Officesaurus Homilus Chronicles: The Fog

At the risk of sounding like an insensitive human being I'm going to occasionally archive the repeat personality types my newfound office life has furnished my existence with.  Perhaps you've met them too.

First up is "The Fog".  I run into this type occasionally around and even outside of work.  We've all seen someone go into screensaver mode while talking to them.  You know the look.  They're gone and most of the processors aren't firing anymore.  I didn't think it was possible to think about 'nothing' until the first time I saw this vacant expression overcome someone's face.

At work this results in that co-worker who asks you for the same information repeatedly and even as you're reminding them you can see your answer disappearing into some sort of fog in their brain.  Where does it get filed?  Who's to say?  Perhaps it goes through a dryer, or a wardrobe--either way it ends up in Narnia with your socks, every file you've ever forgotten where you saved it to, corrupt mp3's from the Napster era and stuff your computer told you it didn't manage to salvage when it crashed.  And even if you managed to find this magical land you would arrive to discover that unicorns are using these lost items as toilet paper.  

My results to engage with this type have mostly been a dismal failure.  The only lasting impression I seem to make is when I get upset over damage caused by their fog-like actions (I remember you said to calculate these important numbers like this - what were the other 2 steps again?  whoops.).  Resulting in things like this conversation:

"Hey, I remember some sort of weird thing happens in the system when I do this twice in a row....what was it again?  Nat knows---I remember she doesn't like it."

Me, "Do you mean *technical jargon here* ?!?!  Yeah, don't do that twice in a row!  You need to cancel the first set and start again."

"Are you sure I have to?  I mean I really have to get this done.  Can I just release both sets?"

WHAT?!  That's like asking if fire can be put out with MORE FIRE.  (note:  fire + fire = FIRE)

You know they know this, yet, in the fog, time slows down and someone's drinking a hot chocolate in a very relaxed way and going, "Are you sure I need to get up for this?  Seriously?  I have cocoa.  Mmmm cocoa."

Look, we all like cocoa, but sh*t needs to get done, son.  

My trouble arises from a complete inability to relate to this personality type.  I run on like 70% anxiety and 29% guilt (1% occasional random euphoria, god I love that 1%).  I'm convinced horrible ethical consequences await me if I don't give 150% to everything I do (this includes evenly sealing envelopes) and is coupled with horrible guilt if I do happen to get away with 99% effort and don't think I feel bad enough about it afterwards.

There is no fog in my brain.  Screensavers NEVER come on.  I'm pretty sure I stir extra brain RAM into every cup of tea I make.  When someone communicates to me from this blankness it is like staring into the face of the nothing from the Never Ending Story.  Suddenly it's me and excel responsible for saving Fantasia.  And what's excel really going to do for me?  Can I vlookup in that necklace of power?  No?  I'm screwed.

Apparently only the fury of my anxious terror at the sight and realization of how far-reaching the consequences of this kind of mental apathy can stretch their obnoxiously lazy tentacles is the only lasting impression I leave on this personality type.  It must be alarming for them to look into my brain as well.  What do they see?  Is it like Time Lords looking into a rip in the space-time continuum?  (I enjoy this as I am now Doctor Who and infinitely awesome.  I need to replace my cubicle with a TARDIS stat!)

Probably the most unchanging thing about getting older is that I don't feel anymore equipped to deal with personality types vastly different than my own now than I did in junior high school when I'd be randomly grouped on an important project.  (Immediate pre-teen horror would set in.  Could I trust these people?  Did they own a thesaurus?  Did they care at all?  Oh God!)

An open concept office creates a strange menagerie of behaviour - followed by a condensing the longer you spend around everyone.  I'm going on three years at my office and the layers that shed, the comfort level and inner-speak you develop with colleagues is amazing.  I mine so much great insight from it, and so much incredible bafflement at the types and interactions that blow my mind.  

Hopefully there is something to be learned when paths cross between two disparate types like mine and the Fog (otherwise I must conclude the karmic overlord of our universe enjoys prodding me with a stick).

Me:  Too afraid to make mistakes.

Them:  Crippling apathy launching avalanches of make-work errors all from a lazy oversight the size of a small coin.  

Me:  Immediate strategizing of a capture-all process to clean up whatever hideous trail of errors have been created in the past and a stern plan for the future to prevent them (already assuming 'The Fog' feels the horrible crushing weight of their error like I do just hearing about it).

Them:  Remembers vaguely my upset from last time and shows up to describe it to me in a horrible Pictionary like fashion that inspires multiple equally horrifying scenarios before I guess which one it actually is

Me:  Moment of stupefied wonder at the state of the world, human nature, life in general, my karma, the real meaning of it all

Them:  Oh so you can take care of this?  Great!  Thanks.

