The Mysterious Books-based on a true story

Once Upon a Time (about a month ago), there was a girl named Theresa who traveled to the far off land of Texas. She was on a quest to visit the strange and mysterious University of Dallas where all of her theatrical friends were held captive until they were able to complete their studies and be freed from the school's clutches. Her friends were sad that she was not returning to the place and they didn't know how they would get along without her, so she went to visit them to give them the strength they would need to endure their long hard journey. While she was there she had a merry old time, going to the playground at midnight, helping poor inexperienced freshmen learn the ropes of the costume shop, and generally making people lives brighter because she was there. She had another mission while in Texas and that mission was to find a way to get all of her stuff back home in one piece. She spent two days and nights finding boxes and other packing materials and filled the boxes with her books, shoes, and other mythical junk that had accumulated during her stay. After carefully filling each and every box, she addressed them to herself at home and sent them on their way.
After several tears were shed, she said goodbye to her friends and went to the airport to return to her east coast abode. (She had trouble with the large, stupid dragon who was supposed to pick her up from the airport and then decided not to becasue he would rather watch his stupid favorite football team lose than help out a friend, but the dragon is another story for another time.......) Anyway, one day, Theresa's minion brother called her at work to inform her that her boxes had arrived. She was so glad, for now she could finally restore all of her items to their proper place in her room....or so she thought. Everything was going fine until she got to a brightly colored balloon box that was sent to her by the princess, her sister-in-law for her birthday earlier that year. When she sent the box home, it was filled with the magazines that she had bought over the school year. She picked up the bok to open it, but noticed that there was a little tear in the box. Thinking nothing of it, she continued to open the box and saw that her magazines were gone, and in their place were five completely random books that were not hers. In stead of a pile of InStyle magazine she had: Crime and Punishment, a book on modern day China, a fictional novel about Teddy Roosevelt, a thriller/romance novel, and a Dr. Seuss book (One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish in case you were wondering). This astounded the girl becasue these were not the articles she herself packed into the box. She looked carefully at the box. Yes, it was hers alright, but where did these come from? She stood looking in amazement staring at these books, wondering what happened and thought of how funny this must be to the poor person whose books these actually are. What must be going through their minds when they open their box only to find tips on how to have the perfect hairstyle for any face and what shoes are in this season.
Perhaps no one will ever know what happened at the post office, or who switched her things or why, but even to this day, if you look at her bookshelf you can see these strange books who have lost their owner sitting on her bookshelf. Maybe these books contain hidden pleas for help from some poor captive somewhere, I don't know. But if this is not a case for Unsolved Mysteries, then I have lost all faith in humanity.
The End.

New Heights of iNsaniTy

How is it that as we get older we act more and more like children? Is it becasue we wake up one morning and realize that the life of a child is more simple and we want to go back to that, or is it beacuse we never really grow out of our childish tendencies? I'm kind of thinking that for most people it's the latter. There have been several instances lately where the people around me who I generally associate with being adults have miraculously transformed into eight year olds before my eyes. And that gets me to thinking....have they always been that way and I just didn't notice, or is it only under certain circumstances that these infantile qualities rise to the surface.

I know there is some kind of saying about how there is a child in all of us, but shouldn't that mean that we all possess the carefree, simple pleasures kinds of child rather than the whiney brat, I need to get my way and if i don't I will have a temer tantrum kind of child in us????

I don't know what the answer is, but until someone tells me, I'm going to go in my room and lock the door and not come out.

So there.

Blonde Moments

Have you ever had one of those days where you have more blonde moments than you do brain cells? I know you would never admit it so I won't wait for an admission. But I would like to confess something to you, something that I had always hoped would be taken to my grave with me. However, in light of recent events, it has become clear to me that I can no longer hide behind the facade of my naturally brown hair.

I, Theresa, am a dumb blonde.

Now I'm not the "is chicken of the sea chicken or tuna" type of dumb blonde. Nor am I the suicide by smelling a scratch and sniff sticker at the bottom of a pool kind as the joke would imply. No, I am the worst kind of dumb blonde. I'm the kind that can go for years without incident, perfectly free to live my smart-ass, brown haired life. Then suddenly, without any warning and due to circumstances beyond my control, I have.....blonde moments. The kind that where the severity of my stupidity is made known to the world and I am helpless in my efforts to rise above it.

