Diversity Training Video, Reindeer Rave, and Dog Show

   So I was right. We all had to go to mandatory diversity training today because Rudolph got teased. (It isn't enough that he has a whole song about himself, and a bronze statue in Mistletoe Park...) Side note: why don't reindeer just fight it out like they did in the old days? Enough with these "reindeer games" - how about some reindeer Hunger Games? ("Oh, you think you're funny - laughing and calling me names, huh? Well, it's payback time!")
   The training included a video that features an elf that is being teased because he has a big nose. Other elves are laughing and calling him Toucan Sam (I don't think it's a stretch to say that this video is basically all about Rudolph and the nosism that he has had to endure for the past few decades).  Then this claymation Snowman walks in and sings a song about how we're all different and how we should try harder to appreciate the things that make us different.

     That was one hour of my life that I'll never get back...Like I said, if everyone was just nice to each other, then we wouldn't have to deal with all this bologna. On the flip side, Rudolph is the only reindeer with a glowing nose, so I can't say I know what it's like to be so different. Perhaps I should be more understanding...
    Oh! So, I think everyone knows that Rudolph's nose glows red whenever he wants it to, but it also glows red whenever he's embarrassed - kind of like elves and humans when we get embarrassed. Poor guy. He used to get teased big time as a little reindeer calf, which only made things worse because that little lightbulb of a nose would just get redder and redder and brighter and brighter. Of course, everything changed on that one foggy Christmas Eve, but I really think he could use it to his advantage at other non-foggy times. Maybe if he could get it to blink like a strobe light, he could throw his own raves. "The Reindeer Rave: Rudolph Nose Best." Clever, huh? I'm here all night folks...
    In other news, I have Quarterpockets registered for he dog show on Friday. I'm feeling pretty good about it! I noticed Miss Sweetcheeks's dog, Daisy, is also on the list of contestants! Perhaps I'll see her there! I need to remember to take Quarterpockets to the groomer tomorrow...
    I can't believe that Christmas Eve is a week away! We are barely on schedule. I may need to put in some overtime this weekend. We'll see.
    Tootles,
     Fritz
   

Sub-Zero Pizza and Diversity Training

   Today was the meeting with Santa Claus about his new pizza parlor. He wants to call it Sub-Zero Pizza. I think it's a great name! As I've mentioned, my main part in this endeavor is the animatronic band. At first he was thinking cute little polar animals, but after the recent yeti attack, he's thinking of having an abominable snowman band called "The Abominables." Similar to other pizza joint animatronic bands, but with more edge.

   I am excited! We have such a pitiful selection of eateries here at the North Pole - mostly Scandinavian. I think Santa was inspired by a recent trip to New York. Here's a picture he showed me from Lombardi's Pizza - the oldest pizzeria in New York City. Yum. Makes me hungry...

    During our meeting, we heard a knock on our door. "Who is it?" Santa asked. "It's Rudolph." Santa rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Come in, " he said. Then Rudolph sauntered in and reported that he had received some hate speech in the stables this afternoon. "And what was that?" Santa asked.
    Apparently, Dancer and Prancer were singing, "Ruuuudolph! You don't have to put on the red light!" Rudolph found this very offense, for obvious reasons. "I'm sorry, Rudolph. That was completely insensitive and not conducive to a team atmosphere and will not be tolerated," Santa said in what sounded like a rehearsed speech. Rudolph nodded and, with some difficulty, opened the door with his antlers and left. Then Santa whispered to me, "I am mandated to say that."
   See, after the original incident when Rudolph became the lead reindeer, the teasing apparently didn't stop and Santa had to institute diversity training and policies to keep things fair within the reindeer herd. Some of the reindeer just will not comply - even after all these years and lawsuits. I have the sneaking suspicion that everyone will have to attend a special diversity training session very soon. Things would be so much easier if people would just be nice to each other! Sheesh!
   Well, we decided to start the bulk of the work just after Christmas. If I have spare time, I'll draw up some basic designs beforehand, but Santa doesn't want me to get distracted. I'm really excited, though! I don't know if I can wait! And I can't wait to get some pizza up here. The last time I had pizza was when Santa brought some home early Christmas morning after doing his deliveries. Apparently some kid left pizza out for him instead of cookies. It was cold and rock hard, but after some warming up by the fire, it tasted pretty good. I bet you humans eat it all the time down there in the subarctic.
   Well, that's all for now. 9 days until the big day! Make sure you're on the nice list!
Peace out,
Fritz

Elf Church Choir

   We had a great day at church today. I sing in the choir and we are working on some great numbers, including "Silent Night," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing", and "The First Noel." It is really sounding good! I like to listen to human music, too. I like Whitney Houston (rest her soul), Adele, Nik Kershaw, and KC and the Sunshine Band. Oh! And Sufjan Stevens - he has a great Christmas album! Humans sing so low, though. There is one band, though, that I think sounds pretty similar to the way elves sing - Alvin and the Chipmunks. Have you heard of them? They are really good. Just imagine the Chipmunks singing "The First Noel" and you will get an idea of what elves sound like when they sing.

