Baths in the Time of Drought

Since damaging the connective tissues between two ribs a month ago, I have found the healing process goes much more slowly as a mature man than it did when I was much younger. I followed the doctor’s directions and most of them worked well except for the high doses of ibuprofen.  The best thing I have done consistently, though is taking hot baths with Epsom salts.

Each time I take one of the hot baths, I feel guilty about it. We are currently experiencing one of the worst droughts in recorded history and a bath is not the most efficient use of water.

If this was Little House on the Prairie, a couple people could bathe in the tub after me, but alas I live alone and none of my friends have expressed any interest in using my Epsom salt lukewarm leftovers.

Maybe I should place an ad on Craigslist – Free in Austin: “Low guilt cleaning. Lukewarm bathwater. Only used once. Pre-soaped. Email for directions.”

Despite my best ecological intentions, I am afraid this may draw the wrong crowd, but it certainly sounds fun just to see what responses I get.

In the meantime, I am trying to carefully conserve water in everything else that I do while I do everything I can to recover and not need the baths anymore.

Excuse Me

Since I have fully determined to lose the 20 pounds I added last year (and the ten I started the year wanting to lose), I have been packing my lunch daily. My lunches have all been a very healthy chopped vegetable salad with a nice garlic and onion vinaigrette dressing. The salad fills and satisfies.

It also causes gas.

Shortly after lunch, I resumed work. At one point I turned from my computer screen to look at a paper on my desk. Midway through the turn, a burp erupted that echoed across my office and out into the greater room outside.

Four people share the space outside my office. The way it is organized, I cannot see if anyone is present at any given time or not. I waited a moment to see if any shocked response emanated from the outer area. No response came, but I felt obliged to offer up an apology, so matching the volume of the burp, I shouted, “Excuse me.” out to any unfortunate person who may have heard the offense.

My embarrassed cry was met my the motion sensor turning off the lights in the outer area.

Girl Crack

Plumbers are expected to show crack.

Guys with guts cannot find pants that fit in the right way, so when they bend over, a crack shows.

Men generally live in a world of oblivion as to the state of their clothes, so when the pants fall below the waist, it goes unnoticed as the crack airs out.

Crack is never acceptable with women.

No!

NEVER!

Today I saw girl crack twice!

Full on butt-crack.

Both of the women were thin and dressed fashionably. They just were not wearing clothes appropriate for the task at hand. One picked up her laundry basket; the other crawled on the floor. Neither one expected to present the show she gave.

Me - I just happened to look at the WRONG time.

Way wrong time.

Tonight I’m going to watch something “sciency” on one of the HD channels and have a few drinks. I want to see something fantastic to get my mind off the images seared onto my brain today.

The Larry Craig Experiment

I keep thinking the Larry Craig event will fade into political history, but it keeps cropping up in blogs, news, and humor – just as the Republican Party feared (and I secretly hoped) it would. Since the event was essentially a he said –vs- he said event, I decided to put it to scientific reasoning. Since there are a few actions that are agreed upon (the meaning is in dispute on all of them), I put them to the test: did the action lead to pee, no pee, sex, no sex, or dancing?

In order to replicate the situation as closely as I could, I used a stall in the restroom where I work rather than my own toilet at home. Just like with the label in the restroom toilet, I was careful not to be spotted doing my experiment when someone else was in the restroom.

To easily understand it, I created a table.

Action	Pee	No Pee	Sex	No Sex	Dancing ***
Peeking in Stalls	X*		X*
Wide Stance	X		XX
Foot Tapping		X	**		X
Bending Over		X	XXX
Sitting	X		XX
Bending Over While Sitting		X	X
*You do want to check to see if the stall is occupied before grabbing the door, so it could be for pee or sex (if the occupant is cute). **My feet are not normally in a place that would lead to tapping during sex, but peeing is impossible while foot tapping. ***Dancing is premarital sex for Baptists.

