Verbisaurus Blogicus

Thursday, 28 June 2012

 So, I found two pennies on the floor of the cafeteria at my job today. This gives me a grand total of $13.25 that I’ve found so far this year. Even though the year is not even halfway done yet, I’m already within striking distance of last year’s total ($13.68). It’s pretty exciting.

In fact, this month alone I’ve already found more than $2.00. This marks the second month this year in which I’ve found over two dollars (the other was January). And in March and April I found over $1.00. 

Last year, there was only one month in which I found over $2.00. Coincidentally, that was also June. I just barely cracked the two-buck mark that month, hauling in a grand total of $2.03.

I have no answer for why I’ve been doing so much better this year. In fact, I would have predicted that last year would have been better since, for most of that year, I lived in an apartment, and I was always finding money in the laundry room and in the hallways.

Maybe it’s inflation.

Friday, 29 June 2012

 This evening, in lieu of reading together, Owen and I stayed up late and watched Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

Here’s a funny thing: Jimmy Neutron is a movie I’ve wanted to see for, oh, about a decade now. It was released in 2001 and, along with Shrek and Monsters, Inc., it was the first film to be nominated for the Academy Award’s new catergory: Best Animated Feature.

It didn’t win that year. Shrek won. I’d seen both Shrek and Monsters, Inc., but I hadn’t seen Jimmy Neutron. Through 2002, I looked for it at the video store, to no avail. When Jennifer and I both joined Netflix, I searched for it there, but couldn’t find it. I even considered buying it on Amazon, but never took the plunge. I guess I didn’t want to own a movie that I didn’t even know if I’d like. So, for years, it just sat in the “Saved” section of my queue.

Anyway, I noticed that recently it’s become available for instant watching. So, tonight, Owen and I hunkered down with a bowl of pop-corn (thanks to Jennifer) and watched the flick. Judging from his laughter, Owen loved it. I thought it was terrible. Not worth the wait at all. It’s hard to see how this was even nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Oh well, at least it was fun to watch it with Owen.

Saturday, 30 June 2012

Here’s a photo of the stairs leading from the Windsor (that’s the lowest landing on our house) to the basement:

Pretty ugly, even for a basement! Each stair is painted green, the same color green as pea soup, which is nasty by any standards. Then there are these quasi-metal edge pieces that serve to rip into your toes as you ascend or descend the stairs. The middle section of each step is covered with a snot-colored linoleum that has lost any sort of plasticity and (as you can see in the top step) is ripped and cracked in many places.

So, about three weeks ago, I tore off the linoleum and edge pieces. Then the steps looked like this:

I think it’s a testament to the nastiness of the original photo that this picture actually represents an improvement on the appearance!

So then I peeled away what little linoleum was still glued down (the black pieces you see on the lower stair) and hammered down all nails that were trying to escape. Then I carpeted the steps:

If you’re my co-worker, you’re probably looking at this picture right now and thinking, “Hey, that carpet looks an awful lot like the carpet in many of our conference rooms, particularly that one room where they recently ripped out the carpet and are going to install that new simulation lab you’re working on.”

Yes. You’re right.

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Tomorrow I am giving my first speech in one of the Advanced Communicator Series books: Interpretive Reading. The first project calls for an interpretive reading of a short story. The toughest part is finding a short story that fits the 8-10 minute time allotment (with allowances for a ~45 second introduction), or that can be edited to fit.

I have a three-ring binder of my favorite short stories. I’ve added to it (slowly) over the years. The first stories I put in there were xeroxed copies of stories I read out of text books in junior high school. Later, I inserted a story from Alfred Hitchcock (which I came across in his biography The Dark Side of Genius) and one from my good buddy Ryan Sutter. Most recently, I added in a short story from an anthology I read in a Hamline class in the spring of 2010.

Anyway, I thumbed through the 15 or so stories this morning looking for a good option. My first preference was “The Lady or the Tiger,” by Frank Stockton. This ranks as my all-time favorite short story. Unfortunately, it’s just too long for my purposes, and I couldn’t think of a coherent way to truncate it.

My second choice was Saki’s “The Interlopers.” Easily my second-favorite short story, it may have been the superior choice, what with its dialog and colorful phrases. But it was likewise too long. It took me about 15 minutes to read it, and I considered chopping out half of it to bring it down to size, but I just couldn’t do it.

Then I tried “The Princess and the Tin Box,” by James Thurber. I love this story, and I think it might have been the most fun to read to the audience. But it had the opposite problem of the other two: It’s too short. I read it in about 4 minutes.

Then I tried the aforementioned short story I first read at Hamline: Steve de Jarnatt’s “Rubiaux Rising.” This is an amazing tale but, again, a little too long. I could have shortened it but, even with an abridged version, it seems just a tad too gruesome for me to read to my co-workers. I don’t want anyone making disgusted faces at me while I’m reading.

