Coffee-Pot Cookin'

I thought I was the only one that did this until I was talking with a co-worker about nifty ways to have coffee while you hike and camp. He mentioned an article he read about “100 things you can make with a coffee maker” (I googled it, but didn’t find anything). Then I told him (a bit hesitantly, I mean, how old am I?) that sometimes I make top ramen in my hotel coffee maker. He counter-responded with this website about “How to Cook Food in a Hotel Room”. Then I told him about this article I had just read about a guy who got laid off a year ago and has been living on his hotel points.

I guess what I am trying to say is….maybe all this traveling for work isn’t so bad after all. First, you cook eggs on your iron in your hotel, therefore gaining valuable hotel points. If you get laid off, you can use them to live. And you can always take these tips and use them at home once you get back on your feet.

All kidding aside, it is hard to try and save money when you are on the road. It’s hard to save money, it’s hard to eat right, and it’s hard to make time to exercise. I have eaten more Top Ramen, carrots with hummus (substitute for salad) and Lean Cuisines in the last few years than I did in the entire quarter century before that. These are not exactly the healthiest foods. However, you do what you can with a microwave and a mini-fridge, IF you are lucky enough to even have those. Otherwise, you eat coffee-pot Top Ramen.

Having said that, I am totally a point whore (excuse my mouth, Mom). If there is a promotion for extra points at a certain chain, I will go there. If it means checking in and out every couple of days, I will do that. If becoming a “frequent flyer” (Platinum, in hotel speak) means getting a free breakfast and/or happy hour, I will stay at a hotel for 75 nights so I can get a 4 dollar “free” breakfast. It may seem silly, but it pays off. I used my hotel points to fly first class to the Philippines four years ago. When I was in South America, it was a treat to stay in a nice hotel (for free) after staying in dingy hostels the rest of the time. The benefits are great, even if the getting there is hard sometimes.

I guess the bottom line is: coffee pot ramen is really not that bad.

photo: taken with my iPhone: Mama P and the Coffee Pot Ramen (May 2009)

All Work and No Play...

...makes Jack a dull boy, right? It also makes me a sleep deprived grandmother. Yeah, I have always been kind of a grandma; I am the one who goes to bed early and gets up early, who turns down happy hour to go home and knit (no, I am NOT kidding) or read, who spends one’s free time writing Christmas cards and thank you cards and journals...boring, right? Yup. That’s me.

Anyway, if you thought I was bad before, you should see me now. I recently moved to Baton Rouge, but am still required to come to New Orleans from time to time to attend meetings or do site visits. So, I am frequently driving back and forth from one office to the other (about 70 miles one way). This, along with 10 hours of work a day, does not leave much room for anything else. My routine is becoming very tiring. I get up around 4:30 a.m. and go to bed around 9. I run approximately an hour to an hour and a half a day. I eat fruit and sandwich for lunch while in the car on the way to a meeting. Phew. I don’t see how people do it for such long periods of time.

I used to go to school and work at the same time and it was similar to this. I got up at 5:30 to make it to a 7 o’clock class on time, then went straight from school to work and worked until 10 at night, so didn’t get home until 11 p.m. However, I have definitely gotten out of the habit of doing that! I have gotten spoiled by my free time. I have started to take it for granted. I guess this is a wake up call (fitting – since it seems like I am getting less sleep). Wake up and smell the...

Luckily I only have to stay in Baton Rouge for a few more weeks. I will be so happy when I am back living in New Orleans, where it only takes me 10 minutes to get to the office, where I can walk to the restaurants and bars downtown, where I can pop home for lunch, where I can visit with my friends... I will try not to take all of that for granted the next time around.

When "Face to Face" Does Not Compute

We had a meeting at work the other day and one thing that was discussed was the fact that too many emails are going back and forth. A suggestion was made: instead of shooting someone an email, get up out of your chair and walk over to their desk and talk to them. This made me laugh because our office is not large; when they said get up and go talk to them, they are talking about a 20-50 foot walk. The longest you may have to go is down or up two fights of stairs, or in the case of many, down two floors on the elevator.

Which brings me to something else: I was reading Shape magazine on the plane last weekend and one of the articles was about small ways to start losing weight. One suggestion was to get a pedometer and make sure to take at least 1000 steps per day. To do this, Shape Magazine suggested getting up out of your chair at work and going to talk to your coworkers rather than emailing them. It also suggested taking the stairs rather than the elevator.

Is this so hard to understand? Do we need bigwigs to explain it to us in a meeting? Do we need Shape Magazine to tell us? Are 1000 steps really that hard to do? If you have a 2 foot stride, for example, 1000 steps would only be 2000 feet. NOT EVEN A HALF A MILE!!! What is happening to us that we can’t even walk a half a mile a day?

