“Don’t Bring Sand to the Beach”

“You wouldn’t want to bring sand to the beach” this is what my supervisor said to me when I was contemplating scrounging up a date or two for the two weddings I had this past Saturday. Yes two. On the same day, at almost exactly the same time. Two hours apart. And I’ve known about this dilemma for a year and a half! Somehow two of my good friends (who don’t know each other obviously) managed to pick the same date over a year before the big day. And knowing that far ahead didn’t make it any easier to figure out what to do. I kept hoping one would be a morning wedding and one would be an evening wedding. But no, they were both afternoon weddings with 5pm reception times.

But I did manage to hit the two weddings with one stone, and by stone I mean smoking hot shoes. Ok, actually I had two pairs of shoes, but in my defense I had originally packed a pair of flats as a back up pair, but then at the after party I had to take my heels off and I had forgotten flip-flops so suddenly it looked like I had just changed shoes just for the after party:

Anyway, so my crazy plan to hit one ceremony and one reception actually worked out beautifully. I saw the ceremony of one and arrived part way through the cocktail hour of the second. I was disappointed of course to not see both ceremonies or both receptions, but this was the best solution I could come up with!

As for the sand at the beach comment-I think my supervisor and I have different experiences at the beach-usually I’m under an umbrella with SPF 70 on… And then at the weddings I discovered everyone had already combed the beach and there wasn’t a single or non-engaged man to be found. (Which reminds me that I think men should wear engagement rings as well, though apparently some of these men were even “pre-engaged” and in that case maybe they ought to just carry the damn ring in their pocket).

Mostly I wanted the sand to keep me company on the two-hour drive between the ceremony and the reception. Instead it was just me singing along loudly to my iPod (which maybe explains why I didn’t have company in the car). So at work today I offered to show my boss pictures from the weddings, but she just wanted to know if I’d hooked up with anyone. I informed her that unfortunately every guy I checked out was spoken for. Her response was “Well, think of it this way: maybe you ruined a marriage. Maybe some guy had his eye on you and is thinking about you now, you know?” Startling comment for a wedding reception. I’m not really sure the appropriate response “I should hope so!” or maybe “I should hope not!”

casual to who?

Inspired by the episode of The Office called “Casual Fridays” I took careful note of the casual Friday in my office today. And I have to ask if “casual” is a synonym for “frumpy”? I saw many similarities to my office and The Office. Inappropriate sayings on t-shirts, clothing way too tight, clothing way too loose, clothing un-matching.

Does casual mean you don’t have to try and match your clothing anymore? Sure people let loose on the weekend, but it’s still Friday, let’s save something for Sunday-there’s a reason we don’t live together.

Does it mean it doesn’t have to fit you? (over sized or undersized-I’ve seen both and enjoyed neither). I don’t really want to see the people I work with “letting it all hang out”-there’s a reason we tuck in. I mean sure it lets you express your individuality, but I can’t take an individual seriously when their shirt isn’t meeting their pants-that goes for the pregnant women too. I don’t mind the men in their favorite sports jerseys-that’s the kind of fully covered individuality I can get behind. Or the t-shirt your friend made supporting nachos ny (guilty!)

But maybe I have a different idea of causal Friday. I’m just trying to show how well I can put together an outfit involving jeans. Though I apparently am not allowed to show how well I can put an outfit together involving knee-length work shorts. Chest tattoos that proclaim “SEXY” on women and undershirts with baggy khakis for men are cool, but shorts longer than skirts I’ve seen-could I be so bold? And flip flops are a no as well. I get it, they’re casual wear, but isn’t it casual Friday? I run every day just in the hopes that my calves are arguably more subtly pleasing to behold than a bold “sexy” tattoo. But maybe I should get that on my leg and then I’d be in the clear?

5 Most awkward Phone Convos

Things you shouldn’t do while speaking to a customer service rep on the phone (this list probably will be ongoing):

1 Extrapolate on NJ governor Corzine’s need for hair plugs

2 Scream at your husband and tell him he’d better get down on his knees and pray

3 Flush the toilet

4 Say “I’m just getting into the tub” and then splash around for a bit

5 Allow to your oven fire to “burn it self out”

My Car is Smarter than Me

I can do unbelievably stupid things in the U.S. too. (Though is Jersey in the U.S.)? I missed my first alarm this morning which should have been my first clue of how the day would go. I’ve never turned off an alarm in my sleep in my life, but some how I did today.

