“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except technology.”
– John Tudor
Our resident IT guy (a species who, as you may remember, is the ancient enemy of secretaries) coming up to me one day and saying, “I’m going to take your phone so that the dispatch center in the stadium can have it.”
C. asking quickly as he started walking away, “Um, can I get a new one?”
“Yeah, the old stadium one. It doesn’t work very well, so good luck with that.”
Irritation.
“New phone” being broken to the point that it isn’t recognizing picking up or hanging up, and the surface scratched so badly the screen is unreadable. Dozens of incoming messages being lost into the netherworld of dropped/missed calls. Calling up the IT gods where they wither in their dark, lonely cave and demand a solution. An actual New Phone getting installed and C. learning from the IT minions how to personally program the phone’s appearance.
Satisfaction.
Small Dog's means are few, but she takes what she can get!
The office IT guy strolling by and looking down at the screen, where he sees, “WHY ARE YOU READING THIS?!” blazoned across it, and jumps about a mile. C. seeing the whole thing.
“I want a pet!”
“We can’t have one.”
“I know, but can’t we get a fish or something?”
“No.”
“Why not?!”
“Because of the plant by the front door.”
“It was as good as dead when it came to me!”
-C. and J.
A day of freezing rain equals three days of kitties in the Police Department.
This is the season of animal escapades! The last three days in a row, some well-intentioned student has brought in a kitten to our office. And the last three days in a row, the sheer cuteness of these critters has ground the entire office to a halt. Of course…when does a series of isolated events stop being a series of isolated events and start becoming a pattern? apparently there’s a small…herd? Pod? Pride?…of feral cats on campus that all decided to spawn right before the temperature dropped forty degrees overnight. So these hapless little babies just keep turning up so we now have Animal Services on speed dial and we lose an hour’s worth of work every morning putting them in front of heaters, buying milk to feed them, and cuddling them (risking who knows how many communicable diseases).
The downside is that my puppy-lust has been enflamed and I want a pet even more now!
Never would think she was an ocelot wannabe, huh?Granted I don’t have the best luck with plants…but I do have a history with feral cats! When we lived in the Pacific there were hordes of cats in the jungle. A particularly nasty one that haunted our street had a kitten we decided to rescue from the evil mother. It took weeks of feeding it in order to trick it inside. The minute the door closed behind her, she attacked the glass in terror and then hunkered down shivering, her tail the size of a baseball bat. Twenty minutes later, she decided she was “our housecat” and that was the end of the matter. And in a continuing Egyptian theme, we named her Nefertiti because of the heavy black marks around her eyes.
Of course, we were all mildly allergic to her (Buddy was catastrophically so) but we refused to get rid of her. And she repaid our generosity by having kittens under my bed while my parents were out of town.
You can’t handle the cuteness!
Since scrubbing cat placenta out of my carpet isn’t an expirience I’d like to repeat, I don’t think I’ll want a cat ever again, but I do want a puppy. A border collie puppy! Want want!
“Make it classy.”
“I thought we were supposed to be sexy.”
“It is possible to be both.”
-Sushi for Beginners, Marian Keyes
Halloween was easily my favorite holiday growing up. I have fond memories of strategically mapping out my plan of attack in neighborhoods in the search for candy, staggering home under the weight of a bulging pillowcase, and spending days or even weeks on my costumes. For a chunk of my childhood we lived in Germany so we had Fasching instead of Halloween (German version of Carnivale), but since the concept of costume + candy + pranking remained the same, there wasn’t too much of a difference to me.
See back in my day, darlings, we made our costumes. Sure some kids were starting to run around in polyester store-bought Power Rangers outfits, but I always regarded them as sad, unimaginative creatures more to be pitied than envied. Even the year I went as a ghost, I took the time to shred my own sheets and drape them hauntingly about my white and black smudged face. My mother would take me to fabric stores to wrinkle my six year old forehead over the merits of historically correct Indian vs. Polar Bear, rifle with me through the chest that held my hats, boots, and scarves that I used for dress up, and applaude my ideas enthusiastically.
That's right. This guy. Bit of a creeper. Hung out with dead people.
The crowning achievement of my dorkiness trick-or-treating career was the year I announced impressively that I wanted to go as…wait for it…Anubis.
That’s right. Egyptian god of the dead. I think I was seven or eight at the time. As an adult I can now only begin to fathom what thoughts might have scrambled through my impressed/perplexed/weirded out parents’ minds as they heard this plan, but they rallied with admirable self control. My dad helped me fashion a jackal head out of a baseball cap for the base, wound about with wire to form the long snout, face, ears, and Egyptian headpiece, and then mummified (pun!) in paper mache. This whole contraption was then painted with black, gold, and glaring white eyes. A baby towel wrapped around my waist, a white tee-shirt, and a cardboard collar painted gold with blobs of color for the gems completed the look.
No one I begged candy off of had a clue who I was. It was also sweltering hot so by the time I made it home, black streaks of sweat and paint had slithered down my face, but I had the most absolutely amazing costume ever!
My childhood memories have been trashy-ed past recognition. (Editor's Note: these are TAME).
And nowadays what am I left with? The only Halloween costumes available to me (since I can’t sew) are cheap, mass produced trashy stuff usually involving thigh-highs and not much else. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a touch of tart as much as the next girl, but I also firmly adhere to the “time and place” mentality. I also believe absolutely that sexy and slutty are not the same things at all. For example, one year one of my flatmates went as a Victoria Secret Angel: bras, panties, wings. Fin. Kiri and I were saloon girls, complete with fishnets and garters, but we took the time to make sure that the OK stayed corralled!
Trick-or-treating seems to be on the decline, too many weirdos out there I suppose, but I’m still debating how to get in on the holiday this year. Perhaps a party with fabulous friends? Or be boring and just watch Hitchcock movies? I’ve never been to a haunted castle/cornmaze/whatever which seem to be all the rage in these parts, so I’m going to try to trick (or treat) J. into taking me to one. Small Dog has no comment on the possibility of thigh highs.
EDITOR’S ADDITION: COURTESY OF DAD
A bit Wylie E. Coyote, but I nevertheless feel as if you, the reader, should be impressed at my creativity! C. Small Dog, Genius.
Halloween was easily my favorite holiday growing up. I have fond memories of strategically mapping out my plan of attack in neighborhoods in the search for candy, staggering home under the weight of a bulging pillowcase, and spending days or even weeks on my costumes. For a chunk of my childhood we lived in Germany so we had Fasching instead of Halloween (German version of Carnivale), but since the concept of costume + candy + pranking remained the same, there wasn’t too much of a difference to me.
Small Dog Syndrome 