Ladies and Gentlemen, you are now reading the words of an official Ashland Inc. employee (as of 5-15).  That’s right, I have been hired on as a permanent employee.  For those of you that didn’t know, I have been working as a contractor for Ashland for the past 9 months.  This basically means they pay more for my services, but I don’t get any benefits, insurance, paid holidays, or anything.  They can fire me with a wave of a finger.  But now I get it all.  Even the cheaper gym membership.  Woo hoo.  It’s kind of a weird situation amongst the other employees.  On one had then other Ashland employees are congratulating me and welcoming me into their glorious empire.  While the fraternity of contractors are congratulating me but giving me the evil eye that says they should have been “the one”.  I really shouldn’t but I feel kinda bad when me, a young fresh out of college bachelor, is getting bumped up from a contractor to employee instead of the guy with a brand new kid or the 50+ year old.  But, such is the battlefield that is Corporate America.

Pictures from the Spring Game and Nick’s Bday cookout should be up hopefully later tonight.  I’ve been having problems with my PC that I hope to have resolved soon.  Who knew that removing your DVI cable from your monitor could cause a geometry mismatch in the # of sectors on your hard drive…. yea…

So today is Friday here at Ashland Inc since we get tomorrow (Good Friday) off. I’ve often told people that working for “Corporate America” is a lot like the next level of high school. Not really college, because I’d be willing to say that only 50 or 60 % of the employees that work here went to college. Let me give you some examples of how I’ve encountered extended school life here at Ashland.

• Short work week’s are often accompanied by less work getting done during 4 days than normally would over a 4 day period on a full work week.
• You can plan that the parking lot on a Friday morning will generally be much more vacant than on a Wednesday, usually due to the large percentage of workers that take Friday off, or just decide to come in late.
• The topics of discussion in the men’s bathroom are just as elementary and inappropriate as they are in a 8th grade locker room.
• The first floor of Ashland can easily be identified as the kindergarten of our school of work. This week the whole floor is decorated with colored eggs, young animal cutouts, streamers and flowers. There is even a picture and sign on one of the walls that says “April Showers” and then on the other end of the room there is a corresponding sign that reads “Brings May Flowers”. BUT, instead of just having flowers, someone actually made a large cutout of The Mayflower. Yes. The ship the landed in America with the pilgrims. Who comes up with this stuff?

So yea, I’m getting the full Corporate America experience. At lunch today a co-worker told me about an interesting game I’d like to play the next time a group of us go out to The Olive Garden. I shall explain:

Name of the Game: Cheese Chicken
Number of players: just 2 of you or as many as you can seat at a table
Location: Any Olive Garden Restaurant
Requirements: Cheese Chicken requires that all participants order a salad
How to play: It is common knowledge that at Olive Garden you get as much salad and breadsticks as you please. I believe this is 25% of the reason a large portion of people go there. Anyway, when the waiter brings over your large bowl of salad you will be asked if you would like some grated cheese on it. Someone will reply “of course” and they will begin to grade cheese over your salad and inform you to say “when” once there is enough. This is the signal that the game of Cheese Chicken has begun. It is simple from here out. The first one to say “when” is the looser and is beaten to death by breadsticks. The waiter may begin to get anxious or get worried looks on his/her face, but do not falter. Cheese Chicken is a game of wits.

I am very much looking forward to playing this game.

Ever since I graduated and started working full time, the way I view a week or month is completely different.  During school I’d usually have quite a bit of free time during the day (mostly due to procrastination) so striving to get to the “next big event” was not something I regularly thought about.  Now that I’m an 8-5 M-F man, I work through the day to get to 5:00 PM and once I’m home I can’t wait for it to be the weekend so I can just relax.  And once it’s the weekend I can’t wait for some event to happen next month.  Honestly I shouldn’t be complaining since amongst my roommates, I’m the one with the least amount of things taking up time in my life.   I’ll be at work thinking about all the things I’m going to do when I get home and then once I get home, none of them happen.  It’s very strange.  I even have a small scratch pad with a list of things to do (including games to beat) and it seems to diminish rather slowly.  Maybe I’m just not that committed to living a completely organized and structured life and I need spontaneity.

In other news ~ I got a hot new laptop last week which I’ve been meaning to make a post about with pictures but it hasn’t happened yet.  (see above paragraph).  I’ll be sure to do that this week.  Just to give you something to chew on, it’s an Thinkpad z60t.  woot.

Last week I started watching The Office and couldn’t stop.  I got through all the current episodes as of Sunday night.  This show is awesome.  If you haven’t seen it yet, give it a shot.  Most of it is pretty dry humor which some might not appreciate but there are some absolutely hilarious moments.  It also has some “feel good” factor to it which keeps you watching.  I hope to one day write up a post with all the TV Shows I watch and what I think about them, but that is something for future Tim to think about.

This weekend, I’m heading up to Cleveland with the Fisco Bros. and Company (Mike) for our Fantasy Baseball draft.  The draft has consumed every free minute I have at work and I think I yipped with glee last night when I flipped to Baseball Tonight.  It should be a good time.  I’ll let you know how my team ends up next week.  I still don’t have a team name yet.  Any suggestions?