Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 


I have no idea who drew this, but there's a free interwebs waiting for them....

Labels: GlenOS-tan and Cube-tan, Portal

posted by Phillip at 8:20 PM

 

I think it's safe to say that, as far as Tuesdays in my own personal lifetime go, this ranks among the most unpleasant. Nothing absolutely horrific has occurred of course (don't panic, as the Hitchhiker's Guide would tell you), but this is still a Tuesday I'm glad is over and would as soon forget.

It all began with...wait for it...snow. More specifically, me looking out the window and discovering a blizzard doing its best to cover the roads in icy slush. At which it was succeeding. This wouldn't have been quite so bad had my analogue alarm clock not gotten its hands stuck at 6:30 and subsequently not gone off at the required time. I woke up 20 minutes before I'd need to leave on a good day.

This being the not-a-good-day Tuesday, however, it took 40 minutes to get through a stretch of highway that normally takes 4 minutes. So there was the arriving to work late. Mel, on the other hand, got back home to discover that some visiting dipstick had taken our private, prepaid spot in the parking garage. (Fortunately, the Super was as livid as she was upon hearing this, and quickly located & dispatched the offending idiot's car.)

As I toiled away in a rather empty store with very little of anything to do except comment about how it was rather empty and that I had very little to do, Mel got to nurse our puppy. And when I say "nurse", I mean: clean up all the vomit and liquid poop left in the wake of Shady once again thinking that kitty poop is a super tasty treat.

...and now just to top the day off, we get to hear the sad news about actor Heath Ledger's death. I have to admit my own disheartened feelings; not only did I consider Ledger to be a fantastic actor, but he was also the top of Mel's "lust" list and subsequently my own "hot guys Mel may just have to fight me for, were I so inclined to lean that way and the opportunity availed itself" list. (And upon inspection, I don't think there's any way I can give that title a proper acronym.)

This is just turning into one hell of a Tuesday.

In the immortal words of the transcriber for the Bugger All This version of the Bible: "And ye did Moses spake unto the Israelites the laws of the Lord, and ye did the Israelites bow down and--Bugger all this for a lark. They aren't paying me enough to copy out this shite. I'm going to ye pub."

Labels: the evil that is tuesday, we shall miss you Heath Ledger

posted by Phillip at 9:10 PM

 


Plague Monkey news update: solid foods are back in style. I'll rejoice when I stop stuffing my mouth. Granted, with my lips still healing, it all has to be bite-sized, but it's amazing how much you can still eat when you simply carve it up into tiny blocks. This must be how Legovores taste the world.

Aaaand, in the last few days, a couple of curious yet familiar blisters appeared on my hands. Ominously familiar ones. The last time I saw these, I'd been knocked flat on my ass in a similar fashion...by Hand Foot & Mouth. Suddenly a lot of the other symptoms make sense. (I was certain I've never bit my tongue in my sleep before, but hey, there's a first time for anything.) Looks like it came back for round 2, though happily my immune system seemed to perform better on the rematch. Hey, at least this time I didn't miss work from being too sick to do anything beyond sleep in a piss-poor style, so that's a plus in my books.

If there's ever a round 3, God forbid, my body had better kick that virus' ass. And offer free popcorn for the spectacle. You're all invited, but you'll have to supply your own butter.

But onto other things. Today I got to miss work for the Head Office-approved reason of renewing my St. John's Ambulance CPR course. Aside from the meeting room we were situated in being right directly behind an in-mall ice rink (and I literally mean right behind: if we looked out the windows, we could see the benches the teams sat on), which makes a nastily cold day even colder no matter how many sweaters you've got, I rather enjoyed it. I got paid to sit down and not fraternize with customers, our instructor was very enjoyable, the course material was worth learning...and I got to be pregnant.

You boggle, I see. There's a legitimate reason for this happening. At least one beyond the usual "random act of fangirl at the keyboard."

At one point, I was "volunteered" to be pregnant for a demonstration of how to assist specific types of choking victims. Hey, I was amused. It made the situation even funnier when our instructor told the woman Hiemliching me, "No, that's too high, you have to reach around him just below the nipple line."

Where else in this blog can you have other people talk about my nipples? (And not in a disparaging "put a shirt back on, you're scaring the cat" sort of way either.)

Labels: hand foot and mouth 2 (the mouthening), how to save a choking MPreg

posted by Phillip at 8:52 PM

 


The bad news about this bit of nowhere: it involves more sad and macabre details about bodily orifices (but happily they're all still above the equator, so to speak). The good news is that hopefully, as of tomorrow, it will be the last I must suffer this rather unpleasant indignity. So far, every other year I seem to get some tragedy involving my mouth and my subsequent inability to consume virtually anything. (And no, it's not because I've got my foot thoroughly lodged up there.)

