See, What Happened Was... (A Toast, Probably A Short One)

Here's to you, 2023. You could have been worse.

I've done this sort of post several times before, so I guess it's a tradition, at this point. My favorites were 2013's See, What Happened Was... (which includes the origin story of that goofy title, and 2017... It's Not Me - It's You, one of my many breakup conversations with the inanimate. We have just under three hours of 2023 left, so let's be brief. 

Here's to January, which is mostly a blur of overtime and end-of-year gift processing for Beloved Employer, aided by my trusty endangered black-footed helperferrets...

"Is this really only one day's worth??"

Here's to February, the first half of which [Maris] and I spent with COVID. Yeah, I know. We were at least two years late. All the cool kids had caught it ages ago. What can I say? We've both spent our lives being unfashionably late for every fad or trend, ever. Why would COVID be any different? Our cases were relatively mild, which was still BLEAH, but made us grateful for all those shots.

February was also the month in which we learned that not only had Beloved Employer sold our dingy-but-cherished HQ building (5ish minutes from home), but they had also changed course and would not be finding another suburban space for us in-office personnel. We would be asked to commute to the fashionable but 75- to 90-minutes away "West End" of DC, where we maintain another mostly-empty office. I'm not exactly "cheers-ing" that... yet.

Here's to March, with its requisite Madness, made all the madder by the rapid preparation for leaving our HQ. If you've ever moved out of an apartment or house, you're no doubt familiar with being fully overwhelmed at seeing how much STUFF has accumulated and needs to be packed or thrown away/given away etc.. Yeah - try that with an office building that once held several hundred employees who apparently never got rid of anything over the past 35 years. So that was fun - and it was just beginning.

Wait - you know what? No cheers for March, either! I forgot Mom dislocated her shoulder for maybe the 30th time, and sat in an E.R. waiting room hellscape for about 13 hours. I was literally searching for an open walk-in clinic when they finally called her name. Next time, we're just going to slam her into a door frame, a la Mel Gibson's character in "Lethal Weapon."

Hmm... Cheers withheld for April, too. I grudgingly started shedding cubicle stuff in preparation for a downsized and not nearby cube in DC. Started taking wistful pictures of the old, rapidly-emptying office...

See? Sad.

Here's to May, because I feel bad not clinking glasses with one month after another. I worked my last day in the office right down the street...

Bye, cow painted by famous guy whose name escapes me...

...and worked my first day at the beautiful but distant DC office. To be fair, I love it there. There are some fabulous colleagues who, like me, actually come in to the office quite a bit, so that's been fun. The commute isn't even really that bad (when the weather is good and Metro's not broken). It just takes so LONG to get there. I marvel at you people with two-hour commutes for years and decades on end. Here's to you!

We're *DC* black-footed ferrets, now!

Here's to June! Nothing happened! Worked on my commuting skills, did some cooking and grilling and got a teensy idea for a possible twelfth novel, and a friend said, "do it," and [Maris] said "see you in August..."

Here's to July, during which I managed to crank out over 56,000 words, several of which might actually go together in ways that make sense. I don't know. I haven't reread it, yet - or finished it. I just kind of kept going. I can do that. It's a gift.

Here's to August! Nothing happened! It was hot, or something. Probably humid, too. Kept writing. Got a little bogged-down, but stayed in the fight...

Cheers, September. I'm sure you were a nice month. I appreciated learning of my promotion, which came a mere eleven months after I took on all that important, time-sensitive work. And the continuing wordiness that had my little novel #12 at over 80,000 words by month's end. Also, I was pretty much finished decorating for Halloween by then...

"Help!"

Here's to October, because vacation. 'Nuff said...

That'll do, OBX. That'll do.

Hi bird! Could you just scootch a bit to the right?

Here's to you, November, when I inexplicably decided to have another go at "National Blog Posting Month," and write a new post every day (which here means night) for the entire month. Actually, it's pretty explicable - it's because I am some sort of masochist. I did it, though! And one of those 30 bits of drivel was MY 300th POST!

Is that a lot? Also, do you dig our hats?

Also in November, we found The Last Spider. You can read about it in one of the "Thankfulness" posts from that month...

Hi. I'm not even hiding, dude. Sheesh.

Here's to December, still echoing in my exhausted ears. There was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra...

((Christmas Devil Horns))

There were [Maris]'s gnomes, and their 12 days of shenanigans...

They had a lot of help, this year. Merry Christmas, fellas.

There were downs, there were ups. Sadly, there was NOT peace on earth (not enough, anyway). But in my tiny sliver of the planet, the month ended strong.

So let's raise a glass to 2023, and eat, drink, and be merry. Most of us are keenly aware of what kind of show 2024 promises to be. I'll regret saying this, but tonight I say BRING IT. The good people of this country and others will find our way through this. We shall breathe in, breathe out, and stay in the fight - together.

Cheers...

The Office - Reimagined For 2024's Discerning Human Asset

It never stops. We just give you a good fling when we're done with you. Photo by Joe - 2001

Thanks to the pandemic (and the Great Resignation, and the "gig economy," and the sudden appearance of some of those Pop Tarts flavors no one asked for) the office as most of us knew it is gone - and it is NOT coming back. In 2020, my Beloved Employer had not one, but two 98% empty offices - one beautiful space in DC's "West End," and one rather less beautiful (at least on the inside) building in the Maryland suburbs. The decision was made to let everyone keep working remotely, sell the suburban property, and move the few of us still working there in-person to the DC office. Mistakes were made, but that's a subject for another post.

So. My seven-minute commute to this...

Ahhhh... Photo by Joe

...is now a seventy-seven-minute commute...

