The Weirdest All Staff Day Ever (part 2: The Benedictine Comedy Hour)

[shadesofmauve]

After Orson Scott Card spoke (and we had a bit of time to stand around with our coworkers saying 'Did he really -- ?' 'Did you hear --?' 'Chopsticks? Really?' etc) I went to a workshop on work styles which was odd in that it was enjoyable and seemed marginally useful (I'm a get-shit-done unfazed-by-deadlines doesn't-want-to-hear-your-sob-story-just-give-me-a-yes-or-no person at work. This surprises no one) we had lunch, which was mostly notable for having no protein whatsoever. One woman at our table pulled grocery store chicken out of her bag and immediately became the most popular woman there.

I amused myself by using my Emergency Face Paint Kit* (tm) and giving myself rainbow 'eyeshadow' to go with my rainbow tights and no hate button. Of course that meant I had to give other people rainbows, too. While I was in the middle of that they announced the annual awards. There are two -- one for being generally awesome, and one for coming up with things that save the library money.

Much to my surprise, I won the second one. Luckily they read the description of what I'd done BEFORE they announced my name, so I had a minute and a half to put down the facepaint, say "Oh, shit. It's me" and come up with something not-entirely-inappropriate to say to over a hundred people.

Afterwards my close coworkers informed me that they spent the same minute and a half thinking "HOLY SHIT RED ALERT OH NO WHAT IS SHE GOING TO SAY?!"

I let the rainbows speak for themselves, though.

I marched across that stage like a proud little rainbow, shook the hand of the only person in HR I'm not absolutely disgusted with, and didn't make a complete ass of myself at the microphone (I thanked them for honoring me for reducing my own workload; I didn't point out that I was being rewarded for redesigning a project even though I'd done the design it was replacing, too).

It cemented my feeling that it was a Very Strange Day, and I decided that spending a Very Strange Day in another almost-work-related workshop would be a waste, so when I saw the monk gathering people for a walking tour, I invited myself along (We rent the gym of the local catholic university for this event, and a tour of their library is always an option instead of a workshop.).

Did I mention it was sunny? As we left the building one of my coworkers said "That thing! In the sky! WHAT IS IT?" and our monk said "I don't know. I think maybe I should exorcise it." MONK HUMOR, GUYS.

The first comment he made as an actual part of the tour was a Puff Daddy joke.

There's not much of interest in the tour itself, unless you count a very unassuming older coworker whom I hadn't previously met gleefully suggesting squishing problem children between the collapsible shelves (we were all a bit twitchy about babies after the OSC talk, I think), or the fact that the university spent $150,000 on a 7 volume hand-bound bible full of modern bible art and covered in hand-tooled leather (on the up side, yay, the painted Adam and Eve as brown! On the downside -- 150,000 for an art-piece bible? In this economy? The catholic church tends to magpies, doesn't it?).

Then we reached a computer lab, and our monk gestured at the dual screen set-up nearest us and said "The guys in the tech lab say this is where I need to come if I want the most out of my Diablo III experience!"

Those of us who had a clue what he was talking about managed -- barely -- not to guffaw. He caught it, and explained "Killing demons is what monks do, right? It's basically just a simulator. Training hours." Then he stuck his hands behind the, er, tabard-over-the-cassock thingy, tried an innocent look, and said "That's what I tell my abbot."

(I was walking with two guys around my age at the time, and lamented with one of them later that we failed to ask his gamer tag. Then we started comparing various Diablos and the other guy said "Neeeeerds." He has no idea. Also, he works in a library. Pot. Kettle.)

And that, pretty much, was the Weirdest All Staff Day Ever.

*I also have an emergency mandolin. Clearly I run into a different type of emergency than most people.

Comments

[pyoor_excuse]

Now, if all monks were like that the world's be a better place... And congrats on the award!

[t-c-da.livejournal.com]

150,000 for an art-piece bible?

I tend to agree with your comments on this... I sometimes wonder which bible some parts of the RC hierarchy are reading, 'cos it certainly ain't the one the one I hear in the pews of a sunday...

Now if it was a C15th art-piece bible, I could understand the dollars, but not for a modern item. I'd shudder to think what a C5th manuscript of Mark's gospel (that I saw on Patmos) would be worth/fetch at auction, on the other hand.

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

I. am. unworthy.

[criada.livejournal.com]

I just went to the link. Holy shit, that thing is gorgeous. Having been raised Catholic, I too have a weakness for shiny things, and I adore the grungy, expressionistic art that I thought was grotesque when I was a kid and saw it all over my Grandma's house, but now appreciate.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Dude. That monk sounds awesome!