It shouldn’t be green, should it?

Ok the title’s a little misleading, but in the end you see where it’s from. But anyway I’ll begin at the beginning, a good a place as any.

About eight weeks ago, well ok let’s step back even further, to the very beginning.

In December last year I got a transfer with my job to where I live now, now as part of my salary package I received rental assistance, now this is basically where my employer will pay 2/3 of my rent for the next two years, so looking this gift horse directly in the mouth, I though shit let’s use this to my absolute advantage. I looked for one of the nicest (and most expensive, funny how that goes together) places I could find and low and behold I found one…..

A brief description for the masses, house….blah blah blah, and the draw card? A fully fenced, large, solar heated, salt water, in ground pool…….. aahhhhhhhhhhhh.

So what did I do? You betcha, I signed that lease.

So, I have never had a pool anywhere, the parents decided to get one put in long after I had left home, but luckily while my brothers were still living at home and my sister was just a glint in her parents eyes, so my fellow siblings could get maximum benefit from said pool (gotta love the parents). But me, no.

I have no skill and very little interest in obtaining any for the sake of pool maintenance. My step dad told me that it’s pretty easy and started in on a description…..blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, I hear what you’re saying but I think I’ll just get someone to maintain it for me, and then I don’t have to worry. He thinks that might be the way to go too, not of course implying that I am incapable of looking after it but with professionals, you know that it will always be ok….Yeah, THANKS.

So with this in mind and remnants of the “pool man” fantasies playing in the back of my head. I call to arrange for someone to come to maintain it. So I get the yes we’ll come out and take a look, ok the address, yep, ok and now onto business.

“How often do I want it cleaned? I don’t know. How often do you come out?”
…..
“Oh, I have a choice, weekly, fortnightly or monthly”.
…..
“Oh, right how much does it cost? I’m sorry? How much?”
…..
“$50 each time you come out and extra for chemicals?” Je-sus!
…..
“Well I better make it monthly then”, I am by now revising the pool maintenance for dummies speech I got from my step dad, boy I should have written some of that down.

But in the end I go with the pool shop, I don’t really want to do it (maintain the pool that is), and if they do I never have to worry, oh and I have this serious condition called laziness, don’t know if you have heard of it but I personally have a chronic case. Now to add to this, the pool is totally automated, the pump, filter whatever, is all set on a timer, and I have to press one button to turn on the solar heating (which I had) so I did not have to do anything (but boy does that puppy suck up some power) except swim when I want to and occasionally when the water is mysteriously sucked from the pool, obviously by a thirsty giant with a straw and a penchant for salt water, I have to drop in the hose to top the pool up (and turn on the tap – the effort involved!).

So I’m set, the first time the pool ‘man’ (or men more correctly) came they parked me in and I had to get them to move the van so I could go to work. The second time they walked past my window, which was open while I was getting dressed for work, I had to do some serious fast moving to avoid detection on that one, and mostly the pool ‘man’ is actually a woman – so much for the fantasies! But the pool was always clean and sparkly and good to swim in.

That was until just recently, now about 2 months ago the pool people came out and I got a call saying there was something wrong with the pump and that they had taken it away. They will contact the owner (who they know as he used to get them to do the same thing when he was still here), and then they will bring it back fixed (or a new one) and all would be back to normal. Right? Well so you would think.

It is now winter and in my opinion too cold to swim, so I haven’t been swimming for a few months now. But just as well, I went out assuming that the pump would have been returned weeks ago and all would have been well, to discover it’s still gone and the pool is beginning to turn a murky shade of green.

So I ring the pool shop. Yes they still have the pump, yes they have spoken to the owner, yes, he said it is fine for them to fix it, yes, yes, yes….. But why is it still not fixed? I called the real estate who mimicked the conversation I had with the pool shop and here I am the pool slowly become a swamp and yes it’ll be fixed, let’s hope they get here before next summer!

Christmas, a pot and baked beans on toast

So this was a few years ago, my mum told me she had bought me a pot for Christmas, she always tells me what she is getting me, I’m not really sure if it’s in a ‘are you ok with this’ capacity or what, but I haven’t had a surprise present for some time. This is ok because I always get a chance to say, no, don’t get me that, what are you thinking? (Not that she listens but at least I have a say). I guess this must run in the family because I always ask the whole family what they want and get them what they ask for, they do the same to me, then at least you don’t have to feign surprise or the traditional “Oh my God, this is awesome, love you guys….” Without at least having practiced it a few times.

So this Christmas my mum told me she was buying me a pot. (no not pot, A pot).

“A pot?”

“Yes, a pot it is a good one, it costs a fortune and that’s what you’re getting.”

“A pot?”

“Yes a pot.”

“So why not just put coal in my stocking and be done with it, ma.”

“Stop you’re whinging, you’ll thank me in the long run”

“Yeah, I’m sure I will.”

And that was it, that Christmas, I got a $250.00 Saffron (this is yellow) coloured, Le Creuset (a fancy French brand) cast iron pot.

For background we always open our presents Christmas eve and have Christmas dinner after this, mum says it so she doesn’t have to do anything (cooking and the like) on Christmas day.

Lucky I have two brothers and a sister, to get supplementary gifts from, and mum never gives us just one thing, we always get lots of little things too, always individually wrapped, so you get an absolute shitload of presents (how much is a shitload you ask, well more than a few but not bucketloads!). If she gave you a pencil sharpener, it would be individually wrapped.

