Month: April 2008

Well Another Crazy Day, You’ll Drink the Night Away Part 2

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 / Velvet / 37 Comments

Work continues to be nothing short of a disaster. Obviously it would be in my best interests to not discuss work, but I’ve already put my two alternatives on to the scales of justice:

Keeping my job and behaving on the blog vs. entertaining you with these priceless gems.

Your entertainment won. You’re welcome.

The Vortex, as my place of employment is now called, will hopefully not win the battle for the takeover of my soul. I don’t even try to go out to lunch anymore. The one day I want to leave on time for a class at the gym, it’s nothing short of a battle to get the hell out of there. And by battle, I mean, some asshole is always showing up as I’m shutting down my computer to ask for something they had all day to ask for.

I’ve created this handy situational/statement analysis from The Vortex with my commentary. The item in quotes is something someone else said this week.

1) “We are in a ‘housing crisis.’ The industry is crashing down so we’re going to continue to have these sort of problems.”

Okay. People, please. Can we please stop fucking calling it a “housing crisis?” To me, the word crisis should be reserved for things which truly are a crisis. Examples would be the tsunami, global warming, my hair during high humidity. “Crisis” is not a catchall to describe the legions of stupid people who couldn’t understand that no matter how many raises they got at Arby’s, it was never going to bridge the income gap required to make the “new” payments when the interest rate jumped. So for that fact alone, let’s never call it a “housing crisis” again. You can call it a “stupidity crisis” if you want. That’s much more applicable. The mass amounts of stupid people running around signing documents without reading or understanding them, getting foreclosed on, and getting kicked out of their house does not a crisis make.

2) “Oh, I was up all night because last night a guy at one of our properties was smoking a cigarette and burned one of the buildings down. He’s not gonna make it.”

Ask me what the accelerator was. Ask me!!! It was the guy’s OXYGEN TANK he was toting around with him while he lit up. Bwahahahahahaha!

3) “Oh, while you were at the fire, I was at another property where there was a flood.”

Ask me what caused the flood. Ask me! Two men were fighting over a woman neither of them are dating. One pulled out a gun and shot the other. The bullet went through his lung and into a toilet tank. The toilet tank exploded and the water flooded into several units below.

4) I was told to attend a meeting in D.C. with a coworker. I was told several times to attend this meeting, with the coworker. I repeat myself because I want to make sure you understand, this meeting was confirmed several times. At the follow up meeting in the office, my coworker and I were reprimanded for attending this meeting. “You should have just asked a courier to retrieve that information.” Yeesh.

5) “You know, when Stacy first started here, she was inundated from day one. All I’ve seen her replacement do is organize stacks of paper and not really do any work. Where did all that work go that Stacy used to do?”

Me. Have you seen my desk? Which brings me to my next item…

6) “They really like clean desks around here. We’ve been told to keep our desks clear.” To which I responded, “Have you seen my desk?” They said, “Yeah, I’m sure you’ll get the talking to.”

They are obsessed with filing there. They file things every 5 seconds.

7) “What time did you get here? I was here at twenty of but I waited at that light for 10 minutes. Bob got here at 7:00. No, I think Randall was first, he was in at 6:40.” “Well I was working from home from 5:30 this morning.” “Did she ask you what time you got in? She’s so crazy. She likes to keep track.” “Didn’t you know you were supposed to go to the other office and tell them you were here?”

I heard all that while I was waiting for my interview, actually. I thought it odd that people were obsessed with what time they all get to work. Then I found out they have a roster and they actually write the time that you arrive. Oh. My. God. I wonder if I should ask for a hall pass and try to pass a note to Ryan like in 8th grade.

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Last night I raided my medicine cabinet to shake out some pills to get me through. I’ve got Lorazepam, Klonopin, Dicyclomine and several other anti-anxiety formulations that may or may not have expired several years ago. I think these little bottles of pills are my only chance of survival, otherwise, as I said to Mr. X, “It can only get better or worse. And if it gets worse, I’ll have a decision to make.”

Sail On Down the Line, About Half a Mile or So, And I Don’t Really Want to Know Where You’re Going

Sunday, April 20, 2008 / Velvet / 15 Comments

It’s disturbing when the past comes back to shake you or slap you around a little. Worse is when the past has the last word.

