Category Archives: Work Fun

New Job, Bob

Posted on May 17, 2013 | 13 Comments

Last week I mentioned briefly that I started a new job. And by the way, sorry to just leave that there and then not say anything else about it for an entire week. The suspense wasn’t on purpose. I felt like I had other pressing things to talk about (friends, eating, you know).

So anyway, yep! New job! I am still in communications and marketing, but I now work for an executive search firm instead of a marketing agency. Kind of a big change, but it feels like a move in the right direction for me.

Now I realize this may be a surprise if you have been following my blog for a little bit, because you probably feel like I just got a new job. Because I did, in November. And maybe you would be surprised because it wasn’t long ago that I was raving on about how I thought that job was my dream job.

I did think that for a couple of months, and the atmosphere was certainly a dream job. How could it not be? The agency I worked for allowed dogs in the office.

linds-ollie

We had beer cart every Friday.

beer-fridays

We had a guac-off.

guac-friends

We had three Christmas parties.

festive-friends

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

With booze.

And our St. Paddy’s Day social turned into a pub crawl.

work-girls

I could go on. I loved the people. The entire office was on a Mac. People swore in meetings and in mass emails. We had a cookie exchange. We had exposed brick in the office (I love that). There was family of squirrels living in the window. I could walk to work.

Those are all great things, and I think it would be difficult not to be jealous of someone working in that environment (my friends hated me). But notice I am not mentioning the actual work here, because actual work-wise, I don’t think the job was for me. I think it would have been perfect if I was 25 and just starting my career, but I was probably in the handful of the oldest people there. Plus I went from an office of five employees to an office of 50, which is a big adjustment, and I think I thrive in smaller organizations because I can be more hands-on in different areas (did not realize this until after I left my previous job). And I went from having my own office to sitting in a big common area with many distractions. Ultimately, something started to not feel right. I started to feel like it just wasn’t the best fit.

Things seem to work out though, because my new job headhunted me through LinkedIn (makes sense since they are a search firm), and after about a two month process of interviews and presentations and 100-day plans and SWOT analyses, here I am. And so far so good, I’m liking it a lot! I’m not going to get all crazy and call it a dream job just yet, but it’s good. It feels like a good fit.

I don’t usually make a point to job-hop as much as this (being someone who doesn’t particularly love change, and having my previous job for nearly five years), but sometimes the opportunity arises. I never would have pictured myself working in executive search, but I never would have pictured myself working for a sports organization either, and that has been my longest job to-date. I feel like if you work in communications you can work pretty much anywhere. Kind of like HR.

So anyway, that’s what’s new.

Have a great long weekend! It is my favourite weekend of the year, because it means it’s finally SUMMER!

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Posted in Work Fun

Irish for the Weekend

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 5 Comments

Happy day after St. Patrick’s Day you little leprechauns!

I did not celebrate yesterday on actual St. Patrick’s Day, but I was lucky enough to celebrate on both Friday and Saturday, so I think that makes up for it.

On Friday my work was hosting a St. Paddy’s social in the late afternoon , so everyone wore their festive green to the office. And I do mean everyone. Every person I saw all day had their green on. Just green everywhere. This was really funny to me because St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t officially until Sunday, so we were all just eager.

And just a quick side note. I googled St. Patty’s vs St. Paddy’s because I never know which one to use, and I found an official website for this…

paddy-not-patty

No St. Patty’s. Don’t do it. Very good to know. I’ll never use it wrong again.

Anyway, after work on Friday pretty much our entire office made our way to a local pub to get our Irish on.

stpats-group

I found a very attractive hat and beard combo, which I sported for a while…

leprechauns

And this is probably the main reason why I love St. Patrick’s Day. I love to see people dressed like fools. And also dress like a fool.

hat-glasses

I switched my outfit up a couple times.

At one point about 5o of us were jammed into this tiny pub, all in our green gear. We basically took it over. It was rammed.

paddy-crowd

I saw a few other customers make their way in, spot our rowdy crowd, and promptly turn around and head back out.

We hung out there until about 7:30 or so, hanging out and drinking beer. It’s really fun hanging out with work people outside of work when everyone sets aside their business pantaloons for a bit.

work-girls

Moi, Emily, Maria, Melissa

Fun times for sure. And it be noted that I work with a few pretty hilarious characters, so I spent a lot of time laughing.

