i love it when people surprise

News of my penchant for foreign snacks is spreading from friends of colleagues to people with whom I make small talk. Today someone I see in the gym now and then brought me souvenir snacks from Japan. She was teeming with excitement and I was trying to appear grateful, but the bag looked an awful lot like the mixed bean cracker mixes I can buy at any Asian store here for about $2.

"You have to open it!" she said. "You need to try them right now."

I sensed this was going in a bad place. I opened the bag and looked inside.

"No, try them!" she practically yelled. "I can't wait to see your face."

Seriously, this was a lot of pressure.

I pulled out a small handful, took a look, then put them in my mouth. Peanut covered in flour, green pea, horse bean with sesame seeds. They tasted a lot like mixed bean crackers. My gym friend was practically bursting with excitement.

So I took another handful. I had almost put it in my mouth when I noticed that this handful did not quite look like the others. It had little dried fish.


Mmmm... rice covered peanut, green pea, sugar covered horse bean, dried anchovy. Dried anchovy?!?

And I had assumed that my gym friend was lame. I love it when people surprise.

want a couple of pills, or a couple of hundred pills?

I hardly ever get sick. When I do, I hate taking drugs. I always say that when you're sick, it's your body's way of telling you it just needs rest. Yes, I'm a bit of hippie.

Well, this week I'm fighting a head cold and it was so yucky last night that I decided to pick up some vitamin C. I went to the drug store down the street--which, btw, isn't some sketchy kiosk but a full-fledged 24- hour drug store--and bought the only bottle of vitamin C I could find that didn't appear to be manufactured for small children.

When I got home, I realized that the bottle had 500--yes, 500--pills, and that the expiry date is--wait for it--October 2009.

Can someone please explain how I (who live alone) am supposed to use 500 vitamin C pills in just over 365 days? Does anyone know of a charity that accepts vitamin C to save the kids in scurvy-ridden areas of the world? Or a book that teaches you how to make hamster furniture out of old pills? I tried to pass a few off to people at work today and they're starting to look at me a bit suspiciously.

is the food almost tasty too?

The name of this joint is highly suspect, no? Too bad it was closed when I passed so I couldn't find out what made the food "almost perfect."

and i'm the one who's single, vol. 2

Recently, I ran into an old colleague on the street. I asked how she was doing. Here is the conversation that ensued:

Colleague: Well, remember that guy I was dating? We're getting married next week!

Me: Wow, that's great. Congratulations.

Colleague: Yeah, it means we won't have to pretend anymore.

Me: What do you mean?

Colleague: Well, you know how Rob's a bigwig in the company we both work for. Well, he didn't think it was right for anyone in the company to know that we were living together, unmarried. So we've been doing pretty much everything separately. If we go to Wal-Mart, we walk in separately, do our shopping on our own, then meet up again at the car. If we're in the car together in town, I try to duck when we hit a stop sign or stop light, to make sure nobody from work sees us in the car together. But now that we're getting married, I don't think he'll want to do that stuff anymore.

Me [trying to act all casual when alarm bells are ringing in every last bit of my body]: Ummm... yeah, OK.

So let's just think about this for a second: that guy just got married. That guy. And I'm still single.

and maybe miniskirts should default to old people sizes

I'm just going to go ahead and admit that I'm a bit of a girly runner. You're not going to catch me running around in a pair of men's shorts and an oversized tshirt. I've got a full drawer of matching running skirts and shirts which I think are keeping runningskirts.com in business.

Today I was booting around their website, looking for anything new, when I came across this:

Here Runs the Bride.....All Dressed in White!

Introducing our new all white running skirts. Are you running to the alter [sic] in the near future? We've got you covered in our new running bride trousseau! Check out the new "Running Bride" running skirt, one of our new Specialty Skirts, the perfect "gown" for your marathon wedding.

We've combined our high performance fabrics and two pocket design into a beautiful all white running skirt. We've even designed a special mesh performance white "Veil" to complete the ensemble.

OK, so far it seems rather amusing. I mean, what kind of geek runs to her wedding? I would laugh my ass off. But then you get to the end and the drop-down menu from which you can choose a size for this skirt looks like this:

color

All White-Size0 (tn12-16) All White-Size1 (wms 0-2) All White-Size3 (wms 8) All White-Size4 (wms 10-12) All White-Size5 (wms 14) All White-Size6 (wms 16-18)

$58.00

Does anyone else find it disturbing that the default size you can order for the "Running Bride" running skirt is teen 12-16?! I think I last wore that size when I was... umm... 16.

care for a drink (or perhaps I'm manufacturing a candle)

I took a domestic flight today. I have the worst luck when it comes to seating on planes. On the last flight I took, the creepy man across the aisle (sitting next to his wife) stared at me for a full hour and fifteen minutes or so from take off to landing. On the flight before that, I sat next to humming woman, who hummed at such a fast clip I was a wee bit stressed out.

