I got to say it was a good day

Seriously?  Best Friday on record.  Payday.  Jeans day.  Free ten-minute massage at the office.  Donato's pizza gift card just for showing up to work.  A shared plate of Tater Totchos for lunch.  Scale said I was a pound and a half skinnier this morning (that was pre-totchos, of course).  And I'm 24 hours closer to that walk-in closet (yup, Sarah, it's that important to me too) and being stationary for the next 15 months!

I'm working on bringing back the use of the word rad.  Today would have been an ideal application.

Not much else to post today, darlings:  have yourselves a rad weekend and I'll see you next week! 

I didn't even have to use my AK.

Some girls have all the luck.

 

...and I'm not one bit sorry about it.

J is the boyfriend.  He's cute, if you like that "former college athlete-smarter than your Calc prof-takes you to chick flicks without rolling his eyes" type.

Which I DO.

We've been dating just this side of a year, and for the first 10 months we lived two hours apart.  Then, through the magic of new jobs and U-Haul trucks and an inhumane amount of packing tape, I moved to his fair city a month ago.

And it. Is. Awesome.

The best part about it is that I would have moved here even if not for J.  I love my hometown.  Northeast Ohio kicks ass and anyone who says otherwise never had ME for a tour guide.  But there's something... something about this city that just draws you in and makes you want to know everything about it.  I'd tried to move here twice before but never got the timing right:  I was looking for a paycheck, not a career, and I didn't know which were the "good" neighborhoods, and I only had one or two friends in the area.

Now?  I've landed a job that makes perfect sense in my life, both professionally and personally.  In two weeks I'm moving out of my temporary home at a friend's house and into a lovely little apartment (with my first ever walk-in closet! *SIGH*).

And my boyfriend, my best friend, is here too.  

Before, with more than a hundred miles between us, we had to actively plan out our dates.  Weekends were too short and it was An Occasion every time we got to see each other, since those times were always at least five days apart.


Now?  Weekends are still too short, but it's not as important because we don't have to cram a week's worth into them.  

"If I haven't said it before, she's a lucky, lucky lady."*


Friends, season 8 #15, "The One With the Birthing Video."**

**See?  Told you.

Happy Hump Day! (...hee.)

YES I KNOW WHY IT’S CALLED THAT.

I don’t care!  “Hump” is hilarious.  Say it without laughing; I dare you!  Just because I can buy beer without getting carded anymore doesn’t mean I have to give up those shameless little indulgences.

Halfway to the weekend... gotta keep our eyes on the prize... and so I present to you:  Guilty Pleasure Wednesday. 

Me?  I love reality TV.  No, I mean:  I love it.  Not all of it; I'm pretty discriminating in what I choose to watch, but once I commit to a show, I'm all in.  I DVR it and watch it once through, and then maybe a second time to catch the little subtleties.  I read the recaps of "my" shows on this amazing site.  I throw my cash away on pools and I root like hell for my horse.  (Robert Best owes me $10, damn it.)  Go big or go home!  

The Big Three are Survivor, The Biggest Loser and American Idol... although Idol loses me once we get past the train wreck audition shows and the complete meltdown of Hollywood week.  

I lived with A and C in the apartment that Colgate built in the summer of 2006, when Britney's infamous interview with Matt Lauer interview aired, and that fiasco stayed locked in the DVR until our lease was up.  Nothing cured a bad day like a bottle of wine and a couple screeches of "we're country!"   

I know you've got one too.  At least one.  Come on, sweetie,tell Rachel all about it.

I believe you have my stapler.

For the purposes of this entry, I'm going to assume you've seen the 1999 movie Office Space.  When I graduated from college, my friends and I all got jobs and saw this classic and then gave a collective gasp and said "oh my God, this is MY LIFE." 

Yes.  Yes it is.  From the fake-casual boss who asks about your weekend and doesn't wait to hear the answer to the coworker whose tics are enough to make you nostalgic for holidays with your family, I bet you've encountered a Bill Lumbergh, a Tom Smykowski, a pair of Bobs, a Milton once or twice in your quest for gainful employment. 

I spend eight to ten hours, five days a week, in a cube farm with 14 other people.  It's not a bad setup for the most part; there's a lot of natural light and most of us are reasonably mellow people. 

Most of us. 

One of us, however, is a little high-strung.  As luck and fate and job karma would have it, this character sits four feet to my right on the other side of a cubicle half-wall.  We started in the office around the same time so there's a sort of newbie kinship, and we have a friendly competition going to see who can waste more time.  (I'm crushing him.)

He is also a whistler. 

And a leg shaker. 

And a lip smacker. 

If there were an American Idol for whistling, this guy would be first in line at the auditions.  Sometimes it's a song; sometimes it's just a random string of notes rolling around in his skull. 

The water in the glass on my desk is rippling as I type this.  Jurassic Park-style.  It feels like my desk is stationed on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport. 

Now and then he'll take his lunch hour at his desk, and that's when I get to hear just how much he's enjoying that turkey sandwich.  Is it Cheetos, or is it Memorex?  MMMMM!! 

The Whistler, aka Tyrannosaurus Bounce, aka Baron von Munchmas, is actually a pretty nice guy.   These little quirks are more comical than anything else.  His last job was a sales gig that had him out calling on clients, so he's not used to being cooped up all day long... I honestly think he isn't even aware that he's doing it, so I'm not going to call him out on it. 

But so help me... if my stapler goes missing, I'm coming after him first. 

The One Where Rachel Starts Her Blog... No, For Real

Remember that episode of Friends, "The One With All The Resolutions," (season 5, #11) where Rachel resolves to gossip less and swears that she always keeps her resolutions? And Monica TOTALLY punks her out by grabbing the diary Rachel started the New Year's before and reading it aloud to the group?

"Dear Diary, I'm so excited! My resolution is to write in you every day. I'll see you tomorrow!" (fans the pages) "...NOTHING!!"

Yeah. Guilty as charged.

But here we are, after getting through a pantload of changes over the holidays, and now is as good a time as any to get to bloggin'. And of course, now that I've said it out loud on the interwebs, I have to stick to it.

Be warned: the Rachel Greene references? I've got a million of 'em. The way I see it: they used my name, I'm totally gonna bogart her scripted wit. (*DISCLAIMER: I'm usually witty enough for two - or three - but us real-life Rachels are allowed an off day now and then.)