Anhydrous Wit

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

It appears I'm not as witty when I'm flirting with a woman.

In the earlier dream, Lena Horne asked me how the cheesecake that she had just fed me was. I said, "As smooth as your voice." (Even in the dream, I knew that was a clunker.)

In the later dream, I had just been seated with a stranger in a brewpub. The guy asked our waitress, "Do you have anything with less than 1% alcohol content?" I interjected, "Yeah, the entrees." (Unfortunately, the alarm woke me up before I could take the first sip of my porter.)

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

While You Were Out

I amassed nearly 200 e-mails to my campus account and 34 to my company account while I was on vacation. Only a few were interesting, and barely any of them were worth commenting on.

In "Stuff for Paper Bag Game" a teacher named Skeeter (honestly -- we also have "Buck" Rogers working here) invited us to donate items for an economics game to be played by his students. He wrote, "If you have 'stuff' of more or less value to teenaged boys that you are willing to part with..." (If he sent this e-mail to the parents, he might get more than a few replies about teenagers the parents are willing to part with!)

"Request to paint an office" was, naturally, a request to paint an office prior to a new employee starting work. The employee's name is Joe Painter. (Why don't they just ask him to do it himself once he gets here?)

The guy who wrote "Mice still around..." has a problem I'm not qualified to handle. "We still have mice roaming around the Tate Hall 3rd floor office. They seem to be avoiding the sticky traps entirely; there are several around our office. Since that wasn't working, I purchased two containers of D-Con. After they devoured the first one in December, I bought a large one, which they have now eaten entirely. This morning, I found two of them in the D-Con box. They promptly ran away. What should we do next?" (My first instinct is that he should sue D-Con for making a faulty product. Then notify the EPA or somebody that we have poison-resistant mice running around.)

I also got a message via the address I use for e-clubs and coupons. A nationally known discount store offered me "20-20-10" -- not fertilizer, but if I spend $20 or more on my next 20 visits, they'll take 10% off of a future purchase. No deal, Howie. This was my second visit to the store in seven months, and all I bought was four light bulbs for $1.50. At that rate, it would take me ten years to shop there 20 times, and I'd never need $20 worth of anything they have. Their 10% (which isn't much of a discount anyway) is safe from me.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Everything New is Old Again

This story occurred while I was in New Mexico for vacation. It regards the new dorm at New Mexico Highlands University, where I spent my first two years of college.

A decrepit dorm is nothing new for them (although it is a twist to have something like this happen in a brand new building). The old dorm which this replaced was where I lived, and it did everything but fall down around our ears. The elevators repeatedly broke down. (Why anyone would try using them in the first place, considering what some of the boys did in them regularly, is beyond me. I used the stairs.) The fire alarms went off at least once a month, usually in the middle of the night (although they had help for most of those instances). Then, when it rained, the roof leaked -- and the walls. That's the only explanation I can imagine for how my room flooded when it was on the sixth floor of a nine story building. I knew a student there who had been an electrician working on the dorm when it was constructed (he was what they called a "non-traditional student", getting his degree later in life). Knowing how it was constructed, he once said he was surprised the building had lasted that long (about 30 years, by the time I moved into it).

Now it sounds as if the school is starting over. I'm glad I'm not there.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Jet Lagged

Oy, it is so much easier to fly west. And, of course, I slept poorly the night before my flight back to The Noog (I always sleep poorly the night before I travel anywhere), and I slept poorly last night because I was back in a bed that is too small and has a crummy mattress.

Still, I was able to crawl out of bed this morning and restart my workout. I didn't weigh in (I don't want to know, after two solid weeks of no exercise and more than usual food), but I could tell in the mirror that I've thickened a little around the midsection. For the next few weeks, mirrors are my enemy. (More than usual, I mean.)

I wonder if Skippy will let me take a nap at work today.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Well Excuuuse Me!

To anyone who attempts to talk to me in a restaurant: Don't go away mad, thinking that I think I'm better than you. Maybe it's because I didn't hear you – not until you said that, anyway.

It seems that I offended a stranger tonight because I didn't thank him for his compliment about my Pinky & the Brain T-shirt. I didn't hear him at all. Then one of my dining companions, sitting across from me, said something I couldn't understand. As he repeated himself for me, telling me what the stranger had said, the stranger said something else, or repeated himself as well, so again I didn't hear him.

