Coffee Cup Size

Robi and I went down to Timmie's for coffee.
That's Tim Horton's for all you Americans.

I take my coffee black.
I can drink it with milk or cream if I have to,
but sugar makes me gag.

Robi gets a Double-Double.

I know that this is a Canadian phenomenon.
And for those of you not in the know,
a Double-Double is a coffee with
Double Cream and
Double Sugar.

I know.
Ick.
I'm shuddering just thinking about it.

So we get our coffees...




The Timmie's downstairs was quite busy this morning.
Not that it's not usually busy,
it was just more so today.

So they label our coffees for us:




This is mine...Black:



This is Robi's...Double-Double:



But, of course, I can't help but notice
how wrong these labels are.

Cuz, let me tell you, my friends...

There's no way I am now,
nor have I ever been,
a B.

And, God love her,
but Robi's not
a DD.

I think someone mixed up our lids.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I haven't been having the best time lately.

Maybe it's because I haven't had a proper lunch in six weeks.
It could be because I haven't been sleeping much lately.
Perhaps it's the 12 hour days I've been putting in at work.

Yeah, you're right.
It's a combination of all three.

Regardless, the final result is that I have become
a person I no longer recognize.
I don't know where this angry woman came from,
but I don't like her.
I used to be nice.
Stop laughing ... it's true!
So nice, in fact, that I was a doormat.
Just ask the First Stupid.

I was mulling this over in my head last night
as I walked home from the train.
Giving myself a Pep Talk:
Something about making lemonade
while the sun shines through clouds with silver linings.
I may have gotten my metaphors mixed up.

But as I'm trudging along the street,
I came across a beautiful sight:




The girls next door took advantage of a beautiful Spring day
and broke out the coloured chalk.





The pictures were strewn across their front yard
and well into the neighbour's.
I wonder if their mother stopped them from going further.
Personally, I'd be delighted to have artwork in front of my house!

At the end of it all was this:



Something made me stop and stare at that for a while.
I felt something wrap around me like a warm hug.

I took it as a message.
Not from the kids,
but from someone who's telling me to slow down.

It wasn't a careless greeting, or even a suggestion.
It was a warning.

Have a great day...
Or I'm going to come down there and have a talk with you.
And you're not going to like it.

I got the message.
Loud and clear.

Words, Words and More Words

Thanks to Barna-Boo for sending me this!


The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled, by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.


I agree with Barna-Boo ... #7 is pretty darn funny.
I also like #1 Coffee, and #14 Oyster


Not to be outdone ...

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration, n. The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus, n. A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton, n. Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation, n. Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone, n. The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy, n. Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti, n. Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm, n. The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte, v. To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis, n. A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon, n. It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon, n. The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido, n. All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect, n. The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit, n. The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug, n. Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor, n. The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.


Is it any surprise that I think #2 Ignoranus is brilliant?
There are too many people in my office who have a Bozone Layer.
And my hands were flapping like crazy in an EW! gesture at #15! *shudder*

Are You Experienced?

Out walking Puppy last night.
TH mentions that a few Witnesses had
stopped by the Funeral Home
and dropped off some Watchtowers.

The director who greeted them
took the magazines with a smile,
and put them in the office downstairs.
With the bibles.

Let them duke it out in private.

TH walks into the office
and sees the stack of Watchtowers

"Alright!" he cries. "I love Jimi Hendrix!"

He works with a bunch of people in their 20s,
who listen to dance music.
They didn't get it.

*sigh*

There must be some kinda way out of here.

Daily XXXword

I had lunch today with Lady Fairchilde.
I use the term 'lunch' quite loosely.

What I mean to say is that I got to leave the office,
go to a fast food place,
and buy some food.
I even got to eat it.

This is quite miraculous,
given that I haven't had lunch in three weeks.
You'd think this would be
a great weight-loss programme.
It's not.

But I digress.
As usual.

Walking back from getting said lunch,
LF tells me about a crossword puzzle
she was working on yesterday.

"It was all about sex," she says.
And she mentions some of the words,
which I thought were funny.

Then she sends me a copy of the puzzle:



That is frickin' hilarious!

Either the guy who wrote this puzzle
is getting too much,
or not enough.

Either way,
Puzzle Boy has some dominance issues.

I'm a little surprised
'SPANK' wasn't in there somewhere.

There is 'DOG' though.

The Eye of the Beholder

As you know, I'm taking a writing class.
I don't know what I expected to take away from it,
but I can tell you I'm a little disappointed.

I've taken some workshops,
and I've entered several competitions.
In every case, I have received positive critiques.

The first story I wrote for my class,
was a coming-of-age piece with some Canadiana.
My professor loved it.

