At my last job I had Microsoft Outlook for my email and day planner. It came loaded with all kinds of nifty functions and many of them were useless. My favorite useless feature had to do with synching Outlook with your special Timex watch.
I don’t wear watches because they get sweaty and smell and I tend to break shit and frankly I have enough problems trying to keep my pants in order; I don’t need to worry about a watch.
One would think that you need some sort of special equipment to synch your watch up with your computer, but that just isn’t the case with Outlook and your special Timex watch. Apparently you just need to hold it to the screen and it does the work for you. I decided to see what would happen.
The set up was easy enough. It asked what info I wanted to transfer and I picked all of it because one can’t be too choosy when synching a watch that doesn’t exist. I hit start.
My screen turned black
Seven white lines appeared
A flash
Suddenly the lines flicker and flash, and vibrate and dance to a beat all their own. It was mesmerizing. It was over too soon. I was thrilled and disappointed all at once. Then it asked me if it was successful. It seemed successful and yet I felt empty, so I hit NO.
It did it again.
I made it run over and over again. It looked like my computer was important and busy. I would scowl as people walked by. I HAD FOUND MY DIVERSION.
Monthly Archives: May 2001
Pee dance
I have an issue that I think other women have but I am pretty sure that men don’t have. Sometimes I wait too long to pee. Maybe I am in the car, or preventing a dam from bursting, or just having too much smug fun in getting all the questions right on “The Joker’s Wild”… either way, I wait too long to pee. But waiting too long to pee isn’t my problem ( I mean, it is a problem, but not the one I am telling you about).
When you have to pee badly, you do the pee dance in an effort to shift your weight away from your bladder. Walking while clenching your ass is both highly attractive to people with drug induced tremors and an effective way to keep you from pissing yourself. I employ this method a lot, but as I reach the toilet I have to stop to undo my pants. I have to find the right position to stand in to get my pants down usually knees bent, ass thrust and clenched (my ass has far too much control over my bladder, if you ask me). My pants are unzipped and the problem presents itself.
Here I am standing in front of my toilet desperately needing to eliminate but I can’t because the moment I let my bent-knee/clenched ass position go I will lose all control over my bladder and empty all over the floor. This is how one pisses themselves while staring at the toilet.
Ant Farm: Day 10
The 3 D’s were the tone of the day: Death, Discouragement and Depression. Ants die, it is natural. If my many hours watching Discovery Channel have taught me anything, it is that ants die. I knew this and yet I got the ant farm anyway. Now I sit here watching my good friends die as fast as cows in England. Their dead bodies are mocking my existense: “We’re dead and you’re alive. But are you really alive sitting in front of that computer all day???” I couldn’t take it anymore, but luckily there was a ray of light. This beautiful ray of light came in the form of Ron the Printshop Guy.
Ron the Printshop Guy is a pleasant fellow who runs the printshop. He wears a goatee and enjoys it when his tamales have a properly balanced flavor. He has a girlfriend and his girlfriend’s cat has feet issues.
Ron came to me asking for a paper plate, but what he gave me in return was so much more valuable than 6 inches of durable, glossy paper. He was checking out what I had deemed the Ant Graveyard and we were discussing the excessive number of dead ones. I pointed out that they were slow and sluggish because of the cold. Then I showed him my carbon dioxide trick and many of them jumped up and ran around as expected. Special Angel Ron suggested that I blow into the farms to enliven those ants as well. Many of those ants I had assumed were dead as I hadn’t seen much activity from them in a long time. Like magic, the ants came to life and scurried about in fear and anger, looking for the heavy breathing intruder.
My spirits are lifted, joy is creeping back into my life and I feel a renewed vigor for my ants. Thank you, Ron.
Do ants like Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Chewy Ganola Bars??? Oh, yes they do. They like them a whole lot! Today was feeding day and as I was riding high on my elation caused by their new found vigor and I decided to give them a treat. Basically, I taught them this:
If you work hard and build a great system of tunnels you get a blend of protein, seeds, grains, vitamins and minerals that are good for ants, but if you run for my amusement you get sweet, sweet candy.
