I'm so blah-some...

Hello stranger. I've taken a very long hiatus from my blog and still after all this time am wondering if anything I have to say here is relevant or worthwhile.

Is my slump showing?

Anyhoo... I decided that my putting out a crappy, wet blanket of a blog post might make me feel better than not blogging at all.

So here's what you get - a list of numbered points of the recent events, observations and general nuttiness that have been consuming my time lately. I realize that it's not much of a list as there are only 2 things on it. Get off my back.

1. Olive Garden Sucks - We're Snobs, Get Over It
Last week I decided to give our credit card statement more than a sweeping glance and discovered a strange charge of $52.83, or some similarly obscure amount, to the Olive Garden.

As a rule, and as a family of not just a little Italian persuasion, we tend to loathe the Olive Garden and many other ethnic-ky chain restaurants on principle. I knew that I sure as fuck hadn't eaten there, and so had no choice but to assume it was MDH. It had to be him.

Surely he had lost a bet or been roped into eating at Olive Garden on his business trip by some senior manager with horrific bad taste. I ran to the den to begin teasing and berating him immediately for dining at such a sub-par establishment when there are home made Italian delicacies to be had almost daily in our own home, made with love, by me.

Well, it backfired because he vehemently denied having eaten at the Olive Garden and not only that but said he had assumed it was me who ate at the Olive Garden. He thought it was an odd, out of character choice for me to make, but was relatively unconcerned.

We were each mutually insulted at the others assumption of our bad taste and spent a great deal of our time last week obsessing and arguing about this errant charge on our credit card. It wasn't me. It wasn't him. What the fuck?

There was much drama. Should we call the credit card company and have the charges investigated? After much discussion we decided it wasn't a large enough amount to worry about but that we would carefully monitor next months statement for any errant charges to such places as TGI Fridays, Appleby's or Don Pablo's.

2. Mr. Boo Can't Touch This

I have posted once before about the annoying little man at my office who has worked there forever and likes to go around startling innocent people while they are quietly working. I call him Mr. Boo and I didn't have much interaction with him before so wasn't a target of his insulting and unprofessional scare tactics - but I am now.

We are working on a project team together and sadly I am on his radar now. He knows who I am and he walks by my cube and tries to scare me on a daily basis. But I am unflappable. He never scares me and I can tell that it is frustrating the hell out of him.

Mr Boo (tiptoeing just out of my sightline - then suddenly leaps into view): BOOOOH!!!!!

Me (barely looking up, calm as a fucking ninja): Oh hey Mr. Boo. What's up?

Mr. Boo: Nothing. Just wanted to give those specs you asked for. (Walks away dejected.)

I had hoped that by flatly ignoring him, eventually he would get bored and leave me alone, but unfortunately I think he may be looking upon my smooth, un-scare-ability as a challenge. I was all smug about it until late this afternoon when he flung a pinata shaped like steer over the wall of my cube and tried to hit me in the back of the head with it while making loud moo-ing noises. It was on this fishing pole kind of thingy so he took a couple of swings.

I could see it coming at me in the reflection of my monitor and he missed anyway. What an asshole.

Mr. Boo will never get me. Never. But I am starting to be a bit frightened that he will never stop trying and it's gotten very old already.

Mr. Boo

Anywhere from 4 to 6 times throughout the day at my office you can hear the sound of a man screaming.

It's not a long, terrified type of scream, but more of a short burst of surprise. It almost sounds like Homer Simpson when he says "Doh!", except it's more like "Ahck!". It's alarming the first few times you hear it, but on my first day of work when I heard the scream and nobody else seemed to notice it, I assumed that someone in the office had Tourettes or something.


After I had been there about a week or so I finally asked one of my co-workers just what in the hell that noise was all about and it turns out there is a man who works several cubicles down from us that enjoys scaring people, and is also quite easily startled himself.

We'll call him Mr. Boo.

The screaming that I hear several times a day is a grown man with a wife and several children going around startling innocent people who are hard at work. Occasionally his screaming is the result of someone coming up and scaring him back.

Do I have to tell you how disgusted I was to hear this news?

How inappropriate.


I don't know this man very well so I think it is unlikely that I will ever be his victim. Besides having catlike reflexes my computer faces the opening of my cubicle so it's kind of difficult to sneak up on me. Although mentally I've begun to prepare. I will scream bloody murder and fake a heart attack. I might even "accidentally" punch him in the throat as I'm falling down on the ground. Maybe I will pee my pants to make it look really authentic.


Obviously I've been thinking about this, but it didn't really upset me or make me totally angry until a couple of days ago when out of the blue he came up and startled my dearest cube mate Hey Mr. DJ. Hey Mr. DJ is a lovely old man with some health problems, not the least of which his "bad ticker".


It startled me too as I'm not used to hearing the "Ahck!" so close to my own work area and then I heard Hey Mr. DJ react with a sharp intake of breath. I started to run over to see if he was OK, but before I got there heard him say to Mr. Boo, in a flat fake chuckle, "You got me". What I heard in that flat fake chuckle, "You suck".


Mr. Boo has worked there FOREVER and has apparently been going around startling people the whole time. Why has nobody stopped him? Why does everybody go around acting like it's funny?


I very nearly confronted him after he frightened Hey Mr DJ, but remembered that I am a Temp and that I have been fired for speaking out about less maddening practices at other jobs and that I really like and need this one.