Scenes from a classy restaurant

The following are actual conversations I overheard while in line at the classiest restaurant ever, and possible location for Mike and Alison's rehearsal dinner: Arby's.

There were two young brothers in line with with their parents in front of me. One was about eight, the other about six. The older brother was asking the younger one where various food items come from. Here are parts of their actual conversation:

Older Brother: Where does ham come from?

Younger Brother: Chicken!

Older Brother: Where does ketchup come from?

Younger Brother: Plants! (I'll give him partial credit for that one)

Older Brother: Where does bread come from?

Younger Brother: Oh, I know... Cows - the booby part!

HAHAHAHAHA! It took a lot for me not to bust out laughing. So maybe the kids weren't the brightest bulbs, but I have a feeling that it isn't their fault. While the kids were debating where chicken nuggets come from, their mother was placing their order at the counter:

Mother: I'll have a Bacon Beef & Cheddar with American cheese.

Cashier: Um, the Bacon Beef & Cheddar comes with cheddar cheese.

Mother: But I only like American cheese.

Cashier: We don't have American cheese here.

Mother: (disgusted sigh) You don't have any American cheese at all?

Cashier: No, only cheddar.

Mother: (after a long pause) FINE! Forget it. Give me an order of mozzarella sticks.

I'm surprised she didn't order the mozzarella sticks made with American cheese.

My Brain = Mush

Ugh, I have been such a blog slacker, but its not on purpose, I swear!

In the last two weeks, three of the eight people in my office decided to take their vacations all at once, leaving me to deal with way more BS than usual. In fact, the level of BS I have dealt with at work has far exceeded my threshold of how much BS I can take without (A) drinking or (B) punching someone in the face - yet miraculously I've only had a couple of sips of a chocolate martini and everyone in my office still has all of their facial bones in tact (for now). In addition, our database software, which contains oh, only all of the company’s operating data, decided to kick the bucket on the exact day that our entire database/IT department (all two of them) left for vacation. So I was left to deal with the disaster on my own, which was so much fun considering that I am neither a database person nor an IT person. It was great. I love my job.

I've also been insanely busy with my other job, otherwise known as the job in which I deal with The Most Aggravating People on the Planet, but I don't even have the heart to get into that right now. So, basically, my mind has turned to mush and I can barely put together a coherent sentence right now (as you can probably tell). I actually have a couple of posts in the works that I'll try to get up as soon as things get back to normal,* and I'll try to be a better blogger from now on. Thanks for your patience!

*"Normal" being a relative word, of course. As in, I only want to hurl my computer out of the window twice a day as opposed to the four to five times a day I do now.

Congratulations...

...To Mike and Alison!
Happy Engagement! Alison, we knew you were the right girl for Mike when you willingly agreed to make real snowmen in some strangers' front yard while they were on vacation - in the middle of September, in seventy-five degree weather. If that weren't impressive enough, you then endured hours upon hours of (Rock)band practice under the severe regime of the Band Nazi, and were no worse for the wear. You are a good sport!

A bit of advice to the bride and groom: Don't feel like you have to listen to any one's advice if you don't want to. It's your wedding, just do whatever floats your boat. And Mike, by the words "your wedding" I mean "Alison's wedding" of course, so just do whatever she wants! I can't wait 'til your wedding!

...To Michael Phelps!

Congratulations on wining your eleventy-seventh gold medal and making Olympic history, an amazing accomplishment at the age of 23! And I mean that with absolute sincerity. It's unfortunate, though, that your countless hours of intense training never included lessons on how to keep your tongue in your mouth. I guess the US Olympic swim team coaches can't cover everything....

JHabs, these are for you!

Helpful hint: Don't Google "Michael Phelps with his tongue sticking out" when you are at work. Or ever.

OK, this has to be an old picture, or else he has the fastest growing facial hair ever. I could just imagine NBC breaking in to their coverage of " 'Gymnastics', or whatever the hell they call that other sport that doesn't involve Michael Phelps" with breaking news: MICHAEL PHELPS FORGOT TO SHAVE TODAY! MICHAEL PHELPS FORGOT TO SHAVE TODAY! Here is Bob Costas with a live report! Also, his tongue is sticking out in this picture.

Nice action shot. So his tongue is not technically sticking out on this one, but you know it was on its way... Also, his goggles are creeping me out!

This is definitely NOT Michael Phelps. You can tell because there is no tongue sticking out of his mouth. Believe it or not, there are other men on the US Olympic swim team, including this fine young man named Ryan Lotche. I think I will make him my Olympics boyfriend, but I may have to fight off JHabs for him!

Sorry, Ricky.

