This is 30

Another year, another compilation. And I know it's been forever, and I'd like to make this one all about me and the flattering things you've said to/about me since my last birthday--

me:  i can feel the vitamins coursing through me!
Éamonn:  "KATTTIIEEEE SMAAASSSHHHH"
(for some reason you're the Hulk in my fantasy)

Sal: I read this in your voice

-- but then I thought, in the grand, kinda-annual tradition, let's shine the spotlight your way.

Mary: Can I note that David just came up on my "People to follow" on Twitter because we're both following The Real Adam West

me:  well, i was on o2 three times last night
so i suspect it will be a quiet weekend
Kaz:  I was trying to figure out the superhero terminology
and then went oh, periodic table

Anthony: if you can live in one city in westoros where would you live

(im a dork just answer the question)

Cat: haha someone just called that their toilet is bubbling

it's really hard to not laugh at that
Cat: i would run out and call ghost busters

Éamonn:  with that thing I can be all like PEW PEW PEW DEMONS!

Bre:  oh, I forgot to tell you he showed me his nunchucks

Éamonn: who knows though, we all make some poor judgement calls when we're younger

If I did all the shit I wanted to do when i was a kid, I'd be driving the Ninja Turtle Van right now

Cat: so oceanport has hired hot garbagemen

Bre: haha, totes and now I have to have coffee with her!

maybe I should say drinks

and just get super drunk

me: hahahah or you can go for coffee and you can just spike yours

Bre:  haha I like that too

she'll be all "I'm a doctor" and I'll be all "I'm drunk"

Ryan: i think i have that disease where you're a lottery winner who hasn't won the lottery yet

Éamonn:  I made an excel graph: number of monitors versus number of eyes

one of the lines was surprisingly flat

Bre: his mom was a potter
Katie: as in beatrix?

Cat: so i was going thru my texts trying to delete them
as i have well over a thousand
and it's slowing my phone down
and i was so drunk i kept hitting RESEND instead of delete!!!!
OMG
HORRORS

Ryan: it's amazing how many results i get for a gchat search of "whiskey slurpee"

David: it's never a good sign when you're watching keeping up with the kardashians, and you're like "I feel you khloe"

Bre: My entire family just broke into "irish rover" on the trolly back from the wedding. The other family was horrified.
Bre: then my mom starting singing the Boston College fight song with my cousin

Ryan: i always wanted to say in confession that i honored another god over my god but i never had the balls

Cat: haha and it'd be wonderful aside from i always feel really dumb around sal  

Cat: he once told me i needed to learn to listen to context clues in stories

Éamonn: Yea, I went 100% magic
but I miss some of the neat little effects you get from the melee combat
I married a guy and traveled with him as a companion and I eventually had to send him home because I kept accidently hitting him with lightening and slitting his throat with my conjured sword
Éamonn: I told Nathan not to read too much into that

Bre:  I think I may need to quit the online dating scene. Today I realized I was messaging a homeless, schizophrenic drug addict who I mistook for a sensitive writer.

Katie: i'm hungry

i want to be sitting at home in my corner eating something involving cheese

Cat: you realize you just described yourself as a mouse right?

Cat: sometimes, when i'm bored, i think up ways to torture people

Maggie: clouds ain't nothing but bitches and hoes, man

me:  ooooooooh SNAP 
Éamonn:  (I haven't arrived at a point yet)

The worst thing I could think of

Cat: ok so i have to tell you something that might make your head explode

and it will be hard...but you did not hear it!

esp from me!

Katie: oh no

tell me that buffy is still streaming on netflix

i can't even look now

Cat: oh i have no idea

why would i care if you heard that from me lol?

Katie: i don't know

it was the worst thing that i could think of

now anything else won't be as bad

A Layman's Guide to Office E-Mail

For those entering an office environment for the first time, I offer a brief introduction to professional e-mail communications.

The Care and Feeding of Your Ellipses

All this grammar nonsense can be a great hullaballoo of rules and procedures. Luckily for you there is a short cut that grammarians don't want the public to know about. The secret is thus:

If you are ever in a situation where you don't know how to punctuate a sentence you can use the special "catch all" punctuation: the ellipsis.

While many people have invested a great deal of energy perpetuating the myth that the ellipsis is intended to designate omitted words, the truth is that the ellipsis can also replace omitted punctuation!   This versatile little guy can represent anything writer wants.

Take this sentence:

"I have a party on Saturday, I'm bringing the cake!"

This can easily be rewritten without changing the meaning as:

"I have a party on Saturday… I'm bringing the cake…"

Exactly the same.

