Not My Thing

After a week of hemming and hawing I finally asked Welder to join me for the symphony this week. "Symphony?" he parroted back to me, "Nah, not my thing. Thanks though."

Geee. Big surprise. He spent the entire evening recanting the 30 seconds of conversation that took place between two other people (one of which is a cute girl) where the punchline was, "If Welder weren't Mormon, I'd totally be dating him right now." Yeah, like I had a shot. That was either a big fat "don't ask me out I'm so amazingly not interested!!" or "Hey, look how desirable I am." Clearly, it was the latter, as I suspected. If Sine hadn't essentially forced me into it, I probably would have chickened out all together. Oh well. Now, I have to find a date to the symphony with only 2 days to go. Excellent.

Duet

A girl friend and I are playing a duet for the church Christmas program. We'll be playing "O Holy Night."

As bad as I currently sound, the thoughts running through the minds of the members of the congregation probably won't be anything about a holy night.

Zoinks! It's bad.

Black Hoodie

I have a black hoodie. I love it. It loves me.

I have come to the conclusion that I wear it way too much.

I was just looking through some pictures to update my facebook profile picture and in 90% of pictures I have I'm wearing the dumb thing. I don't think I'm going to stop any time soon, but I might could consider it.

Does She Live in a Trailer?

"I rebuilt the carburetor, but I thought I might have screwed it up," Welder was telling yet another colorful story.

"Yeah, well, they're not that simple to rebuild."

"Huh, my sister can rebuild carburetor," I felt the need to contribute.

"Your sister can rebuild carburetors? That's hot! Is she single?" Not Welder this time, another guy, this one desperate to get married.

"Nope. She's on husband number four," details...details. Fine, they weren't all spouses, who really cares?

"Four!? And she rebuilds carburetors? Does she live in a trailer?"

"Not now," I said after a moment of thought, "but we used to growing up."

Not much he could say to that. Mostly because he was dying of embarrassment, but, I think the laughter from those of us watching him squirm was probably louder than anything he could have mustered up.

The rest of the evening was filed with jokes about having lived in a trailer. Including one from Welder which started something like this, "So, this one time—and before you ask, yes, we lived in a trailer. I know it's going to come up, so I'm just going to get it out there..." Ahhh... good times.

In Case of Emergency

For FHE this evening we were joining another ward for Thanksgiving dinner. On the way there I got a phone call from a young woman in the ward needing directions. I gave them to her, then 10 minutes later got another call. This time she was in tears.

Used to dealing with Sweetheart I figured that she just got lost, and asked her if that was the case. Through her tears I learned she was in a car accident. We turned around and went back to get her.

It turned out to be nothing—a simple bump—but nothing is quite like your first accident to freak you out well and good.

While talking to her I learned that she hadn't called her parents.

What makes us call whom first? The first person I called at my last two accidents was Mumsy. The first person she called after hers this evening was me. How have I become so important to her that she would call me first? Was I just conveniently the last person she called? I doubt it. I don't know, and I don't really mind, but I am curious.

Sometimes I really wonder why people turn to me...I'm really not that great, or nice.

Higher University

Friday evening, as predicted, Nurse, Musician, and myself went to the temple together. After our session we sat and chatted about the things we learned for the next 90 minutes. It was great. Wonderful, even. I'm glad I went. They offered to go again, if I want.

I might take them up on it—next month.

Decade

My 10 year high school reunion is next year.

I haven't thought about that in a long time. Why do these things really matter? Really, who wants to see people they haven't spoken to in nearly a decade? If I really wanted to catch up with them, it probably wouldn't be that hard. I could just go to the local grocery store and see who's working the cash register.

I probably should have a desire to go—prove to all the spoiled rich kids (who are now probably in unhappy marriages as (or, with) trophy wives, divorced, or working some second-rate job pushing papers) that a rat from the wrong side of the mountain can make something of herself, given enough determination. I should want to show them all what a huge success I've made myself into.

I have this perverse mental image of myself pulling up to the reunion in a very flashy sports car with some young hot babe on my arm clinging to my every word as we make our rounds through the room, showing everyone how great I ended up, how rich, how desirable.

