A garage sale for your mind

Sign in Subscribe

Topic

other

A collection of 205 posts

Lunch

I order lunch through SeamlessWeb. It costs more, but the billable time I'd lose walking, waiting in line, and walking back far exceeds the convenience charge. At least that's how I justify it to myself. I'm good at mental justifications. Today: baked salmon. Delicious.

Lowest Bidder #001

My first tribute to systems clearly contracted to the Lowest Bidder. To upgrade my Verizon FIOS speed, turns out you can't: you must first cancel and disconnect, then order anew and wait. To grasp how long I'd go without internet, consider how long I'd hold my breath.

Self-Motivation

Why must I play mind games with myself to do things I know I can do? It's never truer than when running. "Just another thirty seconds," repeated for ten minutes. Like the time I talked myself into jumping into a snowmelt pool in Yosemite. Hypothermic, but refreshing.

Interesting Day

My federal tax refund finally landed, worth about four weeks of pay. I also got a check from my employer's sub-contractor's sub-contractor for one week I worked back in July, plus two Mets tickets from the blood center, and I billed twelve hours. Overall, a good day.

Work and Words

I work with many Indians whose English varies widely, and I've never once understood the questions some of them ask me. "I have no idea what you just said," I reply, and they leave content. Plus a list of tech words to retire, starting with "let's continue this offline."

Chaos

Three phone conferences happening around me at once. Maddening. I pulled out the headphones, put on some Justice, and sanity was restored.

Grocery Store

I went to the grocery store for toilet paper. Supplies at home are at crisis levels. I returned with mango juice, four apples, and a half gallon of milk. No toilet paper. I'm going to try again today.

Where You Was

If I'd been thinking about my week in Atlanta, I might have parsed it faster when a non-native-English-speaking coworker asked me, "Where you was?" It took me a moment to figure out what in the world he meant. I've gotta get that printed on a t-shirt.

Haggling

There's a guy who works the front of my grocery store asking for spare change. I declined, as usual, but offered to buy him something. What followed was a master class in haggling over peppermint patties and M&M's, right up until "You're wearing on my patience."

Jubilee

The grocery store across the street from my new apartment turned out to be open 24 hours, which means at 3am I can walk fifty feet and just get what I want. I'm liking this apartment more every moment.

Web Analytics