Last week, probably on New Year’s Eve, I was showing a co-worker where the office keeps the scale and demonstrated how to use it. As I expected, I’d put on a few holiday pounds and decided to start again with the points-watching on the 5th. So I’ve been eating pointily for three days. Three days only. I get on the scale this morning and it shows 7 pounds less. This is just wrong. Even counting 2 pounds for the jeans I was wearing last week that’s still more than I ever lost in a week and it hasn’t been a week yet. I’m going to keep it up for another week and see if I need to do any more.
Category: Life
FarPlates
You know that car game where you look at all the license plates going by and you have to come up with a word using all the letters in order? (Okay, now show of hands for the people who didn’t learn it from me.) I got bored with that and started looking for letters that could make the names of characters in books and movies. Then I got bored with that and made it that I had to see at least two from the same source at once. I used to see them all the time, and now I hardly ever do. Then again, I was living at home when I came up with this and my mom’s minivan ended up with plate letters EGW, so every time I was in that car I automatically had one plate for The Wheel of Time.
So anyway. There was next to no traffic on the commute to work this morning, and we were pacing a beat-up little black car with a blue-and-yellow plate starting with 2AEY. It took me a second to register that I could spell Aeryn with that (kind of disappointing reaction time, but LOTR outranks Farscape in my obsession list right now), and I immediately started trying to see the plate on the car ahead of it. (The combo doesn’t count if the cars are separated by more than one car in either direction, you know.) While Kelson, who had realized what I was doing, was trying to speed up to see it, the car behind AEY passed us, flashing 5BLR. Bialar Crais, anyone?
Drama queen
One of my co-workers has disappeared. She called in yesterday and said she was waiting for the electrician, and then didn’t show up. Today she called in and said she’d be in at noon, then didn’t show. She’s done this sort of thing before, but never two days in a row after being 3 hours later than usual the Friday of the week before. (Didn’t put a battery backup in her alarm clock.) Now there are reports that her cell phone was stolen and is no longer in service, and that she was in tears when she called this morning. And she won’t tell anyone anything, which is diametrically opposed to her usual TMI-inducing self. Depending on who you talk to, this is either scary or a complete sham.
So here I am, her underling, trying to make sense of the overdue messes she’s left while our supervisor is on vacation, and watching the number of voicemails on her phone creep up. Soon it’ll be full and the calls will start coming to me. What with the flu doing its KO on personnel, I’m already busy by way of being the only healthy person not on vacation. (Whee.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if this keeps up, I’ll be hard put not to ask for a raise.
ROTK review soon. I promise.
Warning: Contains Ingredients
Here’s another interesting Food Allergy Alert:
Wisconsin Cheesecake Co., Inc., is recalling 28-oz. Candy Bar Cheesecakes containing either Butterfinger, Reese’s Pieces, Peanut Butter Cup, or Snickers brands because they contain undeclared peanuts.
Now I’m not sure what’s stranger about this: the fact that someone managed to leave peanuts off the ingredients list, or that they think a recall is necessary in this case. Anyone with a peanut allergy has long since learned to avoid anything that says “Snickers” or “Reese’s.” Heck, I still have to think twice to remind myself I can eat snickerdoodles. If I see a Butterfinger cheesecake, I don’t need to look at the ingredients. I already know it’s not safe.
Eh, maybe it’s to counteract all those “well-meaning” adults who don’t believe in allergies and insist, “Oh, just one bite won’t hurt you!” — and then watch in horror as the three-year-old who was left in their charge is rushed to the emergency room. I can just imagine someone like that saying, “Oh, well, it says Snickers, but it doesn’t say it has peanuts, so it must be safe for him.”
Victoria’s Secret Service
I always knew salespeople were audacious. I didn’t know until yesterday that some of it stems from the audacity of their higher-ups. We went to South Coast yesterday in search of, well, lingerie. So we found the Victoria’s Secret. I went to look for my size in a rack of something and a cute, sparkly-faced saleschick interposed herself asking what size I was looking for. A dialogue ensued regarding weight loss and undergarment entropy and how many different sizes I had been found to need in the last few months. I was about to do as she was implying was The Way here and go try on their samples rather than sully the merchandise when she brought up the “Angels Card.”
“You get over $75 in potential savings over the course of a year, and two years of our catalog!” she chirped.
I pulled out my standard response. “I wouldn’t use it enough.”
“Oh, you don’t have to. It’s completely free.”
