Category: funny

Love has urinated in my front yard and walked away. (it’s a comic, really… Fred Milton is definitely number one toilet)

In all the hubbub at work this week, I haven’t even had time to tell you the very cool thing the search business folks did for me. A long time ago, we did this big deal with another company that used to give people remote-controlled blimps. I whined and whined and whined that if I did all this work for the deal, that I should get a blimp. I never got it. I did get some great swag from them, like a remote-controlled robot, a cool picnic backpack and a nice polo shirt. Alas, there was no blimp.

As a thank you/congratulations present, the guys got me a blimp!! It was about three feet long, two feet high, and had Where the Wild Things Are pictures taped all over it. It was cool. The first test flight went well. It was just around a little open meeting area. Then, for the rest of the week, it floated in my office, because I was too busy to actually do anything with it.

Friday afternoon, I’d had enough. I needed to take a break, so a couple of my friends came over and we took the blimp down to the CC2 Atrium. The building I work in now is a big four-story rectangular donut, with this big open space in the middle from first floor to ceiling. I couldn’t think of a better place to try the blimp out. It was entirely too tempting. We fired it up, let it go and puttered around a little over our heads. Then, things went terribly wrong. The blimp hit the air blowers at the second floor and shot straight up to the fourth floor, where it was grabbed and mercilessly grappled by the huge air intake vents. We ran up the stairs (because it was well out of range at this point) and tried in vain to use the poor little propellers to free it. It was held fast. So, I went back to my desk and fetched the Koosh balls, in the vain attempt that we could free it by bludgeoning. No luck. Then, we went back to my office where I humbly called facilities and explained the situation and was summarily bitched out for not realizing that the smoke detectors on the fourth floor could have easily gone off, clearing the building and summoning the fire department. Now, in fear for my job, and being blamed for disturbing people trying franticly to finish work before the weekend, I rushed back to the fourth floor balcony to watch my poor captured dirigible and wait for her galant blue-shirted rescuer to arrive. I expected a big ladder. Instead, he went through the vents. I noticed some clanging, and then a hairy hand reached through the vent and grabbed the blimp. He yanked it towards him and uttered the words I knew were coming, “Am I trying to save this thing?” Of course, I told him to do whatever he had to. He popped it and dragged it through the vent, then told me to meet him downstairs.

I guess this all ended well. I learned a little about the fire system in my building, and the guy who performed the rescue wasn’t all that upset. He thought it was kind of funny and said people do stupid stuff like this all the time. But, my poor blimp is crumpled in a box in my office… never to fly again; at least not at work.

There’s apparently another Kevin Lawver in the world. I was pretty certain I was the only one. He’s apparently married and has facial hair just like me. He’s an “evangelist” for a church in Wisconsin.

Did you ever see Are You Dave Gorman? Well, I’m starting, Are You Kevin Lawver. We haven’t met in person, but there’s another Kevin Lawver out there. How weird is that?

Best line of the day so far:

I was in training this morning, and while we were working on one of the in-class examples, the instructor started whistling. Without thinking I said, “Please don’t whistle while we work.” Ok, written out, it’s not that funny, but it was funny in context.

It’s never a good idea to eat Tums when you have a cough drop in your mouth. The Tums get all over the drop and make it extremely nasty… just thought I’d share.

Listen to the dog, y’all.

I am numb. I spent too many hours in meetings fighting people, and now just want to go home, read Dr. Suess books to Max, kiss Jen and let my brain and voice recover from all the arguing and chest-thumping. I wish it wasn’t so hard, but sometimes it just is.

Best line from today: “So, the TPD to QA ETA is still TBD?” No, I can’t/won’t explain it, but I love long strings of acronyms thrown together with no thought that someone might have a hard time doing on-the-fly expansion of those acronyms.

More dogs should write poetry.

I don’t remember my dreams very often. When I do, they’re usually the kind that wake me up with a start and cold sweat. Monday night, I had a good dream that woke me up, I think because of the sheer weirdness of it. I remember going to sleep thinking in French, which is really hard since I only took three years of it in high school and then spoiled any chance of speaking it well by following that up with a year of Spanish. I get verbs mixed up, and frequently throw in franpanglish when I can’t remember the word for shoes (in Spanish it’s zapatos, but for the life of me I can’t remember the French word). Towards the end of my classroom French, I started having French dreams where everyone spoke French and I had an amazing accent. I haven’t had a French dream in years.

Then came Monday night. I was a New York tourist shop owner. I was standing behind the counter in my I ::heart:: NY t-shirt polishing snow globes with the Statue of Liberty in them when a Japanese couple walk in with a map and thirty cameras strapped to them, speaking rapidly and stabbing their fingers at a map. They looked at me and started speaking Japanese much more slowly, as if that would make me understand. I laughed and asked them if they spoke English. They shook their heads and I started wondering if I was ever going to be able to help these poor short people (in my dream either I was very tall or they were very short – yes, in my dreams, all the stereotypes are true. It’s not my fault, I swear). Then, I remembered, I speak French. So, I asked them if they spoke French (in French of course – even in my dreams, I’m not an idiot). Voila! They do!! So, I tried to remember if gauche was left or right and vice versa for adroit. We apparently figured it out with hand signals and waving. I hopped over the counter, grabbed the map, led them out the door, flipped my sign to closed, locked the door, pulled down the big metal gate over the windows and door and we were off. We spoke broken japecais and franglais and laughed at our mispronunciation and lack of vocabulary as we went all over town taking pictures and seeing the sites.

I don’t remember the end of the dream: what happened to wake me up, or why I woke up. I was proud of helping those little tourists. I was proud that I remembered my language skills and put them to use for the good of mankind. I’m just amazed I remembered the dream. I never remember dreams. What does this mean?

And yes, I still don’t feel well. Maybe it was a Robitussin dream…

My dad was in the Air Force for 23 years. For about 22 of those years, I lived at home and followed him around the world spreading democracy like seeds in the wind. When we lived in Mississippi, on the Vicksburg Army Corps of Engineers station, dad had an office with a nice big desk and cool chair. One day, my brother and I were waiting for him to get out of a meeting and were sitting in his office looking for rubber bands to shoot at things. We were in high school, and therefore into making trouble.

We found dad’s CLASSIFIED stamp and the red ink and decided that more things in dad’s office needed to be top-secret. We stamped his yellow Post-It notes, his stationary, his paper airplane, a brochure for some timeshare condo and a napkin. Dad came in, surveying the CLASSIFIED damage, put his hands on his hips and in his best dad voice said, “Not funny”.

For Father’s Day that year, we got my dad a NOT FUNNY stamp and some blue ink.