   After church, we went and visited our Grandma. She is feeling a little better these days. We played some Boggle and Pit and drank peppermint hot chocolate. Good times.
    Tomorrow I have a meeting with Santa Claus again about his pizza parlor idea. Kind of excited about that. 
    10 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!! Can you believe it?!!
Cheers!
Fritz
   

Peppermint Peak and Miss Sweetcheeks.

   Hello, again. Sorry for taking so long to write today. I have been so busy - and it's my day off! Today, Quarterpockets and I went on a hike up to the top of Peppermint Peak, the tallest mountain on North Pole Island. The weather was clear and sunny, but obviously still very cold! Especially at that elevation. Zoiks!
   From the top of the mountain we could see the ski lodge, the factory, the hospital, Santa's mansion, and all the little elf neighborhoods all around. With everything looking do tiny, I felt kind of big, for once!
   We made sure to keep on the lookout for any abominable snowmen. Man, Quarterpockets would get chomped like a little white chiclet! We didn't see any, though.
    On the way down, guess who we ran into? Miss Sweetcheeks herself. She was walking her little white poodle, Daisy. She told me that she heard all about my run-in with the yeti and how I saved the two elves he was trying to shake out of their car, like two little green tic-tacs. (I'm making a lot of candy analogies today. Odd.) My cheeks were rosier than usual, let's just say that.
    After we reached the base of the mountain, I walked her back home. She lives in a big house with three roommates on Egg Nog Ave. It was decked with the most beautiful multi-colored Christmas lights. Very impressive.
     What a swell day. Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas season!
All the best,
Fritz

Friday the 13th

   Friday, the 13th. Thus far, the day has lived up to its reputation of being UNLUCKY.
   Early this morning, I went into the lab in the R&D department to check on how Miss Treesparkle was doing on her first day of work. She was busy sketching at the drawing board and I walked over to speak to her when all of the sudden I heard the most horrendous noise and felt a warm liquid hit me square in the back like someone had just hit me with a  water balloon.
   Someone behind me yelled, "Sorry, Mr. Miffletins!" It was  Sylvester Poodleflatch. He was working on a new doll, "Baby Upset Tummy." It happened to be chocolate milk, which was easy enough to clean up, but then Baby Upset Tummy started making weird electronic noises and she started saying, "My tummy hurts," over and over and over again, each time getting incrementally higher in pitch and volume. That was freaky enough, but then her head started spinning, and, well, have you ever seen one of those rotating sprinkler heads? Yeah. Chocolate milk ALL OVER THE OFFICE. So many blueprints were ruined....Ugh. Mr. Poodleflatch was very apologetic, but I tell ya - that was not the best start to the day!
  Since I didn't have an extra uniform lying around, I went out to my car to head back home to change (it is NOT fun to walk outside up here in wet clothes - even a little wet!) when I saw that my little mini Smart Car was in the fist of an enraged abominable snowman. What next? I thought. So, I got out my cell phone to call animal control when I saw the beast pick up another car - this one had two elves inside! He started shaking it like a maraca - I guess he was expecting them to fall out somewhere. So I hurried and told animal control what was going on and they said that they would send help ASAP.
   I was obviously ill-equipped, so I just used myself as a decoy and started throwing snowballs at him. He dropped both cars and started running toward me.

