I want to know why there aren't any of those overflow drains on KITCHEN sinks. The bathroom sinks have them, I've even seen “utility” sinks with them. Why not the kitchen? Aren't you just as likely to overflow the kitchen sink? What kind of conspiracy IS this?

My parents have a walnut tree. There must have been 30,000 walnuts on that tree earlier this year. Visions of walnuts everywhere danced in our heads. Then the squirrels arrived. Those hairy bastards! Naturally I was consulted as the “biologist” of the family, and after first half heartedly suggesting we shoot them, I came up with the idea of a “squirrel baffle”. Normally found on bird feeders and the like, the idea was adapted to ring the bottom of the walnut tree as to discourage the nut pilferers. Sadly, the thievery continued due to other potential entry points to the walnut tree. The crop was ultimately lost.

However, something was learned from this experience that I never considered before. My dogs were one day chasing a squirrel across the yard. The squirrel attempted to run up the trunk of the walnut tree. If you imagine a metal, two foot deep, ring of metal circling the bottom of the tree, then you understand our adapted squirrel baffle apparatus. So the squirrel ran up the tree where it collided with the baffle making a sound that can only be described as the sound one would hear whacking a tennis ball into a cookie sheet. The squirrel immediately employed alternate methods in escape from the dogs, and I should point out that it was extremely successful with no apparent harm done.

I came away from this experience not only with an appreciation for how hard squirrel's heads must be, but the knowledge that they have a tremendous understanding of physical comedy.

People at work, in their limited wisdom, couldn't believe what the “funniest joke in the world” was. My explanation of cultural differences fell on deaf ears.

Although, the site did say that Canadians found it rather unfunny.

http://www.laughlab.co.uk

I am driving through my old neighborhood in Coquitlam. Slowly. There is a cat chasing a squirrel up the middle of the street. I stop. The squirrel runs up to my car, jumps on the hood, and the up the windshield on to the top of my car. The cat does the same. At this point, their trajectories begin to differ as the squirrel manages to avoid my sunroof, while the cat does not. Gravity is a bitch. The squirrel makes a clean getaway, while the cat falls onto my head through the sunroof. The cat then scrambles over the backseat and gets a little frantic because the squirrel is disappearing from sight. What started as a sedate drive through my old neighborhood culminates in my having to pull over due to the extremely disgruntled feline in the back of my car.

I'll bet the squirrel is still telling this story to his friends. I'll bet the cat is keeping his mouth shut.{

I'm flying to Ottawa on September 11th. Im not sure this is a good idea psychologically, but it's probably actually one of the safest days to do so. Unfortunately, I'll have to go from Vancouver to Chicago first, then on to Ottawa. On American Airlines. One thing is for sure, I'm not packing any damn scissors in my carry on luggage again. In fact, I think I'll forgo the whole carry on luggage thing this time – lest I get searched in even more of a personal manner than last time….

    In what can be described as the ONLY exciting thing to happen to me while at work recently, I almost broke my leg. Managed to walk sideways into that abyss between the trailer and the warehouse door. Foot went down about 8 inches, and then I fell sideways. It was only due to my impromptu sideways left arm only pushup that I didn't break my leg. I DID manage to get a huge swollen lump on the side of my leg, bruised my foot, strained a muscle in my upper back, my shoulder, and my triceps are completely screwed. On the way down I actually had time to believe that a horrible cracking noise followed by my yelling was inevitable. Would have been one of those nasty compound fractures too, likely. Definitely something that gets one's attention. It received everyone else's attention as well, as three of the four people working around me tried to support me and actually picked me up afterwards. These guys were absolutely CONVINCED that I'd snapped my leg, which in all likelihood WOULD have happened had I plummeted deeper into the gaping maw of the abyss, or if I had failed in my spontaneous attempt at a one armed workout. Never broken one of my limbs before, and I don't plan to start now. This is not saying I haven't broken bones before. I snapped my finger on a NURF! football (you know, the SOFT ones that are supposed to be safe?) at one point, and I broke my jaw in five places once (don't try this at home). Countless toes also have been snapped in the pursuit of bipedal locomotion. Lets just say that I gained a reputation in school as being slightly accident prone. Ever plunged a pitchfork clear through your foot? I have, but this is all beside the point.

    It took a spontaneous dance routine to convince my coworkers as to the integrity of my lower leg. The ones still clinging to the idea that my leg had indeed completed all 90 degrees of the bend they claim they had witness were truly horrified at all my hopping around. Then I refused to go to first aid and returned to work. Dumb.

    An hour later, my lower leg had swelled up quite a bit, and had turned all kinds of colours. So I went to first aid, and then returned to work. The real kicker about getting hurt at work is the paperwork involved. At least they horribly massacred my the spelling of my last name….

