Post Superbowl Babblings!!

Whoo hoo, we won the Superbowl. I say ‘we’ because of course *I* contributed MASSIVELY as I lounged on my sofa and scoffed low fat barbeque flavoured soy chips and quaffed diet Sprite while watching the game. Party on!!

I have to say though it was quite an achievement for me to sit and watch 4 hours of football because, shocking though this announcement may be to some, I’m not what you’d call much of a sports fan. No really I’m not. I’m even less of a fan of American sports where the games seem to go on for, let’s be honest here, an ETERNITY – what’s with all the stopping? - but I do rather like to champion the underdog, especially when the underdog is from my adopted home city and the favourites include all round golden boy and scumbag love rat Tom Brady.

Boo hisssssssss!!!

It’s team Moynihan all the way in my corner of town. I’m not at all a fan of Tom.

I realise of course that I am making sweeping generalisations about Tom Brady’s character based solely on what I’ve read in the gossip columns. It’s more than a little judgmental of me perhaps, but I just don’t care. Dumping your girlfriend when she is pregnant with your child…well, it’s just not good form is it. I feel similarly about Billy Crudup. I’ll give you that he’s a very talented actor and I used to find him rather attractive, but after the whole shenanigans of him dumping of Mary Louise Parker when she was pregnant he just makes my skin crawl. Repulsive!!

Anyway as I’ve said I’m not much of a sports fan, in fact the only time I ever go to games in the US is when my friend Nick visits me in New York. He usually coerces me into something or other. The first time it was a Yankees match and I considered it was a true sign of the value of our friendship that I was willing to forgo a precious Saturday afternoon to watch a pile of sweaty men spit and scratch their bollocks for a few hours, but that wasn’t enough for him. Oh no, he insisted I actually watch the game and was utterly appalled that I brought a magazine with me. Hey, I needed something to do in case I got bored. To my credit I didn’t open it once in the FOUR AND A HALF HOURS we were sat there – see, I’m a true friend and by God was my arse was numb from those hard plastic seats – and I did have quite a nice afternoon – a couple of beers helped - but I have to admit that my favourite part of the whole thing was at half time when the grounds men tidied up the pitch while doing a routine to YMCA. The rest of it, I could take or leave.

There just isn’t anything in it for me. I don’t even like it for eye candy purposes, although admittedly big swarthy men just don’t really do it for me, in general I prefer a leaner man, like a football player for instance – and when I say football I do of course mean ‘the beautiful game’. However if my friends are any barometer I’m a bit of an exception as a fair few I know are quite turned on by these baseball/American football types. They tell me it’s because the guys are so huge they would make them feel tiny, but then I’m 5ft 1 and a 114lbs (8stone 2 Brits), so i'd be hard pressed to find a man that wouldn’t make me feel tiny, although your average jockey would probably make me feel like a right heifer, but I’d be worried about an American football player slipping on a banana skin or some such and squashing me flat as a pancake.

Times Square celebrations courtesy of Lordofnerur via Flickr

The end of an era

Today is the last day in the office for our current head of department before he heads off to pastures new. It’s hard to believe today is his last day, I’ve only just got used to the idea that he’s leaving and here he is clearing out his office to leave. I’ve never really got used to the fact that everyone in the US, regardless of seniority, seems to be on a 2week notice period, it’s so short compared to the six months notice required for many of my friends who hold senior positions in the UK.

It's quite a sad day really. I’ve worked for him so long it'll be weird not to have him around anymore. He hired me to work here just a month shy of 7years ago and although I’ve had my moments where I haven’t exactly agreed with his way of doing things - he can be terrible for having favourites and he’s always been very reluctant to expense a few drinks on those rare occasions he’s called upon to reward his underpaid, hard working staff. Seriously you’d think he was being asked to spend his own money - but for the most part I've appreciated working for him and I’ve learned a lot so seeing him leave is like the end of an era.

I'm not the only one that feels that way. His resignation stunned a lot of people as everyone just seemed to assume he'd be around forever. He made no secret of the fact that he loved working here and he did very well for himself. Understandably news of his resignation led to a lot of whispering in corridors with people speculating as to whether he’d decided to leave of his own accord or whether he'd been pushed out due to the recent deterioration of his working relationship with certain senior someone, especially given the company he’s leaving us for hasn’t exactly had rosy financial prospects of late. It feels like a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire to me and so in a wine fuelled bravado at his leaving do on Wednesday night, I decided to ask him what the story was on his resignation.

