Last week, I had a meeting with my manager, in which he showed me the paperwork for what my raise will be this year. (It was a nice number, I’m not complaining.)
Anyhow, he hands me my copy of the paperwork for my records, looks me in the eye, and says, “You’re doing an excellent job, Gin – keep up the good work.”
And as I smiled, shook his hand, and thanked him, I realized that he has absolutely no idea what I do all day.
I haven’t done more then about half an hour of real work in an entire day since well before Thanksgiving. I’m between tasks, so the lull will be short-lived, but still – I’m getting a raise for cruising blogs and shopping online for the past 3 months.

I was talking to J about this the other night, and had an epiphany – how many people that I work with half-ass it and get away with it like I am? I work with incredibly smart people; I am PROUD to tell people where I work and what I do, because there really is a Cool Factor to it. But how hard are we really working, or are we pretending to work?
I had an hour long discussion with my coworkers this morning about Lost. Afterwards, one of them sent out an Outlook meeting invite, requesting my attendance to a Lost new episode forum tomorrow morning, in his cube at 8 a.m., complete with IM conference room for those that cannot attend in person. I accepted, because DUH, but how many hours of our work day tomorrow will be spent dissecting new plot points and rehashing old ones?

Maybe it’s my old, rusty conscience kicking in.
But I’m still gonna slack tomorrow.

Oh man, these were the coolest commercials back in the day (who am I kidding; I still dig ‘em.)

It makes me feel old to think that it’s been over 10 years since this ad campaign first aired.













I think my favorite is Swing.
J and I swing dance, but we don’t do any of that crazy aerial stuff.

The weather here is gross again – thunderstorms, hail, tornado warnings, the works – and it reminded me of a story.

I used to love thunderstorms – I liked to watch the lightning.
When I was a freshman in college and still living at home, a bad thunderstorm came through one night. I was sleeping soundly through it, when lightning struck very close by, and the force was such that it actually shook the house (and yes it is a HOUSE with a foundation, not a trailer or pre-fab home).

I will step back here and mention that I was a big nerd in high school, involved in a lot of different stuff, and had all the trophies and plaques to show for it. Some of the plaques were above my wall. Above my bed. Specifically, above my headboard.

Okay, so when the lightning struck, the thunder shook the house so hard that the plaque knocked the heads off the tacks it was hanging on, and the heavy, wooden, gold-plated plaque fell, corner first, onto my head.
Surprisingly, this did not fully wake me up – I rubbed the sore spot, and rolled over and went back to sleep (or maybe it knocked me unconscious, who knows – it would not have been my first concussion).
I woke myself up a short time later when, when I had turned over and thrown my arm across my pillow, I noticed it was wet. And my head was wet. I went to the bathroom, saw my head covered in blood, and started screaming.
My mom was the only other one home at the time, and she came running in to see what the racket was. I was screaming, “I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!”, and she tried to see what was going on, but realized she couldn’t see shit without her glasses, so she spent 10 minutes looking for them all over the house while I was freaking the hell out.
Finally, we figured out that the wound was very small, but head wounds bleed like crazy, so I just cleaned it up as best I could, took some Advil, and went back to bed.
It is extremely difficult to let such a wound scab over and heal when it is well into your hairline, and it is summer in south Texas, which means that your hair must be in a ponytail at all times, and your head will be sweaty and gross and necessitate that you wash your hair every day.

The morals of the story are:
1. Don’t hang anything heavy on the wall above your head, or it could fall on you in the middle of the night and you could die, or at least suffer a head injury.
2. If you are one of those people who gets annoyed when scaredy cat-types jump with each thunderclap, don’t sit next to me. Sorry.

I love me some George Michael.
This song is included on my "Rock Out Driving Music" mix cd, and if you happen to be in the car with me when it comes on, you will witness my pathetic attempts at sexy writhing, and plenty of belted "FREEDOM!"s.

This song is fucking sexy. (The video is pretty damn sexy, too.)

This is the song that, if I had the (figurative) balls to do so, I would totally strip to.

If this doesn't make you smile even the teeniest bit, YOU, my friend, are dead inside.

I feel kind of like ass today.
Or I should say, if I were able to feel my body, it would tell me “You feel like ass today.”
I’m congested and cough-y and struck with fits of lighteadedness, so I’ve spent the morning breathing slowly and deeply, and doing important things like organizing our community snack drawer or using the hole-puncher.

My weekend was Meh.
Was not able to see Sharon Jones on Friday night, dammit, because I got roped into helping my parents out with some stuff, and by the time I got home, I was exhausted, and the show was sold out (glad I called ahead). Poop.

Saturday night we went to the Continental Club to see Two Tons of Steel. I’m not a particularly big fan of theirs, but it had been a while since we’d been out, and they are pretty danceable.
It turned out to be more crowded than we’d expected, as a bunch of annoying nerd dance club members were there, and were just annoying as fuck. They were all in their little jazz dance shoes, with their shirts tucked in, dancing to the house music in between bands. WE ARE IN A BAR. Sulk condescendingly in the corner with your beer like normal people. Do not get all huffy when someone spills their Lone Star on your precious Capezios or whatever the fuck they are.

I’ll admit to being perhaps judgier than most (but trust me, as much as I slag on other people, I give it to myself 10 times worse), but these people were ripe for the snarking – there was a lady wearing a red velvet shirt with an actual matching clip-on red velvet bow in her hair, which she wore just above her ear. Most of the guys were of the light-wash-tapered-leg-jeans, white-athletic-socks-with-shiny-black-dress-shoes variety. They all looked like crazy cat people. It was almost too much for my little catty mind to bear, so I went back on my self-imposed abstention for the night, and got a little drunk.

I’ll throw in here that, for the most part, I like Drunk Gin. Drunk Gin tends to use lots of big words, interspersed with all manner of uses of the word “fuck”. It’s how I wish I could talk all the time, but somehow I don’t think that my government supervisors would take kindly to me carrying around a water bottle full of Shiner. Plus, since Drunk Gin only shows up a handful of times a year, I treasure her appearances all the more.
I will also admit that it’s entirely possible that the only reason I find Drunk Gin so charming is because I’m drunk when she comes around.
I will now stop talking about my drunk self in the second person.

Back to the point (wait, there’s a point?). J had had a few beers too, so while he was only very slightly buzzed, his tongue was loosened enough that we had a really good conversation on the way home. What we talked about was trite and boring – about our (hypothetical) children, and how we intend to raise them, blah blah blah, and wait, when are we going to get our taxes done? – but we don’t talk about deep things that often, and it was nice.

I think I started this post with a point in mind. Huh. Can’t remember what it is now.