Is apathy like recreational drugs?  I feel like I'm constantly being offered it by burn-outs "It's really easy and fun, try it! Dude, it's amazing!"

But is it amazing?

I don't want to be less alive in own life, even if my rapier of justice is aimed only momentarily at something as seemingly insignificant as doing the same math twice.

Is the fog living in a cocoon?  Are they enlightened?  Am I too uptight?

The thing is, I want to populate my Narnia with enormous dreams, not lost files.

I would like my socks back though. 

Unless they’re unicorn toilet paper.

Husband Dialogue.

Me:  "I was thinking about you today ^_^"

Drew:  "Well, I was thinking about you forever and all time!"

Me:  "WTF?!  You can't just say that, that's cheating!"

Drew:  "I just did."

Lifeasaurus Rex

So our life insurance dude asked us what our 10 year plan was today and since we didn't have anything we made stuff up as we went.  It started off responsible and then got increasingly better:

 - Pay off student loans
 - Invest in RRSP's
 - Invest in future children's education
 - Invest in house-plan savings
 - Start a band (Drew)
 - Get published (Nat)
 - Run a bakery in Paris
 - Own a cottage
 - Alternatively, own a European Chalet (especially for writing, once fame as novelist is achieved)
 - When/If pregnant: drive across Canada together

The biggest and best is still Drew's.  If we strike it wildly, madly rich, we buy up an entire apartment building, or perhaps our own street of houses and invite all our friends to live near us rent/mortgage free :)

How's that for 'there goes the neighbourhood' ?  ;-)

Books

Coming home from my first writers group meeting the other night where the discussion had turned to ebooks, I realized that I've never weighed in on them.  Let me start by saying, because I have friends and co-workers on both sides of this, that I support all of it.  The entry below is simply my own, personal feeling on books.

Ebooks are the talk of my workplace by times and everyone is waiting to see things like "ebook erosion" or the second coming of itunes.  From person to person opinions are widely varied on ebooks.  The general consensus seems to be that an ereader makes a very practical travel companion, that the price point is enticing and that a certain type of book can be pretty much permanently justified in this format.

However, the lingering physical qualities of books are still spoken of with quiet reverence.  I often wonder if this nostalgia will fade over generations but I sincerely hope it doesn't.

I have loved computers and the internet since infancy.  Having a gamer Dad meant I could navigate DOS menus even before being able to read.  I spend hours reading social media, hunting down music, writing, LJ'ing, blogging, collecting inspirational photos and reading oodles of fanfiction.  I'm not sure how I lived before my iphone.  I even have the Kobo app. but I have never used it.  I have never read an ebook.

I still love books.  I love the idea that once you have crafted a tale you craft its container in equal measure.  I love the feel of questing through a bookstore and seeing, really seeing, all the possibilities. It's humbling to realize you probably can't ever read them all.  It reminds you you are tiny with a heart's appetite bigger than your body can contain.  I love a good bookshelf and I love looking at other people's.

Music stores, I must confess, always held some intimidation for me.  There was a certain element of being seen with certain music or, perhaps a better way of saying it, identifying yourself very strongly by your choice of genre.  (not that there isn't book judgement, ha ha, oh how there is)  However, I wasn't sorry to make my music buying experience private.  I didn't seem to lose a sense of happiness from bouncing from artist to artist with my own karma and people rarely recommend music I like.

But if bookstores vanished it would be like entire parklands disappearing too.  People come into a bookstore with a certain amount of openness I think and a desire to touch and feel what they are looking for.  It has never stopped being special to read a book.  No awards, or celebrity nods, or author fads or movie adaptations can ever overtake it completely.  The ritual of sitting down to read still comes with the idea that you turn everything else off and just relax.  If you're me, your favorite books will, if left untouched, open automatically to favorite parts.

And lastly, perhaps there is still some magic in books being fashioned on paper.  I found a great LJ icon that says "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart".  Every breath out is a tree's breath in and vice versa.  How many breaths went into the page you are reading, in every possible way?  And I don't say this as someone that is terribly alert or alarmed by what things are made of (each New Year's renews my socially unconscious half-hearted environmentally aware guilt).  But there is still some awe built into books.  For all the times you hear wind rustling leaves, or you collect them off the ground and press them between book pages.  For that moment as you get older when you revisit a place and realize the trees are four times as tall as they were when you were a child.

Trees whisper and beckon and offer a bevy of texture, sight and sound.  We always feel a yearning at some time or another to be close to them.  And a good bookstore feels much the same.

Modern Baking Necessities

Disclaimer: I promise to start a series of "wedding moments" posts in the coming months. I'm toying with drawings and I have some ideas in mind. I swear!

Moving right along to current matters: Baking.

Now that I have an all powerful and fabulously blue kitchen-aid my true status as Baking Maven (or Baven) can be acknowledged at optimum power.