It is time for Senator Craig to come clean (out). After my careful research, there is no way he was in that stall for its engineered purpose. Every action possibly works for sex, but peeing is only possible with two of them.

What happened to the age of investigative reporters who should have figured this out months ago? It took me getting bored while peeing one day (I had already been though a pot of coffee, so I was there for a while). But now that we have scientific proof, we can put the entire event to rest and the Republicans can adapt to having a gay senator in their midst while they continue their rhetoric of intolerance.

Hazardous to Humans

Today while drying my hands in the men’s room at work I glanced down into the trash can and could read part of a label that had been torn off a bottle or box of some product. In bold letters it proclaimed: Hazardous to Humans and Domestic Animals.

I really wanted to learn more, but did not want to be “that guy” caught rummaging through the garbage in the men’s room. I’ll probably have this job for a few more years, so that’s not a reputation I want to carry with me.

From the edges of the label I could see, it had obviously been torn, so I’m not certain I could have even learned the name of the product it boldly warned me about.

Was this something the custodian was spraying around my desk?

Is it the reason I no longer have wood ants crawling around the window but have a lingering cough?

Is it the sweet-clean concoction they mix in the mop water?

All I know is that it is something used in the building and it is something Hazardous to Humans and Domestic Animals.

Which leads me to wonder:

Does that mean it is safe for wild animals?

Does appropriate disposal mean pouring it into the creek or down an open sewer with direct drain to the river?

Maybe tomorrow I’m going to be “that guy” who demands the custodians open up their secret stash of products so I can read all the labels to put my paranoia aside – or make it worse.

Toilet Terrors

One of the perks of my job is attending conferences in different parts of the country. It helps satisfy my travel urge – in fact, I rarely take vacations apart from a day or two on either end of a conference.

In conjunction with the travel, I get exposure to a variety of hotels with their range of accommodations. Some graciously treat their guests and others find every way to bilk each penny they can from the guests (why is it the more expensive the hotel, the more I have to pay for internet access, but the cheaper the hotel, the more likely it is free?).

A favorite part of any stay in a hotel is the restroom.

As eco-friendly as I try to be at home, I admit I am something of an eco-terrorist at the hotel. I like the clean towels. I like hot water that does not run out. I like the creams and smelly things the hotels put out.

So, I spend as much time in the bathroom as I spend in bed.

The hotel I’m staying in this week is an exception. I have not been able to adequately control the water temperature, so it is either scalding hot or freezing cold. The creams are not nearly as nicely smelly as at many other hotels.

The greatest drawback I have with the bathroom, though, is the toilet.

That’s right, the toilet.

I stay in fear I may accidentally hit the knob and make it flush.

The toilet in my room flushes in milliseconds. I tried to time it, but my fingers are not fast enough on the stopwatch among my phone features.

Did I ever mention I was a bit obsessive?

The toilet flushes loudly too (albeit it is a short loud sound). The shy me remains convinced that everyone on my floor and the floor below me and room above me knows when I’ve done my business.

I actually look forward to getting home on Friday with my softer towels, better smelling creams…

…and quiet toilet that does not devour pets and small children.

Kentucky (Derby) Favorites

It is certainly a time of high stress and high energy at work and so I suppose I’m susceptible to an occasional misreading. This afternoon I came across a news story about Queen Elizabeth’s upcoming visit to the United States with a stop at the Kentucky Derby. In the article there was a lengthy description of the meal to be served in the clubhouse from which the Queen will have her vantage to watch the race.

The paragraph began with a comment about the menu filled with Kentucky favorites.

In an article about the Kentucky Derby, the usual favorites are horses.

So of course I started giggling.

And then there were a couple guffaws.

And then I had to leave the office for a few minutes to regain my composure.

Of course my mind immediately went to the thought of serving the Queen, the world’s most famous horse lover, a well-aged equine steak – probably from one of the last year’s losers.

