We’ve kicked off our week of holiday cheer here at my office, and a coworker and I decided to starts things with a homemade holiday breakfast. Since we’re making it all at the office where we do not have a stove or standard oven, we had to improvise a bit. She and I made 3 different types of pancakes (original, blueberry, and gingerbread), maple sausage, nested eggs, over-easy eggs, toast, and all the fixings with only 2 electric griddles and a toaster oven. We fed over 40 people and made it all in less than an hour! I was pretty impressed with us and everything was darn tasty. Plus, I got to wear my fun apron at the office!

I challenge my foodie friends to make your coworkers an office-made breakfast over the next few weeks and help spread the holiday cheer. I guarantee you’ll make someone’s day and start yours off right, too. Happy Holidays! :o)

The holiday season is upon us and that means it’s time for bad holiday drivers to be out in full force. After nearly being maimed three times today by these demons on wheels, I have a few words for everyone on the road during the next month.

• You are not special. Your destination and schedule is not more important than anyone else. Blatantly inconveniencing others to suit your needs is not cool. Calm down, slow down and remember how to drive properly.
• Parking badly gives all other drivers full rights to ding your car, key your car, and even leave you a note expressing how terrible of a driver and person you are. Take a few extra seconds to park straight and between the lines.
• And speaking of parking, there is absolutely no need for you to back into a parking space. You look like a redneck douche and usually block traffic in order to complete this unnecessary parking maneuver. The ONLY time this is appropriate is when you are backing into a short-term loading zone to pick up a large item.  Pulling through to an open space so it appears that you backed in, is allowable.
• Idling your car and blocking traffic in the main drive of a parking lot or on a street while you wait to pick someone up is just plain rude. Find a parking spot or drive around in circles and keep coming back by, but do not block traffic just to make things easier for you.
• When you’re shopping somewhere that has carts, just take the extra minute to return the cart to the store or cart corral. No one likes to have their car dinged by runaway carts. Practice good shopping and parking lot etiquette and maybe others will pay if forward, too.
• Please, please, please watch your children in parking lots. There have been so many times that I’ve seen unattended children run out into the drive because their parents were more concerned about getting the contents of their shopping basket in the car before their children. I really like kids and I don’t want to hit them (although they are worth a lot of points), so please keep a hold of them.
• Cutting people off is not okay. This gives you bad driving karma/mojo/voodoo that will come back to haunt you. Use your blinker, wait your turn and, if necessary, pass your destination and u-turn back. I promise where you’re going will still be there in the extra few minutes it takes you to do this.
• On that note, if someone has their blinker on let them in. Is a few extra cars ahead of you really going to affect your schedule all that much? Be nice, smile, wave and let the good driving karma/mojo come to you.
• Tailgating someone will not help you to get to your destination sooner. Don’t be the asshole who tailgates, just back off.
• Traffic signs and signals are not suggestions, they are the law. Please follow them.
• Remember, pedestrians have the right-of-way most of the time and they can’t outrun you, so let them go first. And to the pedestrians: walk in the most direct way possible to get across the street, not in a diagonal. Don’t walk down the middle of the drive, stay to the sides of the parking aisles. Also, jaywalking is a really dumb thing to do. I swear sometimes they wish we would hit them.
• Your eyes should be on the road, not your phone. Texting and/or playing with your phone while driving is such a bad idea that they had to make a law against it. Stop lights give you the perfect amount of time to send a quick text, so wait until then. No one is good at multi-tasking while driving, so why take the risk?
• Using your horn to alert another driver of an imminent accident is appropriate. Honking your horn to express your emotions is childish and rude. Exception to the rule: cars that have cool sounding horns, like La Cucaracha.

I feel better now. Let me know if you have any more to add. I look at this list as a living rant and welcome yours to it.