How To Make Enemies At Work

Yes ladies and gentleman, it is another VIMB “How To” moment. Today’s moment is brought to you by the acrid smell of burnt popcorn as it wafts through the office on a Friday afternoon, making the end of a long and arduous work week all the more needed. So, without further adieu but a large middle finger to the person that does this EVERY week …

How To Make Enemies At Work

1. Remove the outer plastic wrapper from a bag of microwave popcorn
2. Unfold bag and place in work-place microwave oven
3. Press “popcorn” button
4. After approximately two and a half minutes, when timer ends, press “popcorn button again (alternately you can set the timer for 5 more minutes)
5. Go back to your desk
6. When the smoke and smell of failure finally reach your desk, go to microwave and remove your smoldering bag
7. Place directly into garbage can without dousing in water
8. Walk away so no one knows it was you
9. Make new bag of popcorn in microwave oven on other side of office

 

 

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Color Me Spackled

Day something of getting Tori’s new room together went interestingly. Moving the bookshelves into the basement yesterday was not as bad as I thought. This is a room thAt we really never did anything with when we first moved in and just put things in there. Because of this, we never really looked at the walls. We should have.

There were so many holes and divots in the walls that it would have beeb easier to re dry wall. We don’t know what the people before us did but … DAYUM! Of course there was a little. It of my ocd coming into play with me having to find every single imperfection on the wall. It took me close to a total of 6 hrs to spackle this room. That doesn’t even include sanding yet. That was just the initial spackle job.

This week I sand, re-spackle, then prime and do the ceiling paint. Hopefully next weekend we can do the walls with the color on Saturday so I can watch the commercials on Sunday. The game is a rerun so no need to watch that.

Maybe I will win the lottery this week and I can suddenly hire someone to paint.

How To Get Ready For A Snow Storm

Yes, it is time once again for another fun and informative Voices In My Brain How To Moment! Today we are covering a topic near and dear to the midwest today:

How To Get Ready For A Snow Storm.

1. Embrace the warm weather and decide to do snow blower maintenance

2. Purchase oil, new spark plug for snow blower and a space heater to warm the garage so you can work comfy

3. Annoy neighbors for one and a half hours running the old gas out of the snow blower

4. Turn off snow blower, go inside and have lunch and plan on finishing later

5. Leave car on driveway at night because you never finished later

6. Tell yourself that it isn’t going to snow for a while and put off finishing

7. Wait for 5 weeks until it starts to snow and decide you have to do the work tonight

8. Get stuck in traffic for 2 hours on your way home in the snow. Decide you are too tired to do snow blower and lay on the couch

9. Look out the window in the morning, realize you never bought gas for the blower so that even if you wanted to you couldn’t use it, get in your car and just barrel through the snow.

10. Say “It can wait until the weekend” and continue to make your redneck plowed driveway by driving on it and packing the snow down over and over.

11. Look like the schlub of the neighborhood.

What Not To Buy … A Gifting Guide

So, the other day the team here at Voicesinmybrain gave our directions on how to shop last minute. We have received literally hundreds of comments on that post. Granted, they were mostly spam, but we still had a big enough response that the editorial staff got together and read through the one email we got from Melvin R. in Susquehanna, PA. This email had a simple request: “You told us how to shop and gave a few suggestions, but, what should I avoid buying for my girlfriend?” Excellent question Melvin. Since the editorial staff only has 2 women, and one of them can’t speak, there was limited input from the female perspective. We did do our best however to come up with our top 10 list of gifts NOT to get your girlfriend for Christmas (or any other holiday for that matter). In no particular order, here they are.

1. A stripper pole – No matter how sexy you think she is, and no matter how sexy SHE thinks she is, you should never suggest she dance for you like that. For this to truly be a gift, she should buy it for YOU.

2. Anything that vibrates – Do you really want to encourage her to replace you?

3. Edible Clothing – Again, this is really a gift for you. If you think it isn’t, consider the fact that she is going to be all sticky and gross after you are done slobbering all over her.

