Caesar's Invasion of Britain + Quote!

I have one of those page-a-day calendars on my desk for work. This is the third year I've had one ^.^ This year, instead of a daily comic, I picked up "The Dangerous Book for Boys." There was a similar one for girls, but that all had stuff about etiquette and what-not. The DBB had cool trivia and how to make paper airplanes XD

In any case, for the past couple days, the pages have been giving information on Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 BC. It's been really interesting, and I thought I'd share some of the tidbits.

In 55 BC, Caesar's Romans first landed on the beaches in Kent. The Britons (which means "painted ones") fought in the water with their dogs to prevent the ships with soldiers from reaching the shore. Caesar's personal account of this battle actually marks the first reference of a specific domesticated dog breed - the English mastiff. ^.^ The surviving Roman soldiers, including Caesar, ended up coming to a truce with the Britons, but they came back in 54 BC with a huge army: 800 ships, five legions of troops, and 2000 cavalrymen. Fortunately for the Britons, a huge storm hit at the same time and decimated Caesar's ships and troops. With his remaining armies, Caesar marched north and wiped out a bunch of tribes before finally agreeing to peace terms. Then he left and never returned (due to being distracted by Cleopatra and then being stabbity-stabbed).

Work Quote of the Day (I'm not certain of the context):
J: I hate deceased employees.
L: They're such a nuisance!

Quick-n-Dirty Update + Quote!

I'm not going to regale you with epic tales of being sick for a couple weeks. You're welcome.

Aside from that, life has settled into that kind of comfortable yet frantic pace that the holiday season seems to bring - and while most people I come across are pleasant and jovial, I definitely understand the "Seasonal Blues" phenomenom. Especially with the weather being consistantly overcast and drizzly. And the fog. The fog has been incredible.

My company Christmas party is tomorrow night - we'll be heading to Jack Allen's Kitchen and will be there opening night - it's kind of exciting, and I feel vaguely like a celebrity.

And here's the quote of the day (I don't know the context, but I heard it all the way across the office):
S: Look in my eye. There's glass in my eye. LOOK AT IT!

Food + Dancing

We put in a big sandwich order today, and I accidentally wrote "No lettuce, no tomato" instead of "no mayo." Fortunately, I corrected it in time - I would have been very unhappy. As a follow up:

Me: I'm the dumbest person ever.
D: Yeah, that's what I've been telling people.

In other news, it's the one-year anniversary for Kick Butt Blues! We're celebrating with a semi-formal dance tonight. I have a pretty dress and everything! Now, if I can just shake this being-tired business...

Miss You Fever + Quotes!

Want to hear a great Texas blues song? It's "Miss You Fever" by Delbert McClinton - it'll play on imeem.com.
Listen!
Mmm, such a great song.

Also, two great work quotes today:

S: I think the internet comes in through the plumbing. I'm serious. Someone flushes, and everyone goes offline.
-----
S: Have you guys seen the videos yet?
M: Nope. We're like... we're the mushroom group - always in the dark.
S: Well, I guess that explains the moss.

Designing a Store for Work

So, at work, I'm trying to create an online store. There's a company that allows you to upload your own template so the store can look exactly like the rest of your website (which is a really cool feature).

Well... I go to upload my template, and here is the screen:



Wow.

Christmas? Already?

The onslaught of Christmas music has begun! Well, it actually started promptly after Thanksgiving... and in some cases, I heard Christmas songs as early as October! Yuck. Now, I'm specifically talking about secular Christmas music - I actually don't mind the religious, sung-in-Latin ones. That's probably because my mom really likes this type of music (think Handel's "Messiah" or just about anything by Libera), and I grew up listening to it pretty much year-round ^.^

It's also the time for Christmas decorating. Case-in-point, I set up the office Christmas tree. I had forgotten that all the ornaments were doused in glitter (I didn't choose them - don't blame me!), so by the end of the decorating, I was pretty much covered with sparkly red bits. *sigh* I'm not girly enough for glitter! Rar! Also, we don't have a tree-topper like a star or angel... so I put my ugly plastic pineapple at the tope and am waiting for people to notice. Out of the 40+ people who work here... three have seen it ^.^

You know those tree skirts? They're usually circle-shaped with a slit on one side so you can wrap it smoothly around the base. Well, our particular tree skirt didn't have a slit, so I was sitting on the floor hacking at it with scissors, and one of my coworkers passed by and said, "Now you see, this is why we can't have nice things."

Work: The RPG

So I was thinking what life would be like if my job were an RPG-style video game.

The unlikely troop of heroes:
Scott, my boss - The leader of the group, also the witty, light-hearted one. Probably a Cleric.
Tony, the body-building financials consultant - He'd be the fighter type, of course, with great demolitions skills. Every RPG team needs a burly fighter, and we're doubly blessed as this one is smart, too!
Tom, the IT guy - Probably our black mage as he has little tolerance for people. Snarky to the max. Spells are fueled by pent-up IT guy anger.
Josh, our database guy - Most likely to get cast into the elven ranger role. All parties have to have an elf, right? Plus he's tall and blond.
Me, of course - I'd probably get cast in the lovable rogue/assassin role. Also, token female. ^.^

