The Latte Mug

What is it? The Latte Mug is a virtual metaphoric “happy place”. It is where we retreat to brew up new and interesting ideas, concepts, theories, and art projects. It is a place to exchange thought and conversate with ourselves and others. A café for thinkers, idealists, intellectuals, movers and shakers. A pre revolutionary war room. I think you get the point.

Why is it needed? This place is kind of like our ideal social gathering, a place where, if we could talk face to face with all the people we IM and email, we’d meet up here. It is needed to nurture our creative souls.

What will be the discussion topics? Any and everything, there are no limits at the Latte Mug!
So will you, please, come sip our brew?

CC Relationships

Today I want to talk about relationships. When you are in a relationship, a long term relationship to be precise, it is understood that at least one person is going to grow. And if the relationship intends to continue, the relationship will have to grow with the people involved. Some grow faster than others, and a long term relationship has to be flexible enough to grow and move as the people move into the next phases of their lives. In an ideal situation, both people are growing around the same time, in the same direction.
With this definition of relationship growth understood, we here at Cubicle Crusaders have an announcement:

WE ARE GROWING!

We started this blog as a way to vent about our current circumstances. As with life and relationships, our circumstances have changed, which we were hoping for to begin with. We began the practice of speaking what we want into being. The good and the bad. We have been very careful when outlining our dreams and goals for this main reason and we are daily surprised when a wish comes true. So now it is time to unveil the next phase of our journey:

The Latte Mug!

We are shedding the shackles of the cube. We never wanted to be here, and we never intended to stay. Although only one of us has successfully (forcefully) made it out of the cube, both of our minds have virtually left the cube building. And we want you guys to meet us where we are, instead of reflecting on where we were. We are in the latte mug, chilling. We will explain, in detail, what it looks like from where we are, and we are inviting you to join us. So please be patient as we pack our boxes full of insightful experiences to take with us, and pack up some trash bags full of needless crap to leave behind. The Latte Mug only has room for wind to blow us up and closer to our dreams, not cement bricks to weight us down during our journey.

Stay Tuned!!!!

The many hats we wear at work.

There are times when we’re at work when we have to take on the job duties of others. This is especially true with the workforce shrinking so rapidly. For those ambitious folks, doing the duties of others and learning new skills is a good way to pad our resume and get a bunch of “free” experience. I call it free because we are often not paid extra to pick up someone else’s slack. It is still a learning experience, and I am an ambitious girl, so yes I do get geeked whenever one of these tight wads lets me do something outside of my immediate duties. And I’m going to toot my own horn for a minute as well; I can indeed do many things quite well, without reading a manual. So anyway for the past week or so I’ve had to put on my videographer hat.

Videography is something I learned how to do in undergrad, along with a number of other handy things that can’t be disclosed online. So anyway, I haven’t done it in several years, so when I inherited this project, I almost did back flips. I got to run around the office with camera, mic, and light kit in hand working with talent less people who can’t speak or read or take direction.

I was feeling like Tyler Perry up in this piece and was loving it! This free experience was definitely priceless for me. I got to beef up my resume AND portfolio as a designer.

I just wanted to take the time to reflect on a positive experience I’ve been having. It is true that I am dead tired, a little cranky, and frustrated with my coworkers and management. This is very very true, but in the end, it was worth it. You can’t put a dollar amount on experience, not as an amatuer anyway.

Happy Friday Ya’ll!

If I Were the Boss: Hair Salon

Okay, Naturally Alise here, I am still alive... :)

On this edition of "If I were the Boss" I choose a hair salon. First off, I would like to say that I ABHOR hair salons, which is why I want to create on that even I would love. So enjoy, and stop on by, lol....


* My salon would be a natural hair salon, no offense to the relaxer sisters, but I personally can not stand the chemical smell of relaxers in a regular salon, it would drive me batty.

* It would feel like you were at a snazzy jazz lounge, lots of pillows and comfy couches in the waiting area.

