Kids these days

(I told G this story the other night, and he enjoyed it so much he suggested I put it in my blog.)

Part of my job involves working with kids. I lead a discussion with them at the beginning and the end of their day with us (if you don't know where I work or what my job is, I'm sure this doesn't make much sense). I ask a lot of questions of the kids and encourage their participation. They are usually very enthusiastic. The group this week made me laugh with their over-the-top enthusiasm.

I wanted to get a vote on which of the five stations they had visited during the day was their favorite.

OK. I'm going to ask you to think of something in your head and then raise your hand. (Hands go up) Not yet. I want you to think about which of the stations was your favor(Hands go up)ite. Not yet. Don't raise your hand until I ask you to. Does everyone have their favorite in their head? (Hands go up) Not yet. Don't raise your hand until I ask you to. OK. (Hands go up) Everyone put their hand down. Don't raise your hand until I ask you to. Now, I want you to raise your hand (Hands go up) IF (Hands back down) station 1 was your favorite. (Selective hands go up) blah, blah, blah.

They were just so ready to raise their hands they didn't care what it was for or if they knew the answer or anything. I should have told them they were volunteering for clean-up duty.

I really enjoy working with the kids, and I think I might be doing a good job because one of the kids from the enthusiastic class said to me, "You're good!" That's high praise from a fifth grader.

Better than a car wash

My windshield developed a crack in the upper left corner a couple of weeks ago. I noticed it right after G had driven it, so I naturally blamed it on him. The crack wasn't growing, so it wasn't at the top of my list of things to take care of.

I happened to be sitting in the passenger's seat last week and noticed that a second crack was developing in the upper right corner. Replacing the windshield moved up the list, but it still wasn't at the top.

I drove to lunch earlier this week, watching the right crack, which was slowly getting larger. I was gauging its progress in relation to a spot on the glass, and I realized it was growing by the minute. The next time I looked over (mere seconds later), it had jumped about 10 inches! Now, I was in panic mode. I had visions of the windshield breaking into pieces and falling into my lap as I was driving. Of course, the pieces would be sharp shards, not harmless rounded safety glass pieces. They would cut my face and hands and cause me to crash the car, and it would be terrible.

So when I returned to work, I called to set up an appointment for the replacement of my windshield. I asked about the mobile service they advertise in their ad, expecting it to be difficult to actually get that service. She said she could schedule mobile service for the next day (perfect so far), but I knew I'd catch her on the extra fee. But guess what? There is no fee for mobile service. Even though my car was about 30 minutes away from their shop. Great! I'll take it. In fact, why wouldn't everyone take it? Who are the suckers who go to the trouble to bring their car to them?

I now have a brand spanking new windshield, and the best part is that it's totally clean, inside and out. I also recently replaced by wiper blades, so I feel like I'm driving a new car. And for a fraction of the cost!

Georgia (Aunt Pat) on my mind

GAP and I had great fun staying in the lovely motel you've heard so much about. Our typical schedule was that I would go for a run while she showered, and while I was showering, she would watch the morning news, mainly to see what kind of weather we should expect.

As an aside, the weather was really irrelevant because we spent our days inside a building in which the temperature ranged from slightly cool (2-5 degrees below comfortable) to down right frigid (15-20 degrees below comfortable). We walked to the building in short sleeves and then wore jackets all day inside.

Anyway, one morning after my shower, GAP told me that Rod Stewart had been singing on one of the national morning news shows. She said he was really showing his age and he didn't even sound like himself. We agreed that sometimes that happened when people got old. I returned to the bathroom to dry my hair, and when I was finished, GAP tried to tell me something.

It took a while for her to get it out because she was laughing so hard, but it finally came out that the reason Rod Stewart didn't sound like himself was because he was actually Barry Manilow.

That explains it.

The evidence

So back to the awful hotel business.

My aunt (Georgia Aunt P, or GAP) arrived first. I'm sure the facts that she was by herself, exhausted, and hungry upon arrival made the entire experience more traumatizing than amusing. By the time I arrived the next day, things were starting to be funny. What things? Well, for one, the contents of the drawers:

Drawer 1 -
Contents: two cans of Budweiser still attached to the 6-pack ring, and an empty 6-pack ring
Question: Why would you store your beer in a drawer when there's a refrigerator in the room?


