In my first job out of grad school, I picked up a lot of peeves. Many of these annoyances can easily be kept in check. Be respectful & professional at all times & everyone will get through the 9-5 with a little less nail biting and teeth grinding.
☠ Do not interrupt colleagues when they are eating lunch. Whatever you need them to help you with can wait until they don’t have a mouthful of sandwich.
☠ If it’s crucial to take a personal call, take a walk outside. It’s the only way to keep your personal life private.
☠ Keep your cell phone on silent in the office. No one wants to hear your tinny default ringtone on repeat while you’re in the bathroom.
☠ When taking in-office calls, use your inside voices. There is no need to scream into the phone.
☠ Take care of your own tasks in a timely manner, especially if others are depending on you.
☠ If you use the printer, pick up your documents quickly. Don’t let them sit there all day. No one likes sifting through a stack of papers looking for a single sheet.
☠ Clean up after yourself. Don’t leave sauce explosions to dry in the microwave. Don’t leave dishes in the sink. Don’t throw stinky food scraps in your desk trash can.
☠ Don’t wear excessive fragrances. Likewise, Febrezing the life out of your cubicle also creates an unpleasant atmosphere.
What bugs you at the office, macaroons? Share your etiquette tips!
I adore this photo. Grab someone & kiss 'em, macaroons!
I did a lot this week, macaroons, but I’ve been too busy & distracted to remember any of it! Seriously. The other night I showered & intended to prepare for bed by taking out my contacts, but instead I snapped out of a trance & realized I was putting on eyeliner. I feel like an alien.
Andrea & me at Atreyu praying for water balloons!
At Mayhemfest, the
sun melted bodies & bands
melted faces off!
I know I will lose,
but until then I can’t stop
chasing what I want.
My professional
writing is starting to get
noticed by big eds.
Finally got my
vanity plates for Rebel!
Move over, Suzie!
Oh, Alzy Q, Baby, I love you Alzy Q.
Finally got the
finishing touches on the
Doo Wop shop at work.
I will find any
occassion to celebrate
friends, but congrats guys!
Monday: Turn your laptop into a planetarium. Shut off all the lights, click “full screen” & explore the stars like a couchstranaut.
Tuesday: In your radical self love handbook, write a style guide for your own personal kissing method. See how you perceive your style.
Wednesday: Head to the local video store & rent the film with the most bizarre title you can find (& tell me what it is!).
Thursday: Turn off every sound making device around, close your eyes & press play.
Friday: Have a blackout party! Shut out all the lights, burn some candles & invite your friends over for drinks & blackjack!
Weekend Homework: Contribute to this call for submissions from women about orgasms. Sounds like an interesting project. I encourage you to write it. Whether or not you decide to send it, you’re sure to learn something about yourself… or at the very least close your weekend with B.O.B & a room full of candles.
leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtub full of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him. and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries . don’t lose too much weight. stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. heart like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas. heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street. — marty mcconnell
I’m away all day rocking hard & melting faces at Mayhemfest, macaroons, but I thought I’d talk briefly about dressing for epic facemelting fests.
Just add motorcycle!
My jeans are a lot less Balmain, sadly & my shoes much taller. I’m wearing my supersoft Dethklok tank & my Tarina Tarantino Things That Hurt bracelet with my beloved sad banana charm added. It’s amazing how well comfort & badass intertwine.
Keep in mind- never wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the band you’re there to see, unless you just bought it at the venue. Happy mosh-pitting!
I wanted to be a nurse (like my mom), a mermaid, a baker, an air force pilot & finally a magazine editor (phone lines are still open, Glamour!).
Right now, I’m managing development of a retail department for an amusement park. It’s not what I thought I would be doing at 26. It’s certainly not a cubicle full of beauty product samples & fashion editorial storyboards. Here’s the problem with real life- it doesn’t ever live up to our dreams.
That list of things I wanted to be tells me what I really wanted was to be creative (baker, mermaid, editor) & command authority (pilot, nurse). I manage a full staff & make all the big decisions from what products the company should sell to who gets hired to what all the retail outlets look like. I also get to design apparel, logos, etc., have them drawn up & put them on the products I think people will love best. I get to shop for a living while using the reasons behind my desire to hold all those other professions (or mythological creaturedom).
Instead of pining for the title you don’t have right now, look for the dreamy elements you did land! Someday, I will be a magazine editor, macaroons. In the meantime, my job is pre-tty fantastic!
What did you want to be when you grew up? What are some common traits of those jobs? Are you using any of them in your current field?
Sometimes I feel like I'm just part of someone's collection of strange lives.
This week was full of friends, many I hadn’t seen in a while. As certain aspects of my life deteriorate with no concern from the other parties involved, I’m reminded that I really need to make time for my friends, no matter how exhausted I am after work or how pleasant the call of the couch & a movie topped with a big bowl of ice cream sounds.
How foolish to let
my heart start to heal when love
can’t find its way back.
I spent a hot day
with ice cream & old friends from
Nickelodeon.
Friends start families
while I’m always slightly too
wrong for everyone.
My little Muldoon
has the flu & hobbles like
a little old man.
Lucky Bones fills with
stories from my girlhood at
dinner with my dad.
My heart always feels
like a kid with splattered ice
cream on the pavement.
Monday: Watch this hilariously awesome tutorial on how to trick people into thinking you’re good looking.
Tuesday: I just discovered Moleskine MSK, which lets you customize pages, print them & add them to your Moleskine. Check out the recipe pages! Type up all your best secret recipes & build your own cookbook! You can also use the wizard to create any kind of pages you want or need.
Wednesday: Write an anonymous secret love letter to someone you’re into & leave it someplace they can find it. What letter? You don’t know anything about any letters. Do you look like a post office?
Friday: Read “You Are Jeff” by Richard Siken. I love this poem. I really can’t pick a favorite section, but I love the one about God making tuna sandwiches & this one feels pretty right too:
Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Don’t make a noise,
don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will
come back from the dead for you. This could be a city. This could be a
graveyard. This could be the basket of a big balloon. Leave the lights
on. Leave a trail of letters like those little knots of bread we used to
dream about. We used to dream about them. We used to do a lot of
things. Put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, pick up the
bread and devour it. I’m in the hallway again, I’m in the hallway. The
radio’s playing my favorite song. Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I’ll
keep walking toward the sound of your voice.
Weekend Homework: Order takeout & eat it in your underwear while watching ridiculous bullshit movies. There’s nothing like it!
I don’t particularly like or understand the waistcoat-as-shirt thing, macaroons. It’s not a flattering or even feasible style for the big-boobs-tiny-waist ratio that comprises my cartoony body. I’m also a firm believer that if you’re holding some kind of adorable animal in your photos, you’re probably trying to compensate for something- sweater kittens in this case?
However, if you’re interesting in looking like a prom night walk of shame, macaroons, you can do it for just $143!
Click for product info
What are your thoughts on the formal wear thing? Wasn’t this over last year?
