wasted talent

so i'm sitting at my desk eating m&ms and checking my email when i hear one of the company's founders and the CIO walking down the aisle behind me, introducing themselves to the ruck along the way.

hey, at least i'm adhering to the clean desk policy ... except for the tv guide ... oops!

a man named carroll

the weather was dreary and warm. the wine was smoky and dry. we were drunk within 45 minutes and hadn't gotten to every table.

fortunately, carroll the produce salesman from roanoke was there to tell us which wines we'd like and which we shouldn't try. it wouldn't have been a successful tasting event without him. i mean, come on ... the guy's an expert on bananas.

unfortunately, there were no german rieslings on hand to divert his attention, and as much as we tried to maneuver through the tent full of sardines (no re-entry), we couldn't shake him.

why did denise introduce us? because she was drunk first ... just barely. there wasn't enough bread to go around, so i can't blame her. but the galaxy burgers were good, and we left his card on the table ... in case the waitress was interested.

why can't we all be brothers?

at lunch yesterday, tony drank a crème soda. he wanted it to be a raspberry crème soda, but they only had diet raspberry crème soda, and he explained that any carbonated beverage that's labeled "diet" is innately evil, so he got a regular crème soda and made the rest of us vow to never again drink beverages with fewer calories than other beverages.

sadly, i don't remember the brand of crème soda he drank, but i wish i did, because i would link you to it so you could enjoy life as much as we did.

i don't know, maybe we eventually became boring and he was trying to find something else to concentrate on. regardless, tony decided to read the underside of the bottle cap, which, in very tiny print, advertised the fact that the fortune written there was an authentic fortune, and if you so desired, you could submit a fortune to be printed on the undersides of future bottle caps.

for real ... that's a lot to write under a soda cap, but there was more: the fortune. it read: "buy a stranger a meal." tony quickly deduced that since we were having lunch with him, we weren't strangers, and we laughed at him.

then he said, "i'm gonna do it. i need to build up my positive karma store." with that he stood up, walked to the middle of the line of patrons, and approached a woman. he showed her the cap, she read it, and he handed her $10. at first she didn't take it, but he somehow assured her that he wasn't insane.

random acts of kindness are bizarre to watch. leaving, we all hoped she didn't get food poisoning.

find the joke

this morning i read this headline on msn.com: "10 technologies that deserve to die." curious, i clicked.

because of the department i used to work in, when i think of technology i think of gadgets. i think of electronic devices that have been invented in a futile attempt to make our lives easier -- as if we didn't already reach that peak with the remote control.

before reading the list, i wondered which technologies i would say deserve to die ... and then, because i'm such a softhearted person, i wondered if anything truly deserves to die ...

... well, yeah ... duh ... this isn't the peace corps.

so, here's a list of useless things i'd get rid of if i had a say:

• spam blockers
• the steam magic pro
• RONCO
• electric staplers
• 40-watt light bulbs
• the "close door" button in the elevator

finally, i read the msn article ... and this guy is going on about nuclear weapons, the internal combustion engine, and land mines ... i thought purging those was just implied. had i missed the mark? no. the last technology on his list was DVDs.

it was then that i realized that he's a barking lunatic and i'd wasted three minutes reading his article when i could have been working.

a-(corn)maze-ing

you never think you're the kind of person who'd scream when things jump out at you in a dark cornfield until you've actually had things jump out at you in a dark cornfield. of the four of us, i screamed the most. maybe it was because i had the most suppressed stress and needed an outlet ... most likely it was because i was the biggest chicken.

but that's not the point, is it? the point is that mandy was stunning yesterday and every step she took was in grace. her husband led our pack and consequentially had his back to her the entire time, but i'm sure her modishness was no surprise to him; brad and i, however, were awed. there was something about the way she tromped through the corn, tried to bribe the guy sitting near the exit to tell us where the exit was, and danced in the strobe light by the electric chair ... incredible.

"don't touch me!"

it started with a hand check in an unlit barn: monsters jumped from the wall, mandy screamed, the assailant threw his hands in the air, shawn chuckled guiltily, mandy punched shawn, and the adventure through the maze began.

