No thanks.

I just saw a commercial suggesting that a GREAT gift for a new bride would be a basket filled with cleaning supplies.

Ummm....

When I get married, please do not get me a basket of cleaning supplies. Unless maybe it comes with a coupon for you to come over and clean. Thanks.

Dreams

Last night I had some pret-ty strange dreams.

I dreamt that I was on a boat, and in a raft, and floating in the ocean. Ironically, I floated into a forest at some point, and explored some old deserted houses, and then floated away again. It was a long night of floating and splashing. But I remember feeling completely happy and unrestricted and free by the end... who knew that floating could be so liberating?

I dreamt that Memorial day was the Monday after Thanksgiving. Except I mistakenly thought I had the day off when I didn't, so I accidentally missed work and spent the whole day floating. When I realized this mistake, I started frantically thinking that people were going to wonder why I hadn't been on Sametime all day.

I dreamt that my Blackberry was really, really, really big.

I woke up at 8 am and my mind told me to get up and go to work, because there was IT auditing to be done. And then I remembered that it was Thanksgiving and I told my mind to shut up and go back to sleep. So that's what I did. Happy Thanksgiving.

This Ain't a Dollhouse

What an irritating song. Slacker radio is awesome, though. It brings cheer to many a dull workday. (Found at www.slacker.com if you are also suffering through dreary days of work and require some musical cheer.)

Today someone was talking to me about skiing. She asked me if I knew how to ski, and then quickly followed with "I guess there probably aren't any mountains in California." Come on, Boston. Haven't you people ever heard of a little feat of nature called the Sierra Nevada mountain range?? It's kind of a big deal. And you thought Californians were bad at geography...

By the way, everybody one the East Coast skiis. I guess snowboarding hasn't made its way over here yet. Too bad. Nobody in California under the age of 40 skiis anymore. Well, mostly.

Today I had to wear gloves when I left work. Which makes it very hard to play with my Blackberry while waiting for the bus. Yes, I do finally own my very own Blackberry. It has an awful lot of buttons. But we are getting along nicely so far.

I discovered that a girl at work wrote on her blog almost a year ago about her "love/hate relationship with the idea of having a Blackberry." I swear I just saw this today. It was freaky. I'm almost positive that she has the same personality type as me. Which might explain why she's inside my head...

So tomorrow I intend to be very productive. Which I will then follow with four very unproductive days... also known as my Thanksgiving holiday break!!! No turkey for me this year. Just a hot date with my DVR and some much-needed time away from my life as a business-lady. I'm very excited.

My New Love/Hate Relationship

I joined the world of working adults a couple months ago and very quickly discovered the secret to being a businessman/businesswoman. You might be as disappointed as I was to find that it is not, in fact, some sort of elite wisdom about the world. The secret actually revolves around the obsession with a single all-powerful, all-knowing little device: the Blackberry. Thanks to this nifty little machine, there is no longer any such thing as work life or personal life. It's all crammed together in some kind of 24-hour portable cyber-life via the Blackberry.

At first I was a little bit horrified at this discovery, and I kept thinking how I never wanted to hand over my soul to this deathly little thing. Then after a few weeks, I decided that Blackberrys are actually sort of cute, and maybe even useful. I almost ordered one, but it fell through at the last minute. I took this as a sign that the Blackberry and I are just not destined to be together. And then I had a few really crummy weeks in Businessland, during which time I decided that Blackberrys are definitely an evil, unnatural creation, and I thanked the universe for not sending one my way. And then I was riding the bus yesterday when I saw a young, perfectly-nice-looking girl pull a titanium Blackberry Curve out of its cozy little pouch. It just looked so shiny and harmless. So I decided right then and there that I wanted one after all. The same one, actually. So now I've ordered one, thus beginning what will likely turn out to be a powerful love-hate relationship. Don't judge me.