After the official social ended, about 30 of us turned the night into an unofficial pub crawl down Yonge Street (I know, my work is ridiculous). I made it until about 11 and hit up two other places before I decided to call it quits and subway it home. I still had Saturday to look forward to!

Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day part two with all my pals and their friends and lovers.

girls

Since St. Paddy’s did not officially start until midnight, we did not show up to the pub at 6pm like last year. We hung out at Dawn and Mark’s before making our way over to the bar for around 11.

ev-linds

Evan and the rest of the lads were in attendance also.

Dawn made the most delicious festive cupcakes.

cupcakes

I wanted a vanilla one and it was so big I had a bit of a tricky time eating it… I ended up with my mouth stuffed and cupcake all over my face, so everyone started laughing at me, which made me laugh, which then made me inhale cupcake, so then I started choking. That is always awkward. Choking in front of people is no fun. Your face goes all red and everyone stares at you and asks if you are okay until you are done coughing like a maniac. Good times. Anyway, it was all good, I survived, and that cupcake was really good.

My addition to the food table was green goat cheese and honey dip.

green-dip

Which made Emily laugh so hard she cried when she saw it. And then everyone said it looked like playdough (which it does). It’s fine, you may snark on the green goat cheese dip all you like, it was still delicious. I really went all out with the platter also.

Eventually it was bar time, so we hit up the same Irish pub as last year (last year was insane), the Waltzing Weasel in Oshawa.

It was not busy at all, since it was not actually St. Patrick’s Day yet (midnight!), and we were the only ones dressed in green. But we have no trouble creating our own party.

We did the green beer thing…
green-beer

I love the green beer.

We also met up with this lovely lady…

linds-sherrie

Sherrie had another party to attend, so she couldn’t stay for very long and that was sad. But the rest of us had a good old Irish time.

green-girls
st-pats

St. Paddy’s comes but once a year, so you gotta make the most of it!

A very fun night also. I felt the St. Patrick’s Day love!

stpats-love

I hope you guys all had a great weekend and were Irish for at least a day!

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Posted in Holidays, Pals, Work Fun

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The Guac-Off

Posted on February 12, 2013 | 28 Comments

I am a little late in blogging about this, but a couple Friday’s ago my work had a Guac-Off (guacamole contest) to celebrate the Super Bowl.

guacs

So much guac. We had nine participants in total.

I have to be honest here and say I don’t even really like guacamole all that much. I think because I just LOVE SALSA SO MUCH so if I am eating my tortilla chips with anything, I prefer to eat them with that spicy tomato deliciousness (and a friggin’ lot of it).

But I do like contests or any sort of competition. Quite a lot. Also, the winner received a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila, and again, not the biggest fan of tequila, but I think winning is more important than the prize.

So I was on board for the guac-off. And having never made guacamole before, I needed a partner who kind of knew what they were doing with guacamole-making if I stood a chance at winning. So I roped in Evan (who LOVES to cook, have I mentioned this? Score again) to help me.

We went out and bought a ton of avocados (and Corona, as you can see in the background, and we also had tacos for dinner to complete our Mexican night).

avocado

We mashed those babies up with a potato masher, and then just started adding ingredients. We didn’t follow a recipe, or Evan didn’t, because I mainly just supervised and let him take over. He put onions, garlic, tomatoes, lime juice, cayenne pepper and cilantro in the food processor and then just added that to the mashed avocado.

ingredients

Which we then mixed together until we had a beautifully creamy guac.

guac

Which was not quite as fluorescent green as it looks in this picture. My iPhone likes to get excited about colours sometimes.

We thought the guac still needed a little somethin’ extra, so Evan had the great idea to add a little tahini as a secret weapon. I think it was a good call.

Honestly our guacamole was really good. Again, no expert here, but I really liked it. By this time I had been taste-testing guacamole for about two hours so I couldn’t tell anymore whether it was good or not, but the next day I was loving it. We didn’t think it was winning guacamole, but it was good!

We had a bunch of leftover taco beef from dinner, and Evan really wanted to add it to the guacamole, which looking back I think would have been an amazing idea. But at the time I voted that down. I love the idea of buafamole (haha), but I thought people would be weirded out by eating beefy guacamole. I kind of wish we did this though… Ah well. Next time.

