I spotted this fake fingernail outside the women's restroom at work after lunch today. I wanted desperately to stop and take a picture of it, because it's not everyday you see an appendage, fake or otherwise, just lying on the floor somewhere, but I was with a bunch of girls from my department and didn't want to appear macabre.

So I had to launch a recon mission later in the day to return and capture it with my camera phone, which was harder than it seems, because our main reception area looks out on the bathrooms, which I imagine provides no end of enjoyment for our receptionist.

Disgustingly, but not surprisingly, the nail was still there-- I suppose no one wants the job of squatting down in front of the ladies' bathroom and, with their bare hands, picking up and discarding a Lee press-on. After loitering nonchalantly for a few moments as several people wandered through the entranceway, I was able to snap this stunner.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm so fascinated by the presence of this nail-- I suppose it has something to do with the questions it dregs up, namely:

1. Who still wears Lee press-on nails?

2. Who could lose one and not notice?

3. If they did notice, why did they not pick it up? It did, after all, come unstuck from their own hand, which means that they of all people should feel the obligation to pick up after themselves.

The real test will be to see if the nail is still there tomorrow morning (it was still present at 5:05, when I left this evening). If it's not, I'm going to pretend that our cleaning lady spotted it and, finding it chic, affixed it to her own pinkie, ensuring that her pimp hand would be strong.

The Secret Lives of Auditors

One might think that my lack of blog entries is indicative of a totally boring life, dry and tasteless as Cracklin' Oat Bran, and just as regular. But in actuality, my life has been extremely interesting over the last two weeks-- I just can't tell you why.

Specifically, I can't tell you why because every interesting thing that has happened to me involves my job-- and yes, I mean interesting in a universal sense, not interesting in a only-interesting-to-insurance-people sense. But I don't really like to talk about my job on my blog for two reasons: I don't want anyone from work to find it and read it and come to my desk and quote it to me mockingly before they have me escorted out by security, and also, most of you pass out and begin drooling if I even so much as interject a word that sounds like "insurance" into a sentence.

But I can tell you, without fear of reprisal, the following short list of things I did at work today:

1. Jabbed myself pretty hard in the back with the pointy end of an exposed screw while scrambling around under my desk, attempting to plug in my jump drive so I could listen to "Sister Christian" on my computer.

2. Ate a horrendous sandwich.

3. Sent like a thousand people to collections-- take THAT, you non-paying a-holes! You'd best step off next time you make fun of ME for ordering tacos with just meat at Chipotle, because you don't even KNOW what kind of power I got.

4. Listened to "Sister Christian" a bazillion times; each time it got to the "Motorin'" chorus, imagined myself in the car with the windows down driving across a bridge while my hair whipped dramatically around me, like I was in a po-mo Zach Braff movie (side note: I feel that Zach Braff's voice is far too high for his physique)

5. Entertained co-workers with a story about a doll I used to have named Gorilla Ann

I also did a multitude of other things, but they were not funny things, unless you think writing e-mails to the Virginia Board of Insurance is funny, which I wager you do not.

The people you came in with

Today was the last day at work for one of my co-workers, a guy named Todd, who secretly fed me most of my information about the Cavs so I could go home and look smart in front of Ben (it was Todd who tipped me off to the fact that Daniel Gibson was nicknamed Booby long before everyone else started calling him that). In the old building, I sat diagonally from Todd; in the new building, I sat right across from him. We were never really friends, but I really liked Todd-- he was funny, and a good worker, and a very smart guy. And now he's gone, and I'll probably never see him again.

In fact, a lot of people have left my office lately, mostly because of the drive, as my new office is about seven hundred miles from everywhere, and you must drive around something called Dead Man's Curve to get there. In fact, of the original group I worked with at the old office, only two people remain, other than my boss and the other supervisor. We've got new people, and they're awesome, but there's something to be said for the people you came in with.

I've always had a lot of friends-- not to sound pompous, but I am insanely likeable. But co-workers are a different breed of friends. They're like stealth friends-- you don't even realize how much you like them until they leave.

And if you think about it, you probably spend more time with your co-workers during any given week than you do with any of your other, outside-world friends-- even, probably, more than you spend with your significant other or family. So the sudden void left by Todd's absense is troubling.

The sudden fact that there is now only one dude in my entire department is also troubling, because now we could all begin crying at a moment's notice, with no dudes there to hold us back. On the plus side, I don't have to hide the secret departmental tampon supply anymore, but that is but small consolation.

Farewell, Todd-- you will be missed.

Devil Pants

Some of you may remember the shopping spree I went on earlier this year, in an update to delame my wardrobe? Well, on this shopping spree, it happens that I found the perfect pair of black pants, made of just the right fabric to repel dog and cat hair, and with just the right leg flare, so as not to look too librarianesque. And, they are a size six, which is most definitely not my size. But if I were to die in a horrible work-related incident, when they came to take my body away, they would find that I was wearing size six pants, and probably would have that figure engraved on my tombstone.

