Lead by Example

Tonight for dinner I had a cupcake. Now I'm making a cake to take into work tomorrow. That's why I'm head of the wellness committee at work, folks!

You're Not the Boss of Me

So the other day I was taking some Facebook quizzes (I should live in Paris), and I came across one called "What Kind of Wife Are You?" Despite the fact that I am not a wife, I do think that I would be pretty kick-ass at it, and not in a scary desperate-to-get-married-and-make-babies kind of way, but in a stuck up, condescending, over-it-all kind of way. Like I could be a wife if I wanted to be, but I'm not, but I'm still good at it.

And of course, my suspicions were confirmed. According to some Facebook app, I'm totally a good wife.

But this isn't just another blog about how great I am. There are plenty of those already. This one is about my favorite favorite question on the quiz.

It said something like your husband comes home and tells you to quit your job. Your response is.

Now, before I tell you what I said, I have to qualify my response by saying that most of the answer choices were a little absurd and some kind of mean. One was that you'd tell your husband that there was no way you could afford to quit your job on his "puny" paycheck. But my response was "laugh in his face," mostly because the idea that Wes or anyone would say that to me is facially absurd. I'm not saying I'd never quit my job because my nonexistent husband asked me too for a really important reason. But if he told me to, well, either he'd be kidding, or we'd soon be going through a real divorce.

NaNotSoMuch

So, at the beginning of the month I set out to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight on November 30. I'm not alone, and I used NaNoWriMo as an excuse for not blogging at all. (Turns out I really don't rule at all. I have neither a novel nor a bunch of posts.)

But here I am, less than three hours away from my deadline, and I'm officially throwing in the towel. My final word count is just over 22,000, and as you can see I'm blogging, not working on it.

I'm not really really giving up, though. I plan to give myself another month to get to 50,000 before I turn around and start revising it. I'm trying to build up a writing portfolio, which is why I have a blog in the first place. So even though I wasn't able to write 1,667 words a day, I've still written creatively more in the last month than I have in years. This even trumps my thesis, which clocks in at just under 15,000 words, counting the bibliography, and took about a bazillion months to complete (there was more research involved in that one, though).

As far as NaNoWriMo goes, I can't really say that I followed their advice especially well. I never attended a write-in. I only stayed up late once or twice to write, and I only forced myself to write a few times. In other words, I did a pretty good job of churning out 22,000 words while still living the life I like to live. So I think that bodes well for my ability to keep writing in the future, if not my ability to write for a living. (Differently than I already do, that is. I know, nothing is ever good enough.)

Everybody's Workin' on the Weekend

Not everybody, I guess, but my co-worker and I sure are. Last night at 5 my boss told us that we would need to submit our annual report to the printer by noon on Monday. Which is one thing if your boss has given you all the material, and you've had time to lay it out, and the designer is ready to start packaging stuff. Sure, then Monday at noon is no problem.

But when you're barely halfway through because your boss keeps making major changes and hasn't even given you all the material to edit, well, then that's bull shit.

Guess which experience I'm having? At 10:30 this morning I had no fewer than 10 emails from my boss about stuff we had to do that day. I spent the next four hours editing and putting together the text for our designer and bugging my boss for the rest of the material.

So we've been working all day, and tomorrow we'll have to finish up (what we have!) and then I have to proofread it--our other editor will never see the annual report before it goes to print!--then who knows? I still don't see how we're going to make that deadline.

In the meantime, I'll be glued to my computer if you need anything.

I Just Like Ice

Hey, organization in my building, quit bogarting the 7th floor kitchen. I respect the fact that you have to have (all-too) frequent meetings in the board room about, whatever, "inform[ing] and educat[ing] policy makers and the broader policy community about events and trends in those societies which are strategically or tactically important to the United States and which frequently restrict access to such information."

But I wish you'd respect the fact that I only like to drink water at a specific temperature (and, ahem, I think you mean "that are strategically" and "that frequently"). I don't want to go all the way downstairs (6 floors) when I could just go up one. The ice is better on 7 anyway. It's smaller, and I can eat it when I run out of water instead of just going to get more water. Just sayin'.

Seriously, every time I tried to sneak into the kitchen today to get some ice, there was a break and everyone came pouring out of the Jamestown Foundation meeting, blocking my access to the ice maker. So I drank cool water all day and didn't get to chew any ice. It was devastating.

Update: The organization asked that I take their name out of my blog, so I did. Who knew search engines worked so well? But I still want ice!

Welcome to the Real World!

I just want to take a minute to embarrass my sister and let everyone know that she got a job!

So congratulations, Katie. Welcome to the grind. I spent the first few months of my job trying to come up with an alternative to the monetary system so we wouldn't need money and, more importantly, I therefore wouldn't have to go to work everyday. I'm still working on it, but I'm glad you can now join me in my theorizing.