I started a new job. I got the job through a temp agency. I met a woman there named Beth, who not only happens to live in my aparment building, but on the same floor and down the hall. And I just talked to her a couple of weeks ago when I was taking down some laundry. I saw her Manx cat and petted it when it came out. How’s that for a small world?
When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?
Catrandom:
I would never tease someone about something related to their occupation unless I’d also done time in those particular trenches. I too have in the past made what I then called a living by proofreading, editing, indexing, writing ad copy, and a variety of other activities related to producing printed material.
I wouldn’t pick on something just to show I knew it was wrong, either. There was something about that particular sentence that begged to be dragged out into the light. It was like an inversion of the famous line attributed to Yogi Berra about a certain nightspot or restaurant:
so far guanolad seems to have the best one…
im sure there are some more good ones, where are they? 
Chief’s Domain - http://www.seas.ucla.edu/~ravi
This is a terribly sneaky way to make my first post ever on this board, but Watson is asleep and I just can’t resist telling this story about him behind his back. He’ll probably never see this, so if anybody wants to tease him about it later please don’t be too obvious –
Last fall Watson’s company had a lakefront project that was just about at the end of a long private road along the lake shore. He went down one morning to look in on the job, and was driving on the lake road with his window down, and a few hundred feet from the job site he was nearly knocked out when a misguided duck flew in through the car window, bounced off his head, and went thudding into the closed window on the passenger side. Once trapped inside the car, the duck proceeded to go berserk.
He claims to this day that it was no big deal, but the site super and most of the crew saw the whole thing, and they said he was like a man possessed when he jumped out and started running around like a chinese fire drill opening all of the car doors and swearing so loud that the neighbors came out to see what was going on.
I can also say that whoever came up with the “crap through a goose” phrase never had to clean up leather seats after a scared duck got finished with them. It wasn’t pretty. Might not be the strangest thing that has happened in the last year, it has been a pretty strange year all the way around, but it’s definitely one of the funniest things that’s happened, and I just know he’d never admit it.
All I have to do to get his goat when he gets out of hand these days is to yell, “Duck!”
Ms.Crick
I have no idea what this ‘signature quote’ thing is all about, but it seems pretty random. I’ll get back to you once I get a handle on it.
Is this for real, Crick?
You’re not just another schizo, are you? we’ve had our fair share of those lately, ya know 
Coldfire
"You know how complex women are"
Okay, here’s another one. Just to show you all what a bizarre life I lead.
I’ve posted this before, so I’ve just quoted the exact tale from when I wrote it then, so ignore the present tense elements. (Yes, the search engine worked!)
Ahem…
===
As most of you know, I’m from New Zealand originally, and moved to Australia six months ago.
About twelve years ago, I had a pen-friend, Trudi, who lived in Melbourne, and we corresponded together for about four years before we drifted apart (as you do). During that time she visited me in NZ for a month.
I am in Melbourne now myself, and have been trying to track her down in a casual way, phone book, ICQ, etc, but not knowing if she was still alive, still in Melbourne, had married, or what, had made things a bit difficult to determine for sure if she was even accessible.
Just two weeks ago I suddenly woke up, remembering her boyfriend-of-the-time’s last name, and started checking that name as an alternative, but no luck.
This morning I turned up at the station as usual to catch my train into work, and there was this somewhat bohemian-in-training familiar looking young woman chatting with the newspaper man, and my body went zing with semi-recognition.
I entered the same carriage as her and sat nearby, hoping something would give away who she really was, and as luck would have it she had a post-it note on her diary with her name on it
Trudi!
There are three million people in Melbourne, and by pure chance I accidentally ran into her.
Wow. Cool, huh?
===
If anyone can come up with weirder stuff than this, I would love to see it.
-PIGEONMAN-
The Legend Of PigeonMan - Shadow of the Pigeon
Weirdo of the Night
Four words people: I went to Woodstock.
Long story short: I used to work for an alt-rock radio station, I quit, a good friend of mine gave me his plus one, vini vidi ran from fire. In a nutshell:
And that is how I spent my summer vacation.
Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth
Hanging out with opium smugglers on the China-Myanmar border.
Sure, they insisted they were in the jade trade. One fella was wearing a $500 leather motorcycle jacket and big Doc Martins in 90 degree heat. He talked for about 20 minutes about how difficult it was for him to get just the right style of Docs imported in that particular part of the country, taught me how to play this neat air hockey kind of game played with checkers, and then resumed talking about how difficult it was to order just the right style of motorcycle jacket.
Went to San Francisco for a Girls Weekend Away and ran into another girl we all used to work with. We’re from Cincinnati. She lives in Tampa, Florida. We ran into each other while waiting for the trolley.
It’s a small world.
Last summer I used to bartend in a restaurant. On weekends, there would be servers waiting tables in the lounge because it was too busy for the bartenders to tend bar AND wait tables.
One Friday afternoon the server scheduled for the bar called in late, so I was stuck waiting tables on the patio AND tending bar (grrr!). These two ladies showed up and took a table on the patio. I was busy and hectic, but not to busy to flirt with the better looking woman. It was summertime and she was wearing a short sun dress–Nice! At one point she told me the last time she had visited this restaurant, she got really drunk and got her navel pierced. The flirting went on, but when the scheduled server finally showed up, I had to give up the table with the cute chick.
A couple of hours later, the two ladies came in and sat at the bar and the flirting resumed. At one point, I asked her a question about her pierced navel. With a look of shock, she asked me how I knew about (NEWSFLASH–alcohol does funning things to the brain). After I explained, she asked me if I wanted to see it. I was actually stupid enough to say, “Don’t be serious, your wearing a dress.”