I quickly tossed a small piece in there and instantly it was covered in a grinding, seething mass of ants desperate for the sweet, chewy, wholesome granola and soy lecithin. Maybe later I will see if they like sour gummi caterpillars or maybe they would enjoy Marie Callendars Meat Lasagna, cuz I know I do.
Sorry about the sporadic nature of the Ant Log, been busy at work and my ant joy had dissipated with the perceived death of the colony. I make no promises to you, but I will try harder.
I win
Here is a list of things that are very American that people in developing nations would rightfully kill us for doing.
* Buffets: Gorging ourselves on marginally nutritious food and throwing away much of what we take.
* Car Washes: Dumping huge amounts of water and soap on our environmentally disastrous automobiles just to make them look pretty.
* Soda: We have regular access to what is arguably some of the world’s cleanest drinking water, but we prefer to imbibe artificially flavored and colored beverages.
* Multi-room, multi-bathroom houses: most people don’t even have a roof to shield them from the elements and we spread ourselves out over the land living 2 or 4 to a house that could hold many more.
Now, many of you are ready to call me a self righteous twit, but I freely admit to participating in each of these activities with gusto and pride. Casino buffets rank up there as a fun time for friends and families. I bring my car to a place where they wash and dry and vacuum and armour-all it for me. Why drink orange juice when orange soda approximates its color so nicely? And finally, I live with one other person in a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in which, except for the lack of kitchen, it could be easily cut into 2 fully functioning separate living spaces.
Ant Farm: Day 8
My ants were left alone for the weekend and while there were no great monuments built to me, they also did not die. I can accept this lack of extremes.
Today was another watering day…an activity that fills me with dread. When the ant farm was first set up, you had to pour in quite a bit of water to make sure that the convenient, easy to carry sand was evenly moist for the comfort of the ants. Now the sand is dry and I am only to put in a few drops of water but I fear that I won’t put in enough and it will distribute itself too evenly and the ants wont be able to survive this horrible arid experience.
Watering time brought unmatched excitement to my ants today. With freedom hill complete and functional I was wary of opening my ant farm to water them, as well I should have been. Upon opening the village section and squeezing the eye dropper of clean water, the ants scattered and made a break for it. The ants had planned well in the construction of their beloved freedom hill, but how could they foresee the world outside their village? One brave ant made it out, hitting the surface of the file cabinet with a barely audible click. He recovered and ran, what else could he do? He ran straight for the edge of the cabinet where I stood waiting with the cover to their village. He was promptly tossed back in and the village sealed.
Surely this ant must have been awestruck at his experience. What would you think if you ran off your world and made a great leap into the unknown only to find yourself falling from your sky back into your world? You would think you had discovered a wormhole in the universe. Your fellow ants would see you as a mythical hero. You would be part Antstronaut, part Albert Antstein. Your fellow ants would throw a parade in your honor and you would feast on succulent sprouts and suck water from the ground. Surely, your fellow ants would want to do that if your fellow ants had the ability to remember stuff that had happened 30 seconds before. Fame and glory are fleeting in the ant world.
Today my little ants are sluggish and boring. After mulling the situation, I have determined that it is because it is noticeably cooler in my office now than it was last week. Our cooling system was set to deal with the high tempuratures last week and now that it is cooler this week the system can pump out very cold air. Even I am slightly chilled. I can almost hear my ants complaining. “What is this with the coldness? We used to be happy. It was warm and it felt good. Now we got cold, and we got young ants dancing in the walkways and buildings. What do we want for buildings. Acch, what I wouldn’t give for a little of the old days.” “But, papa, don’t you remember? The sand was not so convenient or easy to carry then. And there were many creatures who ate us. Papa, we have food and we have water, such as it is, and an amazing lack of ant eaters here.” “Feh, go on with you. My knees hurt from the cold.”
i will look into heating options for them soon. On a side note: Carbon dioxide still sends them into a frenzy, but a slower, more sluggish frenzy.