Odds and Ends

There was a sawmill about a mile from where I grew up, and one of the foremen had the nickname Close Enough, because when they were working on something he would be the first to come up with that welcome phrase.

I was working as kitchen help in a large cafeteria when I was driving a van and kept a lot of tools in it. If something went wrong I might get asked to fix it. There was a large locker room for the cafeteria staff with quite a few lockers of ex-employees that had been left locked. The manageress gave me a list of lockers and asked me to cut the locks off. After about a dozen were cut she came back to see how the job was going which was fortunate because I had a question. "Want to go out after work and steal some bicycles?"

We really need more dates than just the "best before" date on food packaging. Not everyone can afford or even wants the absolute best. How about a "still sort of ok" date followed by "take a chance until?"

A woman seemed to be exasperated by men wearing their pants low at the back. She referred to the style as male cleavage.

To the pessimist the glass is half empty. To the optimist it is half full. To the beer drinker it doesn't matter as long as it's beer. To the engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. To me it's like "Listen you guys, I'm tired of hearing about this, OK? Can't you find anything else to argue about?"

Have you ever been told that your humming or singing sounds like the mating call of a stomach pump?

That's the very first smiley I've ever used. The thinking was just a bit philosophical, with questions like "Did any of the great traditional writers ever use smileys?" Never! You just don't see that. "Didn't Van Gogh add one to one of his letters?" Nope, that was finally exposed to be just a clever forgery. "What about Kevin Riley, does he use them?" Give that guy a small graphic and he'll use it to display his presentation points. But that's a good point; maybe it would be OK to use them.

Favorite bumper sticker: "Eat dessert first. Life is so uncertain."

Favorite lower class inspirational quote: "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

When I startle someone because they didn't realize anyone was in the area near them. "It's the way I look. I do that to everybody."

What drives the economy: I found out by accident when a plumber was telling the guy he was working with "As long as the hookers keep putting up their rates, we're gonna keep putting up ours."

Way back when it was done on typewriters, a typist was saying that she liked to eat corn on the cob from one end to the other. (1 or 2 rows at a time, from left to right I suppose.) She said that when there are kids at the table just taking a bite out of anywhere, it really gets to her.

I grew up on a farm. We slept in the house and the animals slept in the barn. It worked really well, but city folk get it all mixed up.

"Tragedy breaks down the barriers between people. Comedy dances on them." Maybe Shelley? I was reading essays by the romantic poets and this stood out enough to be remembered, but I began to appreciate it more a day or 2 later and never made it back to see which one wrote it. It does point to something interesting we can do with our differences; enjoy them.

On one job I was called a jack of all trades a few times. I used to add "And master of toilet tank mechanics." (It's like a plumber but more specialized.)

A few comments that come in handy at work.

When someone says "see you tomorrow" an answer I've enjoyed lately is "Oh you never know. One of us might have a better job by then." This one is really flexible. There are so many things that can prevent something happening in the future that anyone suggesting something will happen then is pretty much just feeding you your straight lines. (Everyone is a comedian, at least with a little practice, right?) But you might want to be just a bit extra careful with "OYNK, one of us might have a better place to live by then."

Since the economic downturn and one of our team getting fired for something he had gotten away with cleanly in the past, "OYNK one of us might be fired by then" has had the laughs.

"Well I checked my balance and I can't retire today, but at least I made it to quitting time."

"I may be slow but at least I take my time."