Nothing to write home about - a very early MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

Spats had a mandatory meeting this morning. Apparently I wasn’t bored enough after yesterday (since which time I have had literally no work, nothing to do), so the interns were all brought together for an hour long meeting about the history of the base, the main research directions on the base, and the base’s role in the overall research work the Navy does. Ugh. B-O-R-I-N-G. At least there were granola bars.

So, I’m bored. Yesterday, I did two minutes of something that (if you wear glasses with the word “WORK” printed on the inside of it and squint real hard) vaguely resembled work. And that was it. And today I have just as much to do. So I brought the book I’ve been sifting through. Neal Stephenson is my own personal god, lemme tell ya. In his novels I have been treated to no less than a thorough, detailed, meticulous description of a character eating Cap’n Crunch cereal, and a philosophical discussion of an object’s defining properties, when it retains those and when it does not, using Pie as an example. Oh, it’s delicious in more ways than one.

As a counterpoint to that, here’s today’s Pun:

rosie, I wholeheartedly concur.

Now, you want to talk ER visits, let me tell you about my little brother. We’ll call him Ben, because that’s his name. The following incidents have occurred:
-When he was just over a year old, he was using his freshly-mastered walking skills in our local library, which has a fish tank in the kiddie section. Eager to go see these fish, he ran over there, tripped, and cut his head on the corner of a bookshelf. Stitches in his head.
-At the age of two, he fell down the stairs and broke his wrist.
-About nine months after that, he fell again, I think on the playground, and had to get stitches in his chin.
-Several years later (at the age of seven or eight), he was spending the night at our cousins’ place. A hearty bed-jumping session led to him flying off the bed and his head landing on a dollhouse. A dollhouse with lots of pointy plastic projections. My cousin (a teenager) carried him into the ER while my brother’s head oozed.

So as you can see, my brother has been through some scrapes. And these are just the ones that sent him to the ER. I haven’t even mentioned all the times he was patched up at home.

102

Swampy, by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any tattoos, would you? I found an um… video, with your identical twin on it, who is slightly tattooed.

103

**Spats ** - your brother is one resilliant little booger

104

Yeah, you must have despaired on ever getting rid of him. :smiley:

105

I owe chocolate, huh? How about Midnight Chocolate Madness cookies? The ingredients include a cup or 2 of baking chocolate, lots o’ sugar, cocoa powder, a cup of walnuts, chocolate chips and about 1/2 cup of flour, which results in all of 10 cookies. They go very well with Cabernet, or so I’ve been told. If you don’t like walnuts, how about a dark chocolate fudge instead? Or vanilla rice crispy treats or an orange glazed poppyseed poundcake? It would be so nice to have people to bake for again! :smiley: My current co-workers don’t like for me to bake, so they complain non-stop, while they’re [del]stuffing their face[/del] eating, how terrible I am for baking. Phooey on them! No more poundcake or fudge for those ingrates!

106

My co-workers have figured out that I’m on an Evil Quest to Make Them All Fat, but they can’t resist. :smiley: If you fatten up everyone around you, you look skinnier by contrast.

seven loads of laundry done. Time to work up the energy to clean the litterbox, Nature’s Miracle something Bailey peed on, clean the kitchen, and make a cold noodley thing for dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. On Sunday I scraped all the ice out of the freezer. I’m all productive.

107

:eek: They promised me nobody else would ever see that! Jeez, one wild weekend in Tiajuana and… huh? Oh! Nah, that ain’t me. Really. See? I don’t even have any tattoes.

