New Year = New Methodology

New Year. 

New Resolutions. 

New Goals. 

New Office Supplies. 

New Coping Mechanisms.

What ever gets you through.

Fête de Noël à la maison de Nina

[I don't know why I went French for that title, except I was trying to alliterate Noël  with Nina.] 

I attended my first holiday party at Nina's home in December 2013, even before I worked with her - officially. The fact that I attended "might" have been a clue to some of the Caramoor crew that the team dynamics were about to change. I had some "official business" to take care of first, so we had to keep it on the DL.

Parties à la maison de Nina are fun, homey, and her dogs and little boys continue to crack me up. Last year, I might have been wrangling one of the pantsless-wonders, which stood me in good stead with nephew Cannon decided to some of the same things when I visited over Thanksgiving. It ain't a holiday party until you spy at least one of the kids ... Well.

Anyway.

Friends from the department, "alumni" from the department, significant others, and many more attended. Munched. Talked. Laughed. And munched some more.

 And maybe some of us took some inspiration from lighting features,

 talked DYI, STEM, and MakerBots with Nina's Tom,

and came up with low-cost, recycled lighting options for summer activities.

 Glow stix and empty wine/water bottles

et voilà!

 Merci Nina

Joyeux Noël

Dinner by Nina
Desserts by Nettie 

~Photos by iPhone

Dining Al Desco: Part 2

If you ever want to make me laugh, say this to me: "Oh Auntie Nettie, you must enjoy eating outside on your lunch hour. Your workplace garden courtyard is soooooo beautiful."

SO MANY THINGS ABOUT THAT MAKE ME LAUGH.

HA! I dine, when I do dine, al desco. I even took occasional photos to document this.  Part 1 is here.

Don't judge my eating habits. At least I had SOME lunch. Between meetings. Between projects. Between IMs, emails, phone calls. (Sigh. Can I go back on vacation?)

Also: Those of you who know me, know I have a Diet Coke addiction. There are many pictures of Diet Pepsi shown here. They were FREEEE. FREEEEEE trumps everything - ever.

Dino Bits are cheap Fruity Pebbles with DP

Emergency supplies for later. You DO spy PB and J fixin's

Fancy mustard, VERY fancy cheese, cashews and DP

Eye Candy (yum), fudge gelato, Advil and DP

GINORMOUS Diet Coke and chocolate? garlic knot? (OI - I think that's HOME actually on a work-from-home day).

Someone's leftover Greek or Indian something or other

Oh HELLO, random Kale Salad

Pens in the homemade egg/potato salad. This is why we can't have nice things.

I picked the cucumbers yesterday morning in the office garden. Does that count for anything?

My desk is STILL a mess.

~photos by iTouch

Photo of the Day: Dining al Desco

 I call this: Dining Al Desco, a still life

I don't always have time for a lunch-hour, or even a lunch break. Some people get to dine al fresco.

I dine al desco, so I keep my supplies handy. 

When it's not "dining" time, they are the props for my desk calendar.

 en situ

My desk is a mess.

~photos by iTouch

Friends Don't Let Friends ...

Work is ... a bit ...

We'll go with busy these days.

And the weather is a bit ridiculous,

So, a nor'easter found me hunkering down with Christine for a series of sleepovers.

Along with grown-up tomato soup and grilled cheese, (lobster bisque and serious grilled fromage),

Which turned into a late-ish night purging collections of Christmas decorations, a tree-trimming, and repeat of our Christmas Tree skirt wearing from last year.

Things have been a bit silly from time to time this year, and luckily for me, Christine's been willing to go for it.

From being the Celery Queen 2014, harvesting the last of the Office Garden,

 

To creating new office Turkey Week traditions,

 

Thanks for the laughter and the funny e-mails and graphics, sweetie. 

~photos by iTouch, except for 1st graphic

It's Monday Again!

via the Twitter

Cubicle shown is not the real cubicle.

Summer Scenes 2012: Commuting Views

Although working through the loss of a second camera in about six months (RIP Ms. RubyNikon), I've still been trying to document some of the things I see around me. Thanks to a cell phone and/or an iTouch, I've managed to photograph some of the daily scenes in the life of Auntie Nettie.

l: I take photos. A photo of a photo ... too meta?
r: How do New Yorkers wash their cars? Double park on the avenue, run a hose to the local building/fire department, and wash them right there in the street! (Don't try this at home. Use a car-wash or your driveway, like most of the country.)

At the office building

l: Behold the current state of the corridor outside my office. Such loveliness/health hazards. Corridors of Power? HA!
r: The view outside the building only reflects how nice the outside is, versus the insides. Storm clouds passing - look for sunlight on the horizon.

