Curses, Andy, Curses!

So, it's hardly a secret that Andy on The Office is annoying as hell.  He's always singing in that annoying "I think I'm a classically-trainer singer and want people to complement me" way, you know what I'm talking about?  The type of singing that makes you roll your eyes and purposefully yet painfully ignore him?  Because if you complimented him, he'd get a big head and do it far more often?

 

Well, that's not exactly how I'd describe the Andy in my office, except for he's annoying in a completely other sense.  He repeats himself, saying dumb little phrases over and over.

 

"I just want to call the supplier, and figure out what's going on there."

 

(two minutes later)

"Yeah, I just want to find out what's going on there."

 

(a minute later)

 

"Okay, yeah, give me until tomorrow, I'm going to find out what's going on there."

 

OKAY, I GET IT.  YOU'RE GOING TO FIND OUT WHAT'S GOING ON THERE!

 

Okay, so maybe I'm a bitch, but it's only in my head and only to my blog!  And all of the Internet to read!

 

So, he's actually not that annoying, I just needed a good segue into the fact that I find it funny that Andy (The Office) annoys me because of his singing, and Andy (my office) also sort of, by accident, today annoyed me because of singing.

 

Today he got to repeating "just find out the bare necessities that we need".

 

Which turned into...

 

"Okay, let's just figure out what exactly the bare necessities are" and "What is the absolute bare necessity?"

 

Which leads me to start signing (in my head) that goddamn song from that Disney movie, with the emaciated ape-boy and jungle bear singing and dancing "The Bare Necessities" over and over and over and ahhhhhhhhhhhasdfasdj;edflwe2292121012jasl;das;dfaswoqwieuwdwqpweoruqwepbarwepoeidbaerweofjf.

Accomplishments of the Week

1.)     Last night, after coming home from work and strewing about my belongings all over the place like a child throwing a fit, I picked up after myself before I went to bed.  This, my friends, is monumental.  Normally, I would keep the strewings as they were, add another layer of strewings the following day, so on, so forth, living in filth, then hyperventilate on Friday night after a whole week of this behavior because I live in a pig-sty.  This whole “pick up after yourself daily” thing is pretty rad.

2.)     I sold something on Ebay and made twenty bucks. SCHWING!!

3.)     I signed up for Extra-Curricular Activities.  AKA, Hobby Hunting.  I am optimistic.

 

The Customer is Always Right?

I don’t know if it’s because I work in Purchasing (where I subconsciously live by the motto “the customer is always right” thus making ME always right, ahhh I love it) or if it’s because young Americans are just used to instant gratifiction, but man, let me tell you, I am a hard-to-please customer.

 

This car salesman I’ve been talking to, he has a low say-do ratio.  “What, pray tell, are you talking about?!”  I can hear it in your head right now.  Say-Do Ratio.  A beautiful thing.  Let’s say you tell your wife “Honey I will mow the lawn and clean out the gutters” and you only end up doing one of those chores. First of all, you are a chump. Get off your ass and go clean out the gutters, the football game will go on regardless if you watch it or not. You can look up the score later.  Second of all, let’s say you still only do one of the chores. Well, you’ve SAID you’ll do two things and you’ve DONE one thing.  Say-Do Ratio is low. (For mathematical purposes, it’s actually Do-Say ratio in that Husband’s ratio is 50% right now).  If he were to complete both tasks, his Say-Do Ratio would be 100%.

 

Right, so where was I?

 

Car salesguy.  He SAYS he’s gonna go “x” in “y” time.  Such as, “I’ll fax you the quote within 30 minutes.”   Well, I’m standing at the fax machine 29 minutes later and pissed-off by 31 minutes.  Don’t say something you’re not going to do.

 

I’m allllll over Say-Do Ratio like white on rice. It’s my favorite thing to judge people on.  Well, that, and their choice of MySpace song, but I digress…

 

Why must car shopping be so dreadful and why can I not trust a car salesman to save my life.  Oh, because they’re employees of Satan, that’s it! I forgot…

 

 

 

The Day in Which My Mom Got All Ball-Buster with Airport Security

We were traveling to New York for a wedding last fall right after they implemented the whole “put your 3 oz. toiletries in a quart-size ziplock bag or else” initiative.  Literally, like the next day. So, I followed the 3 oz. rule but was like “they’re not going to actually DO ANYTHING about this law, I mean, it’s Detroit. Bigger fish to fry…”

 

Hoo boy, was I wrong. They quickly confiscated my Oil of Olay face serum, which cost me about $20 a pop from the drug store. In other words, I feel as though I’m slathering diamonds on my face when I use it, the cheap bastard I am. Since I’m known to be, errr, somewhat sensitive when ‘people of power’ (aka airport security hahahahaha) yell at me or look down upon me for ‘breaking the law’ I get all meek-like and obedient and repentant. TRUE STORY.

