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We had a lunch meeting with our new department manager for R&D who told us how our firm has done and what changes we might expect in the workplace.  We’ve done very well and are starting to reverse some of the cost cutting measures so sometime this week our water coolers will come back.  We prodded him more to see what else we could get and soon we found out if our luck continued we’d get all our old amenities back.  This manager was new so I figured I could try something.

Me:  Do you think we could get our meeting budget back?  We used to have food during lunch meetings.
Manager:  I don’t see why not.
Me: So, we could bring back free bagels on Friday? (which we never had)
Manager: Well, I guess if we can justify it.
Another temp picking up on what I’m doing: So you’re saying, six months or so we could get the espresso machine back? (which we also never had)
Manager: I love a good espresso.

By the time we were done we’d almost gotten a soda fountain and build-your-own sundae bar.

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I volunteered to grade tests for the Temple’s High School Math Competition but first I had to come up with an answer sheet.  The first question for the 9th and 10th grade test was:Equation

I have no idea how to evaluate that.  Normally I’d take a few derivatives and pray but those are geometric functions, taking their derivatives is like digging a deep hole in sand.  We’re throwing this at 9th graders?  The tests should be easy to grade as I look at blank page after blank page.  I’ll give them partial credits for “I have no fucking clue” or dirty limericks.

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Today I judged at a GP. I hate GPs, they’re as close to working in a Pennsylvania Coal Mine in the 1870s as I get with 18 hour days on my feet, repeating the same series of actions over and over again.  I missed the new staff member tryout for it so I wanted to compare judging to being a staff member at Ockanickon and found some amazing similarities.

Factor Judging Scout Camp Winner
Dumb Uniform X-Zebra Stripes X-Khaki Class A Tie
Knowing Byzantine Rules X-Comprehensive Rules X-Guide to Safe Scouting Tie
Dealing with dumb kids with dumb parents X-JSS Judging X-Every shit 12-year old going for Eagle Tie
Horrible Work Hours X-16hr Grand Prix X-36 hour days due to norovirus Tie
Contact with Women X-Ugly players or mothers X-Ugly Venturers or mothers Tie
Dick Leadership X-Scott Larabee X-Dave Hasel Tie
Sense of achievement at improving America’s moral fiber X Scouting
Ability to curse and tell dirty jokes X Judging

Hm… Ability to curse versus sense of achievement at helping America’s youth, that’s a close one.

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I was at Wawa today stocking up on a weekend worth of sandwiches.  While waiting for my sandwiches I decided to browse through the ingredients of the various flavored milks and upon opening the door heard the deep baritone of James Earl Jones reading the New Testament played off of a boom box.

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The freezer at work is continually shrinking due to the steady encroachment of idiocy and icing.  There’s an obese woman the hoards diet freezer pops and the frost has extended to the point that I can barely squeeze in an ice tray where once I had three.

The power went out at some point last night for four or five hours and the fridge died in the process. when I got in this morning my ice had melted, even though the freezer frost was completely untouched and possibly bigger, in clear violation of the second law of thermodynamics.  I was angry and pouty over my lost ice until a fat-laden voice bellowed “my health bars!”

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The 2nd day of the 5 day meeting marathon went down today and again, around 6 PM there was a cornucopia of coffees, drinks, individual serving cakes and cheeses including what tasted like peppered mozzarella (genius!)  I enter the room and shortly afterwards a facilities fellow walked in, presumably to change some ceiling lights, and I offered him some of the bounty to which he responded “I’m like a mouse, I might have some Swiss cheese”.  I carry out six or seven cans of soda and return to find the food trays stripped.  All the food is completely gone and even the utensils and tea bags had been taken.  Yeah, mouse-like, a mouse with a forklift.

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A few days ago our home was appraised to provide a value estimate for what will probably be a bloody drawn out divorce between my parents.  The estimate came back lower than what I thought it’d be based on zillow.com and I immediately began cheering.  My coworkers thought I was insane and my more liberal cohorts started railing against the fed, et al.  They don’t realize that my brother and I want to buy our own house and any drop is a plus.  If we can reduce the value further by re-directing the Mill Race Creek to run through our kitchen, we have a backhoe, a front-end loader, and a construction contractor that owes us a few favors.