Today was shaping up to be a boring day, so I did what I always do when I’m in need of content, I went food shopping.  I knew things would go wonderfully when I saw a woman pick up and intensely comparing two cans of soup for nutritional information and I could tell that she took health seriously.  She was somewhat slim and while fleet of foot, slow of mind as after I looked at the soup rack, she was comparing two cans of the same exact type of soup.Things were smooth until check-out when the cheerleader-reject doing the check-out did everything in her power to avoid bagging.  For instance, once all groceries were put on the counter but not yet scanned as the food backlog prevented items from going over the scanner I started bagging and rather than her helping, she’d simply wait until I’d cleared space and scan another item and twiddle her hair and plan what she was going to wear to the box social or sock hop with the dunderheaded cheerleader-reject #2 across the way.  Finally, she asked me for my phone number instead of my Genuardi’s card and I indicated I could probably handle that myself.  BAD MOVE!

Like many lower animals, proto-cheerleaders can detect pheromones to determine mood and intent and apparently my fierce-sarcasm-and-arrogance gland was working overtime.
Her: Would you like help bagging?
Me: Yes (thinking my initial guess was wrong).
Her: Cory (or some other new-wave name)! Help bagging! (Vindicated!)
Cory (to her): So are you going to the Phillies game tomorrow?
Her: Yeah.  I hope it doesn’t rain more today or they might cancel the game. (WTF?)
Cory (to me): Are you going to the Phillies game tomorrow?
Me: Me?  No, I’ll be going to work.
Her: Was that an insult?
Me: No *confused look*
Her: What’s your problem with baseball?
Me: Nothing  *confused look*
Her: Okay. *Disgusted look*  Would you like help to your car or can you take care of that to?

Is there some secret handshake I used indicating that I was a dick or is my condescending air just that powerful?

The tournament- I really want to use my pulled wisdom teeth as Vanishing counters on Magic cards.  What does that say to an opponent when a player uses human teeth to keep track of life totals or counters on creatures.  And to think some members of the Christian right don’t like the game…Dinner- Mykie was wearing his “I eat more pussy than cervical cancer” shirt as we entered Cheeburger Cheeburger, and all was going well with the waitress until mid-order Steve points to Mykie’s shirt yelling “that’s horrible!” as I dive with a menu to conceal the shirt from the waitress.  Mykie finishes his 1 lb burger and gets his picture taken and the female photo taker finds his shirt humorous and the entire restaurant cheers for his gluttony.  But the picture comes out blurred requiring a retake as confused restaurant goers wonder why his picture keeps getting taken as if he’d consumed 4 lbs of beef.  A particularly good copy of his picture looked like it’d been dyed with the Jamaican flag and his shirt reads “I eat more piss… a cervic can” because of how it folds.  The last picture attempt comes after most of our party has left so you just see Mykie smiling with a giant burger with an array of empty bins around him as new patrons see his tacklessness and what appears to be a monument to gluttony.

New Guy from Packaging and I went out to lunch until 25 minutes into the car ride I realized we weren’t there yet.  I look at him, mention that I typically only take a half hour for lunch and shrugs his shoulders saying his boss isn’t in so he doesn’t care.  I ask him where he’s going and says “an Indian place I know”, and by the time we’re actually there I’m pretty sure we could have been in Canada.  We eat, return and I book it into the lab knowing I’ve spent two and a quarter hours on a 30 minute lunch break.  I broach the threshold of the door ready to profusely apologize to my boss when he looks at me and says “Terry, today you’ve learned a vital lesson.  Never go to lunch with someone from packaging.”  Even worse, the Tanduri chicken got lodged in my tooth sockets making my gums swell, so for the next few hours I was pulling little strings out of the back of my mouth that looked like a vegetable but having no idea from where they came.

My IH instructor has a somewhat rigid absence policy and in that I’ve missed 2 extra classes having my teeth extracted I’ve prepared.
Him: What proof can you give that you were out for a medical reason?
Me: *Slams teeth on table in alcohol vial* Does this work?
Him: But those could be anyone’s teeth.
I hope I’m half that cynical when I’m that old.