One day I came out the service exit to see that the local mounted police were keeping the street safe - for children of all ages and species. Note: I had to take a series of photos to get this one on the right. I knew it would happen. You just have to wait for the moment to occur. The officer was more patient than his steed; that horse was ready for the stable and his oats!

Heading home:

It's not just the people of New York who eek out a living off the little patches of land between concrete.
l: a little urban garden spotted off the train tracks right by a highway on-ramp.
r. This doe was spotted on my way home, as I was walking over a highway overpass. She just emerged out of the thicket on the highway ramp. You don't usually see deer near this particular highway. I guess the coyotes aren't far behind. I got funny looks for taking the photo, but still. When the wildlife decides to move in, you start wondering about the deer ticks taking up residence in your hood too.

Series: Juxtaposition of looking down and looking ahead

l: Encroaching foliage into the Concrete Jungle
r: It's a rat-eat-pigeon squab world up in the overpass rafters.
Urban decay takes on a whole new meaning.

Walking home to the setting sun.

l: To find that it's July and the Christmas lights are still up above and below me.
r: Working dinner, while fielding phone calls and working on the computer.
So glamorous ... not!

Just a random assortment, I know, but it's good to off-set all the childhood pictures from time to time, too. Real life and stuff keeps happening in the present, while I look to the past.

40 Diamonds for 40: Letters from Lisa

I have been most fortunate in my career to have shared office space with people that I really enjoy. I have spent, and currently spend, FAR too much at work, so being able to have a good working environment, and enjoy the people you share space with, both personally and professionally, is a true blessing.

Lisa is one of our little trio tucked into a room off the main suite at the Big J, where she has to deal with many varied writing assignments, from speeches, proclamations, to curriculum review analysis, to onerous accreditation studies. She's a published author, an Ivy League PhD, but doesn't make you feel insecure about your lack of similar credentials. Another fellow baker, she offsets her cookie addiction with regular gym visits during lunch. Although I've deserted her lately, I know she's hopeful I'll rejoin her on the 22nd floor, as we work off our considerable stress on rowing machines, reclining stationery bikes, and/or elliptical machines. Out of an unspoken agreement, there is no photographic evidence of our gym trips, so my photo of Lisa is borrowed from her staff portrait in the School newspaper. Outside the office she has an adventuresome spirit, going zip lining on family vacations. Forget bungee jumping, or jumping out of airlines, perhaps I can try zip lining. Lisa did it, so so can I! Thanks for participating Lisa.

Sharing an office with Auntie Nettie has truly been a unique pleasure, as I’ve been able to witness her “in action” on a daily basis. One of the things I most admire about her is that she not only knows the name of seemingly everyone in the building – from the custodians to the “IT guys,” from the security guards to the work study students that come and go – but she also really knows something about each of them, and what makes them special. One of the many things she knows about me is my addiction to peanut butter cookies, particularly the Aramark ones that are served at so many school functions. Since I’m not in the office every day, many is the time I’ve arrived at my desk in the morning to find a few cookies wrapped up in a napkin like a special gift from a fairy godmother. And it’s not only cookies, but books, useful coupons, a beautiful ammonite or handmade Christmas ornament – all offerings that speak to her wonderful generosity of spirit, and that make coming to work more enjoyable.

Not that she’s a saint (well actually, I guess she technically IS a saint, of the latter-day variety) – she can gossip with the best of them, and believe you me, if someone provokes her ire, she won’t keep it to herself. This is just part and parcel of her charm, of course – her humor, her irreverence, her spunk are all part of the package, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. So as she celebrates her big “four-o,” I send her my fondest best wishes for all that awaits her – I hope the next decade is filled with much happiness and fun.

"Snow Day" Ramblings

Warning: This entry is full of excess silliness toward the end of the post. Chalk it up to the barometric pressure. Or something.

I learned something about myself today. Not only am I more hyper than I thought, but WASP guilt and no distractions make Auntie Nettie a productive girl.

Let’s back up a bit.

Today I was really hoping for a Snow Day. Like really, really hoping, giddy with anticipation, mapping out my list of Snow Day movies and projects, and looking forward to the text at 6:00 a.m., hoping for a Snow Day.

The weather forecasters were making dire predictions about the inches, nay feet, that we might get. New York City administrators geared up to cover their collective butts after the mangling of the Blizzard of Christmas 2010. The mass transit system went on a reduced schedule to preserve trains and tracks. Some school systems were canceling classes/sessions/meetings before flakes flew.

Alas, The Big J did not have a Snow Day. My area of NY got maybe a foot at the most. I could have gotten to the office if I had had to, but boy … am I glad I didn’t.