This weekend I had several encounters with my past, or, more accurately my past had several encounters with me.

Friday Mr. X and I walked into a restaurant and the three glasses of wine I had didn’t prevent me from recognizing my high school’s best friend’s sister who was sitting at another table. An odd coincidence considering that they still live in Connecticut, I haven’t seen them in at least 10 years and this would be the last place I would expect to bump into anyone from Dupont, much less Connecticut.

I spent the rest of my weekend in a variety of ways, the least interesting of which was watching an episode of Keeping up with the ~~Fake Eyelashes and Ten Coats of Mascara~~ Kardashians while at the gym. On this particular episode, one of the sisters is having a fight with her boyfriend because he lied to her about something I couldn’t quite understand from the scrambled closed captioning, and I didn’t want to plug in and listen to it because their voices make me ill. Anyway the one beastly sister keeps encouraging the other sister to dump her boyfriend who she’s clearly in love with and still is unsure what really happened – if it was a misunderstanding or an outright lie. The discouragement from the beastly sister reminded me of a friend I once had who was unhappily single and who constantly encouraged me to end my relationship with my then-boyfriend no matter how big or small the issue at hand. Eventually I learned to stop telling her the details of our issues. More importantly I learned that maybe that friend wanted me to be single more for her own selfish reasons than because it was the right thing for me, and she probably wasn’t really a friend at all. It’s easy for people who aren’t happy with their own life to encourage you to make decisions that will ensure your misery too.

Taking Thora and Sammy to the dog beach, I grabbed a backpack I haven’t used in years. It is my dog beach backpack. It’s nylon and I had crumpled it into a drawer and was trying to form it back to it’s original shape when I realized there was something in the lining. A little detective work and I realized it was paper inside the zip pocket which I haven’t used, well, ever. I opened the pocket and found an index card. Having never used an index card in my life, I flipped it over and realized on the back, there was a note written to me. The writer had designed it into a coupon and wrote some pretty descriptive, sexual things for which I could redeem this coupon.

I can only imagine how long this has been in there – I’m guessing two years. How he managed to get the last word with a note I was meant to read, and apparently redeem, years ago is creepy.

Cooking a soup I reached for the basil from the spice rack. I used the last of it and before tossing the bottle into the recycling bin I took a quick look to see what kind I had bought. Not that there are so many spice brands but I was curious. Kroger brand basil. Who buys Kroger brand spice? Me I suppose. Me in 1999 or 2000 in Atlanta.

The jeans to end all jeans, the ones that I love, the ones that are comfortable and look great even on a fat day, the ones I paid $200 for, are dead. Mr. X pointed out a hole in the crotch when I jumped in his lap this weekend. That Mr. X. Always on the lookout for new holes to stick things…anyway, I guess I can kiss those jeans goodbye as well. Not as happy about that one, but as for the exes and such, firmly rooted in the past is where they belong.

Bye Bye Pope. We Hardly Knew Ye.

Friday, April 18, 2008 / Velvet / 13 Comments

Dear Pope:

Wassup? Thanks for coming to say hi! I really appreciated that you orchestrated this visit to bestow your prayers on D.C. There is no hope for us though, so I hope you don’t feel your visit was in vain. I mean, come on. You met with GW. Did you really think that we stand a chance of becoming anything other than selfish “yeah, and so how does this affect my life” kind of Americans?

I appreciate the traffic jams, the Pope decoys, the erections the police get when they get to block off streets, “direct” traffic and let you through. No, really. It’s not an inconvenience at all. See, none of us really want to get to work today, because none of us want to earn our dollar so that we can share it with GW and the likes of his posse.

Though, I should point out. I did handle this “almost” encounter with you way better than I handled my encounter with the last pope.

Rome. 2004. Pitstop and I were making our way through Italy and as we are known to do, stumbled into something just seconds before a life changing event was about to happen. Because we spoke no Italian, we didn’t know that the day we chose to go to the Vatican was the day Pope John Paul whatever was going to be there.