(Here's a close-up shot I was able to get after I pelted him a few times in the face. Maybe that was a little reckless, but - you need to know what kind of danger I was in!)
   I started running as fast as I could. Then I noticed another elf carrying some snow skis approaching me (obviously oblivious to the crisis). Then I had a flash of brilliance. I ripped the skis out of his hands and he ran in the opposite direction. The yeti, however, had a score to settle, and was still hot on my trail. I ran for the west gate toward the coast where I "vandalized" the iceberg. Once I saw that we were out of the gate, I quickly strapped on my skis and jetted down the hill toward the cliff with the iceberg in sight.
   All that skijumping practice really helped, because I was able to race down the hill to the edge of the cliff and coast through the air - clearing the gap between the cliff and the giant iceberg, floating off shore. It was glorious! I landed on the iceberg with the greatest of ease. I turned just in time to see the yeti trip, tumble, and roll down the hill. As he did so, he became a giant snow ball himself and rolled right off the cliff and into the sea! (And I thought I was cold and wet!)
   It took another ten minutes before Animal Control arrived. All they did was briefly look for the abominable snowman, but he was long gone. Then it took another 45 minutes before I could get rescued from the iceberg. Yeesh. That threw my whole day's schedule off - and I was still cold and wet from that chocolate milk!
   As for the elves in the car-maraca, they were okay. They saw Dr. Picklejinx at the ER and were cleared to go home with some minor bumps and bruises.
   Well, I took the rest of the day off for "mental wellness" and am now sitting in front of the fire place in my easy chair with my laptop on the top of my lap...obviously... I'm sipping some Cup O' Noodles and just going to relax today. No more bad luck for me.
   Later, skaters.
    Fritz

Mr. Firebreath, Big Red, and Quarterpocket's Tricks

   Interviews yesterday went very well, and after some consideration, we decided to hire Angelica Treesparkle for our R&D department. She was educated at Princeton and speaks Swedish, plays the harp, and volunteers at North Pole General in Labor and Delivery a few hours a week.
   As part of the interview process, we have each applicant bring a portfolio of projects they've worked on in the past and encourage them to bring in any new and original toy designs and/or prototypes they may have created. Miss Treesparkle showed me and my team an awesome new toy called "Mr. Firebreath." It's this cool dragon toy that shoots fire out of his mouth like a flame thrower. I nearly burned down my office when I first tried it! My curtains were torched, but I can get new ones tomorrow, probably. We took it out to an ice berg floating just off the coast near factory's west gate and I melted my initials into it. (Well, someone has to melt the icecaps! Al Gore is going to be so disappointed otherwise...)
   Needless to say, I was really impressed. However, when I showed the toy to the safety people, they were not too happy. Ugh. They said "absolutely not". They always ruin everything! Every time we come out with a cool new toy they full-on reject it. Man, toys are so BORING these days! If you can find the video, I recommend taking a look at the old commercial for the last awesome toy I invented that got pulled - but only after it made it into kids' homes. It was called Big Red. It was a viking doll that shot streams of red fluid out of its head like a sprinkler. Kids loved it! Boring parents and other stick-in-the-mud adults did not.
   In other news, my cousin Toffeebells told me that actually, Mintchuckle Sweetcheeks hadn't seen my blog at all! She's been really busy with the baking schedule and her endorsements and really didn't give it a thought. I guess that's a good thing and a bad thing. Oh well. I saw her at the Christmas briefing. Guess who sat down right beside her? Mr. Bobkins Snifflebrook, my arch nemesis. Hope she likes the smell of dead fish...
  Quarterpockets is getting really good at playing dead. He even does this pathetic little cough before his body goes limp. And, when he shakes, I swear his little "ruff ruff" sounds like, "Pleased to meet you." He's going to take Best in Show, mark my words!
   Well, I have a busy rest of the day. Hope you are all being good!
Cheers!
Fritz
 

Janet Reno, Dog Show, and Interviews

    Greetings, English-speaking Christmas revelers of the world!
    Well, Santa got some bad news last night. He was not chosen as a contestant on "Dancing With the Stars." Instead, they chose Janet Reno. Sounds like they are going for something different this season - like an appeal to the geriatric viewing audience. "Shuffling With the Stars" or something. I don't know.
    Being that he was not in a good mood, I wasn't able to meet with him this morning about some ideas I have for his Pizza Parlor. I'm thinking a band of animatronic animals that play in a band: a polar bear, a reindeer, and arctic hare, and arctic fox, a yeti. Something like that.
    Speaking of arctic foxes, I took Quartpockets to see Dr. Treacletart again to finish off his shots, and I saw a poster for a Dog Show and I think I might enter him! It's going to be on Dec. 20th, so I will have to do some major prep work.
   After his appointment, we took a walk in the park. I'm kind of an amateur bird watcher, so here we see some Canada geese and some swans. Not sure why or how they ended up here. But that happens from time to time.

 Same goes for this blue jay.

   Well, I better go. I have two positions to fill in the research and development division. I have to interview 12 applicants. They all have engineering degrees, but they vary in experience. I'll let you know how that pans out.
     Tootles,
     Fritz