The Office Person of the Year - 2008

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Stephanie Ann Hall
In 2008, The Office has experienced more changes than can be fully recounted. If we have become better people by any measure it is largely due to the presence of Stephanie Ann Hall in our lives. While her effervescent personality has affected us all generally, her contributions to our lives are more individualized.

Stephanie is a big fan of Gavin Gee. She is such a fan that she has baked no less than 3700 cookies of all types upon Gavin’s request for them. I would note that 3700 is a conservative estimate. Several experts agree that the actual number is likely far greater. Stephanie has also become a relationship advisor to Gavin, and he didn’t even have to ask her to be that for him.

Tom and Stephanie share a special and completely platonic bond. This is in part due to the prohibition of any romantic overtures between them imposed by yours truly. Nevertheless, as any true friend would, Stephanie has, time and again, offered and carried out fraternal service to Tom.

Since becoming friends upon Andrew’s arrival at The Office, Stephanie and Andrew have spoken in some format on a daily basis. Stephanie’s nutritive world-view has benefited Andrew in everything from dating advice to fashion assistance. Urban legend around The Office also adds the rumor of more than one kiss that may have transpired between their collective lips.

Personally, Stephanie has had an immeasurable impact on my life. When I say “impact,” I mean it. She and I have collided over differences of opinion on a multitude of issues. Spurred ever onward by her passion, she has never given an inch, despite my recalcitrance. Furthermore, she is never wrong. She has taught me so much that I am better for having known her.

All these things make her, as I have told her before, altogether indispensible. She colored our year beautifully and she continues to do so. It is readily evident why she is The Office Person of the Year 2008, and it is well deserved. --Abinadi

A question

Does simply pasting a link to your website on other's blogs and such increase search engines' chance of listing your page in a search since there are links from other pages going to it? For instance, the name of this blog should be a link to my website, is that helping my website? Does pasting it in this message, like so, http://moonlightcrew.com/ help at all?

The REAL Office

The real office starts in just over 2 weeks....

I hope everyone is amply prepared

A walk in the park (or just through Austin...)

So a few days ago, I decided to take the bus to and from school for my Monday/Wednesday classes since the Rio Grande Campus of ACC is so close to my house.

Yesterday I researched the route I would need to take and approximately what time I would need to be at the bus station.

Now, Tom had said that I could ride the UT shuttle bus for free, so I thought I would try that out.

So this morning I head down to the bus stop at about 8:15am, and the bus came about 8:25am. I’m one of the first stops, so there weren’t that many (if any) people on board all ready. I took a seat near the front of the bus.

Now, you must take in mind that this is the first time EVER that I have used a bus on my own. I’ve always done this with someone else.

So the stop I want to get off at is the Rio Grande and 15th street stop. As we’re coming up on Rio Grande (the bus is driving down 15th street), I notice that the bus driver is not in the right-most lane. And so I think that he may not stop at the stop I need. Now here’s the funny part. I know that if you pull the little thing, the bus driver will stop. Well, I was worried about having to pay for my fare because I’m not a UT student (I had brought money to pay in case I needed to). So I look at the time, and determine that I should have enough time to walk to school from where ever the bus does end up stopping (all this time hoping that the bus would stop before it got too far away). Well, I should have just grown a spine and pulled the thingy, cause the bus didn’t stop until we were at about 20th and San Jacinto! That’s only about 1.24 miles away from where I needed to be! It was about 8:38am by this time. My first class didn’t start till 9:10am, so I had a good 40 min to get to ACC. Well, it only took about 24 min to walk the 1.24 miles.

So, my reworked plan was to just ride the regular bus back home. But, as I’m done with school I decide that I wanted to try an experiment. I would walk HOME as well! I had called Tom right after I got off the bus to tell him about my unfortunate situation. I commented that I may be just as far away from ACC as The Office is. he disagreed. So I wanted to see exactly how long it would take. I had some time to kill, so I thought, why not? I'll burn off some extra calories, and get some Sun. I've got two legs... I'm self-sufficient and independent kind of guy. I don't need no stinking bus!

It turns out I live 1.91 miles away from the Rio Grande Campus. It took me about 40 min to make the walk. I left at 1:43pm and got home at 2:23

Now it's time for some of the lessons I've learned:

1) "These shoes AIN'T for walking" - if I'm going to do this again, I need to wear better shoes. Running shoes, perhaps.

2) My backpack weighs far too much. I've got not only my books, etc in there, but it’s also my laptop bag. Talk about weight. I just weighed it, and it’s about 30 lbs! Now I have a lot more sympathy for guys in the army that have to do 6 hour marches wearing all their gear, which – if I’m not mistaken – can weigh upwards of 60 lbs! freakin’ heck….

