Me and My Imaginary Friends

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Getting credit

One of the podcasts I listen to is a public radio show which discusses language - both the etymology and correct usage of words.  (I'm such a word nerd.)  About a month or so ago, one of the hosts was talking about how China is cracking down on their Chinglish signs.  China is sending out delegations all over Beijing to correct poor English translations before the Olympics come to town. 

Naturally, we saw tons of these signs in both China and Japan.  Poly took several photos.  I sent links to both my photos and Poly's photos of these Chinglish signs to the lady podcaster.  She responded to my email today.  She confirmed that she would love to post these photos on their show website, but it has not been overhauled to allow her to do that yet.  Instead, she asked permission to post a couple of the images on her personal blog as long as she credited me.  I told her to credit me or Poly using our internet handles and gave her permission to do so.  I will link to the posting if she blogs about our images. 

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Most Popular Names

I heard a story on the radio as I was waking up this morning about the most popular last names per country.  In my still groggy state of mind I thought that I would Google the story to blog about.  Well, I can't find that particular story, although Wikipedia does have a page dedicated to the subject.  OK, so that's not too interesting.

But while searching, I ran across the most popular first names according to US Census data.  I don't know which Census, but it kinda looks like the page compares the data from at least two censa (?). 

Naturally, I looked up my own name - my name is in the lower-mid-400s.  What shocked me is that my mother's name is in the top 5.  I mean, I know it's a popular name, but when I think about it, I only really know 4 (my mother, an aunt, a sister I knew when I was a kid and one of my dad's cousins).  The really strange part is that my mother and my aunt have the same last name ('cause they married brothers) which is also the maiden name of my dad's cousin.  There's something about the combination of those two names...

Anyhoo, I looked up several other names:
  • Infectious Laughter made it into the top 25.
  • Jules and African Hag each made it into the top 100 (with their birth certificate names, not their nicknames).
  • My sister Super Mom made it into the low 200s.
  • I was quite surprised to find that Kimi Stewart's unique spelling of her name beat my name to make it into the low 400s.  (But ultimately her name is one the list a few times with various spellings.)
  • Affie's name is only 6 names less popular than my own - in the mid-400s (although there is a more popular spelling found in the mid-100s).
  • I was surprised to find out that The Doctor's (and Bookie's) name is significantly less popular than mine - the low 600s. 
  • I was even more shocked to find out that a pretty stupid spelling of The Doctor's name is still more popular than Mehsha's name which is in the high 2400s.  (Me and each of my sisters have wanted to use Mehsha's name for a daughter - and Super Mom would have if the boy twin had been a girl.)
  • The way Sporty Nice spells her name pushes it down to the high 3600s although the common spelling is found in the top 50.
Now on to the men's names:
  • Poly's name made it into the top 100.  I guess that's not too surprising, especially since every language tries to claim its origin.  (And since our family has waged a successful campaign to single-handedly increase the popularity of his name.)
  • I Dunno's name is not far off from the ranking of my name - low 400s.
  • Both of my brothers-in-law have names in the top 50.
And that's about it.  (It's pretty easy to search for family names when most of them have the same name.)

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Calling All Word Nerds!

I just heard about this fabulous site and thought that you'd love it.  It is a dictionary that allows people to add new words that should be part of English but are not yet in common usage.  For example:  testosterzone - "The area surrounding any gathering of men, where there are no women present. Often accompanied by the presence of cigar smoke."

Check it out.

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All a-Twitter

There's a relatively new technology called Twitter.  It is basically like blogging for txt messaging.  Here's how it works:

I go to the Twitter site.  I set up a free account with them - giving them my email, IM and phone number.  Then I look around for people I know who also use the service.  (I'll cover the reality of that later.)  I find Susie.  Oh, I know Susie.  I click the link to "follow" Susie.  So anytime Susie sends a txt message to "Twitter" I (and all the other people following Susie) receive that message.  I can choose to get it through txt on my phone, to my IM account or just let it pile up in my Twitter "inbox."  (It's not really an inbox, but I'll call it that for clarity's sake.)  Sounds simple, right?  It is.

