South Carolina Trip and Other Shenanigans

I feel like we have not talked in FOREVER!!!

Since I have so many things to tell you, I’ll just have to tell you in small doses, since I don’t want to overwhelm you, and because I have a hot date in a couple of hours.

I have two happy things to report.

Number one, I have finished writing the MD Archery Guide!  Hoorayyy!!  I was staying at work till 9 PM 4 nights a week the past few weeks to write the darn thing.  (Okay, sometimes I left at 8.)  (And sometimes I went to happy hour and had a few beers, and then came back to work, so hopefully that made for an interesting guide.)

Number two, I changed desks at work, so now I am so far away from chewing and clicking.  It is wonderful.  Others are envious and sometimes just come and stand at my desk, because they are going through withdrawal.  And I get lots of e-mails.

12:34 PM  Colleague

hello

if you're interested in hearing food being chewed

please drop by 

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Miglin, Veronica 

Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 11:44 AM

To: Same Colleague

Subject: Hello.

Do you want to join Leo and me for lunch at Brio?  We are leaving in like 15.  Hello.

From: Same Colleague 

Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 11:45 AM

To: Miglin, Veronica 

Subject: RE: Hello.

No, I’m poor.

And I want to listen to food get macerated here.

Hello.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also the temp that used to be here misses me, too.  Sometimes he just IMs me random yelling.  They all have a weird way of showing it, but the boys miss me when I am no longer available.

9:45 AM Temp

Ugh [[ new temp ]]  got an internet posting of his arrival

I ONLY GET A WELCOME BREAKFAST

you guys really rolled out the red carpet huh

9:46 AM Miglin, Veronica

You are ridiculous

9:46 AM Temp

I see how it is

9:47 AM Miglin, Veronica

you are lucky you got a welcome breakfast

I don’t think he got a welcome breakfast

9:47 AM Temp

On my first day, I got asked if my family was in the Salem witch trials.

I hope you know I’m kidding.

My bagel was delicious.

9:49 AM Miglin, Veronica

btw, WERE your ancestors in the Salem witch trials?

9:49 AM Temp

We’re done here

9:49 AM Miglin, Veronica

still never got a solid answer on that

I went to South Carolina.

I saw on my handy-dandy custom-made-by-Kake calendar that Melissa’s birthday was coming up, and so I asked her what she was doing for her birthday.  She said she was watching TV and working.  Realizing that this was a milestone birthday, I found this to be completely unacceptable, so I rounded up some Maryland folks, and we went down to South Carolina to surprise her.  It went off really well, and it was really awesome of the other Maryland folks to take the time/money to fly down to see her, and to The Boyfriend for helping coordinate. 

Kate and I drove down from Maryland.  It took about 10 hours and it was a beautiful drive, complete with a stop at The Apple House and a beautiful sunset.

Not to mention, a definite vocal workout due to having Pandora set to Disney songs for 6 hours straight. 

It turned out that all of us, the drivers and the flyers, arrived at the same time.  Kake and I picked up the friends from the airport and went right to Melissa’s and it was awesome.  We went out to dinner, and had a great visit.

  

Kake and I did some exploring while we were there, and ran into a little town that has my alias’s namesake.  

We found a park called Paris Mountain, and did some light hiking.  And selfie-ing.

 As we were driving down Paris Mountain, repeatedly singing “Colors of the Wind,” (naturally,) there was a very Kate & Veronica moment.  We were mid-word in the song, (I believe it was right after, “how high does the sycamore grow, if you cut it down, then you’ll never know, and you’ll nev…..”) and we both turned into Twilight vampires when at the same exact moment, we both caught a waft of a campfire fire. 

Then we laughed and we laughed and we laughed.

When Melissa got off of work, we went out for dinner and I will bless your eyes with the sights of our food, you're welcome

Definetly a better way to spend your birthday than on the sofa watching TV.

And then we finished the evening by playing a bunch of rounds of Cards Against Humanity, which btw is hilarious.  I believe Kate went home and ordered her own set immediately.

I will say that the popcorn game is real in South Carolina.  They have a couple of popcorn stores who sell every flavor of popcorn you can think of: watermelon, sour cream & chive, jalapeno, cotton candy, birthday cake, and on and on.  I walked away with some pizza popcorn, and it made the boys at work very happy.

It was a very nice little weekend road trip, fueled by the largest cups of coffee Sheetz sold.  I think we each had a cup of coffee in our hands all of the waking hours.  Well, coffee or beer.  You know how it goes.

