Cheers to Free Pizza Jack

When was the last time you didn't do something that you REALLY wanted to do, just because it was socially unacceptable?

When was the last time you didn't tell someone off, just because you were being sensitive?

When was the last time you crashed an event, just to skulk around the refreshment table?

I just had a conversation with my cube neighbor, Mark, about another coworker -- let's call him Free Pizza Jack -- who always shows up as a "company representative" at our customer events, because there is free food. Granted, this guy is one of the people at our company who could discuss what we do in grandiose detail. But does he say a word at these events? NOPE! Does he approach a single one of our customers to see how they're doing? NYET! Does he do a SINGLE GODDAMN THING to earn his free pizza? Again, a resounding no.

He just walks in to the event while everyone is milling around, strolls right up to the open pizza boxes, grabs slice after slice and stands by the table until he is full. Sometimes he asks if there is free soda. And then he leaves.

Today, Mark was really irritated with Jack. Just the thought of him pissed him off. "What right does he have," hasked, "to go in there and take something for nothing?"

Mark had a point there. After all, he is the person who has to organize these events, guestimate within a few people how much pizza to order, and then make happy happy with the customers, no matter what mood he is in. Even then he doesn't always get to eat any.

I was in enough of my own snit to jump all over someone like Free Pizza Jack, when I realized at the last second that -- you know what? -- good for him. Really! Good for him! I thought about my own sour mood and the fact that if I had even one of the monsterous balls that Jack had, I wouldn't be in the crap mood to begin with. Instead, I would have told the person who is irritating me exactly why they were so annoying, and then moved on with the rest of my day without another thought about said frustrating situation.

But did I?

Nope.

So today I am all about honoring people like Free Pizza Jack. They seem horribly gauche at best, breathtakingly selfish at worst.

But who cares?

Maybe we get so exasperated with them because they do what we desperately want to do, but for whatever reason, won't. So three cheers for the brazen folks who dare to put it all out there, even when social norms wag their fingers at them. Free Pizza Jack takes first place today, but I'd like to acknowledge some folks who deserve honorable mention:

• My coworker Steph: She stood in the hallway and said to me in one breath (rather loudly, I might add): "It's three o'clock and I haven't done shit for work today and I just spent two hours in Jeff's office and talked about absolutely nothing having to do with anything productive and I can't make myself care today for some reason and ooops there's my phone I guess I'll go answer it and do eight seconds of work while I tell the person to shove off and just wait here I'll be right back and you can finish your story."
  
  Rock on, Steph. You just validated Reagan, whom I know has spent the last 3 hours in his office reading ESPN.com. And Peter, who has been downloading illegal music all morning. And Thomas, who works 10 hours a day but takes 27 cigarette breaks an hour. +8.3 points.
  
  
• Crazy Pie Guy: This dude takes "think global, act local" to a whole new level. He appears at town meetings when he knows a particular representative will discuss an issue he feels passionately about, then rush the stage with a cream pie, smash it in the rep's face, and run out of the room.
  
  It's illegal, it's impolite, and I totally love it. +9.8 points. -0.2 for not yet being aired on CNN.
  
  
• Snotty Boston Bodyguard and his Hummer: It's sort of a copycat of Crazy Pie Guy, but I doubt anyone who owns a Hummer and buys Starbucks on Beacon Hill in Boston keeps tabs on local Maine politics, so he gets mentioned anyway. He came back to his SUV to find a metermaid writing out a ticket. They exchanged words. He got a ticket anyway. The metermaid got a whole face full of Peppermint Mocha.
  
  I can't figure out why metermaids don't outnumber dentists for the highest rate of suicide in a profession. It's a miserable job. The better you are at it, the more people hate you. But still, I have yet to meet a pleasant one. A proctologist is nice to you before he probes you up the butt -- can't a metermaid soften the punishment with a smile? +7.5 points. -1.5 for burning the metermaid. +.2 for owning a Hummer, which is a giant "fuck off, I hate the environment" in and of itself.
  
  
• Mrs. Ruth Tilde: This lady was about 85 years old when I was in college. She was a student there a million years ago, but continued to live nearby and appear, year after year, at catered events on campus. She was friendly to everyone, even though no one wanted to get stuck talking with her for very long. She'd schmooze the room, then head right for the buffet, where she'd PULL OUT ZIPLOCK BAGS to fill and stick back in her purse before she left for the evening.
  
  +7.3 overall. +.2 for doing it even though she must have known that she's a cliche.

Joie de geeks

I absolutely, positively LOVE geeks.

Not nerds, not dorks -- I mean the real, true geeks. To be more specific: Techie Geeks. And to be totally accurate, I mean Boston Techie Geeks.

The hardcore ones.

It's a strange genre of person. There's already a schema in place for them, but if you get to know one you'll see that there's so much more to them than their stereotype. Draw a picture of a Boston Techie Geek and you'll have a sketch of someone slightly overweight; wearing an MIT class ring and a pair of jeans, baggy from being on their 4th consecutive day of wear; at least 5 digital devices on their person, all of which communicate with each other; glasses slightly out of style; long hair in a pony tail for men; long hair, unbrushed, for women.