4. Cooking lessons – If she doesn’t already know how to cook, then that means she doesn’t want to. Trying a not so subtle hint as this is a possible relationship ender.  Take her to dinner somewhere nice instead.

5. Anything to do with cleaning – See #4 … same concept.

6. Gym Membership – Again, see #4 … Do you see the pattern here?

7. Clothes – So many things can go wrong with this … Wrong size which can get you in trouble, wrong style which could show her how bad your fashion sense is (I learned that one the hard way) and god forbid you buy sexy lingerie.

8. A romantic weekend – This actually depends on how long you have been together. Too soon and you will scare her away. Don’t wait too long in the relationship though or she will expect a ring during the weekend.

9. A pet – This is like saying, “I want a pet but I don’t want to take care of it so I am giving it to you as a gift so I can play with it but you have to take care of it.”

10. A poem or original song – No matter how “romantic” you think this idea might be, unless you are Dr. Seuss or Dave Grohl, all you will be saying is “I am soooo cheap!”

Remember, we worked for minutes and did a modicum of research in order to bring you this helpful information. Please do not embarrass yourself this gift giving season. Heed our advice and you will find you will be the best gifter on your side of the bed.

How To Last Minute Christmas Shop

Yes my friends, with Christmas fast approaching, the staff here at Voicesinmybrain thought we would lend a hand to the weary shopper who has procrastinated until time has almost run out. We have gathered our combined years of extensive experience and compiled the best things to do when you are last minute shopping. Ok, so it is just me and what I seem to do every year. Take my advice to heart, or discard it like last year’s fruitcake. Either way, I hope you glean some sort of helpful information from another VIMB ‘How To’ moment.

1. Look at the calendar every day starting the 1^st of Dec and tell yourself “I have plenty of time!”
2. Ignore #1 until Dec 20^th and then when you get to work and realize the date say “Oh Crap!” loud enough for co-workers to hear.
3. Forgo lunch the next 3 days as you run from store to store trying to find that perfect gift that everyone is sold out of by now.
4. Try shopping online but realize shipping will be 3 times as much as the gift in order to get it in time.
5. With 2 days left, check the “Seasonal” isles at Walgreens, CVS, Jewel etc. Find no gift but get enough candy for stocking stuffers
6. With 1 day s left, go into panic mode, run to each store you previously went to before. Buy sizes that don’t fit, and damaged items with hopes they will be back in stock when it is time for returns and exchanges.
7. On Christmas Eve, realize that your gifts suck, stop at a gas station and buy everyone a bottle of booze and some scratch off lottery tickets.
8. On Christmas morning, realize it is not about the gifts and it is about family and togetherness and all that sappy stuff and enjoy the day. (Sorry, had to end it on a high note. It’s Christmas after all!)

Child Rearing 101

As a relatively new parent, I am always looking for tried and true methods on how to raise a well behaved, caring, smart child. When they are older I think I have it down. I remember what my parents did and so I will have my theories on what worked and what didn’t. (probably more what I liked and didn’t since I turned out pretty ok) It is the times that I was too young to remember, that I have nothing to compare it to.

I haven’t read any books or taken and classes or anything goofy like that. I watch other parents. I observe how their children act. I listen to their advice and their stories of how they dealt with certain situations. Then, I ignore it all and I take my cues from movies and television.

Everything I have ever needed to know about raising a child has been committed to celluloid and video tape. Mr. Mom, Mrs. Doubtfire, Adventures in Babysitting and many others, have all been chock full of wonderful parenting tips. This is Christmas time however, so, I am currently gleaning information from an all time classic, A Christmas Story.

What could I possibly learn from this movie? More than one might think. In addition to valuable tips in family life, I learned how to fix a furnace, that I should drink Ovaltine, how to beat up a bully and how to let out a string of curse words a mile and a half long.