So the festival of present opening concluded, we retire for the evening meal now my mum is a seafood freak, she loves it, absolutely loves it, (she always makes me eat some form of fish product on fish Friday (this is Good Friday) and I manage to smother it with so much tomato sauce that even with scientific testing you would not know there was fish in what I eat of it). But back to Christmas, now she has gone out and purchased a Seafood extravaganza for this meal, lobster, crabs, prawns, oysters you name it she would have had some. As I may have mentioned I do not like seafood, at all, prawns at a push (the poop shoot must always be removed, ALWAYS). But still I am not a big fan. So mum begins cooking up Lobster Mornay, and chilli crab, eating the prawns and the raw oysters (I am far away at this stage – in my opinion eating a raw Oyster is on par with sucking down a phlegm glob – not a nice thing to do).

I am cruising around the kitchen trying to find the roast pork and ham that she must have hidden away somewhere, although I don’t smell it cooking, but I’m sure it’s just the seafood, stinking up the room. The closer it gets to meal time, it begins to dawn on me that this is it.

“Ma, we’re not having Lobster are we?” I tentatively ask.

“That’s what I’m having, you can have some if you want, or there’s the chilli Crab, some Prawns or a few Oysters.”

“Mum – you know I don’t like any of that stuff, where’s the real Christmas dinner?”

She laughs at me, LAUGHS! By this time I think that this is definitely it, but denial is still there trying to convince me otherwise.

“Fine then,” I say and head for the pantry. After about 5 minutes trying to decide what flavour of tinned soup I am going to have I spot a can of baked beans.

“God dammit – mum. I am going to have baked beans for my Christmas dinner.” She starts laughing at me again.

So I sat at the table eating my baked beans on toast, the rest of the family with Lobster or some other form of seafood (YUK!!).

She still gets Lobster every Christmas but I now make sure we always have a roast beast of some sort (even if I buy it and cook it myself). Where is the Christmas tradition in my family? Where? How can I have a great Christmas eating baked beans on toast for my dinner? Where’s the celebration in that?

Screw fashion, pass me my coat….

Today I saw a girl walking along the street (with a few male admirers, I must add), she was wearing some hipster jeans (so we are talking a few inches (for my American friends) of midriff exposure) and a tiny short sleeved top (Oh and shoes I guess, I was driving past and didn’t really notice – must have been that blinding flash of white from the exposed skin).

What gets me about this is that it is the middle of winter and it is cold… (yeah, yeah, I know, I am a baby). It reminded me a little of when I was back in school (of which, the aforementioned girl would have been around school age now), where it was sacrilege to wear any form of coat, especially rain, as it didn’t look ‘cool’. I would have turned into a popsicle, rather than be warm and as far as rain was concerned, you could have wrung me out some days. All for the sake of coolness. But things change...

So why is this a continuing trend for the young throughout the ages? I have no idea.

I have two (not one but two!) Wool (and Cashmere, dahhh-lings) coats, a plethora of umbrellas (I seem to loose one, and as they don’t cost much I buy another only to find the old one – I think I have about 5 or 6 now), but alas, still no raincoat – that uncool stigma just hangs on for some of us. But this is more than enough to remain warm (and mostly dry).

Why do I now wear them? Maybe it’s because one of these coats kinda looks cool, I don’t know, my brother (well both of them actually) rag on me about being in the Matrix whenever I wear the full length one, it is black and looks similar (but is wool not leather – leather doesn’t actually keep you warm I have found (unless it’s already hot out and then it’s a sweatfest in leather - ummmmm, maybe that's rubber??). I react one of two ways when this happens, I either throw a ‘kiss my ass’ or similar comeback (usually much more offensive) or do a little Matrix spin, so the coat flares out (making the noise that goes along with it – this goes without saying, a little like pretending to be Darth and Luke duking it out, you must make the light sabre noise or there is no point). Hmmmmm, I am supposed to be an adult woman now, right? Oh well. I think I don’t have enough oestrogen, either that or the fact that I have 2 late teenage (ok Matty is 20 now, but behaves no different, I can assure you) brothers that behave this way and influence my behaviour accordingly. Don’t have brothers, you are missing out!! Anyway I am getting way off track.

The other coat is shorter (just covers my ass) in length and looks ok, I wouldn’t consider it to be cool as such but it is warm and I can wear this in the office as the full length one does look silly here (when I am sitting at my desk anyhow). I guess the main deciding factor is they keep me warm and that’s more important to me now. I did see however, another girl, later in the day who was wearing a coat that looked as though she had killed a bear, buffalo or some kind of brown furry animal and had thrown its hide around her shoulders (fur out), a scary hairy coat, they may be the ‘fashion’ in coats, maybe the first girl just didn’t know, but I’ll pass on the furry coats.....

So what am I babbling on about today? Well I guess the main point of the story is that I will wear clothes that keep me warm rather than clothes that are the in thing, don’t get me wrong I do have winter stuff that looks good, but has minimal to no skin exposure and sometimes even all covered I’ll still wear my coat!

And finally (here is a nasty confession) I have, oh yes, have, left the house wearing my Ugg boots (these are sheepskin boots – I have knee high ones) a pair of track pants – not those noisy ones just plain fleecy lined material (why do they call them a pair I wonder?) and a flano (this is a flannelette shirt, I have a few but the blue plaid one is my fav). I have on every occasion covered a majority of this outfit with my full length coat but you can always see the boots, the coat has a split up the back so generally you can see the pants too and to be perfectly honest the buttons don’t start 'till half way down the chest so you can usually see the shirt too, lucky for the all saving scarf I add to this ensemble.... and if I put on my beanie and gloves..... wow, I am something to behold. But this is a privileged outfit and it doesn’t get out much, I mostly only wear it if I am too lazy to change and we are going for an ice-cream run or to the video store late at night.

