I am my own secretary

I recently made an appointment with someone for work. When I called, I called the individual's secretary and said "This is Sylvia [insert real name here]. I am calling in reference to your email to set a phone meeting with [insert person I am scheduling with here]." She kept referring to me in the third person, which I thought was weird, but whatever. At the end of the conversation, I asked if I should call him or if he would call me. She said she or his assistant would send an email confirming and would indicate that in the email. She asked if she should send the email to me or Sylvia. I said, "I am Sylvia. I don't have a secretary." She seemed flustered for a few seconds and then told me "Well you are doing a good job." Made me laugh. I may not have a secretary, but at least, I fill in well for one.

Facebook

I made the plunge and joined Facebook about a week or so ago. I know I was the last person in the U.S. to join besides my Dad, so this is not exciting news. However, if any of you are on Facebook and would like to be friends, send me an email. I am not good at searching for people. Half the time, I can't even find people I know are on Facebook. If you are wondering if Phollower is going to join, here is your answer:

Me: You want to join, admit it.

Phollower: I don't know. I kind of do, but I don't want it to be a place I don't check regularly.

Me: You'll check it enough.

Phollower (using a sad, dejectd voice): I sent you 16 pieces of flair, a hug, and a sticker. I threw a snowball at you and a tossed a frisbee to you and you didn't reply. You didn't even kick the hacky-sack back.

Anatomy

I heard a story from a colleague the other day that was about a student in one of her classes many, many years ago.

She was teaching oral anatomy. He had labeled the "uvula" (the little thing that hangs down in the back of your throat) as the "clitoris" on his exam.

She responded on his exam by saying, "I think you are confused."

Phollower, who was there for this story, responded by miming like he was sticking his two fingers into someone's mouth saying "trust me, you're going to like this!"

GOOOOAL! (Revisited) and some donuts

First, I got a second goal tonight at hockey! As Phollower pointed out, that means I have more goals than Max Afinogenov of the Sabres this season.

Second, after hockey we went to BadunkaDunkin Donuts. The people who work there are so amazingly stupid. They always get our order wrong. We were in the drive-thru today, and we asked what donuts they had left. The guy started listing things, very slowly. We asked if there were any white cream donuts. He said no. He also told us there was only one chocolate frosted one. When we ordered two cups of coffee (one large with 2 sugar and 1 cream and one medium with 2 cream and 1 sugar), he kept thinking we were changing the coffee order, not ordering two cups of coffee. Finally, we decided to go in since he seemed so confused. There were a whole tray of white cream donuts and another one of chocolate frosted. These are kids who were supposedly educated in a very nice suburb, supposedly great schools.

I thought Zoe or I had posted about the last time we went there, but I could not find it. So, sorry if this is a repeat. Zoe, BP, Phollower, and I stopped there for coffee and donuts one evening. We asked at the drive-thru what donuts they had left. We told them we wanted a dozen donuts and to make sure to include a list of 4 donuts, but they could add any of the other donuts except 2 specific kinds. I can't recall the exact kinds we wanted or didn't but the basic request was to make a dozen with 4 kinds to include for sure, 2 to not include. As we drove away, we opened the box. It was full of the 2 kinds we did not want and none of the 4 we did. We went back, told them the problem, and pulled around. They handed us more donuts. Guess what? Same problem. So we tried to explain again. We ended up yelling into the window what we wanted as they pulled them off the shelf. Then we asked if we could have some napkins. Keep in mind, we had 4 people in the car. The kid at the window gave us 2 napkins. By the end, we were laughing our asses off.

Ummmm......really? And something cute.

Donovan McNabb, QB for the Eagles, really didn't know football games could end in a tie??? WTF?

And now for the cuteness - when I was there tonight, almost 19,000 people were watching:

Go Blue States

Our state went BLUE, first time since the 1960's. YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!

More Politics

I know you are tired of hearing about Obama, but it is almost over - one more week and I will either be crying in joy or crying myself to sleep and considering moving to Canada.

Obama is going to be on The Daily Show on Wednesday, 10/28. Here is a link with some video of an interview. I am not sure if Obama was on the show earlier and these are replay or if Comedy Central posted the interview early.