On my flight today, I set next to Guatemalan travellers. They seemed like nice people, that is until someone came to serve drinks. Strangely, no flight attendant on this flight spoke Spanish (was I in a parallel universe?) and my new Guatemalan friends apparently spoke not a word of English. When the attendant made a gesture of pouring a can of Coke into a glass, the couple looked at her as if she were a Martian. I translated "she's asking if you'd like a drink" into Spanish. Then I got to experience the joy of communicating the intricacies of their drink needs, from ice preferences to types of juice. Once the drinks were served, I also got to translate "thank you," because these Guatemalans were travelling in an English-speaking country and apparently hadn't yet figured out how to say that either.

OK, so if these Guatemalan people are travelling outside of their home country, methinks they're not exactly poor. Shouldn't relatively wealthy people in that part of the world have some grasp of the English language, however tenuous?

But even if they truly have no grasp (as seemed to be the case), how hard is it really to understand the gesture of a can of Coke being poured into a glass? I've travelled through some pretty far-off places where none of the languages through which I can stumble are spoken, and somehow I've always managed to make basic actions understood - and understand the basic actions of others in return. Context always helps, and methinks it's quite normal for a flight attendant to offer one a drink.

Did they think maybe that she was trying to sell them a deserted island, or teach them how to make a nuclear bomb? Guatemala has now dropped a country or two on my "must visit" list -- a good thing for my alarmist parents' ability to sleep, since it consistently ranks among the top 5 countries in the world for homicides.

a hate-on for the help desk

I work in a big corporation. As such, two things must be true:

1. Getting a hold of the computer help desk is an event to be celebrated. If the help desk calls and offers to help, one never, ever hangs up. A calendar page will need to be turned before the help desk calls again.

2. Layoffs are always handled so poorly that all productivity screeches to a halt.

My computer has not enjoyed the time since I last wrote. One day, when I thought I could not handle another moment of mind-numbing motherboard frustration, the help desk finally called. Unfortunately, on this same day, layoffs were rampant in my department.

All morning, my work group (divided among a few cities) had been monitoring who was still at work and who had been laid off by checking to see who was still online. If someone went down, the phone calls began. If the phone wasn't answered, reconnaissance missions were sent to his or her desk to see if he or she were still in the building. Names were flying.

In the midst of this, my help desk friend said he needed to log on to my computer to help me solve my problem. And so he took me down.

Two minutes later - no tall tales here - my phone began to ring. Of course, I was on the line with the help desk and completely unwilling to even look at the hold button.

Then the people started coming to my desk, pale faced. They saw me still sitting there, laughed nervously, and walked away.

OK, so this was funny, right? But it's also a bit messed up.

am i being a hard-ass?

Hey, if you break down and cry at work when you've just received the call that your parent has been taken to hospital, or when you've fallen and broken your leg into several pieces, I'll be the first one to hand you a tissue. But people who randomly cry at work--maybe because they feel they've been mistreated, or because they're super in touch with their emotions--make me long for a time when robots might run the workplace. I'd like to get my performance review from C-3PO. Really.

I have to admit that I'm not really into crying to begin with (who are all those people who bawl during movies like Beaches and Yentl?!) but I can't begrudge people the right to cry in the privacy of their own home or car or trailer or backyard or any other place where I am not. But is it too much to ask people not to cry in the bathroom we share at work or in the cafeteria from which I also need to buy my lunch? I think I sound really British when I say this (and British I am not), but crying to me just seems kind of private.

Last week I got sent to an "inspirational" (quotation marks intended) business speech. The speaker was a well-known television personality who has built up quite a brand for herself. Her topic was her ten important hints for business success. Partway through her number one hint she started to cry. Soon the crying turned to sobbing. It went on for so long that I began to wonder where all the moisture was coming from. Were there secret onions in there somewhere?

And all of this was in front of an audience of about 500 people. Not that I was a big fan to begin with, but I will no longer be able to look at her with any respect.

Unreasonable?

need some destructive electronics?

(Try to look past the egregious apostrophe abuse.)

This place made me stop and laugh out loud in Hawaii. I have to assume it opened before December, 2004.

food violence

All right, I not-so-secretly love this story about the two roommates who went to blows because one ate the last English muffin. A shot glass and a vodka bottle were used, inflicting "head wounds." Their parents should be so proud.

