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Easter Surprise

It started nice enough, unseasonably cool, with a nice light marine layer hanging over the valley. This time of year the valley can be a blast furnace. But today, aaahhhh, light marine layer, 60 degrees.

I think to myself, cool! I can take the dog out for a walk first thing in the morning, without working up a big sweat, what a treat.

But, no. I end up on the phone for nearly three hours. No walk for me, the dog gets to go out, thanks to the wife. So my dog gets out, but me, I get to sit inside and talk on the phone. By the time I'm finished, its back to good old fashioned blistering valley heat. Oh yeah, and it did manage to sprinkle a little overnight, which is nice, but it didn't really rain enough to really get anything wet, just enough to make the normal dust layer on your car into little dirt marks.

So now my car is dirty. Like a thousand cats with muddy paws took a walk over it.

Then I decide to make some chicken buillion for lunch. I take a mug from the cupboard and procede to fill it with the broth and then I go back to my office for, you guessed it, yet another phone call. A few minutes later I go back into the kitchen, where my wife tells me that my teeth and lip are "bright green".

Well she doesnt just tell me, in an offhand way, like " say honey I was talking to the broker the other day about what we needed to do to get a vacation home, oh by the way your teeth are green, and he said we really aught to open an IRA..."

No, nothing dignified like that. Instead of that, she keels over laughing in real panty wetting spasm of laughter that goes on for at least 10 minutes.

Well, at least I've got that going for me. I can make my wife laugh.

Apparently the last use for this particular mug was for this years Easter Egg decorating session, and it wasn't washed out well enough when it was completed.

I rather foolishly assumed that dishes kept in the cupboard were in fact, clean. My lifes experience as an older brother and a father of two tells me that I should have known better and to always assume that your taking your life in your hands when you use kitchenware, but there you go, I let my guard down just once and what do I look like?

I look like what Andy Warhol thinks I should look like.

So there I am, unproductive as hell and literally "green in the face".

Then my son adds insult to this existing injury, and asks to go to Fry's.

I love Frys. All techies love Frys. It's our store. Its a no hold barred no compromises, we carry not just one motherboard kept behind the counter away from the public, but 20, 30 sometimes 40 motherboards proudly displayed for all to see. No insulting "Geek Squad" style service plans for us Frys shoppers, we are the Geek Squad!

But no, I don't get to go to Frys today because one of my 'little miracles' is being less than a miracle today, and I'm back on the phone again, talking to some middle manager in Pigsnuckle, Arkansas about why some fantastic piece of software is now splattered all over the screen doing little more than mocking its user instead of doing what its supposed to do.

I get through this little nightmare, its now 3:00 in the afternoon. Its practially quitting time and I've barely gotten started on what I wanted to get accomplished for the day.

Then to make matters worse, I find out that a set of reciepts for my expense reports have once again gone missing. I hate expense reports. I hate making them, I hate turning them in, I hate using them. It doesnt matter how close I follow my expenses, how much I put every possible dollar on the expense report, I always seem to come up in such a way where I am out two or three hundred dollars at the end of the Quarter.

So naturally, I then spend the rest of the afternoon...

ON THE PHONE WITH AMEX!!!!

I hate the phone. I hate talking on the phone, I hate talking on the phone with a set of neon easter egg green teeth. But I really hate chasing down receipts for expenses that I've already turned in - TWICE. Because after I'm done with the phone, I then have to go to the AR department and ask them where the hell are my receipts!

I hate having to go to the office. Go.To.The.Office. Just the words alone grate on my nerves.

So I drive to the office, the actual real life office, the one with other people in it, that office. "Why arent these people at home working?" I always say to myself on the odd occasion that I am forced to go into the office. I always wonder just whats wrong with these people that I've now been forced against all common sense to come visit.

Think of it, having to spend your own money to "go to work", its downright barbaric.

Go to work? I am my work, whats this "go to work" stuff? isnt that right up there with "Hey pardner get me a sasparilla!", and "Jethro, go throw a shoe on that Mare before she goes lame"?

Go to work... I feel like Fred Flintstone rapidly paddling my feet under the car to visit the rock quarry.

These people arent on my vibe, they are leaving work, they are going home for the day. My day, thanks to all the interruptions hasn't even started.

So I go down to AR, I find the right clerk, and ask my pointed questions.

She goes through the files. Snapping gum.
Ah yes, the final kick in the crotch, the gum snapper. the close talker and the gum snapper all in one package. You know the kind, the kind that calls you "hun" and gives you a hip check in the hall and laughs like a donkey.

Yeah. that's the one. Everybodys got one. Doesnt matter where you go, everbodys got at least one, like OSHA fire extinguisher laws.

She finds the defiled expense reports, find the missing reciepts in the wrong place** and then she says in a chirpy "didnt quite make the audition for "Alice's Flo" sort of way...

"Say hun, didjall you know you've got some really green teeth"?

and before she finishes the word "teeeeeeh", shes all the way buckled over in a full gut bustin' laugh.

I have no defence. I just cant run off like I'm Marsha Brady and wait for a commercial break. I try explain to her the nature of how it happened, the easter egg dye and all that, which of course just makes it worse.

In between her trying to catch her breath and explain to everyone else as she was now busy trying not to laugh and explain it to the now gathering crowd, I used basic hand signals to ask " are we ok, expenses done?, im outta here..." to which she just threw her hands over in the universal clerk hand signal for "at this point buddy, you could requisting an whole helicopter for yourself and a years avgas too and I would approve it"

I got one thing finished today. Expenses paid.

oh well, it could be worse...

**- not my fault.

Posted @ July 11, 2007 07:21 PM | Current Affairs

Posted by: Knox at July 12, 2007 06:37 AM

Posted by: frank martin at July 12, 2007 07:55 AM

Posted by: Vittle at July 13, 2007 08:11 PM