Filed by Bil at 9:53 pm under Fightin' Words, Humanism, Love

We’ll start with the shoes.

I don’t really have that much to say about my shoes, other than it had been over a year since I had my own (functioning) pair of Converse All-Stars, but thanks to a Christmas miracle, I am once again strapped in canvas and rubber, burning down highways and ready to kick ass at a moment’s notice. Life is a thousand times better. These shoes will make 2008 SO much better. This pair especially, the first after a dark age in my life, will not only get me around, they will serve as a symbol that my spirit is running strong. When there is a roadblock, they will make a brief squeak on the floor and we’ll all just pick right up again, fast as before. In fact, these shoes will probably help me fly. Literally.

And speaking of Christmas miracles, several orphans in Chicago had a VERY merry Christmas this year thanks to my place of work and a little bit of war – penny wars, to be exact. Much of the credit of the success goes to my team, I might add.

Don’t get me wrong. When I say “my team,” I don’t mean I’m anybody’s supervisor. The Operations Dept. at my office has standing “Olympic” teams (”Olympic” because we all possess super-human strength and skill in addition to our rosy demeanors). The Great Penny Wars of 2007 was a competition between all the teams to bring in the most pennies.

Each team had a jar. When you put a penny into your team’s jar, you got a point. When you put a silver coin (or folding money) into another team’s jar, they lost points equivalent to the cent value of the coin or bill.

I give my team (who will remain nameless) the credit for stirring the competitive spirit of each team. There was a two-week window. Right at the beginning someone from my team put in about $12 in pennies. For the rest of the two weeks, each team murmur amongst themselves how best to bring down our team. It turned out the most popular strategy was to wait until the very last Friday of the competition and then BAM! All the pennies in their own jar, all the silver coins spread evenly amongst the rest, but with a huge portion of silver going into my team’s jar. Because we were so far ahead. One team in particular (who will NOT remain nameless – it was The Fighting Mongeese of Destruction…those bastards) spread horrible, nasty rumors and convinced people from other departments to place silver coins in our jar. These people were scared of our massive penny advantage, and they pulled out every dirty trick in the dirty book.

It was a tense couple of weeks, and the last battle of this war on the last day was nothing short of Gettysburg-esque. Coins were dropped. Tears were shed. Lives were changed forever.

One member of The Fighting Mongeese of Destruction placed $20 apiece into the other teams’ jars. Someone from another team followed suit. Someone else from yet another team had only $20 to give, so that person placed it into our jar. At the end of the day, each team wound up in the negatives by thousands of cents. I myself went to the bank and purchased a brick of pennies. I won’t give the exact dollar amount, but let’s just say this: it was thousands of dollars. Really. Swear. (Okay, not really.)

In the end, all this money went to an orphanage. The grand total was over $650 dollars. Our team came in at second place, having the second-smallest negative amount of points, just after those despicable Fighting Mongeese of Destruction. Bunch of rat bastard snake-eating weasels. They only won because they’re rich. Oh, well, the joke’s on them – the children were the real winners. Ha.

Honestly, I hope you all had as glorious and shoe-filled a holiday as I did. But now that the most wonderful and expensive time of the year is past, I’m going to focus on the important things…like getting a new car for Devon because hers died and mine is doing the car equivalent of coughing up blood and trying to replace it by drinking pure bacon grease – in other words, it’s going to die pretty soon, I can feel it. I’ll keep the interested portion of the world (all five of you) up to date on how that goes. Car buying is a frightening prospect, and my ability to maintain an unhealthy distrust of other human beings will be put to the test. Because while I don’t have any real experience buying cars, I know this much: NEVER TRUST A CAR SALESMAN. It sounds prejudicial, I know, but it’s the only way to get out of this kind of experience alive.

Stay tuned.