Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Uh...yeah. Did you get that Memo?


I've been away for what seems like an eternity and I am quite confident that everyone involved is seeking professional help to deal with the obvious depression associated with my absense...but fear not my friends...I have returned.

Last Friday I was sitting at my desk trying to make the last two hours of the day disappear when one of my female co-workers approached me and asked if I "Got the voice mail?" I get lots of voice mails, many of them stupid, and THE voice mail she was talking about was almost assured to be one of those. They all are.

"You have GOT to listen to it," she quipped.

"Why?" I asked.

"Just do it," she laughed. "It's worth it."

Okay...So I did.

I opened up the message and heard the branch president begin talking...I just assumed it was the normal weekly voice mail he sends out on Friday afternoons (actually, he records it and his assistant sends it out....more on her in a bit)...how wrong I was. Normally his messages do nothing more than update us on the happenings within the company. You know...new accounts, new business, personal goals, new hires, pep talks - what can YOU do for the company? - Stuff that is right out of office space pretty much.

Unfortunately (well, for us cube rats it was a blessing on a boring mundane Friday) his assistant forwarded out the wrong voice mail to the company, turns out the voice mail she sent out to the entire company was the president trying to set up their secret late night rendez vouz at a local sleep shack.

There are two great things about the president plowing his assistant.

1. To say his assistant gets around like a record would be a disservice to records. I have worked at this company for roughly three years and in those three years this woman has been married four times. Four. I didn't think it was possible to have four relationships in three years let alone four marriages. Yet here we are.

"Hell........Lumberg fucked her."

2. Our president is a moral bible thumper in every sense of the phrase, "Moral bible thumper." The fact he is not only bangin' another broad, but bangin' his assistant (which is just so cliche), is incredible.

I love it.

About an hour after this voice mail we got another voice mail from the branch president talking about how we have this new voice mail system (which we don't) and earlier in the day some "tests" were made. He continued to ramble on about how "we all need to pay attention to detail in our daily work and need to be accountable for every one of our actions."

You just can not make this shit up.

The day before all of this happened I was sitting at my desk following the Pirates-Brewers game on MLB.com Gameday. This is no way to follow baseball, but when you're bored out of your gord at work you do what you can to get your daily baseball fix in. The Bucs and Beer Makers played a low scoring pitchers duel that saw Uekers boys take a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the 9th where they called upon Derrick "Roids" Turnbow to seal the deal. I sat in intense anticipation as the Pirates got a couple guys on base in a last at-bat attempt to complete the four game sweep. With a runner on 3rd and Jose Castillo up at the plate Gameday appeared to freeze for a few minutes (as it turns out the umps reversed a homerun call...making it a game tying double instead of a game winning homerun)... when finally I saw the result of the play.....a tie game..I let out a simple "woo" to show my approval. Moments later Ryan Doumit came up and ripped a game winning single down into the right field corner which instantly made me slap my desk and scream out:

"FUCK YEAH BABY! DERRICK TURNBOW IN YOUR MOMS PANTS!" At which point I began to bang on the walls of my cube and pump my fists into the air in intense celebration.

Your bad.

Over the weekend of May 20th I made the two and a half hour trek from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to see my Battlin' Buccos take on the Indians at the Mistake by the Lake. I have family that lives up in that area so it was rather simple to score tickets to Saturdays game...it was the first time I had actually ever been into Cleveland and I've gotta say....it's every bit the dump I heard it was. Jacobs Field is a nice yard but it's no PNC Park, and to say the fans are a real "wine and cheese crowd" would be the understatement of the century. This place was dead from start to finish. No atmosphere. No excitment. No pizzaz. Nothing. Silence. Luckily however I was not the only Pittsburgh native to make the journey up north to the land of burning rivers. If I had to make a rough guesstimate I would say about six to seven thousand Pirate fans in Jacobs Field on this night, you could not swing a dead cat without hitting someone wearing a Pirates jersey. It made the night quite fun, especially since the Pirates won in front of a very vocal Pittsburgh contingent.

Nate Mclouth opened the game by working the count full on Jason Johnson before taking a 3-2 fastball and crushing it deep into the right center field bleachers.

In the 3rd Inning the Pirates got two monster homeruns (one from Jason Bay, who in case you have not heard, is the greatest baseball player in the game today..and the other from Jose Castillo) to make it a 7-2 Pittsburgh lead. I yelled down to my Uncle who was sitting a row in front of me (he got me the tickets) and said, "Man, this is just like football season, the game has barely started and Pittsburgh already has seven on Cleveland." I laughed. He didn't.

In the top of the 9th Jason Bay (best player in the game today) hit his 2nd homerun of the game, an opposite field blast to deep right field which put the Bucs up 9-6...moments later there appeared to be a ruckus down the left field line...people yelling, crowds gathering, cops running in from all directions...the concourses, the aisles, the field....it was a fight. This Pittsburgh-Cleveland thing carries over to baseball too. It turns out a Cleveland fan threw a beer at a Pirates fan (one of these days those numbnuts in Cleveland are going to realize Beer is to valuable to throw) because he took offense to the Pirates fans ransacking and pillaging his home. The problem with this (aside from the fact he wasted his beer) was the Pirates fan turned out to be a very angry 6'4 200 pound black man. Needless to say he turned around and punched him in the face. Pittsburgh 10. Cleveland 6.

Thats all I got for now. And until next time:

I'm out like a boner in sweatpants.