Makes me eager for 2010....

But things are healing nicely, albeit slowly. Once again, the less I talk the better off I am, but naturally my retail vocation enjoys slapping me across the face for such whimsical notions. As of this evening, the wound/sore/"are you sure it's not infected?" has been reduced to a piffly size, and I barely register anything beyond mild discomfort if food or drink passes over it. The roof of my mouth has also healed over to the same results. It's just the insides of the corner of my mouth that are still, shall we say "twitchy", and I think it may yet be another day or two before I can go hog wild at a buffet table without fear of terrible pain as food passes down my gullet.

Hey, be nice. I can see you rolling your eyes there. It's been a week and a half since I've been able to eat...well, anything. The last 5-7 days I've been living off soup broth through a straw. And chocolate milk. Oh God, the chocolate milk! I am ever so grateful the grocery store had it on sale; I've downed close to 8 litres of it since Saturday. (Mel forbade me from having the last bag, since she's had...I think a small glass of it herself.)

But in all honest,y I needed that chocolate milk. And not just for the tastiness. No, in truth it helped coat the stomach and kept hunger at bay. Which worked out great, since in the last few days as my mouth as gotten better, my appetite's started to return with a vengeance.

You have to understand the tragedy of all this: this past Sunday evening, the store had it's belated We Survived Commercialmas party at the Mongolian Grill. There were six of us in attendance, and I did not, could not eat a single thing. Sure, it saved on the bill, but everyone kept mentioning how guilty they felt eating in front of me. And yet here's the scary part: at the time, my ailment was still pronounced enough that my appetite was shot dead before it could even try to breathe. I was actually able to stare at any given plate of heaping food and not feel a pang of hunger--or even a stab of jealousy over wanting to eat it myself.

Some of you who know how monstrous my appetite is are no doubt cringing in fear at this mind-boggling image.

But yes, soup is being had now. Tonight I dined of chicken noodle soup--a definite step up from chicken-flavoured broth. What will tomorrow bring? Hopefully the ability to eat a sammich. And after that...oooh, baby, I've got to make up for lost time.

So tune in next time, when you'll probably be able to hear our ignominious blogger say: "I swear, Mel, the rabbit must have escaped out of her cage in the middle of the night, opened the fridge and guzzled down that last bag of chocolate milk. Honest!"


Today's Lesson: the opening animation to Katamari Damacy still makes no sense, no matter how many times I watch it. (But damned if the King of All Cosmos isn't fabulous for it!)

Labels: desperately seeking sammiches, return of the mouth of pain

posted by Phillip at 7:53 PM

 


2008 seems to have it in for me. At least January does. I'm beginning to suspect that the end of the year is going to be phenomenal, and as a result all the counter-balancing unpleasantness is being squeezed in the first few months.

About 3-4 days ago, I woke up only to discover I'd managed to tear a small chunk out of my tongue. Don't ask me how it happened. I still don't know, and I'd love to find out if only to build a time machine, go back 3-4 days and stop this from happening. So now my tongue is in the stage of healing I can only describe as exquisite pain. Granted it's a little hyperbolic, but depending on what I ingest, it feels as though I can sense a few hundred nerve endings in the wounded area, and they are all very angry with me.

This wouldn't be too problematic, but there's more. I'm guessing that in the first day or two, I subconsciously chewed on the inside of my cheeks in order to make sure my tongue didn't get crunched between my teeth as I sleep. And all that has led to some variation of swelling and blistering on either side of my mouth, making for even more pain and a general inability to digest anything that can't be sucked through a straw.

(Soup for the win?)

I can tell that things are healing. That's always a good sign, but I rather miss being able to eat solid food and having a mouth filled something other than stabbing pain. And the talking. There's a karmic bitch that's coming back to bite me. Due to the placement of my current wounds, talking could be best described as: "please don't do it, it hurtses us." Naturally, my job just has to feature me talking to a great many customers over the course of a single shift. Dammit.

I can manage the talking, it's just that I sound like a special needs kid, or that I have the lisp from hell. The longer I can go without talking, I'm hoping the faster it'll heal. But, customers being customers, they're having none of that and are insisting on stopping by and asking many an insipid question.