Vote for Change, but vote early

I was making calls today for the Obama campaign, encouraging people in the state I live in to vote early. In my state, they are predicting several hour long waits at the polls on Election Day. In fact, I have heard of people waiting an hour at early voting sites already. The Obama campaign officials in my town are afraid he will lose voters when they can't wait for hours to cast their vote.

So the point of this long-winded, PSA is to vote early if you can, especially if you are planning to vote for Obama. If you are not voting for him, I recommend waiting until Election Day. Yeah...you betcha!

Opening Night for the NHL

Before the first game last night for the NHL, Versus showed had footage of a "party" the NHL was throwing for Red Wings fans in Detroit. The feature artists were Def Leppard (and yes, that is the correct spelling). You read correctly, Def Leppard. There are tons, dare I say hundreds, of great bands who are currently making music, and the NHL gets Def Leppard. I heard they have a new album, but I mean bands making good music right now. I really don't think the NHL officials get it.

Since Versus had the only games on at 7 and 10, we had to watch Versus. That is usually an unpleasant experience, but tonight it was especially unpleasant. I would post some footage from youtube from the "performance" but it was so terrible I'd hate to put anyone through watching it. Don't get me wrong. I liked Def Leppard back in the late 80s, but now I am more into music with more complex melodies and with more than 3 lines of lyrics. The lead singer looked horrible. I think he has been eating and doing drugs nonstop since Def Leppard stopped being popular (actually that may have been what he was doing when they were popular). He sounded horrible.

At one point, two of the Red Wings players showed up on stage with the Stanley Cup, riding on a motorcycle. One of them lifted the Cup up, kissed it, and handed it to the lead singer of Def Leppard, Joe Elliott. He took the Cup, kissed it, and placed on a table upside down. The NHL player ran over and righted it. What an ASS Joe Elliott is. Why should his fat ass get to kiss (or touch) the Cup? Could he not even found out how to handle the Cup ahead of time? I am pretty sure it was not a surprise visit.

All in all, it was a black mark on what should have been one of the best days of the hockey season.

Politics, politics, politics

Another one sent to me from Scarecrow:

PBS has an online poll posted asking if Sarah Palin is qualified.

The poll will be reported on PBS and picked up by mainstream media.

It can influence undecided voters in swing states.

Click on the link and vote yourself.

Google Searches

Ok, so I had that post a while back about "DP" and I knew it would lead to some unsavory google search points to this blog, but I was not expecting this...

"double penetration husband brother"

Yes, according to google analytics someone searched for that.

And I am really unsure what else to say about that.

Split Personality?

I recently saw a car with the following two sayings on bumper stickers.

Sticker 1: "My boss is a Jewish Carpenter"
Sticker 2: "Graduate of the Road Rage School of Driving"

Now, both stickers seemed to be about the same age. Therefore, these are not two car owners' stickers colliding.

So I am left with two options in figuring this conundrum out:
1. The car owner is actually working for a Jewish carpenter, and not THE Jewish Carpenter who is traditionally being referred to by the bumper sticker.

OR

2. The owner has a split personality since, although I am not a religious person, I am pretty sure THE Jewish Carpenter would be pretty against road rage. It seems very not "turn the other cheek"-ish.

Being on the Weather Channel must be hard

Well, it's tornado season in the Midwest which means Phollower and I watch more of the Weather Channel than we'd like to. We were watching it recently, and Jim Cantore, one of the "meteorologist on air personnel," was talking about the severe weather. He was saying how one storm was kicking up a bunch of tornadoes earlier and that there was a spiral pattern to the cloud, indicating more were coming. But some lackey off-screen must have notified him that there were no tornado warnings in that area because he started mumbling about how there should be some soon. Then he said that the storms cycle, go quiet for a while and then suddenly start spawning tornadoes. If you watch, you imagine the "exciting" vocal quality he used for that little announcement.

I thought he should have said: "The storms cycle, get quiet, then BAM a tornado comes swinging out." Like Emeril. He made cooking fun, right? I know, he didn't really, just annoying. But I think it must be a hard job to do. They want to make weather exciting. But the only people watching are people who are living in that weather, and quite frankly, we don't want the weather to be exciting.