Here’s my conclusion:

I do not want to move to Greenville, South Carolina.  There are lots of reasons, but it’s enough that there is no alcohol served on Sundays.  

It's okay for a short visit, but we were ready to get back to Maryland.

The ride home was just as beautiful, paired with hours of praise and worship and Britney Spears and Disney.   Alas, home is where the Smidgen is. This land feels like home to me.

So does Washington State.  And a few other places.  But not SC.    

I have not received your text messages, and I am sorry.

I don't know how long this has been going on, but my suspcian is that it has been at least a month and a half.  My phone has been receiving about half of the messages that people have sent to me.  I am so mad about it that I just want to scream and punch things.  I also am missing calls, and people are being sent directly to voicemail.

I tried to do a hard reset while I was in South Carolina, because I was missing important texts from the people I was with in SC.  

So, I lost all of my contacts, for naught, as it were, because it did not help at all.  I just got a ton of text message notifications at the same time that said this:

I am allegedly getting the replacement phone in the mail today, and my hope and prayer is that all of the messages that I have not received are still alive in cyberspace, and they will all be delivered to my new phone.  I know it won't happen, but I can dream.  After all, I am now on bad terms with a lot of people, and it's possible that it is all over not having received some important communications.  

Therefore, if you have sent me a text in the past two months, and I did not respond, it's because I never got your message.  Please try again.  

On the ride back, Kake and I discovered that this song should be my Tinder tagline.

Btw, as Melissa's birthday present, I reactivated my Tinder, and let her play on it for a while.  NEVER AGAIN.  :-x

But there will be more Tinder episodes on this blog in the future, based off of your feedback of wanting more.  :-)

Until next time... take care of yourself.  <3

Tinder IV, BA & ES, NBC, Cow

Hello.  I should not be writing this blog, because I need to write the Maryland Archery Guide right now. 

Do you have a passport?  You need to get your passport!!  It makes me nervous when people don’t have one.  You just never know what is going to happen.  What if you meet a very wealthy and handsome and eligible bachelor who wants to take you to Rome for dinner tonight??  WHAT THEN, I ASK YOU???  I can  be ready and at the airport in 45 minutes.  Let’s go.

Tinder 

I deleted my Tinder account for now because I don’t care anymore, but here are some things that were lingering:

I knew this convo was gonna be good - I was waiting for it, and he delivered:

Ready for the answer?

You're welcome.

And then there are some people like this: 

Okay, listen, you have given no reason for anyone to care about your existence. 

 Oh, and this sweet treat:

Clearly a kosher situation.

This guy gets straight to business and knows what the ladies like:

Actually, a lot of guys are just holding cash. It happens a lot.

Maybe I’ll reactivate it if you want me to and you come and play it.  I never remember to, and it’s boring.  Also, I keep running into people I know, and it's awkward.

Bryan Adams and Ed Sheeran

I love it when people just get me.

------------------------------------------------------------------ 

From: Miglin, Veronica

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:31 PM

To: Katelyn Sullivan

Subject: ed

Ed Sheeran tho.

Seriously.

I’ll have it.

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

From: Katelyn Sullivan

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:33 PM

To: Miglin, Veronica

Subject: RE: ed

Only bc of his voice.

Kate Sullivan

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

From: Miglin, Veronica

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:33 PM

To: Katelyn Sullivan

Subject: RE: ed

Yes.  It’s like Bryan Adams… I just want to rub their voices all over my body.

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

From: Katelyn Sullivan

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:34 PM

To: Miglin, Veronica

Subject: RE: ed

That’s acceptable.

Kate Sullivan

It's A Strange & Magnificent World

Do you have any outrageous experiences?  Experiences which when you reflect upon them, you think, “How the actual heck did that even happen?  Who DOES that?”  I have so many of these – far too many to recollect at one time.  Really.  Any of my very good friends can attest to the peculiarity of all of my strange encounters – it seems unbelievable at times, and more frequent than the average person.

Last night on the drive home (I was at work until 9:30 PM writing the aforementioned archery guide) I was remembering this one flight I took when I was a kid.  I used to travel back and forth to L.A. as a kid.  My dad lived out there, so I would spend time in the summer with him.

My dad used to fly a whole lot, and so he had a whole lot of frequent flyer miles with whatever airline it was (I think it was American Airlines.)  He would use his points to fly me out there sometimes (east coast to west coast – lots of points.)  

One time, he cashed in all of his points on a first-class ticket for me.  I remember being super excited about it, and how he would say, “Everyone should fly first class at least once in their life.” 

