Are you over my moving posts yet? I'm not...

I thought today I'd put a face to all the players.

This is Julie (the one who appears to be pulling her hair out); Julie is the head moving consultant.  She's really nice and ever patient.  Next to her is Tyler.  Tyler is the one fitting all our files and bookshelves in a space that is too small for them to fit.  She is a miracle worker.  The gentleman is Herb, he's the head mover.  He likes to talk, a lot.  Did I say he likes to talk a lot?  He does.

Here's Mollie (the one on the phone).  She's overseeing this whole thing from the carpet to the doorknobs and everything in between.   She took us to the new space yesterday.  This is going to look very good on her resume!  The new space is beautiful!  The gal sitting is Sarah.  I'm not sure what she does, but it must be important.  I can tell you she doesn't do her payroll on time.

Next up, Seester!  Seester is Mollie's right hand and also in charge of getting our entire Planning Department all packed up...even though she's not their Move Coordinator.  She's been working day and night.  Dad said he never sees her anymore.

This is me.  I guess everyone is tired of hearing me whine.  I'm pretty sure I'll be shrink-wrapped and put in the moving truck.

Hey, wait!  Nobody puts Baby in the corner!!

And finally, here's the new/old building.  Can't wait to get there...

That's all for now.

Happy Pride!

Yesterday, Adventure-Poppy, Adventure-Puppy and I set out from our house with the goal of ending up in the Castro to celebrate Pink Saturday.  What is Pink Saturday, you ask?  Let's consult the Internets...

"Pink Saturday is a street party held the Saturday night before San Francisco Pride (Gay Pride Day) in San Francisco's Castro district. It coincides with the annual Dyke March."

So there you go.

Anyway, off we went.  Another goal was to buy Adventure-Puppy a muzzle. If she has a muzzle, we can take her on MUNI.  We stopped at our local pet store.  No luck, but the gal did give Jax some good treats.  Next stop, West Portal...uh oh, that pet store doesn't exist anymore.  So we found some string and a small paper bag that we figured we could rig should we need too.  While in West Portal, we ran into Amy/Charley.  Small world.

Okay, now back to the adventure.  Mappy-Pappy had mapped out our route, which consisted of hiking up to Twin Peaks to see the Pink Triangle.  Of course, this sounded good at the time, but once we started up the many stairs of Peak #1, my alter-ego, Kelly-The-Whiner came out for a visit.  Adventure-Poppy doesn't like my alter-ego because she only comes out when Dora-The-Explorer-Poppy is having fun.  Once we were back on concrete, Kelly-The-Whiner went bye bye.

We reached our destination, only to find what seemed to be millions of people!  Why must I do this to myself??  We ended up finding a sweet little spot to hang and stayed there into the evening.  Check out the views...

The gal is dancing, but she's not the Dancing Pig. The Dancing Pig is a BBQ place.  Not bad, but couldn't hold a candle to Poppylicious' BBQ.

So after it was all said and done, we left and hopped on MUNI without a problem.

We had so much fun, I've had trouble getting out of bed today.  I think Adventure-Poppy is ready to get back out there...

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Moving Day Is Almost Here Again...

I can't help it, I can't stop lamenting about this stupid move.  I've been up at 4:00am everyday this week...I'm having dreams about it.  One of the things I didn't mention before was that we're going from an office environment to an open cubefarm environment.  Have you ever tried to take a lawyer out of an office and place them in a cubefarm?  No, you haven't because it's not done.  Okay, it might be done at Google, but I bet you $20 that lawyer rides his skateboard to work!

We've been given newsletters on the proper etiquette of living in a cubefarm.  The last dream I had was BK handed me a note that read "You talk too loud."

I was taking a tour with Tyler, the gal that is helping me with placement of all our files and bookshelves.  Guess what?  We don't have room for all of it.  Uh oh...

Anyway, I've been very busy packing myself...and others, bless her heart.

I will mention here that STT has been my star packer.  I've not had to worry about one little thing with her.  Yay!!

But, here's where it starts to get good...well, not good, it really sucked.  We were asked by a few office volunteers to get all our food stuffs out of the kitchen cabinets and the fridge/freezer so that it could all be cleaned up for the move.  There were many of these signs posted at least two weeks prior to the deadline.

Now, when I read this, I interpreted it to say clean out all your junk.  That's what I did, see...

Someone else in our department did not interpret it that way, obviously because this person is a lawyer, everything is up for interpretation/negotiation.  This person interpreted this sign to mean that they should take only the stuff they want and leave the rest for the volunteers to deal with.

