We've Been Compromised! Abort?

I don't know if I've been unlucky, careless or I'm turning into Michael Jordan of pretending to work "Minor League Baseball Edition", but I've had a few inconveniences lately. Nothing major, but I'm a pretty paranoid guy.


Last Friday, UW was taking on Illinois in the Big Ten tourney. I was sitting at my desk, with the ESPN TV feed playing on my computer, while sort of working, albeit not real efficiently. My monitor is in the perfect location relative to the door to my office, meaning it faces away from the door. So nobody can really tell what is on the screen unless they come around to my side of the desk. Anyway, about half time of the Badger game, one of my bosses (who is a big sports fan, and who knows that I am too) pokes his head in and asks me what the score was. I was a bit flabbergasted. I'm not sure if he knew that I was keeping track and didn't care, but just wanted to know the score. Or if he just assumed? I sort of played dumb like I wasn't watching it on TV and told him "last time I checked the Badgers were down nine....". I hadn't left my desk so I'm positive he didn't know the extent of my slacking. I personally don't think there is anything wrong with monitoring a scoreboard every few minutes, but I'm not the boss either.


When the game was over, he poked his head in again and asked. This time, I was onto his game and told him I don't know. He seemed disappointed and confused by the answer. Then I decided I would be "helpful" and say "Let me check. " And then he came to my side of the desk while I pulled up the box score.

The second incident occurred yesterday. Thursday and Friday of the NCAA tournament are about my two favorite days of the year. In a past life, I would skip class/take off of work to watch all day long. In my current position I can't do that. What I can do, however, is manipulate my schedule so that I don't have any appointments and can be sitting behind my computer between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., where I may or may not watch MMOD. So last night (yes, last night) one of my bosses decided to come into my office while I was in there to take a look at our calenders to see if they could pawn some stuff off on me this week. When they reached Thursday and saw 5 hours blocked off with no explanation, the question was "what is this?" I just said, I don't want any appointments. Then, they went to Friday and saw the same thing and said "You don't ever want appointments or what?" So that was awkward. Nothing incriminating, but one of those things that will probably cause the bosses to wonder what I'm doing during those hours. My only saving grace is that this particular boss is not a sports fan, and probably doesn't realize that there is basketball being played during those hours.

The question is: Is there any reason for me to be concerned? I say not because I have been working 60+ hours a week for the last 6 weeks, and I feel I deserve to fuck around for two half days. Thoughts?

DVR ALERT!!! Friday, beginning at 2 p.m. do not attempt to communicate with me in any way unless someone died. I will be going dark and will be watching the last three sessions of the tournament beginning at 6 p.m. as if they were happening live due to Bucky playing at 1:50 p.m. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

ST. PATTY'S DAY: Happy amateur hour! Even though I'm a quarter Irish, I don't need an excuse to get drunk. I prefer Wednesday as an excuse. While getting drunk on green beer is fun, it also brings out the assholes who can't handle their liquor and like to start fights. And it is annoying.

X-Mas Spirit

One "party" down. One "party" to go. This afternoon is my work "party". This party is going to take place between 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, and is going to consist of appetizers and drinks. I'm not even kidding. Also, since I live 30 minutes from work, getting all fucked up is not an option. Not that getting all fucked up with people 30 years older than you is all that fun anyway, but I would like that to be an option. I would say the highlight of the party is that it is going to be free, and it will save me an hour and a half of pretending to work.

Saturday, it is my mission to put up the Christmas tree and rearrange the furniture in my living room to accommodate it. The biggest thing is that I have to carefully plan this around the smorgasbord of sports on television. My goal is to nip that shit in the bud before the SEC championship game. As bullshit as the rankings and the BCS is, I do realize that we in fact live in a society (Russia?) where this is about as big of a game as you can possibly get in college football. And it is #1 v. #2 for the chance to play in the fake (but at the same time all too real) championship. Bucky will be destroying a collection of athletes from a historically black college (Grambling) at noon, which I assume will be on the Big Ten network. This would seem to be an ideal time to get this decorating shit out of the way. The good thing about decorating the tree, is that other than putting the fake tree together and getting it correctly wired (pre-lit of course, so wiring consists of plugging all the sections together), I am not allowed to touch it. This is probably because I don't really give a shit about where the ornaments go, or which ones go on the tree, or whether every square inch is covered. The process of watching my wife decorate this stresses me the fuck out. Which typically leads to drinking.

Saturday night is going to culminate in Wisconsin interrupting their beach vacations to take on the Rainbow Warriors (yeah, I went there) of Hawaii. The game starts at TEN THIRTY (10:30) P.M.!!! Which is cruel and unusual. If I was in Vegas, it would be awesome to bet on this game with no other games to distract me (See Boise St./Hawaii in October). Instead, I will have to find a way to stay awake until 2 a.m. to see the end of a 40 point blowout. (Actually, I'm seeing 47-20 Bucky, Badgers rush for 300 plus). The only positive for all of you is that I can insert information into the T-3000 because this will be the last game, and the brackets can likely be revealed by Sunday morning for Juice's Dream NCAA D-I Football Get Together Presented by Astroglide.

Sunday will be a day of rest, and watching random NFL (seriously, if I am subjected to another fucking shitty Viking blowout I'm going to murder somebody. So you should probably steer clear on Sunday night) games (and that $5.99 a month for RedZone is making more and more sense to me every week). Monday, I get to try to slink out of work a few hours early so that I can belly up at Buffalo Wild Wings before Packers/Ravens.

Out.