Sunday Snippets

Being the anniversary of Elaine's disappearance, I took Thursday off work. The last place I wanted to be was surrounded by people who a) didn't know about her and b) I didn't want to get emotional in front of. It turned out to be the right choice as I cried twice before 10:00am.

I spent some time with my dad, went blackberry picking with my mom, and then baked a blackberry pie with said berries. All in all, it was a much better way to spend a day remembering Elaine then feeling alone and weepy in a soul-crushing cubicle. (This is not a commentary on my work place specifically, all cubicles are designed to be soul-crushing. In fact, I'm pretty sure the word 'cubicle' means 'four wall soul destroyer' in Sanskrit.)

Say hello to my mom, the woman who taught me how to bake.
Home Ec Teacher Moms for the win!

I love to bake but living alone (and not having a dishwasher), I don't do it very often. When I do bake, I tend to keep one or two pieces of the baking for myself and then give the rest away to family, friends, co-workers and the employees of my favourite coffee shops and restaurants.

If you are a proprietor of such an establishment and you see me coming, you want to befriend me. So far this year, I have given out Sansa's Lemon Cakes, Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Bailey's Cream Cheese Icing, Zopfe (a type of Swiss bread), and Blackberry Pie. Plus, there's another round of the cupcakes already in the works thanks to a certain beloved employee's imminent return to Dublin. I pay you to serve me and I give you food... not a bad deal.

My younger brother is significantly younger than me. This means that for the releases of 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz', he had to patiently wait until they were available on DVD. With the release of 'The World's End' this past weekend, we finally got to a Cornetto Trilogy movie in the theatres together. We decided to forego a sunny afternoon outside for the confines of a darkened theatre in which we proceeded to laugh our asses off. According to my text messages, we made our plans to see this together on June 21st. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only geek in the family.

Is It Only Tuesday?

You know those weeks where it feels like it should already be Friday but it isn't? In fact, if you're really unlucky, it's only Monday? At least I made it to Tuesday before I started ugly-crying about my desire for it to be the weekend already. During one of my meetings, we were talking about setting up review sessions for next week. Plans for next week?!? It must be Friday!!!

Lying bastards.

For my next (and last) meeting of the day, however, my coworker brought each of us one of these:

I totally stole this picture from Bon Macaron's Facebook page without asking. So, if you're in the Victoria area, please visit them and tell them Andrea sent you so they don't get mad at me when they find out. Or Jennifer. Or Claire. Any of those names should work.

I raved to my coworker about the awesome blackberry not-really-a-macaron creation from Bon Macaron during a meeting on Monday (my picture here). Obviously, my powers of persuasion are amazing if she bought three of the blueberry ones today! Best. Meeting. EVER!

(Just to be really clear, I'm getting diddly squat for raving about the macarons so when I say this is my honest opinion, this is my honest opinion.)

***

Once upon a time, I attended university in Freiburg, Germany and lived in a student residence called Ulrich Zasius Haus or UZH. The UZH had a magical Pepsi machine in the foyer/mailbox area. What was so magical about it, you ask? Well, two buttons dispensed Pepsi but the other six buttons dispensed beer! BEER, PEOPLE! Even more magical? It was cheap beer. Our building became the meeting place for nights out... which often became nights in.

My older brother and two friends came to visit.
They were also amazed by the magic Pepsi machine.

I was reminded of this fact while I stared at the Coke machine in my current apartment building. Sadly, all its buttons are for non-alcoholic beverages and no amount of fake spell casting would change that.

*sigh*

As much as I made fun of the UZH and called it 'the ghetto', I do miss some things about it.

***

I try to remain vague about my job for various reasons (not least of which because it's the professional thing to do when you work in my field and have a personal but public blog) which means that it's hard to explain why finding this picture online today made me so damn happy. Just know that it put a huge, goofy grin on my face for the rest of the day.

If you don't get this poster, click this link.
And then ask to borrow my DVD so you can watch the whole movie.

Now to figure out where I can put it up in my cubicle without it being noticed...

Question: Any work pet peeves of your own to share?