Thanksgiving Hangover

Thanksgiving weekend is over. And I definitely was not ready for it to end. I like turkey and eating so Thanksgiving is really a tailor made holiday for me. Plus there is the added bonus of having an extra day off of work. The weekend, "long as it was" went by way too quickly though. Clearly I didn't come up with a list of things that I am grateful for. I tried but every time I went near the computer I had visions of cubicles and incompetent managers and I didn't want to mar the weekend. So I left the computer alone.

But I did promise that if you were good, I would come up with a list. So this is my, belated-and-now-way-beside-the-point, list of things that I am grateful for.

I am grateful not to be a Lifer. If I were a Lifer here, it would be a short life as I would become another pathetic statistic about why job satisfaction is important.

I am grateful that Veronica is not here today. I feel bad that she is wasting a vacation day celebrating her Weekiversary (she celebrates both the day she met her boyfriend and the day they first went out, which stretches to about a week. This all happened 9 years ago and her bf has made it clear he doesn't want to marry her). I feel bad because in all likelihood she is spending it by herself. But I am thankful that she isn't here telling me about how her bf brought her carnations to show her that he cares.

I am thankful that we use crappy, outdated, virus attracting PC's at work instead of shiny perfect Macs. If we used Macs I might start to think that it was cool to work here and stay indefinitely. Instead, I am confronted daily with the uncoolness and inefficiency of both this workplace and these machines, further solidifying my need and desire to get out of here.

I am grateful that John did actually step down from his role as my overlord. I was sick and tired of pretending that I didn't loathe him and now have more time to direct my rage more evenly at other things. I'm glad that I don't have to see his face as often, and that his voice is usually muffled by beige walls. Mostly, I'm thankful that he has stopped touching me and therefore I am no longer contaminated by d-bag bacteria and able to resume living a normal life.

I am thankful that I did laundry last night. Partly because I love the smell of clean laundry, but mostly because it saved me from picking through my closet (pile on the floor) trying to figure out if something was clean. In the dark. I feel confident that everything that I am wearing today is stain free and smells nice. Also, I was thisclose to wearing bathing suit bottoms, so laundry was less something to do and more something that needed to be done. Last week.

I am grateful for my puppy calendar. Aside from the diseased looking puppies in August (I had to look at those for a month!) the calendar has made me smile. It also has great quotes like "He hath a share of Man's intelligence, but no share of Man's falsehood" and "He cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog". And there are all those adorable puppy pictures.

I am thankful that there are so many crazies that I work with. I like working with people like this because they make me feel better about myself. Maurice, the mechanic who gave up the career because it was "too dirty". Veronica, the lifer who thinks that everything revolves around this department, to the point that she came in on a saturday she wasn't working, just to say hi. The people in accounting, who have sold their souls and stare vacantly at spreadsheet after spreadsheet, coming out only to cook smelly food in the microwave. The wiccan. The students. All of them are crazy, all of them are different and all of them make me see how much worse my life could be.

I'm grateful to Anna and Claire for distracting me during the day. I would be thankful for Michael too but he doesn't read this blog and he doesn't know how to 3 way email so he's really not that much use to me. But Anna and Claire are my saviours. Each comes up with random, yet fulfilling topics of conversation for me to mull over and discuss. Each is privy to my rants and rages (lucky girls) and provide me with their rants and rages in return. I know that Anna has been forced to take 3 steps backwards and work on things that should have been completed this summer and that Claire always seems to deal with the craziest people. And I know that on the days when they are not in the office (they could be puking their brains out and they would be better off than when they are in the office) my world is a little bit worse.

Finally, I am thankful that you are reading this blog. That you will come back tomorrow and read it again. That you passed on the link and that you commented. Because if you didn't look like you cared (and I know how much effort that takes, I do it all the time) I wouldn't write on here. Actually I probably still would, I have a lot of anger and I need the outlet, but it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying.

PS did you notice that the things-that-I-am-thankful-for post is so much shorter than my I-hate-this-place-and-this-is-why kinds of posts?