New office observations and duck lips...neither are good

First day in the new office!  Like how I gave it an exclamation point?  That's me, faking excitement. There are a few drawbacks to my new space.

1) There is a bathroom right next door and I can hear it flush and the hand dryer blow whenever it's used.  At least I haven't experienced any bad odors so I'll admit this could be worse.  I will take the long walk down the hall to use the public bathroom, thank you very much!  I passed the owner of the company coming back from that bathroom today...I'm not the only one that isn't fond of our new bathroom.  Plus it has a shower.  Really?  They think staff is going to shower right next to the reception area?  If they do, I hope they sing in the shower and entertain us all.

2)  I apparently don't move enough because my motion sensor lights turn off sometimes while I'm sitting there working.  I also get to experience my co-worker's office lights going on and off on a regular basis as they come and go.  It's a bit trippy!

3)  I have some new views worth mentioning.  First I'll mention what I had at the old office...large windows facing out to the street.  I could peep in at the neighbors across the way, watch the occasional red tailed hawk sit on the roof and just enjoy the sky.

Now I have a white wall to look at if I look away from my computer.  There's a LOT of white in the new office.  A LOT!

OR I can look out my door, into my new boss's office.  She doesn't like me.  Last time she was in town I think she said "hi" to me once. I think.  Maybe I imagined she did to make myself feel better.

The good thing is that she primarily works in TX so mostly it's just an empty office.  Bad thing, there will be no escaping her when she's here.  NO privacy at all!  She can give me the hairy eyeball all she wants and short of ducking under my desk there will be no escape! 

4)  I'm not seeing any places to put any family pictures.  Yet.

5)  It's a VERY sterile environment.  Today I noticed that my papers blended into the white desktop.  Like camouflage.  Never thought about white desktops but I have to say, now that I've had a smidgen of experience, I'm against them!  They also show every speck of dirt!  My mechanical pencil lead snapped off and landed on the desk.  I swept my hand over it to scoop it into the garbage and it left a nice gray smear.  I haven't bothered to run to the cleaning closet yet.  I think I'll live with it for a while.  Savor this gray smear on my white desk top.  It's like art according to the Walker Art Museum. It could actually go into the Walker Art Museum!  Last time I went there I realized I could take a crap in the corner and they'd probably fence it off and call it art.  I'm not a fan of the Walker because they put freeze dried dogs in the corner and rub rubber off tires (stinks!) and call it art.  I find that flatly insulting.  I've seen ART and that ain't ART.  It's crap! 

Now for my entertainment segment!  I'm going to post some pictures I took of myself this past weekend.  I'd decided it was time to update my profile picture on facebook so was taking some lovely self portraits.  NOT!  Actually, when I do this I take a bunch of pictures hoping I won't hate a few.  Most of them looked like crap.  I tend to get obnoxious in the process because when you look at bad picture after bad picture you (I) finally decide to embrace it.  So I tried to do duck lips.

This is my first try.  I think it's safe to say I don't know how to make a "sexy" pucker. 

 

I thought I'd try to suck in my cheeks like a model.  (I saw this technique on Zoolander.) This did NOT help!

I figured I'd try pooching out the upper lip.  Isn't this what the teeny boppers/20-somethings do?  Why is it so hard to make this look even marginally decent??  I look like someone punched me...or I don't know what.  It's just not good.  It's stupid.

After the dismal upper lip failure I tried pooching out both lips.  I looked like a guppy.  Or a younger, slightly more feminine version of Mick Jagger.  Or Goldie Hawn on First Wives Club after she had her lips done.  Basically, I looked stupid.  I don't know how to do duck lips.  I'm against duck lips because most people look stupid with them but I have learned that I look even more stupid doing it than most!  I'm still not going to admire those who can make them look sort of ok.  It's stupid looking.  I have proof.  Look at this picture!  IT'S STUPID LOOKING!!

I was really bored this weekend.  Not bored enough to be terribly motivated but bored enough to take duck lip pictures of myself.  In fact, I savored the boredom!  I rolled around in it like a dog rolls in garbage! 

Well, this was an interlude.  Time to brace myself to go back to my white, white office tomorrow.  Or just try to forget for a few hours and enjoy having some color around me.  I'm tempted to bring in some magic markers and do a little artwork on the wall to break the monotony. 

