Biz Bee: The Sequel

Myself nailing a word

I pride myself on my ability to spell. It's kind of uncanny how good I am at spelling, and you could argue that perhaps my mutant power is the ability to spell anything correctly. Quite the gift. Of course, I used those powers for good last year in a charity event in which I represented my company in a spelling bee against other Alaskan businesses, titled "the Biz Bee." We came in 8th last year, so I can only assume someone had a power dampener there, negating my powers (I still spelled all of my words correctly).

Power dampener or not, it was so much fun last year that I'm back for round 2, with my faithful compadre Sharee joining my side once again, along with new teammate Sara. I'm really looking forward to completely dominating Alaskan businesses, as this year we won't let silly words like commisar (err...commissar) bring us down. You're ours Biz Bee!

V-I-P! V-I-P! V-I-P!

Amy and me - Prom pose right after the VIP Awards

Last night was my company's VIP (Very Impressive Performer) Awards and it was held at Josephine's on the 15th floor of the Sheraton Hotel. For those that have not read previously, go here for a breakdown on why exactly I was getting this award. Anyways, even though it was a great honor and the concept of it was cool, I was kind of dreading it because it was a lot of people I didn't know, it was three hours long, and I feared that the event would be boring.

Thankfully I invited Amy along as my "date" (we always corrected people and stated that she was my college friend, which is also a lie strangely as we may have went to the same college but I did not know her there), which promised to make the experience interesting at the very least.

And good god, did she make it interesting. At one point while eating a remarkably delicious piece of cake (inhaling may be a better descriptor of what I was doing to the poor, defenseless dessert) Amy looked over at me and simply asked "are you still gaining weight?" for everyone to hear.

Great, even my date was insulting me.

Before you feel bad for me, think about this: this is precisely why I invited her and why she was perfect to go along with. Everyone else at the dinner was interested in being formal and "professional" , but very few people were interested in fun it seemed (professional and fun do not have to be mutually exclusive concepts). Which is why Amy and I imported our unique brand of fun, as believe it or not I may or may not have incited the "gaining weight" question with my own, similarly insulting one. We went back and forth all night, and it was great fun insulting each other and making jokes about nearly everything going on around us.

So not only was this a night where I was being lauded with an illustrious award, but the night ended up feeling like a weird mixture of Prom and Graduation (in a good way - they gave me a boutonniere!), albeit one that had an open bar, very delicious food, sweet prizes (clock with my name engraved on it and a $100 stock certificate - count it!), and I got to share it with one of my best friends and someone who was equally willing to be ridiculous and jokey just to make the experience a fun one.

Right before I left to pick up Amy, I spoke to a coworker who was a previous recipient of the award who confirmed my fears: yes, it is dreadful, and yes, it is boring.

Thankfully we defied history and expectations last night, as it was a great time. Can't wait for my next one. Don't forget to keep your schedule open Amy. At this pace it should take me another year and 2 months, so make sure late June is open in 2009.

The Weekend Edition

To keep with tradition, this evening I present to you the weekend edition of A Slice of Fried Gold, also known as "Why the previous weekend rocked." However, once again due to my forgetful nature there was no camera present (others did have cameras though, so we'll see what I come up with later) and sadly I have absolutely no pictures. My bad! In standard fashion, I'll break it down in a Cliff's Notes format, and then go into details about a one or two specific happenings.

• First dinner ever at Ginger
• Cirque Dreams at the Performing Arts Center with Colver, Lorna, and Kim
• Palmer Open House for GCI
• Being recruited to be a mascot performer
• Dancing at a busy intersection in Palmer with a coworker
• Making sushi for the first time with Amy
• Jason's Bday BBQ
• Rocking killer vocal/guitar duets on Rock Band with Amy
• King's Cup again
• Wrestling and rap battling
• Tragedy striking Battlestar Galactica
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall with the crew
• Finally watching my How I Met Your Mother DVD's and falling in love

So yeah, busy weekend as per usual. Fueled by coffee and tons of delicious food, it all went really well and I had a ton of fun. Plus the weekend was gorgeous, with blue skies and sunlight in every direction along with 55 (!!) degree weather - leave us alone lower 48, we're Alaska, that's as good as we get. I really do think that nothing beats Alaskan summers, and I'm already getting that feeling even though the snow hasn't even left us quite yet.

What stood out this weekend? Well, in particular the GCI open house was a huge success, and I had a ton of fun joking around with coworkers, high fiving Bob the Builder, dancing at intersections to attract traffic, and being amazed at various networks ability to only hire attractive girls to work for them (at our open house there were two PBS Sprout reps, and they were both very nice and very cute).

In particular, I was pretty jazzed and my energy apparently stood out to a lot of people around me, including one of the people involved with the "talent" - aka the guys in the Bob the Builder outfit - who asked me to send in a resume to do mascot work in Alaska. Obviously, I won't do this, but if I'm ever in need of a third revenue stream (along with my primary job at GCI and my side business with Amy) I can always act as an Eagle or Tony the Tiger for a few hours and make bank. Seriously funny though, and I'm glad I seem to have the skill set necessary to run around in an oversized character costume.

Also standing out this weekend was the performance of Cirque Dreams that Kim, Lorna, Colver, and I attended, which was spectacular and very entertaining. My good friend Sobo always raved about the Cirque events, but I was never really interested in it. Now? Pretty impressed, as the show we went to was extremely well performed and visually arresting in a way I didn't really think it would be. Sure, it was still cheesy like I thought it would be, but it was a lot of fun and I love trying new things. This was definitely new, and I'm glad I had another weekend with so many new and exciting experiences.

Everyone's a V.I.P. to Someone

To provide recognition to GCI employees who, through personal initiative, have made a significant contribution to the Company which significantly exceeds the scope of their Job Description and deserves recognition.

That quote is from my company's VIP policy and procedure. Why am I posting it here? Because today I found out I am going to become the second person in my department to ever earn a VIP (Very Impressive Performer) Award. Booyah!

Specifically, I earned it by developing (along with my partner-in-crime and fellow VIP Toni) a workaround on Motorola Z6 ROKR cellular phones that made them fully functional and able to sell, and then organizing teams to manually program the phones with myself (and Toni). The arrival of the ROKR handset led to a 60% boost in cellular sales, so you could say that the two of us were responsible for a 60% increase in our sales. Ahhhhhh yeah!

Toni and myself will be celebrated (along with the other VIP's within the company) at a banquet on April 29th, where we'll be lauded by others within the company and served a ridiculously delicious dinner from the Crow's Nest in the Captain Cook hotel. I'll be awarded such illustrious prizes as a clock with my named engraved on it and a $100 stock option (big money!). All sarcasm aside, it's a heck of an honor, and I'm really proud of the fact that people within my company think I'm doing a good job.

Now for those that went to college and/or high school with me, I have six words for you: how do you like them apples? I always said I was a "potential" guy, a perennial sleeper looking for the right situation. Well apparently the application of my skillset is finally starting to match my potential.

Not to be immodest or anything, because everyone knows I'd never do something of that sort.

It's Alive!!!!!

Beware world.

The fantastic installer from GCI came yesterday. It turns out with the rapid change in temperature the snow melted inside of some box, flooded our lines, and that was what was nuking my internet and TV. I have to admit, I was getting strangely used to not having internet at home, but clearly my affliction has taken anew.

Damn you internet. Damn you!!!