The sea was angry that day Anticipation ran high until the Pope, he finally did arrive! Well, everyone climbed onto their chairs to watch the Pope be wheeled down the aisle and Pitstop and I made the “error” of stepping on someone’s plastic folding cafeteria chair. That someone happened to be an evil German. Let it be said now: I hate Germans. Anyway, he started screaming at us to “clean this” and I told him to fuck off. Mr. X thinks that is what did that Pope in. He died shortly thereafter.

So new Pope, Benedict, be happy that you didn’t come close to me while on your visit. But thanks for coming!

“I am the best Pope evah! Whose that girl fighting with the German?”

*That’s the German’s head by the way.

Hawking the Trivial Tryst Again

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 / Velvet / 14 Comments

It’s no secret that Velvet was born as a dating blog. While two years of disastrously covering my dates proved to be a nightmare, I can still appreciate events that encourage the manfolk and womenfolk to mingle. My friends have put together an event called Trivial Tryst.

“Trivial Tryst is a stray distant stepchild of the now obsolete 90’s sociology experiment that was Speed Dating. The event aims to take the good aspects, such as meeting several like minded people in a short period of time, while eliminating the stress of forced conversations and the painful onset of ‘dead air.'”

Check this link for more details and to sign up. I have the inside scoop. There are more guys signed up right now than girls…to which I say, “Fucking finally. Fuck you D.C. and your ‘seven girls for every guy’ bullshit.”

I have another inside scoop. I heard the boys are mostly rugby players. That’s all.

Well Another Crazy Day, You’ll Drink the Night Away

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 / Velvet / 32 Comments

Well, against my better judgment, I’ve taken a job.

See, when your beloved (for more ways than one) place of employment goes bankrupt, and you burn through your severance, unemployment, and savings, it’s sort of time to go back to work even though you have no desire. It’s even worse when your lover is also unemployed and loving it, and enticing you to spend the day in bed more often than once in a lifetime. Though, I think it’s safe to say that I milked being unemployed for a long time. I passed up a few offers when the money or the job wasn’t right. Then it came time to get serious and just when I did that, I stumbled upon three opportunities. None were exactly what I wanted, so I had to suck it up and make the best choice I could with the information I had.

During the interview process with the company I chose, a few things raised my eyebrow. And I know what you’ll say. You’ll say, “Why the hell did you take this job when you are so well versed with a corporate-bullshit-o-meter?” It’s a valid question and here’s my answer: Because the money was too good to pass up.

But here’s another answer: Now I’m sitting here, halfway through a bottle of wine on a school night when I am a stickler about drinking, or rather, not drinking, during the week. It’s work, dogs, workout, sleep, work, dogs, workout, sleep from Sunday night to Thursday night. No fun during the week is what I need to do to ensure I actually wake up when that annoying alarm sounds off for the 11 millionth time. So why have I broken my rule and why am I sitting here, half in the bag, on a Tuesday?

Here we go. I interviewed with all parties on one day. After the interview they made a soft offer but the salary they tossed out wasn’t right and I said flat out, “No.” Keep in mind, I was a woman without a job. Technically I had zero negotiating power. But I wasn’t going to trade in my temporary job which was pretty laid back and easy, and close to home, for something that wasn’t close to right.

The offer letter arrived via email later that night with a better package but still not quite right. So began a long painful dance of back and forth negotiations. If I told you where I started, and what I ended up with, you would call me a liar, then you would call me for all your negotiating needs. Then I would refer you to Mr. X because he’s where I learned my diabolical method of negotiations. Once we agreed on it all, I said, “Okay, so you want to call my references?”

“No. We don’t need to. We did the background check.”

I’m sorry, but has anyone ever heard of this? How on earth does a company not check your references? I smell a Dupont sized Rat. So, I asked them to reconfirm some of the added issues in writing and they said they couldn’t because I don’t know what their reason was but it violated some policy. Now, has anyone ever heard of this? Christ, someone rip my tits off. I figured I had nothing to lose by taking the stupid job and if they decided to lie to me then I’d just quit.

In my first week of work, I was asked no less than a dozen times something to the effect of, “Wow, you came back today?” and “Are you overwhelmed yet?” and “Are you ready to jump out the window?” On my first day, I found out that my counterpart had quit in the time between when I accepted the offer and the day I started. They fired someone my fourth day at work. Then when my counterpart was training me she said, “My first week here they fired three people.” Yeah. That’s a little scary. Then she said, “I’m the third person in a year who has had my job and I didn’t make it four months.” They fired someone again yesterday.

