December 2007 Archives

My friend Jenni is coming to visit me in Seattle for New Year's, and I am most excited about this.  We've been plotting and planning for a couple of weeks, and we officially decided a few days ago that we will be defecting to Canada for a couple of days.  We've been trying to line up the details, one of which is the increased security at the border, and how you can no longer just say "Um, yeah I'm...American?  Sure." at the border crossing and be let through.

Which sucks, because Jenni's passport is expired.  So she has been on spazz patrol, scrambling to get a renewal expedited.  Apparently she had an appointment at the passport office this morning, so I got a frantic message from her when I arrived at work that we needed to dig up some sort of supporting documentation, stat.  Options:

1. Hotel reservation - The problem: The hotel we are staying at is a very small operation, and they don't have automated email confirmations.  I begged the lady on the phone to send me something, anything.  This request (and presumably the concept of email) was quite confusing to her and I suspected the email confirmation would consist of something like a message saying "yeah, you have room 131 on 1/4" from her personal AOL account.  This email never arrived.
   
   
2. Train booking - The problem: When making a booking on Amtrak's website, if you're crossing the border you have to enter the passport ID numbers of all the travellers as part of the checkout process.  I don't have my passport with me today, and obviously Jenni doesn't have one, period.  So we can't get a train reservation without a passport, and Jenni can't get a passport without a train reservation.  Fuck.
   

Jenni had to leave for her appointment as I was still on the phone trying to figure all this out, so she wasn't able to print anything to take with her to the passport office.  I managed to talk to a human at Amtrak, and she was great and got me set up with a reservation under the stipulation that I call back with passport information in a couple of days.  This Amtrak angel also sent an email confirmation, which I promptly and frantically forwarded to Jenni hoping like hell they might let her check her email from their computer really quickly at the passport office, just long enough to print the proof they needed.

So it was a very hectic morning.  All this buzzing around and stressing out....then silence.  Finally Jenni calls me excitedly explaining that she got everything taken care of, and she would get her passport next week!  Yay!  I just assumed she was able to print that Amtrak confirmation.  No.  The only documentation Jenni was able to print before she left for the office was a stupid itinerary I crudely put together in Google Spreadsheets.  Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the "official documentation" that the passport office ACCEPTED AND PUT IN JENNI'S OFFICIAL FILE:

I have no idea whether to be totally impressed or totally disappointed in the passport office.

So I celebrated Christmas with Matt and Chris last night so we could do our gift swap before Matt and I left town.  That Matt...we always joke about he is a superhero and we're just waiting to figure out what his superpower is.  But seriously his superhero power is his memory, and his ability to parlay his good memory into buying good presents.  Seriously, he is the best, most thoughtful present-buyer this side of the Mississippi.  Look what I got!

#1: Golden Girls "Stay Golden" T-shirt that I've almost bought for myself 20 times, but never did:

#2: The most kickass pan in the world from my favorite online shop in the world (fredflare.com).  It's a brownie pan specially designed so ALL the brownies can be edge pieces!  I've been wanting this pan so bad, too!  And Matt being Matt, also included a supplementary follow-up gift of brownie mix and eggs, so I could go ahead and make the brownies right there on the spot!!



AND I also got a promissory note for a special field trip to go ice skating!  Would the wonderfulness ever end???

No!!!  Because then we watched the Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas special, and I saw this sweater that Joan Rivers wore:

So here's what happened.  The City of Seattle recently developed a new tram/trolley/streetcar system that connects the South Lake Union area to downtown.  So we now have a South Lake Union Trolley.  Apparently their marketing team didn't fully think through that, and hurriedly launched a campaign to brand it as the "Seattle Streetcar."  Sadly, this is a total waste of time because we're all obviously going to call it the SLUT no matter what they paint across the side of it.

The SLUT officially launched its service last Thursday, with great fanfare and mayorial blessings.  And this morning the SLUT had its first accident when an SUV ran a red light and smacked into it.  When one of the guys at work saw the article on the Seattle PI website, he issued a challenge for everyone to come up with a sluttier headline.  My co-workers seriously delivered:

• SUV "Money Shot" Leaves Young SLUT Worse For The Wear
• SLUT gets banged - only skidmarks left behind
• Slut gets banged in the AM!!!!!
• Trucker sees red light, bangs first slut he sees
• SLUT forced to take break after unexpected early morning bang
• Following a morning incident, SLUT operates without protection
• SLUT Rammed After Ball Bearing Mishap
• SLUT is FUCKED!
• Morning quickie leaves local slut bruised and battered
• The new SLUT goes down for 30 full minutes as commuters look on
• Barely Legal SLUT gets knocked up

I was recently going through a special document I have called "Quotations from Various Smurfs.doc."  In it I found this important list of instructional tips for how to succeed in bowling.  I remember going to the bowling alley alone one day, purely to work on my form and do a self-assessment.  Here are the fruits of that research:

1. move index finger
2. get out of own way / drag feet
3. opposite arm flare
4. follow through
5. crouch / lunge
6. flip off opponent

I hope you find this useful in your bowling efforts.

So the lion said I had to go to the holiday party at work.  (Not that it took much arm twisting.)  Parties at my company sound fairly legendary, and all sorts of mysterious clues had been dropped over the past few weeks.  "Wear your coat."  "If you need to be back by a certain time because of sitters, let us know so we can arrange for it."  "We're meeting in the lobby here, and do NOT be later than 7:30!"

Theories abounded.  "Booze cruise!!"  "We're totally going to the zoo to drink with lions."  "We're walking to the Space Needle and bungee jumping off of it into a vat of champagne!"  "I think they're going to just let us ride back and forth all night on the newly inaugurated S.L.U.T." 

Not so.  The office party was actually...at the office.  Which wasn't so bad, because they actually did a pretty rad (and fast) job of morphing the place into something fantastical.  Every conference room had a theme: hookah lounge, hot chocolate corner, karaoke zone, sno-cone palace, face paint central, etc.  It was kind of like going to the fair.  Only you're at work.  And everything is free.  Especially drinks.

I'll skip most of the stories, because they're no different than most drunken work party stories.  But I will tell you about my shoes.  On Saturday morning after the party I noticed I tracked mud into my house.  Monday someone reminisced about the cake that was brought in towards the end of the party (cake that I did not remember).  Tuesday (today) I was straightening shoes in my closet and saw that I must have stepped in a swamp of wet toilet paper on the night of the party, because the shoes I had worn that night had white crusty shit around the heels.

Then it all dawned on me:

I suddenly remembered the cake fight that broke out!

That was not dried toilet paper mache on my shoes, it was FROSTING!!!

That was not mud that I tracked in, it was CHOCOLATE!!

A My Little Ponies stage show???  I can't decide how I feel about this:

1. Full of child-like wonder?
2. Amazed someone smoked enough crack to come up with costumes and choreography for something this retarded?
3. Creeped the fuck out?