3 incredibly awkward momnents.

1. Running into your ex-girlfriend to find out she is hanging out with your Brother now, and she lost an eyelid.
2. Getting up to give a presentation and realizing not only is your fly down, but you are wearing two different shoes and your Powerpoint Presentation is an older draft, where instead of using your company's name you use the term "Idiots"
3. Sitting in someone's office when you find out that their Grandmother died.

Only two more to check off the list and I will have the trifecta.

Why are all control rooms in Submarine's dark?

Trick or Treat
Smell my Feet
Give me something Good to Eat

If you don't
I won't Care
I'll pull down your Underwear

Or in my case today

Trick or Treat
Stare at Spreadsheets
never a break from my seat

It's okay
I don't care
Staff meeting was cancelled and out of my hair

I realize that it is probably for mopping purposes but is there any other obvious reason I am missing as to why bars and restaurants put their chairs up each night?

Daylight savings time sucks. Sorry for the harsh language.

IS there anything more telling then when someone comes up with a really clever halloween costume, but then is overly proud about it. Saturday night I saw the movie Cocaine Cowboys. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a documentary about how drugs really built Miami into the city it is today. It included a lot of archival footage, a lot of explanations about how it was done, and really some spot on interviews. It ran a notch long, but otherwise great film, and best of all the soundtrack was done by Jan Hammer who was the music guy for Miami Vice.

Anyhow on the bus on the way home, there were two guys dressed up as the Super Mario brothers. The costumes were clever and pretty sharp, but in the end they were way to proud, bordering on hubris about the whole thing, and it showed that they probably had been thinking about these costumes since last year's party when they came as the two kids from Boy Meets World and bombed.

Tonight I will be dressed as Mike Vrabel from the New England Patriots as hopefully they win in Monday night.

Friday I was interviewing college seniors for jobs at the Corporation for after they graduate. One of the people had been in a foreign army as an officer and commanded 15 people. As she told stories I wanted to say, "the last time I had ordered 15 people to do something and they listened I had a to start with 'Simon says'"

Francis Scott Key, by the way, only wrote the lyrics, not the music. He was Taupin and David, to John Stafford Smith's Elton John and Burt Bacharach.

Can you believe the news that in the past the Amazon River flowed backwards?

Just think about that for one second, the largest River (not the longest, the longest is just a river in Egypt) once went in the other direction. Think about the consequences of such a finding. Absolutely nothing. That's right. I don't care. What it does prove is something I realized long ago 99% of things that scientists do, is like 99% of the work that I do, meaningless.

I once wanted to be a scientist, but I never could spell the word hypothesis right.

My 10 favorite Halloween Costumes of All time (In my life)

1. Age 2 - Francis Scott Key
2. Age 4 - A Kenyan Marathoner
3. Age 7 - Arlen Specter
4. Age 10 - Sexy Nurse
5. Age 12 - Putty you use to tack posters to your Dorm room wall
6. Age 15 - Jamacian Elvis
7. Age 19 - Skipped it that year because I was in the Hospital
8. Age 23 - The Noid
9 . Age 27 - Apathy
10. Age 28 - Craig's List

TomKat has set a wedding date, in other news I have passed the one billion mark of things that I have heard that I don't care about. Number 999,999,999 were design specs for a new database I got an hour ago. Number 234 which took place in May of 1977 was "You know who the cutest baby in the world is, you are" as spoken by my Mother's friend.

5 Wonderful Names for Whalewatching Tourboats

1. Moby Ship
2. The Lose Your Lunch
3. The 35 dollars can make you miserable and bored at the same time
4. The No, those pretentious kids will never shut up.
5. The Stop it with the Sperm Puns Already!

