Erratica Reduex

Interesting lunch hour.

BIKES!
While walking to the bank, I noticed that the "American Vehicles Only" rule for government employees doesn't seem to apply to motorcycle cops in this town.  The officer lecturing the careless driver had a very sleek, powerful looking Honda.  I consider motorcycles beautiful, especially the ones designed for speed, and not to try to prove that fat middle-aged businessmen actually have penises.  

I'd almost get a bike, except I remember the thread from yesterday where a motorcyclist was using a 30 year-old study to try to show that helmets do no good in preventing head injuries.  And then I remembered I'm not crazy enough to ride again.


FEET!
The Asian market behind my workplace is very large and nice, and has a huge deli full of well prepared items that look and smell wonderful. But...why does it have a serving bin full of steamed-white chicken feet!?  CHICKEN FEET!  Lying in a pile, all white and pimply and claw-ish...I think I'll stick with the pork buns for lunch; at least I don't know what's in those.

From the techsupport community. A techie friend that I read this to actually screamed in pain when I reached a certain point of this story.

From: $user who for whatever reason came in on Monday when no one else was in the building.
To: IT Dept.
Re: A/C constantly running.

Don't panic, RXM and I aren't going anywhere.

But my new work is moving to new digs next week, about three times as large, and very nicely arranged(former banks make the BEST centers).  So this week we are packing up an entire office.  Desks, computers, files, books, catalogs, the assorted pieces of tech used by our clients, and binders.  Especially binders.  Three-ring binders must be the rabbits of the office ecology, because just when I think i have them all packed, more turn up, needing a new box.  

Geez I wish I had a katamari right now.

In spite of my natural cynicism about the custom, I still made some resolutions for the new year: lose weight, be more healthy, be more creative...

...I should have just gone for "Don't mis-set my alarm clock so that I wake up at 7:05 on a work day."

After the least romantic shared shower in my history, I was hurriedly shaving, when I noticed that my shaving can wasn't my normal "travel" sized can of Edge, but a extra-large sized one. My half-asleep mind considered the situation, and came up with a logical explanation- "AHA!" muttered I, "I must have slipped into a parallel universe. One where the clock was set differently, and I bought a large sized shaving cann of Edge." Given my state, it was a perfectly reasonable explanation...until I found the travel-sized can neatly packed in our travel toiletries kit. Either the changes in the parallel universe were VERY subtle, or RXM merely tidied up so I couldn't find anything.

It's definitely not a different enough parallel universe that I didn't have to go to work this morning- and the pile of papers at my desk looks suspiciously familiar. Still, I'm observing things carefully, looking for differences, just to be sure. I'll know for certain when my boss comes in tomorrow. If she has her teeth filed, it's parallel universe time.

or more importantly, get asked about.

Like today. When the overstuffed interdepartmental envelope I was carrying dropped and burst open, I discovered that it happened to be filled with a large number of foil packets. A (u)lot(/u) of square, flat, foil packets. I did a classic double take, and checked: sealed foil packet-check. Round circle inside, check.

Yep- someone was using interdepartmental mail to send a envelope stuffed with a hundred or more condoms. I guess someone was anticipating a very Merry Christmas indeed.

Fortunately nobody was walking by at that time, so I scooped it up, and hurried to my desk to do a quick taping job. Even more fortunately, nobody walked by when I was hurriedly trying to tape the thing together, and condoms were spilling across my desk. And so I sent the package on it's merry way.

Bizarrely enough, given the destination, I can kind of figure out why that department needed a huge bunch of condoms. But I really wish they were a bit more careful. I mean, someone could have walked by and seen them, and then I would have ended up sharing with the whole office.

People may remember when the panel in my boss's office fell out in the last rainfall. It never got replaced, for some reason. Whichis why during today's storm, I heard a scratching sound above me (Oh noos, thought I, the lights are shorting out!), and then a big crash in my boss' office- a crash that turned out to be a pigeon that had found it's way into the office through the big open hole in the ceiling.

After five minutes of it fluttering frantically around, our computer guy snuck up on it and captured it. He even found a new ceiling panel lying around somewhere. But this really doesn't give me a lot of faith in our landlords.

*image of full elevator crashing down, and the maintenance guy coming around a few days later to say "Yep, we oughter fix that some time."*