But alcohol redeamed me (oh, sweet alcohol), because 5 minutes later she asked me again. This time, I said “Yes.” Boy was it worth it. Right there in the bar, she jacked her dress to show me her navel. And she wasn’t wearing ANYTHING underneath the dress. Aaahh! Yes, I actually did glance at her pierced navel, but I had problems keeping my eyes that high. Wow!
Because she was facing me behind the bar, I’m not sure if anyone else saw it. But I don’t care, I wasn’t looking at anyone else.
A couple of months later she came back into the bar with another gentleman. I don’t think she remembered me, but I haven’t forgotten her.
Dunno how strange this is, but…Since just after New Year’s, I’ve been working a temp-to-permanent job in an office. I didn’t mention it here because I’ve announced “jobs” before that lasted a day, but it’s been six weeks now, and it looks good. Anyway, today I went to Burger King, and the manager there was the same guy who managed the BK I worked at, then quit, when I was going to school. He was easily the most ridiculously strict boss I’ve ever had: once I ate a fry that was on the outside of the fry vat, and therefore unservable, and he called that stealing. Anyway, he either didn’t recognize me or didn’t care. I was dying for him to ask what I was up to so I could tell him, but I didn’t want to worm up to him.
Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green
Hmmm, Milo, you are a contender! I’ll swap with my story but first have to tactfully bury a cheery “hello and welcome” to Crick. Hey, we’ve heard some about ya and Watson is a pure hoot, so glad as hell you checked in. (Hey, if you lurk maybe you know about the stalwart Chief Scott and his mysterious Girlbysea who now posts here.) So welcome and a tidy segue out of the paragraph…
What the hell hasn’t happened? After 5 years of mindless idiocy I booted out my alcholic and philandering husband. Love wasn’t an issue, but human obligation was. He’s now in the grim physical meltdown from alcholism. Bad news: he’s dying and I’ll never know how much I enabled. Good news: I’m free of the death throes.
After being trashed at work during this–throat slit in the dark–I jumped to a new job, and then had a promotion thrust on me. Seemed like A Sign. So now I’m salvaging a very sick institution, in a position I never really wanted but needed for the financial security.
So…in 1 year: got trashed at work; shed alcholic, womanizing spouse; took on salvaging sick institution with depressed staff, totally screwed systems, a highly public capital campaign fundraiser and 3 construction projects.
But other than that, it’s been great.
Veb
My bus stop got blown up. A lot of weird things happened to me in Israel, but that seems to be the one that most captures attention.
As many of you know, I spent last year studying abroad in Jerusalem. You probably don’t know, however, that I was studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which happens to be located in East J’salem, which is kinda-sorta part of the West Bank. It was part of Jordan until 1967, and is the only part of the West Bank that was annexed by Israel. Anyway, as a result, there is a very large Arab population there, which I thought was cool (I could hear the muezzin calls to prayer!), but there is sometimes tension, as you might expect when you put a large Israeli university in the middle of an Arab neighborhood. I had been in J’salem for less than a week (I’d been in Israel for two months, though, in Haifa) when terrorists planted a bomb in one of the two bus stops for the dorms in which I lived. No one was killed, a couple soldiers who happened to be waiting at the stop were injured. This was at 8 am, and although the blast itself didn’t wake me up, the police sirens did.
That was the only time in eleven months that I was ever really frightened for my safety, and even thought about going home.
~Harborina
“This is my sandbox. I’m not allowed to go in the deep end. That’s where I saw the leprechauns.”
I was diagnosed as having Diabetic Perphial Neuropathy & had to retire early.
Yer favorite
WebTv poster,
Carl
Okay it wasn;t this year but I have to post this. it started with my parents separating, common enough. Then my oldest sister was raped while away at school. Then my middle sister’s fiance was diagnosed with a depression and as an alcoholic. Then I was crossing the street with one of my friend’s when she was hit and killed by a car (I tried CPR but her injuries were extensive). All of this while my bf was away with the army. Then my dad threatened to kill himself (fallout from the depression) my middle sister called off her wedding because her fiance went in for treatment, I was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression, put on prozac and temazepam (sp?). while on the drugs, my bf took advantage of the situation (I hadn’t wanted to have sex in a loong time, those of you on Prozac will understand) and didn’t understand why I dumped him. The next guy I was seeing tried to suffocate me while I slept, when I woke up and demanded to know why he said ,“Oh yeah, felt like it, sorry about that.”
Since then I have moved five times, had no fewer than seven jobs (most of them menial nothing jobs, oh yeah and I graduated from High School. There, that should round out “the good ol days”. Course now it’s just smooth times, right?
If it makes you feel * any* better, Poysyn, you’ve reminded me that, no matter how bad things get, there’s always someone in worse straits.
Hang in there, kiddo. Things ** can** only get better.
“You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks
All I can think of after reading this far is just how boring a year I have had. That may be a good thing, but wow. Close to speechless over some of the above escapades.
Have you voted for your favorite, huggable Mullinator today?
Milo, don’t worry about me sweetie (thanks for doing so though) I’m going great now, new job, great guy, good relationship with mom & dad, sisters are doing good, everything’s fine. Uh-oh anyday now, something will shit on my head.
Strangest thing that happened in the past year? Rose had a dream about meeting me and my parents, BEFORE we became friends or exchanged photos. I sent her a picture of myself later, and she said that that was what I had looked like in her dream! Weird.
Strangest thing that’s happened in the last year? I’m no longer single (and I fully expect to STAY that way…)
StoryTyler
Distinguished Big-Hootered Assistant to Criminally Insane Doctor,
Self-Righteous Clique
“Not everybody does it, but everybody should.”