“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”

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!”

I make damn good muffins.

Work had overtime on Saturday. Since we had to be in at 7am we all brought food in to share. I was feeling pretty lazy and not really sure what I should make. Last minute I made some blueberry muffins. I was quite unprepared for the reaction my muffins would generate. They went like hotcakes, or more accurately like muffins. When I saw one of my coworkers go by with a tray of food I mentioned I had made the muffins and she reacted with “you made the muffins?! I FUCKED that shit up!” There was something baffling about that to me. I wasn’t sure what my muffins had done to receive such treatment. I figured she meant she liked them when I saw her going for a second one, but then again she could have been taking a sledgehammer to the muffins at her desk. Or perhaps as one of my friends pointed out she could have tried to make the recipe and had messed it up royally.