My brothers have persuaded our East Coast cousins to join them for a camping trip this Memorial Day weekend. Although I won’t be able to attend this year, Susan included me on the email where she listed the food and beverages she’ll be taking with her. It’s a pretty thorough list, covering everything from pancake mix to applesauce to hot chocolate (I think it’s a bit warm for that last, but different folks have different preferences). Grace replied by asking why her caviar wasn’t listed.
That one’s pretty simple really. I attended the first family gathering at this campground and as I recall, there’s a fishing pond down by the campground entrance. So to get her caviar, Grace will need to take along a fishing rod, tackle, and bait. (I seem to remember my niece catching a fish several years ago using a nightcrawler on a hook.)
Although I’m not sure where the fish and game commission stands on the subject of drift nets, I am fairly certain that although the technique will yield large quantities of fresh fish, throwing in a boulder with an attached stick of dynamite tends to be frowned upon.
Once Grace has caught a suitable number of fish, obtaining the caviar is left as an exercise for the student.
Category Archives: Stories
Scatter-brained Telephony
My cell phone has a very cool voice-dialing system that gets activated when I use the wireless headset. All I have to do is tell it the name of the person I want to call and if that name matches an entry in the built-in phonebook, the phone reads the name back to me. Once I confirm that it made the right match, the phone makes the call without me ever taking the phone out of my pocket.
The phone has some problems with some of my friends’ names, but for the most part it’s pretty darn reliable. One of today’s calls however was quite surprising.
Phone: Say a Command
Me: Voice Dial
Phone: Say the name or number
Me: Mom and Dad
Phone: Did you say, “Mom and Dad”?
Me: Yes
Phone: Sorry. No match found
So simply put, the phone was able to find the text “Mom and Dad” in the directory so it could confirm that’s who I wanted to call. But once I confirmed that’s who I wanted to call, the phone immediately forgot the conversation?
I think my phone has Alzheimer’s.
Happy Answering Machine Day
I tried to call Mom on Mothers Day, but she was out of town and left the cell phone turned off.
Some might point out that this could have been deliberate. After all, she probably figured I’d try calling. That right there is a pretty good reason to turn off the phone.
But what if one of my brothers had called?
I Need to Find Something Better to Read
I eat fast food more often I like, but when I do, I usually get it to go. Tonight was the first time since early last fall that I actually went and ate my dinner in a fast food restaurant.
It’s been pretty well established that I’ll read practically anything (more about that another time), and tonight was no exception. While I was eating, my eyes strayed to my hamburger’s wrapper and I read the inscription: “Nothing says you like having things your way more than having this WHOPPER with Cheese.”
But I ordered my sandwich without cheese. Does this mean I don’t like having things my way? Are they saying my way is wrong? Does this mean that the only way I can truly have it my way is to have it their way?
Probably the best way to handle this in the future is to eat the wrapper and read the burger.
Gridlock-Flavored Ice Cream
After spending most of Sunday afternoon on yard work, I decided to go out for ice cream after dinner.
For most of the past year, “going out for ice cream” has been synonymous with “going to Bruster’s.” In part I go there because it’s only a mile away (Amy called this “walking distance” until I pointed out that it would mean walking along Rte 355). But mainly I go there because it’s good ice cream.
By the time I got there on Sunday evening, it was clear that a lot of people agreed with me about that being a good place to go. At 8:00pm, the place was absolutely packed!
Unlike the other Bruster’s locations I’ve visited in Pennsylvania, this one has a drive-through window. Not only were there long lines at the walk-up windows, there was a line at the drive-through too.
The line at the drive-through went completely around the building. And then it did something I’d never seen before: The line wrapped around the front of the building too. It was so long that the end of the line was actually blocking the exit from the drive-through! Put another way, the only way anyone could leave the drive-through window was if the rest of the line moved up. But the line couldn’t move up until the car at the drive-through window left.
People in the DC area can be quite stubborn, and they’re equally used to waiting for gridlock to clear up. And Bruster’s ice cream is worth waiting for.
I’ll bet they’re still waiting.
Matt's Falcon
Matt and I were among the people who spent some time Saturday helping the Mt. Airy Jaycees with their spring yard sale. This was my first time attending and I soon discovered that the name is somewhat misleading. This “yard sale” takes over the local fairgrounds!
During the course of the morning, Matt told us about some of his and Anna’s pets, including a pair of rats. In the early afternoon, he acquired one more critter. Several carpenter bees had been hovering around the table and after one was knocked out of the air, Matt went over and picked it up on the end of a pen, and then transferred it to his arm. (Carpenter bees supposedly don’t have stingers. I was quite content to let Matt do the verification.)
Matt had always wanted a Peregrine Falcon, this is similar.
Honey? Can I keep him?
HOWTO: Wash a Shower Curtain Liner
The great thing about plastic shower curtain liners is that they keep the floor from getting soaked. A few years back I took a shower with just the curtain but no liner and afterward stepped out of the shower and into a quarter-inch of water. Whoops!
The problem with shower curtain liners is that after a while, the soap scum and mildew accumulates and they get pretty disgusting. They don’t generally get any other sort of damage, but I’ve never figured out a way to clean them, so my habit has been that I replace them every few years.
