The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘Weekly Wacko’

Honeymoon Plans

For our honeymoon my fiance and I will be going to India. If you are like most people that have been informed of this, your reaction is probably “oh!” Not an excited “oh!” but the same kind of “oh!” you would hear if you ordered a cheeseburger, but without the bread, hold the burger, hold the cheese, hold the tomatoes (so basically some pickles and onions).

Yes, it’s a kind of confused, I don’t know what to do with this “oh!”

My mom pointed out that it could be because we are breaking from the standard enjoy the beach kind of trip. Our trip will involve a lot of movement and it’s going to be a real pain to get there. But you know what? We have the opportunity to take a great big trip and see someplace new, so why not make it someplace VERY new and so far away that a future trip there seems unlikely due to an increasing list of responsibilities as we get older?

Yes, we may experience “Delhi belly” (an adorable way of saying diarrhea), and yes, we may run ourselves ragged in our pursuit to see as much as possible (this is more my style trip, we have planned rest times because my fiance knows me and that I will feel the need to constantly move if we have not planned rest times), and yes, we will definitely overspend on items while the locals laugh and make fun of us in any of 22 languages … BUT, we are going to ride elephants! And we are going to stay in a PALACE! And we are going to experience sights, sounds, smells, and cultures that will be brand new to us. And we are going to get diarrhea! Oh, wait.

Do you have any tips for us on our global travels? I have been reading up on India but the more information, the better.

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Corporate Brad Announcement

This past week I had a breakthrough event in the life of my corporate mind: I was an a-hole to an intern. Sorta.

The area where my co-workers and I work is going to be moving into a smaller space so people need to take a good look at any and all papers they have. Some co-workers even have filing cabinets worth of papers. And in some common areas there are filing cabinets. I was standing in a common area looking at one with another co-worker when I said, “aren’t the interns back? Can’t we just have one of them scan all this just in case before recycling it?”

Wait – WHAT?! Did I just casually say ‘make the interns do the work everyone hates?’ And not just assigning work to interns because it’s boring stuff, but assigning it to faceless interns because I haven’t met any of them. (One summer my friends and I befriended the interns and tried to be nice to them. At the time I thought ‘am I a weird older guy trying to be cool in front of young people?’ This summer I haven’t even bothered introducing myself to the interns because I’m afraid they would look at me and think ‘ew, why’s that old dude talking to us. Did he just make a joke about how he used to play with a ‘yolo’ but could never figure out how to walk the dog? Was it even a joke? Or does he think yo-yos are called yolos? Ugh. Let’s leave.’)

Anywho … There you have it. Continuing my slow march toward being 100% corporate entity. Say, have you checked out those benefits, boy, and how about this weather, oh what’s that, sure sure the corner office. (Psst. That’s my example of being 100% corporate.)

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Want the history of “Corporate Brad?” Sure, have at it …

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Let’s Hear it for the Birds

Recently my fiancé (I am still more often than not calling her my girlfriend – whoops) and I spent the weekend with her grandparents. The idea was for us to relax, possibly go fishing, and just have quality time with them.

Despite less than ideal weather (which I learned impacts your likelihood of catching anything), the fishing happened and it was enjoyable. I learned a good bit from my fiancé’s grandpa and even got a rod and reel as a gift from her grandparents. (The last time I had gone fishing may very well have been for bugs.)

To me the most interesting moment of the trip was a very mundane thing that led to a funny realization.

On Saturday we were moving and shaking pretty much all day – fishing trip, then I went for a jog, then ran some errands with my fiancé’s grandpa, dinner, then downtime (phew). I had been looking forward to sitting on the deck, looking at the ocean, sipping coffee and reading. Sunday morning brought this lovely scene to reality. After a bit my fiancé’s grandparents came outside too. They began to talk about birds in the birdhouses outside of their house. Apparently some neighbors watch them so much that they recognize when they have come back (after they fly away to wherever during the cold season). Both grandparents told bird stories – the first about watching a bird fly up, up, up, tuck its wings and dive bomb down then spread out its wings and swoop safely along. Then a story about an angry mama bird circling the birdhouse chirping away at a baby bird too afraid to take that first leap to learn to fly … Eventually the mama bird came down, knocking the bird out of its house, forcing instincts to kick in and allow the bird to learn to fly.

My God, I thought, they watch birds for fun. That is a new level of boring.

This is when I had my moment of clarity. (By the water, too, how classically symbolic).

Sitting there, happy to sip coffee and not move, I realized how if me from 15 years ago was to see this … He would be shocked. I can’t tell you how shocked I would be. ME, one of those people who just likes to sit around and sip coffee (coffee!? blech!) and not move. Don’t I know there’s a BEACH right there? Don’t I know I could be doing something FUN? I looked at the birds and wondered, how many years til you guys are interesting?

I think there are three things that will help me continue to transition to becoming someone my 10 year old self would dread – enjoying life (especially the little things), finding humor in those little things, and having someone around who has to listen to my ramblings (I’m looking at you, fiancé).

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