But there are a couple of things that bother me.  I don't know if you can stop people from "following" you.  So Susie may have a ton of random strangers who have decided to get her updates.  Susie sends out the message "Wanna see Grease at AMC tonight at 7:30?"  On the one hand, that's great.  She just told all her friends that they can meet her at the movies tonight.  The more the merrier!  On the other hand, complete strangers may show up looking for Susie or even worse, know that she's not home and break into her house.  Great, the more the scarier. 

Naturally, I don't know anyone using this service yet.  So who could I "follow" to get a feel for how it works?  I am following pseudo celebrities from the technology world - people who podcast about technology for a living.  I have a feel for their personalities because I listen to their podcasts basically everyday.  And now I get updates about what they're eating while I'm in the bathroom.  Seriously.  I got one of my first Twitter messages from a tech-geek located in San Francisco while I was in the can.  Last night before I went to bed, yet another tech-geek informed me that his day was just ending and he was heading home to watch TiVo.  This morning the guy who co-founded Wikipedia Twittered to tell me (well, not just me) that he was in Syndey, Australia.  Isn't that nice?

In one way, it's cool to think that we can have this level of connectivity.  This is even quicker than email because not everyone has an email capable device on their hip (like I do).  But I just can't figure out if I like it.  I can't see any of you signing up for it.  So who's going to "follow" me and get my Twitter messages? 

What do you think?

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Monday, April 23, 2007

How does this look?

Hover over the bottom right corner of this image. When you see a "pause" symbol, click it to start the slide show playing.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Why Aspirin is My Best Friend

You all know that I have headaches. I'm on medication for them. But sometimes I just get regular ol' headaches that have nothing to do with my "condition." When that happens, my prescription won't help. I used to take aspirin. But there's so much press out there about how aspirin is bad for your stomach.

And then...there's The Doctor. She went through a problem a while ago that was an inflammation of the lining of her stomach. It was incredibly painful and most likely caused by aspirin. Since then she has staunchly lobbied against the use of aspirin, to the point that she's even got me freaked about it.

I got a headache on Friday morning. I started downing water, Ibuprofin, sinus medicine, my prescription, anything and everything I could think of except aspirin. I was going to get through this thing without aspirin. I had it kinda under control by the time I went to bed Friday night. But it was with me again Saturday morning. I pushed through it, not enough to get to bookstudy, but enough to get out in service. After an hour in service, I was baked. I could barely drive my mother's car back to the Hall to get to my car. I ate, took some more of my prescription and went to bed.

I was awakened about an hour later by a phone call from my brother in law - the one who lives in Florida. I knew he was coming up here some weekend this month, but had forgotten which. It was this weekend. He called to say that he'd never seen my place and would like to see it. Oh crap! I haven't cleaned in a while due to my various travels and periods of feeling poorly. I wasn't really able to clean, but I was able to put most of the stuff away from downstairs before he got here.

Thankfully my headache had receded enough that I could carry on a coherent conversation with him. We went to the Turkish place for dinner and then dropped by my parents house to visit for about an hour. He dropped me off at home around 7:30. I went to bed with most of my headache gone. It was only hurting a small bit in the very back of my head. That's bearable. It's when the pain reaches the top or front of my head that I can't function.

I woke up this morning thinking that the headache was gone. But it was playing a nasty trick. By the time I got out of the shower, it was back and in the front of my head. I knew from the previous day that leaving the house before it was under control would only make it worse. I ate, took some Ibuprofin, drank lots of water and sat down to let it wash away. It didn't. It only got worse.

Around 11:30, I had had enough! I grabbed the bottle of Excedrin Migraine and downed two pills. I txt'd Jules that I wouldn't be able to make it for our plans this evening and laid down.