3) YAY Texas summers! Boy, it was hot out there… just walking. I wasn’t walking fast or anything like that… and I was pretty slow. But, boy did I work up a sweat.

So in closing: Yay for walking, boo for heavy backpacks.

Gavin Gee - Behind the Mystery

Gavin Gee. What a guy. At the poetry slam friday those in attendance were graced with a fine piece of prose by our dear stephanie hall. her ode to gavin began a whirlwind of mental activity that finally lead to this post, a dive into the depths of this young man's life, mind, and soul.

So who is gavin gee? what makes him the irresistible bachelor that he is? as a trusted and respected journalist i cannot reveal my sources, but many intimate conversations with many a delightful young woman has revealed some interesting things. gavin is wanted. theres something about that curly hair and the way he denies women. usually the unkempt and tightwads are left on the roadside, but he manages to keep the ladies coming back to bang their heads against his wall. hes immovable, and indecipherable.

so, as my gift to the women of the office i present what makes gavin tick. (it is april, the best month ever, so im feeling generous).

1) gavin loves cheap things
a certain girl, after a date with gavin recounted this to me: "we wanted to go get hot chocolate after our free date, and i knew gavin wouldnt want to spend any money, so i said lets goto mcdonalds, since that was the cheapest place i could think of."
not enough evidence? check out those shoes of his. he refuses to get new ones! think hes in love with the broken sandals? wrong, hes just in love with that green!

2) gavin enjoys being a vagrant
do you even know gavin?! do i really have to explain this one? let us consider a few facts: gavin doesnt spend money (maybe his panhandling isnt working out too well?), gavin looks homeless (check out that hair, the beard, or the shoes), and need i even mention the way he refuses to pay his rent and sleeps in the dumpster when his roomates deny his freeloading?

3) gavin hates women
surely this is the most attractive thing to those of the female sex. he denies you, so you come back for more abuse. perhaps the rest of us men could take a lesson from gavin and and try and seem more disinterested and turned off by those women around us

4) gavin likes to read good books
what a hottie!

5) gavin HATES liberals
dont even try and come in talking about how obama is your personal savior or about how the dems have the solution to *insert problem here*. this fast talking conservative will out quote you with his economist style knowledge of what the high profile conservatives are using as their debate material, and the man practically wrote the book on what is wrong with the welfare system today (see No, I won't work to support your lazy rear by Gavin Gee, Prentice Hall Publishing, NY, 2003). The man is a poster boy for the anti-liberal movement. He wont think its cute or witty when you purport to understand things you clearly dont or when your tree hugging attitude doesnt have the hard facts or answers he expects out of you when you try and argue.

6) gavin LOVES free things
kinda goes along with a lot of the previous posts. food is the way to this boy's heart

7) last but not least, gavin likes to drive slow
huh? well, he likes that, and that just shows how laid back and stress free he is. dont even TRY and bring your drama or tears to this guy's front door



oh, april 17th is my bday. make it awesome
<3 bryant

Bruce R.

Read my blog: Preachin' to the Choir

I’ve gotten in the habit of telling missionary stories recently, and a post on Rant Fever reminded me of another part of my mission. As a Mormon missionary, I had 2-ish hours every morning for study. There are several things one is supposed to do during this time, including study with your companion and study the language. It’s a shame to say that most missionaries kind of fade out of study-time after the first few months of their mission. But, being accustomed to reading a lot and desperately needing some intellectual stimulation, I stayed fairly on top of things. After a month or two, I had exhausted the Missionary Guide (the one that was, thank heavens, replaced by Preach My Gospel), the MTC Spanish textbook, AND the “missionary library” (a collection of four or five universally approved church books for missionaries). Some mission presidents restrict missionary reading to those listed above. Had that been the case with my mission president, I might have gone crazy, having plowed through them all almost before I was out of the MTC. Some extend it to a few other staples like The Miracle of Forgiveness.

Luckily, my mission president had a little more discretion. For those of you who have seen The Shawshank Redemption, I was the Morgan Freeman of missionary libraries (also of ties, guyaberas, and electric water-heating showerheads). I was a networking champion and could get a hold of just about every uplifting or theological based book I could imagine. It started with raiding in-apartment libraries. Missionaries tend to move areas every few months, and suitcase space is at a premium. As they go, they collect clothes and souvenirs and stuff like small speaker sets to play classical music. This means that books that have been read are left behind. Quickly, I became the proud owner of a complete set of Institute student manuals, including the highly touted and out of print Book of Mormon study guide (literally three times as long as the current one. In a situation like this, page volume is at a premium).

