The next two months are going to suck

The Starbucks I go to every morning when I go to work has closed down for renovations.  They estimate that they will be back open in July.

This is pretty much the worst news I’ve heard in my entire life and I am legitimately upset over this recent development.

Honestly, I don’t really know what to do moving forward.  I can handle the interruption of my morning ritual, but I can’t handle the denial of a consistent delivery of caffeine.  As much as I may bitch and whine about all the students and corporate stiffs who get there before I do and plug up the lines, I’ve literally gone to this Starbucks almost every single work day, and quite a few weekend days that I’ve happened to be in the neighborhood.  I can probably count on one hand how many work days in which I did not go to Starbucks.

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Oh, Georgia

It’s that time of the year again: where you’re probably at work, and I am not, for today is the recognized Confederate Memorial Day.

It’s a paid day off, so I’m not complaining about that part, but it never fails to amuse me when one of the Mondays of April is recognized as such an ironic day of remembrance.  Sometimes, it’s hard to believe people who publicly exclaim their excitement of the approaching holiday, because they’re not really paying attention to why we’re getting the day off, as much of the knowledge that it’s a day off.

Ironic in that regard, is the fact that it’s unavoidable to not acknowledge that Atlanta is a very predominantly black city, and there were people in my office who happen to be black, being overheard talking about how they couldn’t wait for the “holiday weekend,” because it meant having an extra day off, and their subsequent plans to accommodate the extra time.

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Does the thought of communicating with me intimidate you?

Silly question, I know, but not without reason.

After getting “this isn’t a reprimand but kind of is a reprimand” about how I correspond with people within my company (for the second time), I’ve accepted the reality that people in my office are scared to communicate with me. As irresponsibly cowardice as it may seem, it appears to be in my best interests to let other people do the speaking for me, as my words coming from someone else, appear to be vastly less inflammatory to the fragile people I work with.

I have to remind myself that I’m not in an agency environment, where people have told me to my face that something I’ve done is not acceptable in spite of the amount of legitimate work I’ve put into it, or that I’m not in an actual creative studio, where everyone is perpetually in competition with one another regardless of how much they may deny it, so everyone develops somewhat of a shield and an edginess to their tones. Despite the fact that I just turned 32, I’m still leaps and bounds the youngest person in the office, which is to say that everyone else is much older, not just in age, but in work experience.

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It never fails to amaze me

I hate to talk about public restroom etiquette (again), but unordinary, and definitely unsavory habits are becoming so frequent that it’s become unavoidable.  What I believe is that civilized people over the age of like, 3-4 years old should pretty much know how to use a public restroom; it’s really not that difficult, and yet, people, specifically the ones that work in my office building, are completely incapable of adhering to them.

Now I’m sure every single male that works in a place of business with other people has plenty of stories that they have the decorum to not share with others about other men who notoriously flush before they use a urinal, and then do not flush afterward.  These people are both mental, and completely retar-actually, that would be a disservice to those people who are actually retarded, but are still capable of having the courtesy to flush the fucking toilet after they use it.  So people who do not flush the toilet after they pee are both mental and just plain stupid.

We live in modern America, and as long as we have working plumbing and modern sewage systems, every person should have the right to approach a toilet and have it be crystal clear water looking back at them.

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Why do some people insist on going by their middle names?

I have a co-worker who goes by “Dan.” Furthermore, he sits right behind me. Additionally, he also does more or less the exact same thing that I do, except he’s like twenty-five years older than me, addled by a litany of physical ailments and is far less competent and adept at the software we use than I am; this is not opinion, it is genuine fact.

Never mind the old man rants that come from him, reminiscing about the days of when Quark was the standard, and how all today’s Adobe software sucks in comparison, or back when he was in the military, or whenever something political in the news happens and he feels the need to voice his opinion to the rest of our group. My objection with him is simply the fact that he goes by “Dan,” because that’s not his actual name. It’s his middle name.