So fashion victim? I think not..... Give me my coat I’m going out.

By the way, the title doesn't really fit with the story but I like it and it's going to stay.

Horror Scope

I got this from this blog when I was cruising around the web yesterday.

Find out who you truly are....in a negative sense, that is.

This is me.


Aries (Ram)

Born March 21 - April 19

Aggressive to the extreme, the Aries is primitive - warlike and cruel. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, he often has trouble remembering the simplest of things. The Aries will often try to backstab his peers, but luckily, he usually lacks the mental capacity to succeed. He is vulgar and blunt, and incapable of subtlety.

From early childhood, Rams aspire to be a career soldier or an astronaut - which is why they constantly go around trying to pick fights with everyone they meet.

An Aries should be kept as far away from family savings as possible - he will blow it all at the first chance, but will not remember how or why. He is unbearably dull in a conversation, mostly due to an annoying tendency to ramble on for hours about himself, completely oblivious to those around him. When drunk, an Aires will usually become rowdy and violent, often making a scene.

To find out your (not so good) character traits click here.

A puzzle and some facts

I have a(n almost) fetish for logic puzzles, I love them, can’t get enough, so as I like to cruise around other blogs, I always find it fun to stop when someone offers up a quiz or something that is a little challenge (mentally of course). It’s always fun...mostly...

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the “What colour was the bear” puzzle. So here is something a little harder for you. This has always been one of my favourites. The names have not been changed to save the innocent.

Here goes:

Jack and Jill are found lying on the floor dead, they are surrounded by pools of water and broken glass. What happened?

Have a go and I’ll tell you the answer tomorrow.

Oh and the most exciting thing to happen to me today? I got lost looking for a valuers office, although I did stop and ask for directions (twice!). Don’t be too hard on me, I had a very busy day and I just walked straight past it (it was just a doorway and was kinda hidden before you judge my mental capacity…).

As the posts pretty short and I usually post oodles of words, here are some quirky facts (yeah, right!) to chunk it out a bit. The comments were already there and are not from me.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
(Hardly seems worth it.)

If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
(Now that's more like it!)

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
(Oh My God!)

A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
(In my next life, I want to be a pig.)

A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
(Creepy...I'm still not over the pig.)

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
(Do not try this at home...... maybe at work.)

The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
("Honey, I'm home. What the....?!")

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
(30 minutes... lucky pig... can you imagine??)

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
(What could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?)

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(I still want to be a pig in my next life...quality over quantity)

Butterflies taste with their feet.
(Something I always wanted to know.)

Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
(If you're ambidextrous, do you split the difference?)

Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
(OK, so that would be a good thing....)

A cat's urine glows under a black light.
(I wonder who was paid to figure that out?)

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that.)

Starfish have no brains.
(I know some people like that too.)

Polar bears are left-handed.
(If they switch, they'll live a lot longer.)

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
(What about that pig??)

Birdshit and a bone

So it’s raining today (as it was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before and even the day before that – I think). So what exciting escapades have I gotten up to over the weekend? A big fat nothing, I finished my report and sent it off, but my most exciting jaunt was out to buy groceries and to get my boy (this is my dog) a bone, which closely resembles the rib cage of a cow (probably because that is exactly what it is!). He spent literally hours trying to rip the ribs from the spine, I even went out with a hammer (ok it was a meat mallet) and a knife to give him a hand, but to no avail, that cartilage is something else. But I notice the bone is gone this morning, so I think it is secretly buried somewhere in an effort to rot those joints away – no doubt in a few days I will probably be able to tell where it is from the tell tale stench.

So the most exciting thing to happen today? Well the rain on my car today has washed away the bird shit that has been on the bonnet for about 2 weeks now (it’s just a car, I could give a shit if it looks clean). But let me tell you of the story of how it got there to start with. I park my car down by the river which is about a block from where I work, everywhere else it is 2 hour parking and the parking inspector gets around, so if you don’t want a ticket you park down by the river. So about a fortnight ago I parked my car under a Eucalyptus tree down there, in the shade, you know. Now I am not sure if you are familiar with the Sulphur Crested Cockatoo (these are big white parrots with a yellow crest) or the Galah (these look the same as the white Cockatoo’s but are grey with pink crests and wings). These fuckers always hang around in the trees here, the Australian natives actually(the trees that is), they eat the nuts in them you see. I blame these birds entirely for the rest of this story.

So I go to get in my car in the semi dark, as usual. I’m driving along (as usual) and I look toward the passenger side of the windscreen. I can see a grey/white looking patch on the window, but I am not too sure of what this is at this stage and think – hey lets get that off the windscreen.

Easy job right? Well it may have been if I had any water in the windscreen squirty things (I have no idea of the real name of these). So I hit the water squirty knob and what happens? Well no water to speak of but the windscreen wipers automatically go in an attempt to remove the water that isn’t there and in effect smearing this very fresh and very large pile of bird shit across the windscreen. I was like someone had thrown a bucket of white paint across the windscreen. I couldn’t see shit (yeah, I get the pun).

So here I am squinting through the whitewashed windscreen trying to make my way along the road. The worst of it is I don’t have a tap (that I can turn on – I am a weakling – I admit it) or any kind of hose in the front yard, so I limp (figuratively speaking, of course, I am after all still driving the car), with very restricted vision to the nearest Servo and pull up – to get petrol of course and hey, since I’m there anyway, I may as well clean my windscreen. I have never seen so much bird shit in all my life and I am very careful I don’t lean in it as I clean, don’t need to explain what that stain is.

