I'm Unsure If Crappy Decorations at Work Are Meant to Be Ironic...or not.

The offices at the school are decorated for the holidays. And by “holidays” I mean Christmas. And by “decorated” I mean various things have been taped to the walls.

Taping up pictures of Christmas trees, printed from a black-and-white office printer, is not festive. It’s just not. No, the jaunty angles don’t help either. And the more they put up, the more it just looks like some psychopath is stalking a tree and has a bunch of pictures taped to the wall. “Here the tree was getting a decorated, here the tree was getting coffee at Starbucks, and here the tree is taking a shower. It must be a naughty pine! Ah-HAhahaha….hmmmm? hmmmm?”



Sorry for the bizarre tree-stalker fantasy there.

The upside to all of this is the otherwise depressed and twitchy employees are getting a nice diversion. The downside is we had students in interviewing for the medical school today. My first question as a potential student would be “You want me to pay $160,000 in tuition over the next four years, but yet you have a paper plate cut like a snowflake taped to your wall?” As a prospective student, my sense would be that there are serious budgeting problems at the University.

Oh well. Don’t worry about me. I’m really not that riled up over the craptacular decorations. I’ll just go back to balancing these ledgers and wait for the first of the three ghosts to visit.

Electronic Blog Neglected for Needs of Analog Blog

The Christmas letter, that is. I am finally about to take our cards and the “Holiday Herald” to the post office. At least 95% of them. There is always that 5% that we can’t remember if they moved, got imprisoned, defected, or had some other shenanigans happen since last Christmas that warrants a new address label. Their cards are placed in a holding pattern until we get a card from the person in question. Then we quickly address the envelope based on the return address and act like we were totally on top of their life change.

We’ve had a very nice Polish man in our basement all week. I recommend one for your home. He’s working on the bathroom tiles. All day long I hear him calling “Teeeeeem? Teeeeeem?” whenever he has a question. Tim doesn't understand everything he is asking, so we don't know exactly what we have agreed to down there. If we end up with Hello Kitty trim tiles, we'll know we nodded "yes" when we should have shook our head "no."

Things get more complicated when we have one guy that speaks Spanish, one guy that speaks Polish, and one guy that speaks… who knows? Klingon? The three of them put together have an English vocabulary of about 100 words with very little overlap. It makes for some interesting games of “telephone.” By the time information gets to Tim, we are told “Our whale-gun broke, we must use MC Hammer, which requires more wine.” Tim, being the helpful guy that he is, goes to home depot and buys them a new whale-gun. Then the construction guys just look confused when he hands them their new harpoon.

Cultural diversity can be hilarious. These guys could have their own 1980s sitcom.



Hahaha!!! Oh, Balki!

The Weather Outside is Frightful

Usually when they predict a huge snowfall, we are all left disappointed. By “they”, I mean meteorologists. Meteorologists love drama, and they don’t mind hyperbole. This time, though, they were right. We’ve had at least 6 inches of snow since it started coming down yesterday. This is Bear’s first time seeing snow, so he spent a long time just staring out the window and then looking around to see if anyone else in the house was freaking out.

We’ve gotten a few of our holiday traditions checked off the list. We bought the tree. We put up Christmas lights. We took dad to the hospital. We’ve almost finished our shopping, thanks to the Internet, a hearty Discover card, and a lifelong commitment to laziness and staying warm. The Christmas cards are the next holiday-related funtoonery to get out of the way.

Wow, I just realized that we really kill a lot of trees around Christmas. The cards, the wrapping paper, and the actual Christmas tree that we prop up in our homes and hang lights and ornaments on. (Not a very dignified way to go if you are a tree.) Well, I am pretty sure this is the way Jesus would want us to celebrate his birthday.

This post is dedicated to Dad. Dad is the hero of hanging lights, and he went down for the cause… and will not be allowed to go back up for the cause ever again. Mom said so.