I blame it on technology. Not only is this great world of email, text messaging and Internet robbing us of our friends and a real connection with people, but it is also robbing us of our health. Why go out and date when there is eharmony.com? Why walk over to so-and-so’s desk when you can email them to ask what they want to do for lunch? It saves time, right? If your eharmony.com match doesn’t work out, you didn’t even have to put on makeup and get all dressed up. If your friend has other plans for lunch, you saved yourself a walk. We are getting lazier physically and mentally.

I admit that I too have gotten sucked into this vortex of emails and texts. At this very moment I sit here and blog when I could be discussing this issue with a coworker or friend. I tell my problems to the faceless masses but withhold them from my friends. I send out mass emails asking coworkers what they are doing for lunch. I send texts to people instead of calling them. I too am mentally and physically lazy.

Can we avoid this downward spiral? We are in a constantly changing world and technology is getting more and more prevalent. Kids these days are much more technologically advanced than I will ever be. I just hope that we can continue to teach our technology laden children the value of a long walk on the beach rather than another episode of Friends, a face to face chat with a friend rather than a text, a thank you note rather than an email or…taking the stairs instead of the elevator!!

Men At Work Part Deux

A while ago I wrote about the funny nicknames we give the old guys at work. This is an update to that blog... I am still in the same office with a lot of the same people, but we have made up more names. I have also added a few acronyms (we can't help it; it becomes a habit to use them!) that we have learned and/or made up since the last post.

THE PEOPLE:
1. The Loud Talker (LT): When this guy got here, I thought he was sooooo rude. Then I learned that he doesn't hear very well...oops!
2. Grumbles: Yup, he is back! I don't sit by him anymore so I don't get the brunt of it, but he still lives up to his name!
3. Multi Meeting Man (MMM): ALWAYS in meetings. Always calling everyone into meetings.
4. Big Mouth Bass (BMB): Guy who never stops talking. Ever. Even when he is eating. He probably talks in his sleep.
5. Sour Krause: Actually a nice guy with lots of things to say, but he doesn't smile very much.
6. The Manatee: I can't really say much about this guy. Let's just say he doesn't move very fast. And a guy named Seth that we used to work with does a dead on impression of him.


THE ACRONYMS:
VIM: Very Important Meeting (usually called by MMM - above)
BFE: I always thought of this as Butt F Egypt, meaning "a very far ways away", as in "The parking lot is packed! I had to park in BFE today!" However, in this business it means "Base Flood Elevation". Not as fun, right?
SAC: Sav-A-Center, a grocery store (there is also WF: Whole Foods, and TJs: Trader Joes)

more to come later...

Men at Work (no, not the band)

Men at Work (no, not the band)
Okay there are are all these old guys at work and if we do not know their names, we just make something up.
For instance, there is "old guy smoking", who is ALWAYS out front puffing on a cigarette. And he is all wrinkled and grey and...always smoking. Hence the name. Then there is "curly q-tip". Well this has a background story though. A Q-tip is an old guy with white hair. And don't get me wrong, this is not prejudice or rude; a q-tip told me about it! So...in my office we have A LOT of q-tips. In fact, mostly q-tips. 97% q-tips, 3% under 50s. What can you do? So anyway, "curly q" has a funny wild and crazy head full of curly grey hair. He also has another name - stoney-q, but that is only becuase he walks soooo slow and he always had droopy eyes. I even caught him eating a kit-kat the other day at his desk! Can you imagine! Then...there is "grumbles"; he is a guy on my team who is about 70. He sits at his computer all day and complains about everything...the weather, the computer is too slow/too fast, people are too loud/too quiet/too black/too white..... he never gets enough! Then there is "creepy guy" who stares at me every time he walks by... Chris had a guy that sat behind him that always had a fan on at his desk which blew him all around - "fan guy". And then there is "bear claw guy" who brings a bear claw to work every day and eats it precisely at a certain time every day.
So the other day I was at a bar with Lea, having a drink and who shows up but "old guy smoking!" And he wasn't smoking! That totally destroyed my image of him. Then a few days after that, I was at my desk and I must have been staring at "curly-q" because he said hi to me (at least his hair was still curly). Turns out, get this, they both have names! Haha. Things will never be the same after this.
Old guy smoking = MikeCurly Q = SonnyGrumbles = JohnFan Guy = undeterminedBear Claw Guy = undetermined
If anyone knows the identities of Fan or Bear Claw guy, I would be interested to know....