I think I must have parked my car under some community branch for the birds, or at least their public toilet. So now I always look up when I park. No tree, that’s the spot for me!

Does anyone have a bug problem?

It's the weekend, I have to do a Palaeontology report - did I mention I was doing a 'Science' Degree. Anyhow, hope you are all having a great weekend and here's a funny I got on an email the other day...


Oh no, poor Spidey, I can see the headline now...."Spiderman 3 cancelled due to freak accident".... 

You know, it kinda makes you wonder why the Goblin or Dr Oct, didn't just whip out a can of Raid, but I guess that would make for a pretty short movie.

And a diet Coke, thanks…

I stood behind him in a certain fast food chain getting his Mac attack (now I’ll be sued, damn it). The order went something like this…

“I’ll have a Big Mac meal, oh and can I also grab a Quarterpounder (is that one word or two – lets make it one shall we?) with cheese as well.” (Ugh, I can feel my arteries hardening, yeah, I know, if I feel this way why am I even there? – well this story would be hard to tell if I wasn’t).

“Of course sir, could I upsize that for you?”

“Sure, why not.”

“And is a Coke OK for the drink?”

“Oh, no can I have a diet Coke, thanks”. (I subconsciously felt my eyebrows rising – he did not just ask for a "diet" Coke, did he?).

What is with that? A diet Coke? Yes-sir-e-bob that’ll surely balance out all those nasties from the fat fest you’re about to eat. This never ceases to amaze me, why even bother? Have your glass (ok, plastic cup) of sugar with the fat fest, balance all that shit out. But in his defence, he may be hypoglycaemic (all I know about this condition is that you can’t have sugar – don’t know anything more about it than that – and even then I may be wrong).

But honestly, I have seen this diet Coke behaviour many times, it’s crazy, I tell you crazy! So now it’s my turn to be served.

“Hi can I take your order”

“Sure, can I get a Fish burger (I refuse to use the McBurgers name) and a diet Coke thanks”. (tee hee!)

Not again, when will they ever learn?

PS. This story has been embellished beyond recognition from what actually happened, there were multiple burgers involved and the drink to accompany them was indeed a diet Coke (I was not the purchaser or the eater and I can assure you that they were not hypoglycaemic either, for interests sake), all the rest is speculation and hearsay, but it reads better this way.

The boys night

One of my group of friends decided to have a boys night one Friday, you know, drinking and whatever else boys do (yes, I think there was porn involved). How do boys watch porn together, I wonder? At the end of the movie (plot filled as it is) is there is a lot of throat clearing and uncomfortable squirming as no one wants to stand up quite yet? Perhaps a few, “Can you pass me that cushion?” (and no, I DO NOT mean for kneeling on). Who knows?

Anyhow I was away at a course in Melbourne for the week but I was arriving back that night and I had been speaking to one of my (girl) friends who said she and one of our other friends were going to crash the boys night. I said if I got back early enough I would join them.

My plane arrived home at about 9pm and (to cut a very long story short) my bag had missed the plane (fuck the airline – whatever…). So I am already pissed off and up until this point I had decided to go home and watch TV, my mum was coming to visit me this night too, so I gave her a call to see where she was only to find out she was still at her house and it being a 2 hour drive to get to mine (which for some reason mum always manages to stretch to 3) I thought, screw this I’m going to the boys night.

I told my mum to call me as she was getting into town and I would go home to meet her, this arranged I picked up my Bacardi and a bottle of Coke and off I go (yes I always have a supply for emergencies of this sort – as a matter of fact, I have a relatively well stocked bar at my place, I am not an alcoholic, it’s just for emergencies, as I have previously stated – what is it they say? The first sign is denial). Our illustrious hosts place is at the end of my street so a quick drive (no, as close as it was you don’t walk around my town after dark) and I am there.

I meet up with the other two girls outside and we decide a full frontal assault is the best approach (full frontal is just an expression, there was no removal of any clothes, well not ours anyway). So we knock and wait. You can hear strange sexual noises, moaning and the like, and when the door finally opens (the TV is turned off at this stage – I am assuming this is where the noise was coming from and let’s leave it at that) there is a look of surprise on our hosts face.

“Uh, hi”.
“Hi there, can we come in?” Says one of the girls pushing past him.
“Ahhh, ummm, sure, I guess”.

Scowls are on the faces of every other guy in the room. Looks as though they are going to have to make this a PG party now the girls are here, poor fellas. I’m sure if they offered we would have at least attempted to watch the porn, for a little while, anyway.

Once the boys all recover from our rude interruption and can stand once again without embarrassment, we move to the much cleaner forum of drinking games. We play one where everyone sits around the table and two opposing people are given a glass and a coin the object is to bounce the coin on the table and have it land in the glass (which is quite difficult to the unskilled, ie, me) and then pass it to the next person. If both glasses end up in front of one person they have to skull their drink. So this goes on for over an hour and the room is getting fuzzy and I am getting progressively worse and worse as I can no longer see the coin or the glass quite as clearly as I should be able to. By this time the table has an array of tiny dints from the coins, which our host assures us is fine, no really, it’s fine!

Then the boys decide to tell little stories about themselves. Just so you can gauge the level of friends I have here is one of their stories. I am not sure that many of the stories in the telling directly relates to any of them personally, you know, the I have a friend who…except the one about the prostitute, which I will save for another day…. Incidentally all the stories were about their sexual exploits or drugs.

So the tale begins.

