Monday, June 21, 2004
Professional Development
I wish there were some way I could make weekends my job. I mean, let’s face it, my skills are completely underutilized at my actual job, where Saved by the Bell references go unnoticed and no one seems to care how many jagerbombs I can drink. There’s just this whole negative work culture that’s all so focused on, you know, completing things and being competent. But weekends are where I really shine, as I lie in the sun and pick up dry cleaning with the very best in the business.
This weekend, for instance, I went to the Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright concert at Ravinia. Of course the concert itself was beyond amazing, and it ended up being a beautiful night to be outside. But I really made the event my own by downing a week-and-a-half-old bag of CVS-brand cotton candy on the train on the way up and becoming so hyper that I was basically speaking in tongues, and not just to people who cared to listen. I followed that up with a good deal of wine, and then on the return trip I decided I should drink an entire two-liter of Diet Coke directly from the bottle. After that, things get a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure there was an extended Woody Allen impression involved. See, I’m both fun and timely.
After a rather rocky Saturday morning, then, which involved the well-established rehabilitative powers of the increasingly-tiny McDonald’s Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuit, my friend and I made a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo. In a matter of hours we saw wildlife from every corner of the planet, including a meerkat who had recently delivered eighteen babies and looked quite frankly suicidal and a chimpanzee who was visibly enjoying the shocked expressions of the parents and children to whom he repeatedly displayed his genitalia. It was good people watching, too, from the woman in pink culottes who was simultaneously drinking from a rhinoceros-shaped sippy cup and ferociously ignoring her children’s apparent attempts to throw themselves into the bear pit to the fanny-pack-sporting gentleman screaming customized messages of Jesus’ love (Hey, girl with the red hair--Jesus loves people with red hair! He loves skateboarders, too!) outside the front entrance. It did make me wonder, however, if perhaps the wrong creatures had been put in cages.
So yeah, it was a good weekend. The kind of weekend, really, that would legitimately merit an annual salary upwards of a hundred grand. If only I could get those bigwigs in upper management to think outside the box!
I wish there were some way I could make weekends my job. I mean, let’s face it, my skills are completely underutilized at my actual job, where Saved by the Bell references go unnoticed and no one seems to care how many jagerbombs I can drink. There’s just this whole negative work culture that’s all so focused on, you know, completing things and being competent. But weekends are where I really shine, as I lie in the sun and pick up dry cleaning with the very best in the business.
This weekend, for instance, I went to the Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright concert at Ravinia. Of course the concert itself was beyond amazing, and it ended up being a beautiful night to be outside. But I really made the event my own by downing a week-and-a-half-old bag of CVS-brand cotton candy on the train on the way up and becoming so hyper that I was basically speaking in tongues, and not just to people who cared to listen. I followed that up with a good deal of wine, and then on the return trip I decided I should drink an entire two-liter of Diet Coke directly from the bottle. After that, things get a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure there was an extended Woody Allen impression involved. See, I’m both fun and timely.
After a rather rocky Saturday morning, then, which involved the well-established rehabilitative powers of the increasingly-tiny McDonald’s Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuit, my friend and I made a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo. In a matter of hours we saw wildlife from every corner of the planet, including a meerkat who had recently delivered eighteen babies and looked quite frankly suicidal and a chimpanzee who was visibly enjoying the shocked expressions of the parents and children to whom he repeatedly displayed his genitalia. It was good people watching, too, from the woman in pink culottes who was simultaneously drinking from a rhinoceros-shaped sippy cup and ferociously ignoring her children’s apparent attempts to throw themselves into the bear pit to the fanny-pack-sporting gentleman screaming customized messages of Jesus’ love (Hey, girl with the red hair--Jesus loves people with red hair! He loves skateboarders, too!) outside the front entrance. It did make me wonder, however, if perhaps the wrong creatures had been put in cages.
So yeah, it was a good weekend. The kind of weekend, really, that would legitimately merit an annual salary upwards of a hundred grand. If only I could get those bigwigs in upper management to think outside the box!