"shawn, slow down! jody's getting scared."

we think it took us an hour to get through the whole thing. shawn led, followed closely by mandy, me, and brad. we were a human chain when it came to passing through the pitch dark tunnels, and we stayed relatively close together the rest of the time ... except when shawn started power walking and brad slowed down to let monsters sneak up on me ... nice. dude, i thought we were friends.

"jody, no hitting!"

over time, we developed a rapport with many of the ghouls and monsters running around. one of them was particularly unsettling, not because of the make-up or dark clothes or the way he jumped out of nowhere, but because he was right up in my face. you're not allowed to hit anyone working there, but there was nothing in the rules that said you couldn't shove people ... and this guy totally asked for it.

"shawn rolled a 20 in wilderness lore."

... but he didn't have mandy's negotiation skills. two shiny pennies and a coupon for a small drink at mcd's will typically get anyone to do anything. it didn't work this time, and we ended up running into the guy in my face again.

eventually we found the web's exit and emerged from the corn shivering, sniffling, laughing, trying (to no avail) to warm our hands, and picking on shawn. he claimed he knew the way the whole time ... he just wanted us to get our money's worth ... and we definitely did ...

my feet are still frozen.

the case for nite-lights

the way i see it, there’s a subtle difference between a nightmare and a scary dream. a scary dream is the one in which your life is in grave danger (is there another kind?) but it’s kind of an unrealistic situation and you have a vague notion that you’re going to be able to wake up. when you finally do, it’s 3 a.m. you turn on the light, make sure the bedroom door is locked, and are perfectly content to pull the covers over your head and risk suffocation while trying to stay awake until daylight. oh, and the dog looks at you like you’re insane and goes back to sleep immediately.

a nightmare is the dream in which something conceivably realistic happens to you, totally turning your life upside down. when you wake up, you’re not sure of anything, and have to call either your mother, brother, or best friend at 3 a.m. to find out what they can tell you about yourself. the dog’s reaction is the same to this one as it is to the scary dream, so don’t use her expression to distinguish between the two.

last summer, i had a series of scary dreams in which i lived through horror movies i hadn’t seen yet. they were: Signs, Hannibal, Jason X. the same thing happened this summer with: Jeepers Creepers 2 and Freddy vs. Jason. hey, Jason may seem harmless on screen, but when that guy’s chasing you through a botanical garden in broad daylight, you won’t be laughing.

last nite i had the second scariest nightmare in the history of me. what happened? i got fired and didn’t know what to do! i was running out of money and thinking about moving back to PA … woke up in a cold sweat.

i had the best nightmare ever when i was in high school … dreamed i was an addict. i walked around until lunch totally paranoid, expecting to need a fix at any moment, and worried about how withdrawal was going to affect getting into college. it was great. i can hardly wait for another crisis.

driving lane

the other day i lived that episode of Seinfeld where kramer adopts a mile of highway and paints over the lines to make it one wide lane. for no apparent reason (maybe they were under budget), the county of henrico decided to resurface a 300-yard section of nine mile road.

you know how this works. you’re driving to work one morning, you go through the light by kmart, and with no warning your car drops a few inches. now, you feel the way you do when you get stuck with the retarded shopping cart (and you always get stuck with the retarded shopping cart) because the road is milled and all your car wants to do is drift to the left and into other cars.

[time passes.]

you go through the light by kmart, and you pleasantly notice that your car no longer plummets. now there’s a slight bump that launches you onto smooth pavement, devoid of all lines whatsoever. traffic flows as usual: two lanes on this side, two lanes on that side. this is peculiar because ...

[time passes.]

you go through the light by kmart, and note the freshly painted double yellow line. you’d move to the left lane to pass the slow guy with the unending turn signal, but you can’t because he’s driving in the dead middle of what was formerly two lanes... and so is the guy in front of him. and so are the people in oncoming traffic.

there’s a perfectly clear stopping and restarting of dotted white lines on the fringes of the resurfaced road, and everyone was fine the other day when there were no lines; but the application of yellow has affected us somehow. people who’ve driven this road for years have forgotten that it’s a four-lane road. who can explain the human condition?

it’s like elaine said as she was weaving back and forth, "it’s so luxurious!" maybe people around here just really enjoy Seinfeld.