I ended up choosing “Charles,” by Shirley Jackson. When I read it this morning, I found it took me between 10 and 11 minutes to do so. In the final third of the story, there are a few paragraphs that, I felt, could be safely removed to shorted it a bit. In fact, I think my abridged version is even better than the original, which takes an odd turn in those paragraphs. So, “Charles” it is. Wish me luck.

Oh – and if you want a curious hypothesis, check this out: How geography shapes culture.

Wednesday, 27 June 2012

At the end of the work day today, I attended my final session of the strength training class. The class lasted eight weeks. It’s starting up again in a couple of weeks, and I think I will sign up again. For only $25, it’s a good deal. I like that it gets me off my butt for a while.

Anyway, I went into the men’s room to change into shorts and a t-shirt. When I came out, I began walking back to my cube to drop off my regular clothes. I passed by the water cooler/coffee machine area, and a lady from my division was standing there. She looked at me and said, “Legs!” Not knowing how to respond, I simply laughed.

That’s it. That’s all she said. I laughed and continued on. After dropping off my clothes, I doubled back to head up the stairs to the class, and I passed my co-worker once again. This time, I had something to say. I gestured toward my calves and said, “Here’s your last chance to them before I go upstairs.” Then she laughed.

I know they’re nice legs but, ladies, please, try to control yourselves.

Saturday, 23 June 2012

 Last night was most unusual: I slept at home.

After two nights in The Land of Lincoln, I returned home around 8:00 PM to an empty house. My wife and kids left back on Wednesday (the same day I left for Illinois) to spend some time up at the family cabin. I’m going to join them today. But, for now, I have the hosue to myself.

I’m happy to report the cat is still alive.

Speaking of the cat, I woke up with a jolt at around 2:30 this morning thanks to a very loud noise. I sat up in bed and looked around. Of course, it was too dark for me to see anything, so I turned on the light dimly. I then hobbled into the other bedrooms a bathroom looking for what might have caused such a loud noise. No luck.

So I went downstairs.

I looked around, couldn’t find anything suspicious. I even went down into the basement – the cat following me with a look that said, “Hey, human, what’s your problem?”

I went back upstairs and peeked into my son’s room again, and noticed some of his toys on the floor were askew. I think what happened was the cat was sleeeping on Owen’s bed, jumped down, and then knocked into his toy train or marble works and startled the both of us.

By this point, I couldn’t get to sleep. So I grabbed my laptop and searched on Netflix for something to watch. I watched Jim Gaffigan’s Mr. Universe, which I highly reccommend. It was good fun sitting in bed, computer on my lap, watching a stand-up routine at 3:00 in the morning.

That’s the sort of thing you can do when you have the place to yourself.

Sunday, 24 June 2012

 Well, I arrived at the cabin safely around 1:30 yesterday. It’s been mostly a lazy time, which is good after my stressful week of giving a presentation, dealing with Hamline’s accounting department, attending a 3-day class, and twice flying on an airplane.

Today I mowed the cabin’s property. As luck would have it, the mower ran out of gas when I was about 95% done with the job. This wasn’t really a problem, Jennifer said we had to go into town anyway to get some food.

While out, we stopped for ice cream at Joyful Morning coffee shop. It looked like just a nice, normal place to buy ice cream, but…

Imagine some taking a bible, folding it in half, and trying to force it into your mouth. That’s kind of the atmosphere they’re going for at Joyful Morning. I didn’t realize it at first: I paid no attention to their road sign that offered:

Coffee, Ice Cream, Cheese, Bibles, Gifts

Bibles? Who singles out bibles like that?

Then, when we walked in the door, I saw that old scripture from Joshua that I think came standard with every house a Witness purchases – you know, the one that says, “As for my and my house, we shall serve the Lord”? I just passed it off as a standard Christian decoration.

But then, the guy who served us ice cream had a shirt on that said he stood with Christ. Every table had a donation box on it for Feed My Starving Children (a Xtian charity), approximately 99% of the gifts for sale and decorations on the wall were Christian-themed. They all had these beautiful pictures – you know, of wildlife, sunrises, and soldiers – and “inspirational” messages like “God watches every breath you take” and “Jesus loves me…because I’m straight.” Owen asked me to read one of the messages to him and, after I did, he said, “That’s not true.” I had to shush him, lest we be thrown before the inquisition.

My favorite gift item for sale was a “Jesus loves me” money clip. My least favorite gift item was a bible that intersperced scriptures with images and “facts” about our founding fathers. Christians, please: don’t mix your religion with the US government. You do both a disservice.

The shop’s website says “We would love to host your bible study.” Au contraire: I don’t think you’d love to host my bible study.