    It wasn't until after my hour long commute home that I determined that I could barely move my left arm. Luckily, I'm right handed, but it was painful enough to keep me up all night, and to prevent me from going to work the next day. Missing a day due to work makes for even MORE paperwork, if that were even possible.

    Then came the bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Since I missed a day, I'd have to go to the doctor and get him to verify that I was injured. This even though I had ample witness and a first aid report. Whatever. The doctor charged me 10 bucks to write a silly little note about injuries that he couldn't not verify from an accident he didn't witness.

    It was all ok in the end and the injuries have healed now, a week later.

    Now I've got strep throat, apparently. Picked it up at work free of charge. Feels like I've had some kind of bad sword swallowing encounter or something. Not that I’ve had any good ones either.

    Wots the moral of this story? Don't go to work in a warehouse? I don’t know.

I'm losing my patience with the lack of personal responsibility among coffee drinkers (a gross generalization, I realize). It would seem that if you spill hot coffee on yourself, there is no one to blame but the purveyor of the coffee. Certainly not yourself.

So now there is a new coffee related lawsuit from someone who burned herself with coffee.

“She just pulled out of Tim Horton's and started to drink the coffee through the lid, and it spilled all over her …… She was burned severely because the coffee was too hot.”

I don't drink the evil bean beverage myself. However, I do realize that it is hot and isn't likely something you should be drinking WHILE YOU ARE DRIVING!! This comes from personal experience – the unfortunate incident with a very hot Hazelnut Latte from Starbucks.

To be fair, the lawsuit points out that there was some kind of defect in the lid of the cup, and that also had some hand in the coffee dam bursting all over her. If she wasn't so carefully and diligently observing the road for hazards while driving wouldn't she have noticed the defective beverage receptacle?

I've always heard complaints about COLD coffee, and not the other way around. The only people who I've heard about coffee being too hot are those who dump it in their lap when they are driving. Usually we hear about these things on the news when a lawsuit is the result of someone's coffee mismanagement. Such reports usually cite the infamous McDonald's coffee lawsuit in which events transpired much as they did above. The McDonald's incident resulted in a 3 million dollar award, which was later decreased to (only) $600,000 (US). I wonder how many people started dumping hot coffee in their laps on purpose after this point?

As someone who has dumped large numbers of beverages (both cold and hot) in their lap while driving, am I out of line to think that the blame for any resulting burns or discomfort lies with ME? Hmmm…. I guess I've been missing out on all kinds of financial windfalls!

I was at 7-11 the other day and got that horrific “brain freeze” kind of headache from a Slurpee. I'm kind of wondering if 7-11 hasn't been negligent in giving out a beverage (most likely targeted towards the CHILDREN) that is too COLD. Maybe my resulting pain and mental anguish at having a “brain freeze” headache should result in some kind of financial compensation for my hardships? Anyone know a lawyer?

Today at work my lunch was stolen. Presumably it met it's untimely demise at the hands of some miscreant coworker without the gumption to make his own. This was quite a problem last year as well – as soon as the “agency” temporary employees showed up. Last year my disappearing lunch woes were solved with a note in my lunch bag:

One of these items has something in it that will quite likely
make you sick. I know which one. Do you?

I never lost another lunch.

I have to wonder if this will solve this years problems too?

Has anyone else had problems with extraneous characters showing up after their comments left on other LJ journals? Maybe it is time to ditch my archaic version of Netscape (4.76) and embrace the Microsoft menace once and for all?

I recently flew off into the wilds of Prince George and Calgary to help some friends of mine move.

When trips like this pop up and there is air travel involved – I immediately start to wonder if there will be a rant worthy event soon to occur. This is the way I've decided to think about crappy events – a potential website topic. This time I pictured some impending lame complaint about the “Bran Crunch” cookies that I encounter on these flights. This happened, but it no longer shows up on the radar compared to the other things that happened. I'll take you through it one step at a time.

7:30 am. Day of Departure

I wake up to the screaming banshee sound coming from my clock radio. The least relaxing sound on the face of the earth, I'm convinced. I want to hijack the production of one of those whale song relaxation tapes and put that sound in at around 10 minutes. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I get up. It immediately becomes obvious that there is something terribly wrong with my right ear. It hurts like hell, and my balance is less than stellar. Dizziness. Its kind of interesting that this occurs, for the first time in many many years, on the very day I am about to fly on an airplane. The scent of Murphy's Law is strong in the air.

