Cake in the afternoon

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you may realize that I prefer to work for companies believing strongly in making the world a better place, and therefore give their employees a chance to engage in meaningful work projects, such as consuming large amounts of cake at parties.


I am happy to say that my new company is built on this same strong tradition of bettering people's lives through Things that Taste Really, Really Good. In the month that I have worked there, we have had approximately three celebrations per day, and when they can't find anyone having a birthday in a particular week, we have "goodbye parties." Goodbye parties are ostensibly for people leaving the company of their own free will, but which I suspect are for people who are heavily bribed to leave so we can have an excuse to celebrate. Probably they are secretly kept on the payroll somehow, maybe under "Cake Consultant" or something.

I personally see nothing at all wrong with these parties, and indeed lament the fact that people do not have more than one birthdy per year, because then we could have more parties and more cake and not have to bribe people to leave.

Please do not misunderstand. I do believe that it is necessary, even occasionally desirable, to eat healthy foods, if by healthy one means "containing an ample portion of sugar."

But this propensity of employees to consume cake mid-afternoon has apparently alarmed the Spirit Committee, which has launched two initiatives which seem to be aimed directly at this shameful employee behavior.

Here we must ask the reader's patience in waiting for the remainder of this story (yes, there is one, although we may not quite know what it is yet). The Princess has been under attack this week by alien life forms, otherwise known as Pollen, which her hypervigilant immune system is convinced will take over if not annihilated. She promises that as soon as there is some sort of peace brokered among these warring factions, she will return to writing full-strength. 

Horror matinee

The Hero has been engaged in an annual spring ritual of battling bugs in the house, bugs that obviously do not respect his position as head of the household, king of the castle, wielder of bug spray, etc.The Hero has made it his mission to seal up every possible crack they could be using to gain entry.


The Current Enemy is the stink bug, whose disrespect for our home has reached epic proportions. One day when I, thankfully, was not home, the Hero happened to notice a stink bug gorging itself on a banana. The banana that the Hero was about to put into his lunch bag. The Hero suddenly decided that he did not want a banana for lunch, anyway.


Already disgusted, the Hero watched in yet further horror as the stink bug separated itself from the banana, crawled onto the counter, and -- in an act that could have been predicted after its meal -- quite deliberately relieved itself. 


It was the last natural act that particular stink bug ever carried out on this earth.


Although an entire bottle of Heavy-Duty Fantastik was pressed into service on the counter and made quick work of cleansing the spot, the Hero knows the exact place where this travesty occurred, and likely always will. 


If this is what this creature does when we are watching,what does it do when we are not watching? The only way it could possibly be worse is if -- but we don't want to go there. In the meantime, we press on with sealing up cracks, and console ourselves with the thought that at this moment, scientists are working to perfect the Enemy's enemy, a creature that will make the stink bug wish it had never stepped any of its six legs on our shores. On that day, we may even be able to enjoy bananas again.

Observances

Weird things seen on the subway...

Yesterday the Princess observed a woman on the subway apparently stroking the hair of a child sitting at her feet. Even after considerable time spent staring at this, the Princess was unable to confirm, visually, that the hair was actually connected to a body. She finally concluded that either a) the woman was practicing hair styling techniques on a mannequin head, or b) this was some scene out of a decidedly psycho movie. And also c) she should take up some other occupation on the subway that does not involve trying to make sense of things she sees.

Overheard on the train...

From an approximate nine-year-old to another child: "Hey, have you heard of Donald Trunk?" 

Also overheard on the train...

A three-year-old was disappointed with his visit to the zoo, because "they didn't have grass." 

"No, no grass," his mother agreed. "But they had alligators."

"They had ALLIGATORS?" he said in astonishment.

Hey, was Donald Trunk there, too?

Lessons in coolness

When your commute involves multiple modes of travel, as mine does, it is very important to be able to respond quickly to any change in situation. You want to appear to be a smooth, suave, adaptable individual. You may never reach the level of suaveness achieved by the tourist I observed waving a rubber chicken in the air as a way of locating a lost family member, but you may find success in some small measure.


