Best of 2006

Jan­u­ary

Yeah, Go Baby!

Thurs­day the 26th

The local High School is only about a mile from my house and because ours is a nice quiet neigh­bor­hood the track team uses it as part of their train­ing runs a cou­ple times a week. Tonight I passed sev­eral groups of run­ners in both direc­tions on my rollerblad­ing excur­sion.
On the way to the Odell Weeks track for my mid­dle mile loop, I passed from behind, a small group of guys who I smiled at as if to say, “I may be old, but I’m faster than you.” This is easy if you are on eight wheels instead of two sneakers.

On the way back from my loop I came across a group of a half dozen girls. We were trav­el­ing in oppo­site direc­tions on the same side of the street, so I looked up as we approached so as to not bump into any­one. A cute brunette near the back made eye con­tact and shouted, “Yeah, Go Baby!” I smiled to myself and thought, I still got it, 50 years-old and the chicks still swoon.

It was then that I remem­bered I was wear­ing a blue sweat­shirt with large bright yel­low let­ters that I bought at the gift shop on Annapo­lis a few years ago. She was say­ing. “Yeah, Go NAVY!”

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Feb­ru­ary

Non Con­form­ing Mate­r­ial Report

Fri­day the 3rd

Donna and I work in a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant and our Qual­ity Assur­ance depart­ment uses what they call an NCMR to flag parts that are bad. NCMR stands for Non Con­form­ing Mate­r­ial Report which is the polit­i­cally cor­rect term for crap parts. Like the parts that aren’t up to spec would have it’s feel­ings hurt if we called them scrap or something.

Today at work the Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee had a bake sale to raise money for projects they do dur­ing the year (and per­haps to help defray the cost of psy­chi­atric help for the frag­ile egos of non con­form­ing parts.) Donna vol­un­teered to bake some of her renown choco­late chip cook­ies for them to sell. Last night we made around 10 dozen cook­ies. As always there are a few that get baked a lit­tle too long or crack and break when they are removed from the cookie sheet. Want­ing to put only her best cook­ies on sale we took a paper plate full of the rejects to work to give away on my side of the plant.

To be cute I placed a lit­tle sign over the cook­ies that read:
Non Con­form­ing Cookie Report.
Failed inspec­tion for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:
1) Heat treated to long
2) Rough edges
3) Gen­eral workmanship

Within a half an hour the cook­ies were all gone, but some one had placed a sign over the top of mine:
Sec­ond sam­ple of 24 required to make final deter­mi­na­tion. Sub­mit to Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment. Day shift only.

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March

It Can’t Come Soon Enough

Sun­day the 26th

While I read on one end of the couch, Donna was on the other watch­ing TV. Mostly the reruns of yesterday’s World Ice Skat­ing Cham­pi­onships, but dur­ing com­mer­cials and lapses in excite­ment she would surf the chan­nels. At one point she nudged me to remove my head­phones. CNN was doing an inter­view with some­one involved with a new IMAX movie called “Wired to Win: Sur­viv­ing the Tour de France.” Looks inter­est­ing, but it is not play­ing at any IMAX the­ater within 600 miles of us. Sigh.

After the movie seg­ment we hopped to the other CNN where they were into some­thing about the increas­ing num­ber of major hur­ri­canes. Seems it might be because since the 70’s the sur­face tem­per­a­ture of the oceans has risen 1 degree Cel­sius. Last win­ter was the warmest on record. Glac­i­ers melt­ing! Global Warm­ing! The reporter pinned down one sci­en­tist to say that it is because of human actions that this hap­pen­ing. We are ruin­ing the very envi­ron­ment we need to survive.

From there she jumped to Bravo where “Real House­wives of Orange County” was on. After watch­ing a cou­ple of min­utes of this very weird show I came to the con­clu­sion that if this is what life is all about, caus­ing our own extinc­tion via global warm­ing can’t come soon enough.

