I was cleaning the aquarium at work...

And my wedding ring slipped off my finger. The thing is extremely loose if my hands are wet. I paused just long enough to snap the photo, then fished it out with the net.

Office Supply Woes

I love office supplies! But I'm really picky about what I buy and use. So using three different highlighter brands, with different form factors and marking tip widths tries my patience. I'm using the supplies that my workplace provides - what can I do? But still, fun was had with the highlighting and categorizing. Wheee!

Zoom Zoom

Post-It Note: Breathe More

At work, I present seminars over the phone, teaching clients to use our point-of-sale salon and spa software products. During some seminars, I spend nearly an hour talking non-stop. (I've mentioned my need for throat lozenges and the negative side effects of them here.)

Recently Michelle hung out with me at work (my own little Bring Your Wife to Work Day) and watched me do my thing. She was able to give me a few pointers, including something that I was completely unaware of - I often run out of breath.

I've been giving the same seminars several times per day every day for three years now, so needless to say I have them memorized. It seems that I take breaths at the same times for each instance of the same sentence, such as:

"...at this point, Lisa realizes that she forgot her purse in the car. Now, we have a line of customers in line behind her (of course), so we can't just sit and wait on this transaction, we'll need to put this transaction on hold - you'll see a checkbox for this at the bottom right of the register - click the box for 'Place on Hold' then click 'Accept'." (Breath here)

Many of my sentences go the same way - the only time I pause for breath is immediately after I have given a direct instruction. This is a bad idea because I'm probably running out of breath at this point, and even though I cannot realize it, my voice has been getting slightly more faint with each word.

So because of my bad breathing habits, the student might not hear the instruction, and ask me to repeat it - much to my haughty frustration - damn it, weren't they listening? Forget the fact that they are in a noisy environment with hair dryers, people laughing and talking, tv or music blaring.

This sort of 'didn't realize I did that' thing is the reason athletes and other competitors will video or audio record themselves - it's very difficult to have perspective of yourself performing a task.

I was wondering this morning - you can whistle while breathing in as well as breathing out. I realize that whistling does not engage your voice box, so it's an apples and oranges comparison - but I wonder if a person could train themselves to speak normally while breathing in? Air is flowing across the same body parts.

According to Wikipedia: Normal human speech is produced with pulmonary pressure provided by the lungs which creates phonation in the glottis in the larynx that then is modified by the vocal tract into different vowels and consonants. However humans can pronounce words without the use of the lungs and glottis in alaryngeal speech of which there are three types: esophageal speech, pharyngeal speech and buccal speech (better known as Donald Duck talk).

In linguistics (articulatory phonetics), manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants. For any place of articulation, there may be several manners, and therefore several homorganic consonants.

The ability to speak normally while breathing in either direction would definitely be a benefit to anyone who does a lot of public speaking.

I respectfully decline

"Hey Mike, when you're finished helping that customer, could you take care of the spider outside by the front door?"

50 'Good Husband' Points!

I was chatting with a coworker yesterday, talking about my good lady wife.

"Yeah, I was talking with my life about that -" Blink. "Talking with my WIFE about that."

As Freudian slips go, this one is a zinger. Wait, is 50 points enough?

Mmn Vicodin

I recently lost a tooth - an old root canal and crown - to some sneaky decay. Since it was a root canal, I didn’t have any discomfort while the decay was working its sinister way into the root. Since it had been 2 years since I’d been to the dentist, it wasn’t caught in time and had to be pulled on Friday – two stitches, ouchie!

I spend a lot of my time at work giving hour-long software training sessions, sometimes up to four hours a day for sessions, with additional support calls on top of this. Thanks to all this talking my throat gets sore, so I often have a Cepacol throat lozenge in my mouth.

I realized today that I usually have a lozenge tucked in the back left of my cheek, directly against the tooth I just lost. I’ve had this job for the past two and a half years, and I’m almost certain the throat lozenges are the culprit.

Of course, no one made me use the lozenges, no one made me skip regular dental visits, no one forced me to avoid better dental hygiene – it’s all my own fault.

Let my poor lil tooth be a lesson to you all – if you have a sore throat from speaking too much; try to speak less, speak more softly, and avoid bad habits like popping lozenges as a daily crutch.

Meh

I worked today - ugh - because the girl who was supposed to work ran over her own dog (and for this I am the one punished?).

It's not clear yet if the dog was run over with a car, golf cart, or lawn mower, but I'm assuming it's one of the first two. That's why you don't own a little rat dog.

I do not include dachshunds in the 'rat dog' category, never fear oh friends and family.

