This Week At the Office

We got new nameplates! Is it sad that I found that exciting? I’m not sure why. I guess I like new things? They don’t even look that different from the old ones. However, the old ones didn’t stay on the cubicles very well… mine fell off ages ago.

That’s my name.

That is the new one. You can kinda see the holes on the wall underneath the window where my old one used to be. After it fell off, I put it on the little metal windowsill and basically taped it to the window.

The email we got said we could do whatever we wanted with our old nameplates. Keep it, throw it away, sell it on eBay, give to your mom, etc. I decided to keep mine. I have no idea what to do with it now.

That’s the old one. It’s about ten times thicker than the new one, but not thick enough that you could use it as a weapon. I mean, you could probably poke someone’s eye out with one of the corners, but ain’t nothing gonna happen if you try to hit them over the head with it.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with my old nameplate. I mean, nameplates exist so that if people are looking for your cubicle, they can find it, even if you’re not there. Maybe I should put it on my front door? Then everybody will know I live there! That sounds like a bad idea.

I also thought about putting it on my study door at home… you know, in case I forget my own name or how to spell it.

Maybe I’ll end up throwing it away, after all. But it will probably knock around my house for another couple of years first. I can’t throw stuff away until I’m really sure I’m never going to need it for anything.

In far more exciting office news, we also had cake this week! I failed to take a picture of the cake, so you’ll simply have to imagine it. It was a Costco cake and weighed nine pounds. It was a white cake with white frosting and some kinda white mousse in the middle. And it had a really cute rainbow with a sun and a cloud frosted on it. It was adorable! It was a co-worker’s birthday, so that’s why we had it.

If you’ve never had a Costco cake… you are missing out. They are enormous. I mean, it was a nine pound cake. Who doesn’t want nine pounds of cake? They’re also really good. And the frosting. Ahhh, that is heaven, my friends.

We also had a department lunch at Red Robin this week, which was especially nice because the Boss paid for it. Again I failed to take pictures, but this time it was because this happened before I decided to blog about office life. Though to be fair, I probably would’ve forgotten anyway, for the same reason I forgot about cake pictures. Which is that I was too busy eating. And being in heaven.

Basically, it’s been a pretty good week At The Office. I still have Friday, but nothing much usually happens on Friday. If I get surprised and something does happen, I’ll be sure to report on that. Since I know you are all super excited about my office life.

Coming Soon To A Blog Near You!

A post about audiobooks!

A post about desks and/or workspaces!

A post about more books probably!

And other random things, as usual!

Stay Tuned!

Typewriters & Things

So you may notice that I am using a new blogging platform. This is because the old one wouldn’t let me post blogs for about a century. I thought I fixed it today, so I wrote a big ole long post. And then it broke again. So I’ve given up on it and I’m starting over here, where hopefully everything will run smoothly. I GUESS WE’LL FIND OUT.

Fortunately, I thought to save that big ole post in a Google Doc before it was destroyed. Good job, past me! However, it was kind of long, so I’m going to start you all off with the first half of that blog today and then I’ll post the rest either later this evening or tomorrow or maybe next year if we’re going by my previous track record.

The first thing is that I finally bit the bullet and bought a typewriter off eBay. You see, for years I had my eye on several brightly colored hipsteresque typewriters that were being sold on Etsy, but because they were from Amsterdam, the shipping was horrendous. Plus the fact that they were charging nearly a hundred bucks for the typewriters themselves. Also, they were German style or something so they didn’t even have the right keys. Then I did the smart thing and actually Googled where to buy typewriters. While eBay runs the risk of getting you something that might not work so great, the options are far less expensive and usually closer to home (i.e. in the same country).

I looked at options for about two seconds before buying a 1965 Brother Webster.

 

webby

I call her Webby.

 

Of course, if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve already seen this picture. I bought a replacement ribbon for her, installed it pretty easily, and then went to town as I’m sure you can tell from that paper full of words.

I think her light blue color is perfect – it’s just hipster enough. (You know… because I’m totally a hipster. Right? Aren’t I?)

As it turns out, Webby is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t explain what it is about writing on this thing that I love so very much, but it fills me with endless joy. It’s so noisy and clunky and adorable and I basically get impatient waiting for the day to end so I can go home and write on it.

I also went to Office Max and bought a box of 1500 sheets of paper, so you know. Now I have no choice.

The second thing I talked about in the Blog Post That Never Was: Camp NaNoWriMo.

I hear you groaning. “Not that NaNo-what’s it again!”

Well unlike the November version of NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo lets you choose your own goal. Instead of the set 50,000 words, for instance, I’ve signed myself up for 30 hours. This is good because it means I can work on the outline or the character backstory or the magic system of my story and it all counts toward the goal, even if there isn’t exactly a word count to go with it.

I would say I’m doing pretty good so far. I originally started with a goal of fifteen hours, but I got halfway there in the first week, so I doubled it. That’s a good sign, right?

Of course, I have a habit of losing momentum about halfway through the month and of the nine or ten years I’ve done NaNo, I think I’ve reached the goal maybe twice.

There aren’t any horrible consequences for failure, though, so I keep signing up. Nobody claimed I was sane.

In conclusion, you ended up getting a lot more information about these things since they were a much smaller part of the Post That Died. It’s just that the second part is kind of wordy, so I figured it would be better this way. Not to say that any of my blog posts aren’t wordy, but I’m a writer, so you know. Deal with it.