I felt confident in my entry for the guac-off. My guac was in good company!

guac2

(my guac is in the middle of the above pic)

guac1

There was some gooooood guacamole kicking around.

guac-friends

Alex on my left had a DELICIOUS and extremely well-presented apple tequila guacamole. He let the apples soak in the tequila before adding them to his guac, and I was definitely skeptical about this guacamole recipe when he told me about it the day before…but it was extremely good. His guacamole bowl was the only one that was completely empty by the end of the guac-off. And Christina on the right made a tex mex guacamole, which was also quite delicious.

Some people chose to bring all their ingredients to work and make their guacamole last minute.

last-minute-prep

Which was a good idea, as then your avocado doesn’t brown.

This guacamole was definitely the best presented:

superbowl-guac

I thought this should be the winner before I even tasted it. So creative. I was kicking myself for slacking on presentation after I saw this.

And then the taste-testers rolled in.

taste-test

And we enjoyed our guac with Mexican beer.

beer

I still can’t get over this beer-at-work thing. It’s great.

In the end,  the winner of the guac-off for both presentation and taste went to the football field guacamole, and one of our interns Christina (not the same Christina pictured with me above).

winner

The boys in the background look a little jealous…

But my guacamole did get three votes for taste! Fine, one was my own…but I didn’t expect to receive any votes at all, so I will take that.

I had an extra container of guacamole left and by then I was so sick of guacamole I never wanted to look at it again. Luckily my friends had a girls’ night that evening to rehash all of our Jamaican stories, and you know we love our food tables… My leftover guac fit right in.

snacks

And that was the Guac-Off. Good times.

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Posted in Snack, Work Fun

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A Squirrel Love Story

Posted on January 11, 2013 | 26 Comments

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter you may already know this (but you don’t know the STORY), but there is a squirrel nesting in one of the windows in my office.

There are little glass slats, and then the screen, and then more glass before the inside. So the squirrel just squeezed on in through the slats, and apparently decided it would make a nice home in there. And he is not wrong. If I was a squirrel, I’d totally want to live there.

So at first it would seem that a squirrel is just living in our window. Not much of a story there. But actually, this is a beautiful love story, and a story full of hard work and determination.

On Wednesday morning when the window was still empty of nest paraphernalia, we saw two squirrels “wrestling” in the window.

squirrels

Ah, young love.

I am not very squirrel savvy, so it’s hard to say what exactly they were doing…but it did look like fun times.

The window is directly in my line of vision, so I of course spotted this immediately and alerted everyone to the action in the window.

squirrels1

They’re just wrestling, right?

About an hour later, one squirrel came back with one lonely twig, and set it up against the side of the window. I also spotted this, and I was all, “He’s totally building a nest!”

And shortly after that, this was happening:

nest-beginnings

Definitely some nesting going on. So we decided that we needed to monitor the squirrel’s nesting progress, and since we are the digital team and have techy people and resources, we set up a GoPro camera to make a time lapse video.

go-pro-setup

One of the designers even created a handy label for the window.

squirrel-facts

Just in case anyone was unfamiliar with squirrels. I feel like we are in a zoo (and I LIKE it).

Oh, don’t go by those squirrel facts if you are writing a report on squirrels or anything, I don’t know how accurate it is. But I can say, fist-hand, that this squirrel in particular is not lazy.

The squirrel seemed to enjoy the set up quite a lot.

squirrel-habitat

Good times in there. And he didn’t even mind when people would drop by and stare at him.

squirrel-monitoring

When we came in the next morning, we noticed that the squirrel had been extremely busy over night. Serious improvements went down on that nest!

nest

Big renovations! And he worked at his nest all morning long, and until about 3pm (he usually takes a break between 3-4:30ish we have noticed), bringing in more leaves and twigs and doing some general organizing, and by the end of the day yesterday the nest looked like this:

nest1

Good job little squirrel! That is a palace!

I am excited to see what’s going to happen with this. My theory is the squirrel and his lover came into the window for some alone time, and their alone time went so well that it may produce baby squirrels. And now they will need somewhere for the baby squirrels to grow up, so they decided what better place than that very windowsill? I think babies are going to be raised in that nest. It is like National Geographic up in here! With crappier photos.

