An eerie surprise

When I was younger I had an obsession with smilie faces. I had smilie face pencils, smilie face notebooks, and drew smilie faces over everything I owned. I also tried to pass on my love of smilie faces to other people. So one christmas I managed to find an (in my opinion) awesome pair of boxers for my dad. They looked a little something like this:

My dad, being the more boxer-briefs type, graciously accepted the gift and never wore it. Didn't even take the tags off. So years later, when I started wearing boxers in the summer as pajamas, the boxers got returned to me.

I've worn these boxers many times since then and never noticed anything untoward. Last night though, I woke up in the middle of the night for no good reason. I was warm, so I'd kicked off all of the covers. I rolled over, stretched a bit, looked down, and my crotch was glowing. Glowing. I didn't have my contacts in, so I couldn't clearly see what was going on down there. At first I thought there was a light shining from somewhere, but after a while of blindly searching (literally) I couldn't see anything that could be the source. Then I rolled over, and the glowing rolled with me. Finally I reached down and stretched out the boxers, and there smiling back at me was a glow-in-the-dark smilie face.

I'm sure I've been wearing these off and on for years, and this is the first time I've noticed this. Needless to say, it would have been nice to realize this when I was a little more awake and not in that state when you first wake up where the thought that you got spat on by a ghost in your sleep crosses your mind. Or maybe that's just me.

Office Scandal

At my work, there are a lot of people who choose to bike in rather than drive or take the bus, myself included. Luckily for us, the office has showers we can use to freshen up so us sweaty bikers don't stink up the whole place. This is especially important for me as I work at the front desk, and having a receptionist that looks and smells like she came straight from the gym probably wouldn't be all that great for business.

I work very hard at not waking up any earlier than I have to, so I've gotten into a good routine. Leave the house by 7:40 at the absolute latest, which gets me to work about 8:10. Take a very quick shower, dry off, get dressed and pretty myself up just in time to grab a cup of coffee and start work at 8:30. It's worked really well for me so far. Until today.

7:40 rolled around and I was still packing my bags. I was only a few minutes behind, but with my schedule a few minutes has the potential to make me late. I hop on my bike and pedal as fast as I can (which admittedly is not very fast) to try and make up for lost time. Miraculously, I get to work the exact same time I normally do, but the adrenaline was still with me so I grabbed my bag of clothes and rushed to the shower. After a quick scrub down, I step out of the shower and reach to grab my towel...which isn't there. I'd left it on the towel racks in the common area. Which left me in a bit of a pickle.

Now, to give you a good grasp of the situation, I drew out what the shower area in our company looks like:

(The weird curvy things for the doors are supposed to represent which way the door opens)

The towel racks are in the common area, and I know that my towel is no more than two steps away from the stall I was in. I also knew for a fact that I had forgotten to close the door to the common area, and that most of the people that work in the service department directly outside of the door had already arrived. I briefly tried to conjure up a way to open the door to my stall and quickly sneak over and shut the common room door before anyone sees me - I am, of course, butt-naked and dripping wet. I gave up on that idea pretty fast because if it didn't work and someone saw me, I wouldn't be able to look them in the eye ever again. I mean, we're at work. It's not a place where being seeing naked is excusable. Not to mention my dad works there, so it would then become incredibly awkward for him and the coworker. Just a bad situation overall.

Suddenly I realized that I could call the front desk on my cellphone because my friend covers the phones for the first 30 minutes of the day. If I reached her I could get her to come and throw my towel over (the stall walls don't go all the way to the ceiling) and I would be saved! Not half a second later I was dismayed to realize that I didn't bring my phone into the stall, so I woefully discarded that plan. What was left for me to do? I started work in 15 minutes, I didn't have all day to sit around thinking. Finally, reluctantly, I turned to the pile of discarded clothes from my bike ride in, picked up the long-sleeved running shirt I wore in, and started drying off with that. The fabric was horrible for absorbing water and left little bits of black fuzz everywhere, but eventually I got dry enough that I could get dressed and step out of the stall to get my towel without the fear of being exposed.

With that, my problem was solved. But I couldn't get properly dry before I got dressed, and didn't have time to get undressed again just to finishing drying off, so I spent the rest of the morning feeling damp and more than a little silly. Lesson learned: ALWAYS shut the door to the common room. And that Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy was right: always carry your towel.

Personalities at the office

This may make me sound crazy, but ever give inanimate objects personalities? Maybe it's a product of my boredom at work, but lately I've found myself looking at the machines I use at my office in a whole new light. Here's what I've come up with so far:

The Dot-Matrix Printer

This printer is an old dog that's been forced to learn a new trick. At my company it has two jobs: print cheques, and print invoices. The first it does no problem at all, clearly in line with it's original function. The second, not so much. First, it has trouble taking the paper. Then, once it finally manages to load properly and print it doesn't want to let go of the paper. And once I remove the paper, it has to be restarted before I can start the whole process all over again. The printer tries, it really tries. But clearly it struggles working with the larger size of paper, like an old man struggling to learn to use a cell phone.

