"Qi" on This, Stupid Internet

I woke up this morning to a bedroom in disarray. See, I have been painting my house in what I like to call a 'phased approach' (which really just means I am lazy and my attention span wanes before I can finish the whole thing properly, but whatever). Yesterday, it turns out, I needed to paint a wall in my family room, so I recruited some movers, and my entertainment center ended up in my sitting room.

Hence, the disarray.

So I am lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, when I think to myself, "oh man, I have GOT to get this room put back together...". I start chewing on what I am going to do with all of the extra furniture I suddenly have, where am I going to put it and la di da, when it hits me - perhaps I should think about rearranging the furniture in my bedroom.

And if you know me, you know that my bedroom is my sanctuary, my room for resplendent respite, the place I go to recharge and relax, and that I love it, just as it is (movie ref?). But whatever. I can always put it back, right? And then the brilliant idea hits me that I should go Google "Feng Shui", and get some ideas there.

And therein lies my problem, people.

WHAT THE HELL? Is the problem that this is a confusing concept, or that we "designer-y wanna be types" have flooded the internet with our diluted interpretations of real Chinese concepts? That must be it. We've ruined it, and I can't tell my head from my ass in terms of Feng Shui. What I can say, based on my 20 minutes of research, is that IN EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY OF MY BELOVED HOME, I am inviting ruin and sure destruction in. I am surprised I am still breathing. Or that a rat hasn't chewed off my arm because I have been lying with my head oriented to the North since I moved in.

Whew.

Here's what I have been chewing on since my research started -

• The element that rules my life, or my birth element, is WOOD. Hmm. I like wood. From a decorating perspective, I prefer it over metal, so that must be good. Or is it? Now I am panicking because I think I read that wood destroys metal or whatever, so maybe I am inviting the destructive forces of life into my home? Gah!
• According to my birth element and based on the time of my birth, my favored direction is East/SE. So I should orient my front door, the direction of my desk, or sleeping position this way. I am outta luck on the front door thing, and my bed would be under a window if I put my bed that way, which I seem to remember reading is essentially an open invitation to man eating zombies everywhere - "Please! Make an appetizer of my brains every night!" Hmm. So that's out, until I can get some expert advice on the subject.
• My Kua Number is either 7 or 5, depending on the website. Which means I should actually face my bed west. But doesn't that conflict with my favored direction? And furthermore, what do I do with my dresser and mirror? Since I currently have a mirror directly opposite my bed, my life has been doomed anyway - because evidently, my unconscious-self wrestles with itself in the mirror everynight, which in turn leads to less-than-restful sleep. No wonder I have perma-bags under my eyes.

So whatever. Until I find me a certified, all knowing Chinese practitioner, I think my qi is destined for despair.

And this saddens me.

*sigh*

Public Service Announcement

This is another urgent announcement from my Emergency Blogcast System.

Picture this:

You wake up in the morning and immediately have to jump into work. No time for a shower or proper coiffage. How do you properly wake up in order to arrive to your conference call all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? You wash your face, of course*!

BUT DANGER!

After completing said face wash-age,

DO NOT - I REPEAT - DO NOT MISTAKE THIS BEAUTY PRODUCT:

FOR THIS BEAUTY PRODUCT:

WHILST COMPLETING YOUR MORNING FACE WASHING ROUTINE**.

Thank you.


* Along with singing various scales and do-ray-me's in order to eradicate your satanic sounding morning voice, right? Oh. Perhaps that is something only I do.
** Unless you want to kill yourself with the fumes, and/or potentially melt your skin straight off of your face.

Random Randomness: Meeting Hell & Polyg's

I've decided it's time to create a category of scheduled posts that cover the random thoughts I have as I wander through my daily life (um, ok, probably they'll be random posts, because I'm lazy like that). Often, I will have a thought, think it would make for a GREAT post...and then the wind is knocked out of my sails because:

a) I am insane, and there are few people who can relate to my randomness, and
b) Most of the time, such thoughts are too lame to craft a full post out of.

My rationale for this is that from now on I'll have a built-in template in place that will facilitate my creative laziness.

So I declare: this is the inception of the "Random Randomness" post. (Pay no attention to my need for redundancy here.)

Random item #1:

Sometimes? Sometimes I get SO SICK OF CONFERENCE CALLS that I want to vomit all over the phone. And usually, that is exacerbated when working with one particular group in my world. Evidently, one of my colleagues feels the same way, because I received this IM from her while listening to them talk (and talk...and talk) ABOUT NOTHING:

slacktivism: The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.

So there you have it! I am a slacktivist. Woot woot! And also, I think I have found some new fodder for the WOD game.

Random item #2:

Y'all have most definitely heard all of the ruckus in Texas regarding the polygamists and their underage marriages. Probably I really could craft a full post out of this subject, but more urgently - I keep having this thought about the whole thing:

Has anyone else noticed that some of these women have

REALLY BIG, TALL hair? Observe:

There are at least 2 offenders here that I can see. Just sayin'. We can no longer say that the polyg's aren't stylin'. Turns out, they are finally pulling their wagon trains (and their eleventeen thousand children) into the 80's.

Oh! And also - they speak at "pixie" level volumes. Check it out - you'll see. I suppose - given my propensity to speak at unruly, mega horn worthy volumes - that something like this would only occur to me.

