This week I inadvertantly took a vacation.

Since we have summer flex schedules at work, I flew home Friday with the intention of driving my car back to DC on Tuesday. Then Maven Mom was scheduled to have outpatient surgery on Tuesday, so I asked for another day off. Saturday, Baby the Honda broke down (anyone surprised?), and my return was postponed for another day so my car could get repaired. (A big thanks to my boss  for letting me take off a few extra days!)

It’s been a nice break. I’ve also enjoyed not compulsively checking e-mail, Facebook and Netvibes. Being connected all the time drains you, and I don’t even own a BlackBerry!

A year of living in Georgetown has also given me a new appreciation for middle-class suburbia. Wal-Mart is a wonderful resource, and I’m amazed that I can get across town in 30 minutes or less. I shudder to think about the snob who turned her nose down on suburbs and middle America for the hustle and bustle of the District last year. There’s a lot to be said for living in the Bible Belt and having your family and life-long friends nearby. In many ways I miss not living in a place where I have roots and memories.

That being said, I know that God has me in DC for the unforseen future, and I’m thankful for all the doors that He opened this past year. However, the thought of moving back to Tennessee isn’t the provenical horror that it once was.

Tomorrow, I drive back to the District with my batteries recharged with reality and red stateness.

A Salary.com survey found that American office workers waste about 20% of their time surfing:

An online survey of 2,057 employees by online compensation company Salary.com found about six in every 10 workers admit to wasting time at work with the average employee wasting 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour working day.

Further proof thatOfficeSpace is one of the most accurate movies ever made about American life.  Does this mean that all workers are straight shooters to middle management?

I’m sure that blogging doesn’t fall into that category. This is informative research. 

This morning, a co-worker and I were discussing the pros and cons of Facebook changes over the past year. She joined as a college student, and I as a recent alumni, so we came from the college perspective. We’ve both noticed changes in the atmosphere of the social networking site.

We miss the small sense of community that older pre-global versions had. In fact she started an anti-open platform group on Facebook and wants it to return to older versions. Once, you could only be friends with people on your own campus. Facebook was an outlet for inside jokes, crazy pictures and gossip. Now, it’s a hub for professional networking and political organizing.

Facebook is an incredible social networking platform with unimaginable potential. Zuckerberg and his crew realized that potential and are harnessing the power brilliantly. However, we’ve lost a lot of the small community that we once had on the site.

Why has Facebook changed? Is it because the orginal generation has aged and graduated from college? Has Facebook moved from the college bar to the office water cooler? Is there going to be a backlash of college students now that professionals are flocking to it in growing numbers?

On the other side, David All writes about his growing enjoyment of the platform today. It’s interesting to see the professional view. I’m not against the professional “invasion”, just nostalgic for the cool club that we once had.

Here’s a true story that happened at the office of my friend Lindsay today. Gotta love DC for it’s total absurdness.

So I start getting a stream of emails that start out like this:

“For all interested ladies and gents … the two snipers on the roof across
from my office are HOT! Come by, take a look, tape your phone number to my
window.”

And yes it was really snipers because the President was visiting
somewhere around where I work. Then the emails proceed with mentionings of
posting phone numbers on the window and calls from the sniper. They conclude
with one of my coworkers having a date Monday night with the sniper.TOO
FUNNY

Do snipers make good dates? Well, only in DC do you get the opportunity to try. And they say no one dates in this city.

For the first time in my life, my livelihood and not just my interests are tied in with the election.

Remember when I mentioned that nonprofit job is at one of the thousands of (c)3/(c)4s that take up office space in downtown DC? Yeah, the (c)4 part is really busy right about now.

That’s about all I can say, but we’re extremely busy bees right now. Not the killer bees* that have apprarently resurfaced from 1990 in a weird flux capacitor (maybe they’re wearing my MC Hammer pants), but extremely hard-working, busy people striving for the greater good.

*I’d seriously like to meet the assignment editor at Fox & Friends sometime and just say, “nine times out of 10, I like your show, but is that 10th story from News from the weired?”

Apparently, I haven’t quit my second job.

When I tried to quit, I offered to work my Saturday shift the rest of the semester to help them out with staffing.

My supervisor responded that it would help, and then stated that he’s normally not so accommodating and expects us to finish out our semester commitment.

At this point, I’m rather confused. I really don’t need the money and was mostly staying on so they won’t have massive scheduling headaches. However, I really don’t like it when I go out of my way to be nice, and it’s turned around to look like they’re doing me a favor. It’s already hard enough to balance nonprofit job with school, and I could really use Saturdays to run errands or just enjoy a day off.

While the extra money is nice, my time is more valuable than an hourly wage. Should I completely quit or go on being nice girl? I know at this point that I’m definitely not working here next semester, but I don’t want to burn any bridges.