Biscuit: Tasty Doesn't Get You A Date To The Prom

"Accordingly, the words "husband", "wife", "groom" and "bride", as they appear in the relevant sections of the Domestic Relations Law are and shall be construed to mean "spouse", and all personal pronouns, as they appear in the relevant sections of the Domestic Relations Law, are and shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women." -- Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, New York Supreme Court

I was going to write something concise and meaningful here, but I just burst into tears, so I can't.

I think I'll just say thank you instead.

Thank you.

I think it is safe to say that, as a general rule of thumb, you can judge a place's quality, be it restaurant, home, or office, by the quality of its bathroom.

My company is undergoing a general, and neverending, reorganization, the comings and goings of which are the sole responsibility for a very large number of people. I mean, the employees here shuffle back and forth between departments more often than a football quarterback, hedging his bets, trades dance partners on prom night. So, my little North Tower group just got swapped out for a group that previously resided in the South Tower. As such, I have been exploring things in my new digs.

I have discovered that the previous owner of my cubicle was an office-supply hoarder. I have boxes of thumbtacks and file folders and binder clips, and my other cubicle-mates are totally jealous.

I have tested various unattended chairs and chosen one that is best-suited to my behind.

I have yet to set the message on my voicemail, but my new phone tells me the extension of who is calling, which I probably should not find exciting, and yet...I do.

But most importantly, I have checked out the restrooms, and can I just tell you? These are some swanky office bathrooms. We totally have an anteroom before the actual restroom, which, for men's rooms, are a rare commodity indeed. Then we have a full double-row of five sinks, for a total of ten possible places at which to wash my hands. Then perhaps ten stalls, which is a vast improvement over the four in my last location. Do you have any idea how off-putting it is to walk into a bathroom and find all four stalls are taken? Do you even comprehend how creepy it is to think of four people just sitting next to each other, all pooping at the same time?

The piece de resistance, though -- there are little rubber floor mats in front of each urinal. A little non-slip mat, just in case the fellow there before you was a little nearsighted. Say what you will about the corporate lifestyle, yo. But U-R-I-N-A-L-M-A-T spells classy.

In the course of my working day, I receive a few dozen corrections, changes, additions, and deletions from any number of internal company websites. Normally I just make the change, however tedious, and move on.

This morning I recieved a change to a site's contact list. This list (bear with me through the boring bit here) is broken down into Segment Managers and Core Leads. Core Leads had a colon, and Segment Managers did not.

Segment Managers
212-444-5555
212-555-6666

Core Leads:
212-222-3333
212-333-4444

Got it? Okay. The person in charge of this site asked me to add an ' after "Segment Managers." An apostrophe. So that it would read Segment Managers'.

...Segment Managers' what, exactly?

So I did the sensible thing, and used a : instead, assuming that is what he meant. Which was fine, until he wrote back again to confirm that he did, indeed, want an '.

"Are you sure you don't want it to read Segment Managers: to match the way that the header below reads Team Leads: ? Adding an apostrophe to the end of Managers isn't grammatically correct." I asked him. Diplomatically, I might add, since the first draft of my letter included the phrase, "Actually, you're wrong."

I was prepared to totally go all Strunk and White on his ass when he replied. And, surprisingly, agreed with me.

"You are correct," he said.

But then he continued. "It should read with a semi-colon. Thanks."

...

Yeah.

I know.

Fortunately for grammar and all that is right in the world, I accidentally deleted the part of the email that had the "semi-" in it.

I gouged the crap out of my pinky last night. Sadly, I did not even gouge it on anything cool -- in fact, at the moment I am at a loss as to what an acceptably cool gouger might be, but I know for certain that the serrated edge of a Saran Wrap box is not it.
Other yesterday-activities included a very rousing game of Apples to Apples, brunching, and writing Taylor a letter of recommendation. In the vein of 'I have known X person in a personal and/or professional capacity for X amount of time,' I realized that not only have I known him for just shy of three years, but Friday, totally unnoticed and uncelebrated by me, was my three year blogbirthday! So please, if you have a moment, sing a little birthday song to my Royal Bedchamber. It has come a very long way since its first days as a white-on-black-Courier-fonted cesspool of misery and anguish!
Also I would have SWORN that I just heard someone a few cubicles down dialing the 1812 Overture on their telephone.

I know I should be saying something here about it being Valentine's Day and I know I should be saying something about what is going on with the breakup and it feels weird even to me that I said it happened and then never followed up, but I have no idea what to say and I think I will not say anything about Valentine's Day just as a matter of principle.

