they've come for our souls

on just about any given day, there are vultures circling around my office building

it's a madhouse

insane when you look at them all.

you've been posted

the sheer volume of office supplies given out to me is staggering.

nine weeks of excuses

i've changed desks three times at the office.

the firewall's rules have changed more times than that.

today is st. patrick's day. a day where we all pretend to be just a little bit irish so that we all have an excuse to drink green beer until we puke green barf. it's also an excuse for office people to wear green clothes, and then talk aboot said clothing.

one of the annoying douchebags in my office has a multitude of leather jackets - all of them appear to be the exact same style (although bear in mind that i am MALE and unable to tell the subtle differences in women's clothing - that's why i shop at Old Navy) - but they're all different colours. some days we get the red leather jacket, some days back, grey, navy blue. i'm sure that her leather jackets probably reflect the mood she's in on any given morning. heck, it could just be one leather jacket that changes colour like a mood ring.

today's mood is irish, ergo today's colour is green.

and i think that the only thing funnier than a green leather jacket is series of comments that come along with that jacket. other women approach douchie to say things like "oh wow, that's quite the colour! that looks really ... nice!" - i think that's politespeak for "holy crap, you look like what happened when my dog ate that bag of spinach last spring."

three weeks later

somehow being lazy in the office is paying off for me. i've discovered that in my current place of work that when you have the ability to take control of a client conference call (a skill which the bulk of sales people seem to lack) that you will gain the respect of your management. it has been rumoured that i will be nominated for employee of the quarter for my conference call abilities.

lesson learned: you can succeed by doing less than you think you should. especially in the corporate world.

the road is tough

it's such a pain in the ass when the city in which you live has decided that in order to save money, they must wait until absolutely necessary to send out the snow plows. it took me 20 minutes to drive one block today, but strangely the same amount of time to turn around and go to work on a different road.

at my company, nobody can leave voicemails it seems. it's so bizarre. one of our corporate standards is that we're supposed to change our voicemail message every day (several times in a day if you've got meetings), but rather than leave a message for someone, people in this place just call around to other people and ask if the missing person is in the office.

heck, if you call in to the office main line, the receptionist is supposed to page out to someone who doesn't answer their extension right away and then ask the caller if they don't mind being put through to their voicemail.

i guess the idea is that it helps gain us customer service points, but i think it's almost getting a bit ridiculous. there's no reason i should get a phone call from someone asking if my supervisor is in the office when they can just leave him a bloody voicemail.

long lunch plus boredom equals tablecloth

just a note for all you canadian corporate monkeys like myself: you cannot get out of Montana's at lunch time in a reasonable time frame. your tablecloth will end up looking like this:

it's kind of hard to see in the picture, but the waitress had written We Love Appetizers, which I promptly changed to We Love CRappetizers.

because we all do love them.

today my company did the corporate lunch thing for the entire staff. it wasn't cardboard sandwiches from Druxy's though, it was corporate canada's second favourite flavourless meal option: greek food.

now, that's not saying that greek food is flavourless. although i've never been a fan of the greek food i have had in my life, i'm sure that most greek food is abundant in flavour. food chosen by corporations for employee luncheons tends to be where the flavour is removed from the food. i've sworn to myself that i will never eat another corporate sponsored stale, mayo soaked druxy's sandwich or shitty-white-sauce drenched plate of random greek food (read: weird looking greasy potatoes, chicken, rice and shitty salad) again .

why are HR people so addicted to such bad food? why do they feel the need to constantly pump that shit into our faces? who knows. i figure being that i'm only at the 9 year point in my career that i'm a good six years away from properly understanding the obsession with druxy's sandwiches and shitty luke-warm greek food.

i think the poor quality has something to do with the fact that food purchased from restaurants of any sort in bulk amounts is largely prepared with a deadline in mind rather than flavour or presentation. the amount of overcooked rice and yellow lettuce consumed by my free-lunch-addicted coworkers was rather outstanding though. i'm pretty sure that you could have some dude crap on a plate and mundane corporate employees would eat it as long as it was free and there was cake afterwards.

corporate douchebag communication

it seems to me that one of the most popular methods of communication for corporate douchebags is voicemail.  it's almost as though most of these corporate douchebags call each other knowing full well that the other douche they're trying to reach won't answer their phone and leave the message accordingly with the hope that when they get the call back with the info they need that it will be left for them in the same voicemail format.