Literally 30 minutes later I was 98% better. I still feel a little discomfort when I bend over - all the blood rushes to my head and it throbs a little bit, but I no longer feel constant pain while just trying to exist. Stomach lining be damned! Life is about compromises and if I have to kill my stomach (and/or my liver) in order to be able to leave my house, I will do so.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Good Bye-a Sanjaya

Too bad "Good Riddiance-a" doesn't rhyme better, or "Don't let the door hit you on the butt-a."

I have refrained from boring you good people with American Idol banter, mostly because I have been out of town so much and am always playing catch up.  However, last night's ouster was momentous enough for me to blog about. 

Perhaps you've heard or seen photos of Sanjaya.  He started out with such promise.  He and his sister auditioned at the same time.  She, being older and more sexy, was supposed to be the star of the family.  While the judges invited both contestants to Hollywood, it was clear that they preferred Sanjaya's shy clear voice to his sister's ho-hum ho-ish routine, especially after she was cut before him.  Sanjaya endeared himself to mothers and tweens all over the country when he ran out looking for his sister and cried with her after she was cut.  A sweet, cuddly persona was born.  Imagine a teenage Michael Jackson from India.  He was virtually irresistible to tender hearted viewers.

The fact that he made it to one of the final 7 proves that tender hearted viewers have no business voting on this show.  The kid literally fell apart after his sister was kicked off.  He became awkward and painful to watch - again, think Michael Jackson during his teen years.  His voice was woefully inadequate and he barely sounded good enough for living room karaoke in the home of a deaf person.  But he survived week after week after week. 

I've read (or heard) in a couple of places that there was a website called "Vote for the Worst" that was trying a kind of "hostile takeover" of the show by organizing people to put all their voting power behind the worst contestant.  It was rumored that they were the reason Bucky Covington lasted so long last season and why Sanjaya seemed like he was on his voice-cracking way to becoming the next American Idol.  I actually believe some of this because even Sanjaya appeared to lose interest in his own talent, choosing instead to pretend he was a hairdresser Barbie head in the hands of a maniacal 10 year old girl.  He actually wore his hair in a mohawk one night, a night that was NOT punk themed.  Each week people tuned in just to see what new thing he'd done with his hair rather than to hear him sing.  (As bad as the mohawk was, the dirty-old-man 5 o'clock shadow goatee he wore for Latin night was even worse - very creepy.)

Of course, Sanjaya came across as a nice kid.  But in no way, shape or form did he have the talent to be on that stage.  He was as bad as people from the first season. 

As you already surmised, Sanjaya's run on Idol ended last night.  He cried.  The audience literally cheered.  I don't know if they were cheering as an expression of support to him or to indicate that they were glad he finally got the boot.  I know why I was cheering.

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New link

I just found a fascinating link that compares the handwriting of people under 24 to that of people over 45.  Since I fall right in between those two groups, I was curious to see how I'd do.  I was shocked (and a little horrified) to find out that I write more like a 45 year old than a 24 year old.  I swear I AM hip (or at least hippy ... and thighy ... and busty).

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Also...

New photos posted at Flickr.  Over the last week I've added the rest of Xi'an, Guilin, Canton, Hong Kong, Disney and family snaps.

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Gilmore Girls

Does anyone else watch Gilmore Girls?  I know it comes on the night that we have our big meeting, but that's what DVRs are for.  They introduced a new character last season, maybe the season before that - April.  April is Luke's long lost daughter, although I'm not sure that she can be labeled "lost" since he never knew she existed.  Anyway, the girl is supposed to be 12, or at least that's how old she was when she was brought on the show.  Now I guess she's 14-15.  The actress is around that age and has grown up considerably.  The character now lives in New Mexico (the show is set in New England).  She was on the show last night and displayed a lot of changes based on her new environment and just normal growing up.