The Desktop

My desktop is the newest piece of machinery that I work with. Which isn't saying much. Still, it reminds me of an overachiever, with one weakness. 99% of the time it works beautifully, completing commands with grace and ease. However, it seems to have a pathological fear of the fax program. When I load the program, the whole screen turns beige and it takes effort to everything back to normal. And every once in a while the desktop freaks out and shuts the program down.

The Fax Machine

This machine is a simpleton, straight up. It can do one task at a time, and that's it. Either it can send a fax, or it can print a confirmation. As soon as it's doing one, it's tiny brain it working at full capacity and NOTHING ELSE CAN BE DONE until that task is completed. Not to mention that sometimes it doesn't seem to understand what pressing the "send" button means. Poor, simple fax machine.

The Copier/Scanner

Ever read hitchiker's guide to the galaxy? If you haven't, the important point here is there a machine called Marvin. He's very depressed. And has this constant pain in all the diodes down his left side. The copier/scanner machine reminds me of Marvin. It does what it's told, but often not without a lot of grumbling. It constantly jams, and sometimes completely fails to send the scan where you told it to go. Occasionally, it will tell me there's a jam somewhere, but after opening all of the different compartments you find out it was making up a problem. Dealing with this machine is beyond frustrating. But when it decides to work it does everything we need to it do, so it doesn't get replaced.

See where I'm coming from, fellow Douglas Adams Fans?



The Printer

You know the stereotypical jock from highschool? The guy that's not too bright, but is good at sports so he's the figurative belle of the ball? That's our printer. It does a fantastic job of printing. Fast, efficient, and rarely breaks down. However, it struggles to process print jobs that aren't a basic word document. And sometimes, it has to think about each individual page of a job before it can print it. Not too bright, but still a good printer.

The Coffee Machine

The coffee machine is brilliant. A genius in its own right. But it does things his way. Want to use the same pot to put water in the machine that you're going to hold the coffee in? No can do. Once the water starts going in, coffee is going to be made whether you're ready or not. It makes a good pot of coffee in no time at all though, so what's a little inconvenience here and there?

Dear energy-saving light bulbs...

You have one job. Just one job. When I turn you on, I want to you make my world significantly brighter so I can get stuff done. You don't even have to look pretty while you're doing it. I'm not that picky.

Instead, I trudge up the stairs in the morning and flick your switch only to be greeted by a disappointingly meek glow, maybe two steps up from complete darkness. This does not work for me. I need to put in my contacts, shower, and do a few other things in my morning routine that all require the ability to see. Because of your lackluster performance, I end up leaving you turned on while I wander off with my glasses to check my emails or something until you decide that you're ready to work now, really. By then I've usually forgotten that I turned you on at all because I'm distracted by something else, until someone notices that you're just sitting there waiting for me and mistakenly turn you off. Then the whole process starts over again. Not very energy-efficient now, are we?

I know sometimes I wake you up very early in the morning, but that's no excuse. You knew from the start that this was an on call position, you have to be ready whenever I need you. I'm having some difficulty replacing you, but unless you shape up I'm going to search high and low for a lightbulb that's more willing to do it's job.

You have been warned.

Disappointedly,
Danielle

I hate job hunting.

It's that time of year again. Time to put myself out there and hope that someone wants to hire me for the summer. My ability to pay for the next year of school rides on my ability to convince someone that I'm the perfect person to hire for their job. Not those other 100 people that applied, no. Definitely not. You want to hire ME.

Like almost everyone on this planet, I absolutely loathe job hunting. But this year, I have a plan. I'm applying for job I've help before. Same company, same position. Having done this job before HAS to give me an edge of some sorts, right? Plus it's related to my degree, so double bonus!

I've been watching the website they post on diligently and waiting for them to post it. I miss checking it for a couple days, and when I come back THE POSTINGS ARE UP! Except there's 5 postings for one job. Strange. I open the first one up and my heart sinks. They've cut back the hours on the job, and now it's part time. Each posting it for working different days of the week: mon-fri, tue-sat, thurs-mon...you get the idea. I really need full time work, so if I apply for this I'll have to find a second part time job to work around the first one. After much humming and hawing, I finally decide to just apply for it. I work hard making my cover letter sound as professional as possible, double check to make sure my resume is up to snuff, and send it off.

Lo and behold, while I was applying for the first position they posted two full-time positions. THIS is the job I really wanted! So then I had to apply again, and explain in my cover letter that yes, I did just apply for almost the exact same position a few minutes ago, but this wasn't posted when I did that so will you please consider me for this job instead? Not quite the professional image I was trying to project.