That's when he became upset and snarked that I must think I'm better than he is. Of course, that's the only thing I heard from him. I didn't bother trying to explain or apologize (not that I had anything to apologize for), since he had already made up his mind that I'm a snob. You can't reason with people like that.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Flights of Fancy

My travel from Atlanta to Albuquerque was relatively uneventful. I actually breezed through airport security as quickly as I have in El Paso. Mind you, that's because I was there at 5:00 a.m. (Wait for it.) My flight wasn't scheduled to depart until 7:45 a.m., but since Atlanta is such a busy airport, my shuttle service suggested I get there at 5:00, so they booked me a seat on the 3:00 shuttle -- which meant I had to wake up at 2:00 a.m. (And, thanks to one of my bowling teammates being chatty all night, we were the last team to finish, so I got to bed an hour later than usual, so I had all of 4.5 hours in bed, the equivalent of a good nap, before I had to get up again.) Then, as I had anticipated, my mom wanted my company until the news ended at 10:30 p.m. (12:30 a.m. back in Chattanooga), so I was up for 22.5 hours. Man, it's good to be able to sleep in!

It was kind of nice that the steward gave me an entire can of ginger ale instead of just a cup full of ice and a tiny splash of soda. However, it would've been nice if they gave me peanuts or pretzels or something, too. I hadn't had breakfast, after all. (And, if Southwest Airlines can continue to serve snacks and not declare bankruptcy, why can't the other airlines?) It was exactly for this reason that I packed protein bars: one for breakfast and another for lunch. (I am not going to pay $8.00 for nothing more than a single, solitary sandwich! Why is food more expensive in airports than the rest of the civilized world?)

I took a shuttle from The Noog to Atlanta because I preferred paying $69 rather than the extra $200 or so for the convenience of flying directly from Chattanooga. I saved money and didn't have to drive on little sleep, in the dark, to an airport I had never visited before.

Well, that's not quite true. I have been to the Atlanta aiport several times, but I haven't actually ever departed from there. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the security checkpoint wasn't as traumatic as I expected. Atlanta is a hub airport, so they have a lot of planes arriving and departing, but most of the passengers merely go from one concourse to another, without having to pass through security. (Still, I don't want to test this theory by flying out of there when everyone else is awake, too.)

I took a local shuttle as well from the ABQ airport to my mom's house (it's slightly cheaper than the cab I'm going to have to use when I depart at dark-fifteen in the morning, when it's too early for the shuttle service to operate because only freaks like me can wake up that early).

As I waited outside the terminal for the van, I had my jacket open. It was 36 degrees (the coldest day it had been, I guess in honor of my arrival), but I wasn't cold. I was warm. (I think humid cold is entirely different than arid cold.) It was sunny. (I had gotten out of the South scant hours before the snow was due to fall.) I was at the start of two weeks of doing nothing but sitting in my mom's family room and reading. I was smiling.

After I had made arrangements and paid, the guy behind the counter had said, "Welcome home." Truer, sweeter words had never been uttered to me.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

It's time for another "Good Idea/Bad Idea".

GOOD IDEA: Checking the fire systems the day before the students return to school.

BAD IDEA: Checking the fire systems the day before the students return to school, and draining the water outside the buildings, when it's below freezing.

Honestly, people, just because I mentioned that there's almost nothing for my crew to do because it's below freezing doesn't mean you have to make work for them.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Everything old is new again.

I taped three of The Thin Man movies (based on the book by Dashiell Hammett) on New Year's Eve, so I watched them this weekend. If I had wanted to, I could've stayed up all night and watched six in a row. I also watched a new Scooby-Doo movie (live action and really contrived; I don't recommend it), which purported to tell how the Mysteries, Inc. gang got together (in a Breakfast Club-esque detention).

I decided older was better, so I also taped and watched Fahrenheit 451 (based on the book by Ray Bradbury). Then, to celebrate my liberty, I read some of my current book. (Note: not a new book; I'm progressing through past mysteries found in the school library and a local, used book store.) Then I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (not based on a book, and I didn't care for the ending) and Bridge to Terabithia (also based on a book, which I probably would've preferred, if I had ever read it).

I seem to have come down with a cold. Yes, I had one almost exactly a month ago, and the timing couldn't be worse. I'm flying back to NM later this week, and I'd rather not contaminate a planeful of people, let alone deal with the sinus pressure as we change altitudes.

So, my verdict for the weekend is that older is better. I'm a man out of time, I think.