I have it on good authority that today is a holiday that exceeds all others. February 15 does not get a special mark on the calendar, or a special banner over at Google. What it does get, however, is undying admiration from those chosen few -- those special people with a sense for savings, and a mind for markdowns.

What I am talking about, of course, is Chocolate Day, that marvelous day that outstrips even the day after Easter for bargain candy.

Personally I am fond of the Whitman's Sampler box, as these will tell you what each and every piece is filled with. That way, one can strategize, saving the toffees or caramels for last, instead of wasting them all in a first pass and finishing up with an orange buttercream. I understand that there exist such mavericks as truly ENJOY never knowing what yer gonna get, but such cavalier chocolatiering is not for me. I prefer my chocolates classified and coded. If there is not a map, then designs and swirl patterns on each piece that correspond to an accompanying key will suffice.

Aside from box chocolates, there is an entire hierarchy of other kinds of candy that may be found in the 75% off shopping carts at Target. I tend to avoid some of those, as I can get M&Ms at any time (although not at that price!). I like conversation candy hearts, not because they taste good, because they decidedly do not, but for nostalgia's sake, I think. Hard candies, such as Werther's Originals, are valuable due primarily to their staying power; I can only eat one Werther's in the time it might take me to suck down four or five bonbons. Chocolate-covered cherries are an excellent choice as well, particularly if you get the kind without the weird white creme layer inside -- I prefer my maraschino go unadulterated, if you please.

Chocolate Day. February 15. Do not let this important day go unrecognized -- there are bins and bins of sale candy, waiting to be snatched up by your eager little hands. And while you are worshipping at the altar of the discount, do not forget to look for Cadbury's Creme Eggs -- they should be coming into season about now too.

I had to get a measles booster shot on Tuesday. School was going to kick me out if I did not, because apparently without it, I am far too much of a festering measles-y disease-pot.

Being the weenie that I am, I was totally nervous the whole time I sat in the clinic waiting for my free injection. I do not enjoy being poked with needles. And of course, it was absolutely painless and I felt like a huge dork afterwards. I am still a little nervous about the fact that she made sure to stab me in my off arm -- is it going to react or swell or measles-ify or something? It seems fine thus far, so I am going on the assumption that I was simply lucky enough to avoid having my arm fall clean off.

My favorite part about the entire affair is the word "measles." Measles. Measels? Meesles? Meeeeeeeeeezuls. (Meicesles if you are in London.) I could just sit here, saying measles, all night long.

Instead, I think I will hie to my bed with my cat and a crossword, and cross my fingers that I still have all my limbs in the morning.

So I just made both my mom and sister cry on the phone. I called them both because today is the anniversary of my mom's mom passing away, and I did not want mom to think I had forgotten, which I definitely have not.

To be honest, I have dreams with my grandma in them all the time. She is always carrying around that padded gold purse of hers, and I can hear her voice as clear as day. Nothing special is happening -- usually in the dream we are just going to the mall, or having orange juice, and chatting about nothing at all in particular. I think I like that more than I would dreams filled with eerie portents or something -- it lets me just hang out with her for a few minutes at a time, still. Trading our same inside jokes and laughing at the same stupid stuff together.

All things considered, I doubt I know of anyone braver than her. She fell in love with my grandfather, and moved to another continent with him, sight unseen, and never saw her own parents again. It was decades before she saw any of her sisters again, when my grandpa flew them all out for a surprise reunion. It even made the news. She raised a family, and then managed to not only survive, but go through chemo and beat breast cancer, on her own after my grandfather passed away from a heart attack.

She somehow managed to make Bedazzled clothes look glamorous, and somehow pulled off wearing them with mink coats. She had no problem with getting an airline attendant to cart her off the plane in a wheelchair, and then just standing up and walking down the concourse, leaving the wheelchair guy confused, when she met up with us. She was stunningly gorgeous as a young woman, and absolutely beautiful when she got older, and whenever my mom or sister or I are complimenting the others' appearance, we generally give credit to my grandma's awesome genes.