If you would like to watch the time lapse video so far, see below this paragraph. It is just of Day 2 morning, as we were having some technical difficulties with the camera the day before and we didn’t get it up until well after the nest had been started. But you can see how busy the squirrel was…

I love that squirrel!

(If that didn’t work you can watch it here)

We have also set up a Twitter account for the squirrel (because we’re really cool like that) if you would like to follow along on his nesting and family progress (and of course general squirrel musings).

Oh man, this just makes me laugh so hard.

Annnnd that’s really the only exciting thing that’s been happening this week. Besides the squirrel work has been extremely busy and this week has flown by. And I am grateful, because next week, JAMAICA!

Have a great weekend!

(PS – Sorry for the squirrel porn. I think it’s important that you know the entire story, because I have a feeling it’s going to be BEAUTIFUL!)

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Posted in Random Musings, Work Fun

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Festive Office Adventures

Posted on December 22, 2012 | 8 Comments

Ahh holidays! I am officially off work until January 7 and I could not be more excited. I am mostly excited for the leisuring, I cannot lie. These last couple of weeks leading up to the holidays have been INSANE busy, so I really cannot wait to simmer things down. I’m sure I’ll be squeezing in some adventuring though too.

I was so exhausted when I arrived home from work yesterday that I just collapsed fully-clothed on my bed and slept for three hours. It was beautiful. I felt like a new woman when I woke up.

And let’s get to what led to my exhaustion…

Thursday afternoon was the cookie exchange at my work!

cookie-exhange

We had a great turnout, which equals TONS of cookies! I have never seen so many different types of cookies in one place.

My cookies were in excellent company.

cookies

So we all went around the table and loaded our containers up with 1-3 of each type of cookie. It kind of felt like musical chairs. And actually it was really funny because it was kind of a cookie traffic jam. We were all in a circle and no one was moving, so the entire process of getting around the table took over half an hour.

By the end, I had a good haul.

cookies

So many delicious cookies! I am not sure what I’m going to do with them all, because I can NOT eat them all. I need to be in a bikini in about three weeks (JAMAICA!!!!) so that is not happening. It’s been hard to resist though. I think I may bring them to my family’s Christmas. They’ll probably be appreciative of that.

Some of the boys were pretty excited for their cookies…

cookie-excitement

I need to quickly mention that Justin, the tall guy in the photo with the sweet hair and mustache, does not usually look like that. Apparently he wanted to wear the wig and the ‘stache to “match his sweater.” Attractive.

After the cookie party, we had a holiday cocktail party in our studio (which I work in, it is a bit separate from the rest of our office). We shut off all the lights and brought in a bunch of lamps, put on the Christmas tunes, and created a little holiday ambiance with festive fireplaces on our computer screens…

fire-screen

And then we enjoyed some refreshments.

bar

We had a little bar full of holiday-themed drinks.

drinks

I sampled all three cocktails, and I really enjoyed the gimlet and the cape cooler. So delicious. We also had some beer kicking around as well.

There were also the strongest rum balls I have EVER had.

rum-balls

And I do mean ever. 150% proof? I don’t think that’s a lie. I had one ball and I felt like there was the equivalent of about four shots in it. I almost spit it out, but I persevered and choked it down. And then I felt incredibly warm and happy.

It was so much fun! Everyone was in their festive gear and ready to party.

festive-boys

festive-friends

I even had a glitter twin, Erin.

glitter-twins

We did not plan that, though many people asked us if we did. Just a gold glitter and black blazer coincidence.

Until I changed into my ugly Christmas sweater…

ugly-sweaters

Which I will describe in more detail later because I am attending an ugly sweater party tonight and I will be wearing that bad boy.

We wanted to take a big group photo of everyone, because at one point there was probably about 40 of us, so Justin and I went to move our Christmas tree so we could put it in front of us for the picture. And then we had a bit of an accident, and somehow the tree got knocked over…

tree

And everyone yelled at us and said we ruined Christmas. The photo was cancelled.

The party was only supposed to go until 5:30, but it ended up being so much fun that most people stayed way later to get their festive cheer on. We even had an impromptu ping pong tournament.

