11 posts tagged “list”
We’re
finally starting to settle into something of a routine around here. Our
new schedule involves more time reading/learning, job-hunting and “publicly loafing”
(Shane’s term, aka “exploring outside”) and less time napping, blog-reading and
watching daytime TLC. (But have you guys
seen that show with all the kids? MY
GOD.)
While
financial worries are always lingering in the back of our my
mind, I’m finally noticing just how much our quality of life has improved. Here are a few of my favourite things about
living here so far:
- Waking up to the soothing sounds of rain.
- Accessing running routes in the woods, along the oceanfront or through the city, all from our front door.
- Keeping just one light on during the day, rain or shine.
- Buying our fruits and veggies from the corner stand (and getting helpful produce-picking advice from the folks working there).
- Grocery-shopping as members at Choices (and purchasing weekly fresh bread from Uprising Breads bakery there).
- Finding out Nature’s Path is a B.C.-based company (and benefiting from their local sales).
- Walking to the bank, the library, the post office, the drug store and Cupcakes (at their new and bigger location!).
-
Eating amazing sushi for less than $5.
- Driving the car only once or twice a week (and regularly parking a block or less from home).
- Having almost everything a bus, bike or boat ride away.
- Watching all the wildlife in our neighbourhood, especially the puppies, puppies and more puppies.
- Living so close to my brother.
- Spending this time off with my best friend.
Top five post-party signs your significant other had a little too much wine on New Year's Eve:
He...
1) Tries to help you clean up, but only manages to move empty beer bottles from one table to another.
2) Repeatedly asks, "Did I seem okay?" Regardless of answer, responds, "No, tell me really."
3) Stares wide-eyed around apartment and remarks, "This is weird." Then laughs at self.
4) Goes to bed at your insistence, but gets up within five minutes to put the chairs away because, "They are kitchen chairs. They go at the kitchen table."
5) Finally remains in bed and starts to doze off, but awakens momentarily to yell, "You're my best friend!" from the bedroom. At 3 a.m.
You're a champ, sweetie.
Via the BBC:
“Like their more sober counterpart, the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobels are split into several categories and all research is real and published.
2007 Ig Nobel Winners
Aviation - A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag. Biology - Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.
Chemistry - Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.
Economics - Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.
Linguistics - A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.
Literature - Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word 'the', and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.
Medicine - Brian Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.
Nutrition - Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, 'bottomless' bowl of soup.
Peace - The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops.
Physics - A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.“
All very noble causes, these, although I doubt any could top the development of the seedless watermelon! (Unless it's a seedless watermelon that provokes widespread homosexual behavior. That I would pay to see.)
Here are the minimum number of days off (mandated! by law!) for various European countries. Note that this must be in ADDITION to public holidays.
ANNUAL LEAVE
Denmark 39.5
Austria 38
Sweden 36
Slovakia 35
Luxembourg 35
France 35
Germany 34-39
Portugal 34
Czech Republic 33
Slovenia 33
Italy 32
Spain 32
Greece 32
Poland 31
Finland 31
Bulgaria 31
Belgium 30
Hungary 30
Romania 30
Ireland 29
Netherlands 28-29
UK 28
(Source: Incomes Data Services)
And, from the BBC article I found this in: “Despite being bottom of the EU holiday league, the UK is still well ahead of many other developed nations. In Canada and Japan, workers are guaranteed only 10 days of paid leave per year while the USA does not have any legal minimum for paid leave.”
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go Google “Denmark immigration.“
Hi there!
It was really great meeting you two yesterday to cancel my life insurance policy. I just have a few pointers I would like to offer you, based on my experience at our mandatory get-together. Here you go:
1) When you ask a client to pronounce his/her name for you, try employing a new tactic: listening to the answer. Then, when you use that name repeatedly in discussion, there will be less moniker-slaughtering to distract the client from all the Personal Connecting you are doing so well.
2) Speaking of that Connecting, keep in mind that not everyone has as fond or as vivid memories of high school as you do. Thus, beginning a meeting by listing the people you’ve worked with who went to your client’s high school might not be the best route, particularly for folks who graduated from college much more recently.
3) Ice-breaker questions can be great, sure, but not so much when they are directly quoted from their original source. For instance, “So...what do you like most and least about your job?” is actually a terrible conversation starter, especially when prefaced with no other work-related questions.
4) Showing your client pictures of the guy he/she spoke with to begin the cancellation process, while noting all the wonderful, positive, amazing ways said employee is saving humanity as a whole (via life insurance, natch) will not make the client feel better about what a jerk he was on the phone.
5) Do not assume your client rooms with his/her parents because he/she looks young. Rather, try looking up information regarding age and living situation. (This should be in the very file you read ”thoroughly” beforehand anyway.)
6) If your client turns out to be married, attempting to scare him/her into keeping the policy by proposing scenarios where one or the other spouse dies tragically is not a great move. (For some clients, money doesn’t seem like the biggest concern when contemplating the death of a loved one.)
7) Find out if your client has or even wants kids before listing all the horrible ways they would be affected by a parent without life insurance; you’ll save yourself another pointless threat.
