Category: kerfuffle

And Then There Was The Time…

So after having a confession yesterday about my snake flinging incident, commenter Andy D mentioned that if I’d slung the snake directly onto instead of simply near my mom, that likely I’d remember the conclusion of that story a lot differently.

Which reminded me of yet another story that took place at that family vacation house near Ute Lake.

My dad was an avid hunter and we always had guns in the house. Since my dad didn’t want us to be either scared or a little too curious about the guns, he made sure we all knew how to shoot each and every one.

On the small bit of property we owned in Cuba, New Mexico, there was a tree that had been felled by lightening. It was a huge tree, and it made a really good location for target practice. Whenever we’d go camping, my dad would bring along guns and each kid (and mom too) all had to take a turn. Dad supervised while we learned to load and shoot the gun.

I was shooting my dad’s deer rifles from a young age. All this is by way of saying that I grew up fairly comfortable around guns.

So ok.

My brother had himself a BB gun when he was a teenager, and when he went off to college, that BB gun was left at the Lake House. For a while, around age 12 or so, I adopted that BB gun as my own. It had seen better days, but it worked fine and there was a big box of BBs available for my “ping!” pleasure.

I liked to shoot the gun mainly for the sound of the BBs pinging off the side of something like the old metal sided chicken coop.

Not the most ambitious of kids, was I.

On the property was a telephone pole. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, that telephone pole was covered in a very thick layer of tar. When the baking heat of a New Mexico summer day would get going, that tar would soften into a gooey mess.

So in my eleven year old mind, I had the brilliant idea that if I shot BBs at the tar covered pole, they’d stick. Wouldn’t that be so cool?

I filled the BB gun full to the brim and got to work out back shooting at that pole from a fair distance. I wanted to make it sporting. Now, hitting a decently narrow pole from a good distance is tougher than you may think. Or at least it was for me. What I lacked in aim, I made up for with single minded focus.

Well, so there I was, pumping BB’s in the general direction of the telephone pole, and my mom, wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt, was working out in the back yard pulling weeds.

You can see where this is headed, right?

Sure enough, it was only a matter of time before I pulled the trigger, my aim was a bit off the mark and I…

Yes, I did.

I shot my mom in the arm.

She was, as the saying goes, mad as a wet hen. Quickly enough, a big red welt began rising on her right arm.

Let me just tell you this: I was no longer allowed the use of that BB gun. I was done. For good.

Flinging a snake? I got off easy. Shooting my mom? My oh my. I was in quite a bit of trouble which included a “talking to” from my dad.

That’s never good.

And so in the course of two blog posts, I’ve created quite the Mother’s Day meme.


(I did not, in fact, shoot my eye out. I shot my mom. Whoops.)



Photo is a still from the movie, “A Christmas Story.”


Doing the Superior Dance

A few years ago, in fact, almost three years back, The Good Man and I joined a book club affiliated with our local library. It was run by a really intelligent librarian who was pretty good at managing the club.

She’d do thorough investigations around the book and its topic and would bring up insightful questions for discussion. The first book we read for the club was “A Confederacy of Dunces.” It was an offbeat choice, and I personally struggled to finish the book.

It took The Good Man and I talking about the story for me to understand it and see if for the bit of brilliance it really is.

The library book club was populated mostly by people over the age of seventy, and they were not especially amused by the book. It was an odd club meeting that night. I was unsure if we should continue on, but decided to give it another chance.

The Good Man and I read the next few books and participated in the book club, and for the most part, we enjoyed it.

Then the librarian chose the book “Three Cups of Tea” for the group to read. A non-fiction choice, this was a pretty wide divergence from where we had been. But ok! The book had great reviews and was quite popular.

So I settled in and read it. And I hated it.

I mean, I get it. I get why everyone is so enraptured by Greg Mortenson. But I personally thought his story was a load of yak crap.

For one, I didn’t like the “how great I am” storytelling style. I’ve often found the greatest people don’t need to resort to that.

And for two, I bristled at the idea of this American man imposing his ideas of education and values on these people. I think building the schools is a good and worthy concept, but then get out of the way.

So I said these things at the book club. Well…that didn’t go over well. One especially nasty elderly woman took issue with me on that sentiment.

I should have just let it go. This nasty woman was also deeply offended at the section of the book where it was described how animal dung is picked up (with their hands! *gasp*) formed into patties and dried to be burned as a source of heat.

But she harrumphed and huffed and informed me that Mr. Mortenson was certainly fit for sainthood (in not those terms, but pretty close).

Well. Seeing all the breaking news this week. It looks like *I* was right.

