Today was b5media’s first ever bring your pet to work day. It was a huge success.

Salim’s Siamese fighting fish, Baby Beluga, couldn’t make the subway trip downtown, so he sent Nemo in his place. Nemo ruined the jelly beans.

In keeping with the fish theme, Jon’s 546454134 year old goldfish, Bubbles didn’t make it down either, but Jon took these lovely photos so we could all meet Bubbles and his pal, Casper.

Darren brought in his pug, Portia. She was tons of fun. Apparently she get acne. No one fed her jelly beans.

Most of the other people in Toronto were lamewads and didn’t bring in anything. Jeremy has guinea pigs, but claims he no longer trusts anyone who says that a fun day is going to happen based on the tricks that were played on him in the past. You can read about those here and here. Rather disappointing Toronto representation. Even the girl who works down the hall let her dog Simba hang out with us.

Salvation to the Toronto office came when Will Pate and Beta stopped by to participate. I hope Will isn’t upset we use him for his dog.

The US folks represented really well. They all work from home, so bringing in pets was a huge deal for them.

Mark Jaquithhas 3 cats, Gavin, Beverly and Pixel. He’s trained Gavin to hate everyone but him. Beverly is male, despite the name. Apparently, it’s an aggressive cat and Mark thinks by giving it a female name, the cat will tone down a bit. Mark’s wife trained Pixel to be rude to everyone but her. Apparently, Mark spent all his money on computers and stuff so he feeds Pixel blind cords. He realised later on this was a bad idea and spent $1200 to have a vet fix the situation.

Tris’s female cat, Ben (Tris and Mark need to pick up one of those baby name books), enjoys tape. I don’t know what else to say about that except that cats are weird.

Tony has a really big New York apartment, and owns an elephant named T-Danza. He never ceases to amaze us.

CJ lives on a ranch. We were all expecting tons of pics and stories about her pets. Now, living in Canada, I may be naive to think that Texas ranches lots of animals. Apparently, CJ breeds cats and dogs. They are really cute though, so bonus points for that.

Gab swore she was going to send in pictures of her two dogs…I’m guessing that the lack of photos so far is a clear indication that dog is a code word she uses for her husband Coop because she doesn’t want people to know she is training him to shake hands.

So, whatever people say you can learn about a person based on their pet, learn it.

We’ve expanded yet again….

 In Toronto, our new Administrative Assistant started. Franca Schulte will be taking over that role. 3 things we know about Franca:

- She WON her car. That’s right. WON….from one of those contests that we usually just chuck in the garbage off a Pepsi bottle.

- She likes dogs but doesn’t own one. If we were to have “Bring Your Pet to Work Day” she would get a goldfish.

- She went to school in London…………………….Ontario

Also starting in the Toronto office is Jon Prosser in the VP Finance roll. 3 things we know about Jon:

- He has a 7 year old gold fish

- Other than beef, pork, poultry and fish, he sticks to a mainly vegetarian diet.

- He’s as tall as Salim.

And our newest member is a spawn of b5 founder Darren Rowse. Things we know about Henri Sebastian Rowse:

- He was born at 2am on June 15th

- He weighed 7lbs 14oz

- He has red hair

Welcome to all our newbies. Good luck with the grueling initiation process!

b5media has a new team member. Darren O’Donaghue is filling the shoes of Director of Branded Content. He will be working closely with the rest of the content team to keep b5 as awesome as it is.

Things we know about this Darren (this is tough becaue he’s only been here for 2 hours)

#1- He lives really close to the office

#2- He’s a real keener; he got to work before everyone else today

#3- He likes Starbucks. Ew.

#4- The smell of rotten garbage doesn’t bother him.

#5- He lives next door to AJ Burnett of the Toronto Blue Jays

Welcome to b5media Darren!

So, we moved offices today. Not a huge move, we moved across the hall. With all the growth we’ve had over the passed year, we outgrew our old office and needed more space!

The move went fairly swell. Joe did a lot of the heavy stuff, while Salim watched. Darcie and Rachel feng shui’d the place. Everyone else pitched in and it was all streamed live.

 The best part of the move was actually a week long affair. On Tuesday, Chad and Jeremy were the only ones not in the office, and a great idea came about for a trick to play on them. We decided to tell them that we were going to paint the office on moving day some really funky colors so they would need to wear painting clothes today.

Chad threw a fit claiming to be “allergic” to paint fumes. Sure Chad. Because the whole office was in on it, we really had him going.

Jeremyaccepted it so quickly that we were sure he was going to play a joke on us. We thought that he had clued into the prank (mostly because this isn’t the first time something like this has been played on him. Halloween.) and was planning some sort of great retaliating joke. Nope. Turns out he’s just very trusting. And was actually excited about the bright green and orange we were planning on painting the boardroom. On Wednesday, he called his wife and asked her if she knew where his lumberjack shirt was so he would be able to use it to paint. The whole office was in an uproar (but we had to pretend we were laughing at Salim had said, though Salim is never funny).

