The Dangers of Eavesdropping

I didn't PURPOSELY eavesdrop on my co-worker, but it was still dangerous. I nearly bit my tongue off trying to avoid laughing out loud.

I was walking by a co-worker's cube on my way to the printer. She was on the phone - on a recorded line. I didn't hear the conversation leading up to or after the quote below. So I really have no idea what she was talking about. All I know is where MY mind went after she said it:

"You're right. It's hard and it's weird."

Why?

Why do I like turkey ruebans so much, when I don't like either sauerkraut or Swiss cheese?

03/03/09

Happy Square Root Day!

Jelly Belly Redux

It seems that Jelly Belly jelly beans keep following me around. And that's fine with me.

Husband bought some Jelly Belly jelly beans online, as a surprise. I wondered why at first. After all you have to pay for the jelly beans themselves AND the shipping. I thought we'd need to ask the government for a bail-out.

Turns out Jelly Belly sells their irregular jelly beans at a BIG discount. And he got a special deal that made it around $2.50 a pound. The beans are oddly shaped or stuck to each other, etc. Nothing WRONG with them, just not regular jelly beans.

And the best part is the name: BELLY FLOPS! LOL!

I'm a bad man!!

And no, I'm don't think I'm Muhammed Ali..

As soon as I heard the hulabloo with Blagojevich, I decided I wanted to start a rumor. So, I've posted a few comments in various Chicago newspaper websites. The comments were about how "everyone knew" about the Chicago Cubs curse: that no Cubs team would win the World Series until Illinois politics was cleaned up.

LOL. Now I wonder how long it will take before I hear this curse repeated back to me as fact!

A pet BEE?

At my birthday party in September, my nephew JPJ told me a funny story that I thought I'd share. JPJ is recently out of college and still has 3 roommates, living in a university district of Pittsburgh. He said that one of his roommate knows how to make a bee a pet. I have to admit, I wondered why you'd want to, but it turns out that's not the point.

His roommate catches a bee (the part of the story that most freaks me out) and put it in the freezer for about 30 seconds. Not much longer than that or the bee will freeze to death. While the bee is in the big chill (ahem), he gets some dental floss or thin string and cuts of a piece about 18 inches long. After the time is up, he opens the freezer, grabs the bee and ties one of the string around the bee. Then he fastens the other end to the top of a table. When the bee wakes up, it can fly around in circles.

So, if watching bees flying around in circles is your thing, I've just described another way you can do it. Personally, I'm wondering what they were smoking when they were doing this.

Telling on myself

My cat Trixie is smarter than me. That's not ENTIRELY a new idea for me, but I had it brought home to me again today.

Trixie is prone to bladder infections because she has bad kidneys. So I periodically have to give her a pill (antibiotics) every day for 3 weeks. She's currently about halfway through another course of antibiotics. So she's feeling well enough that it's not easy giving her the pills.

First I have to CATCH her, not always easy for those of us with arthritis. But husband helps with that, if I she's feeling really defiant. Then there's getting her to swallow the pills. Now the pills she's taking, to be fair, are pretty large for a 10 pound cat. But I have a way of pinning her down that doesn't hurt her and allows me to open her mouth and drop the pill in. Then I rub her neck until I notice her swallowing. This part can be time-consuming, as any cat owner will tall you. Then after she swallows the pill, she gets a couple of cat treats.

Yesterday I caught her fairly easily. And giving her the pill was no harder than most days and easier than a lot of other days, so I counted myself as lucky. Until today.

You see I found her pill from yesterday on the ottoman in the living room this afternoon. So, she not only fooled me that she swallowed the pill (not the first time!), but she managed to EAT TWO TREATS before jumping on the ottoman and spitting out the pill that she did NOT swallow.

I am humbled by your orneriness Trixie, but I'm still giving you your pills!

BAD Joke

I just thought of a REALLY bad joke that, for some reason, I feel compelled to share.

What do you call a German shorts being worn by a chocolate snack cake?
Hoho-hosen.


Wish I could say I was sorry! ROFLMAO!

Happy Birthday Hugh Jackman!

He's celebrating his 40th birthday today. I have a present for him, but I suspect he won't come and get it.

Darn!

Funny Dream

I had an odd dream last week that ended with some guy setting fire to the seat of my pants as I walked away. Needless to say, I woke up at that point.

When I did I discovered that my cat Tillie lying right up against my butt and I was dripping with sweat I was so hot. Even at 4 AM when I'm mostly asleep, THAT was funny.

Marketing mistakes?

1. Husband and I got our first Christmas catalog on August 15th. AUGUST 15TH!!! I know that most retailers depend on holidays sales to make money and making money is difficult in an economy like this. But that's more than 4 MONTHS before the holiday. Kinda kills the holiday fun for me..

