Workplace fun

Because I so love this place, I've decided to share with you some of the nicknames my friends and I have come up with for various people here. I've also thrown in some other acronyms. A lot of these came from the brain of ABM (more info below) so I'd like to shout out to him.

HHDC (Hot Headed Dominican Chick) - that would be me. Or as people here like to say to sound smarter than they are (oh, the irony of it all): "myself".
ABM (Angry Black Man) - my partner in crime. Notice the theme of anger here.
DDS, PB (Don't Do Shit, Platinum Balls) - refers to a friend of ours who takes frequent, unplanned time off and is always getting away with murder.
BBB (Blah, blah, blah) - refers to another friend who has the gift of gab (and is also a quite funny stand-up comedian)
The gimp - my friend, who's on a wheelchair, calls herself that every once in a while
BAH (Bitterness, Anger, & Hatred) - another partner in crime who absolutely HATES his job here (can't you feel the love)
SLT (Spiteful Little Troll) - someone I tolerate but who is hated by BAH.

Ok, that about wraps up the people I'm actually friendly with. Here are some of the names for people I have less cordial relationships with.

DB, CT ('Da Boss, Camel Toe) - refers to the head of our group (very much disliked by ABM). She tends to like to show of her wares . . .
WB, FMF (WonderBoy, Funk Master Flex, aka StankBoy, Stink, Superman, etc.) - my annoying co-worker who thinks he's reached Nirvana here at this stupid place. He's an alcoholic in denial and has a bad sense of fashion (acid washed jeans went out LONG ago!). There are reports that he's one of those guys that does NOT wash his hands after using the bathroom (looking at his mouse will prove it) and we all think he wears his clothes several times before washing them and that he only showers weekly. He's always playing hero as a means to make himself look even better in the eyes of CT. He frequently drops by to extol the wonders of our archaic system. I tolerate him because quite frequently he shows his prowess by doing my work for me which frees me up to do more useful things. Like this blog.
Stinky Not to be confused with the one above. This is a female with a halitosis problem.
LATC (Look At The Code) - micromanager supreme who recently got promoted to a position similar to DB's. When you go to him for help he responds in enigmas and tells you that the answer is in the code (No shit, Sherlock, but could you enlighten us by hinting at which of the thousand classes of code it might be in?)
Tank, Santa A horizontally-challenged, reddish-faced member of the group.
Twinkie Another one who is annoyingly too much into work . . . and into desserts (and anything else edible).
DogFace Refers to someone who should probably be on Extreme Makeover.
Beard A female with a facial hair problem.


Vintage names (from 1998-2000):
Homeboy - Used in the most sarcastic way since the person it refers to is the quintessential anti-homeboy. This guy is from Wisconsin and looks like a lumberjack (plaid shirt and all). He talks in a voice that is way too high pitched for his body and it is also in a perfect monotone (and VERY slow). Displaced from his hometown, he's miserable being only 40 miles away from the bad, evil "City" (and all the "different" people in it - a theme here in the lovely state of CT).
DLH (Dirty Long Hair) - musician guy who used to work here and had an interesting 80's hairdo.
Robin Hood - Long-haired guy who looks like he'd be more at home at a Renaissance faire.
The Sloth - refers to someone who used to be my friend when I started in 1996, but then became a "people manager" and became annoying. She ended up being my friend's manager and it was she who coined this name because of the sloth's failure to stand up straight EVER. She's always slouching and with her paunch out.

Tune in tomorrow where we will go into some of the written language oddities here.

Productivity = 0

I took Monday off to study for my Chemistry final. Ended up spending nearly 12 hours on Chemistry that day. By the time the final was over at 10 PM I was pretty pooped. Thankfully we had a "lunch special" at the Floridita on 125th (which claims to be the real Floridita - I don't buy it!) and the day ended on a nice note.

So my work week this week consisted of two days. And I got basically NO work done. Right now I am completely, utterly useless here at work. I am a hunk of meat occupying space. No matter how hard I try, and I have actually been trying all day, I can NOT get myself to think of or do any work.