Okay, that's a Nats Park crowd, but you get the idea. Photo by Joe

But again, the move and the commute and the old office aren't what I'm here to talk about, tonight. No - it gets better. Beloved Employer has put me on a task force, charged with "reimagining" the DC office. My first reaction was a direct quote from the late comedian John Pinette, who responded to people turning off their porch lights on Halloween by warning, "Oh, don't do THAT."  Now, I know that some changes are needed. There are still SO few of us there on a daily basis, and the large meetings, retreats, conferences etc. are pretty infrequent. We have too much space, and I can personally vouch for this organization's diligence when it comes to NOT wasting our donors' money. So, yes. We're going to figure this out.

But I gotta be me, for a minute. I mean, it was right there in the subject line of the invite: "Reimagining" the office. So many ideas. They charged at me like BLACK FRIDAY shoppers, hell-bent on getting that door-buster deal on a Playstation, but then most of them fell down and got trampled and/or punched a lot. I remember a few...

Off the top of my head, I couldn't help but picture all twenty or so office regulars consolidated into one corner of the space. The carpet is replaced with sheets of greasy black steel, and each cubicle is now a bumper car. We've got our screens and a docking station for our laptop, and we get to return to the time-tested office communication technique of "bumping into each other" for impromptu conversations and collaboration. There are some details to work out, but I think this one's got potential.

From not quite the top of my head... Old-timey haunted mansion ride. We scoot from department to department in little cars, as animatronic ghosts and ghouls and such lunge at us and scare us into staying on-task. At one point, a skeleton in firefighting gear sprays real water from a hose and it looks like we're going to go right through it, but the lights go out at the last second and I guess the water turns off, because we don't get wet. Also there's a bit where you emerge onto a balcony overlooking the boardwalk. This reimagining needs no work, for it is perfect. Also black lights.

Sticking with our amusement park theme for some reason... carousel. Yep. Each headcount-- sorry, valued contributor - gets a horse. Our equine department will love it. Well, they would, if they ever saw it. Anyway, round and round we go, and our muzak is provided by a 1920's vintage calliope. Super-loud, because they didn't have volume controls on those things. Did they? I don't think they did, but I'm too lazy to go look it up. Fine. Hold on... HA!! They didn't have volume controls. I am vindicated. Where was I? Carousel office, yes. I remember. That's pretty much it. I'm sure I.T. has docking stations that can be modified to affix to the wooden horses' ears or something. Also, management can set the office speed to maximum, so no one has the nerve to try to jump off and go have a smoke or whatever. Also, still only two tickets, after all these years!

Okay, if I'm being honest, which I probably should be, my first thought was, "Yeah, I can reimagine it - as a quiet wooded spot in freakin' Gaithersburg!" But that bird has sailed, so how about... Everyone in one end of the space, and Joe all by himself at the opposite end. He knows everyone's there if he wants to talk. [spoiler alert: he rarely wants to talk (except to a few of you - you know who you are)] Okay, that's not entirely accurate either; most of us in-office personnel are super-cool to be around. But Joe's busy season dawns, and he will need some space to work through some things.

Castle. Dark and cold, feebly-illuminated by torches in wall sconces. Stone floors and walls and computers and printers. We're shackled to our granite workstations with iron chains. The walls are perpetually wet, and no one can locate the source of the water or the creepily-sad dripping sounds. There is a funky smell, and probably a dragon. Three-tiered dress code: executives in silks and jewels, DC regulars in armour, and Joe in burlap. Straw for lunch (hay - at least it's vegan).

No?

Okay... normal office, sensibly consolidated. But everyone is required to reimagine his/her workspace exactly like Joe's:

Endangered black-footed deskferrets not included. Photo by Anton Corbijn

Join us next time, when we reimagine "reimagine."

Black-Footed Ferrets: It's Their World; We're Just Living In It

 

"We're not *quite* extinct. In fact, we're *quite* not extinct."

In 2013, I wrote a little novel about a young-- sorry, a *new* couple who befriend a 100-year old hobo. For reasons I can no longer remember, the hobo kept an unexplained endangered black-footed ferret named Bingo as a pet. Bingo steals several scenes in that story, and yes that's the one I should be working on publishing right now, instead of trying to do a blog post every night for a month. 

A couple of years later, I succumbed to the relentless direct mail fundraising campaign of the World Wildlife Fund when I saw black-footed ferrets in their catalog of "adoptable" critters. I threw money at the WWF, and a few weeks later I was the proud adoptive dad to my very own Bingo, and her brother Yahtzee. When they found out that I work for the Humane Society of the United States, and that we have a program focused on saving prairie dogs (their primary food source in the wild), they insisted on accompanying me to work. There, they...

...mooned everyone...

...ate all the candy...

...calculated things...

...listened to old-timey iPods...

...hogged the fan...

...demonstrated a bad attitude...

...engaged in shenanigans...

...and more shenanigans...

...got into the Christmas spirit...

...kept watch...

...embraced our brand...

...waited for Santa...

...inspected the new drop safe...

...and helped process donations.

 They also enjoy a bit of drink (or pretend drink)...

"This is a tin mug of lies!"

"Bombay Sapphire, straight-up, twist, very cold for Opening Day."

"Who says martinis can't have paper umbrellas?"

"What?"

They also like sports...

In 2019, they predicted we'd need a bigger schedule, and they were right.

2020 - "You call that a schedule? Why bother playing at all?"

Now, they are endangered black-footed cityferrets. They relocated from our unfashionable suburb to the moderately-fashionable "West End," in DC, where they are plotting to become the life of the office. They also keep me off the ledge, with their relentless and optimistic encouragement and support. It's mostly non-verbal.

"Is that the White House?"