Somehow I think this will never happen in my household. If anyone is ever angry that I ate the last of the fake chicken with 140g of fat and 6,680g of sodium, I promise I'll inflict my own head wounds.

i'm back and i may not feel well soon

Given that I aspire to a vegan diet (I haven't quite gotten there yet), I'm always looking for alternative sources of protein. I love going to Chinatown to scope out new tofu creations, some of which have been a bigger hit than others.

Tonight for dinner I went all crazytown and cooked this sucker.


Yes, soybean made chicken, in the shape of a chicken--I guess. I was a bit suspicious of this, not just because none of the ingredients sounded tasty, but also because the cooking instructions were "microwave 3-5 minutes."

So I microwaved it for 4 minutes. Then I decided I should add something that people normally eat with chicken. Of course, I don't really know what that is, since I haven't eaten chicken in well over a decade. But I had a sneaking suspicion that green peas might work. After all, the people I know who eat lots of chicken are pretty white and peas are a white person food. Or so my reasoning went.

So here it is on a plate with some peas. (BTW, you're seeing it without sauce, since I wanted to taste it first to decide what sauce would go best--and taking a bite would ruin the integrity of the "chicken" for the shot. I ended up adding soy sauce.) How's this for a white bread meal?


You know what? I don't know if it tasted remotely like chicken, but it was delicious. Really.

But here's where the story goes wrong: I finished the whole plate and then decided to go back and read the package again. I read the amount of everything per serving and it didn't sound so bad: 7g of fat, 334 mg of sodium, 6g of protein, 1.4g of sugar. But then I went back and read this: 20 servings per container. So I just ate a plate that had 140g of fat, 6,680mg of sodium, 120g of protein and 28g of sugar.

Is this even possible?! It seems to me that if I really just ate 120g of protein I'd feel a bit more full than I feel right now. And I don't even want to think about what that somewhat excessive amount of fat and sodium might be doing to my organs right now.

This has the potential to be much worse than the misguided Dairy Queen visit. Help.

maybe an urban legend....

... but still an amusing story I heard this evening. At least I'm not telling it, so you can just stop reading when you feel you've heard it before, rather than having to nod politely while your eyes glaze over.

A friend of a friend (it always starts this way, doesn't it?) was dog-sitting a medium-sized dog. On her second day, the dog suddenly dropped dead. She felt terrible and didn't know what to do. She called a few friends, all of whom told her she had to take the dog into the vet.

The friend of a friend didn't have a car and apparently didn't feel comfortable taking the dead dog in a cab or a friend's car. So she decided she'd take public transit (I guess she figured a dead dog in a suitcase is not the worst the subway system has seen). She hauled 50 pounds of dog into an old suitcase and dragged it out onto the subway.

When she came up in the station close to the vet, she found the escalator broken. She was desperately trying to get the suitcase up the stairs when a friendly man stopped and asked if he could help. She gratefully acquiesced and the guy took the suitcase. "Man," the guy said, "this sure is heavy. What do you have in here?"

Knowing that it would be just a teensy bit weird to tell a stranger that the suitcase contained a dead dog, she paused and thought about what lie she could quickly fabricate that would make it sound better than it was. "Electronics," she told him, explaining that someone in her family owned an electronics store.

When they got to the top of the stairs, he turned, punched her in the nose and hurried away with the suitcase. She never saw him or the dead dog again.

(Does anybody know if this is an urban legend?)

Rainy

don't do the funky dance

Walking to dinner last night, I passed a man sitting in his parked car, chugging pink grapefruit juice out of a 2L jug. I turned away to laugh, and spotted this fantastic sign. Thanks, man chugging vast quantities of pink juice!


I stopped doing the funky dance immediately.

RainyBow

news about mark and christine

You're probably wondering who they are. Well, I don't really know much more about them than you do. I used to work with Mark, who is married to Christine. And "news about Mark and Christine" was the title of an email I got from Mark today.

The body of the email actually said, in these exact words: "Mark and Christine are separated as of this past weekend, and they are planning to divorce."

Two things:
1. I haven't tried writing an email about myself in the third person, but I wonder if I'm missing out on something. It might make the email responses I get at work more interesting.

2. Group emails for personal information haven't traditionally been my thing either. When I read this, part of me wanted to send an email to my group contact list about the weird little skin condition in that one spot on my back.

But then I guess I just posted that random little piece of info on my blog, which is kind of the same thing as sending a group email to my contact list. If only I'd written it in the third person. Seriously, wtf?

