Mythological creatures, Thai Iced Tea, and Shoveling.

Monday, April 7th, 2008

So have I told you about the parking lot at work? How there are people so lazy, they park on the curb (where it is clearly not a parking space) rather than walk an extra couple of hundred feet? Yeah, those people. Did I mention that this particular curb is part of the feeder road/entrance to the entire lower lot (situated at the bottom of a hill), and is in a sense the same as parking on a roadway? Now, I know I'm incredibly lazy about certain things, but even I don't stoop that low. Look at that picture above - see the building in the background? That's the office. It's decidely closer than the previous building where we worked, and it is about TEN FULL MINUTES closer than the buildings were when we parked across the campus in a different lot. also bear in mind that this lot is always at least half empty when I roll in, at 8:30 (technically 5 minutes late to my desk).

So all winter long, I have fantastized about how the road would be icy, and a large steel armored car would slide out of control, down the hill, and careen off of every illegally parked car, leaving deep bare-metal gouges in brightly colored paint. Or how a parking administrative assistant, drunk on the power of being put in charge temporarily due to their bosses' viral meningitis, has all of the cars towed, crushed, cubed, and delivered at the owner's expense to their driveways. But I know these silly daydreams are just that - childish daydreams. Heck, one of "our own" here in the buidling decided to "fuck it" and park on the side, since everyone else was doing it. I told him that's what they said at Nuremberg, but he just rolled his eyes. Again, I joke, but in reality, it could lead to a clipped door, a fender bender, or even the boxing in of someone parking legitimately. I have seen some near-misses.

Anyway, things started changing least week. One day, the parking people bravely placed completely benign "parking warning" flyers under windshield wipers, which is basically a bad mother telling her horrible child to use his inside voice - but hey it's a start. It's also about as effective at getting the message across as finding a flyer for the Fashion Bug wedged in your windshield wiper after grocery shopping. What these people need is humiliation in the face of their peers. Of course the smack on the wrist with a flaccid noodle didn't help, so they laid a line of cones along the offending areas, which in any language means "fucking stop fucking parking fucking here". Of course, someone compressed the cone line to make a space for themselves (again, in a lot with vast empty spaces available at 8:30am when I roll in), parked, and walked away.

It was then I witnessed a fellow co-worker redistributing the line of cones to envelop the car after the fact, making it appear as if they parked within the line of orange no-nos. We exchanged a grin, and I complimented his awesomeness. Can you then imagine my childish delight last week, when some anonymous brave True American™ decided to protest these heathen parkers? What did my twinkling eyes see upon my walk back to the car late last week? Cones ON cars! Someone had the balls to place these cones on people's cars, something I would never do or condone... but my god, I loved it enough to document it for all time!

Bonus? Lisa immediately dubbed them "Unicars"! Check out those sassy orange horns on those hoods above!

So whomever you are, brave protestor, I thank you. Not for doing what you did per se, but for making me laugh in the face of laziness. Bravo. You understand that these people won't stop until they are either towed, fined real money, or shamed into acting like adults.

Friday night we had Thai food with Tom and Jane in Towson! Behind Lisa, you can see the Rotating Sushi restaurant.

Here's the Thai restaurant. Great name.

Saturday, we worked for most of the day outside, where I gave birth to a blister. I guess I need to build up my "tilling the fields" calluses little more.

Firetrucks!

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Goddamn I was a skinny teenager. I just realized that this photo was taken after coming back from a record convention, where I used to go to get bootleg cds and records before the internet made all of that stuff unnecessary. There's a Cure bootleg cd in my hand, and a brown bag with a 12" record inside, on the floor to the right. The Cocteau Twins cd box set and general room arangement puts this photo at about seventeen years ago. Haha, Birkenstocks - a VERY short-lived pair of shoes. Haha, Video cassettes.

Here's some meat Lisa was cooking, and I took over, making it into a bear claw.

So Saturday morning we were "rudely" drawn out of bed (at the embarrasingly late time of 10:30am) by three firetrucks, rocketing the wrong way down our one-way street. One stayed at the very end of the street, one picked a house a couple doors down, and the lead truck stopped at our house! Naturally, I went to investigate.

Apparently there was a fire of some sort a couple houses down, as they were moving hoses all around... luckily, everything seemed to be okay and they cleared out after a half an hour.

Early Saturday afternoon hose relay in Baltimore, hon!

Currently, I am in love with machined metal engine bell replacements. Woo woo! Sugi-san rocks!