108

…anymore. :smiley:

109

I have a dilemna
the cow-orker on the other side of my high wall, and thus on a different aisle, loves to walk down my aisle to exit the office (for the lav or the lunch room, whatever) and when she does, she always looks to see what’s on my screen. I know this because I can see her looking in my mirror. If it’s not work, or doesn’t look like work to her (I have several functions she has not yet learned) she’ll say something to the cow-orker who sits in front of me and they will giggle. Front cow-orker has got a case, considering the time she spends on the phone (granted she has a very uncooperative 6 year old who is alternately cared for by his aunt, his grandmother, and his father) or drags a half days’ work out to a whole day (if I had a dime for each time she’s done that . . .) Side cow-orker works diligently, when she’s not on break. Her lav breaks have been known to last more than 15 minutes. (I know this because this is how long I’ve had to wait on line - it’s a one person at a time facility - on more than one occasion)
my dilemna is this
do I say something to the cow-orkers who will both deny they talk about me?
do I say something to our supervisor and be labeled a tattle? They haven’t said anything to her, that I know of, because she hasn’t said anything to me about it. Besides, I get more than my share of work done, even when I’m draggy, so that’s not at issue.
It just gives me aggida (sp?) whenever this happens. I want to stand up and say to them both “it’s none of your goddammed business what is on my screen as long as I get my work done. Why don’t you spend more time on your own frickin work?” but I know that’s not appropriate.
It is possible that it’s all my imagination - that’s it’s pure normal curiosity, and Side looks at every screen she passes; and she and Front are giggling about something totally unrelated. But being the paranoid insecure person I am, this consumes me.

110

I had a coworker years ago who would look over my shoulder then comment on whatever was on my screen - he’d do it several times a week. One day, I opened a new word doc and typed “Mind your own FUCKING business” in large bold letters, and then waited to ATL+TAB’d to it at the appropriate time. He was aghast.

Then he shut the fuck up.

Sorry about the cuss words. I’m still a little bitter about that job and the people I worked with there.

111

rosie, I suggest you follow Winston’s lead. It’s the ju jitsu of office politics: use her own bad habit against her.

112

Thirded. Stupid twit. None of her business.

Ooh! Ooh! I have another Useless Git story! I wasn’t there on Saturday (thank goodness), but according to the other girl who works with him on Saturday he spent the whole evening whining about his new job, how hard it is, how long it takes to get there, his migraine, the smog…

and the fact that he’s not scheduled for work on Canada Day (July 1st), which will be time and a half plus holiday pay. Now, he’s only been working (in a manner of speaking :rolleyes:) at the store for a couple of months. People get offered days with holiday pay in order of seniority. He has been there the least time. He thinks this is unfair. He deserves to get holiday pay because he’s leaving.

Does this seem stupid to anyone else? The great thing is that he’ll be working Sunday instead, which will be time and a half (it always is), so he’s making more anyway.
I will do a really big happy dance after he’s gone. Useless Git.

113

Oh well. A man can dream. (I could send the clip to you if you’d like… you’d see it really is you. ;p)

114

Well, I do like looking at my own handiwork, so sure. :smiley:

I have had employees come tattle on other employees. That dog don’t hunt. I always remind the tattler that if he or she were spending time on his or her work, they wouldn’t need to be worrying about others. If somebody is goofing off excessively, I will find out because I’m kind of a stickler for things being done on time and expect excuses for not gettin’ stuff done to be really good. Tattletales are not suffered well.

115

**smitty ** - “Quit Looking At My Screen” is much more my style, but even that is excessive for me.
I won’t tattle - that’s not my style either; but it’s the not knowing for sure what they’re saying that’s killing me. Whenever people who aren’t my friends whisper in my presence I think they’re talking about me. In school, I was the loser kid every picked one. That sort of thing is hard to shake. Then to have, as adults, cow-orkers behaving like “mean girls” just brings back all the old shit. I couldn’t even eat lunch today, my stomach is so knotted.

116

Studio is painted. I’ve quit for the day. We’ve got to buy some adjustable shelf brackets and a couple of shelves, and a towel bar, and a work stool. And FCD needs to make the drawers for my work table.

Tomorrow, I’ll set up my wheel and attach the tall shelf unit to the wall. Then I can put all my clay and my tools there at the ready. I’ll also have to make a decision about my wedging table and the rolling cart - I don’t think there’s enough space for it all.