 

i think it's like some sort of mark of honour, a comparison they can make when they actually get around to seeing each other face-to-face.  "i had seventeen voicemails this morning - it sure is busy in my department"

 

while i wonder to myself "and did you really need to listen to all of them on speakerphone you cunt?"

 

speaking of speakerphone, there are literally four conference calls going on within ear-shot of me right now all on speakerphone.  i kind of wonder as to the effectiveness of that situation.  they didn't all start at the same time, so someone had to have been able to hear for themselves that there's already a speakerphone cranked up volume-wise.  does it really make sense to have your speaker on too so that your client can hear everything that the other client is talking aboot?  and it's almost as if there's a volume war when captain arsehole behind me starts checking her voicemail.

total brutal

after over five months of waiting, my job actually seems to have purpose now. for the last four or five consecutive business days i have been getting assignments left, right and center for some of the most boring and stupid reports anyone could possibly imagine.



don't believe me? imagine a corporation saying "I'd like to know how much we've spent on Ford transmission repairs over the last six and a half years" and being serious, and that being your job.



but on a lighter note, i've got tuxedo pictures. first though, me looking concerned with headphones sticking out of my ears:

and me with a clean shave and nice looking duds:

almost doesn't look like the same person eh?

picture day in doucheland

i think i forgot to mention that today's picture day in my office.  yes, for some godforsaken reason, my company wants to have photos of every person and every team (let's hear it for team spirit!) in the company.  from what i understand, it's in the effort of compiling an office douchebag yearbook.

 

my main argument with respect to this is that if the company is going to the extent where we have an incentive program based entirely on saving the company money, why is it that they're paying for a professional photographer to come in and literally waste 15 minutes of time of every single employee in the office.  my estimate is that it's nearly 50 hours of lost productivity by doing this ridiculous yearbook idea on top of the costs to shoot the photos and actually produce the book.

 

well, every employee except myself.  i'm choosing to opt out for the aforementioned reason and choosing to waste my time in other manners.  my supervisor noticed first today that i hadn't shaved.  it's actually a pretty easy to make observation because i haven't shaved since the wedding.

 

the really funny thing about photo day is that my company has had almost a revolving door of staff turn-around since i started here.  i'm betting there's been a minimum of 15 people who've been let go/quit since i started here 5 short months ago.  so really, there's a good chance that by the time the "yearbook" is published that another dozen people who are in the photos will be "former" employees.  more gooder, all the time.

such a fine line between stupid and clever

there's a person in my office who is catastrophically stupid.  and i almost feel bad saying that because she is a really nice person, but damn.

 

i'm sure most people work with at least one of these people.  they try so hard to contribute to a discussion and may even chip in with an idea or two, but all too often those ideas are just... um... ridiculous?  absurd?  retarded?

 

tough to say.

 

like imagine establishing a fact in a meeting - perhaps your next scheduled meeting should be on a friday, but you have to reschedule it to wednesday because the office is closed.  everyone agrees and makes the notes on their respective note pads.  after agreeing on this fact, the office idiot pipes up saying "maybe we should reschedule friday's meeting because we won't be here..."

 

no kidding!  really?

 

i find as well that it takes exactly three explanations of a fact in order for it to sink into this person's mind.  in the meeting i will say "okay, so this event is monday then, and we're doing this" - this person's follow up would be something to the effect of what should this event be, and when should it take place.  someone else in the room will see the obvious look of frustration on my face, re-explain the situation and be presented with a second set of equally simple-to-answer but entirely ridiculous questions.  person three will chime in, reiterate what has been reiterated and finally, the information will be assimilated.

 

and the total elapsed time from explanation one to explanation three:  no more than five minutes.

 

it's kind of like watching a Pepe Le Pew cartoon, knowing full well that skunk should bloody well realize that not only should he realize that the cat doesn't want anything to do with him, but also that she's a fucking cat.  not even the same species dude.  she just has white paint on her back.  cats don't even look like skunks, and they certainly don't smell like them.

 

the only problem is that the office idiot isn't a cartoon and it's not funny at all, it's just frustrating.  frustrating like getting a double-double instead of a black coffee.  frustrating like watching Nancy Grace interview a defence attorney.