9 Half-Thoughts from a Very Busy Monday

1. If you see a woman on a hot day running in pants or working out at the gym in pants, I think that means she didn't shave her legs.
2. To me, who has no style, there is no bigger style suicide then wearing a shirt from one athletic clothing manufacturer and a hat from another. For example if you see someone with a Puma shirt and a Nike Hat. Pick a sponsor buddy.
3. Why is it that the Peanut butter in a Reece's product tastes so much better than Jif?
4. Is anybody watching the World Series?
5. How dissapointed is the kid who got adopted by Madonna? Eventually at all these prestigious Montessori schools in London and LA there will be kids who make fun of each other based on how big a celebrity they were adopted by.
6. The end of this sentence will contain a fuzzy egg.
7. The Norse Gods did not believe in 19.
8. If when you wash your whites you tie two socks together, you improve you double your odds of winning the lottery, you however will be frustrated with yourself when you untie it.
9. 14 People will be born today, who eventually will read Mody Dick in its entirety

I think it's great that there is now a word, "Conversate", meaning to engage in a conversation with someone. I really don't think it is a word, but I keep hearing people use it as such. Granted I am horrible at spelling, mixing tenses, and punctuation, but how would anyone ever think that is a word.

I just reread the paragraph I typed and I feel 86 years old.

In other news, another dude got stung in the heart. If I was working in Morning Radio this morning I would be writing lyrics to Bon Jovi's, "You give Love a Bad Name"... "You got attacked by a Sting Ray...

Why does it seem like 30 is a much older age than 31?

So already today I have offended librarians. But it was nice because I got to know a little bit about the demographic of the readers of the Lake.

I am going to try and flush out the rest of you by saying some other negative things and hopefully you will get upset enough to give up your profession.

1. People who write copy for travel brochures have bad manners
2. If you are a product designer for binoculars you are the product of bad genes.
3. If you are a postal clerk in New Mexico, get a life
4. If you are an Eskimo Firefighter from Palm Beach, your hose blows.
5. If you Tivo the weather channel so that when you wake up in the morning you can immediately tell the weather, your Mother wears combat boots
6. If you teach Linear Algebra at a small college in Rhode Island and gave me the only D of my life in 1995, well I have finally gotten over that.
7. If you make more than one reference to Teen Wolf a day, have an awful day in an awful way
8. If you have a brother that blogs, then you are okay.

You are a celebrity. Let's say you are the kind of person who is often second banana in films. In a romantic comedy you are the guy or girl leaves to be with the one they really love. In a buddy film you are the one who dies causing the hero to overcome the enemy with inspirted heroism. If you wanted to be on TV you could definitely get a show without breathing hard. You get who you are. You are going to an Awards show. You are nominated for an award, It was probably the performance of your life, but if you are being completely honest with yourself, you realize you nomination is helped along by it being in a pretty weak category where there is an obvious winner. Here is the question: Do you write an acceptence speech and why?

trigger said...
I'm one of your 6 faithful readers and I'm a librarian. Scary, huh?
9:52 AM

With respect to Walt Whitman's "O Captain My Captain"

Librarian! Librarian! My book is overdue
The stamp in the back’s date has passed, late fees did accrue
The end was near, the resolution was clear, characters were changing
But five more chapters to reveal, left pages of explaining
But O Time! Time! Time
O the bleeding hands of Time
For behind that Desk, Librarians Wait
Full of Scold and dread

Librarian! Librarian! Please cut me some Slack.
I whisper in my lowest voice and put periodicals in the rack
For I am not the jerk with soda or the internet creep
I used the Dewey Decimal System and never fall asleep
Librarian! Dear friend.
Let me return my book
And when I borrow just, say “Thanks”
Without Scold and Dread

Librarian, does not answer, the face is mean and raw
Gives no break, doesn't contemplate, He enforces his law
The crummy ending that took extra days is finally closed and done
And my penalty ends up leaving me 3 bucks less than begun
Exult old books and sing old friends
But I with sunken head
Walk away from the Librarian’s eyes
Full of Scold and Dread

Librarians much like Police officers, Principals, Biology Teachers and Suit Salesmen are very nice people except when they are at work.

Thirteen Good Names for a Pet Walrus

1. Wally
2. Walter
3. Wilma
4. Warren
5. Willie
6. Winnie
7. Wendy
8. Will
9. Wayne
10. Ward
11. Wade
12. Warner
13. Russ

5 Scary things

1. Sharp Knives
2. Monsters
3. Surgery
4. People who raise ponies
5. Librarians

If you ever want to feel really futile about our existence, read the stories of O. Henry or Guy de Maupassant. I just read the Coming out of Maggie by O. Henry on my lunch break. There is something timeless in their writing.

