Just Call Me Ms. Goodwrench

I was at Wal-Mart yesterday.  I feel that in the past I have been fairly critical of Wal-Mart for being such a miserable place to shop.  The lines were always 15 people deep, two-thrirds of the checkout lanes were inactive, the aisles were messy with nothing residing exactly where it was supposed to be, and it often smelled of humanity (liquid, solid, or gas depending on the day and aisle).  In the interest of fairness, I should say that my local Wal-Mart seems to have gone through an overhaul and the last few times I've been there it's been a much more efficient and less sketchy experience.  So, good job to you, North Attleboro Wal-mart.

As I left Wal-Mart and crossed the parking lot to my car I heard someone say "Excuse me!  Can you please help me?"  I looked around and saw a woman standing in front of a large pickup truck with its hood raised.  It seemed as though she was talking to me so I put my stuff in my car and walked over to her.  As I approached, I asked if her truck battery was dead.  She gave me an odd look and then told me that, no, her issue was that when she tried to remove the oil fill cap she came away with the entire oil fill tube instead.  After some discussion I concluded that when her son had last changed her oil, when he screwed the oil fill cap back onto the tube he misthreaded it and tightened it to the point where it was essentially frozen in place.  So, when she went to unscrew it to add some more oil the cap was so stuck that the twisting motion released the entire tube from the engine instead.  Fortunately, I had a flashlight app on my phone (yay technology!) and about 6 additional inches in height (yay genetics!) which allowed me to examine the area closely enough to figure out how the tube needed to be held in order to get it back onto the truck.  It didn't go on perfectly but it did go back on and it was tight enough to form a seal.  I told her I thought she'd be OK to get home but she should get someone to put everything to rights as soon as she could.  She thanked me several times and gave me a couple of handwipes as my hands were black with engine oil.  I told her it was no problem, wished her luck getting home, and left.

It wasn't until I was well away that it occurred to be that there is a good chance that the reason she asked me for help in the first place is that she thought I was a man.  I think that's why she gave me a funny look the first time I spoke to her to ask if her battery was dead.  I don't care one way or another about the mistaken gender identity there - it was getting dark and I have very short hair.  Actually, I guess I should be pleased that from a distance my middle aged lady hips weren't as obvious as I think they are.  What really pleased me, aside from the fact that I think I was actually able to help her, was that it never dawned on me that I wouldn't be a perfectly reasonable person to ask for help.  It was nice to know that I didn't automatically assume that some kind of testosterone-give knowledge was required.

This is a good thing since my efforts at playing the helpless female usually end in disappointment anyway.  A few years ago, a stray cat decided that my garage would be an excellent place to shuffle off its mortal coil.  Unfortunately, thanks to warm weather and a several day stretch in which I didn't need anything from the garage the cat's mortal coil had become quite a haven for disco rice.  Rather than deal with this, I went next door and told my neighbor Jeb about it.  I was hoping that if I seemed traumatized enough he would manfully go into my garage and take care of it.  Instead he got all queasy looking and suggested calling the city animal control office.  This turned out to be excellent advice because about a half an hour later a woman from Animal Control showed up and womanfully took care of it.  My heroine!

They Work Out

I have to admit that I have bought both singles by LMFAO that have been released thus far.  I watched the video for the first, "Party Rock Anthem" and then spent quite a bit of time researching YouTube for instructional videos on "how to shuffle".  My brain now completely understands what needs to be done in order to shuffle (and to dougie, thanks to my last dance-related research) but where the spirit is willing, the flesh remains awkward.

I had seen a few people on Facebook mention the video for the next single, "Sexy And I Know It" but it took a while to get around to watching it.  I'd like to discuss the video a bit, so please check it out if you have a moment.  Don't look at it if you're at work or church, though.

OK, so now you've seen that.

My first reaction was along the lines of "Yikes!" and "I wonder how much therapy costs." upon reflection, though, I realized that they aren't doing anything in this video that women have been doing in music videos since the dawn of MTV.  In addition, lots of people make a point to spend their Super Bowl half-time watching women (sort of) play football in their underwear.  How different is that from rival underwear gangs posturing at each other at the beach?  Aside from gender, it's pretty much the same thing.

So, I'd like to know what you think:  Do you think LMFAO is just trying to be silly and a little disturbing or are they spandex-clad geniuses making a prescient statement on how numb we've become when it comes to female almost-nudity in pop culture?

Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peck-um, Peppers

One of the great things about teaching is that learning takes place on both sides of the (metaphorical) podium.

So.  Last week I was teaching my statistics class some probability, specifically binomial probability experiments.  Don't worry, I'm not going to explain that now.  What's important, though, is that talking about binomial probability experiments requires one to say the word "success" approximately a million times.  Make that two million because I have two sections of stats.

Here's what I learned:  It is impossible to say the word success a million times (or even twenty) without at some point butchering one's pronunciation.  Unfortunately, for me that means changing "suck-sess" into "suck-sex".  Yeah, so that happened.  A bunch of times.

