That person screaming? That's me.

Cover your ears, because I feel a major cuss rant coming on at 4:30 pm today. As soon as leave work and get in my car, it will be on!

My car is my own personal cussing sanctuary, and I find it very therapeutic. Cussing and ranting works as a non-violent form of stress relief, since I promised myself I would not kill my coworkers....again. Which is why I left my last job. Okay, the police made me leave.

Anyway, I get in my car all by myself, shut the door, and let out a stream of vulgarities that would make a trucker blush. Then, by the time I reach preschool to pick up my kids, I take a deep breath and viola!...I've managed to shake off a significant amount of stress.

It also helps to crank up the volume on a favorite fast-paced rock, punk, or dance tune, sing along at top volume, and let off even more steam.

Try it. It totally works.

I LOVE my new layout!

Just thought you should know.

Someone must be seeing it...

Madea Goes To Jail was #1 at the box office this weekend. It made $41 Meeeelllion dollars. Wow. Just....wow.

I've paid to see some pretty craptastic movies in my day, but in my defense, I usually didn't know they were going to be bad. Okay....so yeah, I knew Twilight was going to be bad, and I may or may not have seen it on opening night and then may or may not have seen it a second time. But it the bad-ness of it is what made it fun. Perhaps that is exactly what Madea's charm is...you know it's going to be bad, but its a fun enough ride that you don't mind plunking down your $10.50 to see it?

Anyone?...anyone?....Bueller?

Just Curious

I realize I'm white, and therefore, not black, but I'm just curious...does the black community actually see the Madea movies?

Hi, my name is Kris, and I am a Chai-aholic.

It all started when my husband's carpool kept stopping at Starbucks in the morning. At first, he didn't have any trouble abstaining from buying anything. Coffee is yucky/taboo, and he would usually sleep during the commute anyway. But then he discovered apple chai infusion. He raved about it and told me I should try it, so I took a sip.

I should have known better than to eat the forbidden fruit...

OMG! It is so good! Its like super spicy hot apple cider. Spicy enough to actually burn my mouth a little bit. I shared his drink with him and that was it. I was strong enough not to know that I could stop anytime I wanted to. And I did. I never actually went to a Starbucks to buy one myself, and I was fine with it.

But now he's discovered how to make them at home, cutting out the dealer, and now I've become addicted. Its right there, available, all the time. I think about it all day and can't wait to get home and have my fix. I can't stop. I need help.

I'm not condoning it in any way, but if you're curious... you mix equal parts of bottled apple cider and Tazo Chai Latte concentrate and heat. But I'm warning you, its highly addictive.

Confession: I am a Cougar

I slightly want to see the Jonas Brothers In Concert movie. I've openly confessed my love of boy bands before, and I've even confessed my completely inappropriate old-lady crush on these adorable little boys with dark, curly hair. Its not that I have some gross sexual obsession or anything. Yuck. They're just boys that remind me what it was like to be 15, listening to NKOTB, giggling, and posting pictures from BOP up on my locker. So what if their voices still crack when they sing? So what if the middle one looks like his eyebrows were drawn on with a sharpie? They were great in those skits on SNL this week and their musical performances were...fairly decent...and still better than Ashlee Simpson, right? I can still buy their albums, crank them at top volume, and sing my disturbed little heart out in the car. My problem is that I want to see the movie, but not enough to actually, you know, buy a ticket, and be caught dead in the theater. That would be far too humiliating...but I wish I had a young niece that wanted to go, and with whom I could totally earn "cool aunt" points by taking her to the movie. So if any of you have a young daughter who wants to see this movie, but the thought of sitting through 90 minutes of boy band squealing makes you want to puke, give me a call...I'm free this weekend.

This is not fat

I repeat...THIS IS NOT FAT! Notice the flat stomach? Notice the small hips and waist?

Yes, there is some unfortunate fashion taking place here, but a bad wardrobe does not make her fat.

But I guess anything above scary anorexic, skeletor, imminent death, consumes more than a tic tac & cigarette per day, scrawny veiny muscle arms, equals grossly overweight and subject to public and media mocking. Shame on you, media!

