Introducing Max

Quite possibly I have just now set myself to waste even more time blogging -- granted, it's not like I post all that often, but for all you know it takes me several hours or days even to finesse what I do post (yeah, I know. If you've read it, you suspect that it's definitely not days and probably are also fairly sure that it's short of even a single hour by about 45 minutes or more). But anyway... I digress. What I really want to talk about is Max.

Check him out. How adorable is he? You can feed him, if you like. Go on, you know you want to try it. You can get your own adorable small friend here.

Watchables

So the new Fall season is starting up (or just did) and I'm fumbling around to organize my DVR so that I don't have to watch anything live (because once you start watching shows with the ability to zip past the commercials, you really can't go back, can you? But since I don't watch many things live, I skip all the ads, I don't read any glossy mags, and I can't stand the entertainment mag TV programs (sorry, nothing against you if you can stomach them) I tend to miss some things. Like you know the kooky Christian Slater show where he plays a spy who doesn't know he's a spy because his brain was split or whatever it was, that show? it's apparently gone. How can it be gone? It was such a good time. And, you know, RIP BSG, which I am still kinda mourning, to be honest.

So here is what I still have to look forward to:

Project Runway
Oh, yes! It's finally back and it's already on and I still love it. I hate fashion, but I love this show. I don't really get it, except that it's a reality show, so you see people's craziness, but they're there to actually do something instead of just bicker or look pretty so it feels like there is more substance that some of the other reality shows. But maybe I am just justifying. At any rate, every week I think to myself "Wow, Heidi is stunning." Yep, somehow every week I am surprised by it all over again.

Fringe
It's kinda sci-fi meets cop/agent show, so what's not to love? OK, one thing not to love is the son, Peter, who always has the same exasperated irritation when dealing with his father. We get it. Your father's crazy and that's trying, but your repetitive acting is more annoying than he is. Soooo hoping the writers get a clue and realize this soon. Bc it's somehow super-annoying that the thing that is supposed to be aggravating is much less bothersome than having do listen to/watch the actor who plays Peter expressing that it's irritating.

Dexter
Maybe. I mean, I am totally behind anyway (I've watched four episodes from Season 1), and I don't know if it's going to hold my interest. Because Michael C Hall will always be the little brother on Six Feet Under. Anyway, I have to watch on DVD, so it doesn't really count towards my DVR quotas. One last thing about Dexter. I don't know what's up with his hair (plugs? a piece? what?), but it distracts me.

Biggest Loser
When I first heard about this show, I thought who in the hell would want to watch this? But here's the thing: it is sooooo strangely compelling. These people are amazing! And, you know, they're so dedicated that during the run of show, I find myself getting more exercise and eating healthier. It's like they're a good influence on me. I may be a bit of a softie, but I find it pretty heartening to watch them get their lives back on track. Of course I get really pissed off at anyone who whines or slacks, but the beauty is that they end up gone if they slack too much. In the end, I just feel so proud of them. And that's what we really like in TV shows, isn't it? We like either liking the people we watch--or hating them. I have loads of opportunity to find people to hate, so it's nice to actually feel like I want these guys to do well.

Heroes
Not as good as it once was ... but I will watch it again. At least initially. Some of the storylines are pretty grating (most of the shit with the cheerleader, tbh), but I still like Hiro and I need to watch just in case there is anything even remotely as good as the scene last season of Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) being hosed down. (Thanks again to Sus for giving me a heads-up to that fact last season. I haven't forgotten!)

Lost
Well, it's the last season and I feel like giving up now would be like quitting on mile 20 of a marathon. Yeah, it's bound to be mostly painful, but if I persevere I can get through it. I am almost there. That's what I will keep telling myself. I'm almost there! Plus, let's face it, that's the beauty of the DVR. I can FF through the really brutal parts.

What will you be watching? Anything I should add to my list?

Things on Sticks

So prompted by Stefanie (who implied that I have been sorely remiss in my blogging of late) and Jo who yesterday proclaimed (if one can ‘proclaim’ on twitter, rather than just resorting to the more pedestrian ‘tweet’) that “Other than a Magnum, the moon is [her] favourite thing to have on a stick.”

See when I think of things on sticks, I have to say that one glorious item fairly leaps to mind. I do love the moon, but there is one special golden object which might give the silvery moon a run for her money. That’s right: the corn dog. Star of the summer’s County Fair. A kid-tastic ketchup* vehicle. And so much more.

Corn dogs are such a necessity that you can even find vegetarian versions. Because even if one gives up meat, one cannot live without at least the occasional corn dog. You can also get a turkey corn dog around here (at our favorite little corn dog connection: Ben Franks –bit pricey perhaps, but they do a damn good dog).

I am probably not supposed to like them. But I do. Many things are like that though, right? It’s pretty innocent as far as guilty pleasures go, right? I'm sure some of your are much worse. Feel free to chime in with them ... or let me know what if you have a favorite thing on a stick.

* I enjoy mine with mustard only.

Sick Daze

The company I work for has a policy of no sick days. The way they do this is by amassing all of your allowed days off into one pile and calling them "personal time off" or PTO. So you can use this time for anything you like: vacation, appointments, mental health days, and ... sick days. But, as you may have guessed, very few people want to take one of these potential holidays to lie around feeling unwell. So they don't.

In some cases, where their job and level in the company allow, sick employees can work from home (to one degree or another, not necessarily any less productively than they would do while in the office). Most of the people in my department have this option. But some of them, and ironically the sickliest among us for the most part, don't in fact opt for it. That seems hard to fathom, doesn't it?

Well, mostly these ailing colleagues are parents (and thus sicker than average, what with their young blossoming petri dishes of infectious disease at home). So staying home in many of those cases is actually more tiring and trying than just hauling their coughing/sneezing/wheezing/snotty self into the office where they can prop themselves up in their cube and rest reasonably assured that no one will want to get very close to them, let alone demand their attention.

So they come in. With their assorted infectious germs. Along with the various co-workers who for whatever reason "cannot" work from home (some, it must be said, purely because they deem themselves too important to not grace us with their presence). The downside of this, of course, is that in my experience germs do not recognize cube boundaries. Or maybe they do but are simply not content to rule one small region, but feel compelled to claim their manifest destinies and reach out to inhabit new, unexplored realms.

The ill-conceived "logic" of this PTO arrangement has again become crystal clear to me. Because, that's right, it's flu season. This year, as you're no doubt aware, we even have an uber-flu lurking and waiting to take a foothold. I'm admonished every time I go to the bathroom to "help ensure a healthy work place by washing my hands with soap and water frequently." (as a side note, who are these women who think turning the tap on and rinsing their hands for half a second might actually constitute a wash?! and I am sure it's no better over in the Mens' only I don't have to witness their hygenic leaps of faith). But back to my point about the signs and notices. They're all over the company. We've got dispensers of waterless-disinfectant solutions near the kitchen, signs in the bathrooms, and periodic emails updating us about the "Swine Flu" situation and "precautions".

But no one seems to realize that maybe they need to actually tell people that they cannot come in. Presumably this is a legal issue because they don't offer "sick days" they aren't legally entitled to send workers home? But airplanes can keep you from boarding, right? so why can't an employer keep you from infecting the rest of the work force? It seems to me that instead of posting notices which clearly the hand-rinsers blatantly assume is not targetted at them, they ought to form a Health Brigade. They could do rounds of the buildings and when they spot some snotty one coughing up a lung or whatever, they can escort them right out of the building with a kind "hope you feel better soon."

Oops!

I've totally missed August. Must get straight on a September post before the month is out. and I guess this doesn't really count.