Today is a big day with Season Four of “The Office” about to kick off. As many of you know, LITO has teamed up with GossipGirls.com to provide you with some of the best Office news on the internet.

To introduce me, my name is Jake, and I have been a long time follower of LITO, and am happy to be blogging here now. In the future, we are going continue the strong traditions with profiles and episode recaps.

So, what are your predictions for the Office? How do you think the summer went for Jim and Pam? What about Ryan’s new job? Dwight and Andy drama?

Sound off in the comments.

Check out the Dan In Real Life trailer here. Thanks to thndrjames for the tip! Steve’s new movie will be out in October 2007-I had no idea it was coming out that soon! I’m excited

I also need to say, I got one of my roommates hooked on “The Office” and it’s such a satisfying feeling to sit here in the living room and hear voices wafting in from her room…”from himself. From the future.”

I also wanted to let you all know that I’m not going to be writing for LITO much longer. I’m a brand-new special education teacher, and as much as I love LITO, I need to focus my time and energy on my students and my class right now. I’d like to thank everyone for being so incredibly awesome (”Office” fans are seriously the best!) and helping me out so much. I’m sorry I’m not going to stick around longer, but I’m very excited for the future of LITO - a podcast in the near future (hopefully–still taking volunteers, especially if you are able to record and/or edit the podcasting festivities), and Office PsychProfiles, which we’ll be starting up this week! Brian Stucki started a wonderful thing with this website, and I was lucky to be a part of it, just for a few months. Right now, my class needs me. But I am positive the next writer will do incredible things just like Brian did! So really, if you think about it, it is a total win-win-win situation

T.G.I.F. y’all!!!

I am [finally] completing the last few steps of my move across the country! I have been in Houston for the past five weeks undergoing the most intense and challenging experience of my life, and tomorrow I’m flying back to O’ahu to begin work as a special education teacher in a low-income area of Hawai’i. So I may not have Internet/e-mail access over the weekend, but I hope to.

Two big reminders:

1. VOTE in our Best of Youtube Competition. Over 200 votes have been cast so far, but we can do better

2. Submit your entry for Week 1 of The Office Summer Scavenger Hunt! Entries are due to SummerScavenger@TheTwoCents.com by Sunday night!

I just found out (thanks for the heads up, Jim) that the time and date of my recent posts have been off. I can’t figure out how to fix this, but for now I’m manually editing the timestamp for each post (anyone who has awesome wordpress skills, please e-mail me!). I apologize for any inconveniences, LITO readers!

Happy Monday, LITO readers!
I have some excellent news to cure your case of the Mondays. Warner Brothers is sponsoring a contest in honor of the upcoming release of “License to Wed.”

Though there are many Office-related appearances and links in “License to Wed,” I thought since John Krasinski is starring, we could have an “Ode to Jim” contest!
Your job: Create a tribute to Jim. It can be a Photoshop masterpiece, a piece of artwork, or a poem.

Submit it to me (elyse.moretti@gmail.com) by July 10, and I will choose the winners, then prizes will be shipped! I will try to post as many submissions as possible so everyone can enjoy our odes to Jim!

Prizes, sponsored by Warner Brothers:
First Place: License to Wed T-Shirt and Full-Size Movie Poster
Second Place: License to Wed Magnetic Board and Full-Size Movie Poster
(Check out photos of the prizes after the jump!)

This contest is open to ALL LITO readers, regardless of what country you live in

(more…)

1.  There’s a cool two-page sightseeing feature (”Office”-style) in Happenings magazine, set in Scranton, PA!  Click here to view the full spread, which includes various Scranton hotspots mentioned on the show.  And the love between “The Office” and Happenings (a Pennsylvanian publication) goes both ways: according to the article, a blown-up cover of a 2000 issue can be seen on the side of the refrigerator in the Dunder-Mifflin Scranton break room.

2. Thanks to Alisa for this tip: teamsugar has an entry with the ‘this man is a pervert’ poster and a tip to call the hotline (1-800-984-3672).  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–you should definitely call it for a good laugh!