Two or three years ago Mom suggested that I should put it in the washing machine. Apparently the way you do this is to put the liner in the washing machine along with a couple big towels. Evidently the towels are supposed to supply some protection so the liner won’t get torn as well as some scrubbing action that removes all the grime.
My reaction was that towels or no towels, the liner would surely get torn to pieces, but at a cost of $5-10, they’re relatively inexpensive. So I decided to give it a shot. Just to be safe though, I did my laundry on a Friday night. That way, if the liner did get shredded, I could run out and get a new one right away rather than go to work without a shower.
Much to my surprise, the experiment was a success! The grime was gone and the liner was intact! I hung it back on the shower rod and the next morning took my shower as usual.
That was a couple years ago. After a while, the soap scum and mildew accumulated and the liner was once again disgusting. Having learned from that previous conversation that Mom was right about putting the liner in the washing machine, I decided to do it again around 10:00 this past Sunday evening.
Once again I put the liner in the washing machine with two towels. Afterwards, the grime was gone, I hung the liner back on the shower rod, and Monday morning I took a shower before going to work.
Of course, before I could take my shower, I first had to spend 20 minutes duct taping all the pieces back together so the floor would stay dry.
It's Tough Being a Guy
Take last week at work for example. At 9:30 Friday morning A., our contract administrator, came into my office and scolded me because even with the email reminder she’d sent the day before, I’d still managed to forget about submitting my timesheet on the last day of the month. I’d remembered to fill it out and everything else, but the actual submitting part had completely slipped my mind.
To make matters worse, just moments before A. walked in, my officemate Y. had solemnly pronounced that “Guys don’t remember anything.”
She was right of course. We don’t! And it’s not just birthdays and anniversaries either. We can only remember so many things, and then something’s going to be forgotten, not because we think it was unimportant, but because we ran out of room for it.
One of the items on my TODO items for Monday was to make a phone call to someone out in Michigan. The timing was such that I thought I might end up talking to a machine, so I was ready. The machine picked up and after the tone I started talking, “Hi A.G., this is Blair and I’m calling to follow up on a conversation we had a little while back. Sorry I missed you, but my phone number is 240-6… Oh God, I’ve forgotten my own phone number!”
The truth of the matter is that I didn’t forget the number, I knew all the digits. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what order they belonged in! And since this was a cell phone, there wasn’t even a helpful little sticker for me to look at. But after pausing to collect my thoughts, I managed to explain why I was calling, left my number and hung up.
When A.G. checks her answering machine, she’s in for a good laugh. And I’m certain the one after that will only set her off again. “Hi A.G., it’s Blair again. That number I left you was wrong…” I’m sure she’ll find it entertaining.
Of course, AG, Y, and A. are all women, so they can’t understand what’s going on from the guy perspective. Forgetting things is completely necessary in order for guys to survive. The truth of the matter is, if we remembered even half the stupid things we’ve done, we’d die of embarrassment. And where would that leave the women? They’d be left with a world full of absent-minded males who not only don’t remember, but aren’t even bright enough to realize that they should be embarrassed about it.
This has of course already happened.
Fortunately, I’m a guy. A couple days from now, I’ll have forgotten all about this.
Pulling a Clark Kent
The interviews were one of the most difficult parts of my recent job search. Not just the process of being interviewed, but actually getting away from the old job without raising suspicions that I was out looking.
The dress code at the old job was “business casual”, but as I’ve discovered over time, the definition of “business casual” tends to be rather variable. In the case of my former employer, it included jeans. As nice as it was to dress that way, in the event I ever decided to leave, it would have raised suspicions if I’d suddenly started showing up in interview clothes.
Part of the solution was camouflage. A few years ago, long before I began actively searching for a new position, I started showing up in “spiffy clothes” on occasion. Predictably, everyone reacted by asking me if I had an interview and I alternated between explaining it was laundry day or that I had a date that evening. (Through careful planning on my part, these answers had the advantage of being true. And when circumstances were reversed and other people showed up in dress clothes, I asked them the same question.) Before long, my co-workers became accustomed to seeing me dressed up on occasion.
But dress slacks and nice shirts only go so far as camouflage. Interviews call for a dress shirt, jacket, and the dreaded necktie. Wearing any of those to the office would have been a dead giveaway. So I pulled a Clark Kent.
There was a little park down the road from my old office. I hardly ever saw anyone there, so on my way to interviews, I’d pull in there to change into my interview clothes. I’d pull in, grab my shirt, tie, and jacket out of the trunk and quick as Clark Kent changing into Superman, I’d transform into Man-going-to-an-Interview.
Obviously the superhero routine worked because I only had to do the quick change a few times. After that, I took on a new role: Man-with-a-new-Job
The Schweitzer Chronicles (pt 5)
Three months after we “sleighed” the shuttle, it became clear that folks thought we were still a going concern. So, it was time to enter another status report. I still wanted to have some fun with it though, so returning to form, I looked up the dialogue for the “Dead Parrot” sketch. I started off trying to rewrite the entire thing, but eventually decided to go with something a bit shorter. Continue reading The Schweitzer Chronicles (pt 5)