I am so totally updating my blog.

...But the for-real update is going to take a while since I have to make up for the last several days of blog-neglection. Good thing I'm back at work and finally have the time to write in my blog again. Ha. Anyway, while I'm busy hiding the fact that I'm updating my blog from Bossman and Crazy Lunatic Supervisor, here is some insight into the complex inner workings of the dark cesspool that is my very soul -- courtesy of the Internet:

Your Temperament is: IDEALIST

Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self -- always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.

Idealists are sure that friendly cooperation is the best way for people to achieve their goals. Conflict and confrontation upset them because they seem to put up angry barriers between people. Idealists dream of creating harmonious, even caring personal relations, and they have a unique talent for helping people get along with each other and work together for the good of all. Such interpersonal harmony might be a romantic ideal, but then Idealists are incurable romantics who prefer to focus on what might be, rather than what is. The real, practical world is only a starting place for Idealists; they believe that life is filled with possibilities waiting to be realized, rich with meanings calling out to be understood. This idea of a mystical or spiritual dimension to life, the "not visible" or the "not yet" that can only be known through intuition or by a leap of faith, is far more important to Idealists than the world of material things.

Highly ethical in their actions, Idealists hold themselves to a strict standard of personal integrity. They must be true to themselves and to others, and they can be quite hard on themselves when they are dishonest, or when they are false or insincere. More often, however, Idealists are the very soul of kindness. Particularly in their personal relationships, Idealists are without question filled with love and good will. They believe in giving of themselves to help others; they cherish a few warm, sensitive friendships; they strive for a special rapport with their children; and in marriage they wish to find a "soulmate," someone with whom they can bond emotionally and spiritually, sharing their deepest feelings and their complex inner worlds.

Idealists are rare, making up between 20 and 25 percent of the population. But their ability to inspire people with their enthusiasm and their idealism has given them influence far beyond their numbers.

The Four types of Idealists are:
Healers (INFP) Counselors (INFJ) Champions (ENFP) Teachers (ENFJ)

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Your Inner Muse is Urania

You are most like this muse of astronomy. Your head is in the stars, and you look to the future. You give off a heavenly, mysterious vibe. And you're not too bad at predicting the future.

What Muse Are You?

Now, back to "work." And by "work," I, of course, mean "Furiously surf the net and obsessively check my email every two minutes while periodically updating my blog further. And then make an occasional trip to the office kitchen to have another piece of (my!) leftover birthday office cake."

It's my birthday!!!...

...and boy do I have a lot of updating to do. Ugh.


1. Let's just get this over with:

Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday dear meeeeeee...
Happy Birthday to me!

Now commence rejoicing at the anniversary of my glorious birth. Dinner tonight with a few friends. Maybe something fun afterwards. Perhaps a midnight showing of X-Men 3? Even though it's getting crappy reviews. Whatevs.

2. Scott and I just got back from Seattle yesterday morning. My body is still exhausted from all the travelling and general hectic-ness of the past several weeks, but I do have to summon up some energy to say this: Seattle is AWESOME and I cannot wait to live there!!! Some highlights of the trip:

• Spending about $80 between the two of us on one dozen oysters and a couple of cocktails. I actually haven't determined whether this was a highlight or a lowlight. Oh hell, it was way expensive, but a great time, so I'll say it was a highlight.
• Coming across a showing of "The Da Kinki Code" at the esteemed theater The Lusty Lady. 'Nuf said.
• Inadvertently walking into the office of some brand new luxury condominiums being built, thinking it was a new apartment complex. Scott and I had to go through an entire charade with the real estate agent pretending we were some rich California yuppie couple interested in buying a $900,000 condo with Daddy's money. Ha! As if. If we had known what were walking into, we totally could have played it up. Oh well.

3. We went and saw "The Da Vinci Code" late last night. I thought it was alright. Obviously any movie version would be hard-pressed to live up to the popularity of the book. But it was enjoyable all the same. Didn't hold a candle to "The Da Kinki Code," though. Haha. Just kidding, Mom and Dad.

4. Have I updated this blog since we went to Virginia Beach a couple of weeks ago? Doubtful. It was Sarah H.'s wedding. Had a great time.

I'm tired of writing now. Here are some pictures from the last several months on that I have been meaning to post but have been too lazy:

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Damnit! Why won't the pictures show up??!! ...I'll deal with this later.

Freedom...freedom...freedom.....

FREEDOM!!!

I worked my final concert with the orchestra last night and in about 1 hour and 1 minute I will be walking my sweet behind out of this office and over to Star*ucks to meet up with Ben and hopefully Nadine and Sam for an hour, then over to the mall to pick up my new eyeglasses, then back to the apartment to shower and finish packing, then to the airport and on a plane to Seattle!

Smell ya later, suckers!

In which the sh*t hits the fan: Part I

Bossman informed the staff and orchestra of his resignation (effective in 6 weeks) yesterday.

I intend to inform Bossman of my resignation (effective in 7 weeks) tomorrow.

Cool co-worker will also inform Bossman of her resignation (effective in 8 weeks) tomorrow.

