a magical animal

i forgot to add this in my post yesterday, but why do we eat ham on easter? i know for a lot of people easter is a big family holiday, but i tend to keep to myself on that day and reflect. a few kids i saw at church were pumped to go eat a nice easter ham with their families. is it basically the most anti-jewish dish to eat? one final extra super non-kosher dig? and then wash it down nice glass of milk. seriously.

mutually assured destruction

well i stuck all the phone books on my colleague's desk. i believe the grand total was 10. our office environment is so staid, that i find it absolutely necessary to do things like this - which includes carrying 6 of the aforementioned phone books to work in a duffle bag and my back pack to work. i was kind of sweaty that morning. i am deeply committed to the pranking craft. or i'm just a huge dork. you decide. hint: the answer is both. last friday the books were stacked back neatly by my desk, and my hard drive was hidden away behind them. well played.

.1% of the work week successfuly frittered away through the hijinks. 78% of the work week is frittered away by facebook and twitter. 12% of the work week is spent on the baby bald eagle cam. and 5% is on the shiba inu puppy cam (scroll to the bottom). and 3.9% is spent emailing my friend who sits at the desk 4 feet away from me or throwing wads of paper at her or leaving work early on fridays to go to happy hour. and 1% on actual work. (full disclosure: it took me a shamefully long time to get those percentages to actually add up to 100. and in case my boss checks this, these numbers are totally wrong) although i have to also add that being on facebook and twitter is really part of my job. oh, social media. and since the eagle cam and dog cam were found on twitter, those are tenuously work-related. as are the emails to my friend since 1 out of every 200 emails is actually work-related.

maybe the next time i write on the blog, it'll be about stuff that happens outside of work. but i spend most of that time sleeping.

bringing out the big guns

today my coworker finally asked me if i had been putting phone books on his desk. time to collect a bunch over the weekend and put them all on his desk at once for him to find on monday. restraint be damned.

back to the same ol' same ol'

so i survived that 13.1 miles last week in case you were wondering. it went all right. i did exactly what i thought i could do with the amount to training i'd done, so i'm happy with that. i also know that i can do a lot better than that, so i probably will be whining about doing another half marathon again on this blog soon. i did the marathon in 2:21 and i would love love love to break 2 hours. a modest goal i think. then i can really go back to being a slob again.

actually, i'd probably run this race (www.oaklandrunningfestival.com) again too, for a variety of reasons. the organizers did a fabulous job with the whole event, from the pre-race expo, to the event itself and afterward (beer coupons). thumbs up for that. and thumbs up for the city of oakland - it's a city that gets a bad rap, and it was great to see all sorts of people turn out to cheer us on, from japanese taiko drummers, to hardcore oakland a's and raiders fans, to the arty metalwork organization putting a cool metal arch with real flames coming out of the top on the course for us to run through. loved it.

getting to work again was only slightly difficult. i took the day off work after the race and hobbled around. our office is on the second floor with no elevator, but tuesday was the only real slow day up the stairs. on thursday i was up to my old tricks (see previous entry concerning filling mug full of jello at work). one of the guys i work with is our green business consultant. meaning he consults with small businesses and helps them become more environmentally responsible, and it saves them a lot of money, to boot. anyway, last week, he was talking about supporting san francisco's plan to stop printing the yellow pages. because that's a hell of a lot of paper. on thursday, our building got 5 phone books - even though there are only 2 offices in the building. i immediately grabbed all of them and hid them next to my desk. at my friend's suggestion, i have been putting one phone book somewhere on his desk each day since then. my original instinct was to put all of them on there at once in different places. but this at least stretches out the amusement. i'm not used to practicing this kind of restraint. we are now tempted to go around the city and grab more of them, perhaps maybe walling in his cubicle - that's just a pipe dream. but would be really amazing! i thought maybe since i got this office job i would act more "grown-up" (whatever that means). i am pleased to report that this is not the case.