It turns out, though, that my sister had not even remembered the anniversary. She started crying when I reminded her. She has been more than a little distracted lately -- my tiny nephew seems to have some mystery illness, and it will not go away. Various doctors have floated theories ranging from antibody deficiencies to Crohn's disease to cystic fibrosis, and the immunologist who could, in theory, clear this up, has yet to manage to find time to see him. Suffice to say, we have all been a little distracted with that going on, so it is no surprise that the anniversary slipped someone's mind. We talked about it, though -- and we decided that if anyone is watching over my nephew, it is going to be grandma. And with someone like her on the job, he's going to be fine. Absolutely fine.

I miss you, grandma. Pop by my dreams sometime. We can go check out the sales.

Because we were all so concerned about hers, I thought it would be nice to let my Little Owl know that I just got my own Netflix in the mail!

No, really. I did. Ocean's Eleven. George Clooney. Good movie, I hear.

My head is not accustomed to being this full of things.

My first physics exam is tonight. My brain feels like a trashbag that has been overstuffed with oiled sardines, and then tightly squeezed. I keep finding random thoughts squirting out of my head at odd times, like when ke=8.99x10⁹ surfaced while I waited for my elevator this morning. The vertical force on a suspended object is something like T=cos θ/mg, as randomly popped into my head while I was on the subway.

In fact, I am finding it difficult to concentrate on much else, or much of anything, really. I am sort of vacillating between staring blankly at the wall, and feeling vaguely nauseated. I had sort of forgotten this feeling of "no matter how much I prepare, I should have started preparing weeks earlier and now I have screwed myself over." Which may or may not be true, of course, but I will not know until after this test is done and I can tell if I had a tiny fuck of a clue what any of it was about.

A good friend of mine is moving to Boston at the end of the week -- I have referred to her earlier as my awesome HR lady from my last job. She and I met for coffee during my brief study break last night, and, like we have on a few occasions before, talked about our lives changing. I realized that what is odd to me is not that everything changes. I find it strange that everything has a tendency to change all at once.

And if you are at all interested (and I know you are):

I just rocked the fucking fuck out of that fucking test.

Some days, I could listen to just about anything on my iPod. I will put it on Shuffle, and sort of vaguely dance to whatever gets pulled up on the playlist. Now, granted, occasionally I will skip past the Carmina Burana, because honestly, there is only so much Carl Orff a man can take in a day. The Braveheart soundtrack gets skipped a lot, mainly because I have no idea what it is doing on my iPod to begin with. The Celtic bagpipes, which definitely have their place, are sometimes too slow for office-listening unless it happens to be Scotland the Brave, which I happen to really enjoy singing made-up lyrics to.

On the days when I do not feel like shuffling, I tend to listen to the same thing over and over and over. For example, I am totally fucking dirty for Avril Lavigne. I downloaded both of her albums off iTunes a few months ago, and have pretty much not stopped listening to them ever since. Ditto with bad-ass rockin' British (except apparently actually New Zealander, thank you Josh) chick Tali, discovered after seeing Shasta Cola perform one of her songs at Barracuda a few months back. My Happy Hardcore compilations get a lot of play, as does "Johnny Budz' Hit Factory," which despite the horrendous name is actually a fantastic little bit of musical fluff that also happens to be my music of choice while I am working out. Sometimes I skip back and forth between my main musical redheads: Shirley Manson, and Shiv of The Shivs, both of whom rock more than a mere mortal should.

If I am doing some hard-core coding (as if there is any way to call any sort of HTML "hard-core," oy vey), I need something loud and shouty and probably German, which is what Rammstein or Scooter is good for. Easy-going coding is more suited for the Cruel Intentions soundtrack, on which "Colorblind" still gets me a little misty, or maybe Sarah's "Afterglow," which is nice in the afternoon when I am trying to coast my way to five o'clock. Lest we forget, I also have far more Wing in my iPod than anyone reasonably should, and she gets listened to mostly in the mornings. Ditto with all of my musical cast recordings -- and let me just say it is a surprisingly difficult decision to choose between Glenn Close and Patty LuPone, some days.

And then there are some days, like today, occasions when a single song gets put on repeat. This is often the case with any and all versions of the Black Eyed Peas' "Let's Get (Retarded/It Started)." Then we have "Two Months Off," by Underworld, and "Xpander" by Sasha, both of which can only be properly appreciated at full-blast volume, at least half a dozen times in a row. The one I simply cannot get enough of today, however, is a random song by someone called Big & Rich that I have absolutely ZERO idea how it ended up on my computer at all, called "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" that I have to tell you I have listened to maybe nine bazillion thousand times in the last month. I am at that point where I think I really do need to save a horse, by riding a cowboy. Mm. Cowboy.