More than just groceries

A few months ago, shortly after I moved to my current apartment, I went grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon at a store a bit farther away than my "normal" store. There's nothing wrong with my neighborhood store, but it's small and doesn't have some of the specialty items I periodically need or want (for example their cereal selection is limited). So now and then I need to go to a larger store with more options. There's one grocery store in particular over near the pet supply store that I really like that has excellent variety. I combine my errands and get both dog food and people food in one trip.

The store was exceptionally busy that afternoon, and it was a rather long wait at the deli counter. People were impatient, several people cut ahead of me in line, but I was in no hurry so I just waited and decided that it was no big deal. The people behind the deli counter (a guy and a woman) were chatty, and were really pleasant with me, probably because I wasn't impatient or short with them (pleasantness begets pleasantness, you know). I didn't think anything of it.

I should have paid more attention.

About 15 minutes later, while standing in the dressing aisle trying to pick out a couple of new salad dressings (again with the excellent variety), someone walks up behind me and says: "Hey cutie-pie!" Yes, he called me cutie-pie.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned around to see the guy from the deli counter. He was on break. "Hi," I stammered back once I had remembered how to breathe. Next thing I know we're engaged in conversation. I think I was too stunned to escape before he starts asking me a few questions (name, are you single, why haven't I seen you here before, etc.), continuing to call me cutie-pie throughout the conversation, and then hands me a piece of paper with his name and phone number on it and tells me to call him sometime if I would be interested in having dinner or a drink with him. He then says he has to get back to his shift and walks away.

After he left, I dawns on me what had just happened. I was picked up in the grocery store by the deli guy. He tracked me down in the store on his break to give me his phone number.

OMG. Of course nothing ever came of it because I'm not all that interested in dating right now (my life is complicated enough). And then I realized I can never shop at that store again. Dammit.

Recently I decided to tempt fate and go back to that store (I hadn't been back yet). Again, I was in the vicinity picking up pet supplies and I needed a few things. But since I didn't need anything from the deli counter, I decided to go for it and hope and pray I didn't run into him because I didn't feel like explaining myself and admittedly felt a bit guilty I didn't say "no" when it all went down. I was too startled to escape gracefully at the time. Fortunately, I didn't see him and escaped the store without incident. I don't know if I'll tempt fate a second time.

Memoir in brief

I've been tagged by my colleague KS. Dammit. And this meme is really hard. It's taken me awhile to come up with my answer.

The meme originated over an idea that was prompted by the book written by Larry Smith & Rachel Fershleiser: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure. It’s a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words were, “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post (http://herebaby.blogspot.com/2008/06/six-word-memior.html) if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogsphere
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links
5. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play

Drum roll please...my memoir would be titled:

Trying to live and love gracefully.

Of course, if I could I'd add the subtitle: but not always succeeding.

I'm tagging the following people:

Err-what?!

Statute of Frogs

Eclectic Librarian

A Few of Mrs. Dude's Favorite Things

Library Despot 3.0

Good luck people! This was difficult (as evidenced by my desire for a subtitle).

Question of the day

Someone honestly asked me this today.

Q: Is that your real hair?

Me (heavy on the sarcasm): Um, no. I intentionally chose a wig/weave/whatever with tons of gray hair in it. Yeah.

Drama at the bus stop

I arrived at the bus stop this morning to raised voices and obvious excitement. Ah...high school drama. Gossip. Loyalty. Emotions and hormones running high. This morning's drama can be summed up in the following quote:

"I'm not going to go to school mad. I don't give a f**k what she says because I know who I f**k."

Then the conversation turned to the upcoming prom.

What a way to start a Thursday.

Overheard

Walking through a street fair up and down 2nd Ave. in the East Village:

"Go back to the Midwest where everything is quiet."

Um, yeah, right.

Fortune please be kind

I'm down in Washington, DC for the annual CONSER/BIBCO Operations Meeting. Two days of meetings. And food. Tonight a bunch of us that arrived early enough went out for Chinese food at the same location as last year: Young Chow on SE Pennsylvania Ave. And thank you! to the local person (HN) that organized it. Of course, there were fortune cookies at the end of the meal. My fortune says:

"New and rewarding opportunities will soon develop for you."

I find this both exciting and terrifying. Exciting because they will be new! and rewarding! But terrifying because opportunities usually equal/result in more work. New and rewarding work, but WORK.

So I ask you to please be kind, fortune gods. Please.

Observation

People do not, I repeat, do NOT walk in a straight line. Least of all when they have their cell phone glued to their ear or are trying to text and walk at the same time. They weave all over the place, completely unaware of their surroundings. It's bad enough that in England they're padding lampposts to prevent injuries (see this article from early March). But even without the focus on their cell phone people don't walk in a straight line.