$9.12

So, last week one of our venues/sales partners called because they were having trouble reconciling the commissions that our company has paid them over the last year. There were some things in the contract that were not too clear, and the director of the venue (whom I shall call Crazy Whacknut or CW for short) seemed to think we owed them more commissions than we had already paid. Because I had 72 better things to do nothing better to, my boss sent me to meet with CW to deal with it.

This is pretty much how the conversation went:

CW: You owe us this. Me: No, we owe you that.
CW: You pay 6%. Me: no we pay 5%.
CW: My records indicate... Me: Well, MY records indicate...
CW: Klq8cdhbaba. Me: Prhy74g!(*&Hhgjunnok/.
CW: Oh no she di'nt. Me: Oh yes she DID!

I must have missed legal contract decoding day at law school, because it was really difficult to determine what we actually owed. Oh wait, I didn't go to law school, so what the hell was I doing trying to figure this out? Anyway, after several hours we came to the agreement that we owed the vendor an additional $9.00 in commission, or about .00003% of the $3,000,000 sales for the year. Really. I'm not kidding.

Feeling half irritated that I had just wasted three hours of my life over $9.00 and half smug that we didn't owe them more, I went back to the office and asked accounting to cut a check for the $9.00. Then I emailed CW to confirm the payment and I sent her all of the backup information and calculations just to be safe.

The next day I got a reply from CW. Basically, it said that our numbers still didn't match exactly for the year, and because she is a "Type-A Personality" she wanted to let me know that the exact amount we owed was not $9.00, but $9.12.

$9.12

$9.12 ?!?

$9 EFFING .12??

Hmmm, I never knew that the "A" in "Type-A Personality" stood for "Asshat". I never gave CW the satisfaction of a reply. Instead, I found out from accounting that they had cut the original check for $9.00 but hadn't mailed it yet, so I took a dime and two pennies from my own purse and gave it to the accountant, who taped them to the check.

My employer can pay me back later.


(Note: I totally stole the word "Asshat" from this awesome blog...)

An Open Letter to US Airways Customer Service

Dear US Airways,

I have a couple of small requests that may help improve your customer service.

First of all, when sticking travelers on a small-ass plane so tiny that these passengers have to sit evenly across the plane to ensure that the plane will remain airborne, please do not have your flight attendant come over the microphone and ask for volunteers to move from the front of the plane to the back of the plane to "balance the wings of the aircraft". Doing so may cause certain typically non-nervous fliers to feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with being stuck inside a small-ass wing-unbalanced airplane for two hours. If the fate of the aircraft is resting on the willingness of two old men in Hawaiian shirts to move from row 2 to row 11 so as to "balance the wings" may I suggest that you use a BIGGER AIRPLANE. If this is not possible, please remember that sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Passengers don't need to know about wing imbalances, engine problems, de-icing or that the landing gear is being held together by duct tape. A better approach would be for the flight attendant to say: "The first two passengers in row 2 to move back to row 11 will win a super cool prize!" and then give the winners a super cool prize, preferably an item from the "Sky Mall" catalogue. This makes a fun game out of it and no one needs to know that the plane will fly all willy-nilly if the people don't move their seats.

Also, in the event that a certain customer whose first name rhymes with "picky" and whose last name starts with a "T" inadvertently leaves his driver's license on the airplane after arriving for a layover in Philadelphia, please do not wait until said traveler and his wife are at the opposite end of the terminal, which is about 5.6 miles from the gate, before making the announcement over the loud speaker. And, once the customer his wife arrive back at the gate after sprinting the entire 5.6 miles to retrieve the lost license, it is helpful to actually have an employee working at the gate, not huddled in the corner reading a novel and ignoring the customers at the gate. And, if the employee is too absorbed in his novel to even look up when asked for help and tells the customer that his license is "somewhere on the desk" it would be helpful if the license were actually somewhere on the desk. And if the customer should have the nerve to interrupt the employee again to tell him that the license is not on the desk, it would be helpful if the employee didn't roll his eyes and say "it's the small plastic thing with your picture on it" in a sarcastic tone before finally getting up and realizing that the lost license was not, in fact, on the desk, but in a drawer. Call me crazy, but I am fairly certain that the TSA frowns upon random customers rifling through the desks and drawers at the terminal gates to retrieve lost items. They may consider this to be a possible breach of security, thereby making the customer's trip even less pleasant.

Thank you for your time. I hope you find these suggestions helpful.
Dames
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More fun adventures from our trip to Nashville coming soon! I bet y'all can't wait!

This post is about rice cakes. Run! Run away while you still can.

