Funny Typo of the Day

“However,the problem was solved only over a period of several months as the majority of the newcomers left the North Caucasus for destinies further into the Soviet rear.”

Read that sentence in full.

Now read the proofreaders remark:

“Oddly worded…slightly dirty?”

Back to Basics

I haven’t posted about my breasts for a while, so let me update you.

Yesterday they changed the gear in my car.

Here’s the situation. I was turning a corner and as I was doing so my travel coffee mug slipped out of its cup holder and into the passenger foot-well. It was empty, so I wasn’t too concerned, but I did want to pick it up. At the next light I leaned over the retrieve it. Once the light changed I tried to accelerate only to hear scary upset noises from my car without any movement. Panic was rising, but I had the sense to check that I was in gear, and I was not. Meaning that as I leaned over to retrieve the fallen coffee mug the gear-shift was manipulated BY MY BOOBS out of gear and into neutral. And its not like I have a wobbly gear shift either. You have to push a button down to get it to change gears. I guess the button was squished either between the boobs or between boob and stomach. Either way, Leopold and Loeb are now actively trying to affect my life. Or at least my ability to accelerate.

Book World

Part of working in the Book industry is typos. They happen and that’s just a fact of life. However, every now and then there is a typo that is so funny you have to share it.

I’m working on a Psychology text, and the author was trying to say that he was torn over an issue. Here is the text EXACTLY as it appears in the unedited copy:

I felt tom, and that was rough.

I almost died with laughter. And even funnier is the proofreaders comment in the margin:

(arrow after o) something missing?

Aaaah hilarity

Newbies

So today at work is my one week anniversary (how fast the time goes, it seems like only last week…). Anyway, so today, on the day of my anniversary a new chick started. (I use the term “Chick” for a female roughly my age, not a “girl” but I can’t justify the label “woman”). I thought I’d be nice and say that its not as hard as it sounds initially, that everything will eventually make sense and not to worry, and so I did.

However, she is currently being trained in the cubicle next door, and she apparently has TONS of experience in publishing, like she interned for several summers doing almost exactly this work. True, she isn’t quite familiar with the way things are done here, but she still has a base of knowledge. So I’m sitting here resenting her. Maybe I just need more caffine.

Bladder Control

I have always prided myself on the fact that I can hold off going to the bathroom for HOURS after the initial signal is sent from points South. My current record is 5 hours post the “I really have to pee” feeling. However, today I am peeing like a mad woman and I don’t know why. And its not like I have to pee and when I go its only a little that comes out, oh no, it’s a torrent!

Just so you all know.

Interior Design

My cubicle is bare. Its very bare and very beige. I have a calendar. I have cheat sheets to remind me how to do my various tasks. I have a phone and a lamp. What I do not have are personal things. I brought in a coffee mug, but other than that nothing here belongs to me. Since the weekend is fast approaching I thought I’d rustle up some personal stuff to bring in on Monday.

I keep trying to think of what I want to bring. I think I may bring in my little mermaid poster that I always joke has been personalized for me (it says Ariel on it). I also should bring some pictures. This is where I’ve been hitting a snag. I want to bring in all the pictures that make me happy, all my friends and family and weird random pictures. But where and when to find them? Most of my pictures from school are packed away in whatever receptacle was handy at the time that I was packing. (seriously, my boxes from moving are labeled, Crap, More Crap, Tons of Crap. I guess I thought I was being witty, but instead I’ve dug quite the grave for myself because now I can’t find any of my belongings). Unpacking the whole box is out of the question because there is a law of nature about cardboard boxes. Once you unpack them the things will never fit inside it again. It doesn’t even matter if you remove some of the items, it just won’t fit again.

Also I want some witticisms to prove that I am a witty kind of girl. I have a few in mind, and was all set to buy them online as bumper stickers to tack up on my cubicle wall. That is until I was at stitch n bitch last night and was reminded that I could simply write those witticisms in Word and print them out myself, thus eliminating 99% of the cost I was so ready to pay. What can I say, I’m a moron.

Also on my list are: Mouse pad, chair cushion and zebra figurines to hang out with me in my cube of blah.

Africa Can Bite Me!

I have very few things in my life planned. Not that I don’t want things planned out, its just that actually sitting down and thinking about my life on a grand scale is too daunting a task. Rather, I like to take things a step at a time. One class, one semester, one year at a time. Since graduating in June I’ve faced the looming unplannedness of a future devoid of classes and therefore class structure, a structure I have built around myself like a blanket. To simply shrug it off is far too hard for me, so I delt with it as I always have, one baby step at a time, trying not to look at the next step too hard, but having the next step in mind.

For me step 1 out of college was: Get A Job. I know, I know, I’m a rebel. Who on earth thinks of employment after school? But hey, what can I say, I’m a free spirit. Step 1 has been accomplished and so Step 2 was fast approaching. My foot hadn’t landed, but it was waving in the air. Step 2 was: Find A Roommate which would lead directly into Step 3: Move Out. (yes there was a 2a, Find Apartment). Step 2 has been crushed. Step 2 is now a fantasy. The foot that was out waving over Step 2 has been pushed back and my footing is a bit unstable.