The Reflections from the Lake Guide to Making a PowerPoint Presentation at Work

1. Remember the point of making the presentation is to make yourself look smart, not to communicate thoughts and ideas to the audience
2. If you are going to add a joke, make sure that it is appropriate. Topics such as Sex, Religion, Babboon Butts and Wizards should be avoided 96% of the time, safe topics include Mondays, how you traveled to the presentation and Hilary Clinton.
3. Each slide should contain as many words as the font will allow. Bullet points actually synthesize information into easy remember nuggets for your audience, you are much better off with whole paragraphs of text.
4. If you actually decide to use a flowchart (which are really hard to create) the minimum suggested number of points is 60. All that clutter will make you seem really smart and intimidate people from asking questions.
5. Once per slide name drop someone. Often people will make the mistake of only name dropping senior executives or so called Harvard Business School experts, the real master will throw in a made up name to appear to be even more important. One piece of advice make the name very tough to spell or very common so if some 22 year old whipper snapper Googles the name he comes up blank. (E.g. "As the visionary Swedish Industrialist Sven Sborgmosk said...:)
6. Whenever you are asked a question, before responding say "Good Question"

Some morning Numbers...

11 Minutes until the Staff Meeting.
300,000,001 people in America
2 Rejection Post Cards from Who Want's to Be a Millionaire last night.

My wife said it was because they knew I would win. Somehow the kind words felt more like a third postcard than the kindness she intended.

That's okay my trivia is better suited for Bar Trivia contests or being really annoying when someone confuses Robert Wagner with Robert Urich.

6 Irish Pubs You definitely want to stay away from:

1. The Wounded Dove
2. The Blighted Tree
3. The Rowdy Cougar
4. The Heated Argument
5. The Post-apocalyptic Dublin Inn
6. Jimmy "Yes I have a Toothache" O'Shea's

I wouldn't be so bold to say that when you get a Blackberry you immediately become an A-hole, but if you are an A-hole and then a Blackberry lets you be an A-hole to a higher degree of difficulty.

To my six faithful readers: Who the bell tolls it tolls for thee. I am back and with a wordiness that can only be matched with Nunchucks and hand bells.

5 People who I don't understand

1. People who own more than one Crossbow, but don't own a Crossbow museum
2. People who wear flipflops and mittens (Do you really have much temp discrepancy in your extremities)
3. Anyone who Tivo's Home Shopping
4. People who spend more on Window Treatments than Windows
5. People who consistently Google themselves

3 People I do understand
1. People who don't drink coffee
2. People who put together coherent thoughts communicating valuable information
3. The clerk at CVS who is large and looks a bit intimidating but actually is always friendly.

I am in another office today. Excitement. Anyhow, I just used the Men's Room. I tried to take a picture of it but my cameraphone doesn't perform well under the darkness of a Men's room. There are the 6 rules about using the Men's room posted in 8 different places.

1. Paper towels do not go in the toilet they go in the trash bin. Putting it in the toilet stops them up.
2. Please flush.
3. If the sink is leaking please speak to security don't just return to your desk.
4. Please lock you door when using the stall
5. Please do not print out articles from the internet and leave them on the ground.
6. Please wash your hands.

What are the chances if you make a sign like this that you are a good manager?

Back at work.... YIPPPEEE!!!

Today is the big day. I am sitting here waiting to go to lunch with the Groomsmen, while watching an infomercial on Colon Cleansing (Luckily no pictures). It is called the the almighty cleanse. The person who is the "expert" calls himself an Evangelical Health Missionary. My mind is too focused on the wedding to come up with the set-up but the punchline is something along the lines of but the ironic part is the he is full of crap.

Interesting that my excitement is manistfesting itself in a blog about poop.

Talk to you next week.

This morning in the the staff meeting they had bagels and cupcakes for my pending marriage. IT was nice. I still had to give an update.

When I started the lake, my intentions were to try to capture universal thoughts, ideas or ramblings that come from my head. I intentionally ignored the personal. Too many blogs become 16 year old girl's diaries, not that mine isn't but I didn't want to aim for that. Anyway, I feel as faithful readers I should warn you, because blogging will probably be light this week and next, that I am getting married on Saturday.... Now when I look into the Lake I will see two faces.... So bear with the light blogging as I prepare for a night of toasts, tuxes, terrifficness and tremendousness (I love alliteration).