Day 29: Life's little bloopers

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 29: Life's little bloopers

People often wonder if there’s intelligent life ‘out there’. The question is, is there intelligent life here on earth?

For instance …

I was at the mall yesterday. I had a nail appointment at 3:00 p.m. and since I was a bit early, I was killing time by looking into store windows.

I came across one store with a selection of golf shirts. I stopped and had a closer look.

A woman passed me, went into the store and started speaking to a man. The man in question was dressed in shorts and a golf shirt, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. He sat slightly hunched over on a box, had earphones in, and seemed engrossed in something on his cellphone in his hands.

The woman approached him and said, “Excuse me.”

When there was no reaction from the man, she repeated, “Excuse me.”

When the man didn’t respond she became a little agitated and persisted with, “Excuse me, do you work here? I need some help.”

Still no reaction.

With another “Excuse me,” she touched him lightly on the shoulder. That's when she realized what I had known all along … the seated man was a dummy, a mannequin!

After a quick look over her left and right shoulder, she made a swift exit. Nobody had seen that, right.

While I admit that some women’s elevator doesn’t quite go to the top, there are dumb men too. I should know, I met one the other day.

I went to the mailroom, to pick up some documents from one of four multi-purpose copiers and found a man staring at one of the machines. It was quite obvious that he had a problem.

While waiting for my documents to finish printing, I kept an eye on him.

He placed some papers in the top tray, tapped them lightly so they were nicely lined up, pushed one button and then another button and then waited. When nothing happened, he let out a long sigh and removed the papers.

He went through the process again, placing the paper in the top tray, making sure they were lined up properly, followed by a push of two buttons. When the machine remained dead still, the man’s frayed nerves got the better of him. He did what so many people do in a stressful situation … he started talking to the machine.

“What’s the matter with you, you stupid thing,” he mumbled. “The papers are there, I pushed the buttons, now start faxing!”

“Problem?” I enquired politely.

“I don’t know what this stupid thing wants,” he turned to me, while helplessly raising his arms the way a bird would flap his wings. “I’ve tried three times now and this machine just doesn’t want to fax.”

“Can you show me?” I asked. “Maybe you’re forgetting a step.”

“I feed the papers in the tray like so,” he demonstrated, placing the documents for the fourth time in the top tray, “I make sure they’re all lined up, then I hit the Fax button and then the Start button.

“Are you sure you have the right fax number?” I wondered.

“Fax number?” he said with a frown.

“The number of the recipient,” I said. “The person you’re sending the fax to.”

We both looked at the printer/scanner/fax’s computerized screen and we both knew right away what the problem was … no number had been keyed in.

If this had been a blond woman, and a man had witnessed such a mistake, she’d never heard the end of it. Fortunately for the man, I have a more discreet nature, although I must say, feeling a giggle tugging on my jaw muscles, I’ve never left the mailroom in quite such a hurry.

A scary event

Many years ago, when I still lived at home, Monday was laundry day. Mom had a manual washing machine, struggled with buckets of water and wrestled with wet items to get them into the spinner. By the time she was done, the kitchen was flooded and in addition to laundry she had to mop the floor.

When automatic washing machines became popular she didn’t hesitate, she was going to get one of those wonderful machines. A representative from Primus came to our house and the following week a gleaming new washing machine was delivered and installed.

While the machine was top of the line, mom’s washing skills were not. Having washed manually all her life, an automatic washing machine proved to be a challenge. There were so many buttons and dials. With the machine came a manual of course, but the book being the size of ‘War & Peace’ she didn’t bother to read it. She would learn as she went along.

As such, she accidentally put one of my wool dresses in the machine and must have set the temperature too high because the dress came out several sizes too small for my frame.

Last week history repeated itself. Well, sort of. I’ve been doing laundry with an automatic machine all my life and know about temperature control, but I can’t control the temperature, which is exactly what happened. The pipes in our condo building are to blame.

Even though I had programmed the machine to wash with lukewarm water, every now and then the cold water in the building shuts off and is replaced with hot water. When someone wants to wash his hands, or fancies a drink of cold water, this hot water business is merely an inconvenience, but during laundry time hot water only is a disaster.

Just ask my favorite black jacket. It went into the machine a size 7 and it came out … something fit for a child. I flipped, I absolutely flipped. When I looked at the label it stated ‘100% pure wool’. Yeah well, that explains why it shrunk, wool hates hot water.

I toyed with the idea of holding the building responsible, but if they denied responsibility, how would I prove that it was the building’s faulty pipes? I find this a scary event. This water confusion can happen again and again.

 

Man vs. Machine

Recently I overheard a conversation between two men involving aliens. At the end of the conversation one man asked the other “Do you believe there is intelligent life out there?” to which the other replied “Right now, I don’t believe there’s intelligent life in this room.”

Where it comes to intelligence, or lack thereof, one has to have a sense of humor. Blonds especially, as they are often the target of jokes, portraying them as dumb.

While I admit that some women’s elevator doesn’t quite go to the top, there are dumb men too. I should know, I met one the other day.

I went to the mailroom, to pick up some documents from one of four multi-purpose copiers and found a man staring at one of the machines. It was quite obvious that he had a problem.

While waiting for my documents to finish printing, I kept an eye on him.

He placed some papers in the top tray, tapped them lightly so they were nicely lined up, pushed one button and then another button and then waited. When nothing happened, he let out a long sigh and removed the papers.

He went through the process again, placing the paper in the top tray, making sure they were lined up properly, followed by a push of two buttons. When the machine remained dead still, the man’s frayed nerves got the better of him. He did what so many people do in a stressful situation … he started talking to the machine.

“What’s the matter with you, you stupid thing,” he mumbled. “The papers are there, I pushed the buttons, now start faxing!”