T he Airport

I don't mind airports, providing I'm not late or lost or some other related calamity. This time everything was going smoothly. I got through the ticket counter, paid for one of those airport improvement taxes, and was on my way. I proce eded to security. I waited in a reasonably quick and short line, and approached the checkpoint. The guy ahead of me, upon emptying his pockets, drew the attention of the security people due to several questionable items he had on his person. Most notab le was the fold out knife he had (a blade of 5 inches or so). He vehemently protested its impending siezure, but obviously didn't get to far with that one. He also had one of those lighters powered by propane or something that emits on or those blowtorch flames. Apparently – not suitable for passenger flights (duh!). I was talking to the girl next to me about him, safely out of earshot. “I mean, what do these idiots expect? To be able to bring large knives and blowtorches on a damn plane!!!??”. It was agreed, he clearly hadn't thought this thing through….

The “security” checkpoint

So I put my watch in that little basket, slide it through to the person on the other side. You see… this time – I was smart as I took all my change out and put it into my carry on bag! None of that silly fishing for change in my pocket stuff this time. I walk through with no problems. No blinking lights, sirens, or those spread your arms while I rub my magic security wand over you episodes. I walk to the other side of the security gate, pick up my backpack, and start in the direction of the domestic terminal at YVR.

This is the point where my story stops firing at others and turns the gun on itself….

Virtually tackled. Grabbed by the shoulder s and “asked” not to leave – we have to check your bag. Crap. “Oh shoot – I'd forgotten to mention my #%@^ camera was in the bag” (they like you to turn these things on). Fine, so we open up my backpack, I get out my camera – turn it on. It doesn't st op there. They start rummaging through everything. I start to get confused. I even had to take the lens caps and stuff off my zoom lens. They go through my film canisters, and the INSTRUCTION MANUAL for the camera. This is about the time that the RCM P show up. Great. Cops, and they don't want a group photo. I have a polite discussion with one of the security people about why I am protesting them opening up the back of my camera. “Hell”, I say, “I have pictures of the ECLIPSE in there”!!! A succe ssful negotiation at last. This is when they take everything out of my bag and move me to what is essentially another room.

Sequestration

My acute sense of reality notice that this is probably not a good thing.

Questions – why am I going to Pri nce George – who are you meeting there – what are their names – where are you from – when are you coming back…. etc. I may have avoided the x-ray wand – but I was FRISKED instead (after they found something buried in the seam of my backpack). It isn't as much fun as it looks. I was remarkably cooperative, since this is before the reason for all this had hit me. They were still digging through the crap in my bag. They pointed to the x-ray thingy.

Lit up, clear as day, were THREE pairs of SCISSORS silhouetted amidst the rest of the travel flotsam in my bag.!

So I pointed out where the scissors were. They held one up in the air, scrutinizing it.

This is the exact point I looked for a crowd reaction and saw the strange look that the aforementioned girl that was behind me in line was giving. Apparently, I'd become one of the idiots. I can't disagree. At this point, my own biased estimation of my IQ dropped several… many points.

I moved myself about a month and a half ago. I had this little box that I put all the loose bathroom type implements and tools into. Sadly I made the last minute decision to simply throw this into my carry on baggage on the morning of departure – instead of sorting through it selectively. A regrettable decision, in retrospect.

So they found 3 pairs of scissors in there. One of which was wedged into the lining at the bottom of my bag (my suggestion is that this is why they had to “frisk” me). Thought I'd lost that pair a few years ago – apparently not. All these items were confiscated. They also abused my pairs of nail clippers (why I had 2 I do not know). They tear off those fold out file things on them. One of the file things wouldn't come off – confiscated. 30 seconds after I learned I actually owned a thermometer, I had my thermometer confiscated. After the bag rummaging and interrogation was over, I had to shove everything back into my bag.

Denouement

At this point, still slightly grateful that I hadn't been shot and hung up as an example to others, I realized that I was about to be late for my plane! I don't know who reading this has been in the Domestic terminal of the Vancouver International Airport, but the gate I needed was at the VERY end of it. So I ran. A lot. Know those people yo u see making the frantic dash to their gates? “Tsk… they should have left earlier….” Well – that was me. The lack of the weight of objects that I lost at security probably made me go a bit faster.

I run up to the gate. Nobody was there. This was disturbing – so I ran down the hallway towards the plane. They didn't like this – some crazed passenger bolting towards the door of the plane just as they were thinking about shutting it… but at least I got on! Whew!

Then I began to wonder how my sc rewed up ear would react to cabin pressure. No worries though. It ended up being nothing more than intense pain upon landing and the sensation of someone stabbing an ice pick into my brain every time I yawned for the next two or three days.

Moving from city to city sucks and is stressful, but didn't bother me at all this time.

We now return you to the year 2002, already in progress on a planet near you…..