The villains:
Level 1 Boss: The Insect Brigade - This swarm of centipedes and giant cockroaches uses special drop-from-the-ceiling and crawl-out-from-dark-places attacks. The Brigade's defense techniques involve hiding behind framed pictures that no one wants to break and being so gross that no one wants to get too close.
Level 2 Boss: The Cranky Mailman - His signature move is stuffing everything imaginable into the mailbox so it rips when you pull it out. He uses his knee-high black socks with shorts combo as armor - an effective defense technique as you spend more time laughing hysterically than you spend attacking.
Level 3 Boss: The Emo Bathroom Scorpion - Defends itself by hiding behind the toilet and comparing its soul to a raven or other object associated with darkness. Signature attack involves scuttling across the tiles in a menacing manner. Not very subtle.
Final Boss: The Lecherous, Overly Touchy Coffee Distributor - The most evil of all! His signature attack is arriving on unscheduled dates in order to surprise the unwitting party combined with unsolicited touching of token female (that would be me). Defends himself by being the only coffee distributor in the area, thus making him an un-defeat-able boss. =[

Miscellany

Quote of the day (and it's only 9:24 am!):
"That's right. You know your daddy brought you tacos."

Dancing last night was super fun - lots of good leads on the floor. Learned some new moves, too!

Overheard

Quote of the day: "Don't forget to mention his pants! It's all about the pants."

I have absolutely no idea what the context was ^.^

Condiments!

Around here, we refer to the DHL delivery guys as "The Hot Dog Men." Why, you ask? Remember that Hot Dog theme in Windows 3.1? I do. When I was little, I used to set our home computer to that all time because it was so obnoxious. (That picture still burns my eyes.) And now, for comparison, the DHL logo.

Anyway. That was the set-up for this little exchange.

We got a delivery from DHL this morning that I took to our IT guy and stated, "The Hot Dog Men have bestowed gifts upon you."
The IT Guy: How lovely. May the Mustard Go With Them.
Me: Hmm. I wonder if it would be possible to create some thematic jargon based on condiments?
The IT Guy: Why, I'd relish it.

Hurricanes

Not sure what people know about the company I work for, but the main office is based out of the New Orleans area. The reason an Austin branch exists today is due to Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005 (that's three years ago today).

Living decently far away from the Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes have rarely affected me except for the occasional increase of rainfall as they breakup pretty rapidly once they make landfall. That makes it really weird when I get a meeting invite for "Hurricane Gustav Plans."

2006 and 2007 were pretty tame as hurricane seasons go, and there wasn't much by way of panic in the Gulf areas, but this year is a little different. I think the biggest concern people have is the timing - there's a potentially powerful storm that will be hitting the Gulf by Saturday afternoon, and no one knows where it's going from there...AND it's so close to the anniversary of Katrina. People are nervous. NOLA officials already have mandatory evacuation plans in place if Gustav's projected path aims for the city, and they have a very itchy trigger finger. They plan to call for evacuation 60 hours in advance of landfall. 60 hours!

We're having this big conference call today to discuss possible evacuation and how the Austin office will be covering for the NOLA office... it's the first time I've really experienced contact-nervousness. Heh.

Wow - and apparently we have an official "Hurricane Plan" now. That's oddly creepy...

Stuff-n-Things

This update brought to you by Bongotezz!

Haven't been updating much since I don't have a lot of import to say, but um. So I've been pretty busy with all this Drunk Duck Awards business - trying to get fifty different people to contribute to panels and presentations is like herding cats, only slightly less successful. It doesn't help that I keep making errors in my record-keeping (like assigning two different people to one presentation...yeah). All the same, despite the mini-fiascos, I think it's going to come together beautifully in September.

I've been thinking a lot lately about theme songs...mostly for the characters in Salt. I finally settled on one for Jane, but the others...not quite yet. Well, except maybe Brio. But to reveal THAT song would give far too much away, hehe. It's hard to think of the Brio he is today and the Brio that he becomes down the line as the same person.

Quote of the Day at Work: "No one in this office knows a damn thing about anything. I think you're out of luck." ^.^ I can never remember the contexts, but I work with some stellar and verra funny people.

I need to stop writing this and finish inking and coloring the update that's supposed to go live in two hours. Heh.

Work Fun and Medieval Times

Overheard at work: "If they come in here, guns blazing, I'd say that's negative behavior...not 'I want to change my fiscal calendar.'"

So this weekend, my dad turned 74 years old! Robert (my brother) and I drove up to see him and Mom. Our sister and her daughter went as well. We went to Medieval Times for lunch/dinner - if you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's a dinner theater of sorts - you're served food during the show which involves a jousting tournament and fights for honor and whatnot. Anyway, there were six knights in the tournament with different banner colors. Robert, Mom, and I snickered about them and made up new names for them.

The Yellow Knight was the Knight of Cowardice.
The Blue Knight was the Knight of Sadness.
The Red & Yellow Knight was the Knight of Condiments.
The Black & White Knight was The Nascar Knight.
The Red Knight was the Knight of Embarrassment.
The Green Knight was who we were supposed to cheer for (because of our seating arrangement), and he was the VILLAIN! It was awesome. So he was just "The Green Knight." Pretty much a badass.

It was really fun ^.^

Out of Context

Just a couple of things that were funny - both in and out of context:

"You just don't know what Rush Limbaugh does to me."

and...

"Before you start, ask yourself, 'Do I really need a yarn octopus?'"

A Crash Course in Construction Terms

My maturity knows no boundaries...

Buttstrap, according to dictionary.com, means "(in metal construction) a plate which overlaps and fastens two pieces butted together."

Still. *snrk*

Anyway, I found that paper on my fax machine this morning.