Monday, 25 June 2012

This morning, there were geese outside the cabin. Later, a heron landed on the dock. Then there was a giant turkey on the beach (no, it wasn’t me – I’m talking about a literal turkey). All that fowl is very cool to see, but I gotta tell you about the reptile we saw last night.

In the evening, after going into the cabin for the night, I went back outside to get something and I saw this turtle on the beach:

I’m no zoologist, but I think it’s a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta). I tried looking up info about her last night, but there’s no internet access at the cabin, so I used my wife’s cellular telephone and the best I could find was info about a Blanding’s Turtle.

Anyway, this painted turtle was laying eggs on the beach – right where we had been weeding and digging and hanging out for the past two days. After Jennifer and Owen went out to look at her (and snapped the above image), I watched from the cabin windows until I saw her covering up her work and lumbering back to the water.

I was a little concerned that the eggs might inadvertabtly be disturbed by other family members who come to use the cabin later this summer, so I set up a small fence around three sides of the nest. My work looks like this:

To the right of this “fence” is the sidewalk leading to the pier. The open portion leads out to the lake. Jennifer was a little concerned that a wayword hatchling might head the wrong way and get hung up on the fence, but I figure the improved chances I give them by putting up this guardrail more than makes up for the one or two losses that might occur – almost assuredly will occur – during their mad scramble for safety in the water.

This morning, some of my wife’s family came to the cabin to begin painting it. They arrived even before we left. Two of my wife’s cousins headed down to the lake and immediately began pulling weeds. I walked down there and told them about the turtle eggs. To my delight, one of them said, “Yeah, I figured something like that was going on, so I made sure to stay clear.” Good. Now if everyone can be like that for then next 80 days.

Friday, 22 June 2012

I never ever heard of the suburb of Schaumburg until a few months ago when I signed up for the class that I completed there today. But, now I can say I’ve been – because I am only now leaving the city (village, actually) after having spent just over 48 hours here. I thought a visual diary would do best. I took some of these photos yesterday, and some today.

Here’s the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel where I stayed. It kind of has that “outside courtyard in the evening” look. Notice some of the rooms overlook this lobby. Another bunch of rooms overlook a real outside courtyard, and another bunch overlook the pool. Not mine; my room overlooked the wonderful parking lot.

Here’s the inside of my room, as seen from the couch right in front of the window. Hey – look! Those are my shoes! Cool.

Okay, here is the coolest thing about my room: a bathroom counter made of rocks. Look at that! And the counter is so smooth. Look at the lower left corner of the sink, and you can see how they even cut into a rock to get the sink to fit right. Amazing! How did they do that? I don’t know.

Here’s the weirdest thing about my room – the shower stall has a fixed pane of glass that extends midway from the wall. The other half of the stall has nothing; no door, no curtain – nothing. I got lots of water on the bathroom floor both mornings. Oh well.

And here’s the most disgusting thing about my room. This is an air vent near the window. Notice all the chunks of dust. I point out that this is after I wiped the vents once with my sock (that I had just taken off for the day). This would take, like, 30 seconds to clean. Maybe somebody should get on that before a guest posts pictures like this on the WWW.

I snapped this photo near the hotel’s secondary entrance. The sign on this rock says “Fresh 1800 Herb Garden.” That’s because the restaurant at the hotel is called “Fresh 1800,” so I guess they’re not kidding: they really do use fresh ingredients. I’ll never know, ’cause the only thing I ever bought from that restaurant was a Long Island iced tea.

During the afternoon session on Wednesday and Thursday (yesterday), the hotel staff brought in some snacks for us. Yesterday, they set out this spread: mixed nuts, dried fruit, M&Ms, chocolate chips….mmmmm! All the toppings you could ever want for your ice cream. Except…they didn’t bring any ice cream. How odd. It was especially odd, too, that today, during lunch, they brought out vanilla ice cream and offered absolutely zero toppings. Everyone else set all of those above toppings on the little plates provided (see top left). I grabbed a glass and dumped my snacks in that. Everyone thought I was so smart for thinking of that. Yeah, about once a week, I really nail this whole “living on planet Earth with the humans” thing.

I took an aimless wander though the hotel yesterday evening. (Man, it’s hard to avoid eye contact while doing that.) Here’s a skyway I stumbled upon. It connects the hotel with the office building you can see in the background there. I decided to walk through it, which was a dumb idea, because the skyway is not climate controlled, and so it was about 110 degrees inside this thing.

I decided to temporarily kick the antisocial binge I was on, and meet up with some classmates for dinner. About seven of us met in the hotel lobby, but only three of us ended up going out to eat (I’m not sure how that happened). We ate at Weber Grill, a restaurant you can spot from some distance due to this enormous grill on their property. They cook everything on grills. Weber brand, I bet.

