Everybody Likes Parfaits

Today’s date is 10/11/12.  This won’t happen again for another 14,237 years or something

Close...it's like 100 years.  

And that's if you only write dates in the bizarre American fashion.  If you go with the rest of the world, who put the day before the month, it'll happen again in just under a month.  

Anyway, this is another one in my series of mini-rants about people who like to point out little quirks in the date, like when all the numbers line up or the like.  In fact, at precisely 7:89 PM tonight, the date could be written as 7:8:9:10:11:12.  How exciting is that?

Not very exciting when you notice one thing about that, but I guess that's beside the point.

  

Right!  So here we are celebrating another arbitrary calendar day.  I think this calls for ice cream. 

Please bail me out?

I'm not a tea thief!


Guilty conscience today, Jeremy?


Not really...


That means yes. When did you take up tea theft anyway?


I did not steal tea! It just kinda looked like I did if you weren't paying attention. And since people don't pay attention to the world, I had to go over the explanations in my head on my way back to the office. Let me explain...


Tell it to the judge.


So not long ago, I went down to the Adorably Tiny Cafeteria Thing In My Building to get a bottle of iced tea. It was morning, and breakfast time, which meant I needed to get a spoon. It's been pretty well documented here that my brain doesn't work properly in the morning, so I ended up grabbing the bottle of iced tea, paying for it, and leaving the ATCTIMB. Immediately upon stepping outside the cash register line, I realized I had forgotten a spoon, so I went back in the entrance, grabbed a spoon, and walked out. Perfectly legitimate.

Of course, if you weren't paying attention, all you saw was me walking out the entrance to the ATCTIMB with a bottle of iced tea, avoiding the cash registers. It may have appeared that I was stealing tea, when in fact I was not. Having left the entrance with my legitimately purchased iced tea and complimentary spoon, I walked to the stairwell contemplating if anyone had seen me leaving the entrance without paying for tea and thinking I was a tea thief...and the story I would have to tell if they asked if I was going to pay for the bottle. I also thought it would make for a pretty decent Sametime Status. So here you go.

That's all you need

Manliness through loopholes!


As much as Jeremy NEVER has his manliness questioned, he feels obligated to defend it often and repeatedly.


I do not own a hair dryer. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.*


* - This line stolen directly and shamelessly from Charles Dickens.
Also, nothing "wonderful" is going to come from this story regardless.


I've never really owned a hair dryer, and I basically never have need for one. I consider it a minor point of pride, akin to pointing out that I've never performed Karaoke in this hemisphere. Among my possessions is a refrigerator with an ice maker. It comes in very handy, and I've even learned to better tolerate having ice in my beverages. (I never used to like it, but now I don't actively hate it.) Well, not long ago the water line feeding the ice maker froze, so I no longer have the ability to make ice. I've located service manuals and whatnot for the ice maker, and could probably take it apart and defrost it manually myself if I really wanted to, but I came across a number of internetz forums that tell me precisely how to resolve the problem easily...by using a hair dryer.

So, my inevitable conundrum. Do I go out and buy a hair dryer I'll never use for its intended purpose just to fix my fridge, thus ending my streak of not owning a hair dryer? Do I take apart the fridge, asserting my manliness, but risking breaking stuff? I pondered.

On a separate quest, I found myself in a store noted for selling items for the Bedroom, Bathroom, and Other-Farther-Reaching-Places. I decided to look at the hair dryers and see how cheaply I could get one. Turns out, the lowest price I could get out with was $19. I found this to be unacceptably high for a one-time freezer job. My next stop on this trip was a new hardware store in the area that for strictly Blag purposes, let's call "Port Payload Tools." On my way into the store, I grabbed a flyer. Lo and Behold, they were having a grand opening sale. One of the items on sale, a 1500-Watt Heat Gun for $13.

I'm the proud owner of a brand new "heat gun" which is a manly name for a hair dryer, and I paid $6 less for it. I WIN!

It's a nice crackly hum

I’m starting to think that the only reason I check my mail every day is so I have something to put in the shredder.


Shredding mail is fun.


I very much agree. Most people shred mail items which may contain personal information that can be used for identity theft, like credit card applications and those moronic checks your bank sends you so that you can write a loan to yourself at an exorbitant interest rate. I don't want anybody using those, so I make it a point to shred them. I got a new mail shredder not all that long ago because it was on sale, my old shredder would jam up all the time, and the new one can shred CD's as well. No truth to the rumour that I only bought it because it was featured prominently on an episode of "The Office." (And unlike every other time on the Blag I've said there's no truth to a rumour, there ACTUALLY is no truth to this one.)

The new shredder is a blast. It takes care of business efficiently and substantially...turning an entire envelope full of whatever crap the credit card companies put in it to confetti in seconds. It's a bit of a treat for me, to be perfectly honest, so I look forward to shredding stuff when it comes in the mail. I may go overboard on occasion and shred those coupon books, magazine subscription fliers, town newspapers, business reply postcards, and the credit-card-sized pocket calendar I got from my oil delivery company. None of that needed to be shredded, but I felt happier turning it into shards than simply tossing it in the garbage, so in the slot it goes.

Here's the problem. I don't get any mail that is worthwhile. All of my bills and banking are done online, I rarely look through the coupon books, I don't want or need a new credit card, I'm happy(ish) with my tv and internet service, I have a perfectly reasonable cell phone plan. It's a little disappointing to know that there will be nothing good in the mailbox when I go outside to check it. The saving grace is knowing that whatever's inside has about a 90% chance of going into the shredder within 5 minutes.