A few years back (bear in mind this guy is 21 now). He and some of his friends got hold of some Viagra (now you can already see where this story is going). The pills are kinda small, like aspirin, he said. So he discusses it with his friends and decides, like aspirin that you really need to take two to get any effect. So he chugs them down. What happens next, well… he tells us his heart starts to race and he get this sweaty horrible feeling like he’s about to have a heart attack. And subsequently gets the desired effect from the pills, a ‘bone’ (direct quote, umm, yes nice use of the English language – I am beginning to think this word is commonplace in the male vocab). He said it was as though it was angry, a raging hard-on, if you will, he tried everything to get it to go down, he said that he had sex with his girlfriend almost constantly (I’m sure this was an exaggeration, but not by much) to try to get rid of it. He had a ‘bone’ for two days before it finally subsided. By the end of the story we were all rolling on the floor laughing. He said he would never touch the stuff again (they all say that). Let that be a warning to you boys who are thinking about this, just one is enough (so I’m told). And if you are keen I have plenty of spam email I could send your way.....(when will they learn that I don’t need Viagra and I don’t need a larger penis either, as a matter of fact I don’t have one at all!!)

Anyway a little while later my mum called and I got her to pick me up, I left my car there and walked back around to get it the next day (drinking and driving is bad kids). Some of the guys were still there, but as I had a visitor I couldn’t stay, most of them were looking a little worse for wear, I love how Bacardi doesn’t give me a hangover!

Time to have some "Fun"

We had a meeting on Monday, the whole office. The corporate peons are talking about how we have to make work “fun” (Yeah I know, I already have the wrong attitude about it). I would never consider office work to be fun, for starters it’s not outside, there are fluorescent lights sapping my energy at every turn (I can believe that, even if it’s not actually true),and while you get the odd one, people in Finance aren’t always a riot (except for me, ummmm.... oh and my friends – naturally this goes without saying(well I did say it, so maybe it needed to be said, oh I could go on forever....)).

Not to punish any that actually do read this, I will today spare you from a story and instead share with you an email I got a few years back (I kept it because it’s funny – and yesterday I found it while cleaning out my emails, I don’t recall who it is from, I sent it to myself at home and I always clear the meters of text that says forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, forward, you get my point, so if this is yours please lay claim to it, but if you didn’t want it passed on, why did you stick it on an email to start with?) Oh, and it fits in with the topic de jour.

So here is my suggestion for making the office fun, no I didn’t take it to the meeting, I didn’t actually find it until after it was over, but if I had it, I may have…. The winning score after a month should automatically get a day off (I think). Why not try it?


ONE-POINT OFFICE DARES

1) Run one lap around the office at top speed.
2) Groan out loud in the toilet cubicle (at least one other 'non-player' must be in the toilet at the time).
3) Ignore the first five people who say 'good morning' to you.
4) Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave your name and say, "Just called to say I can't talk right now. Bye."
5) To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your hands over your ears and grimace.
6) When someone hands you a piece of paper, finger it, and whisper
huskily, Mmmmmmm, that feels soooooo good!”
7) Leave your zipper open for one hour. If anyone points it out, say, Sorry, I really prefer it this way".
8) Walk sideways to the photocopier.
9) While riding a lift, gasp dramatically every time the doors open.

THREE-POINTS DARES

1) Say to your boss, "I like your style" and shoot him with double-barreled fingers.
2) Babble incoherently at a fellow employee then ask, "Did you get all that, I don't want to have to repeat it".
3) Page yourself over the intercom (do not disguise your voice).
4) Kneel in front of the water cooler and drink directly from the nozzle (there must be a 'non-player' within sight).
5) Shout random numbers while someone is counting.

FIVE POINT DARES

1) At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once, it would be nice to conclude with the singing of the national anthem (extra points if you actually launch into it yourself).
2) Walk into a very busy person's office and while they watch you with growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10 times.
3) For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as "Bob".
4) Announce to everyone in a meeting that you "really have to go do a number two".
5) After every sentence, say 'mon' in a really bad Jamaican accent. As in "the report's on your desk, mon". Keep this up for one hour.
6) While an office mate is out, move their chair into the lift.
7) In a meeting or crowded situation, slap your forehead repeatedly and mutter, "Shut up, damn it, all of you just shut up!”
8) At lunchtime, get down on your knees and announce, As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again".
9) In a colleague’s diary, write in 10am: "See how I look in tights".
10) Carry your keyboard over to your colleague and ask "You wanna trade?”
11) Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: "Do you
hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now".
12) come to work in army fatigues and when asked why, say, "I can't talk about it".
13) Posing as a maitre d', call a colleague and tell him he's won a lunch for four at a local restaurant. Let him go.
14) Speak with an accent (French, German, Porky Pig, etc) during a very important conference call.
15) Find the vacuum and start vacuuming around your desk.
16) Hang a two-foot long piece of toilet roll from the back of your pants and act genuinely surprised when someone points it out.
17) Present meeting attendees with a cup of coffee and biscuit, smash each biscuit with your fist.
18) During the course of a meeting, slowly edge your chair towards the door.
19) Arrange toy figures on the table to represent each meeting attendee, move them according to the movements of their real-life counterparts.

And if that wasn't enough for you...
1) at lunchtime, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hairdryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
2) Tell your children over dinner. "Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go."
3) Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
4) Put your rubbish bin on your desk and label it "IN."
5) Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over his or her caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
6) In the subject field for all your e-mails, write “FOR SEXUAL FAVOURS".
7) Finish all your sentences with "In accordance with the prophecy."
8) Don't use any punctuation.
9) As often as possible, skip rather than walk.
10) Ask people what sex they are. Laugh hysterically after they answer.
11) Specify that your drive-through order is "to go."
12) Sing along at the opera.
13) Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme.
14) Put mosquito netting around your work area. Play a tape of jungle sounds all day.
15) Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend party because you're not in the mood.
16) Have your co-workers address you by your wrestling name, Rock Hard.
17) When the money comes out of the ATM, scream "I Won! I Won! 3rd time this week!!!"
18) When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot yelling, “Run for your lives, they're loose!"

