Tag: strange

Off-by-one error

Since I came into work on Sunday afternoon, I’ve been feeling one day off all week. Monday felt like Tuesday, Tuesday felt like Wednesday, and Wednesday felt like Thursday.

Today I’ve evidently internalized three days’ worth of “No, it’s a day earlier than that!” because I keep thinking it’s Wednesday.

Drove out to Foothill Ranch yesterday on my lunch hour just to explore a bit and get pictures of the nearby hills where you can actually see what color they are. It’s been hazy enough that from my usual vantage points, they look faded grayish yellow-brown, instead of yellow-brown. (Though by this time of year they should look green. Yay drought.)

In other news, earlier this week I watched someone zip around a truck to pass it on the one-lane uphill cloverleaf section of the Ramp of Doom. Oddly enough, car and truck made it through unscathed.

Off to UCI tonight with alenxa to see The Lark, a play about Joan of Arc by the author of Becket.

In other other news, today’s Forgotten English phrase is “crotch-trolling.” No, it doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Current Location: work

Weirdness of Xmas Shopping

Heh, forgot I’d started this post over a week ago…

Shopping, two days before Christmas.

Heard a dance mix of “The Christmas Song” (yes, the one about chestnuts roasting on an open fire).

Saw a “Sci-Fi” display in Borders that consisted entirely of incarnations of Firefly – the TV show DVDs, the Serenity DVD, and the graphic novel.

Saw a kid wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “I’m allergic to my brother.”

Heard (on Indie 103.1, not in the mall) songs proclaiming “*bleep* no, there’s no Santa Claus!” and “Father Christmas, give us some money.”

Asked about a book at Borders. The clerk looked it up, they were out of stock, but he offered to call another store and have them hold the book for me. Five hours later, when I got to the front of the line at the other Borders, the clerk I ended up with (one of four on duty at the time) said she had been the one on the other end of the phone.

WTF weather

It’s 82° outside. That, in itself, is not terribly bizarre for SoCal in January. What’s bizarre is the fact that it’s 15 degrees cooler inside.

Around 11:00 this morning I was seriously considering turning on the heater, until I decided to check the temperature outside. It was 65° in the living room and 78° on the balcony. So I opened all the windows I could. The living room has warmed up, but due to our floorplan, the back room with all the computers hasn’t much.

What makes absolutely no sense is the fact that our apartment has lousy insulation. We would never get this effect on a summer day that reached 78° by 11:00 and 82° by 2:00 when we might actually want it. (Although 65° is a bit extreme.)

Corporate niceness has gone too far

The office is switching to a new payroll company and direct deposit hasn’t kicked in yet, so I stopped at the bank at lunch to deposit my paycheck. I actually ended up at a different branch from the one I intended to visit, since I missed the freeway exit but there was another branch near the next one.

The greeter asked me what they could help me with or something customer service-y sounding, I said I just wanted to make a deposit, and she said, “Would you like to fill out a deposit slip?” while gesturing to the small stand with three different kinds of deposit slips. It was clearly meant as “Deposit slips are over here, fill one out before you get in line.”

But the phrasing — who do they think they’re kidding? And what’s wrong with a simple, “Please fill out a deposit slip.”

By the time I left, I’d lost count of the number of “Have a nice day,” “Have a wonderful afternoon,” etc. types of comments, and I was beginning to feel like I’d been banking in Stepford. It was seriously creepy.

Oh, and the teller thanked me for filling out the deposit slip.

Wiping beer off the kitchen wall

It’s one of those things you just don’t expect to have to do.

I cleaned out large chunks of the refrigerator today. Among the things I threw out were the remnants of a 4-pack of Murphy’s Stout that I bought for St. Patrick’s Day and never finished. Now, if stout isn’t chilled, it’ll foam out and overflow the can. Apparently 5-month-old stout overflows even if it is chilled, because when I opened the cans over the sink, they sprayed foam onto the wall.

So I wiped the beer of the wall, then went back to cleaning stuff out. Then I noticed that there were brown spots a bit farther away, so I wiped those off. Then I noticed that it was all over the side of the coffee maker, five feet away from where I was opening the cans. Then I noticed it was on the wall on the other side of the coffee maker!

The moral of the story: Finish your stout on March 17.

What Goes Around

I went to Sav-on on Saturday to pick up more NyQuil and DayQuil equivalents. The shelf was practically empty. All sizes of the name-brand boxes (I get the capsules, since I can’t stand taking cough syrup) were completely out.

Yes, they were out of NyQuil and DayQuil.

As for the store brand, which I know from experience works well, they were down to their last few boxes unless you picked up the 40-packs. I think there were two 20-packs of the daytime version, and only the giant boxes for the nighttime.

If anything says “cold season has hit,” it’s a shortage of over-the-counter cold medication!

Current Mood: 🤒sick

Sweet poison

Woke up with a sore throat this morning, almost certainly the same thing Katie’s been fighting all week, so I’ve been drinking tea today. Our lunch room at work has a basket of sugar, Sweet-n-low, and Equal packets which someone has thoughtfully arranged in three wide stripes, making it look oddly like the French tricolor.

When the receptionist cleans the coffee maker, she puts a post-it note on the urn labeled “Poison,” often with a skull and crossbones, to make sure that no one absent-mindedly pours himself a cup of cleaning fluid. (And face it, if you really need the coffee, you won’t notice!)

Disturbingly, someone had set that post-it note on top of the sugar packets.

Now, I’m sure you can find nutritionists, dietitians, and the occasional conspiracy theorist who will agree with that assessment—and throw in aspartame and saccharin as well—but it’s not a label you want to see on something you’re about to put in your own drink. Even when you know it’s safe!

Whoa! That’s real far!

I walked to lunch at the Irvine Spectrum today. On my way back, while waiting at a red light, a 20-ish guy with headphones and a student-sized backpack asked me for directions to UCI — on foot. As it happened, the directions were simple: Take Barranca to Jeffrey, turn left, and keep going.

But 7 miles is a long way to walk!

He did ask if there were any buses that went there. I said there were, but I didn’t know where the stops were for that route.

If he kept walking, he might be just arriving around now.