INTERRUPTION: Marshall is the Weirdest

This is Marshall. He works in our finance department. Tracy sent these pictures to me via email with the subject heading "KSPH 301 Disc Jockey." I mentioned that it was funny because he was wearing Ravens purple AND Steelers yellow (well, a lighter version). Being a hardcore Broncos fan, Marshall disliked my comments.

I guess this is him arguing with someone on the "radio" line about fantasy football?

UPDATE: Tracy told me that Marshall was wearing purple for Spirit Day, which aims to raise awareness about and eradicate bullying, specifically of LGBT youth. I'm an active ally of the LGBT movement, but it's been a bad week for me, so the day completely slipped under my radar. Ironically, I wasn't wearing purple yesterday, so I wasn't even "accidentally" participating. Today being Purple Friday, however, I am rockin' a purple tee and a purple tank under it. So I "missed it" by one day.

Good on Marshall for wanting to show support for a very important cause though.

Nikki Post: LOL

I was cleaning up my "Ray vs. Troy" folder on my computer when I found this picture. I don't think I posted it back when we were doing the play-off/Super Bowl pool, which is a pity because it's AWESOME. I won the office pool by a ludicrous margin because I was the ONLY person who picked the Ravens through everything! I even managed to get some of the spreads correct! Oh, sweet succulent victory. I shit-talked to everyone in our group, ESPECIALLY the IT Director, who was in second place but had won the year before.

Here we see Shawn giving me my winnings. I WAS going to have a picture of me "making it rain," but ultimately I wanted to get a picture of Shawn being sad giving me all that sweet, sweet, sweet cash. What did I do with the money? I'll be damned if I remember. Probably bought several rounds of drinks for friends or took mi novio out to dinner.

Jesus...what other Super Bowl photos did I not publish? Well...here are a few. What the hell.

Doing a (disgusting-tasting) purple vodka shot with my bartender Amy

KIND of a big deal at the game

Troy is such a sweet man! Always supportive

The GREATEST PHOTOSHOP OF ALL TIME

My boss Lyndsey has been teaching herself Photoshop and trying to boost her skills by practicing on her coworkers. I posted to Facebook a picture of me that she'd edited and asked friends what they thought of it so she could get some constructive criticism. Overall, the reviews were positive, although we agreed that my face had too many shadows removed, leaving it looking a little fake. My friend Shannon, with whom I worked at Loyola, suggested that I ask Lyndsey to Photoshop my head onto Ray Lewis' body. I passed the suggestion along to Lyndsey, and in two minutes, this is the masterpiece that she created:

This picture made me laugh so loudly and so hard at work that I cried at my desk. It's the greatest thing I've ever seen, and it's now my Facebook profile picture.

The Most Important Purple Friday of Them All

This is it. The final Purple Friday of the season. Two more sleeps (as T-Sizzle says) until the big game. Two more sleeps until the Ravens fans take over Choppers Sports Bar in Denver and make the walls shake with our cheers. And how are we celebrating? With the best damn Purple Friday around!

First up, my parents:

Here's Mom, rocking her traditional Purple Friday/Game Day outfit.

She's even got her nails all Raven'd up

My daddy just had a full hip replacement and was in the hospital today. Doesn't mean that Mom and I would let him get away with not rockin' the purple! <3

My first office job in Baltimore was at a spring factory in the county. Here are my former coworkers, rockin' the purple! (Front row: Darrell and Steve; from L to R: Tracey, Kelle, Wendy, Kim, Linda, Maria, Mary Ann, and Bonnie)

My co-hostess with the co-mostess for Sunday, Caroline, caw-cawing it up at her office in Denver

College friend Andrew has gone crazy and dyed his hair purple. (The "fu manchu" is left over from last year's playoffs.) He's in enemy territory - SAN FRANCISCO - so he obviously needs to show his pride!

Gordon in Scotland is ready for the big game on Sunday! CAW CAW

I went to get a burrito today from Big City Burrito on campus, and the cashier was a Ravens fan! Stoked I'm not the only one at Anschutz to rock the Ravens!

I posted this at the beginning of the play-offs, before we stomped all over the two best quarterbacks in the league. Looks like MY hope for 2013 came true! (Other hopes: sleep, a clue, money, an early spring, more jigsaw puzzles for the office.)

Should anyone else reading this want to get in on the Purple Friday love, just email me your picture, and I'll add it here. :D

Pre-PRE-gaming - Broncos Edition

I came to work in my Haloti Ngata jersey today so as to keep up my half of a pinkie-promise that Finance Guy Marshall and I had made last night. Guess who DIDN'T show up in his Broncos jersey?! You NEVER break a pinkie-promise, am I right? I also brought an extra, "professional" purple-and-black outfit to wear in case my Broncos fan boss didn't like my choice of attire; she ended up not caring! So I've been walking the halls and manning the front desk of work rockin' #92. Good day.