Drawer 2 -
Contents: an article of clothing, perhaps a man's shirt?, and an item wrapped in foil
Question: What is the thing wrapped in foil? (We decided it was a joint, which left us wondering how we would explain it to the police when the next tenant in the room reported it and we were the last ones to stay there and why didn't we dispose of that stuff or tell the housekeeper to if it wasn't ours because clearly we were aware of it since our prints were all over the drawer.)

And there were other things. The bathroom floor was dirty (GAP was trying to tell herself it was stained, but how do you stain tile evenly?), so it was necessary to wear shoes if you wanted to be anywhere other than the bed. The phone hadn't been plugged in when GAP arrived, and the man at the front desk had told her to just move the bed and plug it in. When she did so, she realized that there was no plug - just a hole in the wall where it should have been. I'm sure I'm forgetting other things, but you probably get the picture.

When my aunt and I returned to the room on my first night, she showed me the drawers, and it was still a little tragic and not entirely comical at this point. I was talking to G on the phone and settling into my bed when I found the thing that pushed it over the edge into comedy: my pillow.

Disgusting, right? It looked like old stains that hadn't come out in the wash, and that makes it a little better except that means that they washed it and decided it was okay to use. And that side of the pillow was facing up!

The pillow was the last straw, and GAP and I dissolved into school girl giggles. We put our jackets on over our pajamas and marched to the office, holding the pillow from the corner with two fingertips.

When we showed the pillow to the front desk attendant, she echoed our sentiments exactly: "That's disgusting!" She was kind enough to get me a whole new pillow instead of just replacing the pillowcase, and she promised to leave it where the management would see it.

While we were waiting for a new pillow, we struck up a conversation with a guest who appeared to just be chatting with the night staff. She was wearing a housecoat over what looked like pajamas (GAP and I felt right at home) and was drinking a beer. She asked us what room we were in and then exclaimed, "That's the best one! I just missed it by one day! I'm in 28. That's the one that flooded on us last time."

There were too many problems with this to even address. First, we have the best room? It's a (deleted to keep this polite, but it might rhyme with pitmole). Second, you're staying here again? Third, your room flooded last time? Repeat question number two.

We stayed there (GAP all the time, and me intermittently) for over two weeks. It got better. The next housekeeper appeared to actually clean (the bathroom floor wasn't stained in fact), but we never changed into our pajamas without checking our pillows first.

The beer and marijuana remained with us for the entire stay.

Blogoleptic

When I was in college, I was apparently sleep-deprived much of the time. I would imagine most college students who went to class were. Because the only way to make sure you got enough sleep would be to sleep through class, right?

Anyway, I'd be in class, listening to the lecture attentively, and all of a sudden, I'd wake up. Not like I'd realize I was dreaming and I was still in bed*, but like I'd realize I had just fallen asleep in class and then woken up. I was a good student, so this was kind of embarassing. (Or would it have been more embarassing if I wasn't a good student? It would have explained my bad grades, I suppose.)

I would redouble my efforts to pay attention to the lecture, and then I'd wake up again. Mind you, I could never catch myself falling asleep. I only knew I had been sleeping when I woke up. I deemed myself narcoleptic.

The point of this story is that I have been a little blogoleptic recently. For a while I had bigger fish to fry, but lately I've just not realized I forgot to post until I'm driving away from the internet. This happened multiple times last week.

However, I have great pictures to post to illustrate the awful hotel, so I will try to post them tomorrow. I would do it now, but I don't want to shock you with too much information at once after such a long time without any.

* I have always been a good sleeper, and I feel so bad for my mom having to wake me up for school every day. Some days, after she came in to get me up, I would fall back asleep and dream I was getting ready. These were very realistic dreams in which I would put clothes on that I actually owned in real life, eat a normal breakfast, etc. When my mom would come back in to tell me to get up again, I would say, "I am." I'm sure she thought I was being obstinate, but I really did think I had already done all that.

At least it's cheap

I know you've been concerned about the whole printer business. Have no fear. The day after I typed that entry, I happened to be nosing around in the supply closet, and guess what I found? A toner cartridge that just happens to fit my printer. I know! What luck. Now the new cartridge sits happily inside its box on top of my printer. Perhaps someday soon I will install it.

So I've been out of town, staying in a motel with Georgia Aunt P. And hoo boy, this motel. There are odd things in the drawers (pictures to follow). Our room overlooks a "lake" (which the hotel is named after, evidently) that contains approximately 14 gallons of water. Total. The housekeeping the first day was absolutely terrible - black splotches all over the bathroom floor, a pillowcase that defies decription (picture to follow), and an envelope in which to leave a tip.

