Pickles

"Yeah, I guess I'll take a few mason jars. I can make my own pickles...I love pickled foods."

"well, be careful. Back in the early days they figure people died from stomach cancer way more than other cancers because pickling was the most common form of food preservation. Just so you know."

"No offense, Katina, but if I die from stomach cancer, I think that will come as a surprise to just about everyone."

Mentoring

A conversation with my mentee last Friday:

Mentee: Today we had a speaker.

Me: Really? What did he or she speak about?

Veterinarians.

Veterinarians or Veterans?

Oh...right...Veterans.




To our veterans and those currently serving: Thank you.

War

I have a new coworker. His name is Henry. Henry is a skinny as all get out Mormon. Yesterday, I kid you not, one of our other coworkers asked, "So, Henry, you did your mercenary work in Taiwan, right? That's how you learned Mandarin?"

And I couldn't stop laughing at the thought of one of the nicest people I know in the world being Rambo. It'd be like if Ghandi joined the mafia.

Miracles

Shawn: Whatcha reading?

Me: An article about how to take better
photographs. This guy says that everyone
should read their user manual.

I agree. And you never read the
one that came with your camera.

It's a Canon Rebel XTI, I figure it's close
enough to the film Rebel that I didn't need
to re-read the manual.

I'm just saying that I read the
manual for your camera and you didn't.

A few days later when I pulled the manual out to read it:

Shawn! Quick! we need to call the Pope!

What? Why?

Because you've performed a miracle and
we should let him know so you might be
canonized one day.

hunh?

You managed to read the user's manual
for my camera without opening the packaging
that the manual came in. That's a miracle!

Queens, New York

"Katina..."

"Yes, Ma-Belle"

"Do you want me to put this make up on you?" (while holding up an eye-shadow palette that has all the colors mixed and is obviously one of the ones that her mother gave her because the make up is old)

"Not particularly"

"But if I can put the blue eye shadow on you, you'll look like a queen!"

::laughing snort:: "Yes, I'd definitely look like a queen. Thanks, but no thanks."

State of the State

So yesterday (Valentine's), the flags were at half staff.

"Don't look now, honey, but I think Texas has shifted to a Catholic State and is commemorating the martyrdom of St. Valentine by putting all flags at half staff. I think it's probably best if we just quietly go with it."

Fall

from my mom when she was down here in October:
"So the leaves haven't started turning yet. What color will they turn when fall finally hits down here?"

from my coworker:
"Do you consider brown a color?"

Catholic Weddings

I was talking to my coworker about his upcoming nuptials via text message. A bit of back story: This coworker used to love Mel Gibson. Loved him right up to the Jewish rant a few months back.

"Are you going to have a recitation of the Apostle's Creed or the Nicene Creed at your wedding?"

"No, we're going to do a medley of my favorite lines from Mel Gibson movies. The priest will ask if I take sugartits to be my wife."

"And then he'll ask her if she takes Masterblaster to be her husband..."

Text Message Conversation

To my coworker:
"Why is your Bella doll making out with your sunblock?"

The response:
"Who knows why Bella does these things?"

So accurate, really...

EE-diot.

Sometimes I can be a total idiot. Usually these times are somehow related to numbers. Scary I know.

The other day, getting ready for the boat trip, one of my coworkers asked if I had change for a $20. He wanted to give me $10 (for food), and give Kevin $10 (cost for bringing a guest on the trip). I needed to give $10 for a guest. I had a $10 bill and a $20, David had a $20.

Are you keeping track?

So I made David give me personally his $20. I put $10 in the food envelope. And then I walked over to Kevin and handed him my $20.

And yes, this transaction took me like 10 minutes to figure out the logistics. And after I explained it all to David, he was like "why don't I just walk over to Kevin, hand him my $20, and you put the $10 bill in the food fund?"

And I kid you not, I said "no, that won't work. Give me your $20."

He handed it to me, and as I'm standing there with 2 $20 in my hands, I must have had that look of dawning understanding because David just sat there laughing at me. David. The man who's brilliance has given us comments such as "I thought the Canadians spoke Spanish because they said 'eh' a lot," and "Mother Goose totally wrote Green Eggs and Ham," and most notoriously, "why the hell would I want salad dressing on my chicken fried steak?"

I guess it's a good thing they don't ask questions like this on the P.E. test.

Now, I'm off to work out that "if you have a 5-gallon bucket and a 3-gallon bucket, and you need exactly 4 gallons, how do you do it?" problem. It'll take me like half the day, I'm sure.

18

Yesterday Bond told me a story about the field work she was doing with our (female) intern.

they were out in the field, sitting on the bumper of the Escape and waiting for a third coworker to get back to the car so they could leave the job site. As they were sitting there, a man came up and asked if the lovely ladies would like to purchase an Adult Movie (bow-chicka-wow-wow). When they both declined, he then asked if they were 18. What would he have done if they said Yes to the movie and No to the 18+ thing? would he have demanded his movies back? Aside from the fact that we haven't even gotten to the question of this man's mental stability since the vehicles have a nice, big City seal on the doors. Yes, that's what us government workers do--avoid doing work by watching porn all day.

