{"id":861,"date":"2010-09-12T14:52:45","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T19:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=861"},"modified":"2010-09-12T14:52:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T19:52:45","slug":"meanwhile-back-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/09\/meanwhile-back-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, Back at Work…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, 08 September 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, one of my co-workers went on a vacation to Europe. On the day he returned to work, there happened to be a planned outing with our department. Specifically, we went on a company-paid outing to a St. Paul Saints<\/a> game. During the game, I turned around and said to my co-worker (who was sitting in the row behind me): \u201cYou picked the perfect day to come back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, guess what? Today, I picked the perfect day to return to work, too. It wasn\u2019t intentional; I planned to take off six weeks and today happens to be the day Isla turns six weeks old. I didn\u2019t even know that today was going to be the perfect day to return until about three weeks ago.<\/p>\n

See, one day, in mid-August, I checked my work email. I checked it a few times while on leave and, on that particular day, there was an email reminding everyone about a group outing scheduled for September 8th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

So, today, I showed up at work for the first time in six weeks. I arrived at 8:15 and, at 11:30, I left to go to Fish Lake Park. For the next four hours, I ate, drank, and played volleyball and Apples To Apples. While playing volleyball, I accidentally launched the ball into my manager\u2019s gut, who reminded me to be careful since it\u2019s my first day back. I\u2019m hoping he was just joking around.<\/p>\n

Thursday, 09 September 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent my first \u201clunchbreak\u201d finishing up my presentation for Saturday. In case you don\u2019t know, I\u2019ve been invited to speak at the Maple Gove Critical Thinkers\u2019 Club this weekend.<\/p>\n

My presentation will be four parts:<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 The history and evolution of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 My story as a Jehovah\u2019s Witness<\/p>\n

3 \u2013 Why I left the religion<\/p>\n

4 \u2013 Atheism<\/p>\n

Yeah, that last one doesn\u2019t really fit with the other three..so I\u2019m just gonna spend about 2 minutes on that. In fact, I think I\u2019m only gonna spend about 2 minutes on the first part, too. Because, of course, since I was raised as a Witness, I have no idea how the movement started. I\u2019ll mention something about New York\u2019s 19th<\/sup>-Century Burned Over District<\/a>, then move on to Russell\u2019s move to Brooklyn, then Rutherford\u2019s strong-arming, and probably end with \u201cyeah, so, now there\u2019s 7 million active Witnesses, and another 7 million who are too smart to go door-to-door.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president of the club says they\u2019ll likely only be about 15 people in attendance, including a Scientologist, a Professor of Religious History, a psychiatrist who has worked with former cult members, and a former Mormon. Oh, goodie! I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be roasted alive.<\/p>\n

Friday, 10 September 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s been a long week of work, what with not working on Monday or Tuesday at all, getting paid to go on a picnic on Wednesday and then \u2013 pow! \u2013 two grueling days of work (in a row!) on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n

I think my workday really peaked when a co-worker sent me this link:
\n<\/embed><\/object>
\nYeah, that was probably the best five minutes of my workday.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m gonna have to remember to add that quote to my list of favorites: \u201cIn the middle of opportunity\u2026excuse me.\u201d Brilliant!<\/p>\n

Despite it\u2019s immense humor content, I want to mention a couple of more serious things about this video:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many of the commenters for this video feel that this is a perfect example of the Republican Party: How it uses fear and emotion to win votes instead of appealing to logic. Well, yes, this man doesn\u2019t exactly shatter any stereotypes I have about Republicans, but here\u2019s the tidbit in their favor: they didn\u2019t give this man their enorsement. Yeah, that\u2019s right, he wanted to be the Republican nominee for treasurer in Stark County, Ohio, but the Republcans who voted in that primary picked someone else. So\u2026good for you Republican voters: thanks for weeding out the really terrible people.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some seem to doubt that his degree in communication is for real. Others wonder what sort of wacky college conferred such a degree upon this loony. My take is this: I doubt he was lying; I really believe that he DOES have a degree in communications. It seems odd, I know. But I\u2019ve known plenty of excellent communicators with no degree whatsoever, and plenty of lousy communicators with degrees. I think the same could be said for just about any field of study, too.<\/p>\n

Man, I\u2019m spent now. Good thing I have a three-day weekend coming up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, 08 September 2010 A couple of years ago, one of my co-workers went on a vacation to Europe. On the day he returned to work, there happened to be a planned outing with our department. Specifically, we went on a company-paid outing to a St. Paul Saints game. During the game, I turned around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}