Where's Florida?

Oh the case of the Mondays... all anyone wants to do is curl up in bed for the rest of the day. 

Today in the office we are having issues with our faxes not going through to the National Marine Fisheries Service office located in Florida. I think all of their phones are down or something because all numbers we have called are dead. After about 15 minutes of muttering and trying to make phone calls Dale just exclaims: 

"I think Florida might have fallen into the ocean!" 

And we just accepted that as a reasonable explanation for uncooperative phone numbers and went on with our day.

Expert Advice

Absolutely NOTHING going on in the office today. As I am enthralled with a texting conversation with my mom I'm also listening to Dale think out loud in the background. I finally put my phone down and started listening in. This is what I caught:

"It's really bad when you answer yourself instead of just talking to yourself. Well... sometimes you just need expert advice..." 

Haha, I thought that was pretty good.

Hardly Working

Today is such a slowww day in the office. The busiest time is always the first week of the month, so things really calm down towards the end. This combined with our building's constant struggle with AC problems (translation: it's freaking hot in here) makes for rather comatose workers.
Dale and I have been sitting around (trying to be productive) and we both had cheese and crackers for lunch.

Whoever invented individual gourmet cheese wedges is a genius. The nearly silent monotony of mouse clicking was broken by Dale's quote of the day:

"Bleaghh I shouldn't have eaten so many crackers. But I did, AND I'M PROUD OF IT!"

And then back to silent clicking. I could take a nap if I had a neck pillow.

Office Moving Day!

We finally moved out of our office at the Coastal Bend Business Innovation Center (CBBIC from now on) and, contrary to popular belief, we didn't end up moving across the city. Instead, we opted to move ONE FLOOR down, into what Dale calls "The Serpentarium". For an exhibit-inspired floor, it aint half bad. See below: 

We have a "stress relief" area. Highly underused, but still nice.

Communal Putt-putt for anyone that actually has free time

And best of all... I got the biggest office on the floor! This actually used to belong to the building director.
*proceeds to feel important*

For some quirky architectural reason, my office has a balcony overlooking the first floor. I kinda love it. 

Today was a hard day of moving tons and tons of files and rearranging furniture, and we aren't even halfway done yet. I'd like to record some of the best quotes of the day: 

Director: That nice furniture is going to cost a little extra, just so you know.
Dale: That's alright, it's just money! And its not even my money!
Director: This is why it's great to do business with you. 

Michael: How's the temperature for ya?
Damaris: It's warm, but there's a nice breeze when I open this door.
Michael: Man, this building. They can fly drones to outer space, but they can't fix the AC. 

(After moving ginormous filing cabinets with much difficulty)
Michael: Well, at least gravity was in our favor. 

(When Michael saw me sitting under my desk hopelessly staring at a mess of wires)
Michael: Hey, Damaris, it might be a lot easier to use the computer if you were sitting on a chair, not on the floor.
Damaris: Thanks for the tip. 

Happy Birthday To Me

Of all the birthdays I've ever had, this year's was probably the least exciting one for one reason only: my brother left at 6am the next morning. On January 21 at around midnight I began receiving the usual deluge of "Happy Birthdays" from all kinds of wonderful people and automated emails, but I felt anything but happy. If anyone of you well-wishers is reading this today, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your friendship and love, and I regret not being appreciative of you that day. It is only now, 3 days later, that I have taken the first baby step in the 'healing process' of saying goodbye to Chris. I ate a slice of birthday cake my mom bought for me (first bite to eat in about 48 hours), I finished reading a book, I went to ATT go get Philip a new phone, and I deleted all the games Chris used to play on my phone, and I went shopping for a journal. 

Things are getting better! This morning I walked into my office and did two things before turning on my computer: 1) turned on a space heater by my feet and 2) made some very hot herbal tea. About 2 minutes after my de-thawing process had begun Dale walked in carrying a huge candle and a paper bag with an equally huge cinnamon bun. Here's the pic. 

Why does that look like such a forced smile? Because I COULDN'T FEEL MY FACE! And maybe because the hot wax burned my fingers and I destroyed my cinnamon bun trying to get it out of the bag, but I actually laughed a genuine laugh this morning. That's an achievement. Dale is such a great guy, he's brought me cinnamon buns multiple times and tells me funny stories to lighten the mood almost every day. Yay sugar for breakfast! 

