An e-mail from the HR department went around today, inviting all employees to a “Skin Cancer Lunch & Learn.” Uh, I think I’m gonna pass. But thanks.
Snippet of conversation between two friends of mine this afternoon:
Susan: “My maiden name was Bonner. All the kids called me ‘Boner.’ ”
John: “That must have been hard.”
Confidential to Wendi Aarons:
I found this picture of our boy Jay “Thunder Island” Ferguson.
Fight you for him.
I’ve found that the downside to being known as the office Healthy Eater is that everyone keeps watching to see if I ever slip up. I was in the kitchen this morning, looking through the Friday bag ‘o bagels when a woman from another department walked in, saw me and stage-whispered, “What are you doing?” She couldn’t have been more scandalized if I’d been snorting lines of cocaine off the top of the toaster oven.
Man, this crappy economy is really starting to take its toll on people. I was walking down the hallway just now and as I passed the vending machine, a woman I’ve never seen before was standing there, looking aggrieved. When she saw me she said, “I have to go upstairs. Pop-Tarts are twenty cents cheaper in their machine.”
Why is it that no matter how scruffy and scary-looking some guy on the street is, he automatically seems more normal if he’s talking on a cell phone? He could be calling to order large garbage bags, a hack saw and gallons of bleach for all we know. But we assume if he’s got a cell phone, he’s fine.
I left Kansas for the New York metro area fifteen years ago. Since then I have climbed the corporate ladder, gotten married, made a name for myself out here. I put deliberate distance between myself and my old life. Now I spend all my free time on Facebook, sending friend requests to everyone from my high school. Oy vey. Or as we say back home, purty funny.
If you think it’s not possible to suck in your belly, stick out your chest and run, you’ve never seen me jogging past the local men’s soccer practice.
When I tell people I’m a writer, they generally say things along the lines of ”Wow - what’s that like?” All they really want to hear is, “It’s great, thanks.” When I answer them honestly, when I tell them that my main character just up and ran off to Vienna with one of her guy friends and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with her, they tend to smile nervously and back slowly away. So let that be a lesson to you: Never ask a writer anything you don’t really want the answer to.
