Hot weather sucks

One of the bad things about not having an office to go to is being unable to escape the daytime heat whenever there’s some horrendous heat wave that strikes without warning. There’s nothing worse than being trapped at home all day wearing nothing but a wife beater and underwear, slaving over a hot stove all the while thinking about all the things that could be done if it weren’t so gosh darn hot. Blech. It’s not supposed to be like this, people. San Francisco is supposed to be foggy and windy, damnit!

You can now reach me at deathspiral@travelcompany.com

So, for those who don’t know/haven’t guess, I work in travel.  We’ll just call my company Travel Company but you could probably figure it out if you paid attention.  Travel Company is a privately owned, small tour operator that runs group tours to weird places.  Being a small company and being as how the nature of our business is strange anyway, I have become sort of used to doing a random assortment of things for the office.  Technically, my job function is internet marketing, but I spend a lot of my time doing data entry for hotel pricing, sending out visa kits for people going to Turkmenistan, calling our Moscow offices trying to get information out of them despite not speaking a word of Russian, looking up airfare, etc.  I’m your girl friday.


The problem is, of course, that I am both competent and quick (when I’m not skyving off to write in Sad Sigh), which means that my job load just keeps increasing.  And it seems like every time we have a staff changeup, I get a new email address (when the IT guy left I became techsupport@travelcompany.com; when the person who did our data entry got too busy to do it, I became database@travelcompany.com; when we decided to start a FAQ project, I became FAQ@travelcompany.com, etc.).  So when 3 people were laid off two weeks ago, it did not surprise me that I was given another email address to deal with some of the overflow workload left by them.

What did surprise me was that I finally counted up the number that I answer every day and I now have 6 email addresses at work.  6.  6!!!!  That essentially means I have 6 different job functions at a company where every job function is super varied since we are small and weird.

So, I guess feeling like a schizo is just part of the hazards of the job.  Write to me!  Really, pick any working email address @travelcompany.com (obviously, not our real domain) and it’s probably me!  There are only 13 employees now.  There’s like a 46% chance I’ll answer.

Like Tree Trunks

For those of you not living in the greater LA or NY areas, Barney’s, that bastion of fancy clothings for liberal elites, hosts a semi-annual warehouse sale in which gay things like suits, scarves, designer jeans, and men are on steep discount.  I mean steep.  We’re talking 80%-90% here.  That being said, when the suit that you have your eye on starts at $2,500 in the first place, 80%-90% off starts to seem less like a huge steal, and more like a month’s groceries.  This, however, certainly does not stop me from spending money I do not have.  (Hey!  The President asked me to, so who am I to refuse?  Plus – it gives me the chance to flash my sexytime Barney’s Card.) Continue reading

Trapped in the Desert

Daniel and I are marooned in Jaisalmer, India for our fourth day now. We were lucky enough to get here right when it started raining for the first time in two years. Continuous rain and oddly cold weather pretty much put the city on lockdown. Our camel safari was swapped, we kind of got swindled (our fault) into another camel safari, and all we wanted to do was die a bit. The ride itself was entertaining but made our asses hurt – everything else was cold as shit and kind of miserable. Our attempt to get out of the desert a day early failed and we resigned ourselves to our room and woke up to a power outage. Now, we have another 6 hours to kill before we can board a 13 hour train to arrive at our next destination at 4:50am. It’s during this time that I plan to write a hip hopera set to R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet.”

Sad.Sigh Down Under – Part 9

11.25.08 – Queenstown – ADVENTURE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!!!!!

Dudes.  It is EXTREME down here in Queenstown.

Or at least that’s what the marketing would have you know.

I awake at 5:45am, (blerg), to head out for my skydive, (glurg), only to learn that it has been canceled on account of the weather.  Curse you, RAAAAAAIIIIIIIN!!!!!!!  (shakes fist)  Yes, folks, it has rained 4 out of the 5 days we’ve been in New Zealand.  Why?  Because God Hates Me, that’s why.  For more evidence of this, please see further down in the post when I talk about my ‘Paradise Found’ journey. Continue reading