I have to preface this by saying that I understand how lucky I am. Not only for the fact that I can afford a vacation in Hawaii but that I am able to take a week and half off from work and still have plenty of vacation days left to play with for the rest of the year. Also, I want to make it perfectly clear that I had a fantastic time on the vacation; great food, great drinks, amazing place to stay and a ton of great friends to enjoy it with. With that said, my first 3 days back at work have been pain stakingly miserable. While a normal day at work is bad enough, your first week after a long vacation couldn’t be worse. Your email inbox is slammed, your voicemail is packed and you keep having people coming up to you asking, “I know you’re just getting back, but can you take a look at that email I sent you back on the 9th and let me know if…” or “we need you to put together a spreadsheet and…” or “contact sales and figure out…” or any other number of mundane requests you get at an office job. You’ve hardly had a chance to run through any of the projects that were assigned to you while you’ve been gone and new stuff is already pouring in. You are out of whack from the time change, exhausted from your horrendous flight home, bloated from all the huge meals, uncomfortable from the sun burn on your neck, it looks like you have dandruff because you’re pealing from the sun burn on your bald spot and your head is still floating in that My Tai you were sipping on (or gulping down) by the pool. This begs the question; are these vacations even worth going on to begin with? It’s not like I have come back to the office relaxed and recharged. I am more exhausted than usual. And all I think about is that for the rest of my life I’ll be getting these little teasers of what life is like when you don’t have to work, but eventually it’s always going to be back to the daily grind. I seriously think the only way to fully recharge yourself is to take a week off and stay at home. Watch a couple of movies, go to a ball game or get some of those errands done you can’t do during the week while you’re at work. Most importantly, sleep in. But even when you do that, the alarm clock on your first day back in the office is going to be a punch in the stomach and your inbox is going to be a disaster. I am not the only one who feels this way. Here are a couple of quotes from friends of mine who went on the same trip…
“I would give both arms and both legs to be back in Maui right now. Literally, I would rather be a quadriplegic in a wheel chair overlooking the ocean and be happier than I am right now. Work SUCKS.” – K.M.
“The Duce and I were saying the exact same thing this morning. This has honestly been one of the worst days of my life I’ve got so much fucking work to do…. it’s making me sick. I’m about to have a nervous breakdown. I wish more than anything that I was back on the island. I am on suicide watch for the rest of the week.” – D.K.
“It’s hardly worth it Duce. Sometimes I wonder about these jobs we have. I sat in a couple of restaurants while in Maui thinking to myself how nice it would be to live on the Island and wait tables for 5 hours a night and make $300.00 cash each night, basically tax free. Or tend bar and pour drinks all day and get drunk with tourists. What the fuck are we doing?” – K.M.
So sure, we’re a little over dramatic but you get the point. Obviously this is not going to stop me from taking vacations in the future. It’s sort of like saying, “I’m never going to drink again,” the morning after a huge bender. It is something to think about though.
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Since it has been almost 2 weeks since my last post I feel that I need to update you on a couple of things that have been going on or I have been thinking about over that time. I was out of town for a while and really out of it for a while after I got back so the hiatus has been longer than I expected. I also broke or seriously bruised a rib while diving for a ball playing kickball last Wednesday night. It’s very painful and the pain or the drugs I am taking for the pain have kept me away from my computer as well. Anyway, I am back and plan on releasing movie #98 on my list at some point this week. Hopefully by Wednesday.
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Speaking of the word Wednesday, I can never spell it correctly. No matter how hard I try or concentrate, it’s underlined in red every time I type it. Why does it need that “D” in there? And if the person who created the spelling of the word really felt the “D” was necessary, why put there? I say we change the spelling to, Wensday or Winsday. Either one would make much more sense to me.
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Happy 30th birthday to my good friend Will out in Washington D.C. A belated happy 30th to Ryan and Dan. It only gets worse fellas. See the bottom of my March 30th posting for a further explanation.
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Have you seen the commercials for the new Speed Racer movie? It looks terrible. It’s directed by the brothers who did the Matrix movies. Those movies did really well, but I couldn’t decide what was worse, the acting, dialogue or plot. Anyway, back to Speed Racer. This movie looks a lot like the Super Mario Brothers movie from 1993 with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. If you never saw Super Mario Bothers, it resides roughly at #10 on my worst 100 movies of all time list. (more on the worst 100 movie list in the future) So no, I will not be going to see Speed Racer. Not unless the critics or friends see it and tell me I am dead wrong. Usually though I have a pretty good eye for what is going to suck, so I would avoid this one from the get go. Another one that looks epically bad is 88 Minutes. Pacino is not only not in anything good these days, but he is now only in movies that are literally the worst out there. I would be almost 100% sure that if I ever say 88 Minutes it would make my worst list. Hoo-ah Al, you’re terrible. You’ve turned into a worse movie slayer than LL Cool J.
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Something that I really have a hard time understanding are those dress shoes that are disguised as sneakers. Or are they sneakers disguised as dress shoes? Sketchers makes a few styles but I am sure there are other brands out there too. Granted, I am the last one that should be handing out fashion do’s and don’ts; but what’s wrong with the old school Adidas? I feel like guys get these to wear out at night or to work and think that it makes them look like casual chilled out guys, but I think it says quite the opposite. If you’re a casual guy just toss on your sneakers and if the bar has a no sneakers dress code, go somewhere else. You wouldn’t want to hang out at that place anyway. Just go one way or the other. Sneakers or dress shoes. The combo shoes are no good and people will start figuring this out soon enough. They’ll be out of style by the end of the year so don’t waste your money.
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On my 3/30/08 posting I wrote about the issue I have with how nasty our restrooms are at work because people leave piss, pubes, toilet paper, toilet seat covers and other various things laying around. There is something else that people do in the bathroom at my office that really bothers me. Some people will talk to each other from stall to stall while taking a dump. When you are taking a dump at the office the only thing that should let anyone know that you are there is the locked door and your shoes peaking out from the bottom of the wall. By the way, I never understood why the stall walls can’t come all the way down to the floor. I have racked my brain for hours on this but nothing has ever come to mind. Anyway, the other day I walked in to the bathroom at the same time as someone else. As we opened the door, he was chatting it up with me and asking about my weekend or something. He contnued to talk as he walked in to the stall, closed the door, pulled down his pants, sat down and farted. He then continued to talk to me as he was pushing out his Quizno’s. I don’t want to be in the midst of a conversation with someone who I know that just on the other side of that half inch thick door has his pants at his ankles dropping bombs. It’s the visual that bothers me the most. Another time I walked into the bathroom and these two guys were in the stalls next to each other talking about business while farting and plopping away. It just kind of weirds me out. The worst is the visual I got when one of the guys was in mid sentence when I could hear him pulling on the toilet paper roll. There isn’t much out there I want to visualize or listen to less than some dude talking about the best way to sell a client while wiping his ass. So go ahead and bring a magazine, newspaper or whatever and just take your dump and shut up. Please, I can’t be the only person bothered by this. ***
Well, that’s about all I got for you today folks. Thanks for stopping by and I’ll be back later in the week with a review of my #98 movie of all time.