2. I bought a new cereal whose label describes some parts as "crunchy fiber twigs". TWIGS?? I need the fiber so I bought it anyway. And besides I've tried and liked other types of cereal by the same brand. But I laughed out loud in the grocery story when I read that. Someone in that company's marketing department got paid to come up with the copy "Crunchy fiber twigs". Who is worse the person who wrote the copy, or the person who approved the copy?

A Practical Joke I HAVE played

My freshman year in high school (lo those MANY years ago), I shared a small apartment with LRR, a friend I met in high school. We had a mutual friend LF who was going to nursing school in a different neighborhood in the same city. For some reason LF kept complaining "No one sends me a letter! How come I don't get letters?"

Mind you this was the autumn of 1977. While that IS a long time ago, telephones HAD been invented. She wasn't THAT far from us or her family. Why not just pick up a phone? We did HAVE phones and knew how to use them. When LRR and I pointed that out to LF, she wasn't convinced. She wanted a letter!

So I sent a letter. LOTS of letters. But it was only a single letter per page, and only one page per envelope. Those envelopes were addressed to LF and mailed to friends and relatives all over the country with a request to mail the envelope on a particular day. So for the better part of a month, LF got the letters she thought she wanted. They came from all over, but they didn't say a thing. And, because I made sure that there were no vowels, couldn't be made to say anything.

When she figured out what was happening and who had done it (the former was harder to figure out than the latter), she actually called us on the phone! Imagine! She tells that story every time I've been to a high school reunion (been a while though).

That's one of my favorite stories (evil without actually being harmful).... But I doubt its one of LF's favorites....

Funny.....

Bumper sticker I saw on the way home from work today:

"Dog is my co-pilot."


Name of a diner I saw on vacation in North Carolina:

"Eat your damn food and get the hell out!" I almost wrecked the car when I saw the sign on the side of the road. I didn't stop, because I didn't know how much further I had to go before I got to the house. And couldn't stop later because I didn't remember where it was! And I LOVE diners!!

Jelly Bean update

Well it's official. The jelly beans are gone. (sniff, sniff). They'll be missed.

But I want to make sure that everyone knows that Husband finished HIS jelly beans BEFORE I finished mine. Two whole days before, in fact.

So THERE! Real MATURE!

I must be a bigger geek than I realize

I've been reading a lot of news websites about gay rights in general since the CA Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. One of the other issues for many gay people is gays in the US military and the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. That law is usually shortened to "DADT" on websites.

Invariably I read that to myself "Defense Against the Dark Arts" first, before going NO WAIT! Does that mean I'm a geek first THEN gay?

If so, why don't I work in the computer field?

Telling on myself

Sometimes I do funny things. Sometimes I do stupid things. Sometimes I do things that are stupid AND funny. When I do, and I feel the urge to share them, I'll put them under this title. And today I feel the need to share.

Once in a while I have a period where I can't seem to get enough of a particular food. And the food is never GOOD for me either. At the moment I seem to be in one of those periods and the food that I'm obsessing over is jelly beans (and no, I was not a Reagan fan.) It's happened before with jelly beans, but not for about 9 years. Like I said, it happens once in a while.

Anyway I went grocery shopping with my husband. We went to a particular grocery store because we knew that this store had a Jelly Belly display that included Sours. Now when I get this jelly bean craving they don't have to be Jelly Belly. I'm no jelly bean snob or anything. They have to be fruit flavored (spice - EW!), but other than that, I don't care. But once I had those sours in mind, well, I did mention that I was obsessed, right?

Anyway, I walk up to the display and tear off a plastic bag. I give it a cursory glance and figure it will hold about 1 pound of candy. Great. Perfect. So I fill up my bag with Sours I had been obsessing over for about a month, put them in the grocery cart and start to push the cart away from the display. Husband says something like "Aren't you going to get any other flavors?" PERMISSION to satisfy my obsession? Why YES! YES, thank you VERY much!

So I grab another bag, and go to the other flavors that he wanted to try (all fruit flavored. YEAH!) and put them in the bag. Then, just to top off the bag mind you, I put in a few other flavors that sounded yummy. Plum? Oh My God That Sounds SO Good! I nearly fill that bag too and we're done with jelly beans and off to fill the rest of grocery needs.

We weren't buying a TON of things so when we got to the check out and the cashier said "That'll be $89.13" I vaguely thought "that's a little more than I thought it would be." But I chalked it up to rising food prices and put the bags in the cart. (To those of you who have figured out where this is going, stop skipping ahead of the class!) Then Husband looks at the receipt and gives me this Look. It's a look that says "I know something that is very funny and I DARE you to ask me about it in front of ALL of these people." Naturally I asked about it in the parking lot.

It turns out that we spent $89.13 on groceries but $31.00 of that was on JELLY BEANS! The plastic bags held more than 2 pounds a piece and we had nearly filled two of them, so we bought over 4 pounds of jelly beans (and it was ALmost enough!)And to top it off Jelly Bellies are over $7.00 a POUND! Can you IMAGINE? $7.00 a pound for jelly beans? I hadn't even looked at the price on the display. It never occurred to me that they would be that expensive.

