I haven’t blogged in the past two days because I’ve been feeling a bit rough. I never thought I’d be sitting at home and not feel like blogging, but it’s happened. I went to work yesterday morning but left at lunch, spending much of the following 24 hours in bed holding my tummy.
On a more positive note, I’m starting to feel better now and the weekend’s just starting!
So I’ve lost a couple of posts over the past 24 hours, but none were so important that I’ll get angry about it. I’ve got much more to get happy about — my website has been switched over to a faster and more reliable server. That means no more timing out or unbearable lagging when loading the site!
I’m borrowing this entry from Captain Slog’s World Wide Weird blog. It’s the Washington Post’s list of winners in its annual contest to provide wrong meanings for well-known words.
The following were some of this year’s winning entries:
Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your negligee.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there.
As you can expect, I’ve saved what I think is the best for last:
Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.
A quirky little link called the box doodle project, reminiscent of napkin scribbles while daydreaming in coffeeshops or notebook margins in theories of communication class.
the rules are quite simple:
rearrange a box to make any
kind of figure or object.
make the most of least.
Show me your doodles!
Ok, granted, the snow lasted about 20 minutes and there’s nothing left on the ground already, but that’s enough for me to post a few links relating to snow!
…you notice the first snow of the winter and your first thought is “I must blog about it!”
So the work conference in Eurodisney ended Thursday night with a real bang – a Higher & Professional Education Gala (where my manager got Marketing Manager of the Year Award for the second year running!) and a great band, keeping everyone, sober or not, dancing till the wee hours of the morning!
No one else from my immediate team got an award, but they did so well during the week (and over the year), awards seemed trivial by that point. The fact that it was almost midnight when they started the awards ceremony might have added to the feeling of “just get it over with already, we want to dance!” in the room! Once the party started, it went on till 2:30am. Those who weren’t satisfied with that went to the Eurodisney club, but I was perfectly happy going to bed, and most of all, taking my high heels off!
I’ll put up some photos soon, but I can say I really had a fantastic week! It’s the first time I stick with a company long enough to be able to see our Director of Marketing jumping around in a scottish kilt outfit with two beers in his hands, singing along with the band on stage! I’m just glad to be part of a team where higher management can learn to forget the hierarchy and come out to have fun with us bottom-of-the-job-ladder minions!
I’m a bit bummed out that I didn’t get much time to go into Paris. We went on Monday night for a dinner at Brasserie Zimmer near Châtelet-Les Halles but had to head back to the hotel right away afterwards as it was getting late and the week was only starting. On Wednesday, I ended up staying at Eurodisney, organising the next day’s presentations and taking a nap. We had a free afternoon pass the the park’s rides but I didn’t end up using it at all. A bit of a shame, but most people said the rides weren’t that great.
Overall, good week, but happy to be home. I’ll have to go to Paris for real in a few months, rather than staying at tacky ol’ Eurodisney!
Today was day 3 of the conference presentations. It’s going very well, I’m impressed with the participation on the part of the sales reps who have to sit there all day.
I can hardly string a sentence together at the moment, I’m so tired! I’m amazed at how well my managers are handling the long days of presentation though! Lana had a full day of Computer Science presentations yesterday, got hardly any time to breathe between sessions, yet still had some kind of energy at the end of the day!
Finally putting faces on the names of all the people I’ve been in touch with all over the world has been the most interesting part of the conference for me. Some are just as I’d imagined them and some were unexpectedly different! I also got to meet one of our authors who is absolutely lovely and seemed to enjoy being here with us.
Tonight will be rather low-key, unlike last night. We’ll be going for a nice meal at 8pm and then I’ve got a feeling everyone’s going to crash early. Tomorrow night is the final Gala, and we’ve got a long day before that, so we need to save our energies a bit.
Hmm I’m really starting to miss my own bed… I’ll be a happy bunny when I’m home on Friday night!
The Eurostar journey was nice and chilled out, even though there were lots of children (thanks to the iPod that cut out any ambient noise) and I’ve arrived safe and sound.
Now we’ve got some free time until dinner and I’ve sneaked over to the Internet cafe that’s been setup for us in one of the rooms. It’s great, might even mean I can get a short post in everyday!
Tonight is a somewhat informal dinner for everyone to get together and have some drinks. We’ll get a little speech from the big boss, then we get to socialize and get organised. I ran into my manager quickly, but we haven’t had a chance to talk yet.
I’m already looking forward to Wednesday afternoon when we get a chance to go to Paris on our own! Should be fantastic! Oh and there I was, trying to find out what to do in Paris, killing myself for forgetting to order a book on Paris through work – We’ve been given Time Out Guides to Paris (which we publish) to help us find our way around! I’ll definitely give it a good read before Wednesday!
Alright, time to go join my manager and unpack some boxes! Time to get this conference in gear!
Off to take the train now… I’m no good at getting up early…
Can you believe the birds are singing even though there’s no sun yet? Andrew’s great for driving me to the station!
that canadian girl 