* Complimentary tea (the good tea), coffee, & water for patrons.

* Individual rooms instead of "booths". One thing I hate about salons is the lack of privacy, and I am not shy, so imagine how a timid person feels all on display. I also hate the cattiness and gossip that takes place in may salons, so that would cut down on that. Each booth would have music available for the client to choose what they would like to listen to.

* There will be classes available for healthy hair care, nutrition, days for yoga, basically it will be a beauty/health one-stop shop.

* Will offer hair-braiding services on-location if needed. Sometimes if you have to sit for 4 hours you might want to be in the comfort of your own home.

* I would emphasize to my stylists the importancee of timeliness and keeping appointments. My biggest pet peeve is going to a salon and not having my appointment respected and honored.

What would YOU do if you were the boss?

*There is actually a natural salon that I used to frequent in Raleigh, NC that has about 75% of the things I would like in my salon... Here is a link to their site: Shatzi's Day Spa .

Who Watched the Watchmen?

Time for a cube break injection of movie madness. This week’s movie for thought is The Watchmen.

Anyone who saw this movie probably knows exactly where I’m going with this. This movie traumatized me, plain and simple. I’m an avid fan of sci-fi, horror, and action movies, there isn’t too much I haven’t seen as far as violent and gory. BUT the Watchmen had a little (big) something extra that I haven’t seen in awhile on the big screen, not since seeing Forgetting Sara Marshal and even then that was little. The Watchmen had almost 3 hours worth of peek a boo big blue p*nis. Apparently one of the characters, coincidently the big blue guy, didn’t like pants, boxers or briefs. And apparently the camera liked to pan out and get him below the belt. The combo left me distracted and mesmerized all at the same time. I tried to pay attention to the movie, honestly I did, but come on, after 1 hr + of background and dialogue the movie puts you through, your going to want to see some action. Its not my fault I got my action kicks from seeing how many times I was going to see Dr. Manhattan’s little Hattan per scene.

I’m still trying to process the movie to see if I actually liked it. The full male frontal and back nudity still has me tripping though. I thought I was seeing a pron. Please believe, Dr. Manhattan wasn’t the only one streaking across the screen in slow motion.

From all the people I know who have seen the movie, they all brought up little Hattan’s appearance as a distraction. Did anyone else experience this trauma while watching the Watchmen?

A Step Towards a Dream

This is a new segment we want to start that highlights the things we do, day to day, that draw us closer to our dreams. It is so easy to get discouraged or distracted, especially now when there is so much negativity around us. However, we cubicle crusaders refuse to accept the easy way, the negativity, and want to chronicle how we stay above it all.

A step towards a dream is anything that you do, or happens to you during your day that can be seen as supporting a dream.

I’m going to pop this off with what I did yesterday:

I have a dream or rather goal of writing a book. Many books actually. But life, mental blocks, fear, whatever, keeps holding me back. So my step towards my dream was setting up a standing time to dedicate to writing. Specifically I’m meeting with a friend, who is working on her dissertation, at a coffee shop, and for those 2 hours, she works, and I work. That is the goal of the session, to get something written. A once a week appointment that I have to keep, dedicated to writing. I don’t have to think about anything else but writing while we are at the coffee shop. And I’m feeling good about it.

If I were the Boss IV

Today’s business is a GYM!

I’ve had a recent experience that made me think about how I would want to run my gym. Last year I took some exercise classes at my job, which is mostly non-white. The class was run by an average sized sista, which means her size was over 10, who’s body shape wasn’t typical, no cola bottle, no apple shape, no brick house, she was just…hmmm well anyway, the sista didn’t fit into any stereotype of what “fit” is supposed to look like. She had some huge thighs, but they were solid muscle. My point is, she had some weight and size on her. I had so much fun in that class because very few people in the class were “fit”, there was no unreachable expectation of what being in shape was. It was a class full of working people (yes we had guys too) who had made a decision to get right. We bitched and moaned, but we had fun.