Sadly, this is not my first foray into being accidentally lewd in the classroom.  When I taught math at a high school in Virginia there was a time when we were covering trigonometric problems.  The abbreviation for the secant function is "sec".  I was using the variable x to represent the angle which meant writing "sec x" on the board several times.  You can see where this is heading.  Yup, in front of a whole room of 17-year olds, I wrote the word sex on the blackboard.  I sent them further into hysterics by saying "Well, ya know, it is Friday."  What I meant was that it had been a long week and I was tired.  What they thought I meant was that Friday = Sexday.  Frickin' fricklebats.

Could Happen to Anyone

I'd like to present this conversation with as little explanation as possible and leave you to determine how it came about.

Me:  Erk!  (accompanied by a wide-eyed look of pain and surprise)

Huppy:  Did you just pinch the skin on your stomach in the hinge of your glasses.

Me:  I did.  It left a mark.

Come conclusions you may draw:  I am very, very flexible.  I have a specific unique facial expression for absolutely every situation.  One of these things is true and one is probably not true.

Situational Awareness Is For Suckers

So we're just coming off a nice three day weekend.  The weather was quite temperate and so a ton of house projects got done.  That's the good part.  The bad part is that in those three days I found three different ways to hit my head on something.  I'm pretty sure the first and the third time were on exactly the same spot.  How did I manage this?  Well, I started out with the locking mechanism from an open trunk lid on Saturday.  The next day I climbed the ladder into the attic and stood up right into a roof beam.  I wrapped up the holiday weekend by hitting my head on a shelf after plugging in some speakers below the shelf.  The lesson I'm taking from this is that it would be best if I just walked around all hunched over because floating just above me is a whole host of crap of stuff waiting to bash me in the noggin.  So, if I start acting weirder than usual I may be concussed.

A-Maia-can Horror Story

I know, it's been a while.  I have a few things saved up to share with you, though, so buckle up!

A few weeks ago we had about a week of dreary, rainy weather.  On one of these days we'd had a respite from the rain and I drove downtown to stop in at my taekwondo school to find out why Master Oh had called me on my cell phone.  I parked in the municipal parking garage behind the school.  When I pulled in I noticed that someone seemed to have parked their wheelchair next to the low wall that separates the garage area from the alley.  The wheel chair was completely draped in a thin red blanket.  If this was to hide it, I'm not sure that red was an ideal color choice, by the way.  As I was straddling the low wall (what, like I'm going to walk all the way around?) near the shrouded chair I glanced over it and saw that there was something in it.  In all the times I have parked there and gone across this wall to get to the school I have never, ever made it over that quickly.  Seriously, if it was a pommel horse I would be sporting a medal right now.  Whatever or whoever (whomever?) was under there was not visible aside from tenting up the blanket in a few odd spot.  It seem to me that there was a smallish person under there taking a nap with their arm up over their head.  On my way back to the car I gave it a wider birth and kept me eyes locked on it the whole time.  No movement.  I sped home.  A hour or so later when Huppy called to say she was on her way home I a) told her about the freaky deaky wheelchair red (blood red!!!) blanket ghoul in the parking garage behind the school and b) made her promise to drive by and see if it was still there.  It was and she was equally creeped out.

I spent the next day thinking about what was obviously either a troll who lost his bridge and hides under this red (blood red!!!) blanket now waiting for unsuspecting people who get to close so he can snatch them and suck the marrow from their long bones OR a pile of dismembered body parts stacked on a wheelchair with a note for the police from a brilliant serial killer who wants to engage in a battle of wits.  That evening, I told Huppy that we were going to drive back there and see if it's still there.  AND IT WAS.  This time I took pictures:

At the time that I took these it had been raining again all day.  As a result, a few things became clear:

1.  It's not a troll in a wheelchair.
2.  It's not a pile of body parts in a wheelchair.
3.  It's not, in fact, a wheel chair.
4.  It is probably someone's bicycle and cart.

Or is it?

Yay! These Pictures Are Gre-...Oh.

At the beginning of May I participated in my first half marathon.  I think I blogged about it already so I won't rehash.

For some reason the company that was contracted to do race photography is based in Germany.  Normally this would be no big deal because I never, ever feel the need to order race pictures.  I have yet to take one where I don't look like I'm having some kind of episode.  In none of my pictures do I look like I'm having fun or even running, for that matter.  I swear I'm doing both.  One time I started running in an exaggerated fashion when I saw the photographer in the hopes that overemphasizing the movements they would show up on camera.  That experiment yielded a series pictures that make me look less like I'm running and more like I'm doing an impromptu roadside audition for Westside story.

So, no spending my money on race pictures for me.  Until now.  I decided that for my first half marathon I really needed to get a picture because it felt like kind of an accomplishment.  Luckily for me, there was a photographer at the finish line getting pictures of people holding their medals.  Perfect!  A race picture where I don't have to be running!  I ordered it and one other one that was only bad but nor outright horrible.

The race photographer's website was very, very slow.  After a million years of trying to look at pictures that would or would not expand from thumbnail I picked the two that I mentioned earlier.  Since the company is in Europe I got hit with an additional fee by my bank.  Thanks bank!  Then the waiting began.  It took about a month but they finally arrived this week.

Here's the one that I was so pleased to order:

I was pretty happy with this one until I looked at it closely.  See it?  Allow me to zoom for you:

I can't decide whether this makes this picture more awesome or less awesome.  On the one hand, look how tough I am!  On the other hand, that is a Buzz Lightyear band-aid.