When last we met our heroine...

"Welcome back from obscurity, Rach!"

"Why, thank you, Rach."

"So... been a while, huh?  What's been going on in your fabulous life?"

"Oh, man.  Where to begin?..."

It was never my intention to abandon the blog.  I just... got busy, is all.  

*snort*  

Fine, yeah, in that way, but also in the general sense that life and family and work and all those other important things started demanding more of my time and attention, and my writing took kind of a backseat.  I've been dabbling here and there (like the fiction I write every month when I pay bills, HEY-OHHHH!!), but simply haven't had the time for a dedicated daily post.

To quote an obscure bit from an old Sinbad stand-up routine:  "some things got to CHANGE around here!!"

"I can't wait to meet him!  I hope he's wearing something made out of windbreaker!"

Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 
"Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life"

There have been a ton of highlights in the last six months!  There's been a low point or two, to be fair, but on the whole it's been a terrific year and I'm looking forward to recapping it here for posterity.  I'll cover the important stuff in bits and pieces in future posts.  

FIrst things first, though:  I've decided to come back to the writing to help keep my sanity intact, to stay in practice... and to keep sharp the skills I'm going to need in my next big adventure!  A busy six months in the totally unglamorous world of higher education has led me to a pretty big self-discovery.  

Y'all, I finally know what I want to be when I grow up!  

I've decided to go back to school to get my teaching license for middle school language arts.

I love academic advising.  Telling people what to do?  Huh; let me think ab- OKAY YES I CAN DO THAT.  However, after three different roles at as many universities, I can safely say that a career at the university level is not for me.  I loved college, as many of us did, for the experience that it was:  learning, sure, but also the 1 a.m. mud-sliding on the quad, the genesis of many a TV-and-takeout tradition and the silly Sunday morning "reconstruction" conversations that helped us figure out just what we had done the night before... 


...and that's why I can't work in the field.  I loved my Miami days so much!  The very last thing I want is for those memories to become overshadowed by administrative red tape and interoffice politics. 

More to the point, though:  I love the English language.  Sure, I take some liberties with it here and there when it’s acceptable –- Facebook status updates are so much easier to type in all lowercase –- but I cannot abide the pandemic abuse of grammar, spelling, pronunciation and structure.

It murders my soul, people.  

And that brings me to today's guilty pleasure -- it is Wednesday, after all!

For a while now, I've been posting pictures of egregious, public mistakes in a Facebook photo album, complete with snarky commentary.  It's been a hit with my friends and even has led one of them to brand me as her Grammar Girl (a responsibility I do not take lightly).  I've resorted to carrying a red Sharpie in my purse:  woe to the person careless with his syntax!

I will cut you. 

The other thing I'm going to relish about teaching?  Sure, I get to tell people what to do for a living now, but just imagine the power I'll be able to wield once I've got a classroom full of little monsters!  

Yep.  Me and Lady Gaga:  we've got big plans for the future of America's youth.

Every little thing I do is magic!

WHAT DID I TELL YOU!?

It totally worked.  Half a dozen ice cubes, flushed right down, plus one long-sleeved Cleveland Browns t-shirt worn backwards equals a free day off work, bitches!

My university has that text-alert system that lets subscribers know of any special developments:  parking bans, bomb threats... snow days...

I woke up to my alarm at 5:30 this morning and checked my phone immediately:  no text.  I'll let you imagine the grumbling and crankiness that ensued.  Six minutes later, I got the all-clear to go back to bed in the form of a text message telling me they'd decided to open at noon.  Good enough for that early in the morning!

Got up four hours later and shuffled around the apartment, pouting about having to get "work dressed" and drive in the cold to the office for a half day of nothing to do... and just as I was about to stop with the pouting and start getting ready, the beautiful tones of the little bing-bong text message alert sounded, telling me to take a load off and stay put for the day.

Apparently I have magic powers.  Anything you want me to work on for you?

Give it a rest, Rach.

I got another snow day today!  The university held out till 3:00, but the roads were getting worse and the snow just kept falling, so The Powers That Be convened an emergency meeting and decided to let us all go home.

It wasn't really a surprise.  My 15-mile commute took 90 minutes this morning, and I was one of the ones who had it easy.

The point is, though, that my first thought wasn't "freebie long evening, ahhhhhh!"  It was "holy crap!  Two extra hours to get a ton of stuff done tonight!"

Commute forgotten, Level 1 Snow Emergency be damned, I'm going to get some moving and unpacking done!  Watch out, new apartment; you don't even know what's coming!  

And then J was my reality check.  

"Rach:  the roads are ten times worse than they were this morning.  The boxes will still be there this weekend."

What my car would have looked like if I had had to work a full day.

Hrmph.  That guy is right, like, all the time.  

So I left the office, picked up a bottle of Shiraz (for me), a six-pack of Conway's Irish Ale (for J and his brother who's visiting), a little pot of broccoli cheddar soup and a loaf of crusty bread... and I've been sitting on the couch since 4:37.

What's cool is that today goes right along with yesterday's entry.  I make lists, an average of two or three a day.  My day planner might as well be my bible.  It stands to reason, then, that sometimes I need a little help shutting off that part of my life and just... being.  I'm writing this from J's couch (because I haven't moved mine yet, duh!) in a sweatshirt and yoga pants; he just got up to pour me a second glass.  He and his brother S and I are plotting out the evening's TV selections and trying to decide between Xbox or PS3 in the meantime.

I know exactly what's going in the gratitude journal tonight.  

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.