You would have been proud of me, I fearlessly got down to the nitty gritty and did not once shirk from asking the hard hitting questions. Seriously I’m like Jeremy Paxman after a couple of glasses of wine; except unlike Jeremy I have absolutely no problems whatsoever with the quality of my M&S underwear, you’ll find no quibbles here about the supportiveness of their underpinnings, oh no, in fact their lingerie appears to be of a far superior quality to the shite sold in Victoria’s Secret, but I digress…..

He’s usually a very diplomatic person, so I was surprised when he responded to my questions very frankly and pretty much told me flat out that he’d decided to leave because of his rapidly souring relationship with the CSS who, putting it mildly, has a reputation for being difficult.

“I really just couldn’t deal with it any more” he told me. ”It wasn’t worth it to stay.”

I can’t say I blame him. He’s lasted longer than most, but I saw first hand back in September how the CSS treated him and it wasn’t pretty. A few of us later learned from our manager – the one who's been promoted into his position – that things got so bad between them that they both used him as a conduit to communicate with each other. You know the way you do when you're about 12 and you’re mad at someone, so you refuse to speak to that person things directly even when they are standing right next to you? Instead you talk to them through a third party and say things like 'Miles, could you ask Kimberley if she’d like a cup of tea please?'

It's hard to believe that I work for grown ups sometimes.

Anyway I’m very sorry to see him leave us, but I wish him all the best. It’s a small industry so I'm sure our paths will cross again in future.

Photo of Jeremy Paxman courtesy of the BBC

The Ting Tings

Oooh, I have a bit of a head this morning. It was the leaving do last night for our departing head of department and, well, two words...free bar!!

We all over indulged a little, there were some stragglers into the office this morning, but quite frankly I don't get many perks with this company, so I'm not about to turn down free alcohol when it's on offer.

On the positive side I'm feeling heaps better than I did a day or two ago, so I think the alcohol may have killed whatever germ was lurking in my system. Yippee!!! I even managed a bit of a chair dance to the The Ting Tings who are being heavily touted as the next big thing. Enjoy!!

Unfortunately the image is imprinted on my retina

I’m struggling to post this week. It's only Tuesday, yet I feel the weekend and the work week have already left me battered and bruised. By the time I got home yesterday I could do nothing more than collapse in a heap on the couch. Last night was particularly worrying as I watched the entire State of the Union address and all the commentary and analysis afterwards because I couldn’t summon up the energy to reach for the remote. I’ve also noticed that while at work - listening to the radio of course, to block out the cacophony that is my neighbour Jose on a conference call. Man does he have some decibels – I can’t even manage a bit of chair dancing when a good tune comes on. It’s very disturbing. Usually I’m fairly energetic and full of beans, but not this week. I feel old and I am not in the least bit happy about it. Sigh!!

Perhaps I’m sickening for something. It wouldn’t surprise me; it seems that every other person that sits near me has succumbed to some germ or other, Emma, my other office neighbour, has had flu-like symptoms for over a week now and in the ladies the other day I had the pleasure of hearing someone wretch. Ugh!! Hopefully it was a case of morning sickness and not something viral. Touch wood that other than blocked sinuses which have been giving me headaches these past few days I feel fine, well except for the tiredness of course.

I’m hoping this weekend will be a quiet one; I think I need it, if I recall correctly I’d resolved to lay off the partying in January after the excess of Christmas, but instead I just seem to have continued the festivities into January. Maybe I’ll have better luck in February. All I have planned for this weekend is dinner and drinks with Melissa at Bar Blanc, a fairly new restaurant in the West Village, so I should have plenty of time for recuperation.

Not so this past weekend, it was the hen party/bridal shower/baby shower extravaganza in Princeton to celebrate Ash’s impending nuptials at the end of March and Val and Sigrun’s – who flew in from Iceland no less - impending Spring babies – a girl for Val who’s due in April and a boy for Sigrun who’s due in May.