 

i swear before i'm through at this place i'm going to be one of those TGIF people.  if i set my screen saver to reference the end of the week or the end of the business day, please shoot me.

welcome to costco. i love you.

have i ever mentioned that the woman that sits in the office behind me checks every voicemail and makes/takes every phone call on speakerphone?

 

because if i haven't, then i should.  it's horrendously annoying.  and she always leaves her office door open so that all of us out in the cubicle farm can hear everything that's going on.

 

she's quite the beast of a woman too.  a little pudgy, a little old and a voice that could grate parmesan cheese.  she's got beady little eyes that try to hide behind expensive-but-not-stylish glasses and short blond hair that looks like it was coloured with javex (i'm sure it's proper colour is either grey, charcoal, or just plain awful - whatever colour satan's ass-hairs are).  she's a manager here and i think she's been an employee of the company for like 20 years or some shit.

 

and if the aforementioned things weren't bad enough - she sneezes so loud that you can easily hear her even in the rare instance when she does close her office door.  it's like she projects the sneeze with her manly, bellowing voice so that the others of her species can hear her call.

 

what's really funny though, is that while on one of these seamlessly never-ending speakerphone calls she'll belt out a few of these sneezes.  sometimes two or three in a row.  my very scientific and educated guess would be because her species is dwindling in numbers and she needs that call to be heard across the continent.

 

on top of it all she's got the holier-than-thou office manager attitude, like somehow by the grace that she has the word "manager" in her job title, that makes her superior to all others not just from a employer-employee standpoint, but with everything else in life.  she's got a bad case of one-upping-you syndrome - like if you've got a bmw 3-series, she's got a 5-series.  if you've got two meetings scheduled for the afternoon, she's got three.

 

every day i put on my headphones in an attempt to drown out her manly hollering voice, but the volume on my iPod only goes so loud and with a somewhat damaged auditory system it's difficult for me to go great lengths of time with my headphones on.

 

you know, she's the only person on my floor that locks her office door.  i'm not sure if there's some sort of reasoning behind that, but even the finance people don't go to that extent.  she will even lock her door when she's going out for one of her 15 smoke breaks every day (which make her smell wonderful).

 

and don't get me started on shoulder pads.

in which i wear a tuxedo, shave two days in a row and make a very short speech

so yes, it is in fact true.  i wore a tuxedo this weekend.

 

and let that also mark the first time in my 31 years that i've ever worn a suit of any kind (other than birthday of course!).  all in all, the day went quite well.  sure things were hectic during the setup in the morning of, and it did kinda rain during the outdoor ceremony, but the rain wasn't that bad and the day was pretty fun.

 

so - t. , if you're reading this:  happy birthday and thanks for a great time this weekend.  d:  thanks for picking me as your best man, and sorry my toast was short.  i could think of all the right things to say, but i think the nervousness of speaking to 50 people at the same time got me and everything got jumbled.

 

and that brings me to monday.  at work.  the expression "sounds like someone's got a case of the mondays" really applies to this work place.  it's so bizarre just how many of your standard office stereotypes actually happen here.  maybe it's just that i'm not accustomed to working in such an environment - maybe this is the "normal" office world and everything else i've worked in up to this point has been the exception.

 

it's been a day of waiting so far.  most days are.  today i have 4 assignments that require responses from the account manager that requested them, and i've had one assignment sent to me that was literally only about several minutes of work.  most of what i've done so far this morning has involved me eating mini-wheats, drinking coffee and texting my sister.  maybe i'll hit the bike shop today, or maybe even the guitar store.  or both if i'm feeling really ambitious.

things i have to do this weekend

• wear a tuxedo (my sister's getting married and i'm the best man eh!)
• shave (see above reasoning)
• drink beer (again, see above)

i actually shaved today in preparation for tomorrow.  i figured i probably hadn't done so in two or three weeks so if i tried scraping all that hair off my face tomorrow it would probably be more painful and bloody than a mel gibson movie.

 

also?  i ordered an iPhone from my cell phone provider the other day and was informed that there are backlogs in shipping them out still so i might not receive it until october even though i want it now.

 

the people that clean the office where i work seem to spend an odd amount of time trying to make sure that my desk is neat and tidy.  every morning the mess of papers is stacked and the plethora of cereal and cracker boxes that are strewn about my desktop are neatly aligned by size and content.  the pop cans and water bottles that litter my desk are always taken away, my pens are lined up neatly and my cutlery is put in proper order (fork, knife THEN spoon).