Then again, he's a Canadian author,
who proudly waves the flag for the home town.

I get it.
I should be proud to be Canadian.
And I am.
But if any Canadian author is honest,
they'll admit they want to break into the American market.
It's where fame and fortune resides.

I thought I'd flex a little on the second story.
It was a rewrite of an older piece.

He panned it.

I was down for days after that.
Not because he butchered it.
I'm OK with that.
I was upset because it bothered me.
I thought I could take criticism better than that.

But after a few days of moping,
it occured to me he was wrong.
That piece was good.
I had completely rewritten it for a competition.
The result was that I was short-listed and,
although I didn't win, to me, that says an awful lot.

I made further edits for the class and it was much tighter,
far better than my original piece,
and better than the competition entry.

Perhaps I wouldn't have felt as bad about his criticism
if I hadn't received such a glowing critique from the competition.
But they told me it was good,
good enough to be sent to the final judge.

And my prof wasn't impressed.

So, for my last submission,
I wrote something just for him.
Well ... not really.
I wrote it for the Life Rattle radio programme,
but I knew he'd like it.

I read it in class,
giving a disclaimer before I began:
"I have yet to read this story without crying,
so bear with me."
Everyone nodded.
And I cried.

He loved it.
The few amendments he suggested were good technical changes.

And then he panned someone else's piece.
It was a great piece,
similar to my style of writing,
and definitely not the prof's.

Which cemented it for me.
It's not me--or us, rather.
It's him.


I sent TH a text:

Me: On break. He loved the story. Figures. And he panned another guys story that was brilliant.

TH: Great literature = Mad Magazine.

Protecting Your Assets

You've all been to the library.
There's always the little sticker
at the bottom of the spine
to identify the book and author
and code it according to the
Dewey Decimal System.

I came across this book in our legal library:



And the spine now reads:



It'll probably take way more than six hours to protect mine.

It's a Pig Sty

I have issues with the state of our staff kitchen.

Each floor of our office has a cafe.
I don't know what the other floors look like,
but ours is quite manky.

People leave their dirty cups,
often with remnants of yesterday's coffee,
lying about the counter.

Even worse, are the lazy sods who
leave their Starbucks take-away cups
on the counter.
On. The. Counter!
They are called take-away cups for a reason.
They are meant to be binned when you're done.

And lunch dishes are never put in the dishwasher.

It's disgusting.
It's like I work with a bunch of cave people.
And to prove this point,
today I found this:



For the love of Pete, people!
Were you born in a cave?!

Rinse off your plate, then put it in the dishwasher.
If the dishwasher is full or running,
then rinse it off anyway,
and stack it neatly on the counter.

And is that a bone?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Do you think you are so important,
that you can leave your manky leftovers lying about?

My DOG is neater than you!!!

Racing to the Altar

My brother, Budge, sent me this.

Not for little ears
or easily offended big ones.
There's some four-letter words.
Just warning.


Marriage is just like a horse race ...

Birds & Bees, Goats & Sheep

Unless you live in a cave,
you've heard of FarmVille.

In the event you are a cave-dweller,
FarmVille is a community game on FaceBook.
Players have a farm,
they plant and harvest crops,
raise animals,
purchase and organize buildings.

As ridiculous as it sounds,
everyone I know who farms,
is seriously addicted.

Me included.

For those of you not in the know,
I must explain something
before I tell you my story.
When you add animals to your farm
you have the option of making them stay in place,
or letting them roam around.

Remember that.
It's important.


Yesterday, I get a call from Lady Fairchilde.
She whispers into the phone,
barely able to contain her excitement.

"Cousin Alex has a DONKEY!
How did she get a donkey?!"

I rush over to LF's desk to see.
Sure enough, Cousin Alex has a donkey.
Very cool.

But then LF notices something else.

FarmVille allows you to
take pictures of your farm.
So LF takes a snapshot,
and posts it to Cousin Alex.

Look closely:



LF posts beneath the picture:

"How the heck did you get a DONKEY ... and just what is that goat doing to the luv ewe???"

Cousin Alex responds:

"The Donkey came out of the golden egg silly,
and it is a luv ewe!!!
That's why all the other animals turned around... lol"

Of course the donkey came from a Golden Egg.
Where else would it come from?
The stork?

Cousin Alex confirmed that she doesn't 'stay' her animals,
that they roam around on their own.
That makes it even funnier!
Then she points out:

"I love the black chicken that's bent down
to see everything under the fence...
Nosy chick! lol"


I started really looking at the picture.
ALL the chickens are watching!
Like it's some live X-rated play.

And what about the little pink calf?
She's going to need therapy for a long time!