: Superior Dance :



I’m sure that the nasty old woman doesn’t even remember that she was so harumphy at me. But I remember.

The sad news is, after that book club meeting, I was so turned off by the whole thing that I stopped going.

So in the end, she actually won.


How Did I Get Here?

This is not my beautiful spice cabinet:



Ok, well, it’s my spice cabinet now. See, I prefer a generally chaotic method of organizing spices. Roughly, the flavors I use a lot are toward the front. The spices I use less frequently are toward the back.

I always know, without having to think, where each spice is located. I open the door, reach in, grab what I need, shake enough into the pan on the stove, then put it back.

Top shelf, randomly speaking, is for baking stuff like vanilla and almond extract. Lower shelf front holds the salt, cumin, garlic, etc. The everyday stuff. The nutmeg is tucked over in the back right corner. Dill is in the middle right. Cocoa powder is top shelf, to the left.

See what I’m saying? Bing, bang, boom, I know where everything is.

That was all well and good until I married The Man Who Checks Expiration Dates. Or, perhaps more aptly named: Food Safety Man.

My darling one is quite diligent about checking the “use by” dates on all food in the house. When he moved in with me, he was horrified to go through my cabinets. He would bring a can or container of something to me and say, “do you realize that this expired in 1996? That means you brought it from New Mexico when it was already expired!” When he said that to me, the year was 2007. Heh.

Yeah. Well. Ok. I *might* be guilty of a teeny bit of hanging on to stuff too long. My beloved sister has had many talks with me over the course of my adult life about “just let it go.” Blame being raised by parents who remember the Great Depression, I suppose. I’d like to consider myself to be…frugal. Really, if I’m to be honest, I’m just too freaking lazy.

And so, when my sweetest went through my cabinets and threw out, oh, about 60% of what was in there…I was mildly annoyed, but I got over it. I’ve become better accustomed to his weekly (if not more frequent) going through and rearranging the fridge, throwing things out and front facing all the remaining contents. So much for my grab and go approach there, too.

And now this…my spice rack. The spices that are the heart and soul of my cooking! He did this yesterday while he was making something for dinner, so I guess I can’t really complain that loudly. But still…I heard him rustling around in there and had to sit, take several deep breaths, rake a Zen garden, chant a mantra, and play a sitar.

I gotta say, it looks pretty good now. I can’t find anything, but I’ll learn. And just as soon as I have the new organization system down, he’ll organize it again.

The spice rack was pretty tough to take, but there was something worse. I almost packed my bags when he organized….(I can hardly even say it)….my toolbox. This was a violation most egregious. My toolbox! And let me just tell you this…I have more and better tools than he does! Now that we’re married, a comingling of the tools has occurred and I may never be the same again.

Oh the horrors of community property!

Marriage is weird. Maybe this is why people usually get hitched so young. It’s easier to manage when they haven’t gotten all old and set in their ways.

Really, all this organizing and changing up my routine is probably good for me.

Just don’t tell The Good Man I said so.



I realized, belatedly, that this might just be the perfect follow up to the previous post about variety being the spice of life. Unintentional, I assure you. One of those happy coincidence type of a deals.


“Hello Gorby? It’s Me, Ronnie.”

One of my all time favorite series of posts on this little blog has been the “Office Archeology” series of scenes from my former employer.

From the first week I worked at the new employer, I’ve kept my eye out for potential Office Archeology items to continue the series. So far, no luck. This place is kept spotless. There are no weird wrappers on the stairs, no lockless keys on the hallway cabinets, and no abandoned staplers laying about. Nope.

I mean, that’s good, right? But almost a little weird too. Every office seems to have that bit of junk that everyone ignores. But not this place.

That said, I have managed to fine one item that, while not junk, absolutely confounds me. Here’s a poor quality iPhone photo:




This piece of historic telephony is located in the break room, right above the trash/recycling/compost bins. In fact, off to the left is the chart that provides helpful suggestions about where to toss your trash.

At first I sort of noticed it, but ignored it. My company has occupied this building for over twenty years, and I figured it was a remnant of the past. A leftover.

But over time, I became more and more fascinated by the red telephone.

Why red? Why in the breakroom? Is there a conspiracy happening?

If I pick up the red phone, do I talk directly to Gorbachev?

Look, for a child of the Cold War era, the red telephone means something!

Remember the days when Ronald Reagan sat in the Oval Office with his finger on the button and the red phone at his side? It was a staring contest to see who would blink first. Gah! THE RED PHONE!