Scratch that, change of plans. I pull up to the reunion in a beat up Jeep Wrangler, my companion for the evening is a doctor working feverishly with Doctor's Without Borders, and was able to arrange his latest trips around this reunion, just to be with me.

Nahh... he's a world class tree hugger, desperately trying to save the Amazon rain forests.

No matter what ideal I dream up for this thing, I'm always coming back to the same thing: I don't show up alone—never. What do I have to prove to others? To myself? Is it a matter of proving something? I spend so much time being happy, and single, that I worry that these day dreams are symptomatic that I'm not as happily single as I believe I am.

But, far more importantly: why on earth do I care?

If the Situation Calls For It

I'm seriously considering trying my hand at the ol' b&e (um, that would be 'breaking and entering' for you more sophisticated types).

My neighbor has been out of town for almost a week now, and I can almost contain myself no longer. How do I know how long he's been out of town? Well, his smoke detector started running out of battery juice about that long ago. At one beep ever 5 minutes, I believe that I've probably heard it round about eleventy-billion times.

I think in this instance the cops might overlook my behavior. After all, I wouldn't be taking anything, rather, I would be leaving something. Something very, very valuable.

I hope he gets back soon.

An Unlikely Friday Night

This Friday night Musician, Nurse, and I are going to the temple together.

Yes. All three of us. On a Friday night.

He offered to go with me, and I took him up on it, then said that I'd like to go with Nurse sometime. They decided that the three of us should all go together. Probably at her request. I don't blame her, one bit.

This shall prove interesting. One hopes insightful, too. Which is the whole point.

Testing the Grounds

At the chiropractor's office on Saturday we were passing time as he worked on my back. "So," he asked, "do you have any big plans for the weekend?"

"Well, a bunch of my friends are going to have a bonfire and hang out tonight."

"Ah. Will there be beer? A key?" he asked. Kind of an odd question, I thought, but I went ahead and answered anyway.

"Nope. None of us drink. It'll be like a big AA meeting—expect none of us are alcoholics!"

"Ahh, that's good." He went on to tell me that he had a fire pit in his back yard, and 'the kids' really liked to have fires out there and roast marshmallows. Then, he told me (and I'm still not certain where this part came from), "Life has been really hard on them, since they can't see their mother and all, because of her issues." Turns out their mother is an alcoholic. Well, now I know where the question came from. Odd to ask a random patient that question, but, yeah... He also asked if they were friends from work or school. He was kind of quiet when I told him 'church.' Not that he should be trying to pick me up anyway, good grief! I'm a patient!

Are We Really Surprised?

I spent many many hours today and last night making granola.

Are you really surprised? Head over to Kitchen Experiments for the recipes. Something tells me that the nutty one is going to prove to be my favorite.

Murder

After one day I decided the best way to go about killing moles would be salve. As I have none, I quit.

Some killer I turned out to be.

Bloodroot

I read once that bloodroot kills moles. The ones on your skin, not the ones in the ground. I have started an experiment to see if this is true. It goes thus:

Get bloodroot extract
Get bandaids
Put 10 drops of extract on bandaid
Apply to skin, over mole.

I started 10 minutes ago. Currently mole #B hurts. Well, I don't know if it's the mole or the whole region. I'm going to leave it on overnight to see if I burn my skin off, if not, cool. We'll keep this up until the mole pops out of my body and onto the bandaid.

Mole #F hurt at first (which makes sense, since I had accidentally sliced part of it earlier this evening). It doesn't hurt so much anymore.

We shall wait this out—at least one day.

Stupid Smile

During Yet Another Thrilling Meeting (tm) I got a phone call. A quick check at the caller ID revealed it to be none other than Blue. I took it.

We chatted for a bit—he relocated back to Utah and ("You'd be proud of me," he claimed) his new roommate is Indian (dot, not feather—I clarified). I told him that he'll need to learn the secrets of the curry and cook something for me. He agreed. Um, yeah. Right. So, why'd he call? He needed the Bishop's number for grad school applications. Well, good luck to him! Hopefully he gets into grad school and figures out what he wants to do with his life. I could be persuaded to be interested in him again.