They adore technology and make a lot of money working with it. They buy cool gadgets with a large disposable income, often before the rest of us have even heard they exist. They are visionaries and can tell you why Microsoft sucks by citing individual lines of code.

But there's waaaaaay more to them than a stereotype. The coolest thing about Geeks is their steadfast committment to being themselves. They're real. And they possess a very cool -- how to say -- joie de vivre.

These are people who have an extremely active social life in their own cozy subculture. They talk about important computer things, progressive politcal things and fun make-believe things that happen in their online role-playing worlds. Sometimes they call each other by the persona they adopt while playing said online role-playing games. They are committed to social causes, and can afford to donate time and money to make the world a better place. Approach one, and you'll have a fantastic conversation about something intelligent with someone who will explain complex theories in easy-to-understand terms.

My company held an open house for recruiting about eight of these folks last night.

Unfortuantely, we forgot to specify in the ad that we were looking for Boston Techie Geeks. True, some of them did show up (hurrah!) but so did some of the other types of geek who fall waaaay outside of the spectrum of introversion, unmeasurable even by Myers-Briggs. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of every walk of geek, and I enjoyed these guys just as much. I just had to switch gears to help them come out of their shell. Most of the time it worked. Sometimes it didn't work very well. And one time, it totally, completely fell flat. Plus, it was the end of the night and I was getting punchy.

Here is one of my all-time favorite conversations, condensed so that you don't actually have to relive the hours of silence between sentences:

Hi. My name is Cella. I am the Marketing Manager. I am so freaking chipper my smile is about to peel off my face! So, tell me, o awkward techie, is there anything of interest I can impart about this fine establishment? NO? Okay, no problem. Let's just stand here in silence and stare at the cantelope. What's that? You have a freak allergy to cantelope? My goodness! I am so sorry. Excuse me? Oh, of course we can move from under the flourescent lighting. I'm so sorry that it gives you sunburn.

I mean, how can you not LOVE these people?

Freaky voo-doo accident or bummer collagen mishap?

Last Friday I was out sick, not with the cold but because -- get this -- my top lip was three times the size it usually is. I went to the Doctor and he said -- I am so not kidding -- "Maybe you bit it."

Bit it?

Like, my mouth is horribly disfigured now after a savage moment earlier today, when I tried to eat my face?

I'm not one of those people who think all doctors are quacks. But I'm old enough now to think that policemen, sports heroes and Hollywood heart throbs look like babies. And along with that rite of passage, I'm allowed to think that some doctors are quacks. And that guy was a quack.

He even looked like a duck.

I arranged the appointment; waited all morning to be seen, all the while afraid I was having an allergic reaction that would close my throat at any minute; PARADED MY DISFIGURED FACE IN PUBLIC while getting to his office, made babies cry in the waiting room, obediently tilted my head back while his latexed fingers stretched out my mouth the same way people do BEFORE THEY BUY A HORSE, and HE THINKS I BIT IT?

For fuck's sake!

He didn't even prescribe medication or tell me to put ice on it or anything. Granted, by the time he saw me, most of the swelling had gone down anyway. But then he had the nerve to tell me that I looked fine and sometimes people imagine that a body part looks swollen because it feels weird, and the brain makes your eyes think it looks different than it usually does.

He had a point, there. I'm sure I looked perfectly natural if I had just, say, COMPLETELY BOTCHED A DO-IT-YOURSELF COLLAGEN INJECTION.

Anyway, I got home from the doctor's office and my good friend was aghast that the doctor gave no medical advice other than to "keep an eye on it." I refrained from telling him that my eye was already on it, along with my nose and part of my forehead, but I digress. Anyway, my friend recommended applying a warm salt water compress for an hour, followed by a warm milk compress for a half hour. I asked if I should apply a spaghetti-o face mask after that, but he told me to quit being difficult and go do it.

I'll be damned, but worked. He swears that there are amazing enzymes in milk that have healing powers. Now I believe him. Why didn't my quack doctor know this?

And, for the record, I did not bite it. It was probably just a weird allergic reaction to something I ate. I did have cod for the first time in years that night. Either that, or my doctor's other theory, which was that an invisible cod bone from my boneless cod fillet punctured my lip, causing a chain of chemical reactions that resulted in a fat lip. I actually think the real reason it happened was because someone practicing black magic in a far off land made a voo-doo doll of someone who looked sort of like me, and the cosmic waves veered off track when a freak explosion on the surface of the sun emitted strong magnetic forces, sending the voo-doo vibes straight to my lip in Boston.

Whatever.

The secret lives of lovers

I was sick this weekend. I spent 97.3% of it hunkered down in bed, watching movies and -- God bless him -- being taken care of by my boyfriend. He was fabulous. He gets one day off a week and he spent it propping pillows, making tea and bringing vitamin c. He even made chicken soup and scored major bonus points when he walked 8 blocks to get ice cream in the middle of the night. Where did I find this guy?

