The Spider Chronicles 2012

Every spring, when Minnesota weather is still trying to decide between winter and spring, the creepy crawlies scurry into the house during the cold and wet spells.  My main nemesis: the yellow sac spider.  Since it would be really boring for me to say, "I killed a spider," this spring I have been writing crazy little blurbs when I kill one.  Highly embellished, but sprinkled with truth, the following is my collection know as "the spider chronicles."  Enjoy.

March 30, 2012
As I reached to turn on the water in the shower this morning, I was suddenly confronted with a tap-dancing yellow sac spider singing "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my rag-time gal." So I killed it. It's too early in the day for singing spiders.

April 25, 2012
My past caught up to me last night when a yellow sac spider confronted me asking where his singing and dancing soul brother was. I asked him what he did. He said he was part of a Mariachi band. So I killed him. It was too late at night for a spider with maracas.

April 30, 2012
As I was on my way out the door this morning, I was surprised to see a baby yellow sac spider wielding a pin-sized sword. So I asked him, "What is your schtick, peewee?" The baby stood it's ground and said "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." So I killed him. I didn't have time for melodramatic spiders.

May 5, 2012

As I shut off the light in the kitchen last night, I saw movement on the ceiling and heard the jingle of tiny carabiners. I quickly turned the light back on and saw a yellow sac spider, with the tiniest green beret ever, frozen in mid-air and staring back at me with a sheepish grin. "Oorah?" he squeaked in his high-pitched voice. "What on earth is going on here?" I countered. "That's classified, Ma'am" he said, trying to look menacing. So I cut his line and killed him. The only one doing a black ops mission in the kitchen after midnight is going to be me.

May 30, 2012
Waiting for a stop light on the way home from work Tuesday, suddenly a big gangly spider was boogeying across my windshield! I frantically reached for the button to put the window up, but not before I heard the theme from Shaft drifting in from the itsy bitsy boom box he was carrying. Next I scrambled for the windshield wiper to wipe him out of existence, but he just busted a few Deney Terrio moves, thumbed his nose at me, and boogied out of view. Canyadigit?

Microsoft logic: an oxymoron

I try to avoid Microsoft products whenever possible, but it is usually inescapable at my place of employment.  This morning I had the privilege of witnessing the logic of Microsoft "security" in action.  


I started my work day like I always do, by logging on to the Microsoft network and opening Outlook to read any new mail.  After that, it was time to start the real business of the day.  Everything was running smoothly until about an hour into my routine.  Suddenly, a dialog box popped up announcing that I needed to log into Outlook.  Hmmm...I was already logged into Outlook and it was working just fine.  I tried re-entering my password, but the box didn't go away.  That was annoying.  I finally clicked the close button to get rid of it.  I hoped that was the end of it.


A short time later I found the need to look up something on the internet.  I opened Explorer and tried to authenticate through the firewall.  It told me my user name or password was incorrect.  No they weren't.  So I entered them again.  And got the same error.  Ugh!  First mail and now the internet.  I tried a couple more times but got the same error.  Was there something someone wasn't telling me?  Did I need to ask my boss if I still had a job?  No no no.  This was ridiculous.  So I submitted a support ticket to our IT guru.  


The guru replied a couple minutes later.  My password had expired at 9:05 am and I needed to log in again.  Are you kidding me?  I could understand if the password expired and a new one was demanded at the next log in.  Oh no, it just quit working.... without any explanation.... and locked me out of my account.  Thank you, Microsoft.  That made me feel so much safer.  I no longer needed to worry about me stealing information from myself, because Microsoft had my back.


I'm not extremely familiar with Microsoft, but I seem to recall in the recesses of my mind that they had a annoying dancing paper clip at one time.  I haven't seen it in the version we use at work, but my guess is that he is hiding in the code somewhere, waiting to mess with people when they least expect it.

Green Eggs and Ham?

The Problem...

There was one episode that pre-dated our limecapade, but it definitely deserves mention.  It was the night before my boyfriend shipped out for his two weeks active duty in the Navy.  It was late, and we were tired, so we went to the local 24 hour restaurant for supper.  We were both actually in a breakfast mood, so my boyfriend decided he was going to order his favorite, Eggs Benedict.  "Hi, my name is Jim," said our server as he approached our table.  And with that one simple sentence, our adventure began.

The Search...

Jim was a very young guy and kinda shy.  He took our order and my boyfriend ordered Eggs Benedict.  Jim turned to leave, then turned back and asked him how he wanted his eggs.  We were both perplexed at this question.  Eggs Benedict only comes one way!  My boyfriend told him that he wanted them the usual way and to just give the order to the cook.  The cook would know how to fix it.

We both thought that was an odd question, but Jim trotted off to the kitchen and we made chit chat while waiting for our meals.  And we waited.  And we waited...  And we waited.......  Now we were getting annoyed.  I think we were the only, or almost the only, patrons in the restaurant at the time.  How long did it take to make two breakfasts?  Finally Jim comes back out and stammers that the cook isn't sure how to make the Eggs Benedict.  So my boyfriend started to explain things to him, but he asked my boyfriend to hold on.  Jim went over to the next table, grabbed a chair, came back to our table, and pulled up his chair to sit with us.  "OK," he said, waiting for my boyfriend's explanation.  That was the defining moment.  We had suddenly crossed over into the TwiLime Zone!  My boyfriend patiently explained the nuances of Eggs Benedict to him and Jim finally felt confident that he knew what it was.  Back to the kitchen he went.

The Solution...

Success!  He finally brought us our meals and the eggs were prepared correctly.  After we had finished our meal, the manager came out and apologized profusely for all the problems.  She explained that they were short-staffed, and that in actuality Jim was a busboy, not a waiter!  Well, that explained a lot, but it begged the question, who was the cook?  The janitor?