If it is in your power to procure a kitchen aid, I highly recommend it. Don't go accessory shopping right after you get it like Drew and I did, it's highly depre-nsive (ie expensive therefore depressing). There's an ice cream maker attachment for a batrillion dollars. Need I say more? Don't ask me what ice cream is worth to me Retail Gods, you can't put a price on pure joy!

Really, flashy tools aside there are only three things that need to be in the kitchen with you at all times while you bake this holiday season.

They are:

1. Obnoxious music

2. Santa

3. Your 5 year old self

You see, recipes will have you believe that their "recommendations" in the form of "measurements" are holy laws written by the flying spaghetti monster on sacred tablets with raw lightning. This is not true. They are instead written by and edited again by the most uptight people you know. The ones who ask for a "sliver" of cake, break your cookies into bites smaller than the chocolate chips themselves and correct your grammar without smiling.

Are these the people you want to make Holiday treats for? I didn't think so. You want to feed SANTA and his belly that jiggles like a bowl full of jelly.

So, crank up that obnoxious music to encourage deviant behaviour and plant Santa on one side and 5 year old you on the other. These are your trusted advisors.

For example: There is no such thing as a "pinch" of anything, and definitely not cinnamon. COMMIT TO THE CINNAMON. Santa loves cinnamon and 5 year old you likes watching inertia huff avalanche like bombs of cinnamon onto your spoon and into your bowl as you try to measure with the exactness of a NASA scientist.

NASA scientists also like cinnamon.

Sometimes in your haste and enthusiasm to compile the ingredients for your latest venture you may find you have accidentally procured the incorrect ingredient. Fear not.

Today, for example, I bought a pound of shredded carrots for Martha Stewart's "Carrot Cake Cupcake" recipe.

As an aside, Martha Stewart recipes are like the sphinx of baking. You must answer their riddles three and pass all their tests to succeed. They will use words like "unsulfured molasses" making you think to yourself "Wait, there's sulfur in molasses?" and "sage leaves cut chiffonade" with a nice bracketed (optional) next to it to acknowledge with cutting precision what a rank amateur you are at life (if you're me they also lead to adventures at the grocery store, the place that used to be your friend, but since "chiffonade" is a cold, dark place where people think you are insane) These recipes also call for more bowls than most people own, to test your true commitment to the sport of baking. So load up on dollar store bowls and make sure your inner rebel is pumped and primed for the baking olympics when you pick up her books. And imagine how EXTRA satisfying it is to slightly alter Martha Stewart's recipes. You're imaging it aren't you? Excellent.

Back to the shredded carrots.

I got home to realize I had instead bought two bags of "french cut" carrots. I worried this style of cutting was too bulky for the unspeakably tasty delicacies I was preparing to create. I considered trying to slice french cut carrots even finer than they already were one-by-one with a kitchen knife and found this idea filled me with apathy and despair. Then I remembered Drew's magic bullet. I turned to Santa, who now sported sunglasses and was perched on a Harley as he pointed to Drew's magic bullet and proclaimed, "Let's do this."

5 year old me, excited by watching things blended to a pulp, ground her fist into her other hand for encouragement.

So I half pureed, half left them french cut and continued on my epic quest for delicious freedom. (currently finishing up in the oven after making 2 and a half dozen cupcakes and a loaf)

Why should you defy recipes even if it's in the smallest way? Because. Now that you are grown up and you've had the joy of realizing no one really has any idea what they're doing you spend your time divided between clinging to the false comfort of exact rules and having moments where your life is a grand musical and you are getting on the next train to adventure (the next train to adventure might be little more than changing an excel formula at your desk, watching it work and being flooded with a sense of omnipotent power, this is perfectly ok.)

Baking is one of the times you should remember that you have something new to bring to the game and you are unafraid to try. And being a grown up should be about making it up as you go, in the best possible way. With cinnamon. And Santa. And 5 year old you high-fiving your efforts. And the soundtrack the most obnoxious music you've ever liked.

For me it includes defeating Martha Stewart with subtle defiance, but you go ahead and find your special thing.

The End.

Photos

I promised these so long ago I'm ashamed.

engagement shoot photos--> Toronto Musical Gardens

wedding photos ---> King Edward Hotel

All credit to the fabulous Calla Evans and her lovely assistant Rachael! :)

Married!

So I did it! So much to say, photos to post, stories to tell I'm overwhelmed.

I'm actually debating trying my hand at a cartoon series of best and craziest moments.

Then I need to cartoon the honeymoon, and getting to the cartoon (aka worst travel experience ever)

Also to come: Pro and Con lists for major decisions, like changing my name. Possibly a series from this titled "Nat vs. Ontario Gov't"

Bottom line, my love for Drew, writing and writing about being married to Drew will no doubt explode into some kind of blog series.

xo, the Garsides.