I started working from home three days a week. Welcome to my office.
Last summer an acquaintance asked me whether I was happy with how life has treated me so far. I can’t remember the exact way that he phrased the question, but I remember being intensely bothered with the underlying implication that life is something that happens to us and that we have little control over our current situation.
It’s absolutely not true. “I’m not a dog,” I thought. “I am an active participant in my life.”
This week? Work, snow, some epically bad dates, dog walks, drag shows and a lot of dancing:
Halvers and I went to the townhouse for classafrass earlier in the week:
And the snow quickly gave way to real spring temperatures. The lake was packed today.
Gateway no longer supports my FX laptop (or even acknowledges that the model exists). I can’t find any new drivers for it and it’s slowly dying. So I went to Mall of America on Saturday to hunt for a new computer. The mall usually has some random event on the weekends, and this week it was all about fancy cars:
Big Box had mostly low-end laptops ($300-$400) and the uber expensive Macs. The 17-inch Mac started at $2,500 – which wasn’t happening.
I then went to the Apple store to see if they had anything better but I was immediately turned off by the lack of customer service. The greeter was preoccupied with his watch and no one came to help me in the five minutes I was in the store. I quickly balked at the prices and fled across the hallway to the Microsoft store.
The salespeople at the Microsoft store were super patient with my 3o-minutes worth of questions. I eventually bought a HP Envy Beats edition, which is 17-inch beast with 3D capabilities and a professional sound card. It’s fancy, and I named it Herman.
My laptop only got used for homework this weekend because Ableton has to manually approve my license for the new laptop. It’s a German company, so you know they aren’t open for Easter.
Being productive isn’t the worst way to spend a Sunday. Maybe this can be a regular thing.
I need to write a thank you letter to 16 Bit Lolitas. Their song, “Nobody Seems to Care” pulled me through countless study sessions and finals.
I now understand why so many middle-aged people are fat.
The alarm rings in the morning and I spring into a routine of grooming, cooking, dog walking, and cleaning. I then make the 30 minute commute to work.
Eight-or-so hours later I am back in the car, and driving 30 more minutes to the tax clinic. I eventually come home, walk the dogs again, do more cooking, and hit my wall.
The morning dog walk was a disaster.
I load the dogs into the car and the radio informs me that the air temperate is -10 with a -25 wind chill.
My landlord probably posted a new ad on Craigslist because this morning my phone gets bombarded with calls from hoodtastic prospective tenants.
Some of the callers hang up on me when I tell them the building income requirement. Others hang up upon learning that their felony record and two month old unlawful detainer is a problem.
I am in Dinkytown when my phone rings for the 5th time. I am en route to buy a $30 xeroxed reading packet for my Weimar Cinema class. It’s my elective, and my only other class besides the tax clinic.
Discovering that the cafeteria had 32oz. cups was probably a bad thing for my diet.
Let’s just say it took a long time to get home.
I had a suit on today because of a tax clinic meeting. I still had this suit on when I left work, so there I am, tie and loafers, excavating the car with snow flying everywhere.
I am at the office’s coffee/hot water machine. It’s a Tazo tea day. A curly-haired woman approaches from the side and we both do a start-stop motion towards the machine.
Me: “Oh, sorry. Go ahead.”
Curls: “Oh no, you go.”
Me: “It’s fine.”
Curls: “You were here first.”
Me: “Well thank you.”
Curls: “You’re very welcome.”
The guy in the stall next to me is one of those theatrical public restroom users who is overly-loud about everything he does.
My loud neighbor gets up, kicks the toilet handle with a little “Hi-Yah!” and then barges out of the stall.
I biked to work on Sunday. I work 16 miles in the suburbs, and the distance doesn’t bother me, but I hate going up the hill near the office.
The hill is on a street named “Yankee Doodle” which makes the whole situation seem even more ridiculous. But do not be fooled! Yankee Doodle has a massive, half-mile long hill that hurts. The hill is so large that I expect a Buddhist monk or a mountain goat at the top.
So I decide to get cute, take a short cut, and promptly get lost in this Ozarky town named Mendota:
We had our annual company picnic at Blackhawk Lake. Lawyers playing trivia is always amusing.
The lake itself was kinda bland, but hanging out with the coworkers was hilarious.
