New York EasyDates

I get to work this morning and immediately delete my 3 emails from New York EasyDates instructing me to select my matches from speed dating last night. Yep, I went speed dating. Walking into the bar where the event was held I was completely nervous. The nervousness only intensified when I began taking inventory of my arriving future daters. I don't want to date these guys! My friends and I took a shot and got some beers, walked upstairs to the hostess and retrieved our name tags. Surveying the other names among my Jamie D tag were names like Tara, Kerry, Gaby on the girls' side and Ilya, Rishikesh, Amjad on the guys' side. Crap, I can't even pronounce these names.

Each girl had either a table, a portion of the bar, or a section of a bench and the guys rotated around the room every three minutes. Now, I realize that three minutes is NOT a lot of time to talk to someone, but there were definitely times where my three minute dates felt like three torturous hours. In a few instances I wanted to scream out "NEXT!" or ditch my date to get another drink. I sat on my bench and partook in some of the worst conversations I've ever had.

All the daters asked the same questions. "Where are you from? What do you do? What do you do for fun?" This got really old really fast as I was saying the same things over and over again "I'm from Seattle, Washington. I work for an investment bank. I like to explore New York and try new things." I was a broken record so I started to spice it up with "Have you ever had braces? What's your most embarrassing moment? What's your favorite kind of dog?" This made it a little more fun for me, but still it was tiring to have these conversations over and over again maintaining enthusiasm and spunk.

A few cases were particularly bad:

Michael: acne-faced redhead carrying a backpack. His favorite things to do are eat and sleep. He likes Mexican food and he was a math major, of course. This is the visual. He was so incredibly awkward and would kind of sit there avoiding eye contact giving me simple one word answers and uncomfortable head nods. I checked the 'no' box for sure.

Rishikesh: dark skinned Middle Eastern looking guy. I asked him where he was from and he said Kansas City. Hmm.. not really what I meant.

Amjad: Pakistani dude and we spent most of the three minutes working out the phonetics of his name. He gave me an 8 out of 10 on my pronunciation. 'No' fo sho!

Other highlights included one guy telling me the details of his appendicitis and how much he vomited and insisted to his 'ma' that it wasn't just gas pains. Sounds like he lives with Ma. Definitely a no.

Another guy told me about how he got really drunk, puked in his friend's car then stripped off his shirt and ran home screaming "superman!" Nope.

One guy sat down and said right off the bat "go ahead and check the no box now. I can tell you're tall. I'm only 5'9". Tall women like tall men." You can imagine how much fun the rest of the 2 minutes and 45 seconds were. Self proclaimed no.

Someone else told me he was from New Hampshire and I started laughing and said I always wanted to go there as a kid because I loved hamsters and I would remember the state name on my geography test by nicknaming it New Hamster. Seriously... who says stuff like this to strangers? Me apparently. He must've checked no for that.

At the end of the night my little yes or no ballot sheet looked like this all the way down.

envelope hope

It’s Friday afternoon. Typically this is when I am hyper, giggly and bouncing off the walls due to the hour and a half separating me from weekendom! Today I sit silently in my cubicle with icicles for fingers searching for things to occupy my afternoon. My boss has been out sick since Wednesday and has not communicated more than 5 words with me. (note: he sent out an “I am sick” email on Wednesday, but neglected to include me on that and any other emails he sent to update “us”(—me excluded) on his whereabouts/health). This really pisses me off.

This is my boss who is anal retentive about email manners and technique. I surely will talk about this more on a later post. He has repeatedly reminded me to CC him on every single business related email I send. Being new to cubicle life, I often “forget” to include him, and sometimes don’t feel it’s necessary to flood his inbox with my novice questions. This makes him extremely frustrated. In fact, I am beginning to think this is his passive aggressive lash out, giving me a taste of my own medicine. This man has not said one thing to me about being sick. Word in the cube is he has pneumonia. Somehow my cubicle-mate knows all the details. Stupid suck up.

Because I am feeling an office version of middle child syndrome, I sent him this email:

I’m sorry to hear you’re sick with pneumonia. I hope you feel better soon!
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if there is anything you need me to take
care of here at the office.

Have a good and restful weekend.

That was really nice of me considering not one word has been said to me. Once I pushed the send button, I couldn’t help but obsessively keep checking for his bolded name to appear and the unopened yellow envelope to pop up! When will he reply? What will he say? Does he know I am feeling neglected? Why is this happening?? Almost 2 hours after I sent my I-slightly-care-about-you-and-am-reaching-out email, this appeared:

Can you please handle, thanks
Jim

This came with an attached form I needed to have signed an emailed. No acknowledgement of my kind thoughts and wishes. Rude. Talk about throwing email etiquette out the window.

Lisa Frank comeback in 2009?