Trying to bike these days is like biking through an obstacle course. Everyone is outside enjoying the spring weather despite the high pollen counts. Which is making biking interesting. Seriously, people, LOOK UP periodically when texting or talking on the phone and be a bit more aware of your surroundings and the people in them. LOOK UP when paths are merging or before stepping off the curb. Didn't you learn in kindergarten to look both ways before crossing the street?

More LOLcat goodness

Kitteh iz beer snob.


see more crazy cat pics

Happy almost caturday!

LOLcat goodness

The combination of two of my favorite TV channels...from a cat's perspective.


see more crazy cat pics

Mental note

Do NOT attempt to floss or do any task that requires fine motor skills after using the asthma inhaler that gives me the shakes.

Trying to floss while your hands are shaking uncontrollable is not fun. Really. Trust me. Not. Fun. At. All.

Observation

While I understand the purpose of Daylight Savings Time, this back to having to get up when it's still dark out stuff sucks.

Suicidal Cadbury creme eggs

These are so very wrong. Yet so very funny.



I think my favorite is the trash can lid. And the hair dryer one is disturbing (almost sexual...which is just beyond wrong).

I'm not so sure I want Cadbury creme eggs in my Easter basket anymore this year...

Via Serious Eats blog.

Connected

Even with an ocean separating us, my mom and I are connected. And I'm not talking about being related, but actually linked subconsciously in some disturbing-freaky-OMG way. Case in point:

You know how I had laryngitis last week? And had nothing but a husky squeak for a voice for several days? Well, I got an email from my mother. She's had laryngitis for the past week. And she sounds like Minnie Mouse when she has it.

I just about peed my pants laughing when I read that email. Just proves that you can separate us by an entire ocean, put is in separate hemispheres, and we'll still be connected. Comforting, yes, but also disturbing and freaky.

Courtesy

Some companies still practice courtesy when it comes to their customers. Amazingly, Verizon is one of them.

They sent a tech person out to fix my phone line this morning. I knew this was happening, and had confirmed last night that I didn't actually have to be home. I assumed that I'd find out if they were successful or not when I got home tonight and checked for a dial tone. Mind you, this was already better than AT&T who usually made me call multiple times to report the problem and wait at least a week before they'd actually even consider sending someone out. So my expectations were rather low. Still, I reported the problem on Friday, and Verizon send someone at the first available time. No multiple complaints. No arguing about who's responsibility the problem is (AT&T always always said it was my responsibility until proved otherwise...even though usually it was their problem). One call to report the problem to Verizon, one test on the line, and they dispatched a tech person to fix it. Cool. Courtesy from a corporation. What a concept.

But it gets even better.

The tech person called my cell phone when he was done to let me know it was repaired. This was after he knocked on my door to try and tell me in person. There was a broken wire that was interrupting my voice transmission but it didn't affect the DSL transmission. Hence the DSL service but no dial tone (still having issues wrapping my brain around that). But he said that all should be well now, and to check when I get home just to make sure.

They CALLED to let me know the repair was complete.

Wow. Speechless.

Misidentification

I bring my lunch to work pretty much every day. And once a week I take stock of what's in my fridge to make sure I have sufficient yogurt, fruit, and other goodies for the upcoming week.

This past Monday was a holiday. And it was bitterly cold. So I did an assessment of my fridge to see if I needed to actually venture outside to go grocery shopping or if I could stay snuggled up with hot mugs of tea all day. I counted my yogurts, the yummy pears in my crisper drawer, and made sure I had enough other ingredients to make 4 days worth of lunches, including confirming I had canned soup as a backup option. No problem. Lunch for the week: check! No need to brave the cold (other than to walk the dog).

So imagine my surprise when I went to get my last piece of fruit out of my drawer for lunch on Friday and discovered that it wasn't a pear, but an avocado. An avocado, people. Yes, still technically a fruit, but not what I expected or planned on. Or what I thought was there based on my fridge assessment on Monday.

OK, granted, they are about the same size and shape. And the pears I had were green, and this particular avocado was more green than not. But still...

How the hell did I mistake an avocado for a pear?!?

Election quiz

So, which presidential candidate do you match with best based on key issues?

87% Dennis Kucinich
86% Mike Gravel
82% Barack Obama
81% Chris Dodd
78% John Edwards
77% Hillary Clinton
77% Joe Biden
76% Bill Richardson
41% Rudy Giuliani
35% John McCain
32% Ron Paul
26% Mike Huckabee
25% Mitt Romney
15% Tom Tancredo
15% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Can you all guess from the results that I'm a liberal? And you know, I knew my preferences without even taking the quiz.

