Archive for 2007

As the first half of my work day had proved monumentally uneventful, I expected the second half to follow suit.

Not so, gentle reader.

Today was the first day in recent memory that temperatures fell below 60 degrees in Austin, whose new city motto really ought to be “Too Hot to Live, Too Fun to Die.” After my lunch break, I was informed that a “mouse, or some other critter” had infiltrated our facility. Being afraid of no critter, and realizing that if someone else happened upon it tragedy would ensue, I set out to capture and release it. It turned out to be the tiniest of lizards (nose to tail, it couldn’t have been over an inch and a half long), which I coaxed into a box and released in the ivy outside the store.

Mere minutes before my scheduled release, a woman came into the store needing help getting some documents scanned. She told us roughly what she needed done (which involved scanning 10 or 15 pages, and saving them onto a USB drive she had brought with her), and then informed us that if we had any questions beyond those basic instructions, she could be of no help.

“You know what a Pakled is?” she asked my coworker. He did not. “From Star Trek, the Next Generation? The Pakleds?”

A light bulb blinked on in my head. I laughed as I realized that she really wouldn’t be any more help. For those of you who don’t know, the Pakleds are a very simple-minded species who keep up with other races technologically by stealing their ships and weapons and convincing someone to help them make it work. Usually they do this by being inept and appearing harmless.

So, she handed me her papers and her USB drive, and in her best Pakled voice said, “You will make this work for me.” It was really entertaining, and almost made it worth getting out of work a half hour late. At least she didn’t phaser me when my back was turned at the scanner.

Marty has discovered how to cook chicken in such a way that gouts of flame emit from the edges of the pan. He has for the first time ever set off two smoke alarms at once, located in different rooms at the other end of the apartment. After mollifying said smoke alarms and starting all the ceiling fans, I found him hooting with glee over the stove, doing it again and again. Fwoosh, zip, fwoosh.

Someone save me, oh god, oh god.

So, Megan told me this evening that most soap doesn’t really kill germs. ….huh? Apparently, only anti-bacterial soap kills germs. Regular soap just lubes ‘em up like greased pigs and helps you to send them squealing down the drain. She must have sensed my skepticism as to the effectiveness of this practice. She then informed me that you should really be washing your hands, scrubbing vigorously, for about as long as it would take to sing a stanza of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Well, great. That brings up a whole new issue.

The real question here is, about as long as it would take who to sing the “Star Spangled Banner?” ‘Cause, if it’s just me humming it to myself, then it’s a reasonable idea. …but if we’re talking about Mariah Carey or Celine Dion singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” then I’ll be in the bathroom for well over a third of my life. Ever notice that when someone *important* sings it, every word has eleven damn syllables? It’s like they’re all getting the star treatment. ….except for “over”. Every word gets longer by roughly 173%, except for “over,” which gets cut in half. Why take out the V? It’s the only interesting letter in that whole word. It’s just mean.

Yes, it’s me — I’m going to post here, too. You thought you were safe, didn’t you!

Marty tells me that I need brains in my elbows.

You see, I have this funny tendency to pick up plates or pans, or, don’t laugh, casserole dishes out of the oven, before testing how hot they are. And once grasped, it takes me several seconds to come to the conclusion that the item is horrifyingly, scaldingly hot. So apparently dinosaurs may have had extra nerve clusters to create responses to pain in their tails, since otherwise the pain would just have too far to travel to tell the brain something was up. Brains in their tails. If I had brains in my elbows, maybe I would respond more quickly to the fact that the thing I just picked up is an ouchifying 350 degrees… or however hot a dish gets when it sits in a 350 degree oven for twenty minutes. You know?

Error in evolution, maybe.

A friend of ours asked Marty if he had any insights on why one might be more attracted to girls in green. Marty suggested a lot of the same things I might have — green being a soothing, relaxing color, and the soothing bit making the attraction feel more acceptable or comfortable and therefore moreso — and then went on to talk about green being complimentary to red, and that it would make the pinks in a girl’s skin tone look more vibrant and healthy-looking, and therefore (theoretically) more attractive.

And I just blinked, because I hadn’t thought of that, but of course Marty would.

Our friends the Triad have been giving a series of workshops on communication-on how to *better* communicate, specifically-for quite some time now. Recently, we signed on to be part of the Usual Error Intensive (UEI seems to be an unfortunate acronym, as it sounds like some kind of inflamed urethral condition), which meets every other week to do a longer, more in-depth session of the Usual Error. The first couple have been fantastic, and the group that meets to take the workshop has a great chemistry which leads to excellent discussion. Everyone contributes, so we all get a lot more out of it. Well, one of the things that good communication tends to dispel (as a 9th level caster) is Drama.

Drama is often the result of poor communication, or manipulative communication, or a complete lack of communication. We were bandying about examples of when different kinds of situations had caused drama, and Kyeli told us about a situation in which she felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices were crying out in *online drama angst*. She told us that she had remarked, “Well, great. I guess it’s time to saddle up the Drama Llama.” ….and we all thought that was the funniest thing we’d heard all night. So I immediately began drawing this ridiculous character. So the next time you feel the need to create drama, or participate in some kind of drama that isn’t directed and on stage, remember the Drama Llama. …have a good laugh at yourself and the situation, take a deep breath, and help us stop the spread of this terrible disease.