Just A Little Positivity

Do you remember those horrible high school days where your hormones decided to lavishly decorate your face with zits and blackheads and anything in between and life just sucked because wearing full faced masks just wasn't a thing? Well... I grew out of that stage, and thanks to a careful regimen of apricot scrub and oil-free moisturizer my skin looks almost normal every day. Except today. TODAY my face decided it wanted to go be an acne-prone teenager again. TODAY my dog decided to hide my contacts case so I have to wear my glasses. TODAY the unusually clear, dry weather decided to go back to heavy humidity. TODAY is one day I really didn't want to show my face at work because my boss is conducting interviews. I sat in my car this morning for 10 minutes longer than necessary and wished I could be invisible. Or better; have perfect skin.
So what ended up happening is that I walked into the office and all the lights were turned off for no good reason. (we have huge windows and monitors, so visibility isn't a problem) Basically just the fact that nobody's bothered to hit the light switch and everything has a slightly dimmer feel to it has made this day better because darker room = less noticeable blackheads across my heavily freckled nose. Way to be positive, Dam.

Video making

Packages come and go everyday in our office. Most of the time we just set them in our boss' office because its hunting equipment or some other random toy he found during his impulse Amazon shopping. Today though, I was accompanied up the elevator by a FedEx man with a dolly full of boxes meant for Great Sage (yeah, that's us). He dropped them off on our conference table (pictured) and I happily ignored them and went back to reducing PDF files.

A few minutes later our boss arrived and started tearing them open, and like anything else I ignored it and kept on staring blankly at my monitor. After some fiddling with the equipment he walked up to me, handed me a white umbrella, and said "Hey can you put this together for me? I'm not even going to tell you what it is, other than this white umbrella, you'll figure it out." 

Well... as it turns out... he purchased a green screen. Remember a few "Deal with Dale" posts ago where he sarcastically made a YouTube video advertising a Vessel Monitoring System? Well, it turns out that a real video needs to happen. Dale loves making videos using a green screen, so we think this was purchased simply for his benefit and amusement. 

Job Security

Today as I was casually perusing Pinterest and reducing PDF file sizes (both mind numbing exercises) Dale walked into the office and said "do whatever you gotta do to become a Notary Public by today." 

My reflexive response to any of these kinds of things is an "ok sure" and then frantically Google "how tos" to see how challenging the task actually is. In this case... not so much. 

So I should get my "notary stuff" in 10 to 14 business days, if all goes well. Steve said it's a feeling of empowerment having a stamp that has your name on it. I ordered mine with purple ink, I hope they don't mind. Hmm... does this give me the potential to get paid for signing stuff? 

Office Talk

Today Steve and Dale were talking about how they finish a whole tub of ice cream in one sitting, and then asked if my husband did anything like that. I responded with "I think he's smart enough not to do that when I'm in the house." After thinking about it a few more seconds I said "well, he'll do this thing where he'll finish an entire box of Cheez-Its in one sitting and won't leave any for me."
Both Steve and Dale chuckled with familiarity, and then they went off on how great Cheez-Its are. Here are a few quotes:

• "Walmart has the two pound package, that's where I buy em. HEB only has the one pound."
• "I used to end up with a pile of crumbs on my chest from eating a whole box during a movie. Just took the vacuum hose and sucked them all off before standing up."
• "And Cheez-Its are great, you get all your basic food groups! You get the cheese, you get the "its"..."
• "... you get the red, you get the yellow, you get the crunchy.... that's all you really need."

Oh men. I was warned that in 30 years I'd come home to my husband eating out of the tub of ice cream sitting in his underwear watching TV. Is it bad that I can already picture this? 

President Pickles

I work at an Innovation Center where people with new and innovative businesses ideas can join and get help with pretty much anything they need to get their companies started. We partner with the University and pretty much use grad students to do all the leg-work (this is how I found my job). Our company has officially "Graduated" from this program and now we have to move out of the building before the end of the year, so we've been frantically trying to find a new location.
Today while Johnette and I were focused on our jobs trying to get things done, Dale walked in with a very important announcement. He said "I have some news that will benefit You and You (pointing at each of us). As of September 1, 2013 it is officially legal to sell up to $50,000 worth of pickles (this is the part where we stopped taking him seriously and looked back at our computer screens) out of a house or garage and not have to pay taxes on them. This is a "new and innovative" idea that can help us stay another 3 years in this building if we want to."
This proclamation was followed with general laughter and then a quick dismissal. This is the most common reaction we all have to the Dale's news of the day. I have to say... if he was serious about selling his homemade pickles I'd totally be down for it, they're awesome. But as for now, I must focus on finding this company a new place to live before we're evicted :(

The Bucket of Rocks

So this is the sort of thing I get stuck with doing at work. My boss went to Alaska for 2 weeks and he came back on Sunday, but didn't let anybody know, and now he's off on another road trip. Today I get an email saying "I left a bucket of rocks at the hotel front desk in Seattle, it weighs about 50 lbs, can you get those to my house?"
Sure thing... that's what I'm here for... lets add Rock Private Detective to my resume.