The good news? We have the best room in the whole place. That's what they tell us, anyway. I'm headed back there tonight, and I can't wait to see if any new oddities have arisen in my absence.

The new workpace workout

I recently switched jobs, which means I switched offices. I brought my computer with me, but I am using the printer that came with the office. About a week ago, the printer started only printing on the edges of the paper, leaving the middle mostly blank. I don't print much, so I just sent my print jobs to the printer in my old office and walked down the hall to get my stuff.

I've finally decided that it might be nice to be able to use the printer that takes up a good portion of my desk, so I looked into getting a new toner cartridge. I don't do much ordering of office supplies, so I was quite surprised by the $100 price tag ($80 for reconditioned). Out of curiosity, I checked out how much a new printer would be. About $150. And it would probably work better than this one, which has to think for a while before printing.

So maybe I'll get a new printer. Or maybe I'll keep using the printer in my old office and call it exercise.

Setting a bad example

A couple of months ago our friend J (who witnessed this) emailed me to tell me that he started a blog. He had been reading mine for a while, and I had inspired him to try it himself. I think I remember him commenting that he wasn't sure he had anything to talk about. I guess reading my blog made him realize he didn't really need to have anything to talk about in order to have a blog.

Anyway, my recent blog hiatus had me thinking that I was being a really bad blog role model, and I was hoping that J was doing better than I was. Turns out, no. He hasn't updated since August 20th. I'm a bad influence.

On the other hand, I took a small group of Girl Scouts to a water park last weekend, and we had a total blast. Even though they're all teenagers. So I'm not all bad.

We were glad that beef was the only thing we had to hide

When G and I go on vacation, we typically have mild adventures. This is probably mostly due to the fact that we almost never have reservations anywhere or anything more than a rough estimate of where we plan to end up. One of our little adventures on our most recent trip involved our border crossing from British Columbia back into the US.

We had spent several days in British Columbia. Since we had been camping, we had a cooler with some food in it. (We had a terrible time finding a grocery store on this trip. It seems every town has a Future Shop in it, which we thought might sell food but in fact sells electronics, but grocery stores are less evident. When we finally found food, it seems that many things are ridiculously expensive. Cream cheese? $4. Cheddar? $7. Produce? The same as here.)

But I digress. So we get to the border, and the guard gives us what I assume is the usual once-over - checking our passports, quizzing us on where we're from, etc. Then he asked if we had any beef. G had just bought a beef kabob at the Public Market in Vancouver (that's another entry entirely), so he told the guard about it. We were instructed to park and take a yellow piece of paper inside to talk to agriculture.

Inside, we were grilled again on our hometown and asked about various food items we may have brought with us from Canada. Then the agriculture man took our keys and searched our car. That's right - searched our car. While we had to wait inside, out of view of the car. It was kind of weird.

Bottom line, the beef kabob was confiscated, along with some roast beef and breakfast sausage we had forgotten about and the core of an asian pear. We were then allowed to cross the border, back to the land of $0.99 cream cheese.

There. I did it.

It's really hard to post something after not posting anything for a month. A month. There is no excuse for that, huh? I tried to post a couple of times, but it seemed like the post needed to be great because I'd been silent for so long. I've given up on that. I'm not sure any of my posts were that brilliant to begin with, so what's the big deal?

In my absence, I've started my new job, which is totally different from my old job in every way imaginable except that I work in the same building and use the same computer and have the same co-workers. Maybe it doesn't sound that different, but it is.

G and I also returned from our six year anniversary trip a couple of days ago. We went to the northwest - Washington and British Columbia. (I abbreviated northwest as NW in an email to a friend and he replied, "I can't think, for the life of me, what 'NW' is. I thought 'New World,' but that's here. Hmmmm.") We had a great time, and perhaps if I can keep up this blogging thing for more than one day, I'll tell you some stories.

I really left you hanging on the story about our neighbors. I'm kind of over it now. The summary is that the house next to us is only occupied sometimes, so we asked the owners if we could park G's mom's car (G's parents live in their RV and are spending the summer in Wyoming) in their empty driveway. They agreed and we did so. The problem neighbors are on the other side of the vacation house. They recently had their dirt driveway concreted (is that a word?). While it was curing, they would park on the street or behind G's mom's car, which we thought was a little rude because what if we needed to use it? And then they just kept parking there. They refused to use their driveway. They would even park both cars behind G's mom's car in the borrowed driveway. We didn't really need to use the car, so it didn't actually affect us, but it was the principle of the whole thing. Every day I would come home and wonder aloud, "Why won't they use their brand new driveway?"