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April

Buy­ing Beer For The Neigh­bor­hood Kids

Thurs­day the 27th

Every morn­ing when I get to work I fire up the PC and wan­der into our “cafe­te­ria” to fill my mug full of ice and water while the com­puter boots up. Donna and I start work at 7:30 and the pro­duc­tion and assem­bly folks start at 7:00, so the place is usu­ally deserted.

This morn­ing as I approached the ice machine I hear, “Psst. Bri-yan.” Over by the water foun­tain, just inside the door, is one of the women who work on the assem­bly line motion­ing me over. She hands me 50¢ and asks, “Can you go buy me a large cap­puc­cino?” So I put my mug on top of the ice machine and get her a hot cap­puc­cino out of the cof­fee machine. As I bring her her cup, another woman shows up and asks if I could do the same for her. I say, “Sure.” So she hands me 2 quar­ters and I head back to the cof­fee machine. After they have both poured their paper cups of steam­ing cap­puc­cino into their approved, cov­ered mugs, they thank me pro­fusely and go back out to their respec­tive assem­bly lines.

I’m guess­ing that they are allowed into the cafe­te­ria as far as the foun­tain so they can get water, but can’t go any­where near the snack or drink machines unless it is dur­ing breaks or lunch. It felt just a lit­tle like going into the pack­age store to buy a six-pack for some high schoolers…

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May

Hope She Thinks They’re From Me

Tues­day the 9th

Sub-Titled: That’s The Last Time Donna’ll Let Me Do That Unsu­per­vised
It’s com­ing up on Mother’s Day, so if you’ve got one, bet­ter start plan­ning a gift. It is time for us to pick out some flow­ers or a plant to be deliv­ered to my Mom in Con­necti­cut. We always used to do flow­ers, but some­where along the way Mom men­tioned she hated to throw away the flow­ers after they got all ooey. She sug­gested we get her a plant, some­thing that could be trans­planted and enjoyed for more than a week or so.

For the last cou­ple of year’s we have been buy­ing and send­ing the Mother’s Day plant using the inter­net. Usu­ally we do this together, because being a guy, I can’t always be relied upon to pick out the best gift. This year Donna let me try on my own, after all it is for my Mom. Not being much of a shop­per when it comes to these sorts of things, I usu­ally pick who­ever has an ad run­ning on the front page of Yahoo. This year’s lucky recip­i­ent of our busi­ness was proflowers.com. I picked out a nice large 6″ pot­ted Ven­tri­cosa Heather plant in a dec­o­ra­tive tin bas­ket for $30 (+ $10 for deliv­ery.) When I showed Donna what I had bought she was pleased. Then she asked me what I put on the card I told her, “Happy Mother’s Day, what did you think?” She then replied, “Did you put ‘Love Brian & Donna’ on it?”

Oooops.

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June

Now We’re Even

Fri­day the 23rd

A few weeks back Donna sent me out for a small Wendy’s Frosty. They cost 99 cents and with our local 6% sales tax my total was a buck five. I went through the drive up and I didn’t have the nickel, so I gave the cashier a dol­lar bill and a quar­ter. She handed me my Frosty and then gave me my 15 cents change. By the time I real­ized I had been cheated out of a nickel; it wasn’t worth going back to get it.

Tonight she wanted another Frosty. Back to the drive up I go. Cost was the same as before, $1.05, so I gave the cashier a dol­lar and then rum­maged around in the cen­ter con­sole look­ing for the 5 cents. After watch­ing me strug­gle for a bit, she finally said, “I’ve a got a nickel, just go ahead.”

Now we’re even.

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July

Brian Buys .06 Gal­lons Of Gas

Sat­ur­day the 15th

We wanted to do our weekly gro­cery shop­ping late tonight to avoid the heat, so we left the house at 10PM mainly because that is when the Trad­ing Spaces Donna was watch­ing ended. We shop at Kroger because it is con­ve­nient and they sell gas too. Because we have a cus­tomer loy­alty card I get to save an extra dime off the per gal­lon cost of their gas. This is usu­ally a good deal as most times their price per gal­lon is a nickel or so less than the sur­round­ing sta­tions to begin with.