Conclusion...

If you go to a restaurant late at night and your server is named Jim, don't order eggs.

In Search of a Resumé

The Problem...

As a lot of us are doing these days, I've been sending out resumés to prospective employers.  Crafting the best possible resumé and getting it noticed is our primary concern.  Combined with the fact that I'm ultimately looking for a career as a photographer, the visual impact of my resumé is very important to me.  I decided on an 8 1/2x11 brochure that folds open to 11x17, giving enough room to add some photographs.  I have a printer that will print 11x17, but not easily on the heavier paper, or without smudging.  So off I went to my local copy center.

The Search...

The guy at the copy center was very nice and helpful.  He got the paper I wanted and ran a test copy.  Oh no!  The black and white photo on the cover looked more like it had turned into a poster.  The shading was all compressed and not blending.  Ugh!  We decided it must be the PDF screwing things up, so he suggested saving it in Photoshop or Illustrator format.  Just to be sure, I went to a copy center/office supply store down the street and tried again.  Nope, still a poster picture.

My document file wouldn't easily convert to Illustrator, so I had to lay out my whole resumé again in the new format.  I went back to the office supply store and tried again.  Yes!  The image looked like a photograph.  No!  Now there was a funky line running through the image.  Ugh!  The lady who was helping me thought there was a problem with their printer, so she would call technical support to fix it.  She called the next day to say it was fixed, so I returned that evening, hopeful that I would get my resumé this time.  Ugh!  Still a funky line!  She said she would call and have technical support come out again.

Discouraged, I went back to the original copy center to see if they could print it, now that it was in the format they suggested.  This time the person who came to help me was a real jerk.  First he tried the Illustrator file, but it wouldn't open because they have an older version than I do.  Then he saw the PDF and wanted to try printing that.  I explained the problem with the PDF, but he wouldn't listen to me.  I think he though he was smarter than the employee who helped me before.  So he ran a test, and yep, poster picture again.  When I showed him the problem, he didn't understand what the big deal was.  He thought that should be good enough for me.  I explained very nicely that I needed it to look like a photograph and I couldn't use that copy.  So he TOSSED my flash drive across the counter at me, turned, and walked away.  I was shocked and speechless!  I wasn't even being a crabby customer!  This was too much, so I just left.  I wish I had taken his name so I could complain later.  I will never get copies there again!

The next day I went to an office supply store in a different city.  I had a very nice lady help me.  I explained that their other location couldn't print the file without the funky line.  Her first attempt was a poster picture, but after a few tweaks, she got it fixed.  And best of all, no line!  Finally, I would get my copies.  But wait!  Then I found out, for some reason, they don't have the same paper as their sister location.  Ugh!  She called up the store by my house to verify, sure enough, not the same paper.  But they did say that the technician had come out and the funky line should be gone now.  I was so close to victory, I could taste it.  Although it tasted a little like citrus to me.  hmmmm.  So off I went, back to the first store, with visions of resumés dancing in my head.  I walked in, went up to the counter, explained who I was, and waited with bated breath.  Oh yes, she assured me, the techinican was out yesterday afternoon and it should all be fixed.  Yesterday afternoon?  I was there last night after the technician had been out and it still wasn't right.  Ugh!  Ok, that did it.  Now we had crossed over into the ridiculous.  That's the signpost up ahead!  Your next stop--The TwiLime Zone!  She said she could give me paper to take to the other store.  I had just come back to my side of town, and I really didn't want to go back there again.  She said she'd call tech support again and call me the next day.  She didn't.

The Solution...
It was time to take matters into my own hands.  I redesigned my resumé layout into a standard two page 8 1/2x11 and printed it on nice medium-weight paper.  I went to the office supply store and bought some brochure pockets for holding the finished resumés.  I even asked if they had some Astrobright lime business envelopes.  I figured it would get the envelope noticed by the employer, and would be a great inside joke.  No such luck, of course.


Conclusion...
After all this work, I hope I at least get an interview from one of my resumés.  Maybe I should have included a copy of this blog post!

How it All Began

The Problem...

It all began many years ago, on a very exhausting evening in Ohio.  My boyfriend and I were in an unfamiliar town, trying to deal with a particularly stressful family emergency.  When it was time to try and relax and settle into the hotel for the evening, my boyfriend decided he would like to kick back with some Corona.

The Search...

We headed to the liquor store and picked up some nice, cold Corona.  What goes best with Corona?  A lime!!!  The liquor store didn't have them, so we figured we'd hit the local grocery store on the way back to the hotel.  Unfortunately, the first problem in this town was that all the grocery stores seemed to close up tight at a ridiculously early hour.  We went to one, then another, but they were closed.  Then we made the rounds of the local convenience stores.  Not a lime to be found.  At this point, we had spent way too much time on this.  We were so tired and emotionally drained from events earlier in the day, that instead of getting angry over this, we both thought it was extremely funny.  Each fruitless stop on our escapade (pun intended) just seemed more and more ridiculous.  I think it provided just the comic relief that we needed that night.


The Solution...
Eventually we stopped at a gas station.  They didn't have fresh limes, but they did have lime juice in those little, lime-shaped bottles.  This was as good as we were going to get, so off to the hotel with the prized liquid.  I asked my boyfriend how it tasted with the lime juice.  His reply was "Eh, not as good as a fresh one."


Conclusion...
So now, when we have a difficult day trying to find something or somewhere, we may say "I went searching for a lime today."  Or, "I was looking for such and such today, and they were all looking a bit green."  A small inside joke that helps diffuse the frustration of the situation.  A small inside joke...that I have now shared with the world.