But these pants, I tell you, were sent here by Satan himself. Oh, yes, they're alluring, as many of the devil's creations are. And I totally do look foxy in them. But they deceive you with their good looks and pet-repellant surfaces into a false sense of security, because these pants want to kill you.

I say this based on the fact that in the two times I have worn them, I have nearly fallen to my death seven times, due to snagging my heel in the descreet cuffs that ring the bottom of the legs. Today alone, I did it in the bathroom at home while applying make-up (leading to horribly misplaced pink eyeshadow), in the bathroom at work, and right in front of my co-worker's desk, causing her to announce loudly, "My God, are you okay? What's wrong with you?"

It's the pants, Ann. The pants want me dead.

So be warned-- if I turn up the victim of what appears to be a routine slip and fall, smeared with eyeshadow and missing a shoe heel, you'll know who did it. Because I'm not going to stop wearing the pants. No. They make my ass look too fine. But please, make sure whoever finds me there checks the label in front of everyone before carting me off to my final resting place.

Kim smash!

So, my happiness level has decreased dramatically since my last post, due mostly to hormones (currently, my normal, happy self has been swallowed deep into the belly of an evil, raging monster who earlier today compared one of her co-workers unfavorably to a ball of yarn). Luckily for all involved, I did not Blog While PMSing (BWP), and have allowed myself to mellow out from Super Angry to Generally Pissed Off. About what, you ask? A number of things:

1. As I type this, the Cavs are losing in a most spectacular fashion. I don't have the sound on, but I imagine that they're just playing the audio track of one of the cameramen's daughter's middle school intramural games. It would probably sync up very nicely to the action.

2. No matter how many new songs I put on it, my MP3 player insists on playing only the following songs, again and again and again:

• End of the Movie, Cake
• Bad Day, Daniel Powter (I am the only person still to have this on their MP3 player, right?)
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder
• Zoot Suit Riot, Cherry Poppin' Dadies
• Jesus Walks, Kanye West

3. The railings on the stairs leading to the front door of my office building have been removed, and these vaguely ominous silver speed bumps have been put up along the stairs, ostensibly to prevent skateboarders from using our parking lot for their illicit purposes. I'm actually torn on this, because it seems sort of fascist, but also, I believe all skateboarders secretly make fun of me whenever I walk by.

4. Jaslene won America's Next Top Model, despite the fact that she is a man.

5. The dog went and slept on my pillow after a long walk in the rain, and now my pillow reeks of wet dogness.

6. Every time I tried to get a book from the shelf at the library today, a weird old man in a Lake County Captains raincoat magically appeared and wanted the same book. Or else he wanted me to look at his ween. I was not willing to find out.

7. In general, all people, everywhere, are annoying (except for you, my faithful blog readers, who are cool and understanding of my Incredible Hulk-esque tranformation, and know in your hearts that I will become a functional member of society again within a few short days).

In conclusion, someone needs to invent something, other than wine, to which I am allergic, that can free me from this hormone driven beast! Please, do something! Before I start bitch-slapping nuns and kicking the invalid!

NOTE: LeBron James just got hurt, probably because I wrote something crappy about the Cavs. I am the worst person ever.

Staredown

Having just encountered a strange guy in the stairwell on my sixth trip to the bathroom today (I have purposefully been chugging large amounts of water in an effort to take many bathroom trips and thus make the day go faster), I realized that I very rarely look people in the eye if I don’t really know them. I don’t know if this is like alpha dog—or, no, that’s not right, what’s less than alpha dog, beta dog?—behavior, because I know that, as the alpha dog, you’re always supposed to stare down your adversary in an effort to show dominance—but I totally can’t do it.

This once got me into trouble at the day spa, when one day I was feeling shifty and would not look my boss in the eye, and she called me on it. “Is something wrong? What aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you look me in the eye? Did you do something wrong?” Which I hadn’t, but as she began badgering me, I really couldn’t look her in the eye, which caused her to spend the rest of the day monitoring me with (from what I could see out of the corner of my eye) an extremely suspicious look on her face.

My favorite part of that story is that she asked me, “Did you do something wrong?” Which is totally what I ask the dog when I think she’s peed on the carpet.

I stink

Every single time I smell something bad, whether it's exhaust, foot stink, or a co-worker's Poorly Prepared Salmon Covered in Burnt Onions and Green Peppers, I become absolutely convinced that the smell is coming from me. Not that the smell is on my clothes, or that I caused it by eating something I shouldn't, but that it is actually emanating from me, as if all the cells in my body decided simultaneously to begin emitting stink rays (depicted here in this highly scientific drawing I found of foot stink).

I guess I didn't realize it until recently, but I've had this problem for a really long time. I wonder if, at one point, I really did stink a lot for no reason, causing me to become sensitive to the presence of other stink-related situations? Or perhaps, when I was a baby, every time my parents farted, they blamed it on me, thus giving me a stink complex. All I know is, if something smells bad, it's probably me, even though I will always, upon first detecting a stink in the air, sniff myself vigorously and can never find conclusive proof that I am the source of the stink. Which in and of itself is a totally different problem, being caught sniffing yourself in public.