It was really a fun experience.  I was probably 11 or 12 years old at the time, but I was used to traveling alone by that point.  I sat in my fancy, gigantic seat, and couldn’t believe that I was able to get orange juice, and an omelet!  And when they were handing around the hot towels, I had no idea what to do with it. I watched the guy next to me and figured it out.  

After a while into the flight, the guy next to me looked over at me, and smiled.  He stopped what  he was doing, and turned to me.  I distinctly remember his voice, and what he said to me; how kind he was.   (Funny how the memory works, n’est pas?) 

He said, “I’m sorry, I’ve been working, and I should have been paying attention to you.”  He asked me some questions, where I was from, where I was going, how I liked school.

He asked me if I would like to see what he was doing, and I said sure.  So he turned his fancy, state-of-the-art laptop (okay, they probably just invented them that year) to me, and showed me all sorts of things.  He told me that he runs football games that we watch on TV.  

He showed me sheets with tons of budget information, and how much things cost.  I, being 11-12 years old, had never thought about things like how much money it costs to light a football stadium, how much spotlights cost, and how much it costs to run TV cameras.  But he was walking me through all of this information, and I thought it was very fascinating.

He told me that his job was to make sure that everything was well lit, and the TV cameras were okay, and that everything went well with broadcasting the NFL football games.  I really enjoyed talking to him, a total stranger, for the remaining 3-4 hours of the flight.  Here I am 20 years later talking about it, so it obviously left an impression on me. 

When we landed, he handed me his business card, and I kept it for several years in my jewelry box.  I forget his name now, but he was some executive at NBC.  I used to video tape football games, just so that I could pause on his name when it came across the screen at the end of games.  He might have been something like Production Executive…  I would probably recognize his name if I saw it.  I doubt I still have that business card, but I’ll be checking my jewelry box tonight.

The point is, you never know how some small act in your day might actually stay with your fellow human forever.

Side note:  do not eat chips around Cow.  She loves chips, and I have no idea why.  Her favorite chips are Tostitos, but she likes everything.  Potato, tortilla, spinach chips, even flax seed chips.  I don't get it.  She's so rude about it - she goes right into your bag; she does not give a what how many times you push her away.  She waits  until you drop one, like a dog.  She will wait all day.  If you drop one, you don't stand a chance at picking it up before she gets to it.

Just to clarify, I do not feed my cats human food.  But she is a determined little thing.

Okay but she is cute sometimes, I guess.

Take care of yourself and each other.  Have a good weekend. 

Laters, baby  

I was robbed. Please don't get robbed.

You might get robbed.  I’m not saying that you WILL, I’m saying that you might. 

I know that I tend to have behavior that errs on the side of assuming the worst is going to happen but hoping for the best, as I've described before here in this blog, but also in just my regular behavior.  For example, checking under the beds and basically doing a sweep of a room when entering unknown territory.  (Kate hates it when I do this when we are in hotels, just because it makes her nervous.)  

I also tend to lock doors everywhere, even when visiting folks in places that have no massive crime rates, like when I visit family who live in more remote places, or in Forks, WA (“Why did you lock the door?? Does anyone even OWN a house key to this place?”  You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.) 

I am usually just a hyper-aware person, and don’t be offended when I request that you walk in front of me, or when I ask you to hold your purse closer to your body.  I can’t help myself.  I’m ready to sucker punch anyone at almost any given point. 

One time I was walking through downtown Philadelphia very late at night (I had drifted away from my group because I am a slow walker) when some man came too close to me (I knew he was behind me for a few blocks) and he went to lay a hand on me, and I turned around and swung and nailed him.  He fell behind and crossed the street to get away from me, and it caused such a commotion that I was okay after that.  But perhaps since I have so many stories like this, that is why I am the way I am.

So, because I care about you so much, I have been thinking about you and your safety.  I am WELL aware that I am at an extreme end of the spectrum, so I probably think about these things more than you do (or should have to), but I hope that you’ll listen to what I have to say.
 

I don’t know if you know this, but my house was robbed about 14 months ago.  I didn’t tell everyone about it.  I don’t share major, major news with everyone until it has lonnng past (i.e. this entry), if ever.  I had a roommate at the time, and thankfully, the burglar did not even go up to her lair.  He did, however, get a lot of my stuff, like my laptop, a lot of jewelry including my dad’s wedding band, my Kindle, my camera, my passport and credit cards.  It sucked.

