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selenayIt's time for the annual staff appreciation breakfast at work. Every year, I hope that they'll appreciate me with tasty bacon, pancakes and maple syrup.
Every year, they appreciate me with granola, yoghurt, fruit and wholemeal toast. In other words, the basic things that I eat every morning. Except I make my own granola and it is awesome. Or I have muesli from Dorset Cereals that is absolutely amazing, particularly the cranberry, almond and cherry. And my yoghurt is organic fat free gorgeous stuff.
Nope, a cheap (probably less healthy, hello sodium and fat content in mainstream granola) version of what I usually eat is not a treat and does not make me feel appreciated.
However, just to piss me off more this year there's an added bonus. Dieticians and fitness instructors will be there to help me plan a healthier life style and lose weight! Go me!
Except that my GI will probably hospitalise me if I lose more weight, my diet is very healthy despite IBD and I work out four times a week.
Yeah, I somehow don't think this breakfast is aimed at me. On the morning of the event (24th April), I shall eat my normal tasty breakfast at home and then sip juice and maybe nibble a corner of toast with my colleagues. If anyone tries to tell me how to lose weight, I'll throw the bloody juice at them. Argh!
< / rant >
In more cheerful news, the Hugo shortlist was announced over the weekend and I now know the sheer scale of my reading/watching task for the next few months. Um, wow.
One of the fun things about reading through awards lists is the chance to pick up things that I'd never normally read. This year that means that I'll be reading zombie novels for the first time ever. I've bought Feed by Mira Grant so that I'm in a good position to read her nominated works. I sense that I'll either love it or hate it. The rest are all things that I'm looking forward to and I've got some hefty reading to get through books 3 and 4 of George R. R. Martin's series so that I can read A Dance with Dragons.
It's nice to see that I've read at least one work from each of the novella/novellette/short story categories thanks to my Asimov's subscription. And obviously I've read John Scalzi's short story because it was such a brilliant joke last year.
Also, I now have an excuse to buy the Game of Thrones DVD boxset. Research! Vital! Hoorah!
All the other films seem to be available to rent from iTunes and I just happen to have an Apple TV that I could watch them on :-D And Captain America was already on my pre-Avengers list of stuff to watch. Um, why didn't X-Men First Class make the list? It was so good!
I've read the first couple of volumes of Fables and I've got volumes 3 to 5 on hold from the library. Only another....eight to read after that to get into position to read the nominated volume :-D Thankfully my library has them all. Woo! And Unwritten 4! And Locke and Key! It's just Digger that I might struggle to track down.
My horrible dilemma is which Doctor Who episode to vote for. All three shortlisted ones were brilliant. Argh.
The next few months are going to be fun!
Every year, they appreciate me with granola, yoghurt, fruit and wholemeal toast. In other words, the basic things that I eat every morning. Except I make my own granola and it is awesome. Or I have muesli from Dorset Cereals that is absolutely amazing, particularly the cranberry, almond and cherry. And my yoghurt is organic fat free gorgeous stuff.
Nope, a cheap (probably less healthy, hello sodium and fat content in mainstream granola) version of what I usually eat is not a treat and does not make me feel appreciated.
However, just to piss me off more this year there's an added bonus. Dieticians and fitness instructors will be there to help me plan a healthier life style and lose weight! Go me!
Except that my GI will probably hospitalise me if I lose more weight, my diet is very healthy despite IBD and I work out four times a week.
Yeah, I somehow don't think this breakfast is aimed at me. On the morning of the event (24th April), I shall eat my normal tasty breakfast at home and then sip juice and maybe nibble a corner of toast with my colleagues. If anyone tries to tell me how to lose weight, I'll throw the bloody juice at them. Argh!
< / rant >
In more cheerful news, the Hugo shortlist was announced over the weekend and I now know the sheer scale of my reading/watching task for the next few months. Um, wow.
One of the fun things about reading through awards lists is the chance to pick up things that I'd never normally read. This year that means that I'll be reading zombie novels for the first time ever. I've bought Feed by Mira Grant so that I'm in a good position to read her nominated works. I sense that I'll either love it or hate it. The rest are all things that I'm looking forward to and I've got some hefty reading to get through books 3 and 4 of George R. R. Martin's series so that I can read A Dance with Dragons.
It's nice to see that I've read at least one work from each of the novella/novellette/short story categories thanks to my Asimov's subscription. And obviously I've read John Scalzi's short story because it was such a brilliant joke last year.
Also, I now have an excuse to buy the Game of Thrones DVD boxset. Research! Vital! Hoorah!
All the other films seem to be available to rent from iTunes and I just happen to have an Apple TV that I could watch them on :-D And Captain America was already on my pre-Avengers list of stuff to watch. Um, why didn't X-Men First Class make the list? It was so good!
I've read the first couple of volumes of Fables and I've got volumes 3 to 5 on hold from the library. Only another....eight to read after that to get into position to read the nominated volume :-D Thankfully my library has them all. Woo! And Unwritten 4! And Locke and Key! It's just Digger that I might struggle to track down.
My horrible dilemma is which Doctor Who episode to vote for. All three shortlisted ones were brilliant. Argh.
The next few months are going to be fun!
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-09 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-10 12:45 am (UTC)My company is sneaky. They put the meal after the team building event, so you have to do all the boring stuff and all the pointless games before you get the tasty reward. Sneaky.
Sounds like you're going to be working it right :-D
I think what gets my goat with this breakfast thing is the way it's worded. They have two paragraphs about how hard we work and how much it's appreciated. Another paragraph about how they're treating us to breakfast as a reward.
Then at the end they mention that it's a super healthy breakfast and there will be dieticians and personal trainers there to start us on the road to fitness.
If they just came out and said "some of you are fatty lard-arses, to help you make better choices we're doing this thing" then it would be insulting, but wouldn't make me feel like my reward for working hard is being told that I'm fat, unhealthy and need to lose weight.
Even leaving aside the irony of telling me to lose weight, it's the reward for my hard work aspect that really kills me every year. A reward is something you don't normally do for yourself, a treat. For me a treat breakfast is not low quality version of my usual healthy breakfast and a lecture on how fat and unhealthy I am. A reward breakfast typically involves bacon and some food stuff that conveys maple syrup to my mouth :-D
If they changed the wording on this bloody email, I probably wouldn't vent about it every year. It would be a part of our drive for healthier communities which is a core company value rather than a slap in the face for all the work I've done. That would only be irritating on the "Oh, delete it now" level that the constant Weight Watchers invitations are. Not on a rant-rant-vent level, which is where I end up every year with the current email wording.
And wow, I feel strongly about this apparently :-D
no subject
Date: 2012-04-10 07:19 am (UTC)I do have the advantage of working in the same office as the (very nice) HR person organising the day. As an office (the 5 of us in our room) we're also pretty good about asking questions of the room to get views on potentially contentious issues, best ways to phrase things and any particularly complicated spelling. :-)