“Problem?” I enquired politely.

“I don’t know what this stupid thing wants,” he turned to me, while helplessly raising his arms the way a bird would flap his wings. “I’ve tried three times now and this machine just doesn’t want to fax.”

“Can you show me?” I asked. “Maybe you’re forgetting a step.”

“I feed the papers in the tray like so,” he demonstrated, placing the documents for the fourth time in the top tray, “I make sure they’re all lined up, then I hit the Fax button and then the Start button.

“Are you sure you have the right fax number?” I wondered.

“Fax number?” he said with a frown.

“The number of the recipient,” I said. “The person you’re sending the fax to.”

We both looked at the printer/scanner/fax’s computerized screen and we both knew right away what the problem was … no number had been keyed in.

If this had been a blond woman, and a man had witnessed such a mistake, she’d never hear the end of it. Fortunately for the man, I have a more discreet nature, although I must say, feeling a giggle tugging on my jaw muscles, I’ve never left the mailroom in quite such a hurry.

www.connymanero.weebly.com

$2,000 faucets

It started so innocently.  My son saw beautiful faucets in Home Depot that were on special … $59 down from $99.  Unable to resist a bargain he bought them and brought them home.  Little did he know those faucets were about to cost us close to $2,000.

The first problem arose when the new faucets didn’t fit the current vanity table in the bathroom.  Oh well, the table was old and in need of replacing, so why not go for a new cabinet?

Off we went to Canadian Tire to have a look around.  We saw reasonably priced vanity tables, complete with a sink, but … they were rather small and I didn’t particularly like the design.  

So, we went for a separate vanity table.

Of course, now that we had a new table, we really should go for a sink as well, so … off we went to look at sinks.

It didn’t stop with the sink of course, we also bought new lighting and a new mirror.

When the vanity table and the sink got installed in the bathroom yesterday, we hit a snag … the piping didn’t fit.  Since neither of us are qualified plumbers we had to rely on a professional.  $210 later, the pipes were connected.

Everything look great.  The new vanity table, the sink, the lights, the mirror … except, now that everything looked new and improved we really should finish the job and go for a new floor.

Off we went again to Canadian Tire to look at floors.  I liked simple, square white tiles, but could have those.  According to the sales person they were not suitable for a bathroom, because their shiny finish would make them slippery when wet.  To cut a long story short, we found a nice tile that wouldn't have us slipping and sliding all over the place.

Of course, now that we had chosen a floor tile, we needed cement and grout, a bucket to mix the cement in and tools to spread the cement, a tile cutter, spacers and a sponge.

Were we done?  Yes, we had everything.

At the checkout point something caught my eye … a washing machine.  It looked so cute and was so reasonably priced.  We needed it, it was a nice deal, so … what the heck, why not?

So, all in all … if Dieter hadn’t gone for the faucets, we wouldn’t have needed the new vanity table and sink.  If we hadn’t gone for the new table and sink, we wouldn’t have gone for lighting and a mirror.  Neither would we have needed a new floor.  If I hadn’t seen the floor, I wouldn’t have seen the washing machine.

$59 faucets that turned into $2,000 faucets … oh well, the bathroom needed renovating anyway.

How was your weekend?

Upon greeting, people often ask “How are you?”, while on a Monday morning, the question changes to “How was your weekend?”  Do they really want to know, or are they merely being polite? 

Assuming that you care about my health, let me recapture my weekend in a nutshell.

Saturday was laundry and cleaning day.  I popped a Tide capsule in the washing machine, added a load of shirts and towels, poured in fabric softener and pressed the “ON” button.  Nothing happened.  I pressed the “ON” button again.  I jabbed at it a few times more but the machine stayed stubbornly quiet.

"Stupid thing, what's the matter with you?" I asked.

No response, which is was a good thing because if the machine had spoken I would have run for the hills.

And then I noticed it ... the door wasn't closed.  Once I pressed that firmly into place, a gently whoosh of water indicated that the washing cycle had started.

While the washing machine did its thing, I was going to do some vacuuming.  A task not to be underestimated, because the vacuum cleaner weighs a ton.  It almost requires a trained bodybuilder to move it from here to there.

I was halfway through sucking dirt from the carpet - all the while swinging to the beat of Jennifer Lopez - when the machine suddenly stopped.  Hold on Jennifer, we seem to have technical difficulties.

I check the "ON" button, I checked the bristles, I peered in the dirt container ... everything seemed to be in order.  So what was the matter with this thing?  Ah, the electrical cord had come unplugged.  That ought to do it.

When everything was clean and tidy I fired up my laptop for some writing.  32 emails awaited me.

Junk, junk, more junk, a message from the UK informing me that my email account had won 32 million Euros, a blog entry about how to be a better writer (must get to that later) and ... ah, a message from a friend who was kind enough to have a look at chapters 1, 2 and 3 of a new story.

I do say "Chapters 1, 2 and 3" because the story held six chapters at the time, but chapters 4, 5 and 6 were not quite approved yet.

After I read the edited chapters - much better this time around - I did a "Save As" and clicked the file name.  OMG !!! too late I realized that I had just saved over the entire document and chapter 4, 5 and 6 were now gone.  Stupid, stupid, STUPID!!!  All that work for nothing.

Finally Sunday night arrived.  This unfortunate weekend was almost over.

When it got a little chilly, I got up and closed the balcony door.  Don't ask me what I did, because I still can't get my mind around it, but in the process I managed to squash two of my fingers.  A scream of pain, followed by holding of the damaged fingers.  And damaged they were.  Not only were the cuticles on both fingers bleeding, they rapidly began to swell to the extent that the knuckles disappeared.

As you can see though, no real damage was done as I can still type.

How was my weekend?  Well, let's just say I've had better.