Mel's a bit divided over the whole thing, spousal concerns for my well-being notwithstanding. Sadly, I'm rather limited in talking, so conversing with me has grinded to a near halt. On the other hand, she's been cheery over the similar halting of my smart-ass comments. (I've been trying to hone my Silent Bob miming skills, but all it gets me is a she's enjoying this far too much "Timmy's in the well again, isn't he?" response.)

And the drooling. Dear lord, the drooling. I don't know why, but the current state of my mouth has resulted in a near catastrophic overload of saliva. I feel like every 5 minutes, I'm having to swallow another mouthful of spit, or hack it out into a sink. I'm starting to feel like the dog from Turner & Hooch, only without the need to tackle someone who's brought me a muffin.

Hm? You've had enough descriptions of my ailing body?

Okay, fine, but you don't know what you're missing...

Labels: with teeth (but without tongue or cheeks)

posted by Phillip at 8:49 PM

 

Well, for those of you completely out of touch with, say, everything, it's 2008. And already things have managed to be buggered up to a point where I'm almost tempted to say, "Well, the year can only go up from here." But that's not entirely true, and really just invites disaster--not unlike your drunken buddies telling you to stuck a live octopus down your pants.

The good of it is that this doesn't involve customers. The about-as-good-as-that-Aeon
-Flux-movie is that it involves our Head Office changing a few key policies. Not that I can discuss any of these policies here, just to be on the safe side. But it is safe to say that at a point where employee morale might be reaching a tragic low, the corporate peaknuckles have handed us a figurative, live hand-grenade and are telling us that it's supposed to be missing the cotterpin.

I see revolt on the horizon, and I am saddened by the fact that this is neither surprising nor something I am entirely against. Provided I haven't had the chance to bail out prior to the exodus, yes it will be problematic with the inevitable staff turnover, but I do see why everyone would be ready to walk out. Hell, with everything Head Office has been pulling, it almost frightened me when, upon learning of the newly-installed policies, I was filled not with anger, or even rage, but plain and simple contempt.

The outrage I might have once possessed is long gone; this is something I didn't think they'd have the sheer audacity to pull off, but alas, they've almost gleefully proven me wrong. Now I know I cannot go into greater details for corporate confidentiality reasons, so here's a helpful comparison to the policy in question: I can only liken it to being beset upon by a horde of undead squirrels and having them sodomize you with the business end of a rusty bread knife. Sure, it makes for interesting conversational topics when you're together with friends, but that doesn't mean you want to have the scars that go along with the anecdotes.

Today may very well be a day that changes everything.

Let's hope that when the proverbial grenade goes off, I'm not the one holding it.

Labels: corporate lurv

posted by Phillip at 9:29 PM

 


Well, it's the first day of a brave new year, which is just as well since the last couple of days in 2007 were rather disappointing. Not to belittle or bother many of you out there tired of the anti-shoppers rant...but why must so many people be that desperate to shop on December 31? Our store ended up doing just as much sales as during its busiest pre-Commercialmas heydays, and everyone just absolutely had to have everything and ask every possible annoying question. (I swear, they all met up together earlier in the day and assigned each group/person a different silly-assed question, since no 2 stupid questions were asked by the same person.)

I distinctly recall 2006 going gently into the night,with shoppers more than content to plague the grocery stores instead of us.

But I rant.

I'm already looking forward to 2008 with the unbridled enthusiasm of someone who hasn't been beaten down by months January through March. Sure, I might end up horribly botching that diet I've been meaning to get back on. Yes, the garage may not entirely get cleaned out in the strictest sense of the words. And certainly, killing Michael Flatley in order to secure my status as the rightful and true Lord of the Dance may have to get put on the backburner (again).

However, my one great endeavour is to stop griping so much about work and how much customers irritate me.

Oh...right.

Wow. Talk about awkwardly destroying a resolution before you even made the resolution. But in my defence, the customers started it.


...but in all seriousness (but not Sirius-ness, since I don't have satellite radio), 2007 had its high and low points, like all the years before it. As my mind's still rather foggy from the Xmas season, it's probably better to wait on retrospection. One can't dwell on the past, but it's hard to know where you're going or why you're headed in that direction if you don't look back & see where you've already been. Philosophical, yes? (I think I paraphrased it off a fortune cookie I got this past summer.)

Mind you, there are a number of realistic goals to be set and (ideally) achieved before 2008 is out. A new vocation, the Project's completion and becoming the one true Lord of the Dance are my top three. Those, and getting people to acknowledge the sexiness that is my ass.

What?

You'd actually think I would start off the year that seriously?



Today's Lesson: the cake is a lie.

Labels: lies my OS toldme about cake, new year resolutions

posted by Phillip at 4:26 PM