i remember...

when i was young, i used to get scared in bed when dad yelled in the living room. he wasn't angry--in fact, they were generally yells of elation--at basketball. i guess "scared" isn't the word i'm looking for. i believe it was "shock." of course, the volume was part of the shock. there was hardly anything that would ever get that loud in our apartment (the place was real brick, though, which means the sound insulation was pretty good. we just weren't a loud family...) part of the shock, though, was that daddy never expressed himself that way in any other situation. it's not like he bottled his emotions... just... like i said, we weren't a loud family.

when i watch basketball, i'll get loud. i'll scream and yell and make funny noises at the tv (wimpering, perhaps?), but never in a public place.

i shocked myself last night.

matt and i went to glory days for dinner. i, of course was watching basketball. matt, surprisingly, was also watching basketball. the hockey game that was on wasn't one he was interested in, and... the end of the mavericks game was on. and everybody knows that matt loves the mavericks. nobody knows why.

fourth quarter. three points down. nowitzki drops a beautiful arc of a trey. swoosh.

i erupt. some group at the bar erupts. some asian girl (not me) looks scared.

what happened? i don't do that in public.

***

okay, so we kinda know why matt likes the mavs. it started out when nash still played for them. nash was canadian. nash looked like a hockey player. it was a natural fit.

when nash went to the suns, i thought matt's aliances would follow. i was wrong. he'd gotten attached to the team.

i don't know why, but i like it.

***

update (5/4/06): funny how things go... i found out on sunday (as in the sunday of my post) that michael gets startled by the same thing.

hmm... startled. that was the word i was looking for in the first place...

lemmie see your rims

saw visions (vw rims) this morning. they were nothing like i'd imagined. i thought the spokes would be like mine... so the rims themselves would be more like a 5/7 version of mine. they're really not. i love my rims so much more now. i should clean my rims...

rims are such a strange thing. there's a nissan quest that parks on heritage, across from rectory (where i turn out every morning) that has z rims. yes, you're a nissan. doesn't mean you're a z. 'cause you can't be a playa in a minivan.

well, i guess digital max says "player." 'cause he's digital max.

<snort>men!

alright, alright, i have nothing against men. but as the sole female in my office, i find it amusing to refer to "my coworkers" as "<hmph> men!"

i hope i don't end up getting sued or fired for harrasment because of this...

anyway, i went to the bathroom this morning (we have *one* in-office bathroom), and the toilet paper was starting to run low. someone, thinking ahead, had placed a brand-new, unused (still glued shut) roll on the toilet tank lid (i know that it has a fancy, nicer-sounding name. i don't remember it. deal.)

just got back from the bathroom. the previously unused roll had been half-consumed, and it was sitting on top of the first roll. the first roll had two sheets left on it.

...

how do they do these things?


it seems like someone decided that they wanted to start the new roll instead of finishing the old roll and swapping them out. and then subsequent people just went with it.

i know i'm not the only one in the office that changes the rolls. i don't change them enough to be the only one. so how do these things happen?

not really complaining... just... strange enough to report.

of course, i find traffic anomalies interesting enough to report. you probably shouldn't trust my judgement.

stupid drivers...

i know, i have a bit of road rage... but it's not like they can hear me when i yell...

but... some pointers.

1. when you're on a ramp, and cars on the road you're merging onto are moving faster than you are, there is no part of the merge procedure that says "slow down at the end of the ramp." if there's no merge lane, that's one thing, but... there is no need to slam on your brakes when your lane approaches a road.


2. turning on your turn signal does not give you the right to change lanes. signaling means you have the intention to move over. do not move over if there is not enough room!


