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!

 

Our District Manager and our handy/cynical maintenance guy Tom arrived at the store today. After taking one look at the new location, the best description of their facial expressions I can give you would be: Oh dear God!!! (And not in a Sunday worship service sort of way, either.)

The crux of it remains thus: our Head Office, being the cunning strategists that they are, decided to wait until 2 weeks before we must be out of our store to start planning how to renovate our temporary location. Of course, the magical upper management world in which they live does not exactly interact well with the laws of...well...reality.

You see, in order for our temp spot to be ready, the leftover bits from the previous owners need to be removed. And there's a lot of those, notably the half-circle of metal covering a good portion of one wall. Plus, we'll need to add in our own features: a cash desk, shelves, slat walls and more shelves. No matter how spectacular Tom's skills are, accomplishing all this in less than two weeks is...

...well, I have a better chance of all of you bowing down and sincerely proclaiming how sexy my ass is. That's how bad the odds are.

At the very least, my DM is starting to kick at the Head Office tires to get something thrown into motion. But she is rather frazzled over the fact that Head Office knew about this whole situation months ago, and has already had 2 weeks to start the revamping, if they so felt inclined.

And I can't exactly say this deal saddens or surprises me. After all, for the last three years I've seen how our Head Office handles the temporary winter kiosks (which is to say: badly). Soon enough we'll see if Tom devolves into "TOM SMASH!" mode and destroys Head Office for their sheer smegheadery, since he is the one who has to literally clean up after their procrastination.

I'll keep this little bit of nowhere updated as the incompetence and aggravation rolls in.

But in the meantime, there is meatloaf that must be consumed....

Labels: did he just make a joke about how unsexy his ass is?, the store move of doom

posted by Phillip at 5:00 PM

 


In the first full weekend I've had off since late July (ah, back to school, how you love to abuse me and my position), Mel & I have been partying it up in Brantford to help celebrate Gabe's birthday. Most notably, last night (Saturday) saw the party being held in the nearby camping/trailer grounds, complete with party guests, streamers, balloons, cake (not a lie, to flog the good ol' meme, but it was very tender and moist) and more delicious burgers & sausages than you can shake a pair of tongs at.

Now if you ask anyone else who was there, it was probably harder to tell who was the bigger kid in the group: Gabe and his 3 other guests, or me. We spent a good part of the evening creating art with Mr PotatoHeads (I had a 4-armed monstosity with a giant mouth filled with scary-looking teeth), creating more art by attempting to wear the Mr PotatoHead accessories, building giant Duplo towers and then smashing them apart, and running amok with not only balloons, but the collapsible tent-houses Kevin brought along.

Though it did devolve to a point where I wore the tent-house and chased all the kids around the campground for a half-hour. And as all encounters between a group of kinds and myself inevitably go, it ended with me being dogpiled. I myself had a blast, but damn, my thighs now despise me for all the piggybacking, squatting and hopping around. Any flexibility is gone, and a mighty protest erupts from my legs whenever I try to stand up.

All in all, a great party.

Aaaaand, as an added bonus, we had this converstion in the van as we returned home. Inside were Kevin, Dana, Mel, myself, Kevin's mom and Keanna (Gabe's 4 year-old partymate). Now Keanna is very whip-smart for her age when it comes to wit. So it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise as it did to hear...

Kevin: [to Dana] "Oh, did you remember our digital camera."

Dana: "I gave it to Phil."

Me: "Not to worry, it's here inside my coat pocket. I've been keeping it warm next to the radiance of my awesomeness. Would you like it back?"

Keanna: [without even pausing] "No, you can keep it."


Ladies and gentlemen, I just got burned by a 4 year-old. I think that's a new record/standard for me, and I have to say, I am rather impressed. (I had been setting the burn up for Dana or Mel, but to hear Keanna beat them to the punch...wow, I have a new apprentice to train. After all, six years ago Mel could barely get any sort of retort in no matter how brilliant an opening I left for her, and now she's nailing them even before I realize I've left the opening.)


Now if you'll excuse me, I'm starting to get horribly addicted to the music & lyrics for Repo: The Genetic Opera (helped in no small part to Anthony Stewart Head playing the eponymous character.) Between this and TV Tropes, my soul doesn't stand much of a chance. (Well, whatever part of it's left at least.)

