’s list of how much money ARM gave each doorman as a holiday gift. I haven’t worked there for SEVEN MONTHS but do I know where a single piece of paper is? The assistant before me attempted sabotage by stealing documents, but I didn’t even have to make that much effort. That’s quite an operation they’ve got going over there.
Stay tuned, lovers! Tomorrow is the Nice Hedge Fund holiday party!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Ballerina vs. Nurse vs. Lawyer vs. Control Freak
I’ve been trying to write my Personal Statement for graduate school applications, but let’s just say it’s going slowly. I’m easily distracted by such paramount tasks as eating cookies, watching football, and removing the red eye in all of my digital photographs.
Okay, I suck.
During one of my moments of distraction I turned to MomOh for some inspiration via gchat. “You’ve always been a writer,” she said. “It’s kind of like breathing.” Yes. But how do I convey that to the admissions board in 500 words or less without sounding like a self-absorbed ass? MomOh pulled out the folder in which she keeps school projects and other mementos of my precocious childhood and dictated to me some of my earliest “invented spelling” works. This poem, written by Kindergarten JackieOh, was accompanied by a goldfish wearing a bikini top:
Did you ever see
A fish Whairing
A beckene
It even rhymes! Where is that talent now?!
The real gem of the collection was a life timeline that I made in first or second grade. I was going to have my first boyfriend at 14, be in the Olympics 19, and attend law school at 20. I had lofty goals! Alas. But it gets better: At age 30 I’m going to move to Washington, DC, then get busy because at 32 I’m having a baby girl named Nicole. Baby Eric will come along at 35, followed by Katie at age 38. Apparently I’ve been a life-planning control freak my entire life. I also named my grandchildren (Nicole will have a son named Matt and a daughter named Diana) and plan to die at the ripe old age of 98. ("Who plans her death on a timeline?" wondered SisterOh.) It's not a bad life, really, but it didn’t help me write this personal essay of why I want to go to grad school for writing. Now, if I were still on the law school track (and in DadOh’s good graces!) I could use this timeline as evidence that even from a young age I have always wanted to be a lawyer.
I’d just choose not to mention one of the other drawings that MomOh uncovered that read: When I get biger I whant to be a balarena. When I gro up I whant to be a Nars.
Okay, I suck.
During one of my moments of distraction I turned to MomOh for some inspiration via gchat. “You’ve always been a writer,” she said. “It’s kind of like breathing.” Yes. But how do I convey that to the admissions board in 500 words or less without sounding like a self-absorbed ass? MomOh pulled out the folder in which she keeps school projects and other mementos of my precocious childhood and dictated to me some of my earliest “invented spelling” works. This poem, written by Kindergarten JackieOh, was accompanied by a goldfish wearing a bikini top:
Did you ever see
A fish Whairing
A beckene
It even rhymes! Where is that talent now?!
The real gem of the collection was a life timeline that I made in first or second grade. I was going to have my first boyfriend at 14, be in the Olympics 19, and attend law school at 20. I had lofty goals! Alas. But it gets better: At age 30 I’m going to move to Washington, DC, then get busy because at 32 I’m having a baby girl named Nicole. Baby Eric will come along at 35, followed by Katie at age 38. Apparently I’ve been a life-planning control freak my entire life. I also named my grandchildren (Nicole will have a son named Matt and a daughter named Diana) and plan to die at the ripe old age of 98. ("Who plans her death on a timeline?" wondered SisterOh.) It's not a bad life, really, but it didn’t help me write this personal essay of why I want to go to grad school for writing. Now, if I were still on the law school track (and in DadOh’s good graces!) I could use this timeline as evidence that even from a young age I have always wanted to be a lawyer.
I’d just choose not to mention one of the other drawings that MomOh uncovered that read: When I get biger I whant to be a balarena. When I gro up I whant to be a Nars.
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