everybody's talking about the weather today in north texas. i have to admit it is rather apocalyptic that last saturday we had mid-80s highs, and today our highs are like 30 with a chance of ice and snow. so saturday i went and got my oil changed in shorts, today i come to work bundled up with a hoody, beanie and the jacket i usually ski in. it all reminds me of lewis black's rants about the weather on the white album. go check it out. now.

i won't beat around the bush, some days at work are just fucking work. and i don't mean i'm so busy i don't know how to live my life, i mean sometimes i'm so ridiculously lacking on things to do that i'm privately amazed when i've been here for 8 hours and i can go home. everybody's job has its perks... i realize i've got a great job so i don't complain much but goddamn, being a cube monkey with little to do at times is vicious. there are seriously some days where i would have been so much more productive had i just stayed home and lazed around for 7 and a half hours, and cleaned the bathroom sink for the other half hour. it's frustrating when you're not contributing to any kind of good in society. i feel kinda stupid when i'll bother to get up in the morning (whether i'm coming in for the day at 7am or 10am), drive into work and just surf websites and complete necessary 5-minute tasks a couple times a day.

it's different at a small company. if you don't have that much going on, everybody in the office knows it and something happens because of it. here, there's just too much going on all the time, people are out of town, taking time off, working somewhere else in the huge building, nobody can really keep track of everybody. if you're not that high up on the food chain, people kinda forget you're there.

i value my job too much to ever really screw around that much, but i admit it kinda makes me wonder -- how much could i get away with and still keep my job? could i come in at 9am, take 1 hour lunches and leave at 4 o'clock everyday without anyone ever even noticing? what if i took an hour at a time to catch up with one of my friends in the building, would anybody be looking for me frantically?

it's a double-edged sword -- i don't really wanna be all that important and constantly swamped at this point, but i don't wanna be so damn bored all the time. for somebody like me, it gives me too much time to think. i end up just sitting here and spacing out wishing i was at home doing any number of more entertaining things. it's weird that i actually end up feeling more swamped at home (damn i need to watch this tv show, i should be playing this game, i need to sort through this music to see if it's any good, etc) than i do at work. granted, i'm not the average joe that just goes home and watches whatever's on tv that night from 7-11 and then saunters off to bed after 15 minutes of a good book, but still. the point is i'm more methodical about my hobbies than my job, cuz it's more fulfilling.

this can be a tough time of year in this type of situation though. it's supposed to be a holiday rush, but for me with everybody else around me wrapping things up for the holidays and taking days off, it's more like the holiday crawl.

at least this wasted some time.

--j