The piece I am focusing on this year, is something that I will be practicing and stocking up for in preparation for the coming years. Soap. I know not to use Lifebuoy as it can make you go blind. Apparently the soap to use is Palmolive. I am glad I learned this little tidbit.

Another thing this movie teaches is that it is perfectly fine to leave your young children alone in the middle of a mall while you go shopping. They are in line to see Santa, what harm can come of that when they are all alone right? And who needs to child proof a house? 100 plugs in one outlet is perfectly fine.

There are plenty of other things I could call out, but the one last important piece of info is that it is safe and acceptable to buy small children firearms. As long as they have glasses on, then they are safe from any harm that may come to them. I know this movie takes place when radio shows, secret decoder rings and pink bunny pajamas were all the rage but, this kind of advice is timeless.

Well, gotta get ready to go out and have a few drinks with some folks from work. We are going to go spend the money from our swear jar.

Until next time, remember … “Deck the harrs with boughs of horry, fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra.”

Another VIMB How To Moment

Once again, we here at Voicesinmybrain wish to help our fellow man with helpful tips to improve your holidays. Today, we here are VIMB want to help with our information on: How To Use Your Saturday To Finally Put Up Christmas Decorations.

– Wake up with plans to go to breakfast

– Wake up late

– Go to breakfast while your new glasses are being made

– Go to Walmart after picking up your glasses

– Go to Babies R Us

– While at Babies R Us, change baby’s clothes because she peed so much it totally overflowed her diaper.

– Head to Costco but stop at Sonic for a refreshing beverage.

– On way to Costco, look in rear view mirror to see baby holding her nose, telling you that she pooped.

– When almost at Costco, realize that you can’t change baby yet because you have to go home for your membership card that you took out of your wallet when you went to Vegas because a pick pocket is really going to did on that Costco card.

– Get home, change baby and baby’s clothes AGAIN because of the longer wait she blew out a bit.

– With baby in her 3rd outfit of the day, go to Costco for the 2 things you needed, walk out with 15 things you don’t need.

– Get home, unload the car, eat dinner, catch up on TV on the DVR.

– Realize you have been watching TV all night, it is 11:15 p.m. and you haven’t blogged yet.

– Come up with a crazy blog idea and try to type while watching Alec Baldwin make fun of his flight “incident” this past week and wonder if he is insane or brilliant for doing so.

– Include Alec Baldwin bit in your blog.

– Look at the clock and realize that it is 11:45 p.m. and your blog post is finished but you have totally forgotten about the Christmas decorations which is what your whole day was supposed to be about.

– Go to bed and hope you can get something done tomorrow.

 

 

I Am Who I Am, I Blog How I Want

I subscribe to a number of posts although I do admit that I am very bad at commenting on most of them. One of the blogs I subscribe to recently asked people to send in their tips on blogging “best practices”. Today the post was all of the responses. I liked the post as it was interesting to see what other bloggers felt were the best things to do. As I said the other day when I was complaining about advertising, I work in advertising. It is more of the online industry though and we also concentrate on the social realm for clients. This means that we need to be exerts in all things social, including blogging. It is interesting to see what bloggers think are best practices and what “experts” think are the best ways to do things. They are quite different at times.

I don’t follow any “rules” that we advise at work. Those tend to be geared more toward business to customer and yada, yada. I also found out that I write about all the things that bloggers say not to write about: I write about my kids, I post at the times that are not popular and no one is reading, I talk about extremely personal things, I complain about people’s grammar even though mine isn’t the greatest … I do a lot of things that apparently I am not supposed to do. Like I said, I liked the post but, to quote something I saw on a friend’s wall on Facebook today … “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss apparently said that. I like that.