Sam I Am

"Did you think that the name for my bracket was unique, did you know it was mine?"

"What now?"

"Green Eggs and Ham. The name of my bracket. I was trying to be unique and reference Mother Goose."

"You mean Doctor Seuss. You were kinda close. At least they rhyme."

I guess this would go under "he'll still say dumb shit."

Though to be fair, I also did a major dumb shit thing, too. One group was talking about something that happened a while ago and David was like 'Oh, Colleen, you don't know that story!" except that she did, but Pam, joking around said "oh, I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know this story." Except I thought she was being serious so I started in on this whole long winded story, a story everyone at the table already knew. and I got most of the way through it before I realized that everyone was looking at me like I was insane. Sigh...at least I bring the entertainment to the table.

Roommates

Shawn and I went to "Cowboy Breakfast" last Friday. Cowboy Breakfast is put on by Rodeo Austin and it's basically a large breakfast extravaganza. you walk from booth to booth and pick up free breakfast foods (pancakes, breakfast tacos, sausage wraps, muffins, etc.).

At one point, I thought I had seen one of my coworkers roommates. A gent that I had just met a few weeks earlier. This man looks like he could be Shawn's brother. As Shawn and I were leaving, I said, "You know, I think I saw Jameson's roommate....Dave?" and Shawn replied, "Ah, yes. I prefer to think of him as Little Shawn."

Which...now that I wrote that, that sounds really bad...

Lunch

The waitress comes to the table... The menu clearly states that the chicken fried chicken platter comes with a side salad + one other side.

"I'll have the chicken fried chicken please, with a side of fried okra."

"Which type of dressing would you like with that, sir?"

"None, thanks."

We all give him weird looks. and one of us finally says, "Really, you don't want any dressing?"

"Why would I want dressing? Okay, fine, what do you have?"

"Ranch, Blue Cheese, vin..."

"Wait, you're asking me if I'd like salad dressing on my chicken fried chicken?!"

"no, sir, I'm asking which type of salad dressing you want with the salad."

"oh, fine...yes, I'll have Ranch. I would also like a coke."

"it's okay sir, I understand, let's get some caffeine in you, then it'll all be okay."

one of his friends: "I wouldn't count on it, he'll still say dumb shit."

Grocery Store Run

From my coworker:

"We ran out of children's Tylenol, which wouldn't have been a big deal, but of course the baby ends up needing a dose, and the toddler was already awake. So, at 4 in the morning, still in my pajamas, I take the boys with me to the grocery store because the wife is out of town. I'm at the checkout lane and the cashier asks me 'would you like to buy body wash or one of our WOW! items today?' I politely said no but I was thinking 'I'm standing here with 2 kids who are screaming, we're all in pajamas, it's 4 in the morning. NO I DON'T WANT A WOW ITEM!'"

Lunch

While walking back from lunch today with Bond and David, David states something about how "we need to have a happy hour for just us ladies."

The man is straight.

The man makes up words.

The man really said "Late-ies"

Dooced

So, I'm breaking my self imposed rule about not blogging about stuff at work (other than funny conversations with coworkers)

But, it is only because too good to not share. Let me entertain you:

Scene: My office, I've just walked in. My boss is talking to the other person he supervises in the office across from mine. He thinks I am listening to what they're talking about even though they are clearly not talking to me. He walks into my office:

"Katina. I've got some bad news. Management has been asked to make some more cuts to our division. So, can you please give me a justification as to why you should keep it for your job?"

"What?! I have to give a justification to keep my job?!"

"Oh good God no! I'm talking about that teleworking program you use. ::ha ha ha::: You thought I was talking about your job? :::ha ha ha::: Oh that's funny, Katina.:::ha ha ha:::"

FOOTBALL!!!

A conversation with one of my coworkers who was born and raised in Texas. He went to UT. He is very....Texan.

"Is there like some crazy rule that states that in order to play as quarterback at A&M or UT you have to have a weird name?"

"Like what?"

"Well, like Chance, or Colt."

"or like Vince?"

"No, Vince is normal. And then A&M had a quarterback named Major."

"Major Applewhite played for UT."

"oh. Well whatever, I amend my previous statement to 'if you want your son to grow up and play quarterback for UT, you have to give them an odd name.'"

"..."

"You're still mad about the fact I said Major Applewhite played for A&M, aren't you?"

"Yes, yes I am."

Rain

"Oh yuck! I'm getting sprayed with the car wash water. No, wait, that's rain!"

"yeah, it really has been a long time since you've seen rain, hasn't it?"

Engine Block

On talking with my coworker today about the grad schools he was thinking of going to, one of which, was in Missoula, Montana:

"So I was talking to the admissions director and he told me that they had enough on-campus apartments for all the grad students. Actual apartments, not just dorms. And he mentioned that they had engine block warmers in all of the garages. And that's when I asked 'What's an engine block warmer?' and there was silence on the other end of the line.

"Then I asked 'Is that like when you have to run the heat in the car because the engine is overheating during the summer?'

"and the Admissions guy said 'Really? It gets hot enough down there that your car overheats in the summer?'

"'well, yeah. Yours doesn't?'

"'hmm...You should really come up here in the winter before agreeing to go to grad school here.'