Ever notice in an office that it's the same three or four people who volunteer for everything?

So, guess what I spent a fair amount of time doing yesterday?

Mind you, before I took this pic, I'd filled up two industrial size garbage cans worth of old food.  We even asked this person if they were sure they got everything out of the cupboards.  The reply was "Yes, thanks."  Then later, that person commented to me what a good job "They" did with the kitchen.  What's up with that?

On the bright side, after today we'll have 3 more days of packing and then Adventure-Poppy and I will hit the road for a well-deserved weekend in Monterey!

Unfortunately, Seester was given the job of coordinating the move, along with MM and will be working through the weekend of the move.  These two have been busting ass for weeks. 

Oh, another cubefarm etiquette thing is that we can't have any personal stuff around our cube.

Say goodbye to Peetie!

Moving day is almost here...

As some of you know, our offices are moving across the street.  Around April, I think, I was given an additional title of Move Coordinator, as did all the other Administrative Assistants/Secretaries here.  My job is to coordinate and make sure all my people get their office purged of useless paper. 

I've also been busy over the last 8 weeks or so boxing up my stuff.  Here's the last 13 years of my work life:

You know how one person's junk is another person's treasure?  Yeah, lookie what I got:

It will have a very good home!

Now, along with being a Move Coordinator, we all attended weekly meetings on what we should be doing, where things were going, etc.  Honestly, this move is massive and not unlike a military operation.

Here's what came out of today's meeting:

This is a little graphic on where we are to place moving tags.  So easy a child could do it!

Are you bored reading this?  I am.  Let's talk about something else...

Where do babies come from?

Later.

TACO NIGHT!

Taco Night is a very special meal at Kasa Kecky.  If it were up to Taco-Pop-O, we'd have Taco Night every night.  We had it last weekend when Dad was here and then last night had friends over for another Taco Night.  Thing is, when it's Taco Night, there is usually enough leftovers for three more Taco Nights.

I think the secret (not anymore) to a good Taco Night is to get yourself a Cross-Rib Roast (the kind with the hairnet on it) and grind the meat yourself. That way, you know that those tacos came from one cow and not 20...this lessens your chance of contracting Mad Cow Disease.  If you do it this way, make sure that hunk-o-meat has about 20% fat on it.  If not, ask the nice Butcher Person to give you some beef fat and grind it into the meat.  Speaking of the Butcher Person, if you don't have a grinder, ask them to grind it for you.

I buy crunchy taco shells, two small cans of diced green chilies, salsa, sharp cheddar (grate it yourself), sour cream, iceberg lettuce, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime...I think that's it.

I start off making Pico de Gallo...chop up some tomatoes and some onions.  The tomato ratio should be a little more than the onion...just a little.  Then add a good bit of roughly chopped cilantro.  Again, you want to see green, but go easy.  Then, I squeeze some lime, add some garlic salt, onion powder, pepper and stir it all up. Adjust the seasoning to your liking.  Now I take a Serrano chili, I cut it in half lengthwise and then deseed one half of it.  Chop it very finely and start adding it in to the mix.  Keep stirring and tasting until it's at the heat you want.

Guac-Pop will also make some guacamole.  She uses some of the Pico de Gallo for that but the rest is a secret...okay, it's not a secret, I just don't pay that much attention to what she puts in it cause I don't eat it all that much.

So the meat gets cooked with the diced green chilies, some salsa and Kecky's Southwest Seasoning.

I also doctor up my sour cream with either some mild chili or most recently Cholula Chipotle Sauce.

Grate your cheese and chop your lettuce; heat up the shells and call it a Taco Night.

I've probably mentioned in a past blog that I like mine double-decker style.  So, I take a soft corn tortilla and char it on the stovetop, spread some refried beans on it and cradle the crunchy taco inside of it and then fill the taco.  NOM!

The whole point of this writing is to show you the morning after Taco Night:

Have a NOM Sunday!

What's in a name?

Our librarian sent all of the administrative assistants a flyer from the National Archive and Records Administration.  The title of this online seminar is "Basic Records Operation".  Mind you, I'd rather lop off my right arm than listen to this seminar but I read the flyer up until I got to the part that read "who should attend".  Guess who should attend?

The target audience for this course is records liaisons, secretaries, files custodians, and others who maintain records as part of their jobs.

Secretaries???  I've not heard that title used since I can't remember when.  Feel like I'm in an episode of Mad Men.  Time for my 12 cigarettes and a bourbon chaser!

