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Thursday, December 18, 2003
The new phone books are here!
Don't you love those little synchronisticalistic moments? Like when small talk at the office party turns to feats of derring-do such as tearing phone books in half, complete with a how-to demonstration then later when you arrive home you find that a dozen new Yellow Books have been delivered to your building's communal doorstep? Past experience has shown that many of them will remain there unclaimed for days. Is it wrong to hope for a rare hallway confrontation so you can put the fear of Sandra into a neighbor by reaching for a phone book and tearing it a new one?
Probably.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
10:46 PM
Next time I'll use wax cylinders
Want to confuse some over-40 adults? Give them each a mini-CD, one shaped like a credit card, for their listening pleasure. Why ever would you do this, you ask. Well, in my case I wanted to share around a recording of a radio broadcast of long ago (1996) that featured interviews with some of the very people I was giving copies to. The MP3 I had finally made from the tape I had originally made from the radio waves on that distant day was made available via a private web site to the group, but I knew from experience that a) finding the site and 2) downloading the file would set most of these Luddites to twitching. Ok, so our holiday party was coming up and I had a dozen or so blank CDs to (heh, heh) burn. But I hate, HATE I tells ya, to use up an entire CD for a single file, one that clocks in at 9 minutes and change at that. So I got my mitts on the aforementioned mini-CDs and some cute little cases for same. To those who showed the most fear in their eyes as I distributed the discs at the party I gave reassurance that their computer or stereo CD player could most likely accommodate the smaller-sized CD. "There's a little groove in the tray that you never noticed," I said. "No there isn't" some replied. Ha. Shoulda bet money. Others accepted the discs courageously only to email me furtively on the morrow to ask how to use them. I'm not even going to go into how many of these people are government employees.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
11:24 PM
"PC" or just pissy?
Word comes from a coworker that when someone in his wife's office proposed a white elephant gift exchange for the upcoming holidays another person in the office complained, citing that they were offended by the term "white elephant". Management's response? No gift exchange of any kind will take place in that office, period. It is unknown whether the person who took offense to the term objected to the "white" part (racial) or the "elephant" part (political). I feel that Napoleon's adage "never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by ignorance" seems to apply here. Nonetheless, management's quashing of the entire gift exchange idea smacks of overkill. To the extent that a holiday gift exchange is appropriate in the workplace to begin with, of course.
My question is: is the person who proposed a white elephant exchange, wherein participants are required to spend little or no money, niggardly?
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
5:00 PM
Mints-ing Words
A note on gum-chewing. 'sokay by me, I used to be quite the conoisseur in my yoot. If you have breath issues or an oral fixation, I say go ahead and chew. Just please not while you're talking with me on the phone and every squishy mastication echoes wetly in my ear. Yish. The only worse sensation is when one is talking to someone a few feet away who is chewing minty gum or is under the influence of a recently-ingested Mentos or Altoids and when said someone's exhalations become your inhalations you get that secondhand minty tingle on your own tongue. I'm fully aware that even without the telltale minty trace one normally breathes in what someone else has just breathed out and I'm not enthralled at that prospect, but the way I see it, out of taste, out of mind, you see? Tasting the taste from the mouth of someone you're not, you know, like all intimate with and stuff is as distasteful as swimming into a warm spot in the community pool.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
4:45 PM
Wipe up the volume
The lady at the beauty supply store regarded my bottle of a really great leave-in conditioner that thickens hair and said "it's expensive, huh?" Well, at $12.00 for a 16-oz bottle I guess it is, but I replied that I didn't mind since a single bottle lasts me more than a year as a little dab generally does me. As I left the store with my purchase I was mentally scratching my head (with the volumized hair) because I thought it an odd remark for someone who sells the stuff to make. The item's price tag seemed to bother her more than it did me. When I got home I placed the bag, unopened, on the floor by my computer desk and carried on with my evening. Before going to bed I decided to unpack the bag. As I pulled out items I noticed that some were wet. Uh-oh. What spilled? Yes, it was the pricey conditioner. The push-up lid had been pushed up and since the bottle had been resting on its side it had half emptied. Oddly enough, there was very little liquid in the bag itself though. Where did 8 ounces of leave-in hair thickener go? Into the carpet where the bag had been sitting, of course. Luckily, it is colorless. It was possibly an accident that the bottle lid had been opened but in retrospect, and if I were the paranoid type, the cashier's comment about the price might make me suspect that she was making sure I would have to come back to buy more earlier than a year from now.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
5:24 PM