Falling UP a set of stairs

A "how-to"

1. Make sure said stairs have a lip at the front edge

2. Make sure you are in a hurry

3. Make sure you are carrying an armload of stuff (such as back volumes of journals or a bunch of gifts/packages/bags)

4. As you are going up the stairs, catch the tip of the toe of your shoe on the front lip of the stair

5. Fall forward ("up" the stairs), bashing your knee(s) into the stairs in the process

6. Two options: partial fall (6a) or full-on fall (6b)

6a. Don't fully go down, just bash one knee, but manage to stop "falling up" by catching yourself, getting your other foot under you and onto the next step, and continuing up the stairs in a kind of half-run until you regain control

6b. Fully fall forward, bashing BOTH knees, spilling said armload of stuff all over the stairs and having to use your hands to stop your forward fall and to prevent your face from hitting the stairs. Compose yourself briefly by sitting on the stairs, then gather belongings and continue on, limping slightly.

You have now successfully fallen up a set of stairs.

For full effect, make sure to do this in front of a large number of people, preferably frantic and stressed out students during final exam time, or, alternately, frantic and stressed out shoppers with toddlers in tow the weekend before the Christmas holidays.

It's time to go home...

The internets are trying to tell me so.

I'm trying to find the webpage for a journal. I link to one of the many associations "official" page from a publisher site and this is what I get:

You have reached the end of the internet, please go back.

The end of the internet...yup, time to go home.

Death of the elevators

Well, the game of elevator roulette is no more. They are dead. ALL THREE elevators at this end of the library are dead. Apparently there was a power surge that toasted the control panels last week. And we have no idea when they will be fixed, but probably not until after the new year.

They opened several stairways down to the staff only area of the ground floor (basement), but the stairs in the library are confusing in general. I'm still figuring out which stairway will dump me where depending on the floor I'm exiting on. I've now taken the both newly opened stairways down (we have to show ID to a security person to keep out the riff-raff) and have ended up in very different places. I got so turned around the first time I practically needed to ask for directions and there are only two options, left or right! It's an adventure, really.

But this still means having to leave plenty of extra time to navigate the detours when heading to the bathrooms.

UPDATE (1:45 PM): There's a big sign on the elevator doors saying they are out of order and instructing people to use the elevators at the other end of the building.

I just watched a patron walk up to the elevator, stand directly in front of it, push the button, and then wait.
Me: Excuse me, these elevators are out of order. You need to use the ones at the other end of the building.
Patron: Oh.
Me: Sorry for the inconvenience.
Patron: Oh! There's a sign! I didn't see that. [was staring at the closed doors with the sign on them expectantly not 5 seconds ago]

Um...yeah. Just proves that we can post as many signs as we want, but we can't make them read them.

Elevator roulette

We have three elevators at my end of the building at work. Three. One dedicated for staff use only, that only goes between the first floor and the ground floor. The other two are general public use, and you have to use a key to access the ground floor because they open into a staff-access only area. There are no open stairways that lead to this end of the staff-access only area. At any given time, two of these three elevators may not be working properly.

A colleague aptly described the staff use only elevator as "chronically ill" in a meeting this morning. There are times you get on it, push the button, the doors close, but you don't move. It just doesn't go anywhere. So you push the doors open button and get out on the same floor you got on. Other times it moves but the doors don't open at your destination. Or you try to call the elevator, the button lights up, but the elevator doesn't move. There's even a plaque in that staff elevator commemorating when President Gerald Ford got trapped in it!

As for the public use elevators, generally one of the two isn't functioning. Usually because the doors won't shut properly. Again, you can get on, push a button, but you don't go anywhere. Or you'll call the elevator to, say, go down (with your key, mind you), and both will arrive, but because the lighted arrows at the top of each elevator don't work properly, you can't tell which is going up and which is going down (both light up). I can't tell you how many times I've just taken a ride because I got on the wrong one. And you can't take these elevators to the 6th floor...you have to use the ones at the other end of the building. If you do try to take the ones at my end of the building to the 6th floor, the doors do open, but they open into a locked cage that you can't get out of from the inside (so I've been told...and I have no desire to find out, thankyouverymuch).

At this point, I'm inclined to make sure I take my cell phone with me whenever I ride the elevator just in case I get stuck.

And make sure you leave extra time if you have to go to the bathroom. There are no bathrooms on the first floor (could someone explain this to me? how is that good design??). You either have to go down to the staff area on the ground floor, or up to the third floor for bathrooms on this end of the building. They exist on the second floor, but only at the other end. And God forbid you get stuck in an elevator (or waiting for an elevator) on your way...