Now it's the waiting game. I sit here for weeks on end, applying to other jobs that I don't really want to do in case I don't get this one. Even when I hear back from them, it'll only be for an interview. Then the waiting game starts all over again.

Only 3 more years of job hunting before I actually will end up with a career. Yipee.

My poor little car...

I am the proud owner of a 95' Chevy Cavalier named Alfie that has more clicks on it than there is people living in my city. He's a good little car that's put up with a lot of abuse. This weekend was no exception.

I was in charge of sound equipment for an interactive dinner theatre production that happened Saturday night. We had to rent 4 gigantic speakers, 4 speaker stands, 2 projectors, 7 mikes (all in carrying cases the size of large laptops), a mixer, a DI box, and about 20 pounds worth of cables to connect all of this. I called a friend over to help me fit all this stuff in my car. We started out by putting one of the speakers in the trunk. We grabbed the speaker, hoisted it up and quickly found out that it was a little bit too large to fit into the trunk easily. It took us about 5 minutes of twisting, flipping, and some fine-tuned adjustments to find a way to get this speaker to fit through the opening. Then it became clear that only one speaker would fit in the trunk.

Eventually we got the one speaker and all of the speaker stands in the trunk, pulled down the back seat and put the other speaker, the 7 mikes, and one of the projectors on there, put the other projector on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and loaded the seat itself with the cables, DI box, the mixer, and eventually another piece of equipment we rented to deal with our issues with feedback. Someone else had to take the other speakers. Alfie did not like carrying this much weight. Driving him was like trying to push a giant boulder up a hill; possible, but you feel every ounce of effort you put in.

When we finally unloaded at the location, I felt like my car was a clown car, with more stuff coming out of him than should ever have fit in. And at the end of the night, poor Alfie had to be loaded up again so I could take all of the equipment back to the rentals place. It's a good thing he's such a loyal, stubborn little car, or he probably would have given up on me a long time ago.

The cycle of exhaustion

I have had a very stressful week this week and it definitely doesn't show any signs of improving. This, combined with a few other factors, led to my brain being incredibly overactive last night and not letting me sleep. It's like being stuck in a conversation with someone who spends hours on end going into extreme detail about their day, from how many times they hit the snooze button to the difficulty they had choosing between a cheeseburger or a bacon cheeseburger for dinner. And the rest of my body was too polite to tell it to shut up so we could get some sleep. It took until 4am for me to be tired enough to ignore it and pass out. I had to get up at 6am.

And so begins the horrible cycle of exhaustion.

THE MORNING AFTER

When I first wake up after a night like this I'm always unbelievably alert. My brain has decided that I just had a wonderful 2-hour nap and I should be ready to go on with my day, forgetting that I was trying for a full night's sleep. My body gathers all of it's energy (I imagine it having a magical bag full of energy that it doles out, kind of like Santa giving presents to children) and, confused by the signals from my brain, believes that it has plenty left to get me through until bed time. Before either of them can correct this assumption, I pump myself full of caffeine. Now my body has more energy than it could ever use! This way I get through my morning without a problem.

THE AFTERNOON CRASH

My body spends the first part of the day handing out energy with glee. Taking a test? No problem, here's a bunch of energy to get you through it. Writing a blog? Why not, we have tons of energy to spare! More coffee? Why yes, please! Unfortunately I can't keep up this charade all day. I'm only willing to put so much of my spending money into keeping myself awake. Unaware that the caffeine supply is running low, my body continues to give out energy with reckless abandon.

Suddenly it happens. My brain says "body, would you mind climbing these stairs for me?" "With pleasure!' my body replies, reaching into it's magical bag. And realizing that there's not much left in there.

Full on panic mode starts. I go from being alert and ready to face my day to being barely capable to even deal with the stairs in front of me in a matter of milliseconds. My body hoards energy, giving out just enough to get me by, and watches fretfully as the supplies run lower and lower. It starts yelling at my brain "SLEEP! GO TO SLEEP! NOW!!!!", which is especially annoying when I am, say, driving my car somewhere. My eyes lose their ability to focus properly and I become clumsier than I already am as my brain fights between its need to shut down and its need to get me home first.

THE REST OF THE DAY

I become barely capable of functioning. My body resists any kind of movement, preferring to stay where it is and save the meager amount of energy that still remains. My brain is spending so much time fighting with itself that even forming a coherent sentence becomes difficult. All hopes of being productive are thrown out the window.

THE NEXT DAY

No matter how much sleep I get the next night, waking up the next day is like trying to dig my way to China with my bare hands. My brain has tired itself out from all the fighting yesterday, and my body is still in survival mode and refuses to give out more than the bare minimum of energy required. Sentences are slightly easier to form than last night, but any activity which doesn't require huge amounts of attention results in a strong desire to go back to bed.

It's not until the next night that there's any hope of breaking the cycle. Of course, my brain and body learn nothing from this experience, and happily repeat the whole thing a month or two down the road.