It hit me that she now really reminds me of Affie.  Her hair is not too far off what Affie's was at that age.  She has "new" glasses that look a lot like Affie's new glasses.  She loves to read, but not the kind of books that other kids her age read.  She cares about the things that are actually cool, not the things her peers tell her are cool.  And she has a way of ... rambling (sorry) that is very familiar - call it free association.

Am I alone here?

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Some Links

This is a funny little animation. This is a neat list of historical inaccuracies - pay attention to numbers 20 and 2. This is a ... you just have to see it to understand it. More later.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Catching Up

I was working in Florida last week. How convenient that my sister and her family live near there. I was able to stay with them and see the babies (I include all her children from ages 2 - 9 in the term "babies").

We went to Disney World two Saturdays ago. My other sister and her family were down there. So that was a nice trip. See my Flickr account for a lovely "magic hour" shot of Cinderella's Castle. We thought Disney World was going to be nightmarishly busy since it was Spring Break for most of the country. But we got to ride twice as many rides as we anticipated. We took good advantage of the FastPass system. There were enough of us that if a few decided not to ride, the boys could ride two or even three times in a row using the passes that we got.

One of the best parts of the whole day is that I spent all of $10. A brother in my sister's congregation works for Disney and got me and my other sister's family in for free. How awesome.

It ended up being pretty cold that day, so we left around the time the sun was going down. There was no way I could have taken the cold to hang around for the electric parade. And I hate getting stuck in that traffic. I'm sure I'll think of more details about Disney later. I'm kinda tired now.

The next day (Easter Sunday) we had the brother who works for Disney and his wife over for dinner. She is the best friend of one of the sisters who went to China with me. So that sister and her mother came with them to my sister's house for dinner. She showed us her photos, we told stories about the trip and talked about Poly.

She said something that I later thought was funny. We were talking about how well Poly and Gameyy seem to get along even though they only met because of this trip. Then she asked if I'd known Sporty Nice before the trip. I said, "Yeah, we're friends. We're nothing alike, but we know that and are OK with it. Poly told me about the opening in the trip and I called her to see if she would want to go." So I guess Sporty Nice and I gave the impression that we weren't good friends. I don't know what to make of that. We did quite a bit apart. But I expected that - she's a very active girl while I'm a lazy butt. I was also sick for most of the trip. So unless you saw us chatting in our room, I guess you could have gotten the impression that we didn't know each other well. Oh well.

On Monday I spent time with Infectious Laughter. It was good to see her. It's been a while and I'm not sure when I'll see her again. We did absolutely nothing but sit around my sister's house. It was just like our childhood summers.

Then I worked during the week. That was OK.

I rounded out the week with a party for my niece on Saturday. It was supposed to be pony themed, but there weren't enough pony party favors/decorations. So it was and it wasn't a pony party. There were cupcakes, games, stories, prizes and lots of running around. A typical little girl party.

I got on the road early because I was worried about the weather (bad rain storms) and getting home in time for the 4:00 meeting. Around 10:15 it hit me that I could listen in to my meeting while driving. So I dialed in and only missed about the first 15 minutes of the talk. I stayed on the line for the WT study. It was nice to hear my congregation again. I've been gone for literally a month of Sundays. I felt like I'd gotten so much out of that meeting that I didn't worry about rushing off to the 4:00 meeting after getting home. Is that terrible?

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

HalloHallo

There was one main phrase that the Chinese vendors screamed to get our attention - "HalloHallo!" Say it really fast and in a Chinese accent.

So, do I have your attention?

I started uploading photos to my Flickr account today. Surprisingly, there are too many duplicates of Poly's photos. You should also check out the photos of Poly's trip roommate, Gameyy.

Assumptions

Before my trip to Asia, I assumed:

  • More people in Japan would speak English than in China.    
WRONG - I was blown away by how many people (particularly seemingly not-well educated market vendors) spoke enough English to transact business.  Perhaps I am confusing English with Pinyin, but I was also very surprised at how many of the signs on highways and on buildings in China were written in English.  I certainly did not find that to be the case with Russia (granted, it was 12 years ago) and assumed that China, particularly based on its anti-outsider history, would be similar to Russia.