So what the hell is going on there? I don’t know, but I guess I’m finding out. The place is like a fucking Vortex. You try to go to lunch and you get sucked into a meeting. You try to leave to go home and oops, you’re there for another two hours. No matter that I never want to leave for lunch. No matter that only one day a week I like to leave on time to make it to a class at my gym. It doesn’t matter. See, you get sucked into the Vortex, and you can’t get out.

One painful day at a time.

If I make it 15 months, I can re-qualify for unemployment.

In any case, I’ll try to find joy in the small things. Like how our VP is on a mission to crack some teeth by constantly jamming hand into mouth and grabbing at whatever’s ripe for the picking. Or how someone yawned all day, then suddenly “came alive” right after a suspicious white powder showed up on the floor of the bathroom stall. Or how people have major meltdowns at the rate of one per three hours. Or how I have to pop like 12 heartburn pills to get through the day. Or how I had to spend the better part of a day reviewing a document which is a listing of property uses. It included the following text:

“The parcel may not be used for any adult entertainment establishment, adult book store or establishment selling, renting or exhibiting pornographic materials or any drug related paraphernalia. As used herein, an “adult entertainment establishment, adult book store or establishment selling, renting, or exhibiting pornographic materials” entertainment establishment, adult shall include, without limitation, a store displaying for sale or exhibit books, magazines or other publications containing any combination of photographs, drawings or sketches of a sexual nature which are not primarily scientific or educational (collectively, “Sex Magazines”) (it being acknowledged, however, that “Playboy,” “Playgirl,” and “Penthouse” are not deemed to be Sex Magazines. ) ”

What I find most exciting about all this is that I haven’t had blog-worthy work drama since I’ve had a blog. Yeah. Exciting. Joy. I hear I66 is having a way better time at work…having to pick up the pieces of my once delightfully funny and relatively low-stress job. I did leave him some gems of entertainment though. Tell the story I66! Tell the story!!!

Two Consecutive Saturday Nights

Sunday, April 13, 2008 / Velvet / 52 Comments

At the Host Stand
Restaurant A: “Is your whole party here? We can’t seat you if your whole party isn’t here so I’m just going to stand here and make you wait until he comes back from the bathroom.”
Restaurant B: “Oh, you’re the ‘X’ party. Welcome. We have your table right over here.”

Taking the Drink Order
Restaurant A: “We have frozen margaritas out of the machines.”
Restaurant B: “Would you like to see a wine list or shall I make a recommendation?”

Ordering Food
Restaurant A: “No, we can’t substitute shrimp for scallops. There are no substitutions. If you make me substitute then the price goes from $12.95 to like, $22.”
Restaurant B: “We can do whatever you want. No, really. We can do whatever you want. You just tell me and I’ll make it happen.”

Clientele:
Restaurant A: Bebe Customers from P.G. County who think wearing sunglasses when it’s 10:00 at night, spending the entire dinner with your friends on your cell phone talking to other people, pushing your chair out in the aisle so others can’t get by, and running your waiter ragged qualifies as classy.
Restaurant B: Arrived in a Mercedes, never been on the metro, owns places in Georgetown, Bethesda, and Dubai, their children went to Georgetown and are heads of surgery at GW, Hopkins, Jackson Memorial, their grandchildren go to Georgetown and have not-so-secret profiles on Late Night Shots.

Cleanliness
Restaurant A: I would have preferred to know that dirty long snot was at the bottom of our chip basket prior to my stuffing my face with the chips.

Restaurant B: Came by with the crumb cleaner between courses. Refolded my napkin when I went to the ladies room.

Dessert
Restaurant A: “Fuck this place. Let’s leave.”
Restaurant B: They called it cake, but I swear it was ice cream.

Waiter? The check!
Restaurant A: Split it four ways? Sure.
Restaurant B: I couldn’t say for sure. Mr. X paid. I do know that the bottle of “recommended” wine was more than my television. I suppose it’s worth it to actually look at the wine list. I don’t know why I’m complaining though, I didn’t pay. Well, not in cash anyway. I paid it off throughout the duration of the evening.