 

the only thing the cleaning staff doesn't seem to do is wash my coffee mug which is, in my opinion, probably the easiest thing they could do.  it's probably the most obvious thing that warrants attention on my desk too.  lined up cereal boxes and stacked paper are great, but day old coffee starts to smell if it's not attended to in a prompt manner.

 

but then again, nothing really makes sense in this place.  it seems like everyone in the company is extremely busy with shit to do EVERY DAY and that i'm the only one who's making their best effort to just kill time but not make it blatantly obvious that i'm doing so.  the really odd thing is that i think it's largely because other people here are ridiculously inefficient in their day-to-day tasks.  like an executive or a manager may request a report, i'd run the report and send it to them.  assuming that i do ever hear back from one of these people it's usually to the effect of "can you export this to Excel - it's not working on my computer for some reason."  this is usually a result of them trying to just copy and paste the information from the reporting application directly, which just plain doesn't work - so they have to ask for help.

 

and not just ask for help, but get in the elevator, come down two floors walk over to me and ask me at my desk rather than just pick up the phone and call me (i.e. pick up the phone, push four buttons, talk, hang up).  the whole "getting help exporting to excel" process generally eats up about 20-25 minutes of executive/manager time because they've got to stop and shoot the shit about how much rain we've had, and is this nice weather we're having going to last, and holy crap is gas ever expensive eh?

 

you know, another odd thing about this place is that i've never worked anywhere that had such an emphasis on the end of the day and the end of the week.  i'd go out on a limb and guess that at least one in ten computers in the office has a screen saver set to say something like "is it friday yet???" or "is it 5 o'clock yet???"  is that a regular thing in office land or have i been magically transported to some bizarre tv show?

 

i wonder if Jack White will give me guitar lessons.

698 is awfully close

close, but not quite enough.  my 4GB iPod nano currently has 698 songs on it, but that's not quite enough for the entire work week plus travel time.  i figure that i'll have to repeat some songs starting late tomorrow afternoon.

 

that's the excitement that i'm looking forward to.  or the the excitement to which i'm looking forward i suppose is the gooder grammer.

 

grammar?

 

grammy?

 

i'm not going to pretend that spelling is my forte (pretend i typed the accent in there so it sounds like fortay).  it once was.  in my university edumucation days, or even my college edumucation, but it seems to me that in the last couple of years of being bored to death in the work place that my spelling skills are slowly declining.  i think it means i need to read more.

 

this week did have its busy moments though.  i had 12 reports that i had to deploy for a client, although when i deployed them it turned out their logins aren't set up correctly so they can't even access them anyways.  not to mention the fact that the dude that requested the reports hasn't replied to any of my questions.  do these reports suit his needs?  who knows?  not me, nor do i care.

 

i've also determined that caring about the end result is not nearly as important as actually just finishing the product.  in the roughly 128 days of my employment at this company i've completed 78 projects and have received only 2 acknowledgements that what i sent out was good.  i know that generally you can follow the "no news is good news" rule, but this place seems to take the "no news" part a little too far.

 

i have also yet to determine whether or not coming to work between 30 and 40 minutes late every day is impacting my employer's opinion of me.  my 3 month probationary status with the company has come and gone without a hint of notice from anyone other than myself and my direct supervisor seems to be of the opinion that if his boss doesn't mention that it's necessary, then it isn't.  in the grand scheme of things i can't see it being a terrible thing to come in late if you're not actually doing any work when you get here.  i'm almost as productive in my car on the way to work as i am sitting in front of this computer.  the main difference between me at work and me in the car is that in the car i can't hit the web to determine what kind of guitar i want to buy or what kind of bike would suit me best for the winter months.

 

in theory, i should probably be more cautious about the things i mention with respect to me working.  all internet activity is monitored by the Surf Control and about half of the world's best time-wasting web sites are blocked.