*end randomness*

Unconventional Restaurant Conversations

Right - so I didn't actually witness this firsthand - oh no. This special little ditty comes to us courtesy of my little sis. And normally, I would say you probably had to be there for this to be funny, but if you knew my dad, this would make you snort your beverage through your nose. Here's how I imagine it went down:

My Papa: "These are the best shrimp ever! You should try one of these - they are like little bundles of joy in my mouth."

*chewing ensues*

My Papa: "No really! These are the best shrimp I've ever eaten! They really are like little bundles of joy in my mouth."

*chewing ensues...time passes. Probably some satisfied grunting happened as well, although I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure*

*look of recognition dawns on his face*

My Papa: "Oh. Except for that sounds like I am talking about eating babies, not shrimp."

From My Friendly Neighborhood Electrician

So I have been slowly finishing my basement - and when I say slowly, I don't merely mean unhurried - the way things happen on a Monday morning when you have to go to work. I mean SLOWLY. I mean that it is happening at such a leisurely pace that I will surely be dead before it is really completed. Or old enough that I won't want to walk up and down the stairs anyway.

But whatever. Finish a tad here, a tad there, and - boom! One day, my house will be more than just a sardine can whenever there are more than 2 people here. And if by then my focus has changed, and I don't really want to open an underground, unlicensed bar/private club here (you know, so I can work from home instead of in corporate hell)...well, then I'll have time to shift gears and re-design. Perhaps I can turn it into an old-folks home by then.

The latest phase of my basement project has included getting bids from contractors...a task that has been relatively painless and surprisingly wallet friendly (ahem, especially given the fact that I plan to hire out all the hard stuff, and then con all the men in my family into indentured servitude in order to finish what's left).

I tell you this because I wanted to share the details of my latest bid with you...for your Friday reading pleasure. Because we could all use a good laugh on a Friday (or wait! Maybe you should wait til Monday to read this!). Whatever. See if you can figure out why I about peed myself when I received this today:

Seriously excellent biddage, Mr. Electric.

Happy weekend!

Trained Assassins

I have this new theory - work with me here, as it's a work in progress...which means this is pretty much a salad of random, unorganized thoughts - thrown into a big bowl, sprinkled with a smidgen of reason and several pinches of emotion, then tossed into a big goo of undefined nothingness. What more would you expect from me, right? I aim to please.

Ahem.

Here's my theory in a nutshell:

Women, by nature, are total workplace assassins.

You are probably thinking that surely, she jests! We all know I think the women of our time are pretty damn happenin'. Because, duh, we totally are. But I've also observed this...this "thing" - a behavior that we employ against each other that really sticks in my craw, and kind of undermines the whole "women's lib" deal. Since I always have to put a box around everything to make me feel better - allow me to elaborate. Or draw:

Figure 1: Female work colleagues at war over who does what, and how it should be done, and whether or not they might get credit for it in the end anyway. Note the skilled use of the bow and arrow whilst wearing heels, and the precision aim of the one wielding the gun. She shakes her fists in contempt as she screams, "Blah blah blah blah blah blah!!!"

But seriously. The theory.

As a group, we rant and rave about workplace equality - we insist we won't stand for anything less. We claw our way up the ladder just like men do, and we rejoice when we get ahead - even by a little bit, and even if it's not our sole goal in life to climb the corporate ladder - I mean, if that's not your goal, surely a little respect and recognition is needed on occasion, right?

Instead of supporting each other in our chosen workplace endeavors, we seem to pull out the figurative knives, the guns, and booby traps when one of our kind is having more success than we are...even if it is just a vague perception of success. Instead of patting each other on the back, we seem to take it as a personal affront when someone else is recognized and we aren't. We start to resent each other. We stop communicating certain things - it's almost as if we want to hold our cards close to the chest for fear that some other female colleague might catch wind of our plans and exploit them for her own advantage. Instead of helping each other to succeed, we launch office place grenades, and then try to see who is still standing once they've detonated and the damage can be assessed.

Sometimes, I think this behavior is unconscious, and perhaps tied to our personal psychological viewpoints and life experiences. For example, I've observed that some of us try to apply "rules" to our jobs - like work and the way it is done has an unbending status quo that must be adhered to at all times. On the flip side, there are those of us who are unable to fathom that there has to be a set of black and white rules that MUST be unbending, unchanging, and non-flexible.

When 2 or more of these specimens meet at work, all hell breaks loose.

We gang up on each other if we are a part of the "majority rules" group like wolves on the hunt - or like that whole "alliances" thing on Survivor. We sniff around for any weakness we can find and when conditions are right, we attack. Perhaps we hold back on a promotion recommendation...or we refuse to share information - our standard reply to a query might be something like "go read it/figure it out yourself!". We forget about tools like "constructive criticism" or "communication"; we might deliver messages with undertones of superiority or try to use humor to make snotty jabs.

Whatever the case, it's like there's this "threat meter" running in the background of our minds, and when someone doesn't follow our way of thinking, or gets kudos for something we don't think they deserved - we instantly go into sniper mode. We stop crediting each other for creativity, we don't allow for the fact that not everyone lives by the same set of rules; the same mantra, whatever.

For a prime example of this behavior, go here. As you see, I am a trained assassin myself.

Perhaps we hate feeling judged and found wanting. Or perhaps we help ourselves to a helping of "justified contemptuousness" to dull the pain.

Whatever the case, it is my considered opinion that we are our own worst enemies.





What say ye?