Answer Key
Restaurant A: Lauriol Plaza. I really really really hate Lauriol with it’s ordinary food and rude staff, the combination of which forms zero basis for their lines and crowds. But because Pennsyltuckey’s only resource for Mexican food is Taco Bell, Sixes, who was in town this weekend, picked Lauriol. She was happy with it and that’s all that counts.
Restaurant B: Il Mulino. Mr. X picked it. We toyed with other restaurants but he wanted to try Il Mulino because someone we know recommended the one in New York. He was happy with it and that’s all that counts.

Tourist Hunting Guide

Sunday, April 6, 2008 / Velvet / 35 Comments

Who would have thought a bunch of blooming Cherry Blossoms (some of which smell oddly like sperm*) would draw thousands of tourists to D.C. Every year I’m shocked these trees lure the common folk, but they do. After spending way too long navigating lower 14th Street trying to get the hell out of the city, I decided to create the…

Handy Reference Guide for Spotting and Avoiding Tourists

Use this easy checklist to determine if you are about to get sucked into the tourist vortex – a time suckage of the worst proportions, the tourist will delay traffic, ask stupid questions and stop to point at buildings most of us have come to despise as the places that have sucked out our souls one painful day at a time (White House anyone? The Capitol?)

Is there more than 1 child per adult? (It’s too expensive here in the city to have more than 1 kid.)
Do they walk around in wonderment, with smiles on their faces? (No one smiles here. D.C. is worse than N.Y. in that aspect.)
Do they all stop like they slammed into an invisible “mime’s wall” when the opposing light turns yellow and they want to cross the street? (I prefer tourists in Vegas who chance it and usually get run over. Survival of the fittest.)
Can you see at least three inches of black roots in otherwise bleached hair? Do they overcompensate for the lack of updated color by…
spending 3 hours curling and flat-ironing into a perfect Laura-Bush-esque bouffant? (Natives know we can’t fight the humidity here so we don’t even try.)
Speaking of bushes, if you get this far with a tourist, do they know what a Brazilian is? (Ask Sixes. She recently requested a Brazilian in Pennsyltuckey and they said, “Where are you going that you’ll need that?” Sixes emailed “E” and I to lament her woe, and E expertly replied, “Honey you’re in the country now. You’ll have to forgive her. She’s used to girls hacking away at their pubes with a lawnmower.”)
Are they wearing sneakers to any place that is not a muddy dog park? (Nikes are not proper outerwear.)
Did you spot scrunchies? (They still make these?)
Did they show up at a $100 a plate restaurant in their Wranglers and college sweatshirt?
Can you overhear talk of how “wonderful” D.C. is and how maybe they will go home and dial up to the internet to see if there are any jobs here?
Are you following an out-of-area plated car driving around Dupont Circle right now, missing their turn over and over and over??? (I’m beeping my horn at you and you have no clue that I’m considering macing you in the face.)
Is Old Ebbitt Grill suddenly jam-packed with people in the aforementioned Wranglers, college sweats, scrunchies and hats announcing their place of employment or hometown ball team?

What To Do if One Approaches You

Back away slowly. They are likely to ask directions and you don’t want to be sucked into that mess of explaining L’enfant and the illogic behind the design of our city.
Tell them they won’t like it here because law abiding citizens aren’t allowed to carry guns, but hoodlums and thugs can get away with murder, literally.
Tell them our justice system doesn’t resemble any of the following TV shows: Hill Street Blues, Matlock, Murder She Wrote, and that our law enforcement mostly sit around eating donuts.
DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT! You might end up hearing about how great Wisconsin is and how the next time you leave D.C. you should go out and visit and stay with them on their air mattress.
Stay strong. It’s almost over. Sorry to inform though that soon, the interns will be here. Sixes will have to do an intern-avoidance post. Wait. Forget that. She doesn’t avoid anything young, innocent, and in pants.

*Re: Trees smelling like Sperm. If you don’t believe me, I urge you to walk from U Street to T Street, down 17th, on the east side of the street. If it doesn’t remind you of the last time a guy came all over your face, then it’s been way too long since you’ve been laid.