I dropped Donna in front of the store, so she could start shop­ping while I went and filled up the tank. When I got around the side of the store where the gas is it looked kind of dark. The over­head lights of the gas sta­tion were off, but the pump lights were on bright, so I went over. As I pulled in there was an atten­dant in the booth, so I stopped and opened the gas cap. I scanned my loy­alty card and then inserted my debit card. When it told me to lift the noz­zle and select a grade, I did just that. I started pump­ing and it was com­ing out really slow and then stopped at 17 cents. Hmmm. maybe they are out of pre­mium. I walked over to the win­dow and asked the atten­dant if they were out of gas or some­thing, when she told me they were closed and that must have been all that was left in the hose.

I went back to the pump replaced the noz­zle and closed my gas cap. The lit­tle LCD win­dow on the pump asked if I wanted a receipt and I replied yes, to which it told me to see the cashier. Back to the win­dow I go. The atten­dant said that she couldn’t get me a receipt because she had already closed the reg­is­ter. Sigh.

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August

My World Is Empty With­out You Babe

Wednes­day the 23rd

I had been shar­ing my cubicle/workspace with col­lege kid/summer help, Adam, since May, but he is gone now and the silence has been deaf­en­ing. Now it is echoing.

A few days before Adam left ASCO’s employ, the Depart­ment Man­ager and the IT guy showed up and asked, “Your last day is Fri­day the 11th, right?” Adam assumed that they were com­ing to say nice work­ing with you, you’ve been a big help, come back next time, etc. His bub­ble was popped when the IT guy said, “That PC should work.” The man­ager said, “I’ll get Main­te­nance to move the desk on Saturday.”

Seems the new depart­men­tal Indus­trial Engi­neer was start­ing on Mon­day and they needed some stuff so the new guy wouldn’t come in to an empty cubi­cle. Turns out the new IE doesn’t start until this Mon­day, so the PC got moved last Fri­day and Main­te­nance didn’t come to get the desk until today. For good mea­sure those guys also grabbed the side table and the trash can. They left behind only a chair and lots of dust.

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Sep­tem­ber

The Lost Weekend

Fri­day the 8th

Star­ring Brian Bog­a­r­dus as Don Bir­nam and intro­duc­ing Donna Bog­a­r­dus as Helen St. James.

We went to the video store this evening and spent $25 rent­ing all 7 DVDs of the TV show LOST. Twice.

The first time we went into the store and found the TV sec­tion where they had the Lost discs all lined up. I grabbed the first three think­ing that would be enough to keep us busy for a while. Donna said, “No get all of them.” Checked out all seven and came home. Donna took a quick nap and about 5:30 we thought we would start our marathon. Each disc has 4 episodes and each episode lasts about 42 min­utes, so we fig­ured we would watch one disc tonight leav­ing 3 for Sat­ur­day and 3 for Sun­day. When I opened up the case for disc one, I real­ized it was a Sea­son One disc. WTF? All of them were Sea­son One…

We didn’t pay atten­tion in the store, we just fig­ured that the sec­ond season’s stuff would right up front because it just came out on Tues­day. Nope. Donna called the store up and asked if they had Sea­son Two in stock. They did. She asked them to put the whole set aside for and we would be in later to get them.

As we were check­ing out we asked for the “Stu­pid Renters Dis­count” and explained what we had done. The man­ager was there and had the clerk call up our account. She could see we had picked out 7 DVDs just two hours before and took pity on us. She did a swap thing and we didn’t have to pay for them the sec­ond time. Nice.