This weekend, I’ll so the preliminary firing of the kiln - great idea when the temps outside are in the 90s, eh? But once that’s done, I’ll be ready for business. After I buy glaze, that is. But I can throw and do the bisque firing before I need glaze.

Time to feed the critters…

117

Hi y’all. Yesterday was my one day off from work, so natcherly I was too busy to post. I was supposed to drive down to Eugene (~100 mi. south) to pick up supplies, but The Boy Child[sup]TM[/sup] picked them up Friday (he works about 1/2 a mile from the warehouse) and put them in the back of his truck and I met him in Corvallis (not nearly so far south) and collected my stuff, plus some other stuff #1 Granddaughter had for Wifey to put in her (#1GD) wedding attendants gift baskets.
I mentioned that #1 Granddaughter is getting married this Saturday, didn’t I? I thought I did. They’re getting married in Eastern Oregon at her other grandparents place. I don’t suppose any of you guys would be interested in seeing pictures when we get back? I didn’t think so.

Anyway, #1 Grandson had to be in Corvallis at the OSU baseball field yesterday for tryouts for the state all-star baseball team. He’ll be a (high school) senior this year, and he’s already received letters of interest from several colleges re: scholarships for both baseball and football, including Stanford (baseball) and Harvard (football). We don’t want him to play football however, "cause if he gets hurt his scholarship could disappear. He’s hoping Stanford will offer him a full ride, 'cause he wants to be an engineer, and they’re a good school for that. They aren’t allowed to actively recruit until the kids senior year however, so we’ll see then. As I said, I collected my stuff, and watched a couple hours of the tryouts, and came on home.

Minor rant: When Wifey told me The Boy Child[sup]TM[/sup] suggested I meet him on the OSU campus, I was very reluctant, 'cause I just knew it was gonna be a trial finding the ball field, and I was right. Like every other college campus I’ve ever been on, there were streets with no street signs, streets that didn’t appear on any map, streets that changed names every 2 blocks, streets that ended at large unmarked buildings, streets that were closed for no apparent reason, and, my personal favorite, streets that became one-way (the wrong way, natch) for a single block before reverting to normal. I don’t know why college campuses delight in this sort of thing. Maybe it has something to do with their view of the world. I dunno.

Movie review: Transamerica Felicity Huffman plays a man who wants to be a woman and wants to have his man bits cut off in the worst way.
Hmmm… maybe I should rephrase that. Tell ya what:
Plot Outline (from IMDB): A pre-operative male-to-female transsexual takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she fathered a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.
This is not exactly the comedy some promoters would lead you to believe, and we didn’t rent it expecting it to be. We rented it 'cause Felicity Huffman was in it. It was excellant, and it did have some very funny bits (not hers) in it, but it was more of an exploration of some quirky characters. By the end of the movie you’ll probably find yourself really caring what happens to her, and her son, who is generally a self-destructive idiot, i.e. a teenager.
I recommend it with this caveat, it could make some people uncomfortable.

Bee Season Wifey got this thinking it would be about a girl studying for the national spelling bee. It shoulda been, and that was in there, but mostly it was a muddle of various brands of mysticism. I’m sure there was supposed to be a message or two in there, but I wasn’t interested enough to dope it out. The one message I did reconize; everything is Daddys fault, just [del]pissed me off[/del] annoyed me.
Very well acted, especially by Flora Cross (the little girl) and Will Gere, but not recommended by me.

Rumor Has It, from Imdb:* “Jennifer Aniston plays a woman who learns that her family was the inspiration for the book and film “The Graduate” – and that she just might be the offspring of the well-documented event.”* pleasant fluff. some good turns by the actors, especially Shirley MacClaine and Mark Ruffalo. “Jennifer plays a neurotic twit” would be a more apt description however, and, despite the fact that neurotic twits annoy the Hell out of me, I’ll recommend this one.

Gotta go back to work now. More later.

Oh, welcome to all the newbies, 'specially Gabriela, who tells really good stories. And hi Shibb!

