My maternal grandmother passed away last night. She was in her mid-80s and had been in a lot of pain, so I’m not as sad as I thought I’d be. She had a long life and had at least three great-grandchildren, thanks to her eight children and over a dozen grandchildren. It’s not a bad way to leave the living, with plenty of family to remember you by and nary a care about zero population growth. She wasn’t a typical…
In the last episode of The Office—a damn fine rendition of the original British show, by the way—the boss starts up a gift-giving-and-taking game of Yankee Swap. This is a game in which everyone brings a gift and puts it under the tree for the giving part, and then all hell breaks loose in the taking part. Once upon a time, in that office in which I found my own personal hell, the big boss, Chert Bitterman—whose name really isn’t…
Okay, so 2005 hasn’t gotten off to great start, but I expected it. How could I not? After a Chinese dinner with H.E., my fortune told me, “The current year will bring you much happiness.” Just my luck. It was New Year’s Eve at the time. December 31, 2004, and only a handful of hours before the “current year” was over. So 2005 began with pain and rain and doctor’s appointments. My computer nearly died, and my commute’s eerily fried,…
I have it in my archives somewhere—a record of my stupidity, written December 17th, 2000: I look like I tried to commit suicide by cat. I spent all day Thursday putting together my desk (with return) using my own two hands. I’ve assembled office furniture before, but I don’t do it daily; I had to use muscles I’d forgotten I had. It took a while for it all to catch up to me, but catch up to me it did….
It was like every young adult novel or after-school special, with the new kid walking into the classroom in the middle of the school year and the teacher introducing him as a transfer from some school far away. Naturally, he was heartbreakingly cute, with that ’80s spiked hair straight out of Tiger Beat and heavenly brown eyes. The girls literally sighed. Our drama teacher, Ms. Dwyer—God bless her—put him in my group. I was directing a scene out of You…