Recently I bought a pilates dvd. I call myself working out at home. I popped the tape in and got ready to stretch and strengthen my core and up popped these two skinny white girls on the screen. They were telling me how to lift and stretch and roll, and all I could think about was how easy it was for their lean bodies to roll and lift and how I was struggling because my thighs are bigger than they used to be, how my boobs and stomach and legs all squish together when I try to roll into myself and how I just didn’t think I was doing it right. I was NOT motivated to continue. I miss my own “real world” instructor (yes I know I’m going back to the class at work, sheesh).

SO if I had a gym, I would have “real world” instructors. I would get some girls with some meat on them, some instructors that reflect my target population to lead the classes. Yes I do have a target population, my people!

At the gym I pay for, we have a chiropractor. At my gym I’d have a dietitian.

At the gym I pay for, we have a juice bar. At my gym I’d have a mini grocery store stocked with the kinds of food we should be eating, the alternatives to the crap we crave. Often when we tell people to find healthy alternatives, they have no clue what you mean. I want to actually SHOW people what is meant by a healthy alternative. Education is a lifelong endeavor.

And maybe a free martial arts class for the kids while the parents are working out…

Maybe a collaborative effort between schools who can’t afford good gym equipment and training programs for athletes with potential. An Olympic training program for high school athletes maybe… *ok these guys aren't trying out for the olympics, but they could. just a little motivation disguised as eye candy. The City Gym Boys.

So far that’s all I have brewing for my “real world” gym targeted towards ethnic peoples.

How would you run your GYM?

Will the real supervisor please stand up?

For those of us who have ever worked under someone else (also known as making cream for another man’s dream), we are pretty familiar with management styles.

Some managers/supervisors micromanage,
some of them are totally hands off to the point when you forget they even
work there,
some of them are schizophrenic- sometimes they micromanage, sometimes they
don’t, hmmm.

Some of them don’t have a clue as to what you or your coworkers do, BUT can delegate and organize their butts off.
Some don’t have a clue and it sabotages everyone’s work efforts.
Some of them are experts in their field and you actually respect them.

I’m here today to talk about those manager/supervisors who linger somewhere in the middle of all that I just described above. You know the ones that you can’t figure out their motive, their agenda, or their purpose. All you know is that you are miserable and every morning you drag your ass out of bed to deal with the unknown. I’ve had a few like this, and the common denominator is, of course, me. I’ve had people say that maybe they are intimidated by me, and they just don’t know how to handle me so they spaz at the mere whiff of my bath and body works. I’ve had people say that the incompetent assume that everyone else is just as incompetent as they are, therefore I get treated like crap just cuz. I’ve ascertained that my round (and increasingly growing more round) peg ass just wasn’t meant to fit into their tiny square peg positions. ok ok yes we know, the cubicle crusaders weren’t meant for the cube. Yes we devoted this whole blog to our escape from the cube. And one of us has made it out (yay). But one of us is still here. And I think it would be unfair to shield the public from my daily adventures in cube land. So I continue my grievances.

I’ve concluded that on top of working diligently to get out of the cube, while I’m here I need to maintain. I’m starting to think that I need to be the supervisor and that I need to be running things around here. I mean, sitting around waiting to be lead hasn’t really worked out for me, if anything its worked against me. I figured if I just kept my head low and stayed under the radar I would be ok. Yeah it worked for all of one minute, and in this time of layoffs and such, being invisible aint what you want to be. Truth be told I have been knocked upside my head for stepping it up in the past. Which precipitated my backing down and keeping quiet, but not anymore. Its rough out here and I hate to take on the mentality of every sucka out for themselves, but danngit I just gotta do it. Time for me to step it up and lead!

I’ll keep you posted…..
and stay tuned for my work ethics (a deeper look into how I would run a business) blog coming later this week!