Labels: Gabe's 4th birthday, no sexybaka--denied, wherein horrible overuses of parentheses ensue

posted by Phillip at 10:29 AM

 





For those of you who have no idea why this should be so funny and relevant for this little bit of nowhere, may I present a (literally) blast from the past. Scroll down the page to the bottom and prepare yourself for...

http://karaoke_vicious.blogspot.com/2003/12/whee-hah-that-one-blowed-up-real-good.html

Labels: lids on blenders and the lack thereofs

posted by Phillip at 8:11 PM

 


It's Monday night, and due to the hype of the ads, Mel & I are morbidly watching CSI: Miami to see if someone finally managed to succeed in giving thousands of people what they would love to see: someone killing David Caruso.

(Spoiler warning: he's still in the opening credits.)

But if one were to attempt to kill the character Horatio Caine, I think we have been given the means by this episode in the form of a dramatic pan shot revealing that Caine's trademark Dramatic Acting Sunglasses have a bullet hole through them. You see, this is why Caine is indestructible in the series: he is in fact immortal, and his power source/mortal weakness is in his sunglasses. You destroy his sunglasses first, and only then can you destroy Caine.

It's a twisted reversal of "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World" from Heroes. Or "The cheerleader saves the world (repeatedly)" from Buffy.

Now if you'll excuse me, TV Tropes demands that I feed it the last couple of pieces of my soul. Mmmmm...soul....

Labels: Shoot the glasses shoot the Caine

posted by Phillip at 7:32 PM

 

I regret to inform you that I cannot spend very much time with you, as my soul is currently being devoured by tvtropes.org



P.S. To Saturday: I would be most grateful if you could refrain from having people stabbed in my apartment's parking lot while I am out at work. Actually, if you could just refrain from having this sort of thing happen in my complex, period, it would be much appreciated.

Labels: Damn you Sean Gaffney damn you

posted by Phillip at 8:22 PM

 


Why, you ask? Well, to answer I give you four little words: Jim Henson Smithsonian Exhibit.

http://www.sites.si.edu/henson/


If this somehow makes it to Toronto's ROM, I'll be there on opening day with Kevin as we kill & eat our way to the front of the line.

Labels: Jim Henson Smithsonian Exhibit

posted by Phillip at 4:52 PM

 


It's the Labour Day Monday, which naturally means two things. First and foremost, it's a day off for Mel & myself, wherein we need not worry about the store(s) calling us for some silly-assed emergency or question. And point the second: the Back To School hell week is finally over. As of tomorrow, the little rugrats will be shoved into a mulitude of perkily-decorated classrooms, as opposed to having them running through our store and tearing it to shreds.

I'll leave the slightly misanthropic rantings elsewhere, since you've all heard them before (and, depending on your own vocational experiences, probably have your own similar rants). Suffice to say, this week saw a non-stop, steady stream of families tearing apart our displays. And of course, Saturday and Sunday were perhaps the worst, as our store teemed from open to close with families who realized that, hey! School starts Tuesday!

But all that is over now. There will still be a number of crowds who will descend on us over the next week, but they'll be concentrated in the evenings. (And more importantly, when I'm not around.) I am rather looking forward to a month of considerably less stress and running around the store.

Mel is too, since next week is her last week at the 6th Ring of Hell (also known as the Stratford store). With a manager and full-timer now hired for that location, most of this upcoming week will see her stepping back and letting them take charge, while she more serves as a consultant for any questions/problems they have.

So good-bye to hordes of backpacks that have overtaken our stockroom. Fare thee well, overflowing bunks of lunch boxes. And kiss my slightly misanthropic ranting ass, families demanding to know why we don't have anything they want this far into the BTS season.

Hmm...and in retrospect, so much for the "I won't rant about this" comment earlier. Oh well.


In other news, about a week ago, as the Olympics were wrapping up, I noticed on a number of Net news sites that the list of Top 5 Hot Topics included "underage gymnasts." Now if i hadn't heard about that particular controversy, I'd be incredibly worried. (Hell, I still am.)

"No, really, your Honour, those pictures on my computer were just research on the '08 Olympics! Honestly!"


Now if you'll excuse me, there's an afternoon I have to lounge through, and a box of cookies who are luring me into the kitchen with their siren's song...

Labels: apparently 'perkily' is recognzied as a valid word despite sounding very silly, BTS hell week 08

posted by Phillip at 11:29 AM