Phollower pointed out that tons of old people are also tuned in, those that are not doing genealogy on their computers, that is.

The "fork-lift"

When we were rafting, the guide let us jump out and float in the 38 degree river if we wanted to. My Dad, along with almost everyone else, wanted to. I tried it, but it was too cold so I got right back in the boat. That meant I was the one pulling people in when they were ready to get back in the boat. I was the one who tried to pull my Dad in. My Dad is about 6 foot, 2 inches, and a big guy - not fat but really muscular and heavy. I had my feet locked under the boat side (as we were instructed) and was leaned back with all my considerable weight and using all of my meager strength, getting nowhere. So one of the guys who was rafting with us, pushed him from the water underneath to help me. He and his friend were from Arkansas and were pretty funny guys. Anyway the following conversation ensued:

Dad: "Who is grabbing my balls?"
AR guy #1: Shifting away from my Dad to another part of the boat, "That's what we call a forklift in Arkansas."

The conversation continued once we were all in the boat.

AR guy #1: "In AR, when you give someone a forklift, it's go time."
Phollower: "Go time? Where do you go from there?"
AR guy #2 (AR guy #1's friend): "WE don't really call it a forklift. He does."
Me: "What is like to be friends with a guy who has his own name for grabbing a stranger's balls?"

So the forklift was a joke for the entire week.

Tegan and Sarah Concert

Zoe, BP, Phollower, and I went to see Tegan and Sarah the other night. They told entertaining stories, interacted with the audience, played great music. All the things you could ask for in a concert.

It was an interesting crowd - different than we expected. There were the usual teenagers dressed like Tegan and Sarah, of course. And most of the crowd was women, again not unexpected. We had the usual giddy girls around us, who seemed intent on taking pictures of themselves through the concert (blinding us with flashes) and texting everyone they knew. But there were some unexpected audience members as well who I can only say reminded me of the "NASCAR crowd" - nothing against people who like NASCAR, you just don't usually see them at Indie concerts. One woman started giving them the middle finger about half-way through the concert after they asked her to stop screaming for a bit. She had been screaming like a teenager starring in a Friday the XIIIth movie. I, personally, was in favor of her not screaming until after she was far, far away from me.

Zoe has also written a review of the crowd, although different odd ball shenanigans here.

Unexpected crowd dynamics notwithstanding, I think I speak for all of us when I say - see them if they come to your hometown.

Scare Tactics from the Phone Company

Phollower and I recently canceled our home phone and plan to just use our cell phones. When I called to cancel the phone representative tried to scare us into keeping a home number.

Phone rep: "My husband and I tried this and it didn't work out for us. Hopefully, it will work better for you and your husband."
Me: "Mmhmm" (undertone - please don't tell me your long story)
Phone rep: "During a thunderstorm, my mother-in-law broke her leg at our house and none of our 4 cell phones would dial out until after the storm."
Me: "Hmmm. Terrible."
Phone rep: "And then our son was in a head on collision and could not call us collect from the hospital."
Me: "Wow." (thinking to myself - you had quite a run of bad luck. I can't believe the hospital did not call from a regular phone.)
Phone rep: "And we started going over our minutes."
Me: "We'll be fine. We don't use all our minutes." (repressing the urge to explain that for the cost of our home phone which we never use we could double our minute allowance per month)
Phone rep: "I guess if you only use about 1/3 of your minutes, you will be ok. It is all those 800 numbers that do it."
Me: "Hmmm." (thinking how many 800 numbers do you call???)
Phone rep: "Now you don't have a security system or anything do you?"
Me: "No." (concerned that now she is casing the house)
Phone rep: "And no DVR or HD service through a satellite provider?"
Me: "They can use the internet connection." (now even more concerned about the casing issue)
Phone rep: "How can they do that? How do you get the internet?"
Me: "Using the cable internet provider."
Phone rep: "Oh I can't get that. I live in the country."
Me: "Too bad. It's really nice."
Phone rep: "I bet." (seems I am a better salesperson than she is!)

Phollower just left to run some errands. I told him to call if he needed anything, unless there is a thunderstorm.