These weekends have become something of a tradition of late as one by one the others get engaged and married. There are only two of us left who are single now. We had our usual trip to a spa where we had either facials or massages and then for lunch after which Susan whisked away the bride and moms to be for an hour or two so that Andrea, Steph and I could go back to the house and gussy it up with bridal, baby and phallic themed decorations including a pack of todger balloons I’d bought at a shop on 6th Avenue and W 4th street – I think it was called Fantasy Palace should any of you New Yorkers be in the market for things of that ilk, beware though as these particular balloons were extremely difficult to blow up. Not that I can say I’ve blown up many balloons recently, so it could be that I’ve lost the knack or perhaps the lack of exercise over the last few months has significantly hampered my lung capacity, but these seemed to be much harder to blow up than normal balloons. I managed to fully inflate one, but couldn’t manage to inflate a second any further than the testicles before I ran out of puff, so instead of struggling with the rest of it I knotted it where it was, snipped off the excess and turned it into a heart. Ahh what I lack in the handling of phallic balloons I more than make up for in the arts and crafts department. Andrea fared no better, in fact she was worse than me as she managed to explode the one she was inflating and gave up after that, however Steph was our champion todger balloon blower after managing to inflate three. Yes, THREE. In fact she did it with such ease I suspect she must practise a lot in her spare time.

Anyway the bride and moms were thrilled with the decorations and cakes we’d had made for them and while waiting for our dinner to cook we cracked open the champers – grape juice for the moms to be – and had the bride moms open their gifts. It’s the first time I’ve been to a baby shower, or a bridal shower for that matter. Last time I was living there we didn’t go in for all that shower gubbins in England. In fact as I recall it used to be considered bad luck to buy baby gifts before the baby was actually born, but maybe things have changed. Ditto on the bridal shower, not that it was bad luck, but we didn’t do a separate hen party and bridal shower, we just do the hen party. It costs you a fortune with all the additional parties to pay for over here, but it was fun to watch them opening their gifts. As you can imagine there were oodles of baby clothes for the moms to be as well as lots of nice undies for the bride, plus a few novelty items including a classy set of ‘pecker maracas’ – also available from the Fantasy Palace on 6th Avenue kids – and a set of candy pasties per the photo above. A pair of candy pasties which the bride to be decided would be a good idea to try on after a few too many glasses of champers. She failed dismally on the Mr & Mrs style questionnaire we tested her with scoring a pitiful 6 out of a possible 30 and so was required to take a sip for each of the 24 questions she got wrong, so was understandably quite trollied, still it was a bit of a shock when she streaked into the living room wearing only her knickers and the candy pasties as the rest of us were finishing off our drinks, it was funny though; especially when we showed our hungover bride to be the photos the next morning, although we were nice and let her delete them…well, we did after emailing one to the groom ;-)

Anyway kids I shall leave you with that image in your heads and a word to the wise should you ever be considering your own candy pastie purchase. Apparently they are a bugger to remove…in fact in Ash’s words ‘they almost ripped my nips off’ so be very careful ;-)

At least I get to listen to the radio at work

I’ve not had much time to post this week, we’re all busy at the office trying to ensure a smooth handover of the client work from the soon to be former head of department to the new head of department who is…drum roll please….my current manager. Yup, they promoted internally.

People keep trying to coerce me into taking on new clients, but I already look after 4 of them and I’m 150% booked which guarantees me having to work a 60hour week, so if I hear “oh but couldn’t you just squeeze this client in?” one more time I won’t be responsible for my actions.

To rub salt in the wound I just passed the elevator bank and there was a pile of people waiting to leave. It’s 5.30pm; I’ll be here at least another couple of hours yet. I wonder what jobs they all have. I wouldn’t mind me one of those.

So yes, my manager – who is admittedly very good – is the new big cheese. He now has a prestigious new role with lots of new responsibilities, some of which I am sure will trickle down to me, and lots more money I am sure, none of which will trickle down to me.

My oh my I just LOVE my job, but not nearly as much as I love this new Hot Chip tune ;-)

Not the most productive of days

I’d intended to post about my long weekend yesterday, but the day got away from me and I never quite got around to it. I arrived in work to the somewhat surprising news that our head of department had resigned after almost a decade with the company.