I have an announcement to make. I love the Stew Leonard's rice cakes. I don't know why. I am not really a rice cake eater, but there is just something in that light and crispy texture makes these so addicting. There may not be much there in the taste department (come on, they're rice cakes after all) but they are sooo crispy and satisfying. And although each one is only a little bit smaller than a dinner plate, they still only have 17 calories each, which is a good thing because I devour them morning, noon and night. Did I mention I love them? I may need to get a grip.


Yeah, I actually Googled "pictures of Stew Leonard's rice cakes" and this is what I got, one picture, which is approximately one picture more than I thought I would get.

Of course, I've found plenty of ways to obliterate their low -calorie count. I've tried them topped with fresh fruit and whipped cream, dipped in yogurt, spread with spinach dip, and once, in a holy-crap-its-midnight-and-I-still-have-hours-worth-of-work-to-do moment of weakness, I dipped them in Hershey's syrup while standing in front of the open fridge. Don't judge me.

So, at work yesterday I had a craving for something sweet, but had nothing to snack on other than some of my trusty rice cakes. Suddenly, I had an epiphany: cinnamon-sugar rice cakes! Happy day! Sadly, I soon found that our office cupboard contained only the following items: hand wipes, a thousand packets of Sweet & Low, hot sauce, a first aid kit, an empty Kashi cereal box, a petrified english muffin and tube of toothpaste. (Yes, this is a corporate office for a restaurant!) No cinnamon or real sugar to be found, so, begrudgingly, I ate the rice cakes dipped in toothpaste.

Ok, not really, I ate them plain and they were still damn good, for rice cakes.

Thank you for reading an entire post about rice cakes. You may now resume with your normal lives.

Sincerely,
Dames

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P.S. (and this has nothing to do with rice cakes, thank God) -

Rest in peace Estelle Getty! Thank you for being a friend.

Little Jen - you didn't happen to inquire about her recently, did you?

My iPod is a Genius!

I don't normally spend the time to fill out all of those annoying Myspace survey thingies that come my way, but I thought this one was kinda cool. Basically what you do is set your iPod (or Zune or generic mp3 player, we don't discriminate here) to shuffle and answer the following questions by scrolling through the songs. Each new song that pops up is the answer to the question. NO CHEATING by scrolling past songs that don't work for the question.

I did it and I have so say the results surprisingly funny, and some of them were right on. I guess my iPod is a genius!

Here are the results of my survey...

1) How am I feeling today?
Only Wanna Be With You - Hootie & the Blowfish

2) How will I feel getting married?
Well, I'm already married, but the answer is Marshall Mathers - Eminem (hmmmm?)

3) What is my best friend's theme song?
Lord Have Mercy on My Soul - Black Oak Arkansas. (hahaha)

4) High school is...
My Generation - Limp Bizkit (well, almost)

5) I am...
At This Point in My Life - Tracey Chapman (how redundant... Thanks iPod!)

6) How is today?
Getting Better - Beatles (It will get better once I finish at the Dentist!)

7) What is in store for this week?
Shiny Happy People - REM (oh, goody, showers!)

8) What song best describes my parents?
Bubble Toes - Jack Johnson (um, gross, no.)

9) How is my life going?
Gangsta Shit - Snoop Dog with Loon (hahahaha again!)

10) What song will they play at my funeral?
No Woman No Cry - Bob Marly & The Wailers (thanks alot!)

12) My friends think...
Africa Bamba - Santana (ok then)

13) My life is lived...
Tangled - Maroon 5

14) This makes me happy...
Waterfalls - TLC (I could write a whole blog about this song, and why it is in my iPod)

15) What should I do with my life?
Fast Car - Tracy Chapman(wait, this isn't Ricky's iPod, is it?)

16) I'll be happy when...
Why Georgia - John Mayer (Actually, I will be happy when this song is deleted from my playlist because I HATE it)

17) What is some good advice?
Not Fair - Shaggy

18) What do I think my current theme song is?
Perfect Blue Buildings - Counting Crows (like my house? Haha, NOT)

19) What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Jump Jive An'Wail - The Brian Setzer Orchestra

20) The type of men/women I like are...
You Oughta Know - Alanis Morisette (Touche, iPod, touche!)

21) How will you feel on your wedding day?
Again, I am already married, but: Killing Me Softly - The Fugees (boooo!)

22) What should I do with my love life?
Let it Be - Nick Cave (Now I am getting scared)

23) What will your neighborhood be like?
Animal - Pearl Jam (Like all of the animals in my backyard?)

24) What will your dying words be?
Cannonball - Damien Rice (apparently I will die during the Revolutionary War)