But for the love of spanx, Jessica...I absolutely cannot defend you if you continue to make this face.

Because it makes me want to kick you in the teeth. Any self respecting grown woman would never make the baby pouty face. Even Tony Romo hates it.

Who's hungry for Mexican?

I went on campus to eat lunch yesterday, and you're never gonna believe what I saw.

Let me just set the stage for you a little bit...the college campus quad, or student union (as some might say) is always busy and bustling. There are sometimes bands playing, booths or tables set up for clubs or vendors, people handing out coupons, and the occasional religious zealot...erm, excuse me, bible enthusiast...being particularly vocal about his/her beliefs. So what I'm trying to get at, is you never know what you might come across. Still, I was not prepared for what I found yesterday.

A group of girls were handing out flyers from their table, and I assumed that they were handing out coupons to a Mexican restaurant, because one of them was dressed like a big taco. Boy was I wrong!

The big taco turned around to reveal that it was actually a.......giant vagina. Ironic?

That's when I noticed all the other girls wearing "Vagina Monologues" t-shirts.

Wow, two references to vaginas in one week. Either I'm on a roll, or I need to seriously cut back.

I just couldn't do it

I tried to force myself to read The Host, otherwise called the body snatchers book by Stephenie Meyer. I read the first chapter, or maybe it was only the first 15 pages of the first chapter, but that is as far as I got...and it was due back to the library yesterday. Oops! I considered renewing it, and even went so far as to log in to the library website to do it, but there are other library patrons that already have holds on it, so renewals are not allowed. Frankly, without a movie coming out about it with lots of sparkling and spider monkey references, I just don't see the point in reading it.

Interviews

A big part of my job is recruiting and interviewing people for various jobs at my company. I really love what I do. I love working in human resources. I love calling people and offering them jobs. The best part is when they get all excited and scream and jump up and down while on the phone...its happened more than once, and it makes my job really fun. The unfortunate thing, is that in order to find that one special employee, I have to interview several other people that may be "special" in other ways. It eats up a lot of my time and can be really boring. This week alone, I have been in interviews for almost two full days, asking the same questions and hearing a lot of the same responses, over and over. It gets hard to focus and pay attention and not yawn while the candidates are talking. Nothing puts an interviewee at ease like the interviewer yawning, right? Sometimes, the candidates are so weird and random that the interviews are downright bizarre. Let's see if I can put together a list of the most memorable interviews.

One guy interviewing for a night-shift custodian position kept making jokes about drinking & sleeping on the job.

One older guy interviewed for a research assistant job because he wanted to go back to school for free and get his Masters. He was very open about it. But when I asked him questions about his work experience, he started talking about his knowledge of helicopters and actually drew diagrams of different types of helicopters on the white board. I wish I was joking.

One guy started name-dropping all the city councilmen that he knew and told me which ones were nice and which ones were jerks.

I get this one a lot...when I ask about their work experience relevant to whatever job they are applying for (accounting, IT, etc), I get detailed definitions of the industry terminology/processes. Like, a general ledger account is blah, blah, blah....and you have to document expenses and income. Really? I had no idea that accounting involved keeping track of the money coming in and going out. Thanks for sharing!

One guy asked about what our company's background checks involved, because he got out of prison on drug charges about a year ago, and he just wanted to be upfront about it, even though his application said he had never been convicted of a felony.

Lots of people ask about how many vacation & sick days they get...and how quickly they can start using them, and how frequently. I even had someone ask me if he could be considered for a leave of absence. Dude, you're not even hired yet! You have to pace yourself. Save this question for your first day of work, sheesh.

One woman sent me a thank you email after her interview and included a link to her personal blog. I went to check it out and it had a warning about explicit adult content and langugage. Mostly it was a bunch of her poetry, but it was definitely adult. Why would you send me a link to you talking about your hoo-ha and about your sexual explorations? #1 - I don't even like poetry. #2 - we don't know each other well enough to discuss that kind of thing. #3 - do you really think I want to read about that, hire you, and then have to work with you every day? I will only be picturing a big vagina where your face should be, every time I look at you.