I came back from vacation remembering how horrid it was trying to commute during snowstorms last year and began to make a plan. Thanks to wonders of modern technology, Internet friends, and product giveaways, I have been doing more personal “computer-things” (yes, that is a technical term) at home. However, the ability to truly, professionally “work from home” for my salaried/insured job was never in my grasp until the New Lenovo moved into the Attic.

Thanks to a few well-placed, okay, CONSTANT bribes of treats this year, and a few late night Skype calls to Big J’s IT wunderboy(s) last week, today was my first day to “work from home.”

And you know what? I was actually much more productive working from home than I am in the office.

Mostly it was guilt – the fear that someone would swivel my office desktop screen to see what it was I was working on (which no one would actually do). Or it might have been something else all together.

There were certainly fewer distractions – no one walking my outside my cubby, no one walking up to the coffee machine, no one filing in my direct eye line, no treats on the office shelf to go over and taste test, and no long hike down the halls to a clean bathroom, which only encouraged me to stop by other offices and engage with other colleagues.

Time clicked by and I barely seemed to notice the clock -- whereas in the office time is marked by the morning mail delivery, lunch/gym /errand time, the afternoon mail delivery, the 3:00 p.m. stir-crazies, and then the sssssslooooooow movement of the clock from 4:45, to 4:50, 4:55, to last the run to the bathroom, to THANK THE DEAR SWEET LORD it’s 5:00 p.m. let’s blow this pop-stand, run for the train.

All of this is AFTER the morning commute where I would have had to fight for a space to stand on the one crowded local train an hour that was running from my part of the ‘burbs into the City, and the schlep and dodge through the subway that would have put me in a foul mood to begin with. THEN I'd only get to do it all over again, in reverse, with MORE cranky people. (Don’t even get me started with the Oh-It’s-a-Snow-Day Let’s-go-to-the-City-DumbA$$ tourists!)

I was actually up, presentable, logged on, and communicating with the office long before 9:00 a.m., and then, for some reason, I worked until 8:00 p.m. More of my annoying months-long, never-ending project actually got done in one day than I’ve managed to do in weeks. My trips to the bathroom took seconds, and I was back on the desk schlogging through data -- data that requires close concentration when you are comparing a series of 13-digit GL codes to other notations and GL codes. I also answered e-mails in seconds rather than letting them stack up in the in-box (which I should have cleaned out too).

I still ate lunch at my desk, but my environment sure smelled and felt better. There were no competing aromas, like my office-mate’s curry wafting everywhere or the odor of reheated fish (really people? REALLY!?). There was no lunch-hour office politics, like the mystery of why some people seem to think they get to take 2-hour lunches while others do not, or why some people get invited to lunch and others don’t.

Not today. Today lunch smelled of the brownies and brittle I made for the IT boy(s) who made this day possible. (Well under my allotted hour, thank you very much!)

As for all those other Internet distractions that I usually surf to avoid work – blogs, infotainment sites, and Twitter? I kept looking at those to a bare minimum, or read them during my lunch hour/baking break. In the office, I’d rather be surfing than working. (Regular readers of this blog/my e-mail friends and/or people who know me could probably attest to this.)

Now I can totally understand why some people telecommute.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t want to do this everyday. I can see how it can be isolating and how you lose the social bonds that come along with working in an office, not to mention how perceived "special arrangements" like this can cause office tensions.

But if I have major projects like this, or proposal research/writing to do? And if I’m not transporting sensitive materials like patron information, checks, or proprietary data?

I’m totally going to work from home more often.

Again, my dear friend Casey and Lenovo who made this possible?

SUPER HUGE TREMENDOUS THANK YOUs!

Special thanks to:

Dave, you know who you are – you don’t have to share if you don’t want to.

Molly at 711 – thanks for not commenting on how I look before I have hair and makeup done. Nettie
needed her Big Gulp of Diet Coke, no matter the weather! (That's the one thing I forgot to stock up on.)

Mr. Visine Bottle – Thanks for being full. 12 hours at a computer is not good for me, but you made it better. (Although, Note to Self: It is time to see the eye doctor. One can only ZOOM so much on some screens.)

And most importantly Mother Nature and Jack Frost. Thanks for the WORK DAY! (to be read sarcastically)
Another foot over this area of NY next time, please. Montauk and CT don’t want any more.

Many Happy Returns

Guess what happens when you take off for vacation?
The work keeps on piling up.
Please stand by while I undig.

Many Happy Returns

Guess what happens when you take off for vacation?

The work keeps on piling up.

Please stand by while I undig.

Garden Views

I've know blogged about the view from my office windows before ... but recently there was a new development. We jokingly called this roof top green space "the grassy knoll," even before the sod was installed.

I guess this makes this guy "the lone gardener?"

From this angle, it looks like he's watering the lawn ...

in a very inappropriate fashion.