I Laughed

Client: "Did you say 'Red Monkey'?"

Me: "No Ma'am; Brett Bunke."

Work Hijinks

Work Window - Pretty Red Bird

NaNoWriMo - Day 21

Er... I don't know what happened. I somehow got carried away and wrote 2,387 words today. Yes, it does seem so. I did the math three times.

I had to work today (boo!) but only a 4 hour shift (still necessitating an hour and a half total commute, boo!). Work went fine - really we're just a cleaning team on Saturdays, with limited interactions with clients (yay!).

I tapped out about 700 words this morning, and then somehow, in the midst of not really wanting to write this evening, I got into a whole 1,687 word scene that was never meant to exist, and now we have conspiracy, adultery, espresso and high art danish. Okay then.

Day 21 - Total Words Written: 36,009

Words Left To Be Written: 13,991

(Cindy hates odd numbers, and will no doubt say to me "You couldn't have written ONE MORE WORD?")

"Nope." I'll say. "The scene ended."

Ferret!

There aren't too many things in this world cuter than a ferret scampering around the office, its little bell janging away. We need a full-time office pet!

Sure, it pooped in my cubicle (really) but hey, it was denied a litter box.

Hexed Text #1

(When text messages go awry)


Mike: Safe at work, love you! Jugs!

Cindy: ?

Mike: That should have said 'Hugs!'

Cindy: By all means, let's celebrate the bosom - just not at work, k?

Checking In

About to get married! Yay!
Had my hours cut at work. Boo!
Heading to Vegas for our Honeymoon! Yay!
Might need to find a new job soon. Boo!

How's your corner of the globe?
Hope life is more Yay than Boo.

Sneaky Snack Solutions

We're not supposed to eat at our desks at work - yet we get no breaks other than lunch breaks. A person gets a bit peckish, you know?

So I came up with this food delivery system that's below the radar, or on the down-low, as it were:

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New desk, new sign

This is a sign at my desk at work. My desk is in front of an emergency exit hatch (literally in front of it) and the hatch itself is sealed with drywall compound, and painted over.

I'd love the chance to test it someday... How long would it take me to drag my desk out of the way far enough to get the hatch open? And how readily would the hatch open? And hey, it would open in exactly the wrong direction. If I moved my desk to the only place I could move it, the desk would assist the door in blocking everyone but myself from using it.

a sign near my desk at work

All you have to do is drag 2 fully laden desks out of the way to escape.
You'd think this would be a fire hazard.

Disappointment #3

"Hey man, want to hang tonight?"

"Can't. Getting my iPhone activated tonight."

"Ha, no really."

"No. Really."

(Tone = Disappointment #3*) "Dude."
(Tone = F@$# Yeah!) "Dude!"
(Tone = Aw Yeah Baby) "Dude."

"So, no hanging tonight? Seriously? So you can play with a phone?"

"Dude, this is the geek equivalent of the honeymoon night. You're not gonna see me till Tuesday."
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Disappointment #3 - also known as Congratulations for Wonderfully Wrong - When you've just had spectacular, adulterous sex with the hottest girl in the state, (aka your sister-in-law) on the night before she divorces her husband (a priest) to join a convent.
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There's Kato in my Spam!

Our work email filter is very lax, since many of our customers email us with support questions, and they use everything from hotmail to corporate email accounts. Thus, we get lots of junk emails. Even places I've worked with very stringent filters will let some spam through.

But we're not allowed to surf the web at work, even on breaks!

So how about this? Create an RSS function that forwards your favorite content to you at work... AS SPAM! The little spammer module would plug in strings of spammy BS in all caps, and you'd just learn to skip those sections and read what you were interested in.

The email's Subject line:
Kato LOVE YOU witfits LONG TIME EREECTION GIANT THINGY PLEASE HER WELL GOODLY MARRIAGE

Body:
If you've been under a rock for the past year or so you may not have known that we were embroiled in a fierce format war. GIANT PLEASEURE STICK ALL YOURS MANY BLESSINGS UPON YOUR MARRIAGE BED The generals of each camp, Sony and Toshiba, each set loose on the high definition battlefield their own hand-picked champions: Blu-Ray and the more aptly named HD DVD, respectively.

LONGER LASTEING HAPPY DAYS FOR ALL ONLY $1.92 PER DOSE

Technologically they were quite similar, with differences between them lying mostly in total storage capacity and interface implementation. What was important was that they were both formats for storing High Definition video content...

Ah, this probably exists already. If not, I demand half of all profits please. Thanks.

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