Just too much work sitting around all day barking at the mailman, getting up to get a drink of water and scratching an itch.

About three weeks ago I met with my trainer at the gym. Feeling like the 22 minutes on the treadmill was not making a difference, I went in because I needed an evaluation and adjustment to my workout. The running for 22 minutes and lifting weights for another 20 three times a week were not producing significant results. I wanted to whittle away more fat so Anna gave me some advice. Less weight training, more cardio. So I bumped my running up to 40 minutes. Now I am burning about 520 calories and hitting a distance of around 3.7 miles per run. But the weight is still there. I can feel a difference, and it is pushing it every run, but what I have noticed is that stupid eating habits are getting me down.

 Working in an office kills your diet. Especially around any holiday. Easter is one of the worst. Those darn chocolate eggs, bunnys, and malted milk ball eggs. I just read the label on these Reeses chocolate and peanut butter Eggs: 200 calories per 5 little bitty eggs. Dang!!!!

I give up. Well no, I won't, but it so frustrating to know that it takes 5 minutes of weakness to suck down 10 eggs, or 400 calories, but it takes over 35 minutes of grueling running on a treadmill to burn those babies off. Life is not fair. 

Pig farm or Apple advertising scheme?
My buddy Marcus sent this article from Boston.com and link.[google map- zoom in] Thanks dude.

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Save one.

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Christy's friends are throwing us an engagement party tonight. It is a "wine tasting" party. This is the first time there is a party being thrown for me. I am sort of bummed though because at least three of my favorite people and back-watchers cannot be there. I WILL have some of my best friends/coworkers, my sister and her husband, not-to-mention, christy's friends. It is sure nice of the Bucks to take an entire Friday + prep time, and host this for us. I plan on enjoying myself and look forward to getting the wedding celebration festivities rolling. Next......bachelor party!
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Remove Inessential Documents & Debris = Removing personality and uniqueness

We are preparring for the move to our new building in August. They have labeled this pre-move clean-up R.I.D.D.
We are all deciding how to handle this. It is smart of the company to begin removing debris now because inevitably it will sneak up on us and we would be forced to throw away good stuff in a panic. I have much less to worry about and throw away than most here. You see, the average employee in just my department, the Creative Services group, is 16 years. I have been here not quite two. What is scary though, is that I am dealing with the stress of RIDDing my cube of what I deem necessity. There is my green iPod IZ, Justin Timberlake Bobblehead, and Season-scented candles, not to mention the Iron Maiden mirror, Dweezil Zappa mousepad and Umbra wall clock. We have been informed and viewed our new desk layouts and are aware that there will be little space to store anything that represents us as individuals. No walls to hang posters, no shelves to hold picture frames or our beloved dog heads. I am trying to keep an open mind but it seems that the designers of our new building are moving us backwards in fashion and usability and practicality. Have they done studies on what makes for a more comfortable/productive office setting? I hope so but if you saw pics of our new cubes, I would think otherwise. I guess by December we will all make these assessments.

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Excuse my French....maybe.

I was just reading in the Journal about how profanity is a measure of corporate culture because cussing is cool in some companies or grounds for insubordination in others. I think this is true in our company. It provides a creative outlet and expression to relieve stress and to also exclaim how happy you are about something. A design maybe? A statement that you agree with? Uttering the "F" word sometimes, maybe most times, is almost like enjoying a breath of fresh air. It pops the stress bubble. I know we use it alot around here, too much, but when saved for just the right moment, it can move mountains, at least internally. I do respect others who would be offended by the use of profanity, and also see opponents of swearing in the workplace or generally. It can be perceived as a sign of unintelligence, lack of education, or sexual harassment.

I have been trying to cut down on my swearing lately, which is funny that this article just came out. I really do not like how much bad stuff has been coming out lately. I am making a conscious effort to minimize, especially the Fbomb, the amount of badness that I say every day. I do think work has something to do with it, but mainly I blame just me and regardless of this article, I plan to stop.

" "Profanity will always offend someone, but the lack of profanity will never offend anyone."
Still, profanity is a barometer of corporate culture because cussing up a blue streak may be taboo to some companies and expected in others. It's used as everything from a social bonding tool to a badge of status, from a weapon to a substitute for it. Not least, it's a stress reliever when a paper tray doesn't know it's already full, a voicemail system doesn't recognize a password, or when an automated restroom faucet splashes your pants, suggesting incontinence that is good for no one's career.
"Uttering a profanity is almost like enjoying a breath of fresh air," concedes P.M. Forni, author of "Choosing Civility" and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project. "

My coworkers and myself swear quite a bit. Mostly just for fun. It gets stressful and hectic here and after an hour, this requires some good ol' swearing. Whether it is used in one of our "office" expressions, or a collaborative gesture, we use it.
What is funny to me is that sometimes the lines are blurred between sounding pissed, or happy. People swear to express joy
or to state frustration.

So take this for what you will, but I think swearing has a time and a place.

Favorite Profane Office Expressions

(not all spoken by me)

"What the Fuck?"