I don’t write my blog to make money, although it would be great if I did. I don’t write my blog to be an expert on anything. I write my blog because it is a fun, mostly relaxing, and relatively inexpensive hobby that keeps me out of trouble and has introduced me to some real cool people who come to read and I go to read their blogs. (even if I don’t comment as often as I should as I have already admitted to)

So, you better go back to your bars, your temples … your massage parlors. Sorry, had an 80s music station on while writing.

So, I have to respectfully disagree with all the folks that say there are rules to blogging. I thought the whole purpose was that anyone could do it and not have to follow rules. If I wanted rules I would get a job at a newspaper (although when you read some of the things today you wonder what rules they follow anymore). I will continue to ignore the “tips” and “tricks” and keep flying blind and feel like a total blogging stud when I accidentally do something that makes my blogs hits spike to over 90 in a day.

In case some of you don’t read me tomorrow. Have a happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the day. Try not to kill any family members after dinner 🙂

I Accept The Challenge

Not really sure I was actually challenged or not, but I am still calling it that. I was reading my friend Kevin’s blog today and it was all about safety. The biggest safety tip he gave, was at the end of the blog. As it was an “Unrelated Aside”, one would think it was unrelated to the rest of his blog but no. The best safety tip was to try to avoid stuffing this Thanksgiving that was made with White Castle Sliders. Yes, stuffing made with sliders.

Personally, I love sliders. Yes Sybil, I even love them while sober! I have heard before about the White Castle stuffing but have never had it myself. I can only imagine that it would keep the stuffing moist and juicy. It would give it a nice onion flavor. Of course you would not use cheeseburgers or bacon burgers or the pickles. I think it would be good.

I said so much to Kevin and he suggested that there may be a video post in the future of me trying the stuffing. I might even go one further and post the entire creation of the stuffing. From ordering the White Castles, to filming the shopping and then cooking and eating said stuffing. Don’t worry, I will either time lapse or just do a few snippets of the steps. I won’t bore you with a 3 hour video. I will have to convince Mrs. Voices to film and put up with the smell of the White Castles. I can look at it as my very first cooking show! I will try to make my daughter proud.

While we are on the topic of Thanksgiving, can I just say that I make the BEST pumpkin pie? Yeah, I will be the one teaching Tori to cook.

While we are still on the topic of cooking, a rerun of Chopped is on, and one of the chef contestant’s name is “Dickensheets”. Bugga, I hope you see this because that name just screams out to you to scream it out.

And I almost forgot, thanks for the idea for today Kevin!

How To Decorate For The Holidays

Here at Voices In My Brain, we are normally vehemently opposed to any Christmas decorations going up before Thanksgiving. I have done well in the past adhering to this myself. I have often times regretted my decision to wait due to the wind and cold. I feel though that those hardships are what the decorating is all about. You go outside, decorate, freeze and then come in and enjoy the fire and some hot cocoa … or bourbon.

This year, I am going to be packing to go to Vegas on Thanksgiving weekend (yes, I will pack the whole weekend … don’t judge) so today I decided that this nice warm but windy weekend would be ideal to get ahead of schedule, even if I didn’t turn on the lights.

So, in order to help all of you who are thinking of decorating early … Voiceinmybrain presents, How To Decorate For The Holidays.

1. Plan on getting up super early to get all the decorations out of the basement.

2. Look at your alarm clock, and sleep an extra 2 hours.

3. Finally get up, put on some clothes and head down to ge the decorations out of the basement.

4. Stop in the kitchen, make coffee, eat breakfast, drink coffee.

5. Watch a DRVed show from earlier in the week while you drink your coffee.

6. Go out onto the deck and stack the patio furniture that is blowing around due to the 50 m.p.h. wind gusts.

7. Go down to the basement, start pulling out the decorations, realize it is time for the baby’s nap, go upstairs and put her to bed.

8. Watch another recorded show because you don’t want to wake the baby.

9. Feed the baby when she wakes up.

10. Play with the baby while the wife does some work.

11. Realize that it is dark outside and too late to do any decorations. Order a pizza and call it a night.

12. Plan to try again next weekend.