I am, however, vowing to keep my work life away from the Blackberry. No work e-mail, no fancy over-priced internet plan, no co-workers ping'ing me at ungodly hours of the night. Just a fun, innocent toy to satisfy my love of texting and double as a backup alarm clock. (Let's hope I don't drop it on the ground like I did to my iPod on the way home today...)

By the way, I just discovered that there is a Facebook fan page called "I Text in Awkward Situations." Um I'm pretty sure I have done this. See, Blackberrys might be useful for something.

And also, I think I have made friends with bus driver who drives the 6:40 bus leaving from Copley Square. He's super nice and he waits very patiently while I fumble through my bag in the dark looking for my bus card. He even let me ride for free on day when I couldn't find it. Today I left work a little early and got on a different bus, but I saw Mr. 6:40 on his break and he waved at me. What a nice guy. Too bad the 6:12 bus driver is not nearly as friendly. He drives like a maniac and never waits for stragglers to get on. What a difference 28 minutes can make.

Haunted Housewares, etc.

My alarm clock is most definitely haunted. Just in case you doubted me last time I mentioned it, listen to this...

This particular alarm clock has two separate alarms, A and B. The other day, I set alarm A before I went to sleep. Like a normal non-haunted alarm clock, it woke me up the next morning with its cruel, mind-splitting beep. I dragged myself out of bed after a good half hour of hitting the snooze button and shut it off. By switching it to 'off'.... because that's usually how one prevents their alarm clock from continuing to beep. Well. Once I was up and about and at least half an hour had passed, the clock began beeping again. Out of nowhere. And not Alarm A, either. This time it was Alarm B. Which I could tell right away, because they have distinctly different sounds. Please note that I have not set Alarm B in weeks... haven't even touched it.

Now of course I am not completely opposed to logic, so my first thought was "did I accidentally turn on Alarm B at some point while I was hitting the snooze button?" Which would be kind of hard to do, since the 'on' switch is located on the side of the clock, nowhere near the snooze button... but that surely makes more sense than a haunted clock, right? Well I promise you that I checked and doubled-checked and triple-checked that both alarms were switched to the 'off' position. Which means that I had sitting before me a beeping alarm clock and no alarms even turned on!! So how do you even shut that off?! Not by playing with the 'on/off' switches. That did no good. I was kind of afraid to unplug the whole thing... because if it kept beeping after that point, then I would just have to move. So I finally got the thing to shut off by hitting the snooze button. Since I did that, I haven't heard from it since. Umm...

This is only one of many inexplicable incidents in the life of my haunted alarm clock. Why again did I move that thing across the country with me? Hmm. I think I might be sort of afraid to get rid of it.

Also, this past week was one of the worst weeks I've ever had. So much for getting off to a happy start with November. The only positive thing about it is that it's over. And it's prompted me to consider a lot of large life issues. Like what it actually means to be alive, and how I can best spend the time that's ahead of me. I'm not entirely sure what that involves yet, but I'm beginning to see what it does not involve. Maybe life is a huge game of process of elimination? I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Hello November

Thank goodness you are here. I've been looking forward to you this year.

I'm very excited that you are bringing Thanksgiving in a few weeks. Not because I have anything fun to do for Thanksgiving... I'm probably going to eat sushi and watch Starz this year. But Thanksgiving means that I have TWO EXTRA DAYS OFF WORK!!!!!! That means two fantastic days free from thinking about IT controls, and two days without the shrill sound of my three alarm clocks going off at 6 am, and two days that I might actually be able to take long showers and do laundry and go shopping and stay up late... so many possibilities!

And I'm especially excited that you're only one page on my calendar away from December... which happens to be when I'm going on vacation for an entire WEEK!! And when I'm going to California!

If you want to be really nice then maybe you could even bring some sunny weather? I will promise not to complain too much about the 35-degree days if you could just be so thoughtful as to hold off on the rain and snow.

I would really, really like it if we could be friends. Especially after October was so mean to me this year. I'm secretly hoping that you and I will get along much better. In fact, if you can just be friendly, I will finally work on getting over June, July, and August...