Fine. “Eh, why not.”
“Fantastic! It’s just five easy questions.” Uh-oh. The catch. “Do you have a credit card for reference?” I did. Swipe. “And can I have your social?”
Riiiiight. Like I’m going to give that out to someone I don’t know, who doesn’t work for the SSA or my employer, in the middle of a store full of strangers. “I’m sorry, I don’t give out my social.”
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone look so confused in weeks. “But–but we don’t give your information out to anyone.”
“That’s fine, but I don’t give out my social.”
So, no Angels Card. Not that I want it, at that price (or the price they charge for underwear, either). But I’m left wondering, what the fuck does Victoria’s Secret need with my social? The credit card should be enough, and handing that over was borderline. If it’s free, it’s free. You’re not promising them any money or business, and in fact you start out by costing them in paper and printing expenses. You don’t need to be a citizen to buy underwear. What gives?
Halloween madness
So work decided to do Halloween on the 30th rather than the 31st because some people don’t work Fridays. This was a good thing, considering that we have not only a potluck but also a costume contest and a pumpkin-carving contest all on the same day and I have a finite amount of time after work. Last year, I was scrambling to make whatever it was I made and carve the Eye of Sauron into a pumpkin (costume was taken care of–Ren Faire outfit) on the night of the 30th, which was very not fun. This year, I baked the cookies on Monday and took Tuesday off for the usual Farscape night. Wednesday, after getting back from the pointless class I’m taking for work, we frosted the cookies while watching Angel and I carved my replica of the “Gourdzilla” face from Monday’s Grand Avenue strip and went out and tossed a mini-pumpkin on the ground to put in its mouth. Easy, simple, and I got sleep.
Here’s what I wore to work.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until the other people in my unit started talking about making a graveyard in the space between my desk and the cubes across the aisle and then doing makeup like dead people. I, being the genius I am, said something like, “Oh, and hey, I can be the undertaker.” So that’s what we did. The graveyard didn’t get made, but everybody dressed dead and someone played “Thriller” really loud. And I won the costume contest.
Gourdzilla also won a prize.
We are now in possession of four no-restrictions, no-expiration passes to Regal theaters, and $20 in gift certificates. So now everybody can go see Return of the King regardless of cashflow. Cool.
The best part of having two days of Halloween is that I had a chance to carve a second pumpkin.
I’d been dying to try this since seeing that other Farscape images had been converted into jack-o-lanterns, and I’d been telling Kelson’s mom I’d give it to her. So it was good to have an extra night to get this done and remember exactly how much I love carving pumpkins. And tomorrow night, it’ll be good to get some frelling sleep…..
Smoke
The weather has been… unusual the last few days, to say the least. Tuesday afternoon I could see smoke from at least two of the fires that had broken out. There was a huge cloud billowing up from the southern horizon, and another huge cloud creeping over the hills to the north. Both seemed to have died down overnight, but they were back by Wednesday afternoon:
By Friday morning, there was enough smoke in the air to tinge the sunlight orange.
Then there was Saturday, which has to have been the most surreal experience I have had in a long time. Up to this point, there were plumes of smoke and large clouds covering parts of the sky. Now the entire sky was covered, keeping the day in permanent dusk, and when the sun could be seen it was bright red. Ashes fluttered to the ground. After several weeks of hot weather, it was cold.
The last time I remember this much smoke was about 10 years ago, I was in high school, and the nearest fire was in Laguna Canyon. And we had an appointment yesterday to check out wedding locations… in Laguna Canyon. So with this nuclear-winter-like atmosphere, we spent the day driving in and out of the very area I most associated with large, nearby fires.
One location we were looking at was setting up for a reception later that evening, and ashes had been drifting onto the plates.
Overnight the Santa Ana winds we’d been hearing about all week finally made their way over the mountains, stirring things up and driving the smell of smoke into our apartment. This morning, ashes were piled up everywhere, even in the carport.
We went out to lunch today, and I learned quickly that staying indoors was the way to go for the rest of the day. Whereas yesterday was all thick smoke up above, today the smoke is thinner, but it’s all at ground level. The sun is visible, but yellow, and it’s like standing immediately downwind of a campfire and not being able to move.
Yesterday was eerie. Today’s scary. Based on news from the radio, it sounds like the fires have roughly doubled in size and destruction since this morning’s paper was printed.
We’re just hoping the flames will get under control… and that none will spring up any closer.