In related news: I have also informed crazed lunatic supervisor that I will be leaving early this Friday to catch my flight out of Knoxville. Subsequently, she has been busy this entire morning making sure that everybody in the whole goddamned office knows that she now has to work the concert on Friday because I won't be able to. To you, crazed lunatic supervisor, I have three words: Suck it up!!! Anyway, luckily I will be in the Golden Land of the Pacific Northwest when the aftermath of this ever-compounding drama unfolds next week. Well, I'll be back in Knoxville halfway thru the week, but I will be busy hiding from the office and getting my birthday celebratin' on.

1,200 miles later...

Too pooped from going back to work (ugh) today to write in complete detail and in fully-formed sentences about events of the last few days. In short, Scott and I drove to Virginia to attend an old friend's wedding. It was a good time. What was not a good time was getting back into town at 3 this morning and then having to go to work. Bleh. I don't really have a clear recollection of actually doing this, but I apparently had the sense of mind to call crazy supervisor and leave a message on her voicemail telling her that I would be taking an extra hour of sleep lest I show up at the office in my then-current state. I believe the words "completely worthless" were the words I used.

Needless to say I arrived back in the office this morning only to be greeted by the mound of work that did not get taken care of while I was gone (harumph!), which was not a pleasant start to the morning at all. What also was not pleasant was furiously trying to get everything caught up and being accosted periodically by Marketing Director and by Bossman himself and being told that they had a variety of other delightful little tasks that I needed to get done. Ugh, don't they realize I have much better things to do than be told to do things by my bosses while at work??!! Haha.

Anyway, it is 20 minutes before the end of the day and I've gotten everything caught up and finished, b*tches!!

***

In any case, the actual trip to and from Virginia was fun. I will elaborate later, yo.

Just when I though I'd heard them all....

Message left on my office voicemail:

"I don't understand why I can't talk to a human being there. All I get is 'press 1,' press *.' I guess you guys just don't want anybody buying your tickets."

Maybe because you called and left this message at 11:19 at night, you moron!!

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In other news: we have a ton of cheese in our office fridge leftover from our post-concert reception this past weekend. I ate a lot of it. Just now. The only other thing I've had today is a can of diet Coke. My stomach hates me.

"Oh, wait. The crunchy stuff is wax?"

It was Bossman's 40th birthday today. In honor of this momentous event, the staff decorated the outside windows of our office building with bright neon signs informing the entire passing public of his big Four-Oh, the steps and walkway to our office with yellow security tape informing the entire inside office pedestrians that they were, indeed, inside the "40 Year Old Party Zone," and, last but not least, Bossman's office with black streamers and ballons informing the Bossman himself that he was one year closer to meeting his maker. Oh, and the whole staff wore black to the office. Ha. But most importantly, when Bossman came into the office, we all proceeded to the conference room to eat Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting for breakfast.

The quote of they day had to have been by our Operations Director, who realized a little too late that the melted candles had left a little extra suprise on her piece of cake.

In other news, I have put off doing the next set of minutes from the last Executive Committee Meeting (oy, which was over 2 weeks ago...) and I need to get it done by tomorrow. Blech. I hate transcribing minutes. I realize now that if I had to choose my least favorite task at work, it would have to be taking and transcribing minutes. ...Or answering the phone. Or anything that has to do with crazy frenetic supervisor. Pretty much anything that isn't surfing the web and eating office cake.

Haha. Just kidding.........or aaaam I?

Blech. Back to doing these damned minutes.

Happy (debatable) Cinco de Mayo

I feel the need. The need for speed. And a bullet list:

• At the risk of sounding like I have a chemical dependency problem -- which is actually pretty humorous considering that the random mid-week cocktail b*tchfest I enjoyed with my cool co-workers the other day (which, by the way, was AWESOME!!) was the only time I actually had anything to drink in probably the last month -- I just have to say that it is only shortly past 10 in the morning and I. Need. A. Drink.
• Reason being? Crazed, lunatic, irritating-as-hell supervisor is causing me to have fantasies of pushing her off the nearby bridge. Or kicking her off the nearby bridge. Or roundhouse-kicking her off the nearby bridge. I don't care how it happens, I just want her to go over the nearby bridge.
• And then maybe she can get eaten by a troll after I roundhouse-kick her over the nearby bridge. Yes, that would be fun.
• But the bright side? After work, Scott and I are going to have dinner with Jim (Scott's hetero boyfriend) and Elizabeth (Scott's hetero boyfriend's girlfriend) at Agave Azul, during which I will commence numbing my work-related anger via one margarita on the rocks with salt. Or three. And then some flan.
• After which we will head over to Ben's house where he is having a Cinco de Mayo party, where I will continue my liquid therapy. A party to which I invited the entire symphony administrative staff to during our staff meeting earlier this week. Ha. I hope they come...except for the one who will not be able to attend due to having been eaten by a troll earlier during the day.
• And while I've decided to go this route with today's entry, can I just say that I slept wrong on my left side 3 nights ago and my shoulder is still killing me! Waaaah. Pity, party of one. I took the only pain medication I had left in the arsenal of emergency pills I keep in my purse, which, unfortunately, happened to be Excedrin Migraine. I am hoping the magical pain-relief molecules will realize that I don't have a raging headache (except for the metaphorical one being caused by my non-troll eaten crazy supervisor) and will transfer themselves to my left shoulder region.
• And because I feel I should close things up with a positive bullet point: Scott and I went and saw two movies last night. This was partly a bad idea since I knew it would cause me to be sleep-deprived at work today, but whatevs. It was fun. We saw Ice Age II: The Meltdown (Cute! The acorn-obsessed squirrel thing was hilarious...) and MI:3 (Where we ran into a gaggle of UT School of Music underlings. The movie was highly enjoyable despite having to watch Creepy Tom "My favorite activies include long walks on the beach and brainwashing my child-bride" Cruise for two hours).
• Ok, that's all. A couple cool non-crazed co-workers have summoned me to their office to eat lunch and have a mini-b*tchfest. Hurray!