Messy me.

Why is it I can never eat a meal without spilling it down my shirt? OK, I’ll give you that it’s not every meal, but I would say it would be a fifty – fifty split, which would be a conservative estimate. It doesn’t matter where I am, I can’t say it only happens when I’m out as it happens at home too.

I think this is genetic, my mother does this all the time too, and maybe it’s not necessarily the spilling that is genetic but where it lands – right in the middle of ample bosom land, and this I am assured I do get from my mother.

Now I have a friend that is flat chested, if you cut off her head you wouldn’t be able to pick her as a girl, she has the spilling gene also, but all her spills land straight in her lap! Much, much easier to hide.

It has come to the point that I am consciously aware of it now and take extra care that it does not happen, but still the spills just keep coming.

My worst experience to date was a few months back when I went out to lunch with a friend, we had Chinese and – you guessed it – chop sticks. Now I am not an old hat to the chopstick phenomenon but I wouldn’t starve if they were the only form of eating tool. On this day I did not have one, but three separate spills. The front of my shirt was looking a little like the buffet table itself!

Once my hideous friend had stopped laughing, which took a while let me tell you, she told me she wanted to go to a nearby shop before we left to get something. I looked down at my shirt, she started to laugh AGAIN and said “too bad, come on…..” I love my friends.

Now luckily, all was not lost I had purchased something earlier and I used the bag as cover, you know where you cross your arms over your chest as you hold the bag close to you. This, I am sure looked ridiculous, but not as much as buffet shirt would have.

So I followed her around the shop in a childlike, “are you done yet?” fashion and finally she was.

We went home and I discarded said shirt to the washing pile and put on a fresh one in readiness for the next meal.

Maybe I should just get a bib and be done with it.

A free bottle of Beer

So here I sit writing this is a slight haze, well ok it’s not really that bad I have only had one beer. One of the guys at work walked around today at 5ish handing out beer. I as a rule am generally not fond of the stuff but I thought what the hell, so I took one. I go to leave for home half and hour later and I still hadn’t drunk more than maybe a sip or two. As it is illegal to walk around the street with unhidden (well I think you have to have it in some sort of bag) beer, I decide to chug the rest.

This is a mistake, but I do it anyway. Now feeling like I am going to hurl (yeah I know, I know, a girl who can take her liquor!), I say good bye to the guys (I work in an office full of men and only 2 other women – it is not as good as you would think, men are bitches too). And my boss catches me leaving, he makes sure that I got a beer, yes thanks, I did. Don’t forget to take a roadie he quips at me as I head for the door. Never to be the one that doesn’t do what I am told I grab one on my way out the door, but don’t open it, it will spill in the car and I am sure there is some law about drinking and driving. Not so much DUI (driving under the influence) – there is definitely a law about that, but actually drinking and eating while you are driving, I heard some hubbabaloo about this ages ago never heard anything further but you know, I don’t want to take that risk.

The drive home - uneventful as always (but I did sneak through a rail crossing as the lights started to flash – I made that much more dramatic sounding than it was, believe me). I started to think about my boss (not in that way). He would be in his late thirties and is a pub goer, he always makes a big deal of it when I don’t go out to the pub with him and the rest of the guys. I hate the pub, It’s always smoky and as I have never smoked I hate the way it feels as though I have been bathing my eyes in acid and the smell that gets in my hair and through my clothes, not to mention the drunken idiots that are all over the place like some sort of plague. Also none of the people I work with are actually my friends so I would rather have my teeth pulled than hang out with them (I am working on my social skills). But back to the boss, I think he is an arrogant prick, he is not even the sort of person I would choose to associate with let alone have a relationship with. (Well actually he does sound exactly like some of the guys I have had relationships with in the past – oh well).

So to finish, I now have a bottle of beer in the fridge that will probably stay there until some one comes to visit and I give it to them to drink. Because as I mentioned I don’t really like beer, it’s just, I guess, the chance to take something for free.

PS. You’ll be happy to know that the buzz is now completely gone and all I have left is the bitter taste from the beer in my mouth, the things we do.

Paintball

Ahhhhhh, the sweet satisfaction of shooting your best friend in the ass while you hunch down behind a rock giggling hysterically as they look for the one who shot them…..

A few months back after an exhaustive amount of organising a friend of mine and I managed to organise a work function to play paintball on a Saturday, I use the term ‘work function’ loosely as all of our immediate friends (work and otherwise were invited) and in the end only about 5 were actually from work and we ended up with a group of around 14 people.

I had never played before but the opportunity to take pot shots at my friends (or anyone else, for that matter) was a very appealing thing for me, not that I don’t like them but I though it sounded like fun.

So I get up at the crack of dawn (in my opinion the clock shouldn’t actually start on a Saturday until around 12) to leave by 7.30am, it is around a one and a half hour drive to the site we are playing at and we are supposed to be there by 9am. I waited for my friend, who was running late (tisk, tisk) and once she arrived we got going.

