Days like today make me want to be here...

Whenever I see Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks

I am reminded of Mr. Tumnus, the faun from Chronicles of Narnia (taking away the ears of course):

When I've mentioned it in the past, people's reactions are like, "huh?"  I mean, come on, look at them...

the picture of Mr. Tumnus isn't the greatest, but there's at least a little resemblance.  Someone's gotta see what i see.... Nowitzki could be Mr. Tumnus' older brother or something...... no?  Ok, so maybe I need to get my eyes checked....haha

A look at my life at work...

"So what exactly do you do at work?" some people ask.  Well, in my line of work, we like to play practical jokes on our co-workers, especially when they're away on vacation.  For example, 2 of my coworkers decided they wanted my office mate (who happens to be their boss) to come back to a nice welcome back present.  They decided that they were going to build a "wall" of this blue cellophane type stuff around his desk and fill the space with balloons.  Why?  Who knows... they thought it'd be pretty funny (they also thought it was pretty funny seeing me flinch everytime a balloon popped)...  Anyhoo, allow me to illustrate them (plus a helper) hard at work on Friday afternoon...

And here is what the finished product looked like from my desk (you can sort of see his chair):

Okay, so this isn't exactly what I do everyday (I do actually work), but these kinds of things do happen occasionally, which makes this industry pretty interesting.  It's nice to have coworkers and bosses that are pretty chill.

Anyway, needless to say, my office mate was amused (and impressed that they manually blew up like 300 balloons), but i'm sure he wasn't too thrilled about the cleaning:

Now when you walk into my office, it looks like he's in a jail cell... haha...

On a more random note, who ever knew that flies could stink up a room so much when they burn?  At work, I have this halogen lamp in front of my desk and in the last 4 weeks, 4 flies have flown into the lamp and created such a smell that my office mate goes crazy everytime it happens.  It's actually funny seeing him flip out so much at the smell.  Each time it burns, it also creates a lot of smoke.  The first time it happened, there was so much smoke (cuz the fly was so huge) rising from the lamp that I thought a fire was going to start, so I turned the lamp off.  And since then, there's been 1 fly per week, including 1 today... it's pretty nasty...why do these flies have to be so huge?  And why do they feel the urge to fly right into my lamp? 

I'm telling you, the working world of construction is not a normal one...

Ok, so I know an update is long overdue.  Have you ever been so busy that you have nothing to talk about?  Probably doesn't make any sense but that's the way it's been for me...

So I'd like to share a couple of "firsts" that occurred this past Sunday...

Those of you who know me know that I always avoided Indian food like the plague.  However, after church I actually ate Indian food for the first time since my senior year in college  (which was a while ago).  I was quite traumatized back then.  Don't get me wrong, the food was pretty good, but I guess the spices didn't agree with me.  But this time I made every effort to get the most bland food so I think my stomach was able to take it.  It was pretty good too, so I guess I'll just have to ease my way into the spices...

After eating Indian food, I went to the Delirious concert with some people from church.  As we were walking, I was talking to 2 of the brothers about how long it'd been since I'd been to a concert.  

me: Man, I haven't been to a concert since...(slight pause)

one of the brothers: Amy Grant?

For those of you who don't know who Amy Grant is, she is a Christian artist who was pretty popular when I was in elementary school or something, which was a really long time ago...Come on now, I'm not that old!

So after the concert (which was awesome by the way) we went to eat in K-town.  A friend of one of the guys joined us there, and during conversation I found out that he grew up in my neck of the woods in PA.  As I was talking with him about people we might mutually know, he made a comment at some point along the lines of, "They're really old, like in their late 20's or something."    

So people reminding me of how old I am is obviously not a first for me, whether they do it inadvertently, like the guy who joined us for dinner, or intentionlly, like those who say I have hal-muh-nee (grandmother) ears...ahem* 

It's all good though, because the highlight of Sunday had to be when one of the guys told me that one of the New School girls asked him if he was one of the elders of the church.  This guy is one of those who likes to intentionally remind me of my age, so you can imagine the amusement I expressed as he was telling me this.  And the look on his face as he was telling me?  Priceless.  I guess you never know what kind of "firsts" there's gonna be. 

So my company had their holiday party tonight.  Can I tell you how much I dislike these events?  Going out with a few co-workers isn't so bad, but when you go to one of these events where there's a couple hundred people crammed into a space that's meant for maybe 100 people....gets a little claustrophobic.  Now the place itself was pretty cute...here's the scene:

A "wood, cabin-like" building, 2 floors, part of the 2nd floor being a balcony that overlooks the main area.  There are side rooms too, but here I am standing against the railing just watching the people below mingle and stuff.  I'm with a coworker and he leaves to go get a drink.  So I continue watching, while munching on some cheese and crackers.  I notice to my left that the servers there have lifted the covers off of the food (it's buffet style).  I see people start getting food, and after maybe about 10 minutes I turn around.  SHEESH!  This is how I felt...

Okay, so it wasn't that bad (I know, kind of a scary lookin' picture).  But there was a literal wall of people right behind me - people who were waiting in line to get food.  Let's put it this way, the place was so crowded and the lines for the food were so long that I decided it wasn't worthwhile to stick around.  That bad that I passed up free food and free drinks?  Yes, that bad...

So as I push my way through the people, listening to some dude in the karaoke section singing/shouting, "SO BAD!"  *boom, boom* "SO BAD!" (don't ask, i have no idea what song it was), I finally make my way downstairs, thinking that no one will see me leave.  I get my coat, walk out the door and as I turn, I hear behind me, "Meliss!"  In my mind, I'm thinking, "Do I turn around or just pretend I don't hear him?"  So I turn around and lo and behold one of my coworkers is standing there smoking a cigarette with a couple of other people.  Dang it!  I got caught!  Haha...So after stopping for a minute to chat, I just say goodbye and leave.

What's the point of this story you ask?  There really is none - I just wanted to share this fabulous experience with you all and tell you how much I dislike big company functions.  

And to all a goodnight...