Have I mentioned that I love my job? Because I do. Quite a lot. This is the most fun work environment I have ever experienced in my life. It is definitely work hard (we do work hard!!!), play hard, and it’s such a great atmosphere. I have trouble believing this is real life. It’s amazing! I love Christmas for the parties, so three separate work holiday parties? Yes, yes and yes.

Have a great weekend!

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Posted in Holidays, Work Fun

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Pre-Holiday Craziness

Posted on December 20, 2012 | 10 Comments

So it is the week before the official holidays, and you know what that means… BUSYNESS. Holy busyness. This entire week has just been crazy.

On Monday after work I had a meeting with the Ontario Wheelchair Sports Association’s executive board (which I sit on), and I don’t really have anything to report from that except it included dinner.

swiss-chalet

YEAHHHHHHH Festive Special! I wait all year for this from Swiss Chalet. Basically it is the same as the quarter chicken meal, except it comes with stuffing and Lindor chocolates, so obviously it is one million times better. I die for their sauce. And don’t even tell me how bad it is because I don’t even care. I could drink it.

Tuesday night was my work’s client Christmas party at the Spoke Club on King West, and that was a fun time!

coworkas

There were some pretty delicious appetizers floating around, so I spent the night eating those and mingling with my coworkers and our clients.

coworkers

I may have made a new BFF with one of our clients Georgia.

photobooth

She was a good time.

There was an after-party, but I was already exhausted so I decided I should probably skip that if I didn’t want to be dead on Wednesday. I have a hard time partying on a school night…

I also didn’t want to be too tired on Wednesday as I had something to look forward to. Stephanie from Clay Baboons was in the city, and we had plans to meet for coffee! This is a big deal, as Steph is from Nova Scotia and we tried to meet up last year during the holidays when she was visiting, but things just got too busy and it didn’t end up happening. It is funny because we have only read each other’s blogs and emailed back and forth a bit (and we are Facebook friends) but I already felt like we were friends. Meeting her for coffee felt just like meeting an old friend. She is just as sweet and hilarious in person as she comes across on her blog! I really had a good time and I probably could have spent the entire day just talking with her.

Sadly I forgot to take a picture of us. I don’t know what I was thinking. But here is what it probably would have looked like:

linds-steph

Exactly like that. Only I was wearing a black dress and Steph was all trendy in a gray sweater. If you haven’t read her blog you should check it out. She is hilarious and her clay is amazing.

My work is having a big cookie exchange party today, and I am incredibly pumped, because as you know I am a cookie connoisseur.

tumblr_mbbkdzpe1V1rqhpfwo1_400

That’s going to be me.

I signed up to the cookie exchange planning on making my Nana’s Christmas cookies!

christmas-cookies

I basically gave myself all night last night to make them, as they are time-consuming little suckers. I had to run some errands after work, and while I was out I realized that I was out of decorating bags for the icing, so I dropped by the Bulk Barn to pick some up. It was not until about 9pm when I was getting ready to do the cookie thing that I realized the decorating bags I bought were not in fact decorating bags.

This is what I bought:

decorating-bags

And this is what they were:

triangle

WTF Bulk Barn?! Holy false advertising! I am a visual person. I know it clearly says “Parchment Triangles” on the package, but if you put a picture of a decorating bag icing a beautiful cake on the box I am going to assume I am buying a decorating bag! What am I supposed to do with a triangle of parchment paper? That does not equal a decorating bag.

I assumed the cookies were going to be a disaster. I thought I was just going to have to sloppily spatula icing on them and hope for the best. But I made myself a little spontaneous decorating bag using a Ziploc bag (because I am a resourceful little minx like my Nana), and guess what?! They actually turned out!

cookies

So I am bringing those puppies into work today, and if all goes well I will be leaving work with about 50 various types of cookies. Hooray for that!

Today is also kind of our unofficial office party, so we are all supposed to dress festively and there is a social with cocktails in the afternoon (probably to replace beer cart), so I am excited for that as well.

Just a lot of things going on, and I am really looking forward to the holidays. It’s going to be leisure city up in here.

I hope all of your busy weeks are going well, and I will catch you guys later!

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Posted in Baked Goods, Holidays, Random Musings, Work Fun