The Burning Palm Post

Lighting storm’s are nothing out of the ordinary during the average work day her in Orlando. Florida’s storms tend to last for about 20 minutes then peter out, but can get rather intense for their brief duration. Last week there was a strike of lightning that made my desk shudder and freaked out most of the people in the office. ‘That sounded close’ was the general murmur down the hall. Moments later Henry came on the PA to announce that a tree at end of the parking lot by the lake had been struck and was on fire. So of course I ran out and got a snappy. You can’t really tell but the neighboring trees have lines of fire running up them, and the center tree (the strike-e) is in a crater surrounded by a ring of fire. The authorities showed up within minutes and contained the fire before it got any real size going. The area smelled like burnt wood till the end of the work day. You may recognize this area from a previous posting. Apparently its where all the action goes down in our area.

The Trendy Slurpee Post

I like to consider myself somewhat of an office trendsetter. Last year I got everyone hooked on microwave paninis for lunch. Shortly after I became the first member of the ‘office-look-a-like wall’ in the break room. And now I have something new and even more office-tacular! Seven Eleven has this new line of Aluminum Slurpee straws that do a fantastic job of keeping your drink cool, looking awesome in cool metallic colors and…as a dart shooter? The latest craze at the office is Slurpee straws. Ok well, MY latest craze is Slurpee straws and I bought them for everyone in my department. Turns out that these bad-boys make the perfect launcher for inner office amusement, and when combined with push pins and foam core (both of which are in abundance in the Art Department) make for some brilliant target practice while transferring big files or waiting for something to download. What’s that? Your computer died for the 5^th time today while rendering a project? That’s cool, don’t get mad. Have a few rounds of Slurpee target practice while you wait for it to boot back up! Stress levels are down 50%! I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Or at least some fresh thumb tacks. I must admit though, I was scared by the alarmingly large amount of co-workers that said it looks like a crack-pipe.

The Crazy Office Post

Work is kinda crazy at the moment. Regrettably Sharon, the company’s matriarch, is undergoing some major surgery, and is expected to be out of the office for a while recovering. Everyone’s furniture is in the middle of the room due to guys coming by on Monday to start painting the walls. There is major construction going on next-door involving compacting dirt for a parking lot, which causes the whole building to shudder constantly. And the air-conditioning was down last week on our end of the building which had us in the high eighties for a few days. Not the most wild of circumstances, but weird to have them all happen at once. Considering that I spent most of my work week gluing together an Indiana Jones backdrop for a Halloween costume (not mine before you ask) and writing stage directions for an NBC script… it definitely wasn’t your average week at the office. Best of luck to Sharon during her surgery and recovery time. Hopefully everything will be a little less crazy when she comes back.