  • Tokyo would be a typical big city.
WRONG - My cousin Spittin' Image told me that I'd see lots of concrete buildings in Tokyo.  He did mention that there were a lot of parks, but I thought Moscow had a lot of parks.  While I enjoyed the Moscow parks, I didn't feel like they made the city seem any "greener" than it was.  I've been to Moscow, London and Dublin.  Dublin definitely had its own flavor and color, but all three cities seemed fairly gray-ish to me.  I did not leave Tokyo with an impression of gray.  I definitely left with an impression of green.  That could be because our hotel was in the middle of a park and we had to walk by it (and a really old famous Buddhist temple) to go anywhere.  But I was impressed by the green long before we got to our hotel just on our bus ride through the city center.

  • Organized tours suck.
WRONG - I have very vivid memories of visiting special spots in Ireland and cringing when the big buses purged loads of foreigners onto a site.  T and I would just look at each other and say, "Can you imagine being on one of those?  What a waste of money to not be in control of where you go or how long you spend at a site."  I prefer to ramble alone in my own hired car in places like Ireland, but a small organized tour is definitely the way to go in Asia.  Especially in China, it was fabulous to let someone else plan my schedule: be in the lobby by 8:30, spend x amount of time here and there, get out now we're at lunch, get back on the bus, here's your hotel, dinner is at x o'clock, tonight we're doing dinner AND a show, etc.  I saw lots of stuff and I was only tired from the actual site-seeing, not the wrangling, navigating and thinking that I normally have to do on vacation.  Yes, there were certain places I would have liked more time or to skip altogether and I would have made different restaurant choices, but overall it was a pleasant experience.

  • I like Japanese food.
WRONG - Well, even before I left I knew that I liked hibachi and not real Japanese food.  But I thought that I'd be able to find something like hibachi over there.  The only thing that came close were some REALLY expensive restaurants in our Kyoto hotel.  The vast majority of restaurants on the street were traditional Japanese cuisine which I already suspected that I disliked.

  • I can't tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese cultures.
WRONG - Culturally the two are nothing alike, even if their arts seem very similar.  The Japanese are very reserved to the point that they won't even call out to get a waitress over to their table.  Their restaurants have a button on the table that they push which lights up their table number on a board to alert the waitress that they need attention.  My experience with Chinese people was mostly of market vendors and let me tell you, they are not reserved at all.  They yell at you, do back flips, shoot off fireworks, slaughter small farm animals - anything to get your attention.  The general population is not quite as in-your-face as the vendors.  But I still felt like the general Chinese populace was more interested in us than the Japanese - they at least looked us in the eye when we walked by them.  I admit that I still can't physically discern the difference between them beyond obvious things like clothing and hair styles (and smell).  But I have learned to hear the difference in the languages - there are just some sounds that the Chinese language has that Japanese doesn't. 

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

You Can't Win for Losing

As Affie pointed out, I expected my garbage to be pretty rank after three weeks.  But I opened my door to the refreshing smell of hard wood floors - so nice after the foreign smells of China!  It made me think about all the complaining I would have done about the lazy garbage men if I were still living in Stinky Garbage Trailer.  But I'm not.  In my new house I don't really have complaints against the garbage men, but the postal workers have reached a new low of incompetence.

I told y'all that I'd stopped my mail before I left.  I mean, three weeks is a lot of mail to pile up in my kinda small mailbox.  I filled out the hold mail form that I would be gone for three weeks and then I would pick up my mail at the post office.  In the past, I have had them deliver all of my mail on the day I was set to return.  But this time I figured that there would be too much mail accumulated to put in my box, so I decided to pick it up.