I've actually always considered myself a secretary and never much cared for administrative assistant, but it's a whole new politically correct ballgame nowadays.  Anyway, I consulted my Internets to see what it had to say about secretaries:


A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit of more than one. In other situations a secretary is an officer of a society or organization who deals with correspondence, admits new members and organizes official meetings and events.
A secretary has many administrative duties. Traditionally, these duties were mostly related to correspondence, such as the typing out of letters, maintaining files of paper documents, etc. The advent of word processing has significantly reduced the time that such duties require, with the result that many new tasks have come under the purview of the secretary. These might include managing budgets and doing bookkeeping, maintaining websites, and making travel arrangements. Secretaries might manage all the administrative details of running a high-level conference or arrange the catering for a typical lunch meeting. Often executives will ask their assistant to take the minutes at meetings and prepare meeting documents for review.

Pretty interesting stuff...not really.  Here's the really interesting thing though, the picture they have to reference a secretary is this:

Guess who that is?  Yeah, it's former President "I Am Not A Crook" Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods...the one who erased the tapes.  Couldn't my favorite Internets site have picked a more suitable example of a secretary? 

Enjoy your weekend!

Wordless Friday...

P.S. Get your blood pressure checked!

It's a Dad weekend...

Let's start a new series called "The Dad Chronicles".


Started off last night with cocktails and dinner at Ristorante Marchello's.  Old school Italian.  This is the second time that Eggplant-Parmesan-Poppy and I have been there. Dad loved the bar.  Score!  He was disappointed he couldn't get a hamburger though.  Hope you're sitting down...we talked him into having spaghetti bolognese...HE LOVED IT!  And he loved the restaurant!  He didn't love it when the old school Italian waiter kept offering him parmigiana (aka that shit).  I had too "Shoosh" him once because "NOBODY SPEAKS ENGLISH!".

After dinner, back to the house for a movie.  I had picked out Racing With The Moon (Elizabeth McGovern, Nicholas Cage, Sean Penn) figuring it was his speed and genre...HATED IT!  He went to bed about 15 minutes into the movie.


Win some, lose some.


Today I took the little dog to the vet for her check-up.  Someone wasn't enjoying it...

It started off bad.  When I brought her into the place there was a Harlequin Grate Dane, Maximous, that took up pretty much the whole place. There was also Mason-The-Barking-Chihuahua and his family who were all out of control. Jax all but tried to get inside my shirt.  Poor baby was shaking like a leaf. But, she's very healthy and the doc said she's got beautiful teeth!


She happy to be home and sleeping it off.

So now it's Sunday. I'm sitting here in the living room minding my own business. Got the backdoor open cause it's so nice...but then I heard the monkeys from the zoo howling.  Probably those baboons with the ugly butts. Probably throwing poop at each other too.  Poppy said it sounds like they're getting closer.  Seems like every time we hear the howling, we hear sirens.  I feel like I'm in the last sequel of Planet of the Apes!


This may be my last communication. I've had a wonderful life and I love you all...

Christmas Lights...

When we were kids and it was time to decorate the Christmas tree, there was that part where Dad would have to put the lights on the tree.  I dreaded this every year, just like anything else electronical that he would set up.  It was always fraught with problems and then cursing would ensue...followed by a really bad mood.  These were the times I'd run and hide.

So now as an adult, when it comes to setting up anything electronical, I'll still run and hide...only this time, Component-Poppy needs help.  Our receiver died and we bought a new one so she's trying to set it up.  I'm getting a stress headache.

This has been going on for about the last 4 hours...I'm worried we'll miss the season finale of Game of Thrones!!! Not to mention, I've got a spectacular dinner planned that will involve grilling.  Ain't no way Persistent-Poppy will give up on this  receiver thing until she figures it out.  Currently, there is "no supported video signal" but we do have volume.  Boo!

Anyway, my spectacular dinner consists of ribeyes and marinated peppers, zucchini and spring onions.  We've not had steak in a very long time.

Yesterday was the grand finale of my 50th birthday celebrations...headed to Seester and Bro-n-Law's for a day of fun and chicken and dumplings!  So crazy good.

Seester tried to send us home with leftovers, but Low-Carb-Poppy and I said no way!  Gotta get back on track...even though as I'm writing this, my mouth is watering at the memory of the chicken and dumplings!

Say, Perturbed-Poppy just said (from behind the TV) "I'm feeling lost."  Now she keeps repeating "Video in...Video in."  I think I may be heading down to Seester's to catch the season finale...I just voted that she put the old receiver back.  It still works, just doesn't have surround sound.

Hmmm, not much else going on.  Enjoy your week!