happy secretary's day

Ah yes, the holiest of all made up holidays, when bosses can ignore the fact that they ignore you all year long -- no wait, when bosses can celebrate the fact that they ignore you all year long -- no, wait...

Now, I get it, that Secretary's Day is a made up holiday, born to drive the sale of cards, flowers, chocolates and lunch. But so is Mother's Day. And Father's Day. And Arbor Day. And don't you love your mothers, fathers and (most of all) arbors?

I was going to write a scathing post about how I hate Secretary's Day, and how the worst gift you could give your secretary is taking her out to lunch. I mean, really, your bosses are the people you work for every single day, often doing for them thankless, meaningless and time-consuming tasks, for little or no recognition. Who would you want to have lunch with less??? And when you get back, you'll have to fill out the expense report. Thanks, I'd love a gift that actually generates more thankless, meaningless and time-consuming work for me to do! Please, I'll have two.

However, I just got back from a really delightful (and tasty) lunch with my bosses, who are a trio of really great people (one went home sick today, so she didn't join us -- but she's great, too!). It's a little hard to be bitter when you're filled with grilled tuna.

So in honor of me having a good day, I'm going to share two other pieces of good news, that will probably have absolutely no bearing on your life whatsoever, but... think of it this way: if you got stuck eating lunch with your bosses, this can only make your day better, and if you didn't, well, then you're already golden and can share in others' success!

First: My friend Alex gave a big-ass concert on Monday night of one of the hardest pieces he's ever worked on. He said it went (and I quote) "grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat"! The Chicago Tribune agreed, saying "The assorted yelps, whispers, buzzes and screams were dispatched with calculated abandon by... Alexander Hurd." If I had to calculate my abandon, I'd call that a rave!

Second: I'm thinking of taking an intro psych class this summer, just to refresh my memory of the intro psych class I took (ahem) ten years ago. (If I'm going to do this grad school thing, I should at least have an idea of what I'm getting myself into...) Anyway, I was looking at a class at Hunter, and I was looking at a class online. Both are about the same price, and the online class wouldn't force me to miss as much work. But, the online class is a no-schedule, no-time frame class, where you just do the work as soon as you can, and then email it to the professor for comments and grades.

So I figure, if I'm not interested in the credit, but just want to learn the material, why don't I try to do this on my own (and save $600)? So I went ahead and bought the textbook that the online course is using, so if I can't manage to do it on my own, at least I'll already have the textbook for the course online!

Genius, right?

And the best part? The textbook only cost me $1.22 on half.com. Love it!