118

I wanna see wedding pics, Bumba.
That’s interesting, swampy. As I’ve mentioned, my biggest problem with Useless Git is that he doesn’t work. I hate tattling, but a)the way my store works is that everyone comes in, looks around, and says, “Hey, look- there are calls that need to be made, and some invoices received, and the fiction section needs restocking”, and then everyone just does it, so work is largely self-directed rather than assigned, and b) the manager isn’t in very much, so while he may notice that things have been piling up a little, he’s unlikely to know why.

Mostly I like the laid-back, self-directed bit, but it can become a problem because it’s easy to take advantage. I know that because my manager isn’t around a whole lot, if something is going wrong he’d like us to tell him, and he needs to know… but I still hate tattling.

Cleaned the kitchen with disinfectant (bleach) and cleared the drains. Now I should tidy the livingroom and the pantry shelves. I think I’ll take tomorrow off until I start work, and do something fun.

119

I want to see pics Bumba! Years and years ago, before my grandparents passed on, they would summer in La Grande, Oregon. It was kind of nice and laid back then. I have no idea what it’s like now.

I hate tattlers too. I figure if someone has time to “tattle” on you or notice if you’re "not working’, then they’ve got way too much time on their hands and perhaps they should think about doing something productive.

Speaking of being productive; I need to go do some productive stuff now (again).

120

Wow, I am draggin’ my butt today, but I have good cause. Yesterday while the ribs were slowly cooking in the oven #3 daughter and I cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards and organized them. (Both The Skiffologist and The Son just cram things anywhere in the cupboards, well, when they don’t just leave items sitting on the table or the counter. While we were thus engaged, The Son’s best buddy called and asked if he could spend the night and go to the pool. YAY, a girl’s night! Off he went, and we finished up our chore, and afterward we were just dishing up dinner when the front door burst open (to a deafening alarm by the pommies) and at first we both thought “What did The Son do to make his friend’s mom send him home?” but no, it was The Skiffologist.

It has been a rough start to the salmon season, the weather has been lousy, they sprung a freon leak in the RSW (Recalculating Sea Water, it keeps the fish fresh longer) last week, so when I saw him, I asked him why he wasn’t out killing fish. Here is what he told me: (keep in mind he’s on a salmon seiner, and he runs the skiff which pulls the seine out from the boat, holds the set while the fish swim in, then he comes around while the skipper “purses’ the seine” which means drawing the lead line closed to keep fish from escaping through the bottom while they winch the seine up and onto the boat.)

He said that he was beginning to circle around to close the seine when it became apparent that something was amiss. It became obvious what the trouble was when the humpback whale came up out of the water. The Skipper was screaming for Skiffologist to back up, which he did, before realizing that the whale was trapped on the other side, so he switched directions. That’s when the second whale also breached. Yup, two humpback whales in the seine, with ol’ Skiffologist right in there with them. One tried to come up under the skiff, but he zoomed out of danger at the last moment. It took some doing, but he got the seine stretched back out so the whales could break free, which they did, and off they swam, leaving behind the seine in tatters. So for the past two days they have been mending whale sized holes in the seine so they can get back out fishing. Day before yesterday they were in Skiffologist’s home village, but the float just wasn’t big enough to stretch the seine, so they came into Kodiak and worked on it all day. The Skipper called and said that he wanted to be travelling with the change of the tide, which occurred at 2:00 am, so I am a sleepy woman today. As well as a worried one, as this season has been plagued with breakdowns and the fish run really hasn’t begun yet. The Skipper told me that he expects that they will be making money during mid-July through September, but I worry. It’s not uncommon for a crewman to owe the skipper money after a bad season, (for fuel, groceries, and all the other crew share stuff like rain gear, boots, gloves, etc.) and right now is just not a good time for that to happen. le sigh

Then again, for the first time since Memorial Day Weekend it’s not pouring rain, so I may get outside and play in the dirt sometime today. That would be a good thing!