A Post-Holiday Depression Survival Guide (alternatively titled, "Top Ten Things I Like About Almost-Empty DC")

Back in the office? You're not alone. I am, too. And as anyone in the office the week after Christmas knows, online entertainment is CRITICAL to surviving the looooooooong stretches of mostly meeting-free days. (Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining, at least not vehemently - just observing that empty days are often slow days).


This time of year presents the young working adult with a bit of a Catch-22. Go home for the long stretch and pray that everyone in your family makes it out on speaking terms? Or conserve your leave for a Carribean adventure during the interminably gray month of February but pay for your choice with a heaping dose of holiday guilt? In either case, I find that the week after Christmas leaves me fairly reflective, and don't even get me started on what the changing of the year does to me - suffice it to say it's no coincidence that the month of January finds me furiously journaling.

But you didn't come here for reflection. You came to be entertained. Without further ado, my top ten favorite things about being back in the groove and "working" the week after Christmas:

1. Less guilt when I miss the bus in the morning and an opportunity to finish my morning coffee without impromptu meetings.


2. Fewer people on the metro. More space, more quiet. Can you put a value on not starting in a state of high anxiety? There are days where taking the metro feels like a running of the bulls, but this week has been blissfully free of commute stress. (Forgive me, I just finished "The Paris Wife," so I have Hemingway on the brain).


3. More space at the gym/pool/running trail/etc. Last night, I had a lane to myself for the entirety of my time at the DC public pool. I enjoyed the hell out of it. And will continue to do so until every fitness facility in the city is overrun by New Year's resolution-ers next week.


4. Slower pace. Everyone is still in a sugar coma from Christmas cookies, which makes them less eager to shove ahead of you in line.


5. Happier moods. Even accounting for holiday stress, I think people tend to slant more chipper this time of year. I even enjoy the generic "Happy holidays!" I find out on Out of Office emails.


6. After Christmas sales. No, it's no Black Friday - which I hate because of the crowds, see #2 - but you can still find some sweet bargains to help round out your piles of presents.


7. Excuses to catch up with old friends. Even if this translates to just posting on their Facebook walls.


8. Freedom to eat junk at any time of the day. Let's face it, those leftovers are not going to eat themselves.


9. An opportunity to blare music - the cheesier the better - from your desk speakers. SANS HEADPHONES.


10. Time to write this blog post

In reviewing the list above, it's amazing how many of them boil down to fewer people around. What was my Myers-Briggs again? Maybe that will be tomorrow's project...

Heaven looks like Jersey...or vice versa

(Click to enlarge.)

A piece of pi

Thoughts

The world would be a much happier place if we all took some cues from the Bonobo.

Nope! Chuck Testa

There are three theories at work here.

One, Jorge Santini, the mayor of San Juan, is using his Christmas cards to promote the San Juan Wildlife Museum and its "realistic natural history displays."

The second theory, promulgated by dissenters, is that Mayor Santini is using his Christmas cards as a veiled threat against his political enemies.

The third theory?  He is just plain awesome.

The Famous Last Word's Guide to Small Talk

After I stopped playing softball, my dad helpfully suggested that I start following professional sports, since I was "bad at small talk" and would "need something to talk about."

Look, I'm no wunderkind like Ashton Kutcher Paris Hilton Jenny McCarthy, but I think I can reasonably say that my parents have always underestimated my social skills. 

Now, some of that may be my own fault.  High school Katie didn't play the long game.  Uninterested in explaining who my friends were and where they lived, I would always just tell my parents that I was at one of two people's houses.  They're not illogical people.

They concluded that I had only two friends.

I love you Wilson.

This conclusion had consequences.  The reason they encouraged me to play a sport in college, my brother later told me, was because they thought it would force me to socialize.  "Katie only has two friends," they told him.  "This way she'll be forced out of her room."

Computers: 523891098   Parents: 0

And then I dropped softball, and my dad and I had that talk on the front porch.

His words come back to haunt me all the time.

I was told by one former co-worker, who caught me hiding at an event, that I "don't play the game."

"Baby," I cooed, "I don't play no games."

Baby I bowl but baby that is a sport.

It's true.  I don't play games.  I master them. You can therefore count yourself lucky that I will share my wisdom and help turn you into the social butterfly of every occasion. Just stick to the below topics, and the moment, as they say in France, will be perdu a jamais¹.

Christmas is Coming

If you were born in the long summer, you wouldn't understand.