Sweet stash

How juvenile is it of me to open a picture of someone I know in paint and draw a moustashe on them, just 'cause I'm mad at them at the moment and don't know how to express my feelings any other way?

Maria The Hero

Today in a meeting this was the song my supervisor kept singing. It was weird and disconcerting. I don't mind being appreciated but it was weird to have my boss tell the group that "Maria will once again ride in on her white horse to save us all" -- especially since most of what we do is team work.

I rule

7 out of 24 participants this weekend were women. I was the only woman not to drop a bike. Several men even rode their bikes straight into the chain-link fence around the yard.

Anyhow, motorbiking is harder than I thought it would be. I've got new respect for how expensive and dangerous the sport is.

I did however pass with flying colours! Yay me! I'm now a biker! (sans bike)

Motorbiking

Is harder than I thought. And what a nice weekend -- we're frying, sitting on running bikes, on ashphalt, in riding gear, at 26 degrees and full sun. Even a mere jean jacket becomes a personal sauna. I'll probably have lost 5 pounds the end of this weekend.

one hour, fifty minutes of toasting.

I came into the kitchen at 12:38 this afternoon for lunch and the toaster oven was on, without any toast or frozen dinner in it. So I checked with everyone in the lunchroom “who is using the toaster? Is it supposed to be on?” The toaster has in previous days been left on all afternoon before… old people’s disease; it’s kind of a problem at work.

Of course it was that same woman of all the printing problems, of accusing new hires that they pet themselves, the only person who has issues with magically appearing templates on the website, that SAME woman who drives me crazy. She was pre-heating to insert four frozen samosas (which were basically the size of 1” won tons) into the toaster. When I left at 1 pm she was just putting in her teeny tiny samosas. Yup, who knew that a toaster oven had to pre-heat for 20 min?

She made a big deal laughing about me being anal retentive and obsessive compulsive about leaving appliances on. I told her it has happened before, and I was just checking – I was merely taking good care of our common space.

So at 2:28 I got cold. (yes, the A/C is finally working) I think to myself, “self, I will make thee a delicious cup of hot chocolate.”

Guess what? Yup, toaster was still going. Those teeny tiny samosas were totally black. I turned off the toaster and went to tell her that her lunch was ready. I thought she’d run me over in the hall running to the kitchen… of course they’re totally dry and completely inedible after being in the oven for an hour and a half.

She gave me kind of a side-hug to thank me for telling her and turning off the toaster for her. That was sort of uncalled for.

Magic

This particular woman at work drives me crazy. If I generally talk about a woman at work who drives me crazy, it's probably always the same one.

Lately, and today again, she's been emailing me asking for information on who posted something to the intranet because she's sure it's totally new. "It's never been there before, I know because I checked, and I've never seen it before."

She wouldn't believe me when I said it'd been there since February 2003. Something was new about it though, she was sure it was the logo. Nope, no one has revised that form since 2003. Sorry, try again. How about the hidden characters that don't show up when she prints the form. Again, nice try, but nope.

It's not new. It hasn't changed. Still hasn't changed. Still not. Nuh-uh. Nope.

Intermittent Air

Intermittently we're getting blasts of cold air. This is new and exciting after the two months of spring have been unseasonably, swelteringly hot. The cold air is mixed in with many years of duct dust, but we are thankful nevertheless.

They had bought a new air conditioning unit and sent us many notes updating the estimated date of installation. Once they finally had a maintenance guy out to install it, they realized that the first guys they had out to assess the situation measured the doorways and elevator wrong, so it wouldn't fit through the building to the roof.

Eventually someone disassembled it, and reassembled it on the roof. Assumingly, though, that certain person had a few screws and a part left over, since then it didn't work.

Diana called me from her office today and said "come smell my office."

"I'm working," I told her.

"No come smell it, it smells like burning rubber. They turned on the A/C and it's blowing on me and it smells funny."

No thanks, I don't really want to smell your office.

What ever the case may be, it's good now and blowing cold air. Even intermittently and stinkily, we're thankful still.

Where am I??

Here! Here? And here.

Do I do this? Several people I know have this annoying habit of saying "here" every few minutes. In particular someone I know prays: "we're here, thanking you God, for this day here..."

And here (aha ha ha) are a few examples of work related here-ings that I don't understand.

I am a medical doctor in St. John's Newfoundland and will be giving a presentation on Crystal Meth here.

I am interested in doing my part to clean up the city I live in here. I need to know more of how I go about doing this.

So why do people do this? In the first example it's a superfluous word. In the second example I had really no idea where the writer's "here" is and couldn't help him.

Mumblebulmbubelmub take 2

I had the priviledge of talking to another expert IT person who was completely incomprehensible. It sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. I had to concentrate so incredibly hard and it was weird because he was really chatty and personable -- something totally unheard of for an IT geek.

At one point he asked me to compile a file for him and at the same time started talking about me being interviewed and started listing something off... and I thought I hadn't paid close enough attention so I said "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening to the beginning of your sentence... what was that?" He thought I'd been interviewed for the radio station, but I set him straight that no one would interview me... that's completely ridiculous!

Anyhow, after I got off the phone my boss (who was spying on my convo) was totally laughing. "He called you to help you figure something out and you say 'sorry, I wasn't listening?' to him?"

Mumblemubmlebumel

A kid in IT kind of mumbles, and he's Chinese so we never really understand him, but he's no clearer when he writes. Here's a funny bit from his email:

After you successfully punish to this site, you can use the link to test it.

I setup this link to go directly to the punish folder and website on EDM-PP29.

If you have any problem, please let me know.

Awe!

http://www.foundmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=finds.view&fid=680

I heart Luke!

I love Luke Doucet. I love him wallowing on the floor in Broken One.

Marcella couldn't decide whether or not to call me Lucky or Spot this trip. Spot because of all the freckles. Lucky because of: the attack sparrow, two terrible sunburns and a portuguese man o' war sting on my texting thumb. (no, peeing on stings is a myth. The locals recommend putting vinegar on stings. I recommend ice.)

I learned: sunscreen and hats are important for fair blondes, don't touch jellyfishes, and for goodness sakes don't look down while you're bobbing around in neck-deep water.

Gallons of iced tea consumed.



 

One of my favourite shots of the trip -- amazing because we were standing about 100 feet above the ocean on a shear wall of black lava rock. 

Cave at the Black Sand beach.

Pictures from the Road to Hana.



Picture also: 54 one-lane bridges, roads so narrow and full of switchbacks that some people get car sick, and no place to pull over. 

6 passenger canoe vs. the 2,146 passenger Pride of America in Kahului. 

Snorkeling day off Molokini & Turtle Town.

 

Awe cute, look at the little sparrow!

Look how close he is getting to us! He might like us!

Aaaeeii!!! I didn't know it but the sparrow was a kamikaze attack sparrow, bent on stealing girls' ice cream cones right out of their hands!!

That's a wasteful shame. 

Fabulous eye wear...

 

Rainbow on the way back from our Hana trip.
 

Rainbow Eucalyptus
 

A plantation tour guide demonstrates how to properly shuck a coconut, where to drill the hole to let out the coconut water, and how to cleanly hit it with a rock so that it naturally opens at the seam.


 

The Granola Girl from California tending a fruit stand on the Road to Hana was much more interesting to watch in her coconut cracking approach.

Rogue chickens roam everywhere on Maui. E v e r y w h e r e.
On vending machines.
Under cars.

This one chased our car as Marcella took a picture out the window.
We ate a lot of fish.