I cannot tell you the things I've done. Allowing people to have the knowledge that I am so susceptible to moments such as these is embarrassment enough. Just know that in the past week, nay the past 36 hours I have experienced two truley perixode induced moments that will live in infamy for days to come.

And now if you will excuse me, I must needs go and hide my blonde roots.

Weird Hobbies

Do you ever wonder why people have weird hobbies? I'm not trying to make some sort of profound point out of this, I was just wondering if you have ever looked at something someone else really enjoyed collecting and went, "huh, well that's weird." I have this happen to me quite often and quite frankly I don't understand it.

I am an avid collector of print socks. And I am not ashamed to admit it either. I have not counted all of the pairs of socks I own, but I do know that they don't all fit in my sock drawer if they are all clean. Recently an aquaintance of mine made the comment, "so what do you do when you are wearing sandals, keep a pair of socks in your purse?" I think he was doing it to be obnoxious, but I don't care because I am not one to get my feelings hurt over something that petty. And the reason his remark did not bother me is simple....I love my socks. They are the one thing that I can were on a daily basis that does not have to be bound by the rules of fashion. My socks do not have to match my outfit. I can wear watermelon socks with brown pinstrip pants and no one can tell me that I am not coordinated. Not only that, but it makes me happy to know that I am wearing at leat one article of clothing that allows me to express my creativity without absurdly drawing attention to myself. Oh and I have enough socks so that I only have to do sock laundry maybe three or four times a year. For someone who hates doing laundry as much as I do, I consider that to be a good thing.

There are a lot of people out there who have crazier hobbies than collecting socks. Some people people collect rocks, some people collect furniature, and there are even people who collect body parts from their victims (you know who you are). So before you look at me like I am a sock freak from Mars, examine your own weird hobbies and embrace them. Once you do you will finally be able to embrace them in others. :-)

It's a Small World, Afterall

When I was a kid the world was massive. It took two whole hours to drive all the way to the far away land of Connecticut to visit my grandfather. I won't even mention the expedition to Virginia to visit my cousins that was worthy of any Oregon Trail. In other words, the world used to be a big, big place. And I new it must be big because the kids I went to school with didn't even know the kids who lived on my block....that's how big the world was in those days. People didn't even know the other people that lived within a two mile radius of each other.

Now that I have hit the age of 22 and am ancient, I see that the Disney themepark ride with the scary little singing Dutch children was entirely true all along. Not only is driving for two hours nothing to me anymore, but I am realizing that through this modern invention called the internet, I am able to reconnect with people I forgot had existed. I also thought that I was the only one in the world who knew the people I knew, and now I know that other people's freinds know my friends. Confused? Allow me to give an example. When I went down to Texas to go to school, I thought I was getting away from everyone and everything previously connected with me. Afterall, every other time I moved to a new state that was the case. SO I move to Texas, where a friend of one of my closest friends lives accross the street from me. So far not too freaky. Well, a guy who is friends with this dude's roommate comes over and introduces himself, So we're talking, talking, and then I find out he went to a particular college in California. I knew a couple of guys who went there way back in the day so I asked him if any of them went to school with him. He says yeah he knows those guys. So I start to get the whoa-that-a-little-weird-but-kind-of-cool feeling about me until he says that he went to a particular high school. At that point my friend says he went to college on the other side of the country with people who went to that high school and asks if he knows the people he knows. And dude says yes! So here we have this random guy who knows people I know who live in NC but went to school in CA and knows people my friend knows who went to high school in PA but went to college in VA with a guy from Indiana who is now living in Texas!!!

And that is just the beginning. I recently foung several people that I grew up with through several internet venues and found out that several of them are friends with each other now who never went to the same school and didn't live in the same neighborhood. And you don't even want to know all of the intricate details of it, trust me it will make your head spin.

This is all too much for me. I mean, I like knowing people and all but this is kind of ridiculous. I don't think there is any place I can go in this country and know absolutely no one.

It's A Small World, Indeed.

That's why I'm moving to Jupiter.