It wasn’t just gospel reading, I needed more for my Spanish, too. I found a missionary who had a college level advanced grammar Spanish textbook and had it Xeroxed at a copy shop (no enforceable copyright laws in the DR. Serves me right, though, that it came back with every other page out of order. 2,1,4,3,6,5…375.). When that ran out, I went to used bookstores and got copies of uncontroversial (Treasure Island, a history of the Catholic Church) books in Spanish to keep the momentum up.

Soon I found that I had exhausted my on-island resources, and still had a year to go. I wrote home for all the books that I couldn’t find on Hispanola (The Great Apostasy, surprisingly. The Messiah series by Bruce R., Believing Christ, etc). Anything that I couldn’t get fast enough from them, I realized I could order from Amazon and have delivered to the Mission Office. I also found out that ‘Pres.’ (our mission president), was OK with us reading secular motivational book.

It was at this point that I had a brief but passionate affair with Self-Help Literature. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, others from the Covey line, How to Win Friends and Influence People, others from the Carnegie line, The Greatest Salesman in the World (terrible, by the way)…

I was hooked. I was addicted. You know how it makes you feel when you make a study plan on the first day of school, ultra rigorous but guaranteed to get you straight A’s. The euphoria from New Years Resolutions. The excitement of a new planner. I quickly learned that you can mainline those sentiments by reading motivational lit. Their plans for helping me become the best me possible are unrealistically rigorous, if not a little hairbrained. Some of them are down right irresponsible. But, the real reason they sell, the real reason why some of them (the irresponsible ones) were even written, was because they are good at making you feel good about yourself as long as you are reading the book. So, I’d end one and jump straight into another. The problem came when I started running low on editions to read. I had to quit cold turkey, and haven’t looked back since.

Antonio Banderas

Office employees, rise up in arms!

The summer after my high school graduation, I had the coziest job of my life at the McAllen Country Club poolside bar and grill. At great pay for a summer job, I got to watch daytime TV and eat three squares that our cook Jakkan would steal from the main country club kitchen. I also usually managed to secure a little food to take home with me. I would take this food to my friend Jeff where he worked at the Blockbuster. When his shift was over, he’d sneek out a free movie or two, and we’d head home to enjoy our ill-gotten films and fajita-nachos.

Jeff and I also both had girlfriends. Girlfriends who treated us poorly. Through our mutual woes, we developed what we called the “Desperado” school of relationships. Our battle cry became “Guns Before Emotion.” If you were in a crappy situation, better to shoot your way out. Go in with both barrels blazing.

Needless to say, this is much easier said than done. But, boy does it make you feel good to say it.

At one point, we got particularly sick of the situation. We decided that our girlfriends weren’t pulling their weight and were undeserving of our affection. To show them, we made a pact. Jeff and I would not display physical affection unless they initiated it. Hand-holding, goodnight kisses, the works. Now, I realize that this is a little juvenile, but we were 18 and those girls really had been treating us terribly for weeks and weeks. Talking tough made us feel better, as did the mutual support.

To further motivate, we decided to make it a bet. Being particularly poor (stealing our evening meal and entertainment), we finally decided that the first one to break down would have to purchase the other a Snickers bar. King size. We shook on it, and left to start our shifts at work. Who won? Neither of us. As soon as we left each other, our respective girlfriends BOTH called us, affectionately saying they’d missed our company. Imagine my relief when I called after work (or maybe he called me) to sheepishly admit there would be no chicken fingers and VHS tonight, to find out that he had folded as easily as I had. How had they known?! The very second we started to stand up for ourselves, they struck. The part that stings the most is we loose the fight in us and fold without protest at the first batting of an eyelash.

I would chalk that up to coincidence and file it away as a clever anecdote to entertain friends, except that there seems to have been an element of that experience in most of my interactions with girls since.

For example, I’ve recently had a rough experience with a certain girl. We’ll call her Schmalee. Inspired by Tom’s cavalier “Let’s forget this!” I decided to stop torturing myself by pulling more weight than the situation was worth by deleting Girl’s number from my cell phone. To avoid the temptation. This was, say at 11:45 at night. What should happen at 11:30 the very. next. morning.? She calls and leaves an endearing voice mail.

How do they do it? Emasculate me the very moment I decide to stand up. And, where does all the rabble rousing go the second there's a smile in my direction?

Guns Before Emotion! (would someone translate that into latin for me?). Desperado Style.

If only.