I haven't gotten as much crap from coworkers as I thought I would. Many of them ARE members of the Broncos loyal fan base, but we all understand that it's just a football game. My view going into the game: if we win: LOLOLOLOL PEYTON MANNING OH EM GEE WE MIGHT HAVE A SHOT AT THE SUPER BOWL AGAIN YOU GUYS. If we lose: I got to see Ray Lewis's last game in the NFL; that's a special moment.

Here's how my Broncos coworkers dressed up today, and here's the week's final retirement party picture.

Breaker of the pinkie-promise

Kristie, our Facilities lady, bleeds orange

I kept my Purple Power towel (waved at M&T Bank Stadium last season when we swept the Steelers) and Lyndsey's Broncos towels (waved at Mile High this year when they beat the Steelers) at my front desk for most of the morning. Shenanigans ensued.

I later decided to tape them to Shawn's wall. See, it's a subtle put-down of the Steelers.

Shawn's...special

Transcript:

Troy: "Broncos v Ravens? What's it going to come down to? A Ray Rice miracle play? A rookie kicker? A Peyton TD pass at the last minute?"

Ray: "CHINCHILLAS! WE'RE GONNA THROW THEM AT PEYTON! THEIR FUZZINESS WILL DISTRACT HIM, FORCING MISTAKES!"

CONGRATULATIONS, SHAWN!

We all know that Shawn's full of it, but now he has two fancy letters after his name that confirm it: Shawn ____, BS. Shawn has finished his last class and now has a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology. Two of his coworkers, Linda and Gabe, decorated his office area this morning in celebration.

The hallway leading to Shawn's office (Note RvT on the door)

Our special snowflake in his decorated office

Shawn told me that the balloons are attached to his desk chair, so every time he glides across his office to work on a different computer, the balloons hit him in the back of the head. How fitting. ;)

Happy Veterans Day, Shawn!

And a happy Veterans Day to all the other men, women, and DOGS! (because they're vets too) who have fought abroad for freedoms that we all take for granted. Special love to my two vets Mike and Pat; I'm VERY glad that you're both home safely. And much respect to Kevin, our school's HR Director, who is also a vet and has a pic in his office of him and his brothers-in-arms hanging out with Robin Williams. No big deal.

The boys give Shawn a special shout-out today for his service doing IT work in the Air Force in Iraq. To be honest, we could end a LOT of wars by sending James Harrison into enemy camps by himself. Just toss an unwitting terrorist a football and say, "Sic him, James!" and the rest will take care of itself.

Transcribed note from Shawn in upper right corner:

"Thanks guys! And thank you to everyone that paid taxes while I was in!"

Grocery Shopping

Wow. Just noticed the egregious grammatical error Ray said. My most sincere apologies. At the time, I was VERY concerned about cookies. After Shawn saw the post, I told him that HE should consider buying me a cookie.

"If I do that," he replied. "I'd have to buy myself a cookie. Then I'd have to tell my wife I had a cookie, and she'd be mad."

"You don't have to tell your wife everything," I pointed out.

"We don't keep secrets from each other. If she asks, I'd tell her."

"What's the likelihood that your wife would ask if you had a cookie today?!"

"You never know with her..."

In the end, Shawn not only bought me one cookie, he bought me TWO cookies, AND he bought cookies for everyone in the dean's office who wanted one. One of our associate deans brought in cookies too, so I was pretty much in cookie-coma heaven for the rest of the afternoon.

PS for non-Marylanders: "Superfresh" is, as you can probably tell, a grocery store. Many of them were going out of business when I left Maryland last year, however, so I don't know if they still exist.

The Broncos Fans Celebrate Shawn's Misery

The day after the Steelers lost to the Broncos in prime time to a national office, my boss Lyndsey, who has season tickets to the Broncos games, donated this "terrible towel" to Shawn, presumably to wipe his tears away, although she donated it without comment.

Shawn was mysteriously absent from work on Monday, claiming later that he had a "doctor's appointment" that day. Instead of going the usual Steelers fan route and making excuses for why his team lost - suggested excuses were the absence of James Harrison and Ryan Clark, and "Mike Wallace is a punk" - Shawn admitted that the Broncos' defense had out-played the Steelers' offense. After some ribbing for his "reasonableness," however, Shawn pointed out that "it's easy to be reasonable when we had 7 starters out with injuries and still pushed the game to the end."