I say somewhat surprising because something had definitely been brewing over the last few months and it wasn’t long before speculative emails on whether he’d jumped or whether he was pushed started arriving in my inbox. A certain senior staff member hadn’t been acting too favourably towards him recently, so most people seem to think there was at the very least a nudge towards the door, especially since he’s heading to a competitor that hasn’t been performing too well in the last couple of years, so not somewhere you would necessarily choose given the option, but who knows. We’re all on tenterhooks now waiting to find out what the plan to replace him is.

Then in the afternoon we were again abuzz with the shocking news that 28year old Heath Ledger had been found dead in his apartment downtown.

Unbelievably sad!!

As I mentioned in the title, yesterday was not the most productive of work days.

Dumpsville. Population: Me

So I haven't heard a peep from Tel Aviv in 2weeks. How weird is that? I went away for a fortnight at Christmas, came back at the end of December to an I-think-I'm-falling-for-you-but-do-you-think-you-could-move-to-Israel email, met him, albeit briefly, for a chat about things, exchanged a few emails on the situation and suggested we talk in person. "I'll call you" he said and since then....nada!!

Sigh!!

Do you think the whole "I think I'm falling for you, but for us to be together you'd have to move to Israel" thing was a ploy to end things that backfired when I actually said I'd consider it? Who knows, but the fact is I've seen him once, for 30minutes, in the past month. Whichever way you spin it, that's not a good sign.

Oh well. Next!!!

Seriously though, I'm very sad the relationship appears to have fizzled out, I like Tel Aviv a lot, he's a good guy, but I completely understand why he might be having second thoughts about us and if he doesn't want to talk because he doesn't see a future for us then so be it. I'll feel like shite for a while, but I'll survive. Sigh!! Cue Gloria Gaynor.

At least work is keeping my mind off things. Can you believe I've only been back a couple of weeks and I've already put in a few 14hour days. Urgle!! Thankfully it's a three day weekend in the US, so I am very much looking forward catching up on my sleep and getting back into going to the gym. I feel so lumpy at the moment. It's hard to believe that less than 6months ago I used to work out 5 or 6 times a week. No joke!! Recently I've been lucky to get to the gym once a week, but I'm hoping to change all that starting this weekend. I survived cardio kickbox class earlier today and plan to make yoga tomorrow morning and Pilates on Sunday. Wish me luck!!

Other than working out I have a lot of movie going and catching up with friends planned for the weekend. I'm movie mad at the moment, I think it's partially to do with trying to keep my spending down as much as possible until I fully recover from the expense of Christmas and also wanting to catch as many movies as I can before the Oscars on February 24th. Tomorrow my friend Lauren and I are going to see "The Savages" - I love Laura Linney - a movie about a pair of siblings facing "the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father", that's according to IMDB anyway, and then on Monday I have a ticket for "Taxi To The Dark Side" at the Angelika cinema downtown. I was dithering between that and "No Country For Old Men" which has had rave reviews, I hear Javier Bardem is excellent in it, he's also a one man testament to the power of a good haircut....

Exhibit A M'lud: Eeeeeek. Run away, run away

Exhibit B: A definite improvement, but a bit heavy on the footie player chic a la David Ginola circa 1997

Exhibit C: Whoa, I wouldn’t say no, would you? Phew….fanning self…throw some iced water on me quickly please!! No wonder Penelope Cruz is allegedly smitten. Sigh!!

Case closed!!

Unfortunately I had second thoughts about seeing the film whilst listening to a review by James King on Radio1 today when he described the film as being "punctured by moments of extreme violence." Oo-er!! I think I'm probably of a far too squeamish disposition to sit through it after hearing that, especially after my Eastern Promises experience, so instead I'm going to see a documentary; a documentary about the death of a civilian Afghan taxi driver at the hands of United States soldiers, a film that also "takes an unflinching and often disturbing look at the Bush administration’s torture policy."

Obviously I'm going for a movie with a feel good factor!!!

I really don't know what I was thinking when I bought the ticket. Something tells me I could be potentially spending a lot of time with my hands over my eyes at the Angelika on Monday. Probably not the wisest movie choice for me, but then again it does me good to have my eyes opened to what's really going on in the world and I thought looked interesting when I saw a trailer for it before the screening of Persepolis (excellent movie) last weekend. Maybe I'll balance things out by catching a showing of 'Enchanted' afterwards ;-)