What I'm Reading - August

Had a job interview today.  Hope it goes really well, because for previously mentioned reasons (and more to come), I can't stay where I am much longer.  However, I'm really broke so it's not like I have much of an option as far as not working.  Not sure where all this money is going, but I think it has something to do with all these miscellaneous wedding expenses, shopping around for horse trainers, and life in general.  Sigh, the things we do to stay up these days.  Maybe I'll go off the grid.

What I am doing that is quite cheap entertainment though, is getting back into reading.  I was always a big reader, and hell I'm partially a literature major so it's not like I'm shy from the great american (or european or world) novel.  Somewhere during all that reading though, it often became a chore.  I love young adult novels, but in my last few years of college that was the only literature class I really enjoyed.  There got to be a point where I'd rather write a novel than read one, and that's just bad juju.

However, it's been years since I've been out of college and there's no excuse for me not to read regularly.  I'm starting a "Less Toddlers & Tiaras, More Books" mind bootcamp (Teen Mom doesn't count though, that's quality television about the modern american family).  It's nearly the end of August, and I've failed short of my completing two books a month goal... that's just pitiful.

Initially, I picked out one "trashy" book to read and one "literary" book to read.  The "literary book", The Art of Racing in the Rain spontaneously combusted in the 105+ degree Texas heat in my car.  I didn't realize books melted... but after finding a pile of papers in random order I think it's safe to say that I will not be completing that book anytime soon.  My other "trashy" pick, Kitchen Confidential brought on by my mild infatuation with Anthony Bourdain, is about 75% completed.

Instead of replacing the fallen "Racing" with another book of equal literary value, I found this gem at CVS and begged the fiance to get it for me.

It's about prehistoric giant man-eating sharks... in an aquarium.  The brain reels in delight.

Morning Mayhem of the Corporate World

I'm doing something I never do, because I think it's dumb.  I never bitch about my job on a blog, ever.  You write it on the internet, and it will come back to you.  It doesn't matter if you publish your blog with your full name or a super-cool-pseudo alias like mine (hah!), it will return.  However, I'm past the point of caring and if I got fired tomorrow it would be a relief - this stuff needs to be shared with unknowing public.

Every morning at work we have a huddle.  This huddle is at a precise time every day.  Not a normal meeting time like 8:30, 9:45, 9:15 etc... but an odd number.  Every day, just to be cool and "alternative" (this place where I am oh-so-hoping to get out of is just so alternative) we have this huddle at 9:17am. 

On my first day, I figured "huddle" was just a colloquial term for company briefing, and that made sense to me.  Little did I know that at 9:16 someone would run through the office yelling "LET'S HUDDLE!" and music would start playing.  This wasn't as bad as what followed next - the group clap.  Readers, every day at 10:13am I have to clap in unison with my entire office... to music. 

Let it be said for the record that I am not "a clapper", so this is somewhat difficult to do every morning before I'm really awake.

What follows after the music stops is first the sharing of good news.  Employees may raise their hand to share good news which ranges from "Sales were great yesterday" to "My mom made me cookies this weekend and it was awesome."  After each good news, the huddle leader will determine how many claps the good news deserved.  From what I can tell, below is a range of clapping awesomeness.

After the sharing of good news, then we move onto the themes of the day.  I won't go into specific details about these themes, but each day deals with a different department of the company and there is cheesy alliteration involved. 

Following the daily themes, we have critical issues - where employees share any problems they have with the company or work place.  Only brave souls go here, and frankly I would need something along the lines of a dissertation compared to a 30 second shout out even if I wanted to fry my ass publicly in front of the CEO.

The finale of this morning event is where we "bring it in", and by we I mean an employee who's one of the tallest/biggest men I ever seen.  NFL linebackers would be jealous.  My first day, I got stepped on by this man who stampeded his way to the center of the huddle to "bring it in".  Now, as soon as I hear the word we're going to 'bring it in for' of the day (usually something inspiring like energy, momentum, or "rocketship") I jump out to the side of the group so my flip flop feet don't get stomped on.  Once "it's in" there's lots of intense group clapping until we repeat the word of the day.

Pray for me.

Here's hoping tomorrow is a rocketship kind of day.

This song is stuck in my head

Too Tired to Think About Anything but 90's Toys

I can't believe this is going to be my 2nd post about toys.  There's no justification for it, only that my new job is really mentally draining and that it's Friday night.  I went out for happy hour after work with some co-workers and the fiance, and that was fun.  Later hubby-to-be and I strolled downtown in a Car2Go, which I will post about later when I'm more coherent and will now refer to them as deathboxgolfcartonwheels (although statistically they're safe blah blah).  Once we got downtime we found a chill outdoor bar with a really trippy projection on an empty stage.  I think the DJ was reliving his rave days, but whatever.  The rest of downtown was covered with skank hos and guys who wear dragon shirts - joy of all joys.  So now I'm home, sober as a judge and wondering what the hell happened to the littlest pet shop.