The article comes on the heels of a great debate about horse slaughter for export to Europe and other places where horse meat is a regular food. Because we in the United States don’t regularly eat it (never say never – you probably eat some fast food) and have such icons as Silver (Hi Ho!), Trigger (always found the happy trail and found himself stuffed in a museum), Secretariat, and most recently Barbado, the thought of eating horse repulses many. With that in mind, horse lovers actually introduced legislation that would close the slaughterhouses that specializes in exporting edible horse meat.

They didn’t address the issue of dog food or glue!

Really – would you rather have Flicka go on a gourmet plate or some kindergartener’s finger?

Can you imagine what Paula Deen would do with the Black Stallion? I’m thinking chicken fried withers. Maybe a forelock gumbo. She would probably offer a “Blue Gate” special for those equine treats!

The Queen did not have to face any of those possibilities. Her dinner at Churchill Downs consisted of largely beef and seafood. We’ll just watch for the menu the next time she goes to France.

Ring Rage - A New Dilemma

This morning Weekend Edition Sunday on NPR ran a story from New York about Ring Rage and what the city council is proposing to combat the rising documented incidents of fights being sparked by annoying ring-tones on cell phones. And while astute listeners who were keen to the date (April 1) quickly recognized the story as the annual hoax (less astute listeners probably also missed the jab of the “sponsorship" by the Soylent Corporation – manufacturers of high protein food products in a variety of colors: “Soylent Green is People!”)

Despite the humor of the piece, it strikes at a deeper issue in society. As cell phones have become ubiquitous in our world – I’m one of those people who only has a cell phone and no home phone – issues of courtesy (especially the lack thereof) have become noted. It has become increasingly difficult to experience even the most solemn of public events without having it interrupted by a cell phone ring.

Is it really necessary to have a cell phone on at a funeral? Could you be receiving any worse news???

Do you have to answer the phone while trying to check-out at a store? Is your voice-mail that difficult to access? Is it that difficult to redial a number that just called you?

Vibrate people! Vibrate! In the correct pocket it is an unobtrusive ring and a cheap thrill.

Or just don’t answer! Since the person is calling you, the odds are that he/she knows your number. If it is important, they are likely to call back – or at the least leave a message.

I’m also not entirely opposed to the suggestion that there be only four approved ring-tones. While the “acceptable” ring-tones presented in the piece were among the most annoying tones (despite being vetted by audiologists as the most pleasant sounds to the ear) I’ve ever heard, it does makes sense. The purpose of the ring is to alert the phone’s owner that something is going on. Do I really want my favorite song played in the tonally limited way of a cell phone ring? I think I’ll stick to listening to my music on my iPod with quality stereo headphones. Just give me a good old ring or scale.

And don’t forget vibrate; make me happy! Make my phone buzz, ya’ll!

Monkey Poo!

Recently I discovered BBC Radio 1 on my Sirius radio and have been high-school giddy. Simple pleasures really turn me on. BBC Radio 1 is the pop music station and it reminds me of the good radio stations I grew up listening to. The djs have a genuine rapport with the listeners and they know how to milk a good radio contest.

There is also something just fun about the accents. Even when they are being a bit naughty, they sound so proper.

Yesterday, the topic of discussion covered school field trips. Callers were invited to tell stories about their field trips or share the worst trip they had taken while in school.

Far and away, the winner for the day was a gentleman recounting his school’s year-end trip to a sewage farm (waste processing plant) where they didn’t learn anything and the only thing to see was “some poo floating about.”

With his accent, even that didn’t seem too bad.

I was recounting the story with some co-workers who shared their own.

One, a former Texas Aggie, shared her story of going to a snake farm with a gorilla that “threw shit” in addition to the snakes.

My mind couldn’t help but imagine this red-headed woman’s voice changing to an Irish brogue and saying: “That big ol’ monkey flung a bit o’ poo.”

But no, she stuck with Texan and he threw shit.

I think I’m becoming an anglophile.