It sucks losing “stuff”, but it also sucks knowing that some dirty stranger just walked through your safety zone; the place you go to cuddle on the sofa with soup when you are not feeling well, where you play cards and watch TV and drink wine with your friends and family and cats.

Coming home that day, after the police left, what was louder than the loss of things and the work to be done logistically was the work to be done inside of both me and my roommate.  There is no amount of washing the bed linens and scrubbing away the fingerprinting powder (which was on literally everything) that will clean off the image of some thief running their grimy fingers on all of your stuff.

When the one place you should feel absolute refuge has been violated in the worst way, it changes something in you.  Something more than my laptop and my things were stolen that day from me. 

I have since purchased a maahhhhsive fancy security system, which video records and then sends me a message if anyone even so much as walks near my fence.  I also get about 30 notifications per day, with video clips of the cats walking all around the house. 

But this morning whilst I was brushing my teeth, I was worrying about you.  And I was thinking of what little things you could do to create a barrier of safety for yourself and your things.

While it really was awful that I was robbed, there are a few things that went to my benefit.  Because of my natural behaviors described above, it could have been a lot worse than it was.  I want to share some things with you about what I did right, and what I would change.

First of All, Put Yourself On The Map

Introduce yourself to your neighbors, or at the very least, be on waving-in-the-morning terms with them.  I know that in this day and age, we have grown to be very uncomfortable with actual face to face time with people we don’t know.  Listen, I’m not here to tell you how to interact with humans, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure that other humans know that you exist, and that you are on their “radar.” 

When my ex-long-term-boyfriend moved out of the house a few years back, one of the first things I did was go over to the neighbor’s house (he is a retired Baltimore city cop) and told him of the situation.  I told him that I am a single female, and that I need him to watch over me.  I told him, “If something looks wrong, it IS wrong.”  If anyone is ever creeping around my house, or if there are unknown people in my yard – call the cops.   He was very understanding, and I tell you what – he has looked out for me, all of these years. 

It goes both ways – if there is someone going around the neighborhood knocking on doors, I call him, just to make sure everything is okay, and he’ll tell me what the deal is, or he’ll run outside and ask.  If someone parks in front of my house and starts creeping around my house, even if they have a house key, he either calls me within seconds, or he runs out and is writing down their license plate number and car description.  I got a call once from my friend who was entering my house with their baby while I wasn’t home, and he was like, “Um.. your neighbor is taking down my license plate number…” and within seconds, the neighbor called me. 

That day when my house was broken into, he was the one who called me.  He gave me a whole log of the day’s activities; how his wife mentioned that something was weird around 10 AM, and then my front door was open around 11 AM, and he knew that we were at work.   He ran out to the store, and when he returned home around 1 PM, he saw my cat outside, and he knew something was very wrong, so he called me right away and asked if I was okay, told me about what he had seen.  He then ran over to my property to let the cat in, and he looked around the house to confirm that the window was broken, and that I had been robbed.

The other neighbors had a pretty big response to my burglary, and it was a big wake up call to them.  So, put yourself on the map.  Care for each other.  Look out for each other.  You don’t even have to like one another, but make sure that you are looking out for your brethren.

This goes for everything, not just your home.  When we go camping, Kake used to get kind of awkward (now she knows why I do it) when I would make a point to engage our camping neighbors in even the briefest of conversations.  On hiking trails, if we pass humans in the wild, I make a point to say hello – anything to put US on other people’s radar.  That way, if we go missing, there can be a good timetable given by witnesses.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Make an impression – be on the radar.  Hold other people on your radar.

Keep Things In Separate Places

I don’t know why I started doing this, but I do.  It’s another thing that just comes to me.  The burglar went through my kitchen window, went in my bedroom, and went to work on my drawers, under my bed, my closet, and my jewelry box.  Do you have a jewelry box?  Listen to what I am about to say. 

I do not keep all of my jewelry in one place.  Honestly, I don’t even remember where a lot of it is, so don’t try to rob me (not that I have anything left.)  But one thing that saved a couple of precious pieces that day is that I kept some very special things in other places.  Yes, the only really expensive jewelry I owned was in the jewelry box, and he got that.   But fortunately, for some stuff that is not worth very much money, but has a lot of sentimental value, I keep that in various places.  If I had kept it all in my jewelry box, he might have seen it, thought it was worth $20, and pocketed it – not knowing that to me, the value of that same item was actually priceless because it belonged to my Grandmother.  You know? 

Think about how you can dampen the loss around your house.  Store things separately.  Put things in cupboards,  split up your jewelry box.  Keep really fancy stuff that you never wear someplace different than stuff you wear every day.

