Tel - why do you hate everyone in your office today? What have they been doing to upset you?
Good morning all.
I guess my stupid question (which, luckily enough, didn’t get asked too directly) was why I should expect to be surrounded by stoners at the Flaming Lips concert. It never occurred to me that happy, silly music was the obvious choice for people who prefer to fill the air with secondhand pot smoke when at an outdoor music event. I wasn’t expecting aliens, santa clauses, or a fighting nun hand puppet to do sing-alongs either, though.
I do, however, get a lot of stupid questions asked of me while volunteering at the museum library. It’s more of an issue with people not knowing how to ask for what they are looking for instead of them asking for something absurd because that is what they want. For example: A few weeks ago, I get one of the gift shop ladies escorting some angry and seemingly confused lady into the library area. Apparently she was going on and on about looking up the signs of the Chinese zodiac in netsuke form. Of course, I’m a little befuddled, but pull out a few books for her. While I’m doing this, she mentions the member’s newsletter had an article (well, why didn’t you tell me?!? I could’ve pulled one out of my ass and found out earlier!) on whatever she was looking for, so I page the front desk to bring me a newsletter. It ends up that the lady was looking to purchase a set of netsuke from the gift shop that had a Chinese zodiac theme. Now, if she hadn’t been so vague and actually used a phrase that would have said directly what she was looking for, gotten angry, and called everyone in the museum stupid, she might have gotten what she was looking for on the first try. She now had to deal with a bunch of people she had pissed off while she was still angry and shoving a newsletter article in the poor gift shop attendants’ faces. I don’t know if she ever got those figurines, though; she showed up on the last day that the exhibit that went along with the figurines was to be there, so she was probably SOL.
ETA: Tel: I can understand being annoyed at coworkers. We’ve all been there. Also, I can’t read much Xanth fiction because of the combination of obsession with underwear and the near-constant punning. This is why I only read a Xanth novel once a year at most.
Ladies and Gentlemen–Superman vs. the Giant Beagle of Death.
(It’s a little clearer if you play it double-size instead of fit to the window. And if you’re paying that much attention to the background noise from the tv, why yes, we were watching 21 Jump Street. Shut up.)
I’ll have to think about stupid questions for a while. I’m sure I have some, but I can’t think of them right now.
Here are our hamsters. The little gray/white guy got sick and we had to take him back to PetsMart. So we’re down to just the beige guy. Who still has no name. We’re open to suggestions.
We went to the zoo (again) this weekend. It’s Farm Babies season so we saw day-old piglets, a two-day old calf, some kids (the goat kind as well as a zillion of the human kind), and some lambs. Plus, the camels had babies, and there was one super cute takin baby. And the prong horns were… um… frisky. :eek: 
It was super gorgeous out here this weekend. I went rollerblading yesterday afternoon and KeithT biked. That was good. And we just sat outside for a while. Plus, I made some yummy whole wheat muffins Saturday morning (which we have already finished so I had to make more this morning) and some whole wheat bread (which I’ve been doing every Saturday morning for a month or so… we’re addicted).
And I got a massage to try to de-stress after last week’s work stress. Which helped until I tried to log on to work yesterday to do one simple thing and the database wasn’t available. And the on-call IT folks were singularly unhelpful. So I had to bug my boss on a Sunday and one of the helpful IT folks, when I really shouldn’t have had to do any of that if someone had just sent out notification when the database didn’t update on time. But no… it’d be way too hard to email a mailing list upon seeing that the database didn’t update. It’s much easier to let us all get frustrated and have to unnecessarily bug other people about it. Grrrrrr. :mad:
[Public Service Announcement]
Tomorrow is Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day!! Yay!!
[/Public Service Announcement]
Heck yes, dogbutler, we have a wind advisory! I’m most interested in the Roomba hockey league. Zoomba wants to play.
My favorite stupid question is really a matter of phrasing. At work, customers instead of asking “Where is your bathroom?” will ask “Do you know where your bathroom is?” or “Do you have a bathroom here?” My favorite stupid answers are below.
Customer: Do you know where your bathroom is?
Me: You’ll have to ask one of the humans.
Customer: Do you have a bathroom here?
Me: Nope, we have to hold it till we get home.
Happy Monday, everyone!
I had a good time yesterday at the Robin Miller class. She is a funny lady and a great story-teller. And a fantastic cook! We got to taste three dishes - roasted chicken with apricot glaze and a mayo-less potato salad; chicken and wild mushroom quesadillas, and a Thai chicken salad with peanuts and lime. It was all very yummy. She signed her latest cookbook for me, too!
Stupid questions, hmm… It’s usually me who’s asking, and I can’t think of any at the moment. How convenient, huh? 
Excuse the double posting of the Robin Miller stuff. I’m gonna go post it in Cafe Society to get a reaction from the Foodies. 
Why everyone knows modular seaweed. :rolleyes:
Oh, let’s see. Today is the day before taxes are due, yet one of them is ninety miles away right now and won’t be in the office till eleven AM (it’s nine-thirty now). That’s what he said, but add a half hour to that just to be safe. The boss doesn’t come till the afternoon, but he always does that. However, by my count, he has told three people so far that their taxes were done and they could come pick them up, when they weren’t actually done. I have to deal with the clients when they come in, of course, as I’m the only one here. We were told we couldn’t call out sick this last week since there was so much to do, yet the other girl who works in the office called out this morning. There’s also a lot of work that needs to be done still on other things, but I can’t do it as no one has yet explained to me what to do. (It’s not stuff that you’d immediately know how to deal with by reading through it, either.) There are probably other things that annoy me, but I think that’s enough for now, lest anyone think that I am just a complainer.