 

So I’m stammering like “oh I’m so sorry, yes it’s not in a quart-size bag, please, take my diamond-expensive face cream and throw it in your trash bin even though I know you guys go looting through it at the end of your shift” and I give it up without a fight. Up ahead, as we were putting our shoes on, my mom could see I was upset and down in the dumps, and asked what was wrong. I boohoo’ed to her that they confiscated my face cream, and she marched her pretty little butt up to the airport security and demanded they hand it back.   This, if you’ve ever met my mom, is slightly out of character.  My mom obeys laws.  She makes us face the consequences for our actions.  I admire this about her.   Except that day, when she got all ball-buster with Airport Security.

 

“I’m sorry, ma’am” the woman said, pointing to the newly-placed sign “it’s not an a plastic bag.”    

 

“Well what difference does it make if it’s in a bag or not, it’s still 3 oz?”

 

And so on, and so forth. 

 

I got the face cream back, I cried tears of joy, did a little back-flip and break-dance in my head, and saw my mother in a different light.

 

Waiting is HARD! (waah!)

Dang is that whole “waiting” thing intense… I’m “waiting” to hear back on something (not to be all vague-like, peeps, it’s just an inquiry about a new vehicle I’m hoping to purchase) I am now getting a glimpse of that excruciating feeling one must get when one waits for something important.

 

Such as:  an answer to a first-date request by a nervous college freshman (especially those few seconds you have to wait to see her response on IM), or waiting for a pregnancy test to come back either positive or negative or “what does THAT mean?”, or waiting for a MCAT score to see if you got into med school, or waiting to see if the revival efforts worked on your loved one in the E.R.

 

Or waiting to see if a car is sold yet or not.   You know, same thing.

 

So Gonna Barf

My cube-neighbor is telling a story in gross detail about pulling a tick out of her pet’s paw.  Barf faint gross.

Here's to you, Mr. Burn (And to Burn's Momma)

A day late, but alas: taken from The Writer’s Almanac for August 26, 2007:

“It was on this day in 1920 that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, was declared in effect. After the Congress passed the amendment, it had to be ratified by a majority of state legislatures. The state that tipped the balance was Tennessee, and the man who cast the deciding vote was the 24-year-old representative Harry Burn, the youngest man in the state legislature that year. Before the vote, he happened to read his mail, and one of the letters he received was from his mother. It said, "I have been watching to see how you stood but have noticed nothing yet. ... Don't forget to be a good boy and ... vote for suffrage."

At the house, supporters of suffrage sat in the balcony, wearing yellow roses. On the house floor, those who opposed suffrage wore red roses. When Burn entered the room, he wore a red rose and the anti-suffrage camp thought they had his vote. But when he was called on to say aye or nay for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, he said, "Aye," and the amendment was ratified by a vote of 49 to 47. A witness there that day said, "The women took off their yellow roses and flung them over the balcony, and yellow roses just rained down."”

 

Much Like Accidentally Reading a Movie or Book Spoiler

You know that awful feeling of regret mixed with that pit-in-your-stomach mixed with “Whyyyyyy did I doooo that?!” when your eyes move against your brain’s will and read down at the end of a website containing spoilers you weren’t going to read, you swear, you would NOT read how the end of the movie ends…

 

I’m sure many people fell prey to this phenomenon during Harry Potter frenzy, etc. but for me?  I got that feeling when I was put on hold with a supplier this afternoon while at work.

 

Knowing from past experiences that this company has HORRID hold-music, I was prepared to start humming to myself in my cubicle, or start reciting what I could remember from “The Raven” which my 8^th grade English teacher made us memorize, or even start talking to myself rhetorically like my coworkers do. 

 

But with that same power that forces you to scan your eyes down even though you see the **~*ALERT SPOILERS~!!11!!!** warning, I didn’t plug my ears, put the phone down, or answer “no” when asked “will you hold?”

 

Instead, I braced myself against the chair, lied to myself by theorizing “maybe it’ll be GOOD pop music… some JT or Fergie” and listened:

 

The Bodyguard, by her HIGHness, Whitney Houston.

 

Obviously, I have some bad karma residing somewhere on my karma slate.  After those painful two minutes, that slate damn well better be scrub clean, clean like the top of the Empire State Building…

 

I’m still shuddering.

 

OMG FAXES

STILL FAXES NOOOOO

 

Case Cracked?

For over 2 years now, I’ve periodically received phone calls from someone trying to fax. It happens every few months, and I’ll get 10 calls in a row from an Unknown Caller and all I hear is the fax shriek and I grumble to turn my phone to silent because I know there will be 9 more calls to follow. Since I never get a phone number I can’t block the call and sometimes Unknown Callers turn out to be actual phone calls from people I know, so I can’t just ignore every time I see that on my Caller ID.

 

Finally today I get about 6 of those fax calls starting at 7:15 am (Thanks!!) and I turn my phone to silent. Then, a few hours later, I reach into my purse at work to grab something, see that my phone LCD is lit up because someone is calling, except this time! It’s a phone number! An unrecognizable phone number! I answer the inquisitive “hello?” and hear those precious precious words… “sorry, wrong number, I was trying to fax something” and I can finally let him know that this number you’ve been faxing for 2 years? It’s a cell phone buddy.

 

Lame news, lame blog, but that totally made my Friday.