If you haven't caught on by now, I love miniature things.  I have conspired with my brother to grow a miniature farm of miniature vegetables (baby carrots, baby corn, cherry tomatoes, etc etc).  I have a slew of model horses and that doesn't even begin to describe it, but that's another day.  So it should be no surprise that in the 90's, a young shemovedtotexas adored "The Littlest Pet Shop."

Sure, they were simple.  This wagged its paw, but hey it had cute little plastic accessories and even more important - PUPPIES!

And this one, little gerbils that had a magnet on them, so you could make them scurry through the cages with a magnetic "wand" on the outside.  Super cute?  Yes indeed, and no pesky cedar shavings that I was allergic to that real gerbils needed.  So I think we get the picture.  Cute little animals, that actually resembled animals - circa 1992.

Imagine my surprise when I strolled through Target the other week and found this monstrosity.

What the hell is THAT?  Does EVERYTHING these days have to have those sad anime eyes?  I mean, when have you looked at a puppy recently and thought, "Oh no, those eyes aren't cute enough.  Maybe if they were bigger, and had little teardrops and exaggerated pupils... then they'd be a winner - but until then, no way puppy.  No petting for you."  I mean, what is that crap?  Pets hang out at the mall I guess, looking sad and Japanese.

This is what happens when a 4 year old is allowed to give an animal tribal tattoos.  It's Littlest Emo Pet, a sad plastic companion for your sad little child who's going to be severely confused in their first Biology class when they see that a ferret's head isn't 500% bigger than it's body, nor is it pink.  Maybe I'm just sensitive, or maybe I've been watching too much "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" but this irks me all the same.  It's a short road now to "back in my day I walked to school up hill both ways," but if they're going to keep my childhood toys in production the least they can do is not fuck them up with pink japanimation barf.

End of a long weekend

This is what our local watering hole looks like at the end if a nice holiday weekend.



Yes, that's a diet coke. Nectar of the gods. I need their nectar, because I start my new job tomorrow. More on our 4th of July later, now I'm going to enjoy the sun and $1 lonestar night.

Martha, Martha, Martha

I have a confession to make. So Martha Stewart stole a bunch of money and I'm not entirely sure that she actually has a soul, but the bitch has some good ideas. Earlier in my life I'm pretty sure I vehemently denied supporting anything Martha'esque or even house keeping/hosting in general, but I have to say that these days I absolutely love being a hostess. Bakerella is one of my heroes, and since 'Top Chef' has been one of my reality programs on record during the last few days of working from home, I've been in the mood to craft some stuff in the kitchen. We're having some friends over for a cookout the 4th of July (unless it rains, then it's more of a cook-in), and to me that means several things but right now I keep hearing "Theme Party!"

Though I'm not going completely crazy (discount plastic red white and blue star themed glasses from Target, and flag napkins does not equal crazy.. by some definitions), I did see these really cute pretzels on Martha's site and thought they'd be easy to do.

I thought wrong.

Actually, they're not that bad but I didn't think about several things.

1) Nobody makes those pretzel rods anymore, and ESPECIALLY not in Gluten-Free and Vegan (Hubby is vegan right now, and one of our guests is gluten-free)

2) Apparantly you need to order red white and blue sprinkles online or something, because I couldn't find any at Hobby Lobby or the grocery store (just had sanding sugar in the wrong colors or nothing at all, listen I'm all for fair trade organic but is there really something so harmful about a chemically died sprinkle?!).  I could have driven across town to Williams-Sonoma, but I couldn't justify traveling about an hour round trip in a bunch of thunderstorms to find.. sprinkles.

So, I improvised.

Instead of red white and blue pretzel rods, we ended up with white, light blue, pastel flower, and orange mini-pretzel rods.  For a while I had a nice little assembly of dip in chocolate, roll in sprinkles, place on tray - with the occasional broken pretzel dropped down on the floor for the dogs to scarf up.  This lasted for about as many pretzels as you see here, before I got bored and went for a more modern approach.

I have not yet developed the patience to accurately dip beautiful chocolate pretzels.  Maybe next year! 

On the horse front, I'm going to have to wait a few weeks before I can go try out the Hanoverian.  The weather has been really crappy, and he's apparently afraid of thunder. He sounds like a really nice horse, but I'm also going to look into some local barns in the meantime and try to develop a list of places to check out that are close to me.  On my last day of my discount at my old job, I bought a brand new IRH helmet - exciting!

Study of a sleepy dog

Not feeling it today.  Here's a collage of crappy iphone pictures of the BT.  Sad to say, I've been working on taking these snaps for a collage for a handful of weeks... mostly while she sleeps next to me on the couch while I pretend to work.  Yes, she is giving me the evil eye in most of these. Yes, that's pretty much her normal expression. It's a hard life to be a BT.

I'm in the process of moving this blog over to a domain and wordpress.  Call me a blog snob, but the web designer in me just can't handle anymore blogger templates and sub-domain nonsense.  Expect a change soonish.