Lock Your Computer and Other Assets

I often used to think to myself, “Why do I have a lock on my own computer?  No one else even lives here!  It’s such a pain to log-in every single time, why do I do this to myself?”  Well, there’s your answer.    Good luck getting into that computer – I set the restrictions pretty clad. 

The “Don’t store everything in one place” rule applies here, too.  Even if they CAN get into that laptop, I have almost nothing sensitive on it, just about 4k photos, and some other documents.  But nothing like my social security number, tax documents, or anything like that was saved to the computer.  If it’s in digital form, it lives “in the cloud.”  Which, of course, has its own security threats, but hey, the laptop was stolen, and I changed all of my passwords to everything immediately.  So, again, “dampening the loss.”

Also, I called Amazon about my Kindle, and I can’t say enough nice things about the customer service.  She was very understanding, and she said, “Is it gone?  REALLY gone?  Like, you’ll never get it back?”  And I said it was REALLY gone.  She said, “Okay, then I will disable everything – no one will ever be able to log into that Kindle again – whoever owns it now owns a very expensive glass stone.”   She was also able to provide to me every single detail I needed to know about that device, which leads me to…

Keep All Serial Numbers For Everything

I know, it’s a pain.  But here’s the easy solution – take a photo of the serial tag for everything – your computer, your camera, your receipts when you buy either of those things, your TV, EVERYTHING.  Just take a picture with your phone, and send it to yourself, with a detailed description in the email, so that you can easily search for it, should you ever need to submit these things to the police.  The police will then check local pawn shops to make sure that no one has it, and then pawn shops will not buy your stuff from the thief.

Do You Have Insurance?

 I mean, do you?  I hope you do.  Don’t go around thinking nothing will ever happen.   Things can and will happen.  A tree is going to fall on your house or your car.  You will one day have back up flooding from your toilets, or pipes will break – you need flood insurance.  You need to have all of the insurance, including renters insurance. 

Do you have fine jewelry?  Please make sure that you have 1) taken pictures of the jewelry, and follow the same procedures as the serial numbers above and 2) see if you have jewelry insurance worked into your home insurance.  Maybe you need to raise your limits. 

 Don’t Assume Implausibility

We were really good about locking windows and doors.  You know how the robber got in?  He took a chair, the only chair in the back  yard, brought it over to my tiny kitchen window, about 18 feet off the ground, and jumped from the chair to climb into my tiny kitchen window.  We had left it cracked that morning, because it was so unlikely that anyone would even notice that it was cracked.  Even if my roommate STOOD ON MY SHOULDERS, she wouldn’t be able to reach the window.  That’s how high up this window is.  This guy really was an amazing climber. 

Don’t assume that you are safe just because it’s so unlikely that something could happen.  It can happen, it will happen, and it did happen to me.

Okay, well, that’s what I thought about whilst brushing my teeth this morning (hey, I have an electric toothbrush – a lot goes on in my mind in two minutes.)

 

Please be safe.  Take better care of yourself.  Watch your back, and protect your neighbor. 

Turn Down For What

I feel like this note of instruction which came written on these chopsticks should also have been printed on my forehead at birth.

I feel that it is important for me to tell you about this, more so for your own safety rather than just randomly spouted pontifications (a.k.a.about 90% of this entire blog site.)  

(Except for the part about Sue eating your food.  I was not joking about that – that is an issue to be taken seriously.  Look at what happened to my milkshake this past weekend.  Even AFTER I threw my body over top of it.)

Her feelings were only slightly hurt when I moved all of my food and my milkshake to literally the furthest point on the table from her.

I have always had very hyper-acoustics.  Years and years ago, I went to a show that was way too loud, and it blew out my ear (which was painful for a couple of years, but now I'm used to it), and I had to get an earpiece after that.  (I owned that earpiece for about two weeks before my boyfriend-at-the-time’s Rottweiler found it on the coffee table and ate it.  I never replaced it.)

So, when I am someplace very noisy (and it’s worse if it is enclosed,) I can’t hear a darn thing, because all I hear is static, like when you turn up your car radio too loud and all you hear is static.   So places like noisy restaurants, concerts, sporting events, and even in cars, I have trouble hearing if there is too much noise.  

I usually then have no idea what is going on around me, and will need to hold your hand.  For those who have become accustomed to going in public with me, you have learned to just hold my wallet (because I will lose whatever is in my hands due to all the confusion) and push and prod me in the direction in which we are supposed to be heading.