Oh, what a night...

Several of us from the symphony staff (i.e. the non-crazed/non-frenzied/non-uptight/etc. ones) decided to continue aforementioned birthday co-worker's celebrations last night and went out for Mexican food and margaritas after work. Can I tell you how nice it is to a) have cool co-workers who are in your age-group, b) be able to hang out socially with said cool co-workers after a long day's (week's, month's...) work, and c) drink copious amounts of tequila with cool co-workers and proceed to mercilessly bash (mostly in the form of bad drunken impersinations and mockery) non-present un-cool co-workers for 4 hours straight?

Good. Times.

In addition to the many annoyances and irritations I have been bottling up inside about certain other co-workers, many of secrets that I have been withholding from the office also seem to have been aired out during the course of the evening. This may or may have been a result of the margarita consumption that was taking place concurrently.

Namely, I confessed (Damn you, tequila!!) to the group that, hey, you know how I'm taking a one-week vacation at the end of May because I'm going home for a few days? Yeah, um, I'm actually using that vacation time to fly to Seattle where -- oh, did I not mention that I'm leaving this job in a couple of months? -- I am hoping to look into some apartments and job opportunities. Oh yeah, and while I'm on the subject, I also realized that I'm actually only going to be out of town until the middle of that week, but I'm just going to go ahead and take the full week's vacation anyway and just hide-out from work. Mainly because my birthday is later that week and I don't want to work that day or the day after. Does that make me a bad person? If you answered "yes": Don't be jealous!

You may think that the pre-emptive purging of my work-related sins was a bad move on my part. But it's not.

Case in point: Communications Manager's response to my crafty one-week covert operation? "Ysabel, we'll keep your secret if you promise to let us take you out on your birthday."

I only hope the people I end up working with in Seattle will be as cool as this.

A hodge-podge of things on my brain...

1. I just finished eating a beef and potato burrito from Taco Bell for lunch and am currently suffering from The Worst Case of Heartburn from Hell Ever. Seriously. Where's a Rolaid when you really need one?! I'm half-expecting a screeching baby alien to pop out of my chest at any moment now. But that would actually be cool since work has been on-the-whole very irritating today and I want to get out of here, and I think a protruding alien baby from my chest would provide me the perfect excuse to leave early.

2. Speaking of work, I - along with a fellow co-worker - had to scramble to get 1,300 letters ready to go out in the mail today before 2pm. Our supervisor was in a crazed frenzy this morning because of this little project, assuming that we would never get it done in time. Turns out, Fellow Co-Worker and I were so freaking efficient that we were done pretty much an hour early. Pro: Finally getting Frenzied Supervisor off our backs. Con: Oy, the carpal tunnel!

3. The Kings have tied with San Antonio 2-2! I, unfortunately, haven't been following Sac too much lately since, a) they never f*ing show Kings games in Tennessee!! Boooooo., b) I've spent much of the last 7-8 months going to bed at an ungodly reasonable hour, what with my fairly recent foray into the working world. Again: Boooooo., c) since getting rid of C Web, Vlade and Peja (Boooooo times infinity!!), my Dreamy Team is not quite as dreamy as before. At least we've still got Bibby Poo.

4. Today is our Outreach and Education Director's birthday and we are having cake (and perhaps some champagne?) in the conference room in about 3 minutes. Woo! Maybe cake and bubbly is not the best idea to soothe my burning stomach. Do I care? No sir!!


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Addendum:

What the hell was I thinking aggravating my angry tummy? Hell hath no fury like my stomach scorned!! Waaaaaaaah!! I am never having a Taco Bell beef and potato burrito ever again!!

Addendum 2:

Oh wait, I just remembered I have my little emergency pack in my purse complete with my mini-jar of emergency pills. And I had the sense of mind to put some Maalox in there! Yay! I love me!

Addendum 3:

And fabulous favorite co-worker just gave me a calcium chew to ease my pain! Wheee!!!

Addendum 4:

ps. At the co-worker birthday "conference" a few minutes ago, I think the office resolved to do some tequila shots this Friday in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Ayayayayaay!!!