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My headphones are useless now

For whatever reason, Big Brother has decided to start blocking a lot of websites that I frequently visit during my downtime at work.  Most of them are LoL-related sites, and even sites like Buzzfeed and Know Your Meme have gotten the big virtual c-block, but it is safe to say that I do not visit any websites that contain any pornographic or vulgar materials.  Come on now, it takes a complete retard to do such things on an obvious monitored network.  I don’t hide the fact that I surf on my down-time, but at the same time I also feel that my track record and work management can justify the capability to surf occasionally.

But the biggest blow to this unprovoked crackdown is that now I’m no longer able to access Pandora anymore.  This upsets me more than any other site getting blocked.

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Writer’s funk ain’t no fun

I’m still in the midst of this writer’s funk, where I feel like I want to write something, but I simply don’t know what I want to write about lately.  It’s hard to explain how I’m feeling these days; I can’t say that I’m in one of my bouts of depression or being all ronery-emo, because I don’t really think I am.  Work is boring and stagnant, but it’s not like I didn’t know this was going to be the status quo when I took this job.  I’m working out and exercising along the same clip, and I feel physically fine, and mentally too, for the most part.

Yet, I can’t really find or think of anything remotely interesting to write about these days, to which that puzzles me a bit.  Usually, I lean onto local news, or try to find something remotely interesting on the internet to spark some train of thought worthy to put into words.  But Atlanta news is pretty stagnant and predictably boring, and nothing makes me want to write about racist agendas and the obvious racial bias that “my fair city” exhibits on such a regular basis.  Not to mention the fact that all the local Atlanta news outlets are money-grubbing rags that recycle the same news anyway.

The Atlanta Braves blog I occasionally write for, I’ve been informed that there are going to be some changes with.  Although it’s nothing really that serious, it does make me wonder if I want to continue to obligate myself with writing about baseball on a weekly basis.  Obviously, my fandom with baseball has grown a little disenchanted over the last three seasons, but I kind of wonder if this was an opportunity to dive head-first into trying to re-invigorate it, or if I just want to stop outright.  Sometimes I think that my position of floating in the middle isn’t necessarily the best idea.

Speaking of baseball, it’s not that I don’t love the game any less than I used to, but here’s an interesting fact: I’ve been to one Braves game all season.  I’ve been to more baseball games at Coors Field in Denver, than I have at home in Atlanta.  I’ve seen as many games in Detroit and Miami as I have at home in Atlanta.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy going to the ballpark, it’s just that the idea of going alone isn’t what it used to be.  I tell you, one of these days I’m just going to have to buckle down and get on board with an 81-game plan, and make my damndest effort to do an entire 81-game season.

Maybe this is the kind of slump that happens when I don’t really do anything in my spare time.  I’ve been spending a lot of time reading lately, and I have to admit that since I started using my iPad as a Kindle, I’ve been reading a ton of books, and I’m finding it more of a bear than anything else when I force myself to read a physical book again, but my declaring particular authors as “physical book only,” it’s something that I’m not going to abandon any time soon.

But my list of options of things to do when I’m at home is a little stale, and makes me think that it’s contributing to my overall mental stagnancy lately.  All I do when I’m at home as of late is either read, play LoL, or watch DVR’d shows.  I could be a little bit more productive and try to do some cleaning, but when 95% of the clutter in the house isn’t mine, it’s somewhat unappealing and unrewarding to even fathom, let alone do, especially when it feels like it’s just going to have to happen again in a week.

Perhaps I need more activities to do in my spare time, to stimulate my brain into wanting to write about something.  That’s usually what normally happens, when I really find inspiration to write, while I’m doing something else, creating the false conundrum that I need to address and write about something while the iron is hot, but oh noes, I suddenly don’t seem to have the time to do such.  Perhaps I should actually address these projects for Dragon*Con while there’s still plenty of time in advance, as opposed to trying to get everything done in the month of August like I ended up doing last year.

But until then, this writer’s funk blows.  I like having something a little more focused to write about.