If we had a safe at home, I'd probably put the darn things in the safe. When you spend $31.00 on jelly beans, the darn things ought to last a while.

But with my current jelly bean obsession, they probably won't.

A Practical Joke I've Never Played

Ohio has lots of lotteries - instant lotteries and the kind that you have to wait until 7 PM every evening to see if you won. Included in the latter are Pick 3 and Pick 4 - lotteries where you pick 3 (or 4) digits and can win as much as $500 on a $1 bet. Numbers - just the mafia used to run - but I digress.

Every night when they pick the numbers, they always do it in the same order: Pick 3 then Pick 4. One night I'm sitting there watching it (actually waiting for Two and a Half Men reruns to come on), when it occured to me: the Pick 3 and Pick 4 numbers look like a phone number when you put them together.

That's when the Mr. Hyde part of my personality came out.

I think it would be hysterical to call the phone number that the Pick 3 and Pick 4 number generates and ask "Is this 123-4567? It is? Well you'd be really rich right now if you had played your phone number." And then hang up.

Mr. Hyde is not, needless to say, MATURE.

And I'll write about some of the practical jokes I HAVE played at some point in the future. I don't do it often, but when I think of a really good one, it's hard to resist.

You Better Be Good to me!

TINA! TINA!

Yesterday Cher and Tina Turner were on the Oprah show. The gay union sent a blast email telling everyone about the show, so naturally I watched it. Time to punch another notch in the gay union card.

A prisoner of your love
Entangled in your web

The show was worth watching - I still have it on my DVR to share with friends tomorrow night after dinner. But the BEST thing, was when Tina Turner announced she was going to go on tour again starting on October 1st! WOO HOO!!

Hot whispers in the night
Im captured by your spell


See the last time Tina toured (which was supposed to be her last tour, but I'm NOT complaining), I didn't get to see her. I was flat broke and couldn't afford a ticket. It was a real regret of mine that I had never seen her in concert, when I'm such a big fan of hers. And I try to live my life so that I have no regrets.

Oh yes Im touched by this show of emotion
Should I be fractured by your lack of devotion
Should I? Should I?

Tickets don't go on sale until Monday, May 12th, but the Oprah show's website had details on how to order tickets early. So I immediately went upstairs, got on the computer and ordered 2 tickets for her show in Chicago on 10/3/08. No shows in Columbus. I then left a voicemail for my friend BS saying "I hope you can get time off on your new job, because you and I are going to see Tina Turner in concert in Chicago in October. Call me." (See? I'm blunt in real life too, not just online). BS grew up in Chicago and still has friends there. And I know how much he loves music generally - although I wasn't sure of his opinion of Tina. But I HAD DECIDED. (G)

You better be good to me
Thats how its gotta be now

A little later I was talking with one of my brothers-in-law, FE. FE said to me, "Why didn't you ask your husband?" It wasn't until that point that I consciously thought about it, but I KNEW that he wouldn't want to go. He doesn't care for vocal music and he HATES large crowds. Traveling to to Chicago to go to a Tina Turner concert? Not likely. Just to be sure, I asked him about it later. He looked at me like I had grown a second (extremely UGLY) head on my shoulders and said "No. I don't want to go." He didn't SAY "Are you nuts?" but he didn't need to. Facial expressions can be very clear.

Cause I dont have no use
For what you loosely call the truth

So BS and I are going to the concert on Friday and will stay in Chicago until Sunday. I've decided that this weekend getaway will be the tail-end of my 50th birthday celebration. Unless I can get afford to go to Vegas and see Cher in concert. THEN ALL BETS ARE OFF!

You better be good to me

I decided to put the first verse and chorus of "You Better Be Good to Me" in this posting so that you could know what I've been like all day. That song has been running through my head since I ordered tickets yesterday!

Bumper Sticker

I saw a funny bumper sticker on the way to work today and thought I'd share: "Your child may be an honor student, but you're still an idiot."

(I didn't say it was polite.)

Funny

I recently had some minor surgery. The night before the operation I was the normal kind of nervous you get before something like this. Not really scared, just a bit apprehensive. So I didn't sleep well early that night; kept tossing and turning and waking up.

Then I had this weird dream. I was being wheeled into the operating room when the nurse asked me what kind of music I wanted to be played during the operation. I told her "Put on 'Blame it on the Bosa Nova.'"

I then woke up, laughed my ass off, and slept great for the rest of the night. I have no idea why.

That song doesn't mean a thing to me. I knew it WAS a song, but if you had put a gun to my head, hummed the melody and said "name that tune!" I would have come up empty. I even googled the lyrics to see if there was some hidden MEANING in the words. Nope. Just BLAME IT ON THE BOSA NOVA! LA la la LA LA!

Like I said in the first post: I like to laugh.