I Am Home

I cannot tell you how glad I am to have access to my own bathroom and my own bed. I have watched tonight’s Battlestacked Galactica. I have set up my Sirius Radio again. And I must, I must in the spirit of the previously blogged travel tips, give a plug to the following product.

They are called “Earplanes.” And they saved my ass tonight.

When I fly, I usually suffer from debilitating ear pain and stuffy head. I bought a pair of earplanes at the Brookstone store at the Vegas airport, almost as an afterthought. I stuck them in my ears before we took off and was amazed that by landing in Denver, there was no pain, no stuffiness, none, none, none. I felt normal. It was a miracle. But the true test was from Denver to Dulles. Weather was tough for that flight, in fact, my plane suffered a lightning strike in the process of landing. We held in the air for 20 minutes before final descent. Had I not had these tubes in my ears, I would have been screaming bloody murder. But I suffered only a minor stuffiness. These things are wonderful and were the best ten bucks I spent the entire trip. Travel tip. Buy Earplanes. They are wonderful.

Street Sense

Is it bad that the Street Sense hawkers offend my journalistic sensibilities? That, when trying to come up with a way to help the homeless, when trying to find a skill that even the homeless could do, someone in the room stood up and said “I know! They can be REPORTERS!”

I deal with this shit every day, some dummy on the other side of the office stands up and goes, “I know! Let’s make another newsletter!” Because, as you know, publishing a news periodical requires no actual skills and anyone can do it. That is of course until it comes to the actual execution of publishing the thing, and then I have people in my office going, why do the pictures in my pretty e-newsletter have those funny (lowercase) x-boxes in them? Why did the three-megabyte PDF I attached to those 4,000 e-mails slow down the entire Internet? What do you mean, “under way” is two words?

Augh.

A Mixed Day

Yesterday was mixed. I managed to wrangle the vendor to help me finally fix the WYSIWYG editor so I don’t have to write EVERYTHING in HTML all the damned time anymore as I have been doing for months. That was good. I did figure out a better way to archive a certain section of our Web site. That was good. I did finally find the sweet spot in the office where I can put my XM Repeater to get flawless reception and am now listening to Supreme Court arguments on the SPAN while I werk. That was good.

Taking out the side view mirror in the parking garage was not so good. Ouch. Poor Esther.

A Puzzling Trade Association Custom

I have just got back from what I find to be a puzzling trade association custom, the stuffing party. Or, perhaps it is just the custom where I work, and other trade associations have more sense about this sort of thing.

What you do, see, is you get a group of people into a big room, and some of these people earn $30 an hour for their jobs, and some of these people earn like $110 an hour for their jobs. So what you do is you have these people stuff envelopes, which is something you could be paying another group of people like $15 an hour to do.

It always confounds me, but I usually put in an hour or so anyway. I figure it’s entertaining to watch a group of people get vastly overpaid to do shit work.

Anyway, happy halloween, and happy birthday also to Kevin Pollak. I am reminded today that the photograph that heads this stupid blog is of me in a fabulous Halloween costume conceived and sewn by that lady who doesn’t eat onions. Thanks Mom.

Telephone Call For Mr. Horrible

I do not usually share much of the goings-on in my dayjob in this space. Today I could not resist though because of the life-imitates-they-might-be-giants aspect of this e-mail exchange.

A: “Does anyone know where the desk chair is for the empty office? There was a chair for that office and now it seems to have disappeared. Please let me know if you know where it is. Thank you.”

B: “Twice I found it in the locked file room and twice I’ve moved it back. Guess it has a mind of its own??”

C: “Thank you, that is exactly where I found it tonight. Would who(m)ever keeps moving it in there, please let me know and why you are moving it? If we need to get a chair for that office, we can order something, but please stop moving the office chairs. Thank you.”

All Systems Are Gopher

While many of you were worshipping Jesus today or watching the football or producing sparkling academic treatises or lounging in your beachside homes, I was putting together computer workstations.

Well. Not all day. I showed up at the new office at 10 a.m. as asked, and they weren’t nearly ready. With a few hours to kill and a grumbelly belly, hunted and devoured an omlette sandwich at a Cosi. I then went to the Borders That Looks As If Built Into The Sidewalk. I can always kill an hour there. Until, of course, I flew by Ex Girlfriend Unlucky Enough To Have Met Me In Crazier Times Than These (she may retain some level of anonymity in this post because that describes like five people). Oy. What were these odds? Granted, her office is near the Borders That Looks As If Built Into The Sidewalk, as is the friendly former place of Free Wings On Tuesday (FWOT), where we went weekly. So perhaps the odds were better than, say, the odds of Artie Lange saying, “No, thanks. I just couldn’t.” After all, I’m horning in on her ‘hood here. (Sorry.) But still, there was a “small world” feel to it. And, it was a fly-by, which is what it probably should have been, so, long story short, I ended up back at the office a wee little bit earlier than requested.

