Around the...hood, trick-or-treating

Oct 31, 2010

Today's Lesson is this, kids: in the hood*, when parents accompany their progeny for trick-or-treating, it is proper etiquette to give the parents candy, too (or at least that is to be assumed as the parents open their own candy bags beseechingly).

*At least in my friend's neck of the hood.

Footie pajamas, you say?

Nov 3, 2010

I was working at my second job the other night when someone in a complete Boy Scout uniform strolled up and asked for help. He was so youthful and cherubic looking that had he not been 6 feet tall I would've thought he was a kid. Then I also thought how silly a grown man looks in such a uniform.

Immediately after he left I saw an ADULT woman in a one-piece pink pajama suit walk by. And by pajama suit, I mean the type that babies wear; I think they may be called sleepers (yeah, I'm a bit removed from the whole baby culture). It was one piece, zipped up the front, and had footies. And by adult I mean that she had kids of her own and had to have been in at least her 30s.

To clarify, I also must say that this happened on November 1st, so the people couldn't even claim that they were wearing Halloween costumes, either.

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I have a friend who also deals with the public. In addition, she volunteers with a parrot rescue. She emailed me recently and said the sad thing is that the parrots speak more clearly than the members of the public do (and she's referring to native English speakers, to be fair).

Around the...taxidermy shop?!

From Nov 4, 2010

I plan to attend a ladies' night that includes a stop at a taxidermy store where they'll do salt scrubs for our hands. Do I have the courage to visit the house o' dead animal heads all over the place? How badly do I want smooth hands?

And, as usual, there will be chocolate replicas of male anatomy that night. I don't know what there is about ladies' night and chocolate anatomy pieces, but they are ubiquitous at such events.

Now that's true love

From Apr 27, 2010

My friend was telling me the story of how she met her husband and had me in hysterics last night. The whole story took probably about 45 minutes, not because it's truly a long story, but she's a hoot and gives every last detail (I know, guys, it probably would drive you nuts, but it was amusing; she's a fantastic person).

She said that the first picture she saw of the man she would eventually marry showed him wearing short shorts, knee high socks, with a Viking helmet with blond braids. It was hard to see much else of him; the photographer was far away. In between giggles, I managed to ask her, "and you STILL wanted to meet him after seeing that picture?!" Why yes, she did, and they ended up marrying.

Budget cuts result in...

My brother came to visit and we decided to take a trek to Detroit et. al. On the way day, we witnessed one of the recent results in state budget cuts. The way that workers are cutting the median's grass appears to have changed. One worker was on a riding mower, pulling a lawn cart. The other worker was IN the cart, facing backward and holding a weed whipper. We were laughing over that one; generally, workers cut the grass using big tractors. It was quite ridiculous looking.

Around the...Halloween pumpkin

From Nov 5, 2010

One of my favorite things about Halloween time is homemade pumpkin seeds. The commercial kind just don't do it for me; they're way too salty and processed-tasting. Even better yet, I love slightly burned pumpkin seeds (I was absolutely delighted when my friend gave me several containers of them that she was otherwise going to throw out).

My mom, knowing how much I love pumpkin seeds, was awesome and mailed me a package of them this week. However, I started wondering how much she loved me when they arrived postage due ;)

Gingerbread envy & a case of mistaken identity

From Nov 12, 2010
I have just returned from a conference. During the conference, staff were decorating the conference hotel for the upcoming holidays. While leaving for dinner, I heard some drilling noises and found a small house being erected in the middle of the lobby. When I returned, it was completed and I told my new acquaintances that I needed to be excused. I wedged myself into the house as I just couldn't help myself. L thought that was great and took a picture with her phone and promised to email it to me. I gave her my business card with my email address and didn't think any more of it the rest of the night.

The next morning, I bumped into my boss, who was cracking up. She asked me why she had received a picture of me in a gingerbread house. I was certainly confused; I wondered how L had known who my boss was and what her email address was. However, my brain suddenly clicked back on and I fished out my business cards and started laughing, too. We have a general template for the cards at work. I was in such a hurry to get everything in order at work before I left on Monday that when I used the template, I had updated the cards with my name and job title, but had left my boss's email address on the card. L had been confused as she had thought my name was [Aroundthewherever]*, not [Boss's Name]*, but thought that maybe I just went by [ATW] casually and sent the email anyway. My boss loved the picture nonetheless and forwarded it to me.

The next night was even more exciting in the hotel lobby. Our group had a pow wow to talk about how the conference was going. The whole lobby smelled strongly of gingerbread so I followed the smell to what had been a wooden house the night before. A gentleman in a chef's smock was stirring a giant vat of icing and was cutting large sheets of gingerbread. He was plastering the gingerbread to the house with the icing. I felt that I just had to offer to help shingle the house with gingerbread (seriously, I had never seen such big vats of icing or such huge blocks of gingerbread before in my life! How awesome would it have been to be a part of it?). My co-conspirators tried to give helpful opening lines of how I could make that happen. However, I think that the chef was having none of it because various conference attendees had been milling about him all night and he just wanted to get the darn thing done. I feel that my life is not complete because I haven't plastered on giant gingerbread shingles. Perhaps some day my hopes will be fulfilled.


*Pseudonyms to protect the silly.