One day, for example, I realized that I was headed toward a nonworking escalator in the subway station. This is easy to do, as there is an epidemic of nonworking escalators in the subway stations, thanks to a USDA regulation that a certain percentage of escalators be in nonworking mode at all times. Their thinking is that America has a big problem with laziness, and if America will not take care of its laziness problem on its own, then the government will kill ALL public escalators. (Attention federal contractors: You are urged to bid on this.)

Seeing the nonworking escalator looming ahead, I quickly changed direction and headed toward another, working escalator, as if I had planned to use that one all along. I am so smooth and suave and adaptable, I thought.

As I neared the bottom of the escalator, I surveyed the platform and thought, Yes, I am so smooth and suave and adaptable that I am now on the wrong platform, heading toward a train going in the wrong direction.

When your suaveness factor is heading into negative territory, it is important to not lose your composure. So rather than turn around and head back up a nearby escalator, thereby alerting everyone nearby to my unsuaveness, I kept walking. I walked suavely, as if I had, all along, planned to walk the entire length of the train, up the escalators at the other end, and down again on the other side.

My resolve to regain a smooth, suave composure deepened with my little trek through the station, and by the time I exited the subway at my next stop, I was level-headed enough to AGAIN use the wrong escalator.

I looked around furtively, but no one had been paying attention to my faux pas. THEY were all busy being suave and cool.

I thought perhaps listening to my iPod would add to the illusion of coolness. I'm sure it would have, if only the earphones would have stayed in my ears instead of falling out and swaying around like an dangling telephone cord in a public phone booth, forcing me to keep putting them back in as if they were defective hearing aids. Definitely not cool-image inducing.

And just mentioning public phone booths, I fear, has reduced my suaveness factor some more.

If you always wanted to be a gerbil

Random observation alert: Today in DC it was apparently Take Your Pillow to (Work? Vacation? Hotel?) Day. Several travelers made their way around on the train and subway with mounds of luggage and pillows. Then again, given how long it takes to detour around the broken subway station escalator that workers are no longer pretending to fix, maybe these pillow-haulers are on to something. 


I have returned from a roughly twice-yearly trek to a certain mall where, if you are even moderately careful, you do not have to enter any actual stores. This is because the mall contains every conceivable entertainment known to man, as well as restaurants and snack stands that together are responsible for 83% of the health problems in America, even though only .6% of Americans shop at this mall.


You can attend a Renaissance Festival at this mall. You can ride a space simulator machine at this mall. You can step into numerous little booths that will take pictures of you -- funny pictures, serious pictures, pictures of your head plastered on someone else's body, etc. And if you are a Tiny Person, you can roll around in a Giant Gerbil Ball.


The Giant Gerbil Ball attraction is located in the food court, presumably because there is not enough chaos there already. The Giant Gerbil Balls are just that -- enormous plastic balls that kids can crawl inside of. The Gerbil Balls reside in a pool of sorts -- remember, this is all taking place alongside people eating their pizza and burritos -- and the kids roll, kick, and bounce inside the ball to make the Gerbil Balls tumble around in the water. If a particular Gerbil Ball is displaying rather ho-hum tumbling action, a helpful employee with a history of childhood bullying will rough it up a bit, just for fun.


I wondered how many kids throw up while inside.


But I actually see a practical purpose to the Giant Gerbil Balls. This mall, by some quirk of nature, is located in a Monsoon Belt. All of the worst storms I have ever personally experienced have occurred while I was at this mall, or within a radius of .3 mile, while .4 mile away, the sun is shining brightly.


So high water is a definite danger at this mall. Should shoppers ever have difficulty getting to their cars, management has a simple solution at the ready: Load them all into the Giant Gerbil Balls,roll 'em out to the parking lot, and let 'em go. 


The winner will be the one who finds his or her car, and who also does not throw up.

