Hutcompany, Inc. LLC

Every couple of years I remember that the Myers-Briggs test exists and give it a whirl. I’ve consistently been an INTJ, or “Mastermind” personality. I think it can best be summed up in the following sentence from the assessment:

“Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead.”

Ben immediately described this as “lazy”, but I prefer to think of it as “Masterminded.”

Other famous Masterminds from history include:
Alan Greenspan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Ulysses S. Grant, Frideriche Nietsche, Niels Bohr, Peter the Great, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, Sir Isaac Newton

I’m excited by those odds…. it’s a veritable meat market over here.

After referring to myself as Joanna M.H. all morning, I’ve decided that Andrew W.K. is a stupid name.

Lately I’ve gotten really into the National Geographic channel. My theory is that their shows sound boring, but are actually great. I’m not sure how they could remedy this, but in order to test it out, I force myself to watch the first 15 minutes of any show on the channel, no matter how boring it is…. to date this has caused me to watch a show about Big Foot, and another on the uses of carbon.  Now, I know what you’re thinking “wow those sound boring.”  But you’re wrong! – Both were great.

To prove my point, I give you a photo from their website of Jake the cat, who chased a bear up a tree.

We’re 36 days in, and I’m still deciding what to give up for lent.  I suppose that, by default, I gave up eternal salvation this year.

Which means I was pretty torn about which e-card to choose:

Last year, I gave my boss a killer birthday present. I knew he was obsessed with Sex and the City, and bought him 2 tickets to the Sex and the City bus tour through New York. I actually didn’t intend for the 2nd ticket to be for me, but he insisted and I wound up taking a half-day off in the spring and getting cozy on a bus with 30 fanatical mid-west women and my 1 fanatical manager.

About an hour into the ride we stopped at the sex shop featured in a few of the episodes. We did not just drive by the store, but (lucky for us) there was a 30 minute stop in the store to do some shopping. And guess what everybody!! The store was offering a 1-time deal on the S&TC ladies fav’ vibrator for tour guests only!

Justin and I locked eyes. We had a strict work relationship: results-oriented, no-nonsense, and no excuses that was in a bit of a turmoil.

Justin: So. Are you going to buy something?

Me: ………. I’m going next-door to get some coffee.

Astrology. Huh. I once saw two girls refuse to speak to someone at a party after finding out they were a Sagittarius. It confirmed my suspicion that they were crazy, and also caused me to start lying about my sign thereafter.

But the worst error of a reasonable mind is to make assumptions. Let’s say there is something to astrology. I mean, what if there really is a connection between the orbital movement of stars and planets millions of light-years away and whether or not I’ll get a raise at work today? In an effort to find out, I’m taking a look at my horoscopes today. If it is a science, if there really is something there, then I should be seeing some trends. We all look at the same stars, right?

I started with Tarot.com, the provider that Google uses for my homepage. My reading for today was: “You may not be very happy.” Oh crap.

Determined not to sink into depression for the rest of the day, I noticed they have scopes for different groups of people. I tried out my LesbianScope: “A surge of confidence has you ready to take over the world.” Ok. Well, that’s a little better. I guess lesbian Leos have great things going on today and, maybe I could just lie to the stars about my sexual orientation? I hope lesbians read their lesbian-specific horoscope – they might forget to take over the world today.

After continuing to comb through horoscopes, there were two that came out as my favorites, due to their straightforward messages. Yahoo astrology’s: “Do something just for the fun of it today! Forget all about getting stuff done.” vs. Tarot’s: “You must take care of your obligations.”

If astrology is subjective enough that it can provide me with two completely opposing horoscopes for today, I think I’ll pass on the experts and just do a little prediction of my own. According to the weather report, it’s going to be 40 degrees and rainy today. Based on my sign, this probably indicates: You will spend much of your day inside playing Wii. Maybe you should also do the dishes, the kitchen is getting pretty gross.

I don’t know about the part about the dishes, but overall that seems pretty close.

The major portion of my vacation last week was spent scuba diving. We were most excited to go diving at night, in pitch dark water with flashlights.

About 10 minutes in, we found a squid! All 4 of us had it in the beam of our lights – you could tell that it was watching us, hovering only a few feet away. The night dive was perfect to see the way the colors changed across his back. Suddenly, a spear shot out and drove through the squid, a hand grabbed it, and it was dropped into a hunting bag.

It was all over so fast… leaving only a cloud of ink in the water.

Why did this happen? Why was life so tragically knocked down before my eyes in those cold black waters? Why did it have to end like this?

I learned the answer during the drive back to the dive shop: “There’s good eatin on those. Cut it down. Fry it up with some eggs and you’ve got yourself breakfast.”

And, I have to give it to him, it’s delicious.

On St. Patrick’s Day having red hair, blue eyes and freckles is a real pain in the ass.

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted the Standford Prison Experiment; taking a group of college students and having them live as fake guards or prisoners in a simulation jail. It’s one of the most famous studies in psychology because after only 6 days into the 2 week study they were forced to cancel – the guards had become “sadistic” and the prisoners “were depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.”

In 1998 my high-school English teacher performed a similar study to teach us about the original: by assigning half of us to be slaves and half to be slave owners for the duration of 1 school day.

I was a slave owner – paired with Pat, a boy I had known my entire life, as my slave. That day I had Pat do everything I could think of for me… he carried my book-bag to classes, pulled out my chair, and brought my lunch to me. He fetched forgotten items from my locker, took notes in all the classes we had together, and opened doors for me. If we weren’t in a class together, he was allowed to go to his class, but had to immediately report back to me to carry my things after the bell.  At one point I became kind-of tired and had him give me piggy-back rides to classes.  Overall it was a pretty sweet day.

The next day we had a class discussion about how things had gone. It turns out that every single other slave owner had freed their slave after 2nd period! Apparently they thought it was whack and had given up on the whole thing. The entire class time was devoted to talking about my behavior that day – I was renowned among both students and faculty as a slave driver.

In retrospect, all I can think about now is how sweet this scenario would be to have at work today.