Interesting things: he could have emailed or text messaged me, but chose to call instead (yippee!). He called in the middle of the work day (not so yippee). Golly, I don't know what's going on in his head. I wish I did.

Follow the Dancing Thumb

Let's play a game. It's called: "follow the chain of events and see if we reach the same conclusions".

1. I joined facebook (many many many moons ago)
2. I took a job at InternetCompany
3. My boss, 'K,' is fired
4. I got a temporary boss, Energy
5. I got bosses TerribleLead and WalksSoftly. TerribleLead reports to WalksSoftly who reports to Energy
6. I needed to purchase a membership for the free shipping account. TerribleLead gave me his corporate purchase card and told me to buy it. I did so. Previously under K we were allowed to use this account for personal purchases. I continued to do so.
7. Coworkers Happy and Grumpy were hired. I shared this free shipping account with them.
8. Energy joined facebook—and added me as a friend. Um... okaaay
9. Months pass.
10. TerribleLead "discovered" what was "going on" with the free shipping account and freaked out!
11. And reported us to HR, resulting in the three of us getting called in for a "sit down."
12. Pissed I went home and updated my facebook status to "I'm looking for a new job. Hire me." At the same time I noticed Energy was recruiting down at BYU. Sadness, he didn't take me.
13. This morning the edict from On HIGH is handed down—we're all getting written up. Frankly, I think this is ridiculous.
14. The building had a fire drill. While we're milling about I comment to Happy that I updated my facebook status, and I think Energy saw it.
15. Many hours pass.
16. I notice that Energy has returned from his recruiting trip, and updated his facebook status.
17. 30 minutes pass. Happy, Grumpy, and I are all called into TerribleLead's office for a chat with all of our leads (we each report to a different person, then to WalksSoftly).
18. In this chat we're reassured that our work is valuable, and that they don't want us to leave the company (or the team), and they need us on the team, and this won't effect our reviews, etc, etc, etc. About halfway through this I reach the conclusion that you may have reached long ago—Energy had finally seen my facebook status and reported back to TerribleLead something to the effect of 'people are unhappy and thinking of leaving the team. If you don't want that, you might want to speak up.' I spent the next 5 minutes trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Energy is no idiot, and, the three of us who are involved in "The Great Embezzlement Scandal of Fall 2007" are among the top 5 or 6 people on our team. Loosing us would not only cut the numbers by 1/4 (and non-managerial numbers by 1/3), but would mean that half the team was now totally incompetent. Yeah, I'd love to see them recover from that.

As soon as we were out of earshot I turned to Happy and (with a totally unpenitent smirk) told him my conclusions. He agreed.

The good news: Energy is handing out the written warnings next week. This should prove interesting.

H.R.

"Granola?" the woman on the other end of the phone said, "this is Pam from H.R. I tried to book a conference room on your floor, but they're all booked. I just wanted to ask you some questions, can you come up to my office, please?"

"Sure," I replied, confused as to what on earth could be going on. Certain it's not about any of my activities, I ran a list of infractions committed by my bosses through my head. When I arrived in her office Pam corrected my false assumptions. It was directly related to my activities.

"Tell me about the company sponsored free shipping account." she requested.

I replied as honestly and truthfully as I possibly could. At one point she asked me, "did you use this account to purchase items for anyone other than yourself?"

"Nope." I replied, pretty certain of myself.

"Whose Lurch?" She asked. Whoops. I did buy his text books—two months ago. "Oh. Lurch." I said, stalling while I thought up exactly what to say, "he's a really close friend of mine."

"Tell me more." she instructed.

"We had a sort of non-thing for a while. I bought his text books, like 3 or 4."

We wrapped up fairly quickly after that. I guess she found out what she needed to know. Wow. Go her. Busting a domestic free shipping ring! I'm so impressed with her detective work.

To be quite honest, I wonder who told her what was going on. I didn't think of it as a big deal up until I was sitting in her office getting grilled. I suppose it's wrong, but I really didn't think about it. Nor did I buy much. I can hardly wait for the fall out. Should be Wednesday or Thursday.

The strangely pathetic thing: my brain says it's not really that big of a deal, my goody-two-shoes bit is panicked and wondering if I need to start job hunting. Geeze Louise, I hope not.