Gender Differences at Work

My previous places of employment have always been predominantly male environments (Fiber Optics, Software Development Consulting) and I have always been in an even more strongly male dominated subset of those industries: IT. So I haven’t had the opportunity to work around many females in the corporate world. Now that I’m in the financial sector, I’m still surrounded by men because I’m still in IT, but the rest of the office is full of females. As a result, I’ve noticed a fundamental difference between men and women in the workplace: These women love to decorate. They decorate everything for every occasion. They even decorate themselves every single freaking day. We IT people seem to have other things going on in our minds and we never really give too much attention to how we are dressed – so when my company says the dress policy is casual, we IT people really take it to heart – we show up in jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies every day. Quick and comfortable. These other women show up every day dressed to the nines (whatever that means).

But I digress….what I really want to get into is this strange compulsion women (disclaimer: not all women, just a significant number of them) at work have to decorate their cubes/offices/general areas. Women at my office had Halloween decorations/Halloween lights/dead Halloween trees with ornaments on them/etc all over the place. Several of these women even went so far as to decorate their offices/cubes to match what was to be their costume that year – Little Bo Peep had standing cardboard cutouts of sheep and Astroturf all over the floor of her office. All the Halloween decorations came down the first workday in November in order to make way for the Thanksgiving decorations which were equally elaborate. And the first work day in December those came down to make way for mini Christmas trees/lights/ornaments/snowflakes/snowmen/etc. It’s a veritable feast for the eyes in this place. I’m expecting great things for New Year’s, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. In contrast, however, the men that work here - their idea of decorating is putting a diploma on the wall and placing some sort of action figure beside their monitors….and these things never get cycled out, no matter what holiday is approaching.

On an entirely separate note, I’m pleased to announce that I am now working a 4x10 schedule and, starting next week, I am being allowed to work one of those 10 hour days from the comfort of my own home. So from now on I’ll only be driving to the office 3 days a week. Hallelujah!

Re: Shout Out

This photo is a response the the 'shout out' I received from my SIL, Nicole. We bought bought these egg ornaments in the Black Forest of Germany a couple years ago. Good memories are always evoked when I see this ornament.

Everybody's Favorite Uncle

Mr X is often referred to as 'favorite uncle' among the nieces and nephews in his family. This may be one of the reasons why:

He's getting them started on their vices at a nice, early age. Mr X justified it as a 'real world' lesson in Mathematics.

Thanksgiving 2008 Part 1

On the actual day of Thanksgiving, Bill Nye and his wife (Mr X's sister) along with their kids picked Mr X and I up and drove us up to Knott's Berry Farm for some good fun with all of the X relations. (Well not quite all...there were a few X's missing.) It was decided that this year we would enjoy Knott's Berry Farm the day of Thanksgiving and we'd do the feasting the day after. That works for me. So we all spent the day riding roller coasters. I was nauseous most of the time but thanks to some Dramamine I survived. (But that night, once I laid down to sleep, a nasty bout of vertigo hit me and I was sick most of the night.)

Here's a picture of Mrs. Nye and her daughter at Knott's:

Here's a picture of Bill Nye with his daughter and the daughter of Mortimer (Mr X's older brother). Yes that's Mr T in the background, undoubtedly up to some crazy hijinks:

Later in the evening the nieces and nephews busied themselves by producing their own version of the Harry Potter story. I think this is a scene where Harry's scar is hurting him because he's thinking of Voldemort. Pretty decent acting chops, wouldn't you say? It must be that very expressive face. This is Mr T's eldest son who, on this blog, will from this point onward be known as 'Harry'...deservedly so:

Mockery

Ah…it’s been so long since I last posted. Luckily for me it won’t take long to update you on what’s been going on since I lead quite a boring life these days. The title of this blog is making a mockery of me, actually. Mr X reminded me yesterday that last year during this exact week we were frolicking on the beaches of Fuertaventura in the Canary Islands of Spain. We’ve been doing this to each other the last few months and it’s always depressing: I’ll say something like, “Do you realize that last year this same weekend we were Lucerne, Switzerland enjoying the gastronomically pleasing Cheese Festival?” A few weeks later Mr X will say, “Remember last year on Thanksgiving Day how we were in Paris and we had a Thanksgiving dinner of escargots and cheese fondue in the Latin Quarter?” “Remember last year this weekend we were in Austria snowboarding in the Alps?”….etc…

Oh well. So this year, this past weekend Mr X and I did some holiday shopping and bought/decorated our Christmas Tree. Mr X surfed several times. I made loads of sugar-laden treats of which I ate too much…that’s the trouble in making these delectable seasonal treats.

**PS – I will be posting some pics from our fun family-filled Thanksgiving weekend soon, I promise.**