Gigantic Zucchinni's

Goatmeal Cereal

I know someone who takes a sharpie and puts a "G" in front of the word oatmeal on her morning cereal. For giggles.

Hihowarya?

After "hi" sometimes I forget to say nice things to people when I talk to them on the phone before I launch into the reason why I'm calling. Things like "having a good day?" and "what's the weather like where you are?" Some of my family find this trait annoying and most find it hilarious. My only redeeming quality is that my "hi" is usually "hi how are ya?" or "hi how's it goin'?" Yesterday I realized that when I met a German person I said "hihowarya."

Snow White

The people here are super funny -- the internet is still a magical place. Today I had three hysterical voicemails when I got back to my desk from the server room but one of the younger guys had already dealt with the lady who's outlook was as she called it "possessed" or she needed a new keyboard -- turns out she'd had a freak-out so bad this guy had gone to help her deal -- she was swearing and mashing her hands on the keyboard but nothing would come up on screen...

White font.

Yep.

True story.

How to quit your job: a primer

1. Pull the fire alarm daily.
2. Eat other people's lunches. In front of them.
3. Steal money.

How not to quit: hand in a reasonable resignation letter and get sent back to your desk to "really really think about it." Then, after lunch, go and reiterate your desire to leave and get sent home "to really really think about it" overnight.

At my parents

M: I get the phone because no one cares to answer it and it's my grandma's half-sister's cousin's daughter whom I've never met on the phone to ask if I'll go out with her son.
A: Yup, been there, done that!
M: It's not like we're related or anything... Oh wait. YES IT IS.
A: Well you gotta keep it in the family! :)

On my crackberry

I'm in Home Depot with my dad and there's all this annoying, repetitive tapping/hammering going on. I peek through the stock to see what is going on and it's a group of Asians building birdhouses. It was funny, is all.

Servers

I called for help this week and was sent probably one of the smartest Server guys a person could hope for. We ended up building a server from parts to be quick about it. To be perfectly frank: I got to install the CD drive and he built practically everything else.

At some point he was looking for pliers in my toolkit and not finding any, mentioned that I needed to go get some -- so I dug around in my purse and pulled out my little tool and he was quite astonished by that magic. A while later when we were plugging in the new server into the rack he needed a mirror and a flashlight to be able to see where he was plugging it into. Neither of which I had.

"Really? You have pliers in your purse but no makeup compact?" Hehehehe, yup.

So we made do with the back of a CD and a lighter.
In a server room, that inexplicably has no redundancies.

Shepard's Garden

Driving down 66th Street past the fire hall with a classmate he points out the Shepard's Garden high rise under construction. Recently, he informed me, he had looked at buying a place in this new high rise but they didn't seem to be for sale only for rent. Astonished I informed him that they were an extension of the seniors' manor and lodge next door and they were definitely only available to old people. "Hm, that makes sense, they had a nurse on staff 24/7 and you could take your meals in the cafeteria..."

FAIL

To truly appreciate the joke here you might need to click on the picture to see it full sized. Notice the caution sign on the left hand side in particular...

What is a negative number?

Lunch and learn instruction on General Ledgers:

Q: What is a GL? Otherwise known as a general ledger? Well, to understand GLs we have to first understand negative numbers. What is a negative number? I'll draw it like a ladder with steps going up...
*draws*
Well actually, it's more like a hill... with steps... going up...
*erases* *draws*
Well actually, maybe it is more like a ladder...
*redraws*
There! Now you need to understand negative numbers to understand Debits and Credits, for when you take money out of one account you can wind up with a minus, but really it's a plus somewhere else, or it could be one of several plusses and minuses in several GLs even if it's still a plus or minus in your account or a minus or a plus in several GLs!

Clear as mud?

It's funny how you can tell when people are explaining things that were difficult for them to grasp so they have little understanding that everyone else might have understood negative numbers when they were introduced to us in Grade 2 and when GLs were covered in Accounting in High School. By very latest when you had your own bank account with overdraft coverage you understood debits and credits. It really IS like a hill! You keep working and working like you're trudging up a steep hill but you keep getting further and further behind, the first step is your overdraft, the second is your credit card, the third is your...

Q: How can I make an ugly car uglier?

A: Stick beads on it!

Smells like a horse with the hiccups

At a hotel in Calgary this weekend we were waiting for the elevator when some loudly chatting Germans came in to the lobby to wait with us. They went on talking about downloading their pictures of their adventures to their computer, completely oblivious that we were in fact spying on their conversation. I remember being impressed because they spoke a certain elegant slang and when I turned around to gawk the woman was Asian. It's surprising, that's all.

We all get on the elevator and as they're getting off the woman complains to her friend "I can't wait for a shower! I smell like a horse!" and added as an afterthought "... with the hiccups!"

My cousin and I couldn't even look at each other until the doors completely closed after which we translated the hilarity for the others in the elevator.

At the wedding reception in the evening we told this story at our table to the absolute astonishment of the rest of our cousins. One of which is a trail riding guide who confusedly informed us "...but... horses don't get the hiccups!" And the laughter exploded again.