How Not to Reassure a Cynic

As the black Santa Claus who worked at Macy's in December of 1990 can attest, I am an extremely skeptical person.

For the past several months I've been enduring chronic lower back pain. It's nothing close to a demon drilling into my eye, more along the lines of a troublesome imp kicking my lumbar. A gremlin rotating my spinal discs, or perhaps a lesser goblin operating a gondola service through my spinal canal.

The best treatment to chronic lower back pain,  people smarter than me say, is to see a Chiropractor. The cynic inside me was yelling "let me out, I have a family! I'll give you anything!" and also something about chiropractors not being medical doctors. As stubborn of a skeptic as I am, I'm open minded enough to try most anything at least once. Plus my insurance covers it.

Suddenly, mobile.

And this year's Halloween costume just creates itself.

I Question My Maturity

ONE
This is currently my office desktop background:

TWO
We just received an email announcing that our normal staff meeting on Monday will be pushed back an hour.  My first thought was, "Hey, that's a perfect time for sticking some Baileys in my coffee."  I can not even currently drink caffeine or alcohol so I do not know where that thought came from.  Or rather, I do, I'd just rather conquer only one demon at a time.

mmmm....Makers.

THREE

Comcast for some reason  insisted on not taking a former roommate's name off of the bill, even though we both repeatedly called in and complained.  When I closed the account, they overbilled me for the final month and actually sent me a check, with the envelope addressed to me and sent to my address, but with the check made out to her.  Real Transcript from online chat as follows:

Interactive Chat with Comcast     
Katie: well, my SSN wasn't on the account, that would be ****  
Ruel: ah, and may I inquire into your relationship with her?  
Katie: well, that seems like a personal question now, doesn't it Ruel?

An Open Letter to My Officemate: I don't like you.

Dear Officemate,

I don't like you.

For a while I thought I just didn't know you.  There you sat, sometimes chatty but mostly quiet. We said good morning to each other and made bland remarks about the office temperature (usually too cold).

But you've worn out my last nerve, officemate.

I hate your stupid polite telephone laugh, exactly three syllables long each time.  Do laughs even have syllables?  The fact that I'm questioning this makes me hate you all the more.

I see you checking my computer screen and judging whether or not it is directly work-related.  And don't think I don't see you checking your Netflix queue.  Your double-screen placement isn't nearly as good as mine.

Officemate, you think you're so superior.  You with your organized  box of work shoes under your desk and your collection of extra umbrellas in case any of the higher-ups need one during a rainy day.  Kiss ass.

And dammit, I can hear you smugly eating your salad at me.  I don't care about your nutritionally-savvy lunch choices, nor does it impress me that I have never seen you buy a lunch.  Ooooh look at you with your organized mornings spent both ironing and getting your lunch together.  Ooooh look at you, getting to work "on time" and then "staying late."  I know your game, officemate, and I'm still leaving at 5. 

Oh, and how about that time I was sick, and you were the only one-- the only one!!-- in the office who didn't ask how I was feeling when I returned.  Like you didn't even know I was gone!  I'll remember that slight the next time you're out sick, officemate, and you'll see how YOU like it.

Not that you're ever out sick. 

I want the book back I lent you.

Most sincerely,
Your Disgruntled Officemate

Cluster Headaches, or A Demon is Drilling Into My Eyeball, or How I Spent My Columbus Day Weekend

In this particular image, the dying natives on the bottom symbolize the left side of my head.  Also, genocide.

This post gets a little long, so I'll wait until you're ready.

Ready?

So last Thursday night I woke up from was electrocuted out of a dead sleep to an incredibly intense pain on the left side of my head, coupled with the feeling that something was savagely twisting my eyeball from the inside.  I stumbled into the bathroom and took two ibuprofen (for only your harshest eyeball twists), and eventually managed to fall back to sleep.

Sometime later-- at what now can be assumed was around 6 am-- I awoke again, this time to the same type of pain, except, if possible, a hundred times worse.  I thrashed around in my bed in agony, unable to control my own body--

Realistic.

--for what felt like forever before I had the strength to get up and take more ibuprofen, which didn't really help.  Eventually I fell back to sleep, but then woke up shortly after to get ready for work.

I thought it was all a dream until I saw the open Costco bottle of ibuprofen on the counter.

Not realistic.

Now, David was gone from Thursday morning until Sunday, first on a religious retreat, and then away to a bachelor party.

Same thing.

So I was left to my own devices.

My left eye felt strained during the day, nothing too severe.  Certainly nothing to prevent me from having some friends over for dinner and to collectively go through "a few" bottles of wine.

What we now know is that alcohol can trigger my particular condition.