I can however get involved in these two sciency/mediciny sites. In fact, I find them quite riveting:
Aflatoxins
Diseases of the liver

I'm praying that this is a good sign that my career is heading in the right direction now. *crosses fingers*

On other news, this weekend I hope to make a post on how my last-minute shopping will go on Thursday. I've already talked about my shopper's syndrome. I had to go back to K-Mart last night to get a gift certificate and got the symptoms again in a matter of seconds. So I am NOT looking forward to our day in the Mall on Thursday. Hopefully I will survive to eat mom's pernil on Friday.

Favorite things

Michael Jackson's favorite things

Some of mine:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes;
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes;
Silver-white winters that melt into springs;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Oh.My.God

Woah, I just did some work.

I figured something out and sent it back to them in 30 minutes.

Now I can goof off again.

Comida calentada

Damn, I've been busy: final on Monday, thickening of the oboe vs. clarinet plot, sick mother in law at home, holidays . . .

Just wanted to mention this:
If something you cook wasn't good the first time around, it will taste even worse reheated.


Deep thoughts by the Cachimbo Queen . . .

Literally Latte

Our cafeteria has a little Starbucks kiosk. I'm not quite sure how it works in terms of who, if anyone, is making a profit off it. The prices are really cheap so I'm thinking it's just that we're buying stuff from Starbucks and reselling it here.

My work friend and I decided during lunch that we'd get ourselves some white chocolate lattes as an afternoon snack. Oh let me correct myself, they call them white chocolate raspberry lattes here since they're copying off Dunkin Donuts.

So we headed on down at around 2:45 or so for our treats. We stood around chitchatting with the cateria lady as she made our lattes. She made my friend's first and I realized there was something kind of wrong. It was pink. Bright pink. I asked my friend about that and she said it was probably just the "upper layer". I was doubtful but kept playing along. The lady makes mine and it too is bright pink. Like milk with strawberry Quick. I take a sip and it tastes nice. A sweet milky flavor. A part of my sleep deprived mind is trying to tell me that no matter how much milk or raspberry syrup you put in coffee it will NOT turn out bright pink. But I was so tired that I was willing to suspend disbelief so that I could enjoy my long awaited treat. Once we get away from the lady's earshot I tell my friend my suspicions that she didn't put any coffee in our lattes. My friend thinks she saw her putting it in. I didn't press it further but when we got off the elevator I took a detour to our coffee station and made a cup of coffee and brought an empty cup with me. When I got back to my office I combined the two and sure enough I got the trusty brownish color I was looking for all along.

Now here's what it says on the Starbucks site:
"A delightfully sweet, creamy combination of coffee, milk and white chocolate syrup, blended with ice and topped with whipped cream (optional)."

Ok, I know that the word "latte" means milk in Italian, but in English it means "strong espresso coffee with a topping of frothed steamed milk" (from www.dictionary.com). Has anyone else ever had a latte without the coffee??

Only my company would offer Starbucks without the coffee . . .

Weeeeeeeee

"Llego tu marido, negra. Llego tu marido . . ."

All is right with the world again. :)

Also, I will be getting an oboe tonight!! No, I'm not buying it, I'm renting it from Greenwich Music. I just happened to find that place on the web today and gave them a call. So over the next couple of months I will decide which instrument to double on. How exciting!

Live from the Billboards

Ok here's something new for a change. I'm posting as the action is happening.

So here I am at Mom's watching the Billboard awards with my brother (who consequently is making fun of the way I'm typing - saying that I look too genteel and shit).

The girl from Evanescence comes on to sing "My Immortal". I'm thinking "way cool" since I really like that song. There are some strings in the background too and she's playing on a beautiful grand piano. Everything is going well though she's not singing in quite an open voiced style as on the recording. Then near the end of the song these guitarists come out. Ok, cool, they're going to do their little rock thing over the strings/piano I think. Then it happens . . . *TWANG* . . . *TWANG*. The damn bass guitar is way off tune. At least one string is way off and another one is close to tuned but still noticeable off. The poor singer's expression changed from inspired concentration to humor, embarassment, and resignation all at the same time. She took it quite well. Kept playing and singing but couldn't get the grin off her face. Poor thing. It was no fault of hers at all. Don't these professional bassist have tuners?? Maybe he didn't have a monitor. But wouldn't you feel the desctructive interference of your out of tune thick bass strings. Wow. It was pretty painful to hear.