I wasn't able to get to the post office until yesterday afternoon.  As I went into the office empty-handed I regretted that I didn't at least have a plastic bag to haul away my postal booty.  I told the man behind the counter why I was there and he disappeared for what seemed like an eternity.  I thought, "Dang!  Is he looking for a hand truck?  Do I have that much mail?"  He finally return with barely one handful.  My entire three week collection of mail consisted of that annoying weekly newspaper-ish ad thingy and a couple of envelopes.  A copy of my Hold Mail Request with the proper dates highlighted was included.  The whole "package" was wrapped with a rubber band.

This pitiful display of mail didn't make sense to either me or the postal worker.  He swore that this was all he could find.  I insisted that this was only one day's worth of mail.  He said he had left a note to begin my mail service again.  I walked out almost literally scratching my head.

When I finally got to my box, I decided to check it for grins and giggles.  Sure enough, I found three weeks of mail shoved into my small mailbox - but there were no grins nor any giggles.  The only reason that I did not immediately shoot fire out of my eyeballs is because my mailbox has a lock.  So even though there was three weeks worth of mail in my box, no stranger could open it to steal anything.  But my main concern was the box of checks that I was supposed to be receiving.  Those are fairly sensitive and I didn't want them to be dropped off at my door.  We do have a system for receiving large packages but I don't know how that works if you don't clear out that big mailbox within a couple of days.  Will your package just sit in there until you decide to retrieve it?

To really pour salt into the wound, one of the pieces of mail festering in my box was a card from the postal service advertising the Hold Mail service.  It was a nice friendly post card reminding me that if I had any plans to go on vacation this summer, I should put my mail on hold.  How's that for irony?

I called the national number for customer service to complain today.  I don't really want to get anyone in trouble, but this could have been a real nightmare for me.  They should know that someone dropped the ball big time.  I think the main problem is that this neighborhood has been in existence for a year and a half and we still don't have a regular post man assigned to us.  I think we just get thrown onto the end of the route of whoever has time for us that particular day.

To top it all off, I realized today that my checks had not come in.  I called the bank to find out where they were.  I was told that there was no order of checks for my account.  I was very annoyed.  I specifically went to the bank to order checks before I left so that they would be here when I got back.  I think I was able to convince them that I did make the order and that they needed to overnight the checks to me without a fee.  I waited a long time to get a supervisor's approval, but I don't think the supervisor ever actually approved it.  I guess I'll have to call back tomorrow to make sure the order went through.

You just can't get good customer service these days.

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Welcome Back

Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.

Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.

Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.

Who'd have thought they'd lead ya (Who'd have thought they'd lead ya)
Here where we need ya (Here where we need ya)

Yeah we tease him a lot cause we've hot him on the spot, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

I returned to my office yesterday to find all the stuff in my office either upside down or turned around.  My two guest chairs had been swapped with my desk chair.  My keyboard, mouse and all the papers (which is a considerable amount) had been turned over.  My monitor, printer, phone and laptop docking station had all been turned to face backwards.  Even the binders (including a few that do not belong to me) in my cabinet had been turned backwards so that the spines faced the back of the shelf. 

I knew immediately who was responsible - basically the only person on this side of the building who talks to me - my brethren alumnus.  (He still needs a blog name, so I'll call him Li'l Brudder until something better strikes me.)  I thought, "Great, all the catching up I have to do and THIS is the first thing I have to deal with."  But ultimately, it means I'm fitting in here.  There's no way anyone would ever have played a prank on the previous person to have my job.  She would have freaked.  However, I learned a long time ago not to make a big deal out of pranks.  If you don't give a big reaction, people won't think it's fun to prank you and they'll leave you in peace.

So when Li'l Brudder came in and asked about the state of my office, I told him it was perfectly normal and then leaned forward to block his view of the printer that I'd forgotten to set right.  I got a good reaction from that.  Evidently, a woman saw him and another guy fixin' up my office last week and she freaked out in my behalf.  She complained to the HR guy and Li'l Brudder's boss' boss.  Thankfully for Li'l Brudder, no one takes this woman seriously, so no harm came to him.  So when I told him that it was all completely normal, he assumed that she had come in on Friday evening and cleaned up after him.  Well, that was a fun way to turn the tables on his joke. 

