Response for Kobes

How lucky I am! I arrived at my desk this morning with little work to do until this afternoon, wondering how I was going to fill my time until my afternoon meetings. But lo and behold! A question from our very own resident female, Kobes!

Apologies for writing a paragraph with three exclamation points.

Ms. Kobes has solicited advice on whether it is prudent to treat one's workplace as a personal dating service. Having never been involved in an office romance myself, I must admit that I cannot speak with direct experience, yet I hope that I can still offer something of value.

The second line of your first paragraph sums up the dilemma perfectly. You are in your twenties, more or less fresh out of college, and in many cases, new to the area where you currently work. This last point is crucial, as it often implies that you may lack (through no fault of your own) non-work related avenues of social interaction and therefore might be more tempted to pursue workplace avenues. Yet you are also bugged (and rightly so) by the fact that this is not college. This is your career, and therefore you want and need to maintain a proper level of professionalism. You certainly don't want to be seen as the girl who has flirted her way up the ladder.

But I know what you're thinking...dating a co-worker is quite tempting! It's very hard to meet people that you like, have something in common with, and with whom you want to build a connection. You never meet anyone cool in bars. Friends of friends are never your type. With a co-worker you have the immediate benefit of an introduction and something already in common, since your career paths and and aspirations are at least similar enough so that you both ended up at the same job at the same time. On the other hand, this is not college where if a drunken night out turns into an unintended sleepover it's no big deal and you and your friends laugh it off in the caf the next morning. Now there are potential repercussions.

I hope I've done well in trying to present both sides of the dilemma. I'll leave you with two bits of advice, which is all my brain can muster.

1) Don't pursue a co-worker unless you are really serious about him/her. I'm not one to question love, but I am one to question judgement. Ask yourself if this person is really worth the trouble (and let's just get it out there - the potential fallout) and proceed from there. Be 100% sure of yourself and aware of the consequences before moving to step 2.

2) If you are going to pursue a co-worker, do it the proper grown-up way. This does not mean drunkenly throwing yourself at someone at a company gathering. It means going through the emabrassing and silly ritual of asking a person out on a date and hoping that they will say yes. Quite frankly, it's the professional way to act, which is how you need to behave in the workplace. If the person says no, then at least you acted professional and the object of your affection will see and appreciate that. You will be seen as an adult, not the town hussy. It will be easier to have your work taken seriously by others. Your intentions will have been out in the open, and therefore the repercussions will be less. If they say yes, well, that's another post altogether.

@ Duke

In preparation for tomorrow's season closer at Cameron, I leave you with this blast from the past...

Frat Lords

"You can take the boy out of the frat, but you can't take the frat out of the boy."

Marathon*

I just finished running 33.6 miles. For those of you keeping track at home, that is a marathon plus 7.4 miles.

And, to pat my back more, this was all through Sunday's driving snow, which, despite the weatherman's predictions otherwise, piled high to four inches.

On that note, I am heading to Chipotle to dominate a very "swole" burrito and a thrice-refilled Coca Cola Classic.

I do or do I?

It's Sunday morning and I've woken up about 2 hours prematurely...

I've been thinking about marriage a lot lately. I'm not planning on popping the question anytime soon, (I imagine it will still be many years before we find a willing and able Mrs Beerman) but next month I'm attending the wedding of a high school friend (the first friend of mine from school to get hitched), and even the simple tasks of RSVPing and looking at their gift registries has made me take a hard look at the institution.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those guys that says that I'll never get married, or that marriage is an arcane and pointless practice for the 21st century. I still believe that if the right girl came along, there would be no doubting my ability to step up to the plate and ask if I could put a ring on her finger.

Some of my pondering inevitably revolves around the fact that my friend and I are more or less the same age and he's nearly married. It's not that I believe that he's too young or doesn't know what he's doing or anything like that. I think that he is a man of solid judgment and therefore I trust that he is making the correct decision. Nor do I believe that 23 or 24 is too young an age for marriage. Most of my parents' friends were married by then. With that said, both of my parents were closer to 30 than they were to 20 and both had advanced degrees by the time they got married, and on some level this has always altered how I looked at marriage. Getting married and starting a family was something that you did after you got your career or professional life in order (or closer to it).

Being mildly career oriented as well, will I do the same? Probably. I'm not ready to bring another person into my life on the level that marriage requires. Would I be willing to sacrifice my career for hers? I'm not sure that I would be able to do that at this stage in my life. And because of my unwillingness to to that, I don't think that I'd be able to ask the same of her.

Note that, as with any subject, I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment. And if Mrs Right came along, I would be man enough to make the appropriate personal sacrifices for the relationship. But for now, I'm 23, single, and enjoying it.

Scooter Libby is my homeboy

Results

I hope everyone had a fruitful weekend, now back to the grind.

Question for Kobes

Kobes,

The Ninth Commandment says that "[one] shall not covet their neighbor's wife." In principle, I suppose I agree with this statement. If a gal is taken, the gal is taken, and there is no point in getting oneself all worked up for something that will inevitably end in disappointment and rejection.

That being said, let's suppose for the sake of arguement that somone wanted to pursue a girl that already had a boyfriend. Within this hypothetical model, what would be the best way of going about doing it?

BONES!

Beef With Bacon

Things have been mighty quiet around here lately, so I figured it was time to complain about bacon. Americans seem to have a problem with bacon. They hide the fact that bacon is part of a normal American diet (and no, I do not respect vegetarians nor their preferences for vegetables).

A prime example is the BLT. Bacon. Lettuce. Tomato. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, why not call it a bacon sandwich? If you have turkey, lettuce and tomato you don't order a TLT. So why order a BLT? Order a bacon sandwich.

And then there's the club sandwich. Which is really just a sandwich with bacon. A turkey club, for example, is a big turkey sandwich with bacon. We need to be honest with ourselves.

Chilly Hillbilly 2007