hungover

hungover
Originally uploaded by bearclau.

Sometimes...

I have to remind myself that I'm at work, where it's not appropriate to let out a loud, long butt-cheek trembling fart.

the voices are telling me to kill you

I hate cats, but this is pretty f'n funny.

Thanks to Reecie for the link.

she'll learn

My new coworker, the young one who "really knows her stuff", doesn't slack on the job. Ever. It's a little un-nerving.

I have a lot of different things slowly loading up on my to-do list. And I'm also behind on my homework for school. And yet I will still waste time on MySpace, reading my horoscope, reading blogs, catching up on my news.

The whole time I can her J typing away on her keyboard, writing the storyboards for the three courses she is assigned to, asking intelligent questions and having the perfect phone demeanor to the clients she is working with.

I can't wait for the day until she gets as uncaring and jaded as the rest of us here.

stupid

I'm feeling pretty stupid at work lately. Like right now. And the only thing I can do to combat this stupidity is to stare blankly at the document I'm supposed to be writing -- or blog.

I'm going to grad school online to get a masters degree in instructional design. What's that you ask? I didn't know until I came into this training department. Basically, an instructional designer develops training (courses) that are optimized for learning.

Why am I doing this? Well, I was hired in the training department to do administrative stuff. Pretty boring. I quickly branched out to teach myself how to use Flash and other tools that were used for developing training courses. I also watched what the instructional designers were doing and thought "Hey, I can do that". And in a moment of spontaneity, I enrolled in an online program to get my masters. It was a good thing, too because the workload had slowed and my manager needed to cut some staff. I stayed because I was able to expand my skill set.

So now I'm doing project management work for the development of a course for the SOX-404 Compliance Process. There has been a huge turnover in the people assigned to my project, so when I lost one of the instructional designers, I volunteered to write one of the sections of the course.

At the time I thought it was a brilliant idea. I would be applying exactly what I was learning in my grad school courses. But the real world rarely mirrors what is taught in school.

The content of the course I'm writing is dull. Financial information always is. I've lost the initial excitement and now I feel stuck. A new instructional designer joined the team last week and she is young, pretty and really knows her stuff. She is grasping the content and knows the route she wants to take to develop interesting and successful material.

I sit staring at the computer going back and forth over using "but" or "however".

I hate my job. I need a new career. Maybe a face-painter at traveling circuses.

l'optomist éternel

I took a much needed road trip to Montreal this weekend. I went with Josee, my now unemployed ex-coworker. She used to live there and was craving a get away. I had been there last year and wanted to go back and see it as a local.

I took off work on Friday and we did the 8 hour drive straight North in the pouring rain.

As I drove through the Adirondacks, the leaves were at their color peak. Even against a gray, dreary sky they popped.

"Wow! Look how beautiful the trees are!"

Josee never even looked up from her Marie Clare magazine. "Ugh. I've seen enough foilage in my lifetime."

Talk about being cynical.

a plea for inspiration

It’s been months since I’ve written anything. Even my journal has been feeling neglected lately. I don’t know why I’ve stopped writing, but I feel guilty about it every time I see my journal sitting on the dining room table while I lay sloth-like on the couch watching tv.

I write to let out mixed emotions. I think that putting them on a page helps me to sort them out. I write so I can remember moments. I write so I can leave a history of my life to future generations. I write so my brain doesn’t rot.

But I keep finding excuses to not write. I have nothing important to say. I left my journal downstairs. I’d rather read another chapter of my book. Barry needs to be walked. House is on TV.

I write when I feel like my life is in some sort of emotional deluge; when I am romantically confused, financially troubled, spiritually empty. But right now I feel neither of these, and the moments where I should have written my thoughts down are gone. To try an recreate those moments just to put pen to paper would come out fake and impersonal.

I hope to find the inspiration to write again. My soul depends on it.

Like he hasn't left

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Say Cheese

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Just another day at work

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Pigtails!

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Bitter Tears

If there was any time to wish for rain all weekend, this would be the one.

Barry Cottontail

Barry Cottontail, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Dope

Dope, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Dope

Girls Night Out

, originally uploaded by bearclau.

How much is that naked man in the window

, originally uploaded by bearclau.

Boyrfriend shopping

Why is it that the freaks find me?

Here is an actual email from someone off of Match.com. I have editied NOTHING:

I am micheal from kansas , i am a machine electrical engineer i have something in come on,...Honest, caring, loyal, and respectfull., i dont like to hurt someone's feeling and i will not like to be hurted also. i love to make one happy and cool. i think you are nice and good to know more of you maybe someday we can meet and know our self in person , i really need a nice one to spend the rest of my life time and be happy with somene that will be honest and real with me and no game playing . i will be very glad to hear from you.......

i love to meet u ,i love ur photo so much,When I look into your eyes, it seems all the problems in the world go away and I'm floating in mid-air,When I see you, the world stops as if the only purpose in life was for me to please you.I may not get to see you as often as I like. I may not get to hold you in my arms all through the night. But deep in my heart I truly know, you're the one that I love, and I can't let you go. really want to meet u, and you really look sweet to me like a river that flows through the windows of a barchelor.

U CAN ADD ME TO UR YAHOO MASSAGER LIST SO WE CAN TALK PLS or OR U MAIL ME TO THIS I D
[freakshow@insane.com]

--
Um, yeah. I'm thinking the prison he's in allows for internet time.

SWF...available

I don't know if I'm ready or not, but I'm doing this online dating thing again. Or at least I subscribed to Match.com. I haven't done any actual dating yet.

So many of my coworkers use Match.com and from what I hear they have received countless contacts and one person in particular had gone out on a bunch of dates - all in one day. What I can't figure out is: where are all my winks and emails? Not only on Match.com, but on eHarmony, Chemistry.com, Yahoo personals... why aren't I bombarded by the freaks and weirdos, with the occasional good-looking sweetheart thrown in. I'm not hideous and I think I'm a pretty cool chick. I think my profile comes across that way, too.

Maybe the cosmic forces are doing a hell of a screening job for me. Maybe they're looking for the person that I wished for.

But then, I wished for Pete...

Pete the Pig

, originally uploaded by bearclau.

daily mantra

As much as I want to ask all my questions, I have to remind myself that it just doesn't matter. He didn't choose me.