A relatively uneventful drive got us to the town with the field around 9 and we’re on the road leading there, now picture this, we come to an intersection, one way is tar sealed, the other a dirt road. Our turn? You guessed it, the dirt road. It didn’t look too bad for the first hundred meters or so but then it turned into a four wheeled drive extravaganza. My car is a relatively boring, ordinary sedan, but if I drive it super slow it seems to be doing ok on the river bed/cliff face that is trying to convince us that it is indeed a road. By this time I have caught up to a few other friends who are also on the Death Valley road. The one directly in front of me was driving his recently purchased sports car and it was just plane ugly to watch him driving along here. But we all made it through without event.

So we’re finally at the field. We are told to get some overalls from the bags supplied and go and line up for our pellets and our gun, face mask and ladies your (you guessed it) chest protector – heaven forbid you take one to the chest. In retrospect I shouldn’t mock this because one of the girls did take one to the chest (without the protector) and she was still whinging about it over a week later. The scary thing is one of the guys brought his own cammo’s (a seasoned player, I was told – I prefer to think of him as a tosser) and one of my friends used to play as a school sport (and I had been warned he was very good).

Now I was going to skip ahead but I just wanted to share the concept of overalls with you, these are not the easiest things to put on, especially when you have 10 men ogling at you as you try to duck down behind one of the parked cars – they pretend not to look, but they are! One of my friends picks me up a small pair and tosses it over, I take one look at the fit (which I think was made for a ten year old boy) and ask her for a bigger pair. All these overalls are (very) obviously made for men, no room for hips or boobs (especially with the chest protectors) but after I manage to crush my femineity into the straight up and down overalls and get one of my (girl) friends help me pull them up over my shoulders (with the crotch riding quite high) and finally zip them up, it’s on, commando style.

So geared up, my 500 pellets at the ready (ok, so they were in a baggy on the side of the field and the only ones on me where in my gun which was loaded to capacity). We go through a lecture on safety. No shooting anyone closer than 5 meters, always put your guns down barrel up, if you get shot go off the field immediately, if you’re having problems stand up straight and hold your gun above your head and a ref will come to you, blah, blah, blah.

So now it’s time for the first game, incidentally by this time it is close to 11am. So we are split into teams and by some shear force of luck I have both the tosser and schoolboy players on my team. So the first game my gun broke, I threw a hissy fit and stormed off to the man to fix it, he took his sweet ass time to do so, but he remade my gun refilled my pellets and around 15 minutes later sent me on my merry way. I had missed the rest of the first game (bugger!). But on with the show……. the second game I was like a sniper, well a sniper actually hits people right? Ok, I was like a crazed madman, shooting here and there, but not actually hitting anything, although my gun after its repair had fantastic distance. I am covering someone else who is trying to creep up through the grass and then I hear a splotch sound a see orange paint start to run down my goggles. I have been popped off by some bastard who sneaked around behind me when I wasn’t looking, oh well off the field I go.

So after a few more games we stop for lunch then back into the fray. Now I am fully aware that I am not the fittest person in the world but I didn’t think I was too bad. For our next adventure we are going up the mountain, to play in the relative bunkers dotted up the mountain side, they send our team and then the other team comes a few minutes later and tries to make it to the top. So off my team heads and I am refilling my gun, yep now it’s done, shit now I almost have to run to catch up, now I get about 20 meters up the relatively steep incline to realise that I am probably the unfittest person on the planet, I am starting to break into a sweat and I have started to puff ALREADY. So I slowly walk/crawl up a few meters further to a bunker and fall in. But now I am in position to shoot anyone coming my way. No one made it to the top but I don’t think I was responsible for putting anyone down, that said I didn’t get shot either.

Now for an old abandoned house. One team is stationed inside and tries to keep the other team out. I hooked up with one of my team members and we belly crawled across to the hedge close to the house, only to be spotted by at least 3 of the other team. We were back to back and pellets were flying left right and centre, we managed to hold out for a few minutes but eventually we were both hit (and off the field we go).

Now the final game (finally, I hear you say!). This game was back on the first field, which was just piles of tyres all over the place, it began as team against team, but ended in a free for all. When this was called I had Mr Schoolboy standing almost directly behind me, he turned and ran the appropriate 5 meter distance and shot me in the back (bastard)! This made me run to the side - people at this stage were going everywhere to avoid this kind of thing happening to them too. I managed to cower down behind a tree and shoot my remaining bullets at whoever I saw, but in all honesty I’m not sure that any of my 500 pellets actually hit pay dirt. But I had managed to get hit 3 times and had some pretty impressive bruises to show.

An insight provided by my brother

A few years ago my brother came to stay with me for a week, he has stayed before, but usually with the rest of the family, this time he came alone, I am 12 years older than my brother Matt (I use his real name as I have two brothers and don’t want to get him confused with the other for future stories). My mother got remarried and had more children (or issue as she lovingly refers to us) long story and not that relevant at this time.

Now whilst visiting Matty, who was around 18 at the time, spent almost 24 hours a day rotating between playing games on my PC and watching cable TV. He did however, emerge for the odd meal. I was at work during the day so I didn’t really mind, but I made him come out and talk to me at night.

I, as the responsible adult asked him one of these days if he had any washing as I was putting on a load. He looked at me and said:

“Yep Nord (OK, he used my real name) could you wash my trackkies for me”. I was happily about to take them when he proceeded to tell me why they needed washing. I still laugh when I think this story. This is what he told me………

“Nord, I peed on them when I went to the toilet”.

I looked at him, “Huh?” and refused to touch them in light of this new information.

“Well, I woke up this morning with a piss fat and when I went to the toilet I couldn’t aim straight and I peed down my leg”.

“A piss fat?” Oh boy, I had to ask, didn’t I?

“Yeah, you know when you wake up with a bone because you really need to go”. (I just loved his grasp on the English language).