Shopper's Syndrome

I may have mentioned it before that I hate shopping. It literally makes me sick and I proved it yesterday.

I left work a little late and headed to K-Mart for my first time ever. I've kind of avoided that store because it seemed to me only a few steps above from the 99 cent stores that litter the Heights. They had some decent things but I did see people picking up strange yard art.

I was perfectly fine when I walked in. Perhaps a bit hungry. Within minutes the symptoms started. It always starts in the eyes. I start to have trouble focusing. It hurts to run my eyes over all the aisles of stuff. My eyeballs start to ache and I have to try to just keep looking forward. Seeing things using my peripheral vision starts to make me dizzy and nauseous. I have to put my eyes on the side of my head, sort of like the screamer. I really felt exactly like that:
.
I then start feeling really lethargic. Like when I drink past my tipsy point and things start feeling slow. Last night I felt a new symptom. Something like a sciatica. My right leg started experiencing a really sharp pain and I started limping. I didn't want people to look at me because I feared that I was starting to look weird. Things just got worse and worse and by the time I was paying the cashier I was starting to break into a cold sweat.

As soon as I walked out of the store I started feeling better. The rain had stop and so the air was crisp. Within minutes of leaving I was back to normal, just hungrier. It just seems like hypoglycemia but why does it go away when I leave the store? And how about the anxiety symptoms.

Only one conclusion: shopping is EVIL!

Holiday lights question

Ok, so is there an easy way to find the burnt light bulb in your holiday lights stand? I think I've just given myself glaucoma trying to to look through all 100 of the tiny bulbs on an old set of lights I had stored up here at work.

Watch your balls . . .

. . . or you might get run over.

Lighter stuff

Oh boy now I feel all guilty that I'm bogging you guys down. So let me just comment on some of the stuff going on with us.

My brother got a call from the Biggest Loser producers. He's on an alternate waiting list. If people who were picked for interviews back out or don't work out, there's a chance he can still get called. So I'm still rooting for him. Of course this has nothing to do with him offering to give me some of his winnings . . .

JC's sister did NOT get a Visa. Oh wait, I think I may have already mentioned this yesterday. So now I get the suegra all to myself . . .

I've decided to stop being a Scrooge since JC I think is secretly into this holiday stuff. So I am planning to put up some decorations tonight so that he finds them when he returns home. Now let's hope he doesn't manage to get internet access from DR and reads this . . .

Symphony Hall

So after class last night I drove home while listening to Symphony Hall on WQXR, otherwise known as "the Classical station". Due to the current state of our music, I've pretty much boycotted La Mega and Latino Mix. I mean, why listen to it for an hour to hear 10 crappy songs and 1 so-so song. I apologize to all who are into the current scene, pero para los gustos se hicieron los colores. I just can't get into what's playing now. My favorite Spanish genre is merengue and they maybe play 1 merengue every two hours. Now, who can blame them when there's almost nothing decent being recorded nowadays. I heard a new song by Elvis Crespo the other day and it was just so crappy. It's funny how not too long ago he sort of "rescued" the scene, but now he's just perpetuating the monotony that has come to plague it. The arrangements have become very stale and unoriginal. I heard one so-so song the other day called something like "Matame". That one at least had some groove going. I really fear for this new generation of music listeners. They are missing out on so much richness by confining their ears to monotonous beats, synthesized sounds, and horrible singing. Where will this minimalist/mediocrity trend end?

Anyway, I digress. So for most of this year I've been listening almost exclusively to Classical again which is awesome. I feel like I've come back home. It's really such awesome stuff. I can listen to it all day and it doesn't get boring. Such a variety of forms, tone colors, and harmonies. It's a lot of fun to listen to how all the different instruments contribute.

