North Beach Pizza

Decor is better than average, and there is parking, which is not something to dismiss easily, but the service is crazy slow and not worth the wait. Maybe it was the time of day we tried to eat there? Whatever it was, it's just pizza and pasta, there's no real reason lunch should take two hours! We should have been tipped off by the fact that there was no one there except retired-looking folks sipping contentedly at coffee and chatting idly.

The food tasted fine, don't get me wrong, but it was extremely simple. In that kind of time, I could have made pasta myself from scratch. And next time, I guess I will.

Today: Back to Work

Debriefing from Be More Firm: that's going to have to be a longer-term resolution, not just a single day thing. But don't concern yourself with it, it is something of a personal matter that can probably be dealt with successfully with this one resolution.

Today, it's Back to Work.

It's only been a single day of holiday, and I'm dragging my feet to work. I don't return from vacation too well. I do feel well-vacation'ed, and I did get a lot of old neglected resolutions out of the way, but now that the Sanity Meter is full, I dread subjecting it to the drain of work again!

So today's resolution is to be a good sport and get back into work-mode. Not quite like jumping back into the cold pool from the hot tub, more like easing back in one limb at a time, but it still counts.

At least I have grilling leftovers to console me over lunch.

Today: Be More Firm

Debriefing from Evil Think Tank: We came up with some pretty good stuff.

- come to work in costume. Link, Mario, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain America, Star Trek uniform, Team Fortress 2 Spy. Endless possibilities. And, of course, refuse to admit he's in costume when asked.

- send himself elaborate display gifts. Bouquets of flowers, huge baskets of treats, giant balloon displays. Also refuse to talk about them, but leave them sitting in an inconvenient place.

- set his cell phone to super loud and obnoxious ring tone, and be called every ten minutes. Refuse to answer the phone.

- buy a huge box of donuts and not offer to share with anyone. Throw excess in the trash.

- make popcorn so the place smells like popcorn. Still do not share.

- eat durian for lunch. So tasty! So smelly!

- wear a snuggie to work

- fish on lunchbreak, keep bait and/or caught fish in a bucket next to his desk

- leave a cardboard cutout of himself at his desk in his place

- talk to self and play the occasional musical instrument at his desk.

And the think tank keeps churning...

Today I'm going to Be More Firm.

I'm doubt I'm known for being firm, but I also doubt I'm known for being easily steamrolled into doing another person's bidding. And if someone thinks the latter, well they're about to be on the wrong end of this resolution.

Today: Evil Think Tank

I like my plan from Monday. It's a very good standard for a daily victory.

Today's complaint is the following:

Do you have someone at work that you hate? Probably, right? At least pretend you do, because it will make me feel better. Like, someone who is wholly incompetent, you complain about them to your friends, you certainly don't ever want to talk to them, and if they fell into a ditch and died, you'd pop the cork on that champagne you've been chilling?

I do that all the time. And I feel like it's no big deal - I don't actually push anyone into a ditch, so no one gets hurt. I don't seriously undermine them, mostly just ignore them, and don't go out of my way to keep them in the loop, or help them with a problem, or.... chat them up.

The problem is at this workplace, I seem to have become that person. Ostracized from meetings, never asked for my opinion, snapped at when I suggest things. I'm not exactly used to being the pariah of the group. The troubling matter is, when I think back to wonder if there's anything the pariah can do to get back in good graces, the answer is a big fat "nothing".

Something to ponder.

Today we're going to Brainstorm Evil Ideas.

As bad as (I feel like) I have it at work, Xian is probably worst off. Not worst off, financially. He is paid super well. Maybe too well to quit - that is part of the problem? Whatever your feelings about money, the job itself - and all the people in it - are the very bottom of the barrel of human decency. And today, we need to brainstorm ways to troll them.

Have I told you? Xian is a professional troller. His work has been bad for longer than my work has existed, and he's retaliated against the world by becoming what one might term an "Extreme Troller". He used to spend all day at work brainstorming things to yell at the other team in Team Fortress 2. And today, we're going to brainstorm things he can do to troll his office, because he is surely going to quit soon.

Today: Take Care of Myself

Going to have to keep rolling on the Be Selfish theme, and continue to stab my way through the evenings in frustration over my workplace.

Here's a vague outline of my three-pronged plan, to be hopefully fleshed out in a later post:

1) Do something selfish

- with the aim of mollifying myself in the short term

2) Do something productive

- with the aim of getting out of this place and into something better suited to me

3) Do something unselfish

- with the aim of making me feel good by making others feel good, and

- to make up for short-term selfish behavior and build good karma in general

Today: Feel Sorry for Myself

Debriefing from Do Whatever I Want: You know, when you're a kid, and you say that? "I'm going to do whatever I want, because nobody's watching me?" And then you hurt yourself really bad, or get a stomachache from eating candy til you drop? Yeah, well let's just say Bloons is hard, and we should quit while we're ahead. "Ahead" in this context to mean that I finally beat the Beginning map on Easy after many hours of grueling battle with balloons and now I might regret that whole day. There is the suspicion, to accompany the bruises, that this game.... might not want you to win.

Pizza was good, though.

Today, I'm going to continue in the theme of selfishness, and Feel Sorry for Myself.

I brought up to my boss how I'm getting thrown under the bus by my one and only co-worker, and he pretty much doesn't care. That's okay, I didn't want to come off too whiny, but I just wanted to make him aware of the situation, in case other coworker shows up dead in a ditch, on fire. But it did sound a bit dismissive, as if "you were already under there, nobody needs to throw you." So, a bit unsuccessful in trying to fix my standing with the boss-man.

Nothing to be done about that! So I'm gonna go home, load up on ice cream, and kill people in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, until my job looks delightful in comparison.

Today: Do Whatever I Want

Debriefing from Don't Let it Get to Me: That one is probably long term, and will need to be broken up into smaller steps. But at least we're aware of it. The first step shall be....

Today I'm going to Do Whatever I Want.

I'm going to eat an entire pizza at 3pm and wash it down with a Pepsi, and no one's gonna say no. Can I even down an entire pizza and Pepsi? We'll never know until we try, Goddammit. I'm gonna play Bloons 4: Expansion for maybe 3 to 4 hours, and then I'm going to watch a basketball game. Take that, world! Who's winning, now? Me, I'm winning. Bi-winning, even.