I work in a relatively quiet office full of people busily typing and clicking and printing and copying and all the things we're supposed to do in the real office world.  

I, of course, am not quiet about anything I do.  I can't seem to help making some sort of noise, even if I manage to keep my mouth shut.  When I'm entering data into spreadsheet with my ear buds in, I tap my fingers to the beat of the music on my keys when I'm not actively typing.  I've also been known to sing along, although I may not realize I'm doing it at the time.  I love to talk to people.  They occasionally enjoy listening.  

Over the past few years, I've been working my up to new levels of rage over the idiotic requests people make of me.  I am an administrative assistant.  I also have a BA, went to grad school, speak 3 languages and do an assortment of nerdy things on my own time.  I do this job because it was pretty much the only thing I could find after slowly re-entering the work force after 8 years abroad and kids and crappy economy.  So sometimes I get a little pissy about the things people ask me to do.  Because I'm better than this job.

I sit right next to the mail room.  It's right there.  People still drop off their stuff to mail at my desk.  Apparently they don't know how to address it (and I'm not even talking about US mail kind of stuff; it's inter-freaking-office.)  Or they can't seem to manage to tape their bloody receipts onto a piece of blank paper to attach to their expense reports.  I have to do that.  Why?  I have no idea.

After a particularly rage inducing day, in which one person asked me how to do something while referring to a document that explained in detail how to do that thing, I now bring my knitting to work with me.  It's sort of a last resort to talking me off the ledge, although having a potential weapon (at least according to TSA) might not be the best idea.  I usually pull it out after I realize that I'm furiously whispering to myself, or my computer.  The knitting keeps my rage whispers from becoming rage shouts and therefore, I keep my job and my kids get to do gymnastics.  

I might actually go pull my knitting out now since just remembering that last person who doesn't seem to know how to read has gotten me all hot.  And not in the good way.

Music to write to

I've been struggling lately with which music to listen to while writing.  This is usually only a problem during NaNoWriMo since pretty much the rest of the year I barely get any writing done.  I love allowing myself the freedom to just write, to let the words spew out of my mouth inelegantly, inexpertly.  Editing the result isn't very fun though.


So I've been trolling amazon.com trying to find music.  I resorted to posting a facebook status update begging for music suggestions (and came to the conclusion that most people suck since only 2 or 3 people even responded.  I guess that could mean that nobody really likes me and/or reads my status updates...nah, that couldn't possibly be true.)  I've come up with two things.


I love the new Yo-Yo Ma The Goat Rodeo Sessions.  This album is freaking amazing. I think everyone should buy it.  Right. Now.  


I've also started obsessing over Amanda Palmer.  Not only is she married to the Neil Gaiman, but she kicks all kind of music ass.  Tonight I've been listening to the Amanda Palmer station on Pandora and that seems to working pretty good for my writing.


Well, back to it.  I'm 2210 words behind for the next 15 minutes when that goes up another 1667 words.  Wish me luck!

This is what I call class

A Louisana woman traded two children that she was taking care of for a cockatoo. Apparently being a trucker made it difficult to care for the children, but not for a bird. The third sibling went to a different home. No word on what she got in return, but one hopes that it was, at the very least, a clue.

CNN: Woman answers ad for bird by offering kids as payment

An afternoon in the life of an unemployed nerd

It suddenly struck me how far I've descended into dorkdom. I'm sitting on my couch flipping between (muted) MSNBC and CNN (in my defense, Obama already finished talking), reading sundry blogs (political of course) waiting for last night's Daily Show to come on. Seriously. Is this sad? Or am I ascending into some kind of nerd nirvana? Or should I just start drinking now?

I'm actually embarrassed for Repubs right now

From TMPDC:

Tonight, we tell America: we know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad, said Steele.

In response to Michael Steele's hip hop speech, crazy Michelle Bachman responded "You be da man!"

I almost wish I were at CPAC right now to witness, firsthand, the hilarity of GOP swirling down the drain of irrelevance.