Victory is sweet, but slightly rumpled

Sometimes life hurls you into the furnace of adversity. But you must rise to the occasion, for through great adversity, great strength is achieved.


For three weeks I have been in the wringer of adversity. I have struggled. I have cried. I have almost been at the point of admitting defeat.


I have been trying to find a new pair of jeans.


This turmoil came about as the result of Friday being casual day at work, and my having no suitable jeans to wear.


My lone pair of jeans, Old Faithful, have long been pining to enter their well-earned retirement. I have put off finding a replacement, mainly because I do not like adversity. 


But tonight, within the span of one hour, I found both a pair of jeans that fit AND a scarf that did not make me look like I was in need of surgery to remove something accidentally wrapped around my neck. My hour of triumph!


Yet getting the scarf to agree to this arrangement was not easy. Finally, after several false starts, it ceased to resemble a sailor's knot and actually began to look like a scarf.


"Good news," I told the Hero. "I finally got the scarf tied right."


He made an appropriate congratulatory noise.


"Uh, bad news," I said. "I can never take the scarf off."


"Hmm?"


"If I take it off, I'll never get it tied right again. I have to leave it on."


My victory in struggle has made me bold. This weekend, I might tackle shoe buying. And I'll be wearing my slightly rumpled, but perfectly tied, scarf.

The Princess gives investment tips

Before choosing a retirement plan at my new job, I am encouraged in the paperwork to fill out an Investor Profile Worksheet, which will tell me how much risk I "may be comfortable assuming." Investment matters can be quite complex, so we have offered here some tips for completing such a profile (be warned that following these tips may catapult  you into the "comfortable with an extreme level of risk" category). 


Tip 1. You may be asked something similar to the following: "Which of the following portfolios is most consistent with your personal investment philosophy?" If the options listed do not quite match your personal investment philosophy, feel free to write in one that does, such as: The one that will make me lots of money.


Tip 2. Some investment questions may appear to resemble the math story problems you hated in school. For instance, a question may ask: "Of four hypothetical investments of $100,000 blah blah blah blah over a one-year holding period blah blah blah blah?" In such a case, answer it as you would have back in math class when you had no idea what the answer was: All of the above.


Tip 3. If a story-problem question contains the words "chance of" and "losing money," however, answer: None of the above.


Tip 4. On a hypothetical question about what you would do if your portfolio were to lose 20% over a short period with 10 years until you begin withdrawals, the answers may range from "I would not change my portfolio" to "I would immediately change my portfolio to something more conservative." You should answer: I would immediately put all my money between tissue paper and hide it around the house.


Tip 5. We regret that Tip 5 has been canceled due to a severe headache brought on by story problems. It may return at some future time, or not, depending on the risk of such a move bringing on another headache.


We hope these brief investment tips have been helpful. Remember, the information given herein is NOT intended to help you avoid tax penalties, although spending time reading these tips may help you avoid finishing your tax return. It certainly works for us.

Ring-a-ling-a-truck

I am daily acquiring more office supplies at my new job, some cannibalized from nearby inert offices, and some arriving magically after I put little sticky notes on the catalog pages and give the catalog to our assistant. Each item vies for prime real estate on my desk, with the things I use most going within easy reach, such as a week's worth of chocolate. 


Other, less important items -- think anything non-chocolate -- get pushed farther away. One of these is my phone. After two weeks, I have had five phone calls, and three of them were for somebody else. So the phone keeps moving farther and farther away.


Soon there will not even be room on my desk for the phone. It will migrate to a desk drawer, perhaps, and then to a table outside my office, then perhaps on the microwave in the kitchen, maybe to the roof. It may find itself, eventually, on one of those roving lunch trucks everyone in the city is enamored with, the ones that serve more gourmet food and are never in the same spot two days in a row.


My phone might find a home on a lunch truck that comes around once a week or so. When it rings, the following conversation may occur:


Caller: Hello, is H. there?


