Friday, February 26, 2010

Awww, Phone, Yip Yip Yip Yip

One of the many important things I was doing while I was away from my blog was dealing with the departure of my long time secretary (and friend) at work. She left for greener ($$$) pastures and I was left picking up the pieces. Having a good (okay, great) secretary means you don't have to worry about a myriad of things like, "Where's this get filed?" "How does this get paid?" "How do you put out this fire?"

In short, you become something of a helpless little work baybee. Working in a field such as biomedical research doesn't exactly simplfy matters either, but it wasn't the complicated stuff that tripped me up, it was the little stuff.

One of the worst things about the whole ordeal (and there were many) was her phone, the main office number, was forwarded to me. Great, the general public calling me on my fancy shamancy Nortel phone which has lots of buttons which are a mystery to me. One day it went like this:

"Hello"

"Yes, may I speak with Dr. (Blank)?"

"I'm sorry, he's not in the office at the moment, can I take a message?"

"Oh, well, could you transfer me to his voicemail?"

(pause, long pause)

"Um yeah, I'm real sure I don't know how to do that."

(laughter)

"...but I do have a pen and paper and I know how to write"

(laughter)

"Ok my name is (blank) and he can reach me at (blank)"

Figuring out that damn phone looked a little something like this:

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

We'll Call it a Hiatus

Ok, so I've been gone for awhile, off in my own little JD Salinger style reclusion.

Been kickin' it hermit style.

Although I know people (2) might have missed my little speck of the internets, I can offer no apology for my absence, primarily because I was off doing stuff...

...lots of important stuff; things I'm sure you wouldn't understand....

What?

Hey, I couldda been doing stuff, you don't know.

Don't try to guilt a recluse like me, you'll only force me back into the tree stump a la Punxsutawney Phil, post scary shadow (by the way, screw you Phil).



Now, about the things I may or may not have been doing while I was away...

I might have been:

1. Shoveling snow - Snow blowers are for the weak and unprincipled elitists. At least that's what I thought before I shoveled approximately 100,000 square inches of snow this year. These figures are based on a 15 ft x 9ft driveway x 58 inches of snowfall.

Here's a little tidbit fer ya - we've had more snow than Anchorage Alaska.

Um, Yeah.

Jackie tried to call BS on my shoveling calculations, but I didn't even include sidewalks, drifting and snowplow piles. Don't go there Woman.

2. Getting fat

3. Contemplating a 650b bike

4. Playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook

5. And not much else.

Anywho I'm sorta back. I think, maybe.