But they kind of stopped doing that for the most part, and I'm not so worried about it anymore.

Pros and cons

There are good things and bad things about changing jobs within the same company. Good things include not losing cool co-workers and friends, not having to move, and not having to learn your way around a new building.

The bad thing I have discovered in the past couple of days: no time for blogging since I'm finishing up my old job and learning my new one all at the same time.

Stay tuned

I just wrote a whole post and then deleted it because I decided that it wasn't very entertaining.

I've got nothing, evidently.

However, I think I can manage to rant about our neighbors tomorrow.

Ha!

I was at a gathering on Saturday night - people that I work with and their spouses. The only child there was about nine years old, and she did a pretty good job of entertaining herself most of the night. By about 11:00, though, she had tired of that and was looking for some socialization from the adults.

I asked her if she knew any jokes. I'm terrible at remembering jokes, but I enjoy them so much. She said she didn't really know any and then proceeded to regale us with non-jokes for at least 45 minutes. Here's an example: Why did the light bulb burn out? Because it doesn't have a brain!

Of course, we would have to guess answers before she would tell us the correct answer, which resulted in some actual jokes. (These responses were never "correct," by the way.)

Why is the skeleton red?
Because he's embarrassed that he's naked.

Why does the elephant walk so slow?
Because he has junk in his trunk.

And my two favorites because I made them up myself . . .

Why do spiders weave webs?
Because they can't knit.

Why do cows wear bells around their necks?
Because their horns don't work.

Bon bons for breakfast

Our volleyball tournament was last night. It was single-elimination, which means once you lose, you're out. I may have mentioned that this year, they lumped all the teams into one league instead of two. So half the teams are really good and the other half aren't. That means that half the time we have fun, competitive games, and the rest of the time, we just try not to get hurt.

In the first round of the tournament, we played a really good team, and we didn't win. We also didn't get hurt, which was actually the main objective. Unfortunately, that meant we were out of the tournament. The rest of the tournament games were between the good teams (since they had knocked the mediocre teams out in the first round), so we hung around to watch how the game should be played.

I had been feeling pretty proud of myself all day because I had upped my mileage on Tuesday and Thursday to 2.4 miles. Woo hoo! That pride was quickly eliminated when the team sitting next to us on the bleachers started talking about running.

Evidently, several of them are training for a marathon and/or have run marathons in the past. They kept talking about the run they were planning for Saturday. 18 miles! You can see why my 2.4 was not so exciting anymore.

The worst part was that they wouldn't stop talking about it. I think they talked about running for at least 30 minutes. The whole time, I could only hear 18 miles, 18 miles, 18 miles, 18 miles . . . By the end of the night, I was feeling like I might as well eat bon bons in the mornings instead of bothering with my measly little runs.

I got over it though - 2 miles again today.

As requested

Several months ago, a couple of our friends happened to be in town. We met up with them at their hotel and walked several blocks to a restaurant we thought they'd like. Well, the owners had decided (without asking us, by the way) it would be a good time for a vacation, so the place was closed. Instead of walking back the way we came, we decided to walk a few blocks farther to have drinks before dinner.

We went to a rooftop bar that had a live band. A LOUD live band. The atmosphere at this place is great except that they have a hard time getting the volume right. So the four of us yelled at each other over a pitcher of sangria.

At some point, the topic of movies came up, I guess, because I was yelling something about "The 40 Year Old Virgin," which we had seen recently. Unfortunately, the music stopped before I finished yelling. To the people within 20 feet of us, it sounded like this:

blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah VIRGIN!

All the people at the neighboring tables (and perhaps in the entire city) put down their drinks to stare at me. If I was a teenager, that would have been the moment that I would have tried to convince my parents that we had to move across the country. I would have been absolutely mortified.

As it was, G, our friends, and I laughed at me and we moved on.

Or I thought we had moved on until one of the friends, J, asked why that story hadn't made the blog. Good question. So here it is.

Do you want some cocktail sauce with your donuts?

