Dial 'N' for Negress

Today, I worked NON-STOP! Too bad I didn't actually get paid for any of it.

In all my spare time, I'm company managing a brand new blaxploitation-genre musical called Dial 'N' for Negress. We're doing a three week run at Theatre Row studios and it is going to be sicker than sicker. (Tickets are only $19.25...cheaper than a beer at Yankee Stadium!)

So, after a putting in a full day at the office, a full day of fighting tooth and nail with Microsoft Word and its crappy text-box and picture formatting, Dial 'N' now has a first draft of our program.

God Bless office jobs!

Tried and True

The obvious first stop for prime time-wasting.

I am loathe to admit that I probably spend several hours a day on Facebook. Not all at once mind you...but at several points throughout the day I just can't keep myself from clicking on that lower case blue F on my bookmark list. That little red notification flag is complete and total validation that you are a person of real import in the land of the internets!

Someone needed to tell you something! Red Flag!! How much more addicting can it get??

Of course Facebook is not just a good place to waste a few checking on your notifications. There's the old News Feed where you can check up people's statuses (status'? stati?), read the links that people have posted, and of course look at pictures.

I have looked through albums upon albums posted by complete strangers. Just because I can. (Be careful what you put out there kiddies!) The most entertaining ones are as follows:

1. The wedding album: (Variation: the engagement album.) Everyone always looks so happy at weddings! And its super fun to judge people on their choice of wedding dress, bridesmaids' dresses, flowers, rings, how drunk people got, etc. Some times I feel like a bad person for making such judgments on what is supposed to be the happiest day of these people's lives. But then I remember, who cares? They're complete strangers! Judge away!


2. The vacation album: Always a good way to pass a few. I find it highly amusing that everyone who goes to Paris has a picture in front of the Arc de Triomphe, everyone who goes to Rome has a picture of the Colosseum, everyone who goes to the London has that blurry picture of the Houses of Parliament taken from the top of the Eye. Travel photos...the great global equalizer.

3. The baby album: Kids are cute. The end.

4. The show album: I work in theatre. Most of my friends are into theatre. Thus, that album of your "Fiddler on the Roof" stint at the Paduca Playhouse? Seen it. Those snapshots of your non-Eq "Oliver" tour? Check. All those backstage photos from whatever drafty barn is putting on "West Side Story" this summer? Yup, I've paged through them all. Random show pics....good times.

5. And of course the I-just-got-a-scanner-and-found-this-old-box-of-pictures-at-my-mom's-house album: Perhaps the funniest of them all. God bless the advent of the home scanner. How else would I be able to snort Fresca onto my keyboard whilst appearing to be reading a very important document?

And yet, for all the time I spend on Facebook, I just can NOT bring myself to grow a Happy Farm, take that "What Michael Jackson song represents you?" quiz, or make a list of the 25 things that...blah, blah, blah.

Nope, I'm a Facebook purist. And yes, I'm aware of that severe contradiction in terms.

Obligatory First Post

So, a couple of weeks ago I came to the realization that the midsummer doldrums had finally set in, and somewhere along the way they had completely gutted my office. People were dropping like flies to vacations, weddings, and "personal days". I had just come through an INSANELY busy work season and, with no real time off in the foreseeable future, I had no qualms with downshifting into cruise control for a couple of weeks.

This is not to say that there wasn't work to be done. There is and always will be a file pile to contend with, an invoice to pay, an email to compose, a phone call to return. But my necessary daily duties had decreased so considerably, that I entertained the notion of starting a blog...just so I would have something to occupy my time, and because...well, when you work in an office, typing = "Don't bother me. I'm very busy doing important work."

I logged on to Blogger and started playing around with blog names. After several names that I searched were taken, my fingers blurted out Don't Let My Boss Find This and clicked "Search". The name was available, and seemed to fit with my whole impetus for starting a blog in the first place so...voila!

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to blog about. What did I have to say that would add something to the blogosphere that someone else wasn't already saying? The answer is probably a whole lot of nothing, which is why my blog sat here, sans postings, for a good while.

My friends who know me know that I am not one to bite my tongue. I say what I think, and I'm usually able to articulate my opinions without issue...so this blogger's block felt strange and uncomfortable.

As I whiled away day after day at my desk, checking in with my favorite websites over and over and over, just praying for someone to post something new, I realized I had PLENTY to say about other people's blogs. Praises, criticisms, suggestions for improvement, plaudits for creativity.

And....how apropos to use Don't Let My Boss Find This to discuss the multitude of ways that I find to waste time between 9:30am and 6pm Eastern. A blog about blogs. How meta.

Since I follow a healthy handful of blogs on a regular basis, I feel confident that I have at least a couple of weeks of postings before I run out of material and will have to start scouring the internet for new ways to fritter away the day. But there's a whole world wide web out there to splash around in so, I think we'll be okay.

Thus...the obligatory first post was born.