On the subject of Xanth, though, I regret that I forgot to threaten to freak MOTM out with my panties.(I got yer TMI right here!) He would have been highly amused. I have no new books right now, so I’ve been going through the old ones, and that’s why I was reading the Xanth novels. Now I have to cleanse my mind with a bit of Robin McKinley.
Snot.
S’too. hee, hee, hee
Glad to see our sense of humor matches because I giggled about the same amount at this!
Modular seaweed! (Band name!) Stupid questions! Superman getting chewed by a beagle! You guys crack me right up. I love you all, and it’s just what I needed this morning, after what happened.
What was it, you ask? Well, I’ll give it to you in the form of my own stupid question:
-Why did a GIANT TREE fall STRAIGHT AT MY BEDROOM WINDOW?
Answer: I think the foliage hates me. Seriously, I happened to glance out my window just in time to see the tree closest to it … get bigger … Bigger?
And then BAM. It hit the window. Fortunately it was far enough away that only the very tip of the tree made impact. Otherwise I could have had a real life pine fresh scent added to my room just now.
breathes
There were two pine needles left in my outer screen like a note from the tree:
*Dear Spats
I hate you.
Signed,
The Tree*
So … yeah. I’m alive, in case you were wondering. But holy close calls, Batman! Yeeeesh. Here, have some puns.
Afterthought: Oh yeah, I’m doing two puns a day, 7 days a week now. Need to get to 365.
Hmmm. Working in IT, stupid questions are standard.
Had to go replace a dead monitor for a lady one time.
Her question. Will all my icons still be there?
My mother once rang me and asked if she could have broken the internet. Apparently her modem wasn’t working.
I really like the plug-in seaweed concept.
I should really eat lunch. Hey, the puppy next door is howling! My co-worker whose grandmother just died needs me to take her Saturday shift, so I’ll have two five-day weeks in a row! Normally I work four, so as to have lots of time on the Dope. This will necessitate actual meal-planning.
(Previous paragraph brought to you by Stream-of-Conciousness)
Four! Four people whose stuff wasn’t done even though boss man told them it was. tears out what remains of hair
Dear God,
I want a new job. And a pony.
Thank you,
Telperien
Shortly after I’d gotten her set up with wifi and skype, Mom called me to say “do I have to switch the computer on before I can call you with the headphones?”
“Yup. Did you switch the modem on too?”
“The modem?”
“Yeah, in the living room… does it have the green lights on? You know, maybe you should get the piece of paper I gave you and follow the instructions.”
She went to check and no, the modem didn’t have the green lights on. Once she’d connected everything, it actually worked. But she’d been trying to call me on the headphones by wiggling their on-cable volume control back and forth and wondering why it didn’t work.
Spats, those puns are lousy but I’m glad you were able to pun 'em in.
Someone apparently asked where the water in Victoria’s Inner Harbour went because it was lower in the afternoon than it was in the morning. “Tide” was a concept they weren’t familiar with. I thought that was a really stupid question, but better to ask and find an answer than remain in ignorance. Right?
I grew up in the Kootenays in BC. The first time I went to a pacific coast beach, I was bending over to pick up a shell on the sand, on a wide, empty beach, and something squirted my bum with water! I yelped, turned around, and–nothing. Oh…kay. Weird. Must be a localised rainfall. Then I got squirted AGAIN. And then I was on full alert, glaring at this traitorous stretch of coast.
Clams. I’d never experienced clams in the wild. (I was the one asking the stupid question of the nice Parks Canada lady.)
Speaking of the great outdoors, I was very sad to find a deceased deer yesterday. Our place borders on Mill Hill Regional Park, and I can walk out my backyard and up, and I’m in the park. It’s great. There’s an unofficial path from the back of our and our neighbour’s place that joins up with the official walking trail. That’s where the former deer was. I wandered up there yesterday afternoon to see what wild flowers were out—last year I found the wild orchids! They are fairy slipper orchids, and I was thrilled. Wild orchids! That sounds a bit more exotic than they are, but nice all the same. I took a lot of pictures last year, carefully lying on the ground as these are low-growing flowers. Careful, not to smoosh them. Then I looked up and saw someone on the official path above me walking their dog. I can only imagine what they thought. Sheesh, you think you’re alone in the woods, and… Not.
Just like you think you’re all alone on a beautiful wild west coast beach, and you’re not. The Mysterious Squirting Beach Creatures are there with you.
I phoned the CRD parks and left a message about the deer. I don’t know if they will remove it or let nature take its course. Sadness. I wonder if it was the deer I saw on Monday morning that looked like it was limping? I wonder if it was a cougar? I hope to hell it wasn’t some moron shooting at it with an arrow or something. Between idiot humans and cougars, I will take the cougar.
I’m taking a week of holidays just because. I have lots of holiday time, and needed a break from the office. My husband can’t take any time off (self-employed) right now, so I’m going to pretend to be a housewife this week, and hopefully get a good chunk done on my latest efforts at a novel. Writing a novel is hard. A short story—no problem. Novels? I don’t know. I can read them, have read countless, but actually creating one myself is a real challenge.
Maybe I will get some more painting done. Today’s goal is serious housecleaning! I want to have a clean and ordered house by noon! Then I can do what I want to do for the rest of the week. Silly things, fun things, creative things. I don’t even care if it rains all week—puttering and ‘putering with the dog and lots of tea is even nicer on rainy days.
My mother, bless her, once rang me up nearly in tears of frustration, she was about ready to dump her computer because it wouldn’t stop underlining things. Old people and technology, it’s not good.
Must be an upstate thing. 