3. Though the Primetime Emmy nominations won’t be announced until July, “The Office” has already garnered a Daytime Emmy nomination for the webisodes!  Last summer’s 10-part saga has been nominated in the new Broadband Comedy category.  There are four new categories this year for broadband work, and all awards will be presented on June 14.  Read more here.  Three cheers for our three favorite accountants!

Also, just wanted to let you know that in case I am a bit slow to post or respond in the next week or so, PLEASE keep leaving comments here, posting in the forums, and emailing me.  I’m in the process of moving from Pittsburgh to Hawai’i (and training for my new job in Houston for a while, too).  Hopefully, there won’t be any problems and you won’t even notice! But I wanted to give you a heads up just in case, and let you know that LITO is not going anywhere

Thanks to everyone for the emails, comments, & posts–keep ‘em coming!

~Elyse~

Brian Howard featured Life in the Office in this week’s “Office chat” profile of fansites for the show.

I was so excited to be able to participate, and you should definitely check out the other interviews he’s done:
Kathie of Give Me My Remote
Jennie Tan of OfficeTally
Melody, Kimberly, & Sarah of The Office Alliance
James of Northern Attack
Matt of That’s What She Said

Thanks, Brian, for including LITO!

This is a bit strange for me to write, but I think it’s important to mention.

A couple weeks ago I realized that with my first baby coming soon my time was going to become quite scarce. With Candace working fewer hours in this third trimester, I’ve had to increase my own hours. And of course when the baby gets here I plan to be the “World’s Best Dad” and spend plenty of time with the little guy. Because of this, I just knew my work here on LITO would suffer. I certainly don’t want this awesome Office community to dwindle but rather keep growing as it has for the last year. So rather than let the site’s capa be detated, I realized that I better pass off the duites to someone else.

Last week, two great fellas offered to purchase the site and I accepted the offer. Quite literally, selling my Baby LITO will help pay for my Baby Slim. (That’s what we call him right now.) During the last week, we’ve been sending databases and files back and forth. I think most of it has gone unnoticed by the readers, but we’re aware that there are still come hiccups with the forum. Those will be worked out.

So, starting now, I’m passing the duties to them. To be honest, I’m really excited to see what ideas they have in store. I’ve done the best I knew how, but I’m by no means an expert at being a webmaster. These guys really have it together and seem ready to keep it rolling. I’ll let them introduce themselves in a post of their own. They know they’re receiving the best Office community around.

I hope of all of you will give a warm LITO welcome to the new writers. It’d be quite self-serving if I even assumed that you came here for my expertise and opinions on the show. I’m quite aware that news about The Office and thoughts from fellow fans is what keeps everyone coming back. I think those to facets will continue without interruption.

I’m sure that you are all painfully aware that we will be seeing a rerun of The Merger tonight. It’s a good episode, but we just yearn for more new stuff.

If it helps at all, tonight I’m introducing a new feature of the site. It’s live Office chat. Some people in the forum have been testing it out and it seems to work good so I’m ready to put it out there for anyone that would like to try it.

I guess it’s obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway. The chat window will tell you when other people are online. I made it so you don’t have to log in to see this. A lot of the time, it might just be you in there. That’s ok though, you can leave something funny for the next person. But, if we ever need to meet over in LITO headquarters to speak of LITO business, at least we all have somewhere to go. (And when Roy kills Jim Halpert, we can all mourn there together.)

So with that, you can go and try out the LITO chat. I’ll also have a link in the sidebar from now on for quick access.

Well, I’m a couple days late, but I’ve heard back from the winners of the February Forum Contest and they’ve chosen what they want from the NBC Universal Store.

Erica is from Chicago and she picked the The Office Dunder Mifflin Inc. Zip Hooded Sweatshirt. It must be cold up there in Chicago.

Ken is in Salem, OR and he picked the The Office: Season Two on DVD.

They made some great choices and thanks to all you ad clickers that make these contests possible. I’ll get those items out to them stat (stat means now…but it will more likely be tomorrow.) Thanks to everyone that keeps the LITO forum rocking!