But lest you think he was simply following the GQ Guide for Taking Care of Your Sick Girlfriend, he also devised his own quirky ritual to help me feel better.

I can't tell you what it was or I'd turn red.

But I assure you he did not get the idea from a mainstream publication. And every time he did it I'd squirm, then giggle and pretend he was a depraved lunatic, and then silently thank the sick coworker who passed her cold on to me the week before.

Yeah, it was that fun.

I happen to think I lucked out, finding a guy who's at once loving, creative and a little pervy. The boyfriend trifecta. He keeps me shaking my head and always on the verge of saying something like, "What the HELL are you doing?" But the truth is that his inner deviant is not a small part of why I fell for him in the first place.

It does, however, cut down on the amount of detail I can offer up while dishing stories to my buds.

I told this to him while I was still giggling after one of his particularly pervy rituals. "You know what? I can't tell half the things you do to my girlfriends."

"Really? Like what?"

Then I gave him the list of other quirky pervy things he does, which I can't tell you or I'd turn red.

He thinks I have a weird hang up about it, but I think I'm growing up. It's a hazard of turning 30 -- sex isn't new any more and so what was once juicy girl talk fodder is now TMI.

That was the first theory I had, but now I think there's more to it than that. Simply, I love having secrets with my quirky pervy boyfriend.

He's a self-described taciturn male, so I know he's not going to go off and blab our intimate details to anyone. That sort of thing is usually left to the woman, who can spend hours with other women talking about things with the caveat, "Don't tell anyone I told you this, but...." And then, when our boyfriends ask what we've told our girlfriends, we can bat our eyelashes innocently and say, "Nothing!" The girl code strictly states that you never let your guy know how much your friends know.

I sort of went along with the crowd on this one until my mid-twenties. That was when I started to feel that love had more to it than trying everything at least once just so that I could have an interesting side bar in my autobiography. Granted, it was also when I entered a LOOOOOOONG stretch of being single, so maybe I didn't have much to talk about anyway.

But still, the idea was forming. The notion that if I don't share it, and he won't share it, then it's ours. Ours. "Ours" is such a nice concept after spending so much of life with nothing but "Mine."

And this from the girl who tried really hard for a solid 20 minutes not to tell everyone she knew that she had just lost her virginity.

Suppose it's a sign of maturity? I guess. I'm at the point in my life when it's not weird anymore when my friends get married. In fact, I'm at the point in my life when it's weird when they STAY married. I'm hoping that I've been single long enough to have missed out on my "Starter Marriage" so that I can skip right to the one that lasts as long as I promise it will when I take the vow.

I've been looking around at couples who've made it. The couples in my generation who have passed through the seven year itch and still find each other attractive. The couples in my parents' generation who have had their mid-life crises and stayed together anyway. The couples in my grandparents' generation who die within 3 months of losing their partner of 50 years.

There's a lot that goes into the formula for a happy partnership. But my guess is that they also have some sort of pervy secrets between them that keep life interesting enough to keep their attention on each other.

And with that, a nod to dirty old men everywhere. Good job, boys.

To juice or not to juice

It's 2:29 pm on a Thursday. I've evaded doing any work that is actually part of my job description for at least 3 hours. I'm half way into a good cup of coffee. The caffeine is starting to kick in, my pants are feeling a little too tight, and suddenly I'm motivated to consider doing some research into something that might turn out to be a new, life-changing hobby for me.

Juicing.

It's been long enough since I've seen any infomercials on juicing machines that buying one at this point would not seem like a tacky, spur-of-the-moment, desperate- attempt- to- change my- life- because- it's- 2:00- in- the- morning- and- I'm- bored- and- lonely- and- covered- in- Devil- Dog- wrappers type of event.

Right?

If I do some research now and find a really good one, along with at least 20 recipes for juice that I would actually drink, my decision to buy one would seem like one made by a rational, healthy human being concerned with her well-being. And I've got lots of time. Perhaps the longer it takes me to get one, the longer I'll actually use it. Let's face it, I live in a studio apartment --I don't have the space to store anything that supports an expensive, yet pointless hobby. I'd really need to commit to the machine and to the new life style. I'd have to find out what "anti-oxidant" means, and really make a concerted effort to consume it (or is it avoid it? because I could do either. I swear.)

*****

The hazard of blogging at work is that someone just interrupted me to actually work. It is now an hour later, the caffeine buzz has worn off, and I have no interest in doing research to find a juicer nor to find out what "anti-oxidant" means. I do, however, have the urge to visit the candy machine and have a snickers bar. In a way, this could indirectly support my juicing effort. Because if I actually do commit to juicing, then I'm going to need to take a "before" picture prior to the big lifestyle switch. And the worse I look in the picture, the more it will seem like I really kicked ass on my new juice diet. I'll keep you posted.