Co-Workers

The people you work with can get to be like your family.....I mean, you spend more of your waking hours with these people than with the ones you love. They know every meal you ate today, they know when your son's soccer game is on Saturday, and what you bought at the grocery store. You talk to them about everything going on in your life, what movies you saw this past weekend, what the President said in his address today, hell, you even talk to them about what the doctor said that rash on your back could be. These people have become your home away from home. You are bonded to these people by ties that can never be broken, well until one of you leaves the cohabitat that is you office, of course. But even then, if they particularly liked you, they will keep in touch, continuing meet you for lunch dates and shopping trips. You will still probably be invited to someone's daughter's wedding. These people have weirdly become your family. You probably know more about them then you do your family and they definitely know more about you. . . which is why they can get on your nerves so easily. And its days like today when they are really getting on my nerves. It almost makes me want talk to my mother.

Frivolous Email

Okay this is totally going to be a major plot point in the season finale of the sitcom I am working on about my office and if I find that someone takes this story from me I will totally kill them.


SO. After a brief hiatus from work, I came back just in time to be part of the subject of the day, (and quite possibly the week when the prez comes back from vacation) all because of one tiny little email.

Let me explain.

In my office the Employee Relations and Outreach Specialist, (yeah I don't know what he does either) in order to boost morale in the office, started a news letter equipped with a tiny error somehwere for ther employees to find. Then the first person to find it gets a 10$ gift card to target or some such. My guess is he wants to make people actually suffer through reading the newsletter, and I was quite frankly very surprised to find that there were many people that fell prey to this trap. Anyway, today everyone was sent an email by this guy which stated:

Congratulations go out to Connie G. (U.S. Patent & Trade Office) who was the first to spot a blooper in the newsletter. She identified the word “it’s” in the NSF article as incorrect; it should have been printed “its”. She has requested, and will receive a gift card from Target.
However, my inadvertent error was in fact, not the intended blooper.
It was Joe B. (Dept. of Homeland Security) who was first to identify the planted blooper in the article about Laverne Douglas. The word “teem” should have been spelled “team”. He too will receive a gift card of his choice.
Congratulations to both winners, I guess I’ll have to be more careful next time.
Thanks for all the response (I got about 15 emails, only Connie spotted the “it’s” mistake, the rest were the “teem” blooper.), be on the look-out next time!


Seems pretty corny and harmless, right? Well it was until one of the guys from my office sent another mass email out to everyone saying:

What do you win if you find a blooper in your emails?
“Congratulations go (should be goes) out to Connie G.”
Haha
Show me the money!


Now I am all for being a smartass, but for the love of all that is holy if you are going to be obnoxious, do it right!!! So, being as this dude has never opened a grammar book in his life, I figureed I would send a friendly little email to him to set him straight....oh yeah, and I also copied all of the people he did so as to properly put him in his place. All I said was:

While I applaud your attempts to gain free stuff, I must point out to you that the sentence was in fact correct in Tony’s email. Though Connie G. was the subject of the email, she was not, in fact, the subject of the sentence. The subject of the sentence was congratulations which is plural, which means that the verbal agreement would not have been goes, (which is the proper use for a singular subject) but rather go (the proper use for plural subject). In order to make goes work the sentence would have gone something like this: Congratulation goes out to Connie G. ………but really why would we only want to send her one congratulation???
Anyway, just thought you’d like to know

After that all the rave reviews started pouring in. People were telling me how funny that was, how it made there day, how they were glad I told him, etc. UNTIL some woman that we are assuming works for us sent us both an email, as well as to everyone else which ever so kindly stated:

Do not send frivolous email messages to me. The Bureau of Labor Statistics frowns on non-business-related emails.
If you have nothing better to do than to send frivolous messages to all employees, ensure than my name is removed from the YRCI-All list.
If I receive any more such frivolous email messages from you, I will file a formal complaint about you.

Talk about someone who can't take a joke. So now this friendly little office banter is something to be frowned upon? I guess it is and I didn't get the memo. My boss has passed my desk several times and given me a funny look of "I am not allowed to approve of what you did but damn was that funny."

I guess I should not have replied to the email, but when you have had the misfortune to actually be educated in the art of proper english grammar, it is important to share the wealth.

And now something that was just a little chuckle and proceed to finish working has caused half of the office to hault all work in order to discuss the joke and the stupid woman who couldn't take it.


Talk about frivolous.