Rainy

does anyone understand this?

All right, so here's another come-watch-me-give-birth colleague story. Sunny told me she had a similar conversation with our friend a few weeks back.

Another colleague was standing, talking to me, when Madam the blurter jumped in.

Colleague [to pregnant colleague]: Can I touch your belly? Do those pants have a panel? I wish I were pregnant like you. It's so great.

Pregnant colleague: Oh, you want to have another kid?

Colleague: No. I just liked being pregnant.

Pregnant colleague: Really? I don't really like always being big and exhausted.

Colleague: Oh, I really miss it. I like it when I have gas because it's the same kind of feeling.

Me: You like it when you have gas?!

Colleague [giggling]: Yeah, I can pretend I'm pregnant again.

RainyBow

the bible was their guide for this?

I do like me some heart-warming church stories. How 'bout this one, with the couple who decided to go at it at least once a day, because their church thought it would be good for their relationship? I'm not really sure why you become a celebrity when you decide to engage in conjugal relations with your spouse, but there it is. And buddy's profound judgement at the end? "I'm surprised it worked as good as it did."

Clearly the Bible mumbo jumbo and/or the constant exchange of bodily fluids have impeded his ability to speak English real good. I wonder if the church is keeping track of this less-than-desirable side effect.

Rainy

thank goodness they won't force me to accept some water

Sometimes the things I see amuse me so greatly that I wonder if some little elf-like creature walks around the world in front of me, setting it all up for my benefit.

(And I think you can see the reflection of my complaint free world bracelet in the window. I didn't even try to set that one up!)

RainyBow

speaking of (non) long weekends....

I don't know how it works in the States, but here, every time there is a long weekend, the gas price jumps by about 5c/L. I have a big problem with this because of the BS reason they always give. 'The price of oil has increased and we have to raise prices so we don't lose money.' Oh yes, the price always increases to coincide with the start of a long weekend and then magically decreases afterward. Do they think we're stupid? Why can't they just come out and say: 'Hey, it's the long weekend and we know you're probably going to drive somewhere for the weekend so we're going to raise prices to take advantage of you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Enjoy your long weekend.'

Seems weird, but this would make me feel better. It would still suck for sure but at least I wouldn't feel like someone was trying to snow me. As we all know, an increase in the price of oil today wouldn't really affect gas prices for months; that gas is going into the reserves and will be used way down the road. Also, the oil companies aren't exactly hurting for cash. Here are some fourth quarter net earnings for you....

Imperial Oil - $886M
PetroCan - $522M
Royal Dutch Shell - $6.6B
Exxon - $11.6B

Here's Halliburton too in case you were wondering (you probably weren't but I feel you should know anyway) - $4.2B. Also, their press release is good reading. Who knew there were favourable tax impacts and foreign tax credits available to them? hmmm.

Here I go, totally off topic again. Anyway, back to the original subject.....

Point is, the gas companies are cleaning up. Yes, I know I choose to drive and have to pay for that luxury, but they could really own up to their price gouging.

Sunny

deal or no deal

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Deal or no Deal. Trust me, I don't make a habit of this, but I was still recovering from my tropical disease so you'll have to give me a pass. The contestant was a young married woman whose greatest dream in life is to have a baby. Of course, living in the US, she cannot afford to have a baby because she has no health insurance. As well, she and her husband made a combined $13000 last year. How two people can live on $13000/year is a mystery to me; I assume they had some help from the parents. She applied to the show in hopes of winning enough money to afford the hospital costs to have a baby. Ok.

This was a special episode in which they had more than one $1M prize on the board. Clearly the chances that she was going to take home a lot of money was very high. As the show progressed, she kept getting higher and higher offers from the banker and she kept turning them down. Crazy. At one point, she ended up with over $600000 on the table. You would think that someone who makes such little money would jump at the chance to have 600K. Nope. She turned it down. This is incomprehensible to me. If you walk in with nothing, why on earth would you throw away over SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Actually, I do know - greed. No amount is ever enough. Frankly, with her financial situation, she should have settled long before it got to this point. I think she ended up with just over 400K. Lucky - she could have lost it all.

Last year, I saw an interview with Howie Mandel and he said that the hardest thing about the show is that a lot of the contestants are in dire financial situations (no roof over their head, can't afford food, etc.) but they still turn down significant amounts of money on the off-chance they will get the big prize. I would have to give them an intervention.

Sunny

well, i like to read books too

... but I'm not sure I'd want to kill someone and go to jail as a means to that end. Just sayin.'

RainyBow