You might not even notice how much noise you are actually hearing at any given point in your daily life, but I am aware of white noise (i.e. air conditioning), far-off noises, and things like people breathing loudly, people chewing gum, and music played in restaurants which is turned down so low that most people aren’t even aware it is playing.  

If you’ve ever spent a great deal of time with me, you know this, as I will start breaking out in song/dance to whatever is playing, and you will stare at my like I am a crazy person until you also hear the music.

While I am usually a very patient person, I lose my s*%$ about sounds.  You might not know it, but I am usually dying inside if someone next to us has been stirring their icy drink for absolutely no reason at all for the past 5 minutes.  

If someone is chewing ice, I am dying inside, and THEN you also add the element of wanting to yell at them about grinding their teeth down on ice.  Too much noise + lack of concern over dental wellness = It's just too much.

Okay, so now I have laid out one of my greatest vulnerabilities for all to know, I can tell you this next part with you now having an understanding on why this issue is a big deal to me, though it may seem like small potatoes to you.

I have become increasingly less patient about noise recently, and I am genuinely sorry about it.  It is due to two reasons:

1)   A colleague who will not stop clicking his/her pen because s/he knows that it bothers me to the ultimate level.  The clicking.  It is about 3 hours a day of just clicking – it’s gotten worse. It’s like a game to him/her.  And perhaps s/he is reading this blog right now, and I don’t even care, because I need you to know that it’s serious, and I’m fixin’ to go to HR about it, as previously mentioned.  Seriously.  It’s not funny.

      2)  A different colleague who is the worst chewer in all of the land.  Listen, I usually can do a lot of self-talk to get myself to calm down in these situations, but with this particular person, it is not just me.  Every single person on the team now owns ear buds, and it is a mad dash to put in the ear buds when said colleague comes back to their desk with food.   I am not joking when I say that the sound of it makes me want to vomit. 

A different colleague recently moved into our little neighborhood here.  On his/her first day, s/he sent me a message that said, “Do I hear… chewing?”  I had to give her the low down.  The same thing has happened to two more people who have moved in.  

It's so serious, that we even try to sound a (silent) alarm.

IM convo:

4:10 PM Other Colleague

lots of chewing.  I heard it over my telephone convo

4:10 PM Veronica

I heard it coming in; I’m in earbuds

4:11 PM Other Colleague

thanks for the heads up :-\

4:12 PM Veronica

I just got situated!!!!!!  The rule is that you place the mask over your head and secure it, pull on the tube to start the flow of oxygen, breathe normally, and THEN help others.

4:12 PM Other Colleague

you didn’t even follow through, I brought it to your attention!

Even my boss, who is against earbuds, walked over to my desk one day, and was standing there talking when she suddenly was given a large dose of the chewing, and had to excuse herself due to becoming nauseated.

I know, this all seems quite trivial, and it is.  But it is driving me insane, and it’s making me very snappy in life outside of work, as well.  So, I kind of have written this whole section by way of apology.   If I suddenly remove your pen from your hand, or pick the gum out of your mouth unexpectidly, I am sorry.  I just am very sensitive to sound in this time in my life.

If one or the other (pen clicking or the chewing) would cease, then I could handle one or the other, but I can’t handle both.  It’s like Chinese water torture.  The struggle is real.

Generally speaking, the group I work with is very heads-down, and respects the sanctity of silence.  In fact, that is our motto - "Respect the sanctity of pin-drop silence."  We have a logo and everything.  

Any time someone comes over and starts talking about/inquiring others about their weekend, the weather, next weekend, etc., prolonged conversation is generally discouraged.

Okay, well have a good (and quiet) week. Drive safely in this cold weather - ice is not your friend when it comes to driving.  OH that reminds me to post more Ice Queen jokes from work.  They are always coming in, and I forget to tell you about them.  Here is one:  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: Colleague

To: Miglin, Veronica

That’s the spirit….  Are you still drinking the eggnog over there?

To: Colleague

From: Miglin, Veronica

:: Gasp ::  You just brought to my attention that I did not consume a single drop of eggnog this entire holiday season.

:: hangs head in shame. ::

From: Colleague

To: Miglin, Veronica
Don’t worry, you were busy freezing Vegas, LA, and the west coast.  

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Too true, too true. 

I leave you with Smidgen's reaction to a new clock that I hung.  He was not fond of the loud tic-toc sound, but he is too kind to mention his annoyance with the sound.  He does not inherit that trait from me.