3. if you get into a fender bender, do not leave your car in a lane of traffic, especially if you're on a highway. a fender bender does not prevent your car from moving. it does not prevent your car from moving to the shoulder. it's dangerous for you, it's dangerous for other people, and it's just plain dumb. don't do it.

today was just bad. easter weekend and all. idiots.

i just don't get along with sprays...

so... remember the incident at bath and body works where i sprayed myself in the eye because i was an idiot? well, a similar incident occurred at work this week...

we got a new air freshener. like, one of those spray things... that you put in the pooper for people to spray after they poop. 'cause that's what you do in the pooper (apparently that might not be the greatest idea in our bathroom... more on that later...). well, since i am obsessed with sniffing products, i decided to spray some to see what it smelled like. just a little spritz into the air. not a big deal... right?

true to merc-fashion, when i went to spray the bottle, my finger was over the nozzle. so the spray came out in a fan in the wrong direction. and my finger smelled like "fresh citrus" or whatever that scent was.

<sigh>

***

in other news... spoon still loves me! even though i neglected my blog (and, consequently, him), he still loves me!

okay, so when i say "he loves me," i mean "he reads my blog." so shoot me.

SoSueMe (hotline, anybody? i didn't think so...)

someone get me that shirt now. except, add a "so" in there. "i'm so blogging this." 'cause that would be funnier. yeah.

***

so strange happenings on the road are nearly constant now. from the district police cruiser whose bumper said "LATINO L-UNIT" (wtf? can that even be real?) zooming down 66 at 100 to the idiots who *try* to drive 100 but have no traffic sense and therefore end up wedged between three slow cars (one in front, one on each side) when they could have zipped right by in the fourth, empty lane (not that i want them to... they generally have no control, either, so i can see some catastrophic accident waiting to happen if they manage to get out of the hole and drive faster than 50), to the black wrx and altima flying by on either side of me (AT THE SAME TIME) going probably 110 (and scaring the shit out of me)... somehow yesterday's idiot managed to stand out (or maybe he just stands out because he was the most recent).

when i'm coming home from work, i take a left to get onto 66. this "intersection" consists of sudley running north and south, and 66 on and off ramps running east. this means that the break in the intersection is one-way (east). it's also the direction that i drive through the hole to get to my on ramp. when my line of cars pulled up to the light last night, there as a car sitting in the median-hiatus facing west.

yeah, i know, he was probably making a u-turn from sudley north... so? the next light is only a few hundred feet away. and that has an actual left. with a turn lane. i don't know if you can make a u-turn there, but i doubt it's legal to make a u-turn going the wrong way through the median.

not that i was particularly mad at the guy or thought he was a bigger idiot than others i've seen, just... somehow, that was special. how do you even get these ideas?

***

i have to admit... all three times i've typed "text-align" this blog (and once or twice when i was trying to correct the mistake), i've typed "text-aling." aling! aling!

that was off topic. there was a topic?

oh, yeah, i said i'd address the pooper issue.

we came on to the office on thursday, and nearly the entire office smelled like... girl. well, derek (whose name i often type "derke." don't tell on me. i don't do it on purpose) said perfume. meh, terminology.

yeah, back to the point. we tried to figure out nearly the entire day what the smell was. wednesday night is cleaning night, so we thought maybe it was some new cleaning solution. i noticed that the smell was stronger in the lab and in our office (giant room with 5 desks). hmm...

i thought that maybe it was the aforementioned smelly spray stuff. but that didn't make any sense, 'cause then why would it be where it was?

erwin and i might have found the answer. mike came and talked to derek about something, and the two of them went to look at it together (i don't remember what it was about)... and a couple of minutes later, erwin and i smelled something. something different.

new theory.

the smell *is* the anti-poopie-smell-spray. it makes its way into our room via air circulation. it makes its way into the lab because the bathroom is in the lab.

the new smell... the poopie smell... happened because someone didn't use the anti-poopie-smell-spray. and so without the spray with the anti... you end up with a poopie smell.

poopie.

***

koff (and anybody else who wondered but didn't ask): i don't have a video of chi-chi's new feat, but i do have one of her doing nearly the same thing. instead of climbing up the front of the cage, she climbed up the side, which means she bounced off one less side of the cage. i only saw her do that once. ever. and it was when we were taking video.

i'll post if it we ever end up taking it off of matt's camera.

***

on a random(er) note... alex's current profile is the same as ulyssees's previous profile. in that they're the lyrics to the same song. except ulyssees had more. and alex has a xanga link at the end.

okay, i'm done now.