To be honest I didn’t know, not only because I am not a man, but because I had never been told, but this was enough to make me start laughing and I didn’t stop for some time. I made him put his own pants in the machine and I washed them for him, I am such a nice sister. The moral here, when you wake up with your boy and think he’s happy to see you, he may just need to pee….

My fridge

Tonight I opened my fridge, hoping the grocery fairy had filled it up with food. But I guess she had skipped past my house once again. The fridge though, had a weird, skanky smell emanating from it. The smell, even though I am not completely familiar with it, is I am sad to say, vaguely familiar. You see, I regularly do my best to breed new forms of life in my vegetable crisper, although I didn’t think anything in there would have this level of smell. Braving the new life forms they may leap and destroy me I opened the draw to have a look. Some cauliflower, a half squashed tomato (which has no visible mould (and I threw away)). But nothing else there. The other drawer, carrots (god only knows how long they have been there as I don’t eat them – but they looked fine so they stayed), Broccoli (I don’t care what Clinton says, I love Broccoli) some Chives and a very suspicious looking, very mouldy piece of pumpkin, this also got thrown away but the smell remained. I think if I bought vegetables at the shop and just immediately threw them away I would save all this hassle.

As I desperately need to do some shopping all my fridge has on the shelves is a block of cheese, some leftovers from last week (also hit the bin, but still not the culprits of the smell) and a plethora of half full jars and bottles ranging from jam to tomato sauce. Two bottles of wine and a bottle of Bailey’s (well a girls gotta have her comforts).

And then I see it, half hidden behind the leftovers I just turfed and the wine. Half a Pineapple, now to add a bit of perspective here, it is the middle of winter and I can’t recall eating any form of fresh fruit (that wasn’t an apple) since Summer, this means this Pineapple would have been in it’s secret hiding spot for months. And looking at it you could tell, it still looked like a Pineapple, except for the colour, it had a strange pinky-orange coloured film across the top of the cut section and the outside had turned a dark brown. So out she went too.

Now with little Miss Stinky sitting in my bin (well…if you consider a plastic shopping bag hanging from the kitchen cupboard handle a bin) I also had to empty that, ok empty isn’t really the right word, throw the bag away is probably more to the point. Now I always thought I could handle bad smells, but the bin outside sits in the sun and has something very nasty going on with it also. So I walk out to the bin, hold my breath, lift the lid, drop the garbage in, shut the lid and step away as quickly as possible so I could breathe once again. One day I will hose it out…..one day…… So I come back inside, have cheese on toast for dinner (again) and vow to go shopping tomorrow.

What should be a simple purchase

Today at lunchtime I went to buy a DVD, not a hard task, I knew what I was looking for and, I (wrongly) thought I would be in and out. It is school holidays and every child known to man is hanging out in the shop I want to go to – doesn’t matter which shop, they are there. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I don’t like kids, I am just as happy as your every day average Joe to stand next to the mother who is ignoring her crying child in the supermarket line.

But back to the story, I am filled with hope that this time the sales assistant will know the movie I ask for and take me straight to it. Or for an even more amazing event that as I walk into the “home entertainment” section of the store, it will be looking right at me, on sale (Yippee!!) and I can pick it up, buy it and leave.

But as I walk to the DVD’s an impending feeling of doom encompasses me. I see the Sales girl – some late teen/twenty something that has a job in a department store – so you already know she’s got it going on (all I can say is for teenage boy Sales assistant is they usually know all about the Indy flicks that I am also partial to, so if you ask them if they have a particular movie they usually know what movie you’re talking about).

So I deviate to the shelves hoping to spot said flick. I scan the specials isle, well not actually a scan more like a 10 to 20 minute look under that one, move that across just in case it’s underneath there, to no avail. Ok now to the alphabetised section, what I am looking for should, I say SHOULD very loosely, be under the letter C. But of the, oh I don’t know, maybe 10 titles filed under this letter that actually begin with C, I don’t see it. I then turn to the opposite isle and catch a glance of the letter T. To my shock and horror, what do I see? The Last Samurai (haven’t seen it, don’t love the Cruise), “The” this and “The” that………. So much for the alphabet, I am never going to find what I am looking for! I glance once again toward the sales girl, looks as though this is going to be my only option. I walk over and once she finally acknowledges me, the conversation goes a lot like this:

Me: “Hi, have you got Blah?” (OK this is not actually the name of the movie – that’s not particularly relevant – and Blah start with the letter B).

Her: “Oh, I’ve never heard of it, what’s it called again?”

I must at this point put a previous response from a sales girl on a previous occasion where the above sentence stopped at the word “it”. I was in a super bad mood and answered with “So you’re telling me that because you have never heard of it, it doesn’t exist? Do you know of every movie ever made?” I think at this point I walked off, this wasn’t in my home town (wouldn’t want to get black listed) and I was beyond caring at that point.

To continue……

Me “Blah”.

Her: “Oh, you sure that’s it’s name?”

Me “Yes, I’m sure”

Her “Did you look under C?”

Me “Yes, I did.”

Her “Oh well, we mustn’t have it”.

No offer to find it, no looking at the famed computer. At this point I am quite close to strangling the girl. But as you can go to jail for this, I turn, without a thank you (this is as rude as I can make myself be in a public forum (where I may just return)) and walk away.

I think of how this happens every single time I go into this store and I berate myself for doing it over and over again.

The definition of stupidity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

One day I will learn. To finish the story on a good note, my mum gave me an internet site to order DVD’s from that kicks ass, they have every single movie I could possibly dream of, even the “Are you sure that’s it’s name?” one.