Soon enough, my obsessive compulsiveness kicked in. I couldn’t ignore the red phone any longer. It wasn’t just something in the background but this THING that was there in my environment taunting me!

My need to be “the good girl’ and follow the rules (meaning, if it’s not yours, leave it alone) and my intense curiosity began to collide.

I must pick it up! I can’t pick it up! I must pick it up! I can’t pick it up!

I asked someone who’s worked here a while about the red phone. I hoped that answers would help ease my OCD.

“Um, I don’t know, I never really thought about it,” she replied, when asked.

This is what normal people do. They don’t obsess about a red phone.

Finally, when the days and nights of curiosity and agony were too much too take, and I found myself alone in the break room, I quickly looked left, I looked right, then lifted the red receiver from the red base, and held it to my ear.

I could hear nothing. “Hello,” I said in sotto voce, eyebrows knit together waiting for all to be revealed.

“Hello?” I said again to the silence.

Then I tap-tap-tapped at the hanging up lever.

Nothing. The phone is dead. I was right, it’s a leftover.

Not satisfied, a week later I sat in a meeting with a few members of our IT team, including the voice engineer guy. At the end of the meeting, I cornered him and asked about the red phone.

“Oh, that’s for disaster recovery. Since we all use VOIP lines on our desks and cell phones, we have to keep one wired line on every floor in case of emergency.”

Ah ha. Well that makes sense.

“Did you know that the phone doesn’t work?” I asked.

He shrugged and said, “Oh well!” and walked away.

Fabulous. The emergency backup phone doesn’t work. Now I have a whole new thing to obsess about.


A Common Language Usurped By a Simple Decimal

Today I went to a workshop to teach me how to properly measure, cut, mat and frame a photo. The end result of the workshop was to be a gallery quality framed photo ready to be hung in an art show coming up in May.

I participated in this workshop last year but was so confused by the process (the volunteer showing me the instructor’s method knew what she was doing, but not how to adequately teach it) that I vowed to pay close attention this year so I could both get it right for the gallery show and be able to cut mats and frame my prints at home.

Ok, so I showed up at the workshop, took possession of my mat board, went to station #1 and got to work.

The instructions said: “measure your image, not the paper it’s printed on but the actual image, and write those numbers in the center of your mat.”

Ok. Fair enough. I measured.

My image came out to be 9 11/16 by 8

So I wrote that down.

Step two said “subtract the larger number from twenty and the smaller number from 16”

(we’re using standard 16 x 20 frames)

So ok.

16 minus 8 equals 8. Perfect. That’s the easy one.

20 minus 9 11/16.

Um.

Uhhhhh.

Did I ever mention that I suck at math?

Ok, I was bound and determined not to screw this up.

Might I also mention that I think that our standard measuring units…an inch divided into sixteen units, is really dumb? When I craft, I use centimeters for measuring. The 10 based system makes freaking sense!

Determined not to be outsmarted, I wrote on my mat:

19 16/16 minus 9 11/16 and then I worked that out equals: 10 5/16

Well I gotta tell you, I was feeling p-r-e-t-t-y darn good about myself right then.

Then the next step said: “Divide each number by 2”

*sigh*

Okay. 8 divided by 2 equals 4. Rock on!

10 5/16 divided by 2 equals…..well it equals a string of curse words that I’ll refrain from repeating.

So I paused. I hemmed. I hawed. I considered calling The Good Man who is really good at math.

I considered converting it to decimals and using my calculator. But that doesn’t help…I still needed to know how many of those stupid little 16th hashmarks on the ruler were required to cut my mat to the proper size.

This is not about expressing the math correctly, it’s about counting 16th marks on a ding dang ruler!

So…I wrote on my mat: 10 5/16 divided by 2 equals: 5 2.5/16

Yes, I know that you can’t put decimals in your fraction. I just don’t care. This works for me. I can count two and a half 16th marks on the ruler and mark ’em off and make a cut.

It was about this time my instructor came over. “Let me see what you’re doing” she said.

She looked over my shoulder and saw my mash up of decimals and fractions. Then she rolled her eyes. Then she said “oh…make it 3/16ths!”

Then she did what my dad used to do when he’d assigned me a task but was exasperated by how I completed the job. She took the tools out of my hands, re-measured my print, marked the coordinates and cut my mat.

Hey, no problem here. She is the curator of the art show and she has to approve all prints for show. I know she’s not going to have a single problem with how my mat looks….

Heh.

I still say there is nothing wrong with my 2.5/16 fraction. I know exactly what it means and my mat would have been measured fine. Cutting it correctly? That’s a whole other story.