In only a few short quickly-passing, time-devouring* weeks, while waiting for various persons to pick up on their ends of the line, I’ve been treated to Traditional Classical, Something That Sounds Remarkably Like Polka, and the rare and delightful office boasting bad 90’s soft rock. Re-entering Le Office Space, I was almost instantly reminded of the delightful variety of hold music chosen by offices throughout the world to entertain their callers, or, most likely, and sometimes a little too obviously, as a desperate attempt to distract their patients from remembering they are out of their respective medications, and probably have called eight times already today. And also, for good measure? They are probably riding the Train O’ Crazy.
There are the hold queues that so efficiently distract you into singing along to Wilson Phillips that you blissfully forget why you were calling in the first place, and anyway, I know that there is pain, but you hold on for one more day, and you break free, break from the chains.
And then there are the hold queues that seemingly send you to a deserted Siberian mountain summit to sit in silence and ponder your place in the universe and, more importantly, what your great great great uncle’s initials REALLY stood for, because ever since you failed to unearth such earth-shattering details of your family history during your Genealogy Project in seventh grade you’ve wondered and couldn’t stop yourself from plugging in various ridiculous potential monikers for a man you always imagined to be tall and broodingly handsome to make up for the fact that his parents named him, simply, A.B. (As a small consolation during said project you did discover you aren’t related to Napoleon, and that the problem you faced as a child, you know the one about your pores being large enough to swallow a small schooner? They can almost surely be attributed to genetics. (Thanks! great great great grandma).
But the golden ticket for the best* hold queue recording, to date, has to be awarded to the business who today treated me to this gem of a message:
“Hello, and thanks for calling Dr. So and So’s Office. We are located on Such and Such Street, Near Such and Such Place. We are frequently visited by wildlife, and by mother deer with their young, stopping to drink at our pond.”
I suppose it’s not an altogether unoriginal marketing strategy.
“Clearly, Bob, as you can see from the graphs here, quality of care=number of wildlife visits, especially if by ‘number of wildlife visits’ you don’t ever mean ‘cougars, who are hungry.’”
*And by “quickly-passing, time-devouring” I mostly mean “literally, eating all of my time like a hungry hungry hippo eats marbles that surely most be covered in invisible vegetation otherwise why would a hippo eat a marble?” I also mostly mean “wonderful”; the job, it is still wonderful. Unless you count the day I stubbed my toe on the copier.
**You didn’t think it could get better than Wilson Phillips, did you? I know. Me, either.
This week I have been:
Writing, editing, and organizing grant proposals, and preparing gargantuan-sized grant budgets feverishly, to meet deadlines both old and new.
Snuggling with my pug and enjoying any downtime I have been able to muster.
Writing! I’m so excited about three different stories I have in the works, and thanks to a recent prompt by Danny, I’ve been sitting down daily to translate my excitement into actual words on a page. (Not unlike snakes on a plane. Only → Read more...
This post inspired by my friend and partner in movie quote crime, Home Sweet Sarah.
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Some of the most memorable places I have stood, in no particular order:
On The Great Wall of China. Next to my sister as she took her wedding vows. In front of the Kremlin in Moscow. Next to my favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Priest Lake. Specifically, my family’s Priest Lake dock spot. On Mt. Seorak, South Korea. Poolside for countless summers with friends, and cousins, and awesome(ly ridiculous) bikinis. At the base → Read more...
Full disclosure: I initially considered titling this post !!!!!!!!! but Wordpress started laughing at me, and threatened to throw spam.
At this point to say I cannot contain my already typically excessive exclaiming is to understate. HOW am I going to refrain from blurting out, “Hawaii! I’m going there!” from now until I leave at the beginning of September? Better yet, Maui! + getting to see my sister in TWO WEEKS = how am I going to sleep tonight? And the → Read more...
Originally aired: January 19, 2007. Watched by Kerri Anne: August 1, 2010. Courtesy of: Netflix Instant Watch. Because: a) I was in the mood for a lighthearted, kid-centric story; b) Netflix told me I would four stars enjoy it and saw fit to leave out crucial somber-tone-revealing plot points in their synopsis; c) Netflix is a lying liar face; d) ALL OF THE ABOVE.
Starring: A slew of great Spanish actors you’ve probably never heard of, most notably Ivana Baquero and Maribel Verdú. Protagonist’s → Read more...