They started the program last night with a Baroque-y sounding piece which was ok. Baroque is not my favorite but this one was fine. I then walked into Floridita (the one near 177th - the real deal) to pick myself up an especial. It's the best deal on Earth. For $4.25 I get a mound of rice, beans, a baked chicken thigh/drumstick, and some maduros. It really does the trick. By the time I got back to my illegally parked car - there's a convenient pompa right in front of the restaurant now - a new piece was playing. Started off sounding kind of Classical in terms of the woodwind melodies, but the form wasn't quite that rigid. The harmonies were also a bit too dissonant for pure Classical. Also it seemed a bit heavy on the lower registers (not in a bad way). The piece lasted my entire drive home (about 35 minutes) and by that time I had decided it was probably something by Brahms. So right when I get off my exit the piece ends and the announcer comes on to say that I had been listening to Brahm's Third Symphony. Hurrah! I mean it's something silly, but I was really happy about it.

I meant to start off this entry by saying that most of the things I learned in college, I managed to forget by now. But for some reason this didn't happen to a lot of the things I learned in my music classes. I remember most of my music theory and my ear is actually better now than it was when I started ear training. Even the history courses, which were my least favorite of the bunch, come back to me a bit. I think I was so excited to finally be learning all that stuff that I must have internalized it really well. Prof. Sisman would be so proud! So would Mr. Kluge. I knew my education would be good for something haha.

Anyway, the Brahms' Third Symphony is a great piece. I especially love the third movement (poco allegretto). The melody is really beautiful and he develops it so well.

WEPA!!

88 out of 90, baby!!

*does a little dance*

I've got a case of the Mondays

Ok so today is not going very well so far. I've gotten involved in a nasty urgent issue at work thanks to this goody-two-shoes do-nothing jerk on my team, JC is in DR and we miss each other, his sister's visa request was denied by some idiotic young girl working at the consulate there, and now it's snowing outside! UGH! Nada mas me falta que me haya partido el culito en el examen de la semana pasada. I will know in a few hours. I better get my A, damn it, or there will be donuts to be eaten.

So what do I do when the going gets tough? I waste time on the internet. YAY!

Random internet quiz

Systemizing - Your score: 41
Empathy - Your score: 40
Autism Spectrum - Your score: 20
Mind in the Eyes - Your score: 29

I guess this confirms that I'm a bit of a tomboy. Oh, and that I'm not autistic. Glad we ruled that out.

Media Musings

Been busy studying for tonight's Chemistry test, but I did have some time to sit in front of the boob tube a bit. Some interesting things:

The Jeopardy guy FINALLY lost!!! I am so happy! He was starting to annoy me badly. His head was getting bigger and bigger. However, I will miss seeing Alex Trebek squirm at the end of the game when Ken would win again. You could tell that he wanted to knock him out.

We watched Office Space again this weekend. It's so over the top yet a it portrays a lot of aspects of the corporate world very accurately. I can't help but think that "TPS" stands for "this place sucks". This is truly a classic for all us disgruntled workers.

I caught the tree lighting ceremony last night. I had never seen Jessica Simpson before other than in commercials. Ok can someone please explain her appeal to me because I just don't get it. The girl has got the absolutely biggest MOUTH on the face of the Earth. Holy crap! I was screaming "Help! She's going to eat me!" every time they would close up on it. And what's up with all the retarded ass gestures she makes when she sings? Coño, ni cuanta' mueca'! I kind of felt sorry for her. She looked like she was having convulsions. Weird thing is she actually has a half decent voice. She sang decently well over that big band arrangement. But the poor thing really does seem to have the IQ of a peanut.

I usually won't admit to watching reality TV. But I have been catching The Biggest Loser from time to time. It does feel like a guilty pleasure of sorts. I know that at least a part of me is relieved that though I'm overweight I'm not quite that big. Though the survivor-style elimination part of the show is annoying, I think the premise behind the show is actually good. A lot of people feel hopeless about their weight problems. I'm sure that the show will indeed inspire some people to try to make positive changes in their lives. They will think if these people can do it, then so can I. By the way I have lost nearly 20 lbs so far this year (since May). So this will be the first year since 1990 where I actually weigh less on New Year's Eve than I did at the beginning of the year. WOOT! 30 more lbs to go! Anyway, so my brother is going to apply for the Biggest Loser 2. He's going to an open casting call today. *crosses fingers* More than for the losing weight I'm hoping this will help bolster his thespian pursuits. But sure, seeing him get into shape and be more confident will be super cool for the entire family. Good luck hon! Break a leg!

I guess that's all for this edition. I have to get back to pretending that I'm doing actual work.