 

boss, if you're reading this - i'm working my ass off here.  the report's almost done.

most people think they would kill for my job

"so then mmat, what do you do for a living there eh?"

nothing.

and in a way, i'm not entirely exaggerating. the amount of work i do in a day does not justify my being employed, but somehow i remain. i've passed through the 3 month probationary period (sans performance review to this point) so from a legal perspective it will now be difficult for the company to justify letting me go.

do i choose to do nothing every day? well, yes and no. i choose to continue to work here until something better comes along, but i do not choose my workload - or lack thereof.

every day i come to work and hope to the gods that something will have happened and they'll need me to work my ass off. i keep hoping that at some point someone will say "hey mmat, this is why we were so excited to hire you - we need you to work your way through this...." but that never happens. i sit, and wait.

and the waiting game is not the most fun game to play. my internet access is extremely limited: no Youtube, no music-related web sites, most online comic sites are blocked, no SomethingAwful.com for me either. most of the images don't even come through in my Google Reader.

and doing non-internet related things is risky based on the location of my desk. i have one of those desks that about 60% of the people on my floor walk past at least twice a day. somehow, that seems to always be my fate. at my last job, i sat directly in front of the CEO's office, the job previous i was sitting in front of the VP of Operations. so some days i read a book, some days i doodle in my sketch book, but anything i do has to be in relatively short sessions. reading too long will encourage the "what are you reading" people to start asking questions, drawing too much sparks the "ooh, are you an artist?" comments.

i'm not an artist. i'm just incredibly bored.

earlier in the year, my dad got me a subscription to Bicycling Magazine. i have read every issue cover-to-cover so far this year. even the advertisements.

i suppose i should be happy that i am at least employed, and to a certain extent i am. i am surprised that the company for which i work pays me to come in and forces me to spend a full 8+ hour day here. i'd really like to have something to do to pass the time though. other people in the office seem to be busy - or maybe they're just really good at pretending.

and today, the day before a long weekend, will be one of the worst. i expect anyone who has the authority to request work from me today will either be taking the day off or leaving the office early. being that i'm a new employee, i do not yet qualify for time off and will sit here drawing pictures and reading The Great Shark Hunt until 5 pm.

on time like canada frickin post

today i decided to show up to work with a clean shave, freshly cut hair and nice looking clothes.  more than likely people will think i've got a job interview, and i find it fun to make people think that.

 

i don't have an interview by the way.  looking for work is annoying.

 

but i also managed to show up on time, probably for the first time this week.  well before the twice-a-day guys even assembled to go out.  the funny thing about this morning's coffee run for them is that the leader of this group (my boss) was actually a good 40 minutes late for work and hadn't even logged in yet.  he just strolled in at ten minutes after nine, set down his bag and said "let's go gentlemen, i need my coffee this morning"

 

what was i doing at work so early (aka on time)?  well yesterday i actually worked, so this morning i emailed the last report i was working on and started hitting my limited internet access for a new hat and a bike i will probably never buy because i can never make up my mind about things (how could i possibly betray Agent Orange?).  i've been lacking discipline over the last week or so with respect to getting on my bike so a $700 purchase in that department may not be qualified at this point.  i probably can justify buying a hat because hey - twenty bucks right?

 

 

the tim horton's phenomenon

as almost every Canadian citizen knows and understands, the place for you to get a reliable cup of coffee in Canada is Tim Horton's.  some people have philosophized that they put addictive chemicals in their coffee, some people believe that there's something about the cream that they put in the coffee that somehow makes it more addictive, but the fact is that it's just an inexpensive generic and reliable cup of coffee is what truly makes it what it is.  if you buy a Tim Horton's coffee in downtown Toronto, it will taste the same as the cup of Tim Horton's coffee you bought in Vancouver and it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg to buy it.  a generic coffee at Starbucks will cost you over $2, but that same generic coffee at ol' Timmy's will only cost you $1.40.

 

and anyone who works in the corporate world in Canada knows that Tim Horton's is an essential part of your daily office routine.  my last two jobs showed me that Canadian office workers have an uncanny addiction to the caffeine in the aforementioned coffee and the routine involved in acquiring it.  pass by any Tim Horton's at 8:30 am and you'll see for yourself the lineup of cars that will extend beyond their drive-thru, circle the parking lot and generally go out into the street.

 

at my new job, i see this corporate coffee addiction on an astronomical level.  there is a Tim Horton's across the street to the north AND across the street to the east.  my direct manager leads a group of 3 people out every morning at 9am and returns with a minimum of ten coffees for various people in the office.  another group heads out at 3pm for the same thing.  based on my calculations, the general area where i sit spends approximately $30 a day on coffee over there.

