Loving Andy as the new regional manager

Guest post written by Michelle Fall

At first when Andy came on the show The Office, I was not a fan of his. He was just some annoying guy who clearly never matured past the age of 18. But he has really grown on me since then and has basically become my favorite character. Now that Michael Scott is gone from The Office, he is my favorite current character. So to me, it was only appropriate that he be Michael's replacement as the regional manager.

I did not expect that to happen, though. I looked online a lot before the new season premiere to find some spoilers about who the new boss would be and while i was online looking, I ran across some info on internet providers. I read about it some and after that I decided to change over my apartment's internet service to it.

My highlight of Andy being the new regional manager right now is the bet that he made about getting a tattoo. I cannot believe that he even went through with getting it! Just another reason that I love his character.

Testing my resolve

This year, I decided to go simple with my New Year's Resolutions.  No insane, unattainable goals (run a marathon in June!  lose 50 pounds!), but simple things, like start counting calories again, exercise more, drink more water, cut down to only one pot of coffee a day.  I also resolved to be more patient with my husband and son, and to try to not stress about little things so much.

I almost broke all of my resolutions January 1st.

The first issue was that the first day of the new year fell on Sunday.  Which meant that, instead of sleeping in and having a lazy day off from work, I had to get my butt in gear to get to church.  And I had to do all this without my typical morning pot of extra-strong black coffee.

When I got to church, it became obvious that my resolutions about patience and not stressing so much were going to be tested.  We were low on volunteers for children's church (because, duh, New Year's), so we were going to have to combine all three classes:  nursery, preschool, and elementary.

The end result was myself and three other volunteers being responsible for 21 kids.

Read more »

Welcome to Adulthood, Population: Me (+ a few billion others)

A lot of days, I don't feel like much of an adult.  Sure I have things like a kid, and a mortgage, and a really awesome corner office, all to myself.  But I also do thinks like eat Milk Duds (and nothing else) for lunch, or just wear whatever old skirt and shirt combo that was initially bought because it fit my Christian high school's dress code.  (If you've met me more than once, it's likely that you've seen me in clothing that's almost a decade old.)

So there's a lot of times when I feel only like a pseudo-grown-up. I have this mythical image in my head of a "real" grown-up being someone who can change the oil in their car, or make a casserole from scratch, or knows how to get stains out of things using club soda. ("Real" grown-ups are also people who own club soda, presumably for the express purpose of getting stains out of things.)

Read more »

A Facebook app I would pay money for...

Last night, I got a text from my little sister.  It simply read:  "Don't get on Facebook."

But, alas, it was too late.  I had already seen that day's pregnancy announcement.

Yes, "that day's".  See, around the holidays, all the happy little preggers women like to start announcing all their happy little pregnancies.  There were five new pregnancies announced on my Facebook feed last week.  That's like, one per workday.  (I'm assuming pregnancy announcements get the weekends off.)

And it's not like I'm not happy for all my pregnant friends.  On a per individual basis, I am happy for each and every one of them.  Thrilled, even.  But when the announcements are coming at me rapid-fire, it's just a reminder that I failed again this cycle, that I'm still not pregnant.  It also makes me feel even lonelier and more isolated, because it seems like everyone can get pregnant except for me.

So, I have been thinking of a design for a new Facebook application that would make everyone else's pregnancies easier on me.  (Because, obviously, people I haven't spoken to since high school should be taking my feelings into consideration before they decide to grow their families.)  Here are some of the features for my new app, which I'm tentatively titling "Bitter Infertile":

Read more »

"Only child"ren get a bad rap.

It started this past Sunday when my husband had to work and my two-year-old son, who normally goes home with him for a nap during 2nd service, had to endure two consecutive church services.  In the same classroom, with the same lesson he had just heard.

Not only that, but I always teach second service preschool, as to avoid being in the same class as my son.  Not that I'm avoiding my kid, but it's hard for a young toddler to understand that, while I'm his mommy, I also have to be everyone else's teacher.

To only compound the matter further, there is a little girl who is always in my class who, though I try not to play favorites, I do have a closer relationship with than I do the other kids.  (Regular attendee, friends with her mom, see her more often, etc.)  Since she's there every week, she's used to getting a little bit extra attention from me.

This has led to, on the rare occassions when my son is in my class, him and this little girl (who are normally the sweetest of friends) getting into tiffs over who gets to sit in my lap.  Doesn't seem like a big deal, but, again, we're dealing with sleepy toddlers here.

So, this repeated itself this past Sunday, with my son being a fussy grumpus with the other kids yet, magically, transforming into a sweet and helpful little child the second service ended and the others' parents picked them up.  Suddenly he was helping with clean-up, chatting up the other adult volunteers, etc.

One of the other teachers turned to me and asked, "So...he's an only child then?"

Read more »