"FTSB"

"Shit Bitch"

"Goddamn Sonofbitch"

"That's Bullshit"

"Shit!"

I hope this does not offend my readers. I could have used $#@*&% instead of the real word, but this gets my point across.

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Based on an article I was reading, hanging out with the dogs, in Martha Stewart Living ( yeah, yeah, I know), I decided to do a Spring cleaning of the refrigerator. I basically used hot water and some baking soda. I pulled out all of the drawers, and shelving and went to town on them. It is amazing how dirty your fridge can become. It scares me to think that we store fresh veggies and meats and fruit in this dirty disgusting fridge. But Christy says that "well, they don't touch the food, so it should be ok." I still think it is gross. Now the fridge is sparkling clean and less cluttered.

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This morning, the dogs let us sleep til 8:00am. This may sound like not a big deal, but every morning, like clockwork, they are up and ready to go outside at 6:25am. EVEN on weekends. Today CA got up and let them out and came back in after feeding them. She tried to get them to go back to bed to no avail, so they got in bed with us. Christy caught this picture, among others.
I keep thinking we should set up a Flickr account ...ok, so I just did.

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I just found an old pic of Ole, who is going to be in our wedding. It was 1985 New Years Eve and we rented out two rooms at the Super 8 Motel. They would always put us partiers on the bottom floor knowing that we would open and crawl out windows, barf all over the bathroom and fill the tubs with Busch beer! Good times. Ole is circled in red.

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We are bracing for a big snowstorm. They are saying it could be a foot or so. It is three years ago almost to the day of our last big blizzard. Come on snow!

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The one nice thing of being between freelance projects, is the down time
I get to spend it with my loved ones. Sometimes, they just are too tired to enjoy a good episode of Gilmore Girls though.



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Is this Mac/Windows marriage good or bad?

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Wearin' O The Green.
( yeah, i know, i should not have tucked in my shirt.)

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The Inventor of the Cubicle..."a bad idea."

Buddin' with Der Marr




Nancy got almost every player's autograph, she was trooper!

The DNA was a sponsor for the Night with the Nuggets bowling party at Lucky Strike last night.

Walmer, Crimmins, Deleo, Enwall and myself went as DNA ambassadors. What a night. All drinks, food and dessert were free. Not to mention the bowling. The lanes weren't scoring correctly, but even though I bowled 3 strikes no one really knew who scored what.
We got to meet quite a few Nuggets, none of which I knew except for Melo, only because of his controversies. Melo ended up on our bowling team though so I got to hang with him a bit. This dude, Der Marr Johnson, was the tallest guy there and Walmer got me chatting with him over dirty martinis. It was a good night. I got Melo to sign a calendar for Christy, even though she has no idea who he is.


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The other morning, like I do every day, I walked into the Starbucks on my way from the bus to work. Walking in, I see two lines formed in front of two registers. Both lines have at least 12 people each waiting to order. This struck me as a new era in service. It did not feel like a coffee house anymore. That may have something to do with the fact that this particular Starbucks is in a bank building, a shop inside a shop. What struck me is that this is a coffeehouse, NOT a McDonalds, or a Burger King at the height of lunchtime. It was a coffeehouse at 7:38am on a Tuesday morning. Today, Christy and I were early b/c I drove. We decided to go to my favorite said Starbucks, but when we walked into the revolving doors, we just kept on revolving to the outdoors because there were two lines again, both with at least 12 people. We proceeded to walk further down the same street to the Wells Fargo building where a new Starbucks just opened. They are not equipped yet to handle big lines and the word has not gotten out that they are there, so the lines are usually short if at all. But today, Friday, people were treating themselves to their favorite latte or Frappacino blended coffee and there were at least 5 people in line. Christy looks at me and says "Would you be mad if I go to Peaberrys?" The dynamic of the once relaxed atmosphere has been transformed into a morning jolt farm. I don'tt like it, and obviously can't change it, but have to admit that I still prefer the Starbuck's experience to most mom and pop coffee houses, mainly due to the decor, the coffee itself second. There are a few coffeehouses in Denver which I frequent, but mainly due to location. I do not like frequenting coffeehouses that let you smoke, or coffeehouses with too much clutter and chaos (tattered books, games and basic uncleanliness-feeling). Still the idea of the morning-jolt coffee farm scares me a bit. I do not think it will stop me from standing in line though. 

I just downloaded this cool widget that lets me post from my desktop quickly. I am in the process of switching over my site(s) to WordPress which I installed last night, but for the meantime, I will use this handy accessory. 

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Last night Christy and I went to the mall with our $100 gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma, a thoughtful gift from Virginia and Archibold. We decided instead of putting the $$ towards one big item, we'd buy a bunch of fun little stuff. Christy got a 3 screen timer to replace the literally demolished 1-screen she has had for years. it is so fancy I could not do it this morning with sleep in my eyes and no coffee. I got some new soap and lotion and a hand stone to rub off the stinkyness that assaults your hands, especially the fish oil we give the dogs every night on their food.

Coming soon: Restroom Critic's new site.

Watch for it soon with new reviews and fun stuff. I am going to take this baby seriously from now on.