Why, It’s Three Days Wrapped Into One

Yes, today is Friday the 13th, but there’s nothing new or exciting about that. It’s been done before. However, today IS Embrace Your Geekness Day. Roughly translated, it’s a day for me to just be myself. I should also tell you that today is Fool’s Paradise Day and Barbershop Music Appreciation Day. Yes, I’m thinking the same thing you are: these 3 holidays are all related because if one chooses to celebrate Fool’s Paradise and a holiday honoring Barber Shop quartets, they must possess a great deal of inner geek. See, my inner geekness is already working; that punch line formed much better in my mind.

I found an internet reference stating that a fool’s paradise is a state of being happy because of false hope. Therefore, I have already placed a sign at the entrance of my cubicle stating ‘Welcome To A Fool’s Paradise.’ For in my office sits someone who tries to be happy because of the false hope that he will tunnel out one day or a car will strike the side wall, thereby creating a window. I also have visions of large objects falling onto our office, but don’t want to share that publicly out of the feat that I will be blamed should something like that ever occur. I have done a lot of things to create a false hope in my office. I’ve put up bamboo sticks, hung little pink flamingoes on the walls and as my coworkers will tell you, I act like a fool. Yes, I’ve already been asked to take the sign down. Again, my exclamation that today is Fool’s Paradise Day and I am being prejudiced against did nothing to help my cause. Why can’t any of these holidays have a basis in religion? It would make justifying my celebration of them so much easier!

As far as celebrating the Barbershop thing, I wish I had been a little more prepared today. I thought about singing barbershop music in the halls as people passed by but I don’t perform well as a one-person quartet. To make sure, I looked up quartet and by my estimation, I am anywhere from 3-7 people short of the necessary number to perform as a quartet. I think. Oh well, there’s always next year.

I want to make sure that I celebrate my inner geekness to its full extent today. I’ve started using my 50-75 cent words and asking questions about the universe, trajectories of objects I want to throw and questioning most of my company’s procedures, thereby suggesting I may have better alternatives. I want to stick a piece of tape on my glasses, but I don’t want to confuse nerd and geek. Although I am working on a very geeky laugh that seems to be attracting lots of attention. It involves scrunching up my face and snorting a few times.

Because everyone and their mother has a quote or tag line at the end of their email, I’ve started searching for a quote by Einstein, Stephen Hawking or Jeff Foxworthy – all legendary minds. If my hair wasn’t so short, I’d go into the bathroom, wet it down and part it down the middle. I’ve already debated cutting my pants shorter with my office scissors to create the ‘high-water’ effect, but then next week when it isn’t Embrace Your Geekness Day, I would get really upset when I have once less pair of dress pants to wear. However, seeing them in my closet might make me wistfully look back on today and think ‘good times, good times…’

To establish my geekness today I am also working on a few software related things and finishing up a spreadsheet in MS Excel detailing the number of times I have assisted my boss or coworkers with projects in relation to the number of times that my coworkers have provided assistance. This serves two purposes. It gets people to say what a geek I am and helps to justify my job in lieu of the Fool’s Paradise sign I had to take down and just a few other offenses, some of which I have previously detailed. Um, and many of which I haven’t.

So there you have it. Happy Embrace Your Geekness Day. You know what; I just realized the holiday is NOT called Embrace Your INNER Geekness Day. There is a difference there. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it sooner. Well, since I have spent all day trying to be geeky, come embrace me!!! Just don’t squeeze too hard. That sunburn from last week is still killing me! And I don’t want anyone to pop the pens out of the pocket protector in my shirt…