Ending/Start

Well, well. It’s the last official long weekend of summer 2007.
Where did it all go?

I’m kind of looking forward to fall, cuz it’s a beautiful time of year and usually a time of deep reflection for me.

This summer was fun all in all.
I got all the partying out of my system in July, which obvs I had a great time doing.
Got to hang out with my friends lots and get outdoors with Sandy often, so I can’t complain in the least.

When August started, I began a month long cleanse that I am happy to say is due to be over on September 3rd. This means that I have had to behave myself quite a bit this month - no drinking, no smoking, no junk food, very little meat, an all organic diet, and tons of herbal concoctions that all pretty much resemble what I imagine boiled sweat socks must taste like. YUMMAAAY.

I feel great though, and plan to stick to a mainly alkaline based diet from hereon.
The benefits can’t be beaten, for realz.

My main reason for doing this is that I’ve researched body PH a fair bit, and have discovered that disease has a really hard time developing in an alkaline body. Whereas a mainly acid based diet/body is the first catalyst for most diseases - from cancer to diabetes.

Unfortunately, most of the food we all grow up eating and loving is acid based, hence the reason disease is so rampant in our society.
All the yummy things like grains, breads, pastas, sugary beverages, coffees, colas, meats, and dairy all metabolize to create an acid PH in our systems, which is ideal for disease to form and thrive.
It's truly scary because in reality, these foods are what 90% of us eat on a daily basis without knowing any better.

The alkaline diet is based on a 75/25 ratio of alkaline to acid based foods.
This basically means leafy greens and specific nuts and legumes 75% of the time.
A tough switch to make, but a necessary one in my opinion.
It’s just going to take a bit of time to get used to the change.
I’ll save a ton of money on takeout too - there’s virtually nothing you can get at a fast food/take away place or restaurant that isn’t more than 25% acid.
How crazy is that? No wonder so many people suffer from health problems.

Anyways, I got a bit off topic here.

Right.
It’s the last weekend of summer folks! Hope you all make it a memorable one!

Life Handed Us a Pay Check, We Said "We Worked Harder Than THIS!"

So it’s yearly evaluation time at work - egads.

I truly dislike the personal evaluation portion of this assignment, because I always found it quite daunting to sit there and try and hype/sell yourself to the people that hired you based on a position they created in the first place.

The trick, I have decided, is to accentuate your responsibilities and accomplishments just enough so you don’t sound too arrogant on the one hand or completely fed up and disgruntled on the other.

It’s a fine line friends.

Over the years, I’ve mastered the overuse of adjectives and subtle self praise to accomplish just this.
And so far it has worked.

This year however, my company has decided to impose a new procedure.
Basically, you get sent an email from your boss asking you to reference the names of all the people you’ve worked with over the past year so they can contact them and give their opinion of your “work”.
Which really translates into their personal opinion of you. A popularity contest of sorts.

I think this is kind of effed.

There are many people we have to work with day in and day out that may or may not like us personally.
Do you think that the average Joe office worker that doesn’t like you personally for whatever reason will distinguish between their feelings about you as a person and the quality of your work? My guess is prolly not.
What a chance this is for them to get their kicks in, right? They get to contribute to the decision about your raise!

Not liking this idea much at all.

Also, we must now fill out our “responsibilities”.

Wait. What?

Are the people evaluating us - in this case, the department heads - not supposed to tell us what our job responsibilities are?
Are they not the department heads in the first place because they’ve mastered every facet of the job we now perform?
Makes no sense.

I was mulling this over as I stared blankly at my portion of the performance evaluation form, and suddenly realized what’s really going on here.

I’ve theorized that the reason we are asked to fill out our responsibilities is because the people in charge - the people that are supposed to mentor and lead us in our job development - HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE DO EVERY DAY.

So, they disguise this fact in a tricky little self-evaluation form that we must fill out ourselves.
They then read over our responsibilities as we’ve listed before the face to face evaluation, call us in for the official chat, and regurgitate what we ourselves wrote in mang-lish (manager speak) so it sounds to us like they really do know the complete ins and outs of our efforts every day.

How clever!

Seriously.

Ahem. Hmm.
Anyways, back to filling out my self-evaluation…

ZIP IT

Doesn’t it seem weird that people, complete strangers even, feel the need to fill silences with meaningless chit chat?
Drives me nuts.

I don’t really see the need to talk to people that I don’t know about the weather or the stock market or the state of politics in the western hemisphere just because we are sharing an elevator.

I DON’T KNOW YOU, YES THE WEATHER IS NICE, YES, UNSEASONABLY WARM, YES I HEARD IT MIGHT RAIN, YES I HEARD THE TSX WAS DOWN YESTERDAY, NOW PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE AND SHUT YER YAPPER.

Seriously.

Not trying to be rude, but I just don’t see the point of yapping uncontrollably to a stranger or co-worker about things that don’t mean eff all.
Even the obligatory “how was your weekend” question by the water cooler on Monday mornings makes me cringe. Because more often than not, the person asking doesn’t care in the least. And quite frankly, I don’t care how your weekend was either Mr….? what’s your name again anyways?
Hence the reason you’ll never hear me ask you that question, unless we have an established relationship of some kind.

This probably sounds neurotic - which it may very well be, but it is sincerely one of my biggest pet peeves.
What’s so wrong with silence and/or minding ones own business?

Will the apocolypse be upon us if we don't fill every quiet moment around other people with asinine yammering?

If you have something interesting or meaningful to say, give er.

I’ll chat up a storm with you any day of the week.

But please don’t try and engage me in gratuitous chatter about how nice a day it is when all I am trying to do is get from A to B on the elevator.

If you’re doing it to ease some sort of perceived tension or awkwardness, news flash - yakking nervously about gawd knows what only makes that worse.

This has been a public service announcement proudly brought to you by CC.

WOOOOOOOOO Part 2

The videos...

My, my, my.

Words fail...except of course WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!