In a moment of madness this past week, I wore plaid pants to work. OK, I really like these pants, and despite that I first bought them when I was 17, they've held up remarkably well. At least that's my opinion, save for a bit of a rip in the right pocket that happened during a trip to Ireland once.
A few colleagues gave me some shit for the day's outfit, albeit more for the schoolboy sweater than for the pants (ooh! Bryan's gone preppy!). I thought I would be able to compensate later in the week (more normal attire for me is more jeans and boots), but had forgotten that a few of us had decided to suit up for Thursday evening, when we went off to a new location for a quiz night. (said events are relatively popular around here, and though I don't play so regularly, the fact that the quiz master said something to me like, "you'd better be there you little fucker," pretty much made it a no brainer).
So, Thursday morning, I arrived to work in suit and tie to greetings of, "ohmygosh, what has happened to you?" or "are there customers on site today?" and the like. Even the lady at the canteen spilled a little soup when she saw me cut through the kitchen on the way outside to walk around on the patio (equate that to powersmoke and chug cups of awful coffee; a typical ritual of mine, as I tend to be unable to sit still for very long, and prefer to pace about when speaking on the telephone. Thus, I'm outside frequently through the course of the day, depending on how much I allow myself to smoke, how much my office partner with the booming voice prevents me from having my own telephone conversation, or how cold it is outside).
Overall, the feedback on my attire was relatively positive ("gee, bryan, now you look like you're our chef (boss)"), and later that evening when all of us arrived at the little cafe for the quiz, we sort of brought an intimidation factor with us, which had an effect on the other quiz particpants. The day before, I had made the argument that at least by dressing up, we might feel a bit more intelligent. Typically when I have played the quiz, I have felt tremendously inadequate, especially since the folks I normally play with tend to know the answers to most of the questions. My contributions usually come from the music round or from the rare question about North American geography (you wouldn't believe how many Europeans believe there are either 49 or 52 states in the US).
Our intimidation helped, but not quite enough. We went into the last round in first place, then lost a couple of easy points because yours truly forgot who sang "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" and wrote down a name so silly that I won't even repeat it here.
Thus, we came in 2nd place, which meant we won some gift certificates to the cafe, which we promptly used to pay our beer tab. All in all, not a bad little evening, though we may not do the suit thing again soon.
I was a bit tired yesterday morning, and hoped to call it an early day, but ended up working very late, which meant I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got home. Only time for a pizza, a movie, and a little ice cream before I simply fell into bed.
The challenges of work continue to both motivate and sadden me. Each week, we have to lay off a few more folks through contract termination or whatever, and that's not always easy to take. I don't have the history here that some of the other folks do, and, as in any unstable work environment, we'll continue to lose some of the talent as people simply find a better solution for themselves, which will make it all the more difficult in future to build (or rebuild) a team.
Meanwhile, on the positive front (choke), more stuff gets shovelled my way and if I'm not careful, I will get stretched pretty thin over the coming months. Prague is at the "let's flop about and lose control stage," which will mean I'll have to go back over there pretty quickly. And, someone decided we should relocate our call center, so I'm going to be involved in that transition, too, and that will probably mean a trip or two to Ireland. Sounds ok to me, but I've also got to race about and keep all the other balls in the air. However, my whole life is about instability, and I tend to work best in this type of situation, so there you have it.
Of course, that means the ipod is blaring all kinds of music right now, particularly as I need the constant psych up (pscyho?) element. Mission UK has been in heavy rotation this week, but there was a brief morning commute to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (which prompted the plaid pants wearing excursion in the first place).
So the soundtrack for the week will be "God's Own Medicine," straight through from start to finish.
keep the faith
bryan
(note to Moe - the fun thing I did for the week was a bit of a combo: instead of going to the New Model Army show at midweek (I should be a fan, but am not), I elected to see if Arsenal would find a new way to let me down in their Champs League match. I wasn't disappointed. There's just nothing quite like sitting there watching your team collapse in a comedy of errors...)
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