So he showed up today in his regular clothes (because he does have a very important meeting with respectable adults), but brought his paint clothes. Joey even dressed up in his overalls to add effects. We made him put his clothes on before we told him the bad news that there was no painting going on.

In a phone call later between Jeremy and an unspecified caller, we overheard “No, we’re not painting today. (pause). Because they’re assholes.”

All in all a good joke.

Other news: Lee ripped his pants and had to borrow Jeremy’s painting pants. Salim will get his first ever Co-Worker of the Week award in a few weeks because it was promised to him if either Chad or Jeremy showed up in their painting clothes. He’ll probably do something to tick everyone off between now and the time he’s supposed to win so that he will lose his privileges.

We have a confession!!!! It’s always the one you least suspect. Chad confessed to the crime. When asked why, he said “cause it said something about Darcie winning”. The category of the b5 Olympics the comment of Darcie winning was that of walking the loudest, and Chad wrote it there in the first place.

It has been learned that Chad used a Wet Wipe to clean the surface, thus making the streaks. As punishment, Chad must copy down everything currently on the whiteboard and rewrite it on the walls of the new office (ps, we’re moving across the whole to where the grass is greener next Friday).

Weeks ago, Darcie and Laura came up with a list of fun activities to do in the b5 Olympics. They put this list on the office white board so that others could put in their suggestions as well. Someone has viciously and maliciously erased the list. It wasn’t a simple erase, it was erased with some form of unidentified liquid. We are on the lookout of who it could have been. The suspects:

Laura Keeling: She was alone in the office all day on Monday, and had plenty of opportunity. She was jealous that the list was in Darcie’s handwriting and wanted to deflect some of the praise for good ideas (motive and opportunity)

Joey: He has lists all over the whiteboards. He was upset that that space was not being used for his lists. He sits a mere 5 feet from the crime scene.

Joe: He’s new and wants to make his mark. He wanted to do something bold that would get him noticed. Salim: It’s right by his desk and he gets thrills erasing things Darcie has written. The crime scene is within reaching distance from his desk.

Jeremy: The erasing was done hastily, synonymous with Jeremy’s erasing style.

Lee: It’s always the quiet one. He has TWO erasers on his desk, which show that he has a fascination with erasing. He was left alone for some time on the morning of Tuesday.

Rachel: She wasn’t aware that she had her own whiteboard space. She’s clearly jealous of Chad’s whiteboard space (which is where the crime occurred).

Chad and Darcie are both exempt from the crime because neither of them were in the office all week.

Who do you think did it? Punishment will be laid down to the suspect with the most votes.

Today was Director of Technology Aaron Brazell’s last day at b5media. Well, tomorrow is his official last day, but he’s flying home to Baltimore from Toronto then. Some of us are sad that he is going. Ok, well, no one has said that, but I can only assume that someone in the company likes him.

No, seriously, we will miss him. Things we know about Aaron:

1) He does very poor imitations of himself

2) He speaks clearly, yet doesn’t make sense

3) We are always shocked that his wife hasn’t left him

4) He’ll attend any chili cook off, anywhere

5) He can’t handle the spice in jerk chicken

6) He is banned from eating bok choy around Darcie for eternity

We would like to take this time to remind Aaron, that once he leaves, anything negative from b5’s inception to now is your fault.

The Toronto office is blessed with the pressence of CJ, our Content Manager, and Tris, our Training Manager. Not much has changed with them since the trip to Austin for SXSW in March. Tris has been writting a new blog which seems to get a lot of attention because of its often un-talked about subject. The blog, Manscaping 101, is about male grooming. Over pizza at lunch, all the guys in the office shared their personal grooming habits. Needless to say, it was an interesting conversation, and as always, I learned way too much about my co-workers.

Since I am a mannequin, I have a never-changing perfect face and don’t do anything to groom (though Chad thought it would be funny to put pink marker on my lips once).

…or extension of one. Salim Teja, b5’s Chief Operating Officer had a baby boy this weekend. (Well, his wife did). Ayden Teja was born Saturday May 3rd at 6:45 pm weighing in at 8 pounds (whoa). Mom and baby are at home and doing fantastically well. Salim is out drinking.

No one is really sure if Salim’s wife exists, or if she is merely a figment of his imagination. We believe he photoshopped himself into the picture of the bride you get when you buy a frame. He keeps saying she is coming into the office to meet everyone “next week”. Does this baby really exist Salim, or are you just making it up so you can “work from home” for 2 weeks?

Today marked the 365th day that Brian Layman, Code Ninja has been b5’s slave.

Things we know about Brian:

1) He is on Jeremy’s list of nice people

2) He likes to purposely jump into swimming pools, regardless of how cold it is

3) He rides a kickass motorbike

4) He’s much taller than you would think

5) He pimps out b5media t-shirts with a bitchin’ fedora