Happy hour looms ahead...

Tonight a bunch of people in my office are going out for drinks, aka happy hour. Happy hour. I want to spend an hour drinking in a bar with people I see all day. Uh, okay. My boss is the organizer, the cheer leader, the cowboy rounding us all up to go. She's gung ho about it too, so I feel more than obliged. We used to have a co-worker who refused to do anything with us. When we went to lunch, nah... don't wanna. We all went out as a group one night, nah... don't wanna. And that kind of bummed my boss out. She likes to do stuff outside the office with us, and sometimes pays... usually when we've kicked ass on a project. If I were a betting man I'd say I'll get a beer out of her tonight... because I did kick ass on two projects. So we're all going out. It's also for people leaving, which hasn't happened much in the past several months, so it's a good reason.

The sick thing is, waiting for me at home when I get there is a brand new washing machine, and I am eager to get home and check out its washing abilities. I am officially old.

My office is freezing today. The air conditioning in this building is touchy. Either you've got Africa Hot or Cape Horn/Tierra del Fuego Freezing. Today, it is the latter. I wore a sundress today, black with little purple flowers. And I got in here to discover that the only item of clothing I had in the office is an old old old flannel shirt, which is red and black plaid.

So I look like a complete mental defective today. I wish I had the digicam so I could take a picture of me, stylin in my sundress and flannel...Kind of Carrot Top style.

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Speaking of Carrot Top, have you checked him out lately in those TV commercials for that stupid collect calling thing he's shilling for? Did he have facial reconstructive surgery or is he wearing the most horrible make up in the universe??? I'm horribly disturbed by him. I used to think he was clever and funny and entertaining but I am thinking he's falling into bad ways of cosmetic surgery, and lies, and drug abuse. Like Michael Jackson. Or Liz Taylor. His level of celebrity is that high. I give you the following as evidence:

Folks, This Disturbs Me To No End.

Anyway, it is just about beer time, I have 10 minutes to finish this up. I have more Gayle pictures, heh heh, and other more substantial things to talk about, but right now, just think about poor Carrot Top, his career, the makeup, the surgeries, and the shame of it all.

And I will leave you with this:

While surfing for the cute little graphic for the top left spot, I came across this. The guy on the right looks like Iggy Pop, the guy on the left looks sorta like someone I know who I personally doubt would be begging for beer money. They both look hard up for a room, wink wink nudge nudge say no MORE!

Iwondered if this wasn't a posed picture, but the rest of the photo is kind of super scummy with a bum sleeping on the bench to the far right and lots of trash under their feet, and they do look like official bums. I feel bad because they're advertising for beer money, when hard oldman liquor gets your shiznit messed up faster. Somoene should tell them that. But the piece de resistance is the bottom of their cardboard sign...

They added "PLEASE!" Which if you read it one way is them being polite, in another them being desperate. But at least they said please. I've been accosted by bums who swear at me, call me names, throw stuff at me because I don't give them any money. I even have a great story where a cab driver rescued my ass from a bum at an ATM machine on Mass Ave in Boston about 10 years ago this month. (oh, my. That long ago???), which I will regale you with later. But these guys said please, so if I'd'a seen'em, I'd'a given'em some money.

what did SHE have for lunch?

I hate public restrooms, especially public restrooms where daily I visit and am surrounded by people I know.

It's one thing to go to a public restroom and have the anonymity of being far away from home, far away from friends, where if your shit don't stink or if it DOES, no one will be able to look at you later and marvel. "What'd she have for lunch? Damn!"

Office bathrooms are the absolute worst places in the world to have to be when you need that moment of "aloneness." There are peak times when there are lots of women in the bathroom. I try to ignore the proverbial call of nature right before and right after lunch, but of course, you can only wait so long.

Pee is one thing. I find it amusing when I'm in the stall and another woman rushes in and has to pee like the racehorse she is. She throws her keys on the counter and rushes in, slams the door and you know she barely gets her jeans down when the sound hits the water like friggin' Victoria Falls. Sometimes she sighs, and I sit and laugh.

But dumping is something that I wish I could reserve for just the homestead. I hate having to go, and hearing that main door open. I sit and wait. I wait until the interloper leaves. And invariably, someone else comes in right as she's leaving... and I'm sitting thinking "this could go on all day." Usually I am all set after that first or second person is gone, I can make the deposit, flush, wash and get out of there quickly.

I don't know what it is about me. I am worried about being too noisy, too smelly, and then suffering from the paranoia of the other person sitting there dreading the day they were born.

One of my biggest pet peeves is sitting there and having someone come out of her stall, while I'm waiting... and then she has to fucking stand there for 20 minutes playing with makeup, looking at her ass in the mirror, examining her teeth for tell-tale lunch remnants... when I have to crap. No one cares about your hair, bitch, get the fuck out!

There are no "safe havens" in my building, places where there is a ladies room on a floor and virtually no ladies, or, a handicapped bathroom where you know you can be alone for a few minutes because, truth be told, no one handicapped works in the building. It's a nightmare.

Once, when I was pregnant with Jessica I was in a rest area bathroom as we were heading from Atlanta to Boston, moving away from the south and back "home" where our friends are. I was in the bathroom, having recently been at a McDonalds (which always wreaks havoc on my intestinal tract for some reason) and had finished up and was getting ready to leave when four old women came into the bathroom.

"Oh dear, it stinks in here!" said one of them. "Smells like... sulfur of some sort. I wonder why..." and the four of them spent the entire time talking about the smell, and how it smelled that way on the FARM where they grew up... and on and on. I stood stoically in the stall, waiting for them to finish and leave (make up adjusting, ass looking, teeth examining... of course). And I eventually left the bathroom.

My husband stated he was ready to call the rescue team, thinking I'd fallen in. I told him I wish I had... he laughed at me. The little old ladies saw me then, and then came over to tell me how cute I was with my baby belly and how excited I must be...

If they only knew, someone that cute could be that stinky...