I expected to be out cold but when I popped my head off the pillow I realized I was better than I thought. Until I saw that it was 9:30AM and I’d slept for 12 hours. Well, so I begin the arduous process of switching main machines and setting up my old computer as a server. But, I run into a problem in that XP won’t install from a SATA drive, so I came up with this solution

Later, after installing 4 500Gb drives in a RAID 5 array, I was intensely worried when everything went fine, I hope something breaks within the next few hours so I know everything’s okay.

Well, it was the day of dental reckoning and at about 9:00 AM I learned the procedure was not covered by my insurance.  Frown.  Anyway, while they were setting up, the nurses were talking back and forth as the anesthetic started flowing and their conversation was so WASPy that I couldn’t keep a straight face.  Such as the Leading-question-so-you’ll-ask-me-and-I’ll-look-amazing:
“So, what are you doing for Easter?”
“Not much, having some people over.  And you?”
“Every year new people come because of the great meals I prepare, this year I’ll have 24 people, I hope I can make enough deviled eggs”
“Ha ha (a little piece of her died inside and some day she’ll go at the other chick with an ice pick)”
So I start giggling and the following happened:
Me: Giggle
Nurse 1: The anesthetic must be taking affect.
Nurse 2: Uh… I haven’t started it yet.
Me: *Laughs to self again*

This happened twice more when they discussed how they prepared their hams and had an argument over butter vs. shortening.  This ended when the doctor came in and actually started the flow of drugs and slowly the nurses began making sense….

Generic NSAIDs come in a number of forms and all have well designed packages that mimic the brand named ones.  I was looking for Tylenol/acetaminophen and didn’t know if I should get extra strength or arthritis specific one that’s actually more powerful making the extra strength regular strength.  Almost all others have no normal strength and just extra strength except aspirin which has a regular strength, reduced strength and low strength, making regular extra and reduced regular.  Even better, Motrin has an all day version that lasts 8 hours and a regular that lasts 6, of which you can take two each period, except that you can only take 6 of the 8s and 8 of the 6s in the day and it still comes out to 4000mg but they manage to charge 20% more by calling it slow release and rebranded the regular as “fast acting” despite it being the same speed it always was.  Interestingly, the slow release is patented, while the generic equivalent is also slow release but unpatented and probably consists of a little coffee filter instead of some big money ubermolecule that controls space-time.  Luckily before my head popped and blood shot out my eye my prescription was filled and I could escape the pull of aisle 6B.

In a bit of hurry to camp this morning, I stopped at McDonalds to grab brunch and not normally purchasing breakfast I asked for a breakfast sandwich, I could get it, I asked for a Ranch wrap, I couldn’t get it, I asked for an apple pie, I couldn’t get it but saw the person next to me get a milk shake.  Apparently a milk shake qualifies as a breakfast food but a wrap isn’t?  The wrap is identical to a burrito except you replace the egg with a little piece of chicken and they offer McNuggets in the morning (I asked).  I should have asked that they wrap McNuggets in a tortilla and then demanded that their morning foods decisions make sense.  Who pops their head off the pillow and says “Coffee’s for faggots, I want a Shamrock shake to get me going”, they should serve it with a Danish so you could have a cavity by lunch.  Stupid McDonalds crazy food time decisions…

CIT tryout yielded another crop of staff hopefuls and a few new terms.  At one point, we had to move a large cart that had flat tires.
Kevin:  This going to be impossible to move, the tires are flat
Me: How impossible?  Impossible impossible or team-building impossible?
Kevin: Right, let’s team-build this cart past the car.
team-build (v. trans.)
1. To move or manipulate a large object or mass through combined group effort.
2. Word use to hide that an immanent task with be grueling, painful and something over which a staff coud commiserate for years to come.
I plan on having the staff team-build some tasks during training, tee hee hee.