But it doesn't stop there, we each had more planned for each other.  After I righted my keyboard, I found that I couldn't log in.  It vaguely crossed my mind that Li'l Brudder had done something to my network account, but I knew he didn't have the ability and the IT guys don't seem like the type to go along with that kind of a joke.  So I called the IT Director to report that I was having trouble logging in.  He changed my password, but that didn't do it.  Well, the first rule in computer problem shooting is to reboot.  So I did that.  Still no dice.  Then I decided to completely reenter my user name and password.  That's when I discovered the problem.  My user name wasn't filling in according to the keys that I was hitting on the keyboard.  I looked down and realized that two essential keys had been switched.  It's very easy to pop keys off and put them back on.  I had a quick reference next to my keyboard just by opening my laptop to look at that keyboard.  I found about four pairs of keys that had been switched.  So that explained why Li'l Brudder left my office so quickly when I called the IT guy to report that I couldn't log in - he was about to bust out laughing.

Well, I got the last laugh.  Back when I started talking about my trip to China, Li'l Brudder asked me to get him a shirt from the Great Wall.  He'd been to China (on an almost identical tour) when he was in high school.  One of his favorite souvenirs was a yellow shirt that said "I Climbed the Great Wall."  His wife claims that it was one of only three shirts he wore when they began dating.  It is now all stretched out and unwearable - I think I've blogged about this before.  Anyway, I did buy him the shirt (for $2) but decided on my way to work that I would act like I'd forgotten.  His wife started working at our company while I was out and I knew that she would be in the office yesterday morning for her weekly staff meeting.  I brought along a little cloisonne bracelet for her and decided that I would enlist her help in teasing Li'l Brudder

So the first thing I did when I saw him was to act like I'd forgotten about his shirt.  I apologized profusely - y'all know I'm a convincing actress.  Then when she was out of her meeting, I called her into my office, told her that I had his shirt but had told him I didn't and I gave her the bracelet.  I asked her to go into his office to show it off.  She laughed and said that he had called her as soon as I told him I forgot the shirt to complain to her.  So while he didn't react in front of me, he was disappointed enough to whine to his wife.  She thought my joke was great and had a good time showing off her bracelet.  I waited about an hour to finally go into his office and throw his shirt at him. 

Good times.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Back in the Saddle Again

Yee to the Haw.

I'm back and I wish I could say that I'm unscathed.  But, scathed I am.  I spent Saturday vomiting up the nothingness that was in my stomach.  Seriously.  I ate very little on the trip - eggs and bread for breakfast and then barely one saucer full of food at lunch and dinner each day.  I typically squeezed in a granola bar at some point in the day, but not quite every day.  One or two nights we had "Western" food and I typically ate that right up.  But the portion sizes were small enough that even then I didn't eat too much (which is a good thing).

Then Friday I had a waffle for breakfast, a tiny packet of pretzels on the plane and then nothing until Mama fixed me a grilled cheese sandwich at her house around 4:30.  I had a couple of bowls of dry cereal for dinner once I got home.  So there really wasn't anything left in my system to purge on Saturday morning.  But I retched anyway.  I am not accustomed to throwing up.  The last time I threw up was in 1998 or 1999 and before that, I hadn't thrown up since eating some bad ham in the 8th grade.  Typically, if I do throw up it's a one time thing and I feel better.  That was not the case on Saturday.  I threw up three times.  That's more than I've vomited on one day since I was a toddler.

I felt decidedly better yesterday, but skipped the meeting just in case I had some kind of infectious virus.  Obviously, I can't skip the meeting tonight.  I felt much better this morning when I got up, but there have been some touch and go moments at work.  I've felt a little nauseated, but not actually to the point of thinking I was going to lose it.

Welp, I'm sure this is not the topic you expected me to post about.  But this is what you get...me in all my gory.

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