The Office

I am a total fan of The Office (NBC, Thursday Nights, 8 pm). I have The Office theme song as my ringtone on my cell phone. I have a Dwight Schrute bobblehead in my office, complements of my beautiful wife. At work, I also have a Michael Scott memo pad that says "World's Best Boss" and at home I have the Michael Scott pen and pencil set. The mousepad I'm using right now is a photo of The Office crew. My wife even thinks I have a thing for Pam. Not true, by the way! (Oh my...I just re-read that, and I realized that I am an Office nerd...oh well...admission is the first step to recovery).

Anyway, I've been thinking for quite some time that the place I work at is a LOT like Dunder Mifflin. Ha! Unless you're my boss, and you've stumbled on here by accident...then I TOTALLY don't mean to suggest that you are incompetent or unfocused like Michael Scott is. Every time I watch the show, I see some parallel to my work. Once, just after the episode about the bat in the Scranton office aired, I walked into work and found a real, live bat hanging by the door in our lobby. True story. We used to have a guy we dubbed "Andy" who would sing made up songs all day long to annoy everyone. And, heaven help you if you leave your cell phone unattended. It WILL end up in the ceiling tile and someone like me will call it repeatedly, just so you know it's gone and you can't find it. We even have a guy named "Kevin" at our office.

So, today, I was just getting started on my minesweeper project...you know, cuz those mines aren't going to sweep themselves. Ha! Unless you’re my boss…and you’re still reading….then I’m TOTALLY kidding about minesweeper. I was actually working on that really important project for the board of directors. I’m not sure my computer even has minesweeper. Well, I was interrupted by a commotion outside my office. Our HR lady (we call her “Toby” behind her back) was lecturing one of our salesmen because he turned in an expense report from Hooters. I had a quick flashback to season 2 when Michael took Jim to Hooters to cheer him up. Apparently our salesmen take clients there too…for a little cheering up of their own. The salesman got all nervous and flubbery and actually said “Um, no, it’s because the chicken wings…” Whatever.

So, here’s my question. If you’re in HR, do you give your sales guys a hard time if they turn in expense reports from Hooters? I guess I need my friends Travis and Mike to chime in on this.

If you have no input on the Hooters thing, besides “That’s what she said,” what’s your favorite line from The Office?

Potato Salad

Yesterday we hosted a great Memorial Day barbeque, as I trust many of you did. The Memorial Day BBQ marks the traditional beginning of Summer, and more BBQ’s inevitably follow. As I was making potato salad for the party, I remembered another family BBQ I once attended at my in-laws’s house a few years ago.

The barbeque started out perfectly. The setting was idyllic. The barbeque had all of the important elements. There were picnic tables with the red-checkered table cloths out on the back lawn, gallons of lemonade, hot dogs AND hamburgers! Grandma was there talking about the Great Depression and Grandpa was there telling stories about the war. There were huge trees to provide shade, and a swing set to keep the kids busy (and in one case, caused a slight head injury). There was corn on the cob, and watermelon, and potato salad…oh, the potato salad.

On this perfect day, my wife was assigned to make the potato salad. She pulled out one of her trusty recipes known as Patio Potato Salad. It is a somewhat unique recipe that calls for 1/3 cup of sugar…yep, someone actually designed a potato salad recipe with sugar in it. Crazy, huh?
Well, that’s where the fun begins. My brother-in-law fancies himself as quite a connoisseur (hey, I spelled that right on the very first try!) of fine food. In his mind, he is the crème de la crème of fancy chefs. He is the self-proclaimed expert on haute cuisine…even though: a) he has no real culinary training beyond the magic bullet infomercials he’s seen on TV, and b) most of his invented recipes consist of just throwing a little of just about everything in the spice drawer in, and c) the closest thing to a chef he has ever been was when he once landed a job dipping fattening foods into hot oil and serving them to greasy men at a strip club (I swear, I am not making this up). He once made up a recipe for Thanksgiving Stuffing out of gingerbread…and um, just an FYI, that is not recommended unless you REALLY hate your Thanksgiving guests. The dog wouldn’t even eat that stuff, but we dutifully indulged him and praised his fine culinary creativity…while shuttling small children to the bathroom and back to dispose of the stuffing in concealed napkins.

Well, Chef Gousteau took great offense to my wife’s use of sugar in the potato salad. (Like he should talk!) Most full-grown adults would have just discretely scooped the offending food off the plate for the dog to eat. Well, my brother-in-law does not generally act like most full-grown adults. He erupted into a rage (still not making this up) and threw the potato salad out of the glass bowl all over the back lawn, all the while yelling at his sister that “She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t know [poop].” (Maybe he thought it just needed a touch of grass clippings to compensate for the sugar and make it just right? Maybe?) I am not the swiftest boat on the water, but I can recognize my cue to leave…and that was it. I was busy herding the children away from the uproar and into our car, and with that, the perfect BBQ came crashing to an abrupt end.

So, all the way home, I had to try and figure out how to explain to a three-year-old that sometimes big people act like preschoolers. Unfortunately, (or fortunately) small children do not understand stuff like “Prozak” and “bipolar disorder.” Has this ever happened to you? How do you explain a big person temper tantrum to a small child?

The Virgin Post

I've always wondered how blogs are born. I guess it happened to me one day when my wife sat down and "created" this little space...and poof! Out of thin air is my blog space. Just like that!

So, what is this all about? One day, a few months ago, my wife asked me one of those questions that just can't safely be answered by a husband. You know, kind of like "Do these pants make me look fat?" (Oh how many husbands have slept on the couch over that one, right?)

Well, after enduring one particularly colorful and entertaining episode involving my in-laws, she came to me and asked "So...if you would have known how crazy my family really was before we got married, would you still have married me?" So far, I've still been able to put off answering that question.

For many years, I have threatened to write a multi-volume series about the crazy episodes that go on in the lives of my in-laws. But, honestly, to this point, that has required too much concentration...too much determination...too much actual work, and I just haven't been able to bring myself to that. This blog is going to have to substitute for the 7-edition, leather-bound, Moby Dick sized tome that I had in mind. I do this at great peril, because if my in-laws ever stumble into this space, I am a dead man.

As we get started, I have two requests from the reader. First, if any of you have suggestions about what you want me to elaborate about, let me know. I'll give you some code words to get the juices flowing. If you want to hear more about: Missionaries at Dinner, Broken Nose, Bathtub, Last Prayer, New Husband, Steakhouse, or Italy, let me know, and we'll start there.

Second, I plan to turn some of this space over to guest writers from time to time, so if you feel the need to share one of your crazy in-law stories in a totally anonymous, non-threatening way that can't be traced back to you, let me know and we'll get you on.

With that...let the madness begin...