Also, just a note to make Shawn publicly accountable for holding up his end of the bet, he owes Marshall $5.

DEEEEMONNNNN HORRRRSSSEEEE!!

It's tough being a non-Broncos fan in Broncos Country (a.k.a. my work). My boss is a hard-core Broncos fan, and there are other delusional horse-loving dreams scattered through the school.

On Friday, Shawn wore his Steelers jersey (Woodley), because "my boss is cool and doesn't care." (Note: his boss Bob is a Bears fan, hailing from Chicago years ago, but he's been trying to raise his sons, who were born in Denver, to be Broncos fans. It's...been emotionally difficult for him.) One of the Admissions/Academics assistants, Stephanie, wore a long-sleeve Broncos tee shirt on Friday. The seeds of a rivalry had been planted.

When I went to take a picture of the latest Ray & Troy conversation, I noticed this delightfully awesome pic of Peyton Manning riding Demon Horse, presumably to victory. Stephanie told me that she plans on adding more and more Manning stuff on Shawn's door (sparing the white board, of course), until "we take this thing 3D," as she said. I look forward to seeing how ridiculous this gets.

The Broncos are playing the Steelers tonight on Sunday Night Football. As Shawn's potential embarrassment & heartbreak is relevant to my interest, I shall be watching.

Ray's Fantasy

Everyone I know, it seems, is involved in some kind of fantasy football league. Friends on Twitter, friends on Facebook, and even people at work. I, however, am disinterested in fantasy football. Takes too much effort. I'd much rather just throw in some money and bet on the play-off games like I did last year at work.

Here's an email exchange that all the participants of said play-off pool got to read as the stakes rose higher and higher. [SPOILER ALERT: Neither Shawn nor I won, although I got waaaaay more points than he did. (He only got 8/40 points.)]

Shawn: [administrator of the pool] "Hello everyone! Just a reminder to send me your picks today before you miss out and wind up tied with me like Tim. I know that since the Broncos have shown their true color it’s probably a little less interesting but we can all root against the Ravens can’t we? Good luck

Me: "Speaking of rooting against the Ravens, Shawn, some miscreant defaced your white board again. A handwriting analysis will clear my good name, but I think it’s just *shameful* that someone would take advantage of the fact that you’re out all day to rub in your face that your team is sitting at home during this exciting play-offs time. Happy Purple Friday everyone! :D"

Linda:
 

"Hmmm. Suspicious"

Shawn: "One would think that here at the Colorado School of [redacted] we would be better at recognizing mental disorders. Especially such obvious ones as those that start with being a Ravens fan."

Rob: [participant in the play-off pool] "They have discovered a new disorder here in Psychiatry just this week called 8outof40pointsitis.  Caused by over confidence and delusion."
Later, after a crushing Ravens loss....
Shawn:

"That damn vandal is back and causing trouble..."

Morale Boosting in the Dean's Suite

Tracy is our HR liaison in the dean's office. To maintain a semblance of privacy, facilities put up this cubicle wall by her desk and gave her a white board so she could write notes or leave messages about her comings and goings. My boss Lyndsey thought that using the white board for drawing little pictures was a better use of its services. Soon the drawings grew too elaborate for one small board. (We had a very creative mountain scene with skiers being rescued from avalanches and a Sasquatch; the drawing prior to this one was of mythical creatures ranging from a chupacabra throwing a person off a cliff to a mermaid to the Loch Ness monster to the aforementioned Bigfoot.) Citing "team morale" as a financial justification for my $6 purchase using company funds, I purchased Tracy's cubicle wall a larger white board. The first drawing was of Hogwarts, as Lyndsey is a big Harry Potter fan, but this two-board drawing of football players soon replaced it.

Originally, the drawing was of Peyton Manning (#18) passing to an unnamed offensive player while a red player wearing the #7 (John Elway) got ready to tackle his opponent. However, I pointed out that the number 7 is NOT an acceptable jersey number for a defensive player. Only quarterbacks, kickers, and punters are eligible to wear such a low number. This caused a lively debate between me and the HR Director, Kevin, who seemed to enjoy how riled up the issue made me. When I came in this morning, ALL of the players were wearing Elway's #7...so I changed all the numbers to those my favorite Ravens players wear. You'll see Joe Flacco (#5) passing to Anquan Boldin (#81) while defensive players Ray Lewis (#52), Terrell Suggs (#55, miraculously healed from his Achilles heel surgery), and Ed Reed (#20) prepare to tackle the veteran wide receiver. Needless to say, Kevin had a good laugh and then changed all the numbers back again.

I even snuck in a little Tebow burn while I was at it.