My idea for Step 2 was to move in with a friend of mine that I will give the alias “Julie”. Julie lived with me in the past in school, we get along well, have deep intellectual conversations (really, I’m not being facetious). Julie, however, had a dream. Her dream was to go to Africa with the Peace Corps and help AIDS babies. Not a dream to be sneezed at. But her Dream was interfering with Step 2. I wont deny that I wanted her to be rejected by the Peace Corps so that my Step 2 would work. After months of delaying their response, and keeping both our hopes up for opposite results, today the Peace Corps delivered.

Julie will be going to Namibia only a short time after our mutual friend’s wedding. She will be gone for 2 years. There was a lurch in my stomach when I heard that. And I think that the lurch was more to do with the loss of a next Step, rather than the loss of my friend. Does that make me a bad person? Probably.

I will miss my friend though. I miss her already and we’ve only been separated for the duration of the summer thus far. She makes me laugh and makes me think and now she is going to make the world a slightly better place than when she found it. I am immensely proud to know her and of her.

Still, Africa can BITE ME!

Too Hot To Handle

It’s a funny thing really. When you were a baby you loved being warm because warmth imitated the conditions of the womb. Isn’t it interesting how it switches. I spent last night with a friend of mine in her parents extra condo. It was a nice place, a bit small but fine for their purposes, close to the airport and a decent place to spend the night. In fact it was more than decent, it was beautiful, fully furnished from Restoration Hardware, whose catalogue I routinely drool over.

And so I did not anticipate problems sleeping in the giant and beautiful bed that was in the guest bedroom, even though my friend and I would have to share. No problems that is until I got into bed. Oh, the bed itself was fine, don’t get me wrong, it was the temperature. I could not find a position that allowed air to circulate around my body. I was dripping in sweat within five minutes of getting into bed. I must have drifted off because I woke up when my friend got into bed. I mumbled something like “goodnight” and she answered me with “holy crap its hot in here”

Forward three hours later. I wake up again, my friend is no longer in bed. I am soaking with sweat. I tried to get back to sleep but it was simply too hot so I decided to wander around a little bit. Let me say that the heat was barely noticeable when one was walking around. It was only unbearable when trying to sleep. The bed was like a heat reflector, every ounce of heat that my body put out was reflected back at me by the down pillows, comforter and mattress pad. (and if you think I was under the comforter you’re crazy, I was lying on top of everything)

I decided to bite the bullet and get up and look for my friend. I could hear her faint snores, so I knew she was still in the house. I found her conked out on the sofa in the living room (with the overhead fan whirring). After some hemming and hawing and splashing cold water on my face and neck I owned up to the fact that there was really no way that I was getting back to sleep in that bed. I contemplated getting into the bed to read, but that idea was vetoed due to the fact that if I couldn’t sleep in the bed, reading wouldn’t be anymore comfortable.

I ultimately went down to get my ipod. I thought I’d watch some of the tv shows I have on there. But, rummaging through my purse I woke my friend. She said it was fine for me to turn on the tv, (and I believed her, at school she is routinely fast asleep with “Flavor of Love” on at full volume). I did and scrolled through the infomercials until landing on “the Fresh Prince of Bel Air”. After about 10 minutes of will smith and company I began to feel drowsy. The overhead fan was on and it was finally a comfortable temperature. I fell asleep in the chair I had been watching tv in.

We woke up to my cell phone alarm at 6:30 because I needed to take my friend to the airport (the whole point of this exercise) and go to work. Remember that I had about 6 hours of sleep all tolled and the longest I slept all at once was about three hours. We were both strangely energized. My friends mother called to ask how the night went and as we complained about the heat she said “why didn’t you turn on the AC?”

Well I feel sheepish. I spent a night of heat induced insomnia because I didn’t think to look for the thermostat. I really did graduate from both high school and college, but nope. No AC for me.

So today I will be pouring coffee into myself every hour on the hour. Oh yeah, and maybe getting some work done. Though I’m not really betting on the latter.

Working hard for the Money!

Well I have a new job, which naturally means that I’m back to Blogging. The thing is that jobs in general suck. Work in general sucks, that’s why they call it work, not play. If it was fun it’d be called fun, instead it’s called Work.

Mostly what sucks about working is that it’s new. I don’t know anyone, I don’t know where anything is and I don’t really know what I’m doing other than following instructions. I don’t know where what I’ve created is headed or is going towards. Also at this point I’m not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel which is beginning to scare me. When I went to work before I always knew that the end of the summer was coming, that I would have to go back to school and that I could return to the life I knew and loved. Now all I see is 20 more years of filling out forms and being confused by acronyms and sitting in the same crappy chair. For 20 years!

I know somewhere in my reasonable mind that things will improve. I will make what approximates “friends” at work and I will find a groove for the actual work.

I felt a little better about the “I’ll be sitting here for the next 20 years” freak out today when the lady who is training me said the same thing about her first day. That after her first day she had the same thought, and she divulged this information unprovoked!

At least today I have my own coffee mug as opposed to using a Styrofoam cup from the kitchen.