So today I got to work just as a downpour hit. A torrential downpour. I gathered my stuff up: checked I had my key, put my dress shoes in a plastic bag and got my umbrella ready. But then suddenly I heard a dripping noise and turned to see water flooding into the passenger seat from the sunroof. So I shoved the key in the ignition and hit the button to close it. I couldn’t see anything move, but the flood stopped so it must have been open just a hairline crack. So I was patting on myself that I had sat in the car an extra second and prevented a major flood.

So then I re-gathered my stuff ready to make a mad dash to the building. I opened the door and hit the lock key on the door and then sprinted to the building. The parking lot was a flood and my pants were completely soaked by the time I got in. I went to my desk to sit down and then did my habitual check to make sure I had everything and realized I was missing my car keys. I couldn’t believe it! I pride myself on how I spastically check for my keys and never locked myself out of my dorm during college and here somehow I’d done it. I was too wet to go outside so I described my keys to the security guard in case I had dropped them and phoned my aunt to bring the spare key. I planned to check at lunch if by chance the door was not locked, but I remember distinctly hitting the lock so I didn’t have hope.

4 hours later a mass email went out to the office that a certain car in the parking lot was still running. Running! Pretty soon I was running too. I told my friend where I was going and I ran out to the car. And there it was, running but not locked. I had left my car  unlocked and running for FOUR hours.  Fortuitously the car was smart enough not to let me lock it with the key running in it. Yet it probably meant to also tell me not to leave the car running for four hours. You may think I should have heard noticed the radio on when I got out. But the other car I’ve been driving leaves the radio on even when the key is pulled out and only goes off when the door opens and when the door opened it was thundering so I didn’t hear it. Of course the whole office knew since there was the mass email. My manager asked me if I’d had my coffee… not enough sir, not enough.

Learn to spell, please

I can’t spell. Hopefully it has not been very evident in my blog
posts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. It’s something I’ve never
been able to do. I blame it on elementary school when they told me
to “just sound it out, it’s better than not writing anything.” Well, I
still do. And it can come out very wrong. Spell check doesn’t help me.
Sure it can often identify the words I’ve spelled wrong, but usually
I’m so far off that the suggestions it has are not the right word, or
it doesn’t even have a good suggestion for me.

My mom accuses me of having ruined her spelling over the years. She says she’s seen words
spelled wrong so many times by me she can’t remember what the correct way is. Some of her favorites of my commonly misspelled words are “tomorrow” and “rough.” Tomorrow I always spelled tommorow, forgetting which letter was double, and rough was a problem of mispronunciation too… I spelled it “ruft.” My mother discovered that one after she was helping me edit a “ruft draft” of an English paper.

One word I still can’t spell is expirience. Good chance it will still be wrong
in this post since it’s another one the spell check is baffled by.
I admit to “dumbing down” my vocabulary in text messages or gchats
since it takes too long to look up the spelling of the complicated
word I would have said if talking face to face.

My aunt used to tell me to look up words I didn’t know in the
dictionary. Is that a joke? A good way of babysitting– keeping me turning pages for hours since inevitably I started with the wrong letter.

In college, I confess, I used the method of instant messaging my friend
Lee asking him how to spell a word correctly. Of course he would never
know what the word was I had sent him and I’d have to use it in a
sentence first. When I visited him in China he didn’t want me trying
to teach anyone English since he figured I would teach misspellings.
And it’s true, I never liked helping my French cousins with their
English homework, I wouldn’t know the answers either. But that was
mainly grammar… and that’s another story.

One time on an English paper I tried to write that something was “in
tatters” but apparently I wrote “taters” and my English teacher (I’m
pretty sure I got an A on it regardless) wrote “what some kids call
potatoes! you meant tatters…”

Anyway, long story long, I had a spelling incident on the phones at
work. In my customer service phone job I was trying to spell something
in a case file for a customer. And I had to spell the word
“essential.” Apparently I didn’t know any of the correct letters in
that word. The phone call went like this:
me: “ok ecc”
cust: “no ess”
me: “right ecci”
cust: “no essen”
me: “of course essens”
cust: “no”
me: “c?”
cust “NO TIAL…” then in a much put upon voice “why don’t you read
that back to me”
I wanted to defend myself, I really did, send her an A paper of mine,
send her my transcript, but of course I couldn’t do anything like
that. So instead I know she’s probably retelling her friends about the
complete idiot she was talking to on the phone…”I guess they don’t
have any standards for hiring people these days!”