 

these twice-a-day guys will often dump unnecessary amounts of money into this habit.  for some of them it's the status of a decent tasting cup of coffee at a decent price.  "at least i don't shell out $5 a cup at Starbucks!" for some it's just an excuse to go out and have a cigarette while "walking" or "getting some fresh air".  the twice-a-day guys are helpful because when they start stirring about you know you can put your feet up and goof off for the next 20 minutes and not get caught (well, if your boss is involved with the twice-a-day guys like mine is).

 

and then there's the sippers.  the sippers are often women in the office (sorry, not meant to sound sexist or anything) and they buy a coffee on the way to work, usually in the drive through.  they will take ALL DAY to drink the coffee purchased first thing in the morning; it's not uncommon to see one of their half-empty cups of coffee on their desk well into the afternoon hours - but that's not the only bizarre thing about it.  they will claim to have the same addiction as the twice-a-day guys, but will only ever have the one coffee and likely never finish it.  the most odd behaviour though is the transportation of this cup throughout the day.  for any meeting, movement around within the office or general chit-chat the sippers will always have that cup in their hand.  they will likely drink nothing from the cup during the entirety of the meeting/conversation/whatever, but they will have that cup with them.  about the only place the cup won't go with them is the bathroom - but i suppose that i can't really confirm that because i've never actually been into the women's bathroom.

 

it's almost as if the sippers want to be caffeine addicts, but because they can't handle it they at least go with the status of carrying the cup around.  it kind of reminds me of high school drinking parties - you'd see those two-drink-drunks walking around with that room temperature beer, wasted out of their minds and often talking about how much beer they've had.  everyone knew that they were lying, but nobody had the heart to say anything to their face.  it is much the same with the sippers, walking around with their stale, cold double-doubles talking about how they can't live without their Tim Horton's.

 

and between the sippers, the twice-a-day guys and all of the casual coffee drinkers, i'd say it's a ratio of about 50% of desks that you can walk past at any given moment and see a Tim Horton's cup.  my company consumes so much of their coffee that the local Tim Horton's actually makes charitable donations and supplies food and coffee when the company does fundraiser events.  it's such an odd place.

overdone?

SO, this weekend i learned a valuable lesson:  don't over-do it with new shoes on.

 

i've learned this lesson before actually.  every time i buy a new pair of shoes i learn this lesson.  i'm sure we all do.  you would think that with the amount of times we've all had blisters on our heels and ankles that there would be some sort of click that goes on in our brains that says "whoah nelly, walking for several hours in new shoes is a stupid idea"

 

but no.

 

so this fine and sunny monday morning i sit here with blisters on my heels from new shoes.  the crazy thing is that the rest of my feet are fine.  the new shoes are extremely comfortable otherwise.

 

totally off topic though...

 

in the corporate world, does it really count as being properly dressed for the office if you're wearing a white dress shirt with a Corona Beer t-shirt under it?  does that mean that i can get away with wearing my running shoes to the office?  because i did (wear running shoes - not the beer t-shirt.  i've never owned and will never own one of those).

 

also, i never bring enough fruit to work.  in my efforts to reduce the number of crappy foods i eat (which is in an effort to get rid of the ol' office belly) i try to eat as much fruit as possible at work but never seem to bring enough.  and damn that fruit for having such a high water content.

slow like my brain

it's not awesome when work is so dead that i struggle to find something to do.  business seems to come and go in this new role.  sometimes i can be busy for two or three days straight, but at times i've got nothing to do at all.  the unfortunate thing is that the nature of my company's business keeps the majority of other people in the office tremendously busy all the time, leaving opportunities for intra-office meandering and chit chat to a minimum.  i've even exhausted what i can look at in the local bike shop here.  it's a pretty small shop and their in-store inventory is never that big so i've seen, picked up and messed around with pretty much all of what they have.  the whole "you have to be here until 5" thing sucks too.

 

i suppose i have to keep positive about it, obviously it could be worse.  i could be stuck at the "you have to be here until 5" job and still have to commute for an hour and a half after that.  at least at this place i'm close enough to either ride my bike or drive for less than 15 mins to get home.

 

actually, if i ride my bike i can get here in 18 minutes.  i'm not quite sure how it works that in my car it takes me 15 but on the bike is 18.  i think it may have to do with the pace that i ride - it must cause me to miss out on most of the stop lights.  next week i intend to ride my bike exclusively - rain or shine - thereby reducing my carbon footprint to almost nothing.

 

well, maybe not.  i keep the a/c in my house cranked pretty high.  riding my bike will probably just balance that out.  barely.