With all the groundbreaking news headlines these days--recession obsession, Obama, Octa-Mom, a plane in the Hudson and Salmonella peanuts you'd think I would take serious interest in our current events. I like to think I do a pretty decent job with keeping up, but for some reason it is always the most random things that stick with me and make a lasting impression.

For example, while browsing the internet at work yesterday, the most interesting thing I came across was from cuteoverload.com A PINK DOLPHIN??!??!?!?! I mean, are you kidding me? This world has OFFICIALLY gone nuts!This is a dream come true for every girl who grew up in the '90s! The world of Lisa Frank has become reality!

Värnamo ho!

Once upon a Saturday afternoon, roommates Jamie and Laina ventured to the Brooklyn Ikea. They were on a couch hunt. They wandered through the maze of couches doing their comparison shopping Goldilocks-style: "this one is too hard, this one is too expensive, this one is juuuuust right!" The girls found a very plush, perfectly sized brownish-with-a-hint-of-purple couch for a very reasonable price. Jamie wrote down Värnamo and its location in the warehouse. The girls meandered through the course of Ikea and selected various other necessities--wineglasses, frames, a cantaloupe colored flower.

The girls finally made their way to aisle 18 bin 52 where the couch was located and come across nothing. Not one purpley-brown couch in sight. Feeling defeated and learning that the store will not receive another shipment until Tuesday, the girls hesitantly headed toward the cash registers. Instantly the other purchases seemed meaningless without having a couch in tow.

Laina chose a cash register line and Jamie followed. Suddenly the next thing Jamie saw was Laina jumping and grasping something in front of them.

"It's the couch! You took the last couch!!!" She exclaimed to the redhead in front of them.
"It was the last one? There were two when I saw it there." said the redhead as she draped her denim jacket over the couch, staking her claim.
"There weren't anymore..." Laina said sadly as she turned to face equally saddened Jamie.

"Bitch." Jamie whispered to Laina.
"Seriously, give us the couch" Laina and Jamie made some quiet banter back and forth.
"I'll buy you a Pinkberry if you give us the couch"
"Jame, we dilly dallied too long! We would have gotten one of them!"
"It's because we spent way too much time searching for that stupid lamp. UGH I am pissed!" Jamie said as she stomped her foot in the same bratty way she did as a kid.
"I think she's swiping her second credit card for it. The couch might be ours afterall!" Laina said as she gave the redhead a death stare.
"she looks like she's nervous, she's getting flushed. Just hand over the couch. Your credit card is declined!" Jamie said as she hoped for the credit card to decline.

After the redheaded couch taker left with the couch, Jamie was rung up at the register. "Those girls took the last couch and we wanted it and now we want to hurt them!" Laina told the Ikea cashier who laughed.

..."Did you see a sticker for this? Or remember how much it was?" Asked the Ikea cashier as she searched the cantaloupe hued faux flower.
"No, I have no idea." Jamie said annoyed.
"hmmm..."
"Damn it Laina! You chose a flower with no tag! This is the worst Ikea experience ever! Forget the flower." Jamie whined with another stomp of the foot.
"Well, why don't I ring everything up, put it all on hold and then you can run back and get another flower and then you can cut the line and come pay for it all." The cashier offered.
"Ok."

Jamie headed back through the warehouse where she instantly laid eyes on THE couch!! Something snapped inside of her and she tried to call Laina. No answer. She sprinted back through the maze of customers and yelled while flailing all limbs "LAINA THERE IS AN ABANDONED COooOOuuUCH OVER THEeEeRREeeEeEEeEE!!!"

"GO GET IT!" Laina and the cashier exclaimed in unison.

Without another word Jamie was filled with a surge of adrenaline and weaved back through the sea of customers to stake claim on the unclaimed sofa. After slyly scanning the area, Jamie slowly began pushing the couch in the direction of the registers, waiting for someone to protest her couch theft. Nothing happened. Jamie successfully pushed the couch all the way to the front of the line where the cashier's smile was just as big as Laina's and she was motioning to cut to the front of the line.

Being a smarty pants, Laina had to ask "aren't you glad now that I chose a flower with no tag?"
Jamie gave her a dirty look completed with an eye roll.

"Does this make it your best Ikea experience ever?" Asked the cashier.
"Yes! I am so excited right now!" Jamie grinned. Her bratty mood completely vanished.
"So no flower I take it?"
"Yeah no flower. Over it."

The two girls had never been happier. They got in line for home delivery, filled out the paperwork and were again united with the redhead from before.

"So what couch did you end up getting?" Asked Red.
"Same one as you." Laina stated proudly.
"ohh... I hope its not the one I saw with the big scratch on it" Said bitchy Red.

"yeah whatever, redheaded ho-bag. Why do you have to be such a bitch?" Jamie and Laina again had a whispering bashing session.
"How about you fix your ponytail?!"
"How about you don't wear two shades of kelly green that clash?!"
"and that scarf"

The couch was delivered the SAME DAY scratch free! Stupid redheaded biznatch. Hers better be scratched.