I thought I was going to stand out like a weirdo by not ordering any red meat at a place called “Weber Grill,” but guess what? The one lady I was with got the shrimp salad, and the other lady got the tilapia. Me, I got the veggie burger. It was good. They also served pretzel buns. I never had those before, but I saw them again today during lunch, and then later at the airport. Must be a Chicago thing. I like them. I’m gonna see about getting me some more.

Okay, so I was at the airport earlier today, and I noticed the guy walking in front of me. He was a pilot. Or, at least, he was dressed like one. He was pulling three bags behind him, and there was this one suitcase he had that I just had to take a picture of. There’s a fancy metal plate on the top that says “In memory of Jesus.” I fucking kid you not. The side of the bag had one of those fish on it that says “ixoye,” which, of course, is Latin for “I believe in zombies.” I was a little concerned that he walked right up to the very same gate that I was going to. On the good side, it allowed me to take this picture. The down side was, I started freaking out that this guy was going to be my pilot. I don’t think a guy like this should be a pilot. I mean, what if the rapture occurs mid-flight? Before I get my beer and pretzels? Alas, he was just hitching a ride on the plane. Maybe to get closer to Jesus one more time before going to bed. Oh crap, I just realized something: if he was hitching a ride on the plane, that probably means he lives in Minnesota.

And here’s the view over Lake Michigan at approximately 6:30 this evening. Have I mentioned I hate flying? Here I am, on the 32nd plane ride of my life. And look at what an idiot I am: I picked the seat that overlooks the wing. It’s like I thought, “How can I increase my anxiety even more on this flight? Oh, I know, I’ll select the seat that looks out over the wobbly wing. Yes, that will be splendid.”

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Well, I was on an airplane today. Yuck. At least it was a short flight. In fact, it might have been the shortest flight of my life: Twin Cities to Chicago. The pilot warned of turbulance during take-off and landing due to both places being very windy.

As I walked down the hallway to my hotel room, a man pushing a cart for cleaning the rooms nodded at me and said, “Good morning!” I nodded in kind and said, “Hello.” Then I pulled my cellular telephone out of my pocket and looked at the time…He can’t possibly be right – it’s not STILL morning, is it? I thought.

But, in fact, it was still morning – it was only 11:32. But it had already been a long day.

After never falling asleep last night – a short night punctuated with Owen’s appearance by my bedside to request water – I got out of bed at 4:15. I left the house about a half hour later, walked three blocks, and then waited for the bus.

The bus arrived a minute late, and drove to the airport. Just after 5 AM, I boarded a tram to ferry me from the bust stop to the airport proper.

Despite a no-show flight attendant, our plane took off as scheduled right at 7:00. We landed in Chicago about an hour and a half later. I called the taxi company, who then sent a taxi to the wrong airport. So I called them again. This time, they sent someone to the correct airport, but I had to wait nearly an hour for him to arrive. The taxi ride to the hotel lasted nearly another hour. (I gotta lotta book reading done this morning.)

After paying the cab, a concierge assisted me with my bags, and showed me to the front desk. I checked in, the front desk lady gave me my room key while explaining, “Your room is just up those stairs, there’s no elevator, I hope that’s okay.” I took a quick look at the daunting 10 stairs and deemed it okay. “It’s okay,” I said. Then I went up the stairs, rounded the corner, and met up with the cleaning staff guy who wished me a good morning.

Thursday, 21 June 2012

The email that I received that gave me all the information I needed to know about the class I am in yesterday, today, and tomorrow, said to bring a calculator. As soon as I read that email, I reached into my desk drawer, pulled out my scientific calculator, and set it on my desk where I wouldn’t forget it.

Do you think I remembered it?

Actually, I did remember it.

The only problem was, last night, when I was unpacking my bag, I pulled out the calculator and suddenly it hit me: This thing isn’t as heavy as it usually is. I opened up the back panel and, sure enough, there were no batteries. No problem, I thought, I’ll just walk over to that mall I can see out my window and buy a pack of batteries.

So, in 90 degree heat, high humidity, and strong winds, I walked the five blocks (or so) to the mall. As I passed by all the stores, it occurred to me that almost no place in a mall sells batteries. Oh sure, I’m sure some stores do, but I couldn’t find anything like a toy store or Radio Shack that would have the needed supplies. I did locate the Sears, but I am loathe to spend money there, so I kept hunting. Finally, I asked a man working at guest services, and he directed me to some store called Street Corner News, or something like that. It was really tucked away in some dark arm of this sprawling shopping center, and it only took up about 50 square feet. There was hardly any room to turn around in there, but I spotted a small selection of batteries behind the counter. “Can I get a pack of those double-A batteries?” I said to the cashier. She obliged and I took off with my merchandise.

So, this morning, before heading off to class, I opened the pack of batteries, then picked up my calculator, opened up the back panel, and saw that my calculator takes triple-A batteries.