Hello, everyone!!! Those of you who only know me as “that lady who sits out by the potted plants” may be surprised to find out that I am now a blogger! It’s true!!!

Well, it’s very exciting, and of course Mr. Newrite signed off on the whole idea, so I’m sharpening my “word processor” skills and just letting things flow! (Of course, Mr. Newrite can’t actually “sign off” on anything now, but he grunts like a much younger man, and he grunted off on this almost as quickly as when we hired that redheaded girl from Argentina or Arizona wherever it was to help open his mail even though he doesn’t actually get any except shampoo samples and come-ons from those crooked politicians. I swear, they’re worse than charities!

But any who, this “newsletter” should be a won-der-ful chance to share things around the company, and get to know each other, even better than we might want to!

The big “buzz” around the building is that fan-tan-stic company party we all enjoyed over the holidays. I must admit that when the sales guys first suggested we have it at a “gentleman’s club,” I was a little skeptical, but it turned out everybody had a great time (wasn’t Eleanor from accounting funny in that strip karaoke contest?) and I have to admit that when the dancer girls showed some of the toddlers how to climb those polls it was pretty cute.

The sales guys want to do the company picnic there but I told him I thought it should probably be outdoors.

Get well wishes to Bernie T. As you probably heard Bernie broke a couple of bones when the loading dock collapsed last month but he’s on the mend. (If you wanted to know how a loading dock collapsed you’ll probably have to get in line – I won’t mention any names, but a certain brother-in-law in the construction business might want to get a lawyer, said Bernie’s wife) and you can send flowers if you want, although his allergies sometimes make his face puff up.

The biggest laugh we all had – NOW we can laugh about it – was when that fellow we thought was from the IRS came by to ask Phil D. if he knew anything about a certain gambling network that seemed to be originating from Phil’s computer (I always said that Final Five thing gets out of hand) but the joke was on us because the guys in his department had put the “agent” up to the whole thing, and it turned out he was only a guard down at the mall. We all had a good chuckle about it and I guess they can fix Phil’s computer even though he accidentally spilled gasoline all over it.

Congratulations and a Dottie Stork Salute to Cynthia in the shipping department. It wasn’t twins or even triplets – there were actually SIX little pumpkins hiding under her apron all these months, and I hear Cynthia’s husband passed out trying to keep with the arithmetic in the delivery room (he’s still a little queasy from when that puck hit him in the head at the hockey game) but they’re all doing fine, and after he came to he said they were going to name them all Scooter.

Stay tuned,

Dottie’s Office Gossip SUM ’14

Well, the time certainly has flown by since my last blog “post”!!! Seems like just yesterday that Art had that heart attack starting the snow blower in the parking lot (the doctor said he’ll be fine – too much lard) and now I”m hot and sticky! … Speaking of which, it’s almost time for Mr. Newrite’s annual birthday party (no one knows when his actual day is, and between you and me and the sea of Gallilee Mr. Newrite probably doesn’t remember either, although it seemed like he was grunting out something when the girls asked him but it might have been too much Splenda in his coffee again) and summertime is probably better than Halloween or Christmas or some crazy Moslem holiday because of everybody’s schedule, and it looks like it’ll be a company picnic again this year, and now all we have to figure out is a gift (and how to make sure you-know-who kicks in this year, I won’t mention any names) but nobody can seem to agree on what to give him. Golf equipment seem to disturb him (especially that clock with the little rotating balls and the bird) and we nixed any mote liquor or power tools after that incident involving Steve’s desk. Sheila from shipping said how about a pedicure, but that didn’t sound like such a good idea (my Aunt Lulu used to say that nobody wants to look at an old man’s feet) so it’ll probably be another gift certificate to that place out by the highway with the moose on the roof.

SCOOPS ‘N’ POOP. As you may have heard, Harold downstairs is on a “leave of absence” so you’ll probably have to buy your own bubble wrap. That was quite a shocker when it turned out he had a secret family living in Seattle (truth be told, he did seem to be gone a lot, and always in the same pants) but no one would have been the wiser if his wife hadn’t accidentally run across the OTHER one putting sunscreen all over his back on Facebook (you couldn’t see his actual back, but I guess there was some tattoo she recognized) which is when the you-know-what hit the fan. Any who, no one’s seen him since January, and if his phone rings you should probably answer it, but just say he’s at lunch and take a message …

NEWZZZ! What a won-der-ful wedding Slats Beeber and his new bride had (we all thought her name was Esmerelda but someone said it’s actually Mitzie) and you can’t blame either of them because that rigatoni definitely had something wrong with it. But the Elks hall is real comfortable now ever since they fixed the air conditioning, and I thought the one-man band was a great solution for a couple on a budget (I don’t care what anybody says, keeping all those instruments going at the same time takes a lot of coordination — could you do that?) and he had a pretty good singing voice too, although he was no Liberace. So it was really nice, and nobody cared that Esmerelda or Mitzie or whatever looked a little inflated around the old spare tire, if you know what I mean, even though she did a great job making her own dress (I always wanted one of those sequin guns — they look so fun!) and you had to laugh when she got carried away after throwing out the garter and started taking off her panty hose (Aunt Lulu would say that some folks just can’t drink Champagne, and some other ones can’t spell it) so I wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall when they left for their honeymoon, Esmerelda and Mitzie and Slats, all packed into Slats’s mother’s Winnebago, and with the mother driving. (She said Slats’s father never took her anywhere but Racine, and she wanted to see Niagara Falls.) So, congratulations, kids!! And have a safe trip, everybody!!!