The staff there today and I shot the bull in our beautiful new conference room for awhile then went out for gyros and salad. Just as we began eating, the movers came in to move our chairs to other quarters. Moving is hell. After lunch, the station setting upping began, and it is not work for pussies, my friends. There is griming around on the floor and grunting and there are artistic considerations and comfort considerations and technical considerations to be met. And some of the offices don’t even have all the furniture or all the peripherals yet, so there’s guessing.

My office is all set, of course. And I can share two lovely things about the new place, which is like a spaceship compared to the old joint, by the way. I speak almost not only figuratively: The rooms light up on their own when you enter a room. They tell me they wanted to conserve power, but I know better: They wanted to make it more like a spaceship.

And we toured the server room, which is much larger than the old one and which actually has a rack for everything, rather than half of the equipment being stacked up on shelves. And I’m standing there with two of my co-workers marveling at the new server room, and then it occurred to me: Jessicacita would be laughing at me right now and calling me a nerd. Heck, if she’d seen this, she might even be making a little nerdtenna gesture at me.

Anyway. I unfortunately have to actually show up before nine tomorrow, an event they’ll be covering on tomorrow’s Today, like that time when David Blaine lived in that water bubble. There’s a meeting I have to be at and some peoples’ complaints I might need to meet.

Random quoth…”An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” — M. Ghandi

Just Not Horny Enough

I like Christina Aguilera. That’s one guilty admission, from me to you. Christina Aguilera is all right in my book. I liked her in her “Come On Over Baby” days—I even have that CD, though I bought it for a dollar at a used CD store in Edinboro, Pa. I thought her “Beautiful” song was unusually affirming for a ladysinger of her ilk. And I like the decade-bending of her latest work. Except.

Except she had a full compliment of horns on SNL this week and did not use them. All they did was provide that percussive “Bop. Doo-dot. Bow.” on “Ain’t No Other Man.” As I watched it I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them, you know, I could hear them thinking, for this I spent 14 hours a day in a practice room through my late teens and early 20s? Christ. You’ve got a full compliment of horns and you’re trying to create echoes of the big band era. Write them a chart or something. Let them wail.

The appearance did nearly redeem itself with her duet with Tony Bennett. But not quite. I would have been happier to see him perform with Jane Monheit, or to have seen the time allotted to those HORNS in the first act.

Jessicacita and I watched The Station Agent…a weird but worth-watching film. It has a midget in it. I don’t really think there’s much more that needs to be said.

Here at my office, we’re getting ready to move. We’ll move on Fry-day, even. And there are people coming in to the office apparently considering moving in to this space, so periodically, people will pass my office at that sort of “just browsing” lumbering pace—and sort of look in. It makes me want to jump on my chair and start acting like a chimp.

If I get through the week without throwing my own poop at somebody, someone owes me a cookie.

I think my Mama will like the new theme I just found and altered today. It appropriates from a design of yore that she was fond of because mamas like to see pictures of their kids when they’re kids, and she was just telling me that she thought the one I’d just gotten were a little too “generic.” I like it. I’m still detailing. But I like it.

Spoilers! All of Youse!

I deliberately left the television OFF last night to save the best television of the week for later, so as not to kick off my first week back post-convention on a lip-doodling, junkie-like vegetation at the hands of the cathode nipple. That’s what Tivo is for. However, thanks to the kind folks at the Stern Fan Network and HuffPost, I already have a pretty good idea what’s going on at The West Wing. The Interweb is EVIL. Evil, I tells you.

I am back in the office today. My plant was dried up because I fergot to aks anyone to tend for her. But she got an extra dose of water and will soon get some plant food. I have already filled the recycle bin nearly to the brim with crap I didn’t have a chance to git rid of because I was too bizy with convention crap. I have begun on one or three top-urgent projects. I have posted a “see you next year” graphic at the convention website and am formulating a new Web strategy for next year’s convention and an off-the-wall marketing campaign involving the New Orleans Zephyrs.

I was definitely feeling the crush about a month out, definitely feeling it hard, as I’m sure a lot of us wuz. But it’s over, and it was a hell of a fuk of a good convention. That is awesome. And it makes you get back to your office full of new ideas and ambitions and excitement and junk. And that lasts about three weeks, tops. But I like convention because of this buzz. It’s pretty cool.

Just stop telling me what happens on The West Wing, and don’t give me ANYTHING on The Sopranos or Grey’s Anatomy, riiiiiight? And, also, comment spammers, ya’ll can give up now. These comments is moderated, riiiight? Riiiiiight?

Howdy from Las BlahBlah

The desert air isn’t good for people, I think. It really dries a person out. I drink the water and apply the lotion and Chap Stick, but man, one can’t help but feel like a sandpaper-face out here.

It is a good convention, the best, actually, by our most specific measurement of success—attendance is at 4,150-some and counting. I am tired already. It is fun to run the raffle machine, but it is exhausting.

I think I flew in with Paula Poundstone, D.C. to L.A. She was nodding off at the gate and just about didn’t wake up in time, and I told her I was about to nudge her awake. If she wasn’t Paula Poundstone, she was her twin sister.

I look forward to getting home where there is actual moisture in the air and to a point where I am no longer in convention season and can be a reasonable human being again.

Time to go do some more conventioneering.