Lunch truck operator/phone answerer: No, only on Wednesdays from 11 to 2. Can I interest you in pan con lechon?


Caller: (Click.)


(Following Wednesday, 12:30) 
Caller: Hello, is H. there, please?


Lunch truck/phone: Sorry, nope.


Caller (testily): I thought you said Wednesdays from 11 to 2.


Lunch truck/phone: Well, you're out of luck today. But we got a special on --


Caller: (Click.)


(Following Wednesday, 11:03)
Caller (more testily): H., please.


Lunch truck/phone: Sure, you want that with sweet potato fries?


Caller: Excuse me?


Lunch truck/phone: The H special. You want it with sweet potato fries?


Caller: What -- no! I want to talk to H.


Lunch truck/phone: Well, she ain't showed up, so we named a special after her for the folks who call. You want --


Caller: (Click.)


Eventually, if my phone loves me, it will move itself to a truck called something like Sweet Nothings Cupcakes, and occasionally phone in an order for me. Then it would merit a place on my desk again.

Bon voyage, commuter stye

Various of my new co-workers are determined to find a quicker route to work for me than my current commute, despite my protestations that I am fine with my current commute. They helpfully suggest everything short of being shot out of a cannon positioned on my home property and aimed in the direction of our office building. If anyone did suggest this I might consider it, although the homeowners' association would no doubt object to something about it.


If people really wanted to help with my commute, they might set about finding a way to fix a certain escalator leading to the subway, which has been broken for quite some time and adds an inordinate* amount of time (*43 seconds) to my daily commute. Workers have been pretending to fix it for several weeks, but apparently have now given up even pretending to fix it. There is an alternative escalator at the opposite end of the station that is working, but we all seem to believe that we must use this escalator, no matter that it adds an inordinate* amount of time (*9,126 seconds) to our collective daily commutes.


But perhaps I am missing an obvious solution here -- just aim the cannon over the escalator...

Calling all tourists

It is tourist season in the nation's capital, which began April 1st and will run through next March. This week many tourists are here for the Cherry Blossom Festival, which commemorates Japan's gift of enormous quantities of cherry trees to the United States in 1912. 
Normally the cherry trees herald the arrival of spring, although this year the arrival of spring was followed by the hasty departure of spring and the reappearance of Old Man Winter, who believes firmly that Punxsutawney Phil the Groundhog decreed 16 more weeks of winter back in February, not 6. The trees, no doubt confused by whether or not they are supposed to be blooming, nevertheless carry on beautifully as usual. They are, after all, Japanese.


But back to the tourists. Tourists are easy to spot here. Although they, like many of us commuters, wear sneakers, they do not wear them with dress pants or skirts as many of us do. When they are walking, whether on a crowded sidewalk or in a crowded subway station, without warning they will suddenly stop, as if their sneakers had thrown an Off switch, and there they remain, rooted to the ground while hundreds of sneaker-clad skirts and dress pants try to avoid them. Although presumably these rooted tourists start walking again at some point, I have never actually witnessed this; unlike tourists, we commuters are physically incapable of stopping until we reach our destination, even if this means walking straight through the subway train and out the other side again.


Although extremely rare, you may even witness a tourist engaging in poultry waving, such as I observed today while waiting for my train home. A group of tourists in front of me were discussing an apparently missing member of their party, John, whose sneakers no doubt had unexpectedly gone into Off mode somewhere in the station. In contrast to many tourists in such a situation, they did not frantically look about for John. They did not call out for him in loud, concerned voices. One of the women simply raised her hand in the air and, for all the waiting commuters and tourists alike to see, waved a rubber chicken.


A rubber chicken that was wearing a bikini.


And in seconds, John had rejoined his party.


Several of us were impressed with the chicken idea, although we did not publicly say this to the tourists, lest they mistake this for approval of tourists in general. But privately, the sight did temporarily restore our good humor toward tourists.


Which will last until one stops dead in front of us again.