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Octo­ber

Mother Would Be So Proud

Wednes­day the18th

Daily, I am emailed a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion with a chart on it that shows how as a plant we are doing towards our goal of ship­ping out prod­uct. Weekly, I get another Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion with 3 lines on it, man­u­fac­tur­ing, assem­bly and total, track­ing our ser­vice lev­els (on time deliv­ery.) The rea­son I get these pre­sen­ta­tions is not because I need to be keep­ing abreast of this sort of stuff, but in my capac­ity as the Arts & Crafts Engi­neer at ASCO.

I print these charts out on in full tech­ni­color on an 18 x 24 piece of paper and post them out­side the cafe­te­ria. These are placed there in the hopes that my fel­low asso­ciates will be inspired to work harder towards our com­mon goals, but mostly they are ignored by the troops as they file in and out dur­ing breaks and lunch.

For the first year or so I sprayed some artists adhe­sive to the backs of the charts and stuck them to a larger piece of card­board sup­ported by an easel. About six months ago man­age­ment decide that the card­board thing just wasn’t pro­fes­sional enough, so they com­mis­sioned a very nice set of wooden frames. The frames even have a, hinged at the top, sec­ond frame with a piece of Plex­i­glas in the mid­dle to pro­tect the charts from out­side dam­age and keep them look­ing nice. These were hung on the same wall that the easel used to sit in front of with the tops of the frames about 6′ off the ground. Inside the frames I have some mir­a­cle of mod­ern sci­ence mount­ing sys­tem, it is made of a sort of rub­bery sheet that has the same low tack long last­ing stickum that is on post-it notes.

My daily rou­tine is to print out my chart and go out to the frame and lift the hinged cover and prop it open on top of my head while I peel the old chart off the sticky mount and care­fully smooth out the new chart while bal­anc­ing the lid up with my head. Because I do this usu­ally at mid morn­ing break for a lot of peo­ple, I get some weird looks and com­ments from folks on their way to the cafe­te­ria for break. Every chance I get I tell them that my mother would be so proud because she was always say­ing to me, “I wish you would use your head for some­thing besides a hat rack.”

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Novem­ber

The Demo­c­ra­tic Process

Mon­day the 6th

Tomor­row is Elec­tion Day and while I just love the bumper sticker, “I don’t vote, it just encour­ages them” I usu­ally do just the oppo­site, I vote to encour­age them. In my own lit­tle protest against main­stream politi­cians, I typ­i­cally vote for the Lib­er­tar­ian, the Green Party guy or some other third party candidates.

This elec­tion my vot­ing will be guided by another bumper sticker I saw just the other day, “It’s broke, so let’s fix it. Vote Democratic.”

I mean what have I been think­ing all these years, vot­ing that way. The Demo­c­ra­tic Party is the way to go, always was, I mean they don’t call vot­ing “The Repub­li­can Process” do they?

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Decem­ber

Get­ting the Car­pet to Match the Drapes

Tues­day the 19th

For those of you who are not reg­u­lar read­ers, Donna and I get our hair­cut every 4 weeks from a friend, Sheri, who owns her own salon. Today was hair­cut day an on our way out tonight of the shop I spot­ted some­thing on dis­play that made me do a dou­ble take.

Remem­ber in the movie M*A*S*H where every­one gath­ers around the woman’s shower tent and they are tak­ing bets as to whether or not Major Hot Lips O’Houlihan is a nat­ural blonde? Let’s just say that with mod­ern tech­nol­ogy she would have no wor­ries about the truth now.

Intro­duc­ing Betty Beauty — The first safe color spe­cially for­mu­lated for the hair down there. Col­ors nat­u­rally, cov­ers gray, and enhances to match your glo­ri­ous locks above. Whether you’re blonde (be a true blonde now!), radi­ant auburn, brunette, or black, our easy-to-use, no-drip for­mula gives you the per­fect fin­ish­ing touch. From now on, when you high­light or color your hair, don’t for­get your betty color for the hair down there.

Or as Sheri said, “Now you can get the car­pet to match the drapes.”

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