Month: August 2004

You work in a secure building. Try to find your badge before you get out of the car, and store it somewhere that you can easily put your hands on it. Don’t give me a big sigh when I question you as you try to get in behind me after *I* open the door; you know we’re not supposed to let in people we don’t know who aren’t displaying a badge. I mean seriously, I need to swipe my badge at least 10 times a day to get into various parts of the building. Why on earth are you keeping yours at the bottom of your messy purse?

If you see the paper drawer on the printer is open, and you also see a person walking toward you holding two reams of paper from the direction of the supply closet, don’t close the paper drawer and start looking in the cabinet under the printer for paper. Because chances are, the reason the paper drawer was open is that someone already looked for paper and couldn’t find any, and that the person you stared at, walking toward you with the paper, is carrying it for the empty printer.

Dork.

I know that technically summer doesn’t end until next week, when when working Americans celebrate having jobs by not going to them. Or something like that. But Junior takes the bus to first grade Wednesday morning, so this weekend is the last one before the REAL marker of time, the first day of school.

We had our last campout at my sister’s house Friday night. It was hot and sticky out, and the mosquitoes had a field day. It was also a very destructive campout, and I wonder if maybe they’ll think better of doing it again next year. Items that were destroyed: a piece of their sprinkler system when the neighbor drove a tent stake through the hose/tubing. We didn’t know until the next morning when he pulled it out and the water started flowing a la Jed Clampett discovering oil. And then part of my air mattress got caught in my truck latch and was destroyed. And someone backed into (slightly, no damage) Mr. Dump’s car. You know, typical Friday night/Saturday morning.

Nature held off on the gross weather until this weekend, so we didn’t go up to Canobe Lake Park, as I was originally thinking. I just hate doing that when there’s really no place to go to get out of the heat the way there is down at Disney. Plus, there’s no way Mr. Dump would have gone with us on a day like this. So it was low key, I did some cleaning, Junior and I took his RC car out for a walk around the neighborhood. It’s ghostly quiet out there. I expected to see more people, or at least hear them. There are three in-ground pools within 6 houses of us, and as far as I could tell, at least two of them weren’t being used (I couldn’t see through the fence of the third, but I wasn’t really hearing normal pool sounds). Where the hell is everyone? Am I missing something? Is there a parade? Free ice cream somewhere? What?!

We picked six strawberries from our five plants today. I’m not very good about taking care of them, or even checking output, so when we do it’s a special treat. I think I’ll plant more next year, just because Junior loves strawberries all of a sudden, so I haven’t gotten to eat many of them.

So anyway, that’s why I have time to write to you, because it’s too hot to do anything outside, and I don’t feel like cleaning the bathroom. Can you blame me?

Listening to the Zito and Jen show on WXLO this morning I learned that Shannon Miller, the gymnast, lives in our humble state, in the even more humble town of Grafton. She’s up here attending school. That’s pretty cool, actually. They got to talk to her about some of the Olympic gymnastics controversy, and hearing it from the point of view of someone who was IN the Olympics as a gymnast, it turned things a bit for me. I guess that’s why people with experience should be the ones out there explaining it, not leaving it up to the Couch Potato fans to complain about. She said that South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-young, the one who people are saying should get the Gold because his starting score was too low, actually made a mistake that should have had points deducted but didn’t. She said it should have been an automatic 2/10s deduction, and that might have dropped him out of the top three altogether.

Gymnastics doesn’t allow for instant replays, there are scoring mistakes made ALL the time, and the gymnasts just have to trust that for every time it works against them, there will be a time it works for them. If they are going to look back at Tae-young’s routine, they have to also take off the deductions, wouldn’t you think? And while they are at it, replay everyone else’s routines so you can score THEM appropriately.

I can’t believe the international gymnastics federation is asking Hamm to give his gold medal to the South Korean. Rubbish. You count on the subjectivity of human judges and hope that they see and note every little thing a gymnast does, and you have to take the scores you get. The judges weren’t coerced into voting one way or the other the way they were in that skating controversy. It’s like umpires in baseball. They make some bad calls, but that’s the way it goes. Period.

I forgot to set the TiVo to get the Synchronized swimming on Bravo at 5pm. Poop.

Here’s an Olympic event I could probably compete in, although I’m not sure how they can keep these people from breaking into a jog: Track & Field – Men’s 50k Walk. Do they hold this at a local mall?