It's quiet tonight

My life is quiet
I sit, staring at the computer, waiting for something to change
Nothing does
I felt stabbed with fear yesterday
I wished you were here with me
Telling me everything will be ok

My life is soft
I roll thru my days, sometimes barely noticing
Everything stays the same
Then a sudden change and I worry
I find my core and get steady again
In the end, it doesn't matter
Let it go

I'm surrounded by people I barely know
Who barely know me
I feel like I'm watching a movie of myself
Staring out the window, waiting to be buried in minutiae
Not what I expected
I should have dreamt of more

I'm surrounded by people I love
Who love me
I feel more myself, full of joy and laughter
Then I'm alone again, life becomes quiet
A pause

I listen to the furnace blow
I hear the click of the keys as I type
The monitor looks back at me
I enjoy the quiet and let go of my worries
It's peaceful
Not ready to let go of it yet
 

Women in Combat

Decision to allow women in combat roles raises questions about draft

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/24/decision-to-allow-women-in-combat-roles-raises-questions-about-draft/#ixzz2Iv6s20fN

This is a tricky subject for me.

I never went into the military because I got knocked up fairly promptly out of high school and ended up in Mommy boot camp.

My brother joined the USAF and I think I would have enjoyed the military if I had joined.  I don't know if I would have because I was floating aimlessly after high school and didn't come down to having anything resembling a life plan until I became pregnant.  But for the sake of this article I'm going to imagine that I would have potentially joined the military.

I was a tomboy.  I played with dolls, don't get me wrong, but I was not a girlie type of girl by any stretch. 

When I was a teen I arm wrestled in competitions to make some extra $, lifting weights and practicing on young men to improve my speed and strategies.  I often beat those men because I was strong and fast.  They thought it was about brute strength.  It is, partially, but a good grip, length of arm and quick, hard pull at the start will usually do the trick.  I totally enjoyed beating them!  Ego trip!

I carried a knife for years.  At age 17 (I think) I threatened a man with loss of his balls during a visit to Minneapolis, because he was harassing me and my sister as we walked down the street.  I meant every word and he decided (wisely) to turn around and walk the fuck away.

I may be female, and I may be basically good natured but I have a hard, cold mean streak and a willingness to do violence.  I've run up against it a number of times in my life.  Let's just say that if anyone causes serious hurt to one of my loved ones, they had best hope the cops get him/her before I do.  I had an ex who thought it was a great idea to threaten to run off with my kid.  The courts wouldn't do anything so I decided to deal with it myself.  He doesn't know it but he's lucky that he finally decided to leave the state when he did.  So am I!  Saved me from doing prison time!

Mostly, now, I don't feel anything that extreme.  I simply don't let myself get into a rage and my life isn't full of drama.  Probably the last time I went into a true rage was a few years ago when some terrorists cut a reporter's head off and I happened to hear it on the radio.  I wish I hadn't heard that. If I had access to them for a period of time after that, I would have done terrible things to them without guilt because to this day I believe they gave up their right to breathe the air when they did that.  It would have been a slow, painful death.  And they'd have deserved every moment of it.  Honestly, I think I could do that to them even today.  I still feel very cold inside when I think of that incident.  Like it would be a necessary thing to do. 

That said, I think I could go into combat and do quite well!  I have some personality traits that would fit the job.  Would I be shitting bricks?  Hell yes!  I don't want to die, but you do what needs to be done even if it isn't easy.  Better to die like that than lying in an old folks home withering away.  At least it had purpose. 

That said, I don't think women should be put up for the draft.  Before you get your panties in a knot, I don't think all men should be put up for the draft either!  Not everyone is cut out to be a soldier and those who aren't can be a burden on those who are.  Or just bullet fodder.  I imagine some of the people I know in a battle scenario and it's laughable.  And pitiful.  Lots of crying, clinging and hiding would go on.  I cringe when I think of some people being put in a field, arming them and telling them to fight and kill people.

On the flip side, the men who think women will distract them need to get their heads out of their pants.  I mean really!  But sadly there is fact behind this concern.  When I came to Minneapolis years ago, my first job was doing accounting for a futon frame manufacturing company.  I was the only woman there when I started.  It was kind of lonely but the guys were nice to me and that helped.  They wouldn't hire women for the shop for a long time because they thought the men would be distracted and there were dangerous machines (saws and drills and nailguns and such).  They finally hired some to avoid lawsuits and guess what?  Some of my male co-workers couldn't pay attention to their work and got hurt on the tools!  I really hate that there is truth to this issue!  It isn't the women's fault.  Some men need to TRY to get their brains out of their dicks!  But they don't.  It's a dilemma. 

That said, equal rights can be a bitch ladies!  You can't have it both ways.  You want equal pay and equal rights, then you have to take the flip side of that and "man up". 

It is what it is.  It is only fair that women be subjected to the draft, just like men!  I don't like it but fair is fair.  Heaven help this country!