I used to pass a biker bar on my way to work. They had a life-sized soldier mannequin that held a life-sized machine gun and was semi-crouched in a position that indicated he might charge. When they placed him near the road, he would often startle me as I drove past. They would also park a hearse outside that had the name of the establishment painted on its doors. I'm not sure what the message was supposed to be, but it didn't encourage me to eat anything there.

The biker bar closed a while back, and the new owners have been remodeling. They've painted the brick building coral, which is a bold choice, in my opinion. They recently put up the signs, and it turns out it will be a crab shack and bakery.

That's not a combination I would choose. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to buy my baked goods from a crab shack. I'm interested to see if it lasts.

Moving on up

Where have I been? Good question. And the answer is . . . getting a new job!

I had applied for a different position at my current place of work a few weeks ago, and last Wednesday, the director offered it to me. After a couple of hours of feeling like G after a two-mile run (i.e., like I might throw up), I was able to get excited about it.

One of the best parts about my new position (other than the more important sounding title) is my new office. It's in a new building - so new it's not done yet - and it has a great view. I was touring the unfinished building with a colleague before the job and the office were officially mine, and she mentioned that some people work all their lives to get a window office.

I didn't say it out loud, but I was thinking, "Well, I have." I mean I may be young, but it's still my whole life.

If you know me in real life and didn't get an email telling you about my job, let me know, and I'll give you details.

Tomato/tomahto

G and I are in the midst of painting the outside of the cottage*. We got estimates from several painters for doing both the house and the cottage, and although we easily justified the cost for the house (it's tall), it was more difficult to justify having the cottage painted (it's small).

We started last weekend with priming the areas where paint had peeled off. Monday and Tuesday we painted trim, and we had planned to start on the walls tonight.

I talked to G this afternoon:
me: It's raining here, so we might not have to paint tonight.
G: Interesting choice of words. Don't you mean "might not get to paint?"
me: No, I was right the first time.

* In case you're curious, because I would be, the house and cottage will be light yellow (Weston Flax) with white trim and turquoise (Turquoise Powder) doors. The porch ceiling will be light blue (Fountain Spout), and the porch floor will be a really nice shade of green that I can't remember the name of. (All paints from Bejamin Moore.)

Stoked

I have wanted to learn to surf for many moons. G has tried to help me, but I was never qutie able to get it. A couple of weeks ago, we happened to be at the beach at the same time as our neighbors. I was out on a board the wife half of our neighbors had loaned me, but I wasn't doing much - mainly just floating around (which is very nice, I might add).

It came out that the husband half of our neighbors is a great teacher (he actually is a teacher, in fact), so he and I went out in the little waves close to shore, and he patiently coaxed me into standing up. It was super-fun, and I was really excited about it.

So yesterday G and I went out. I was anxious to try out my new skills on the shore break while G surfed the real waves on the outside. The shore break, however, was not friendly. I kept nose-diving the board in a foot of water, which means that I was scraping along the bottom with my arms protecting my head from the board which was flailing around somewhere above me. It was not fun.

Once G realized I wasn't having fun (because I paddled out and told him), he encouraged me to try the real waves out where he was. So I did, and I SURFED!!! I paddled for waves, caught them, and stood up. It was awesome!

I'm totally hooked. So if quit my job and buy a van, you'll know why.

I remain champion

We played volleyball last night (yet another of those sports that G can do better than me). We aren't very good at checking the schedule, so it was a shock to our team that we would be playing two matches (three games each) instead of just one.

We had a great time in the first match. Our skill level was very close to that of the other team, so the games were fun. They were also friendly, which makes a big difference. The second match was another story. We knew we'd struggle against the team because they are much better than us.

After two games against the second team, G and our teammate T walked off the court. T sat down on the sand exclaiming her exhaustion. I called out to G as he walked away to ask him where he was going.

"To the showers."
"We only played two games. We still have one left."

G and T simultaneously groaned their disbelief. We got back out there, though, and somehow distracted the other team enough with our flailing around that they lost track of the score. While they weren't paying attention, we managed to get some points, and we ended up winning. That was just icing, because we weren't expecting that at all.

As we left, I overheard a group of guys on the bleachers wonder if the court we had been using was open. I told them that we were finished and that it was open. One of the guys asked why we weren't staying to play with them. I replied simply, "We're done."

As I walked away, I heard him say, under his breath in a flirty tone, "You're done."

Nice comeback, Romeo. What does that even mean?

By the way, the volleyball double header wore G out so much that he opted out of running this morning. I think that 2 miles might kill him again next week.