8) Avoid implying that your client is a selfish person, should he/she refuse to change the policy beneficiary to a charity instead of cashing out, since that qualifies as a pretty big insult and is not likely to get you anywhere.
9) If you really wish the client to believe that you and your company “do not benefit in the least” from selling and keeping life insurance policies, consider allowing him/her to sign the surrender form without a 30-minute effort to convince him/her otherwise.
10) Finally, experiment with different colognes and perfumes, as perhaps another type would better mask the smell of desperation in the air.
Thanks for the check,
Letitia
<< Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.
Here are last year's winners:
1) Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2) His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3) He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4) She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5) She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6) Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7) He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8) The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9) The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10) McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11) From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12) Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13) The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14) Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15) They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16) John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17) He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18) Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19) Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20) The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21) The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22) He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23) The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24) It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25) He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. >>
(Thanks, Carrie!)
Things off the top of my head I would love to do in my lifetime:
Become a part-time dog breeder, surrounding myself with an infinite number of puppies.
Design a classical Chinese or Japanese garden in my backyard, where I could meditate daily.
Learn to dance like a badass.
Get a job with the inimitable Joss Whedon.
Tour Europe, focusing on the countries/cities of my ancestors (mainly Norway and Sweden).
Own a condo along the False Creek Seawall, walking distance from the Granville Island Public Market.
Buy Final Cut Pro (plus a Mac, etc.) and a 3-chip digital camera to shoot and edit whenever/whatever I want.
Write as movingly as Mark Morford, San Francisco columnist extraordinaire.
Guest star on an episode of Spongebob Squarepants.
Gregory Smith.
How about you?
I normally pass on being “tagged” to do something (I’m INDEPENDENT!!!) (or possibly just lazy), but I can make an exception for Elena. So here is a small collection of strange, random facts about me.
1. In middle school, I raised chickens in my basement for a farmer in Wisconsin. We took them in as eggs, hatched them in an incubator and kept them in a cardboard box (under a heat lamp) until they began to grow real feathers.
2. When I was still in high school, Shane’s sister told me I would marry her brother, well before he and I ever met. <insert Twilight Zone music here>
3. Steven Williams’s publicist sent me an autographed picture of him, in exchange for a copy of some sheet music. I got to know her, back in the day, through a Compuserve (anyone?) message board for The X-Files. I guess dorkiness sometimes has its advantages.
4. I have a cousin who was a porn star, once upon a time. My family knows about it because an uncle recognized her in a film he was watching (I know, eww) and saw her name in the credits.
5. Unless the air is absolutely freezing, I will not be able to sleep with my feet covered up - no socks, no blankets, nothing. Even when I was little, my mom had to cut the feet off my "footie pajamas" so I could be comfortable.
6. I officially graduated from college Cumma Sum Laude, despite the fact that I chose NOT to complete the defense required to earn this extra honor. Best Clerical Error Ever!
In honor of a new Office episode tonight (yay!), let me introduce you to some of my co-workers, using the nicknames I’ve awarded them over the last six months. (I will not be mentioning those people I actually work *with*, because you never know...)
- Blinds Lady – So named because of her inexplicable obsession with closing the blinds of the window I sit by EVERY morning, regardless of sun position or intensity of outdoor light. Also known on crabbier days as The Vampire.
- The Nagger (PLEASE NOTE THE “a” IN THIS NICKNAME) – One of two people I share a cube wall with, this woman never talks on the phone to anyone but her lazy, useless teenage children (or so it would appear).
- Cawl – The other person I share a cube wall with, who has managed to pass (very explosive) gas, clip his fingernails, belch, hack up a hairball and yell into the phone all in one day. Thankfully, he mostly just sticks with the farting. (On second thought, ditch the thankfully.)
- World’s Ugliest Woman – I know what you’re thinking, “She can’t help it, it’s genetic.” On the contrary, this woman has *earned* the title by: a) gaining that enormous amount of weight, b) cutting and styling her hair in classic mullet form and c) buying the LOUDEST Hawaiian shirts she could find...and wearing them to work.
- Gigantic Man – His slogan: “Able to topple over puny humans with a single swing of one spectacularly large hand.”
- The Mumbler – This lady was referenced in my entry on bathroom etiquette. Though I’ve never seen her face, she often enters the bathroom after me and proceeds to talk?chant?pray? herself through an entire BM.
- Candy Man – This guy obviously uses his "work candy" dish to rid himself of the most disgusting sweets imaginable (stale, Christmas-colored, off-brand candy corn, anyone?) - probably all purchased before 1982. I have long since taken my business elsewhere.
- Patchouli – So called because of the trail of smell she leaves in her wake EVERYWHERE SHE GOES. Also, due to certain cube observations, referred to as The Hippie.
- Biker Chick – High-heeled leather boots? Check. Close-cropped blonde hair? Check. Stylish, sexy work outfits? Check. Walk that screams “screw everyone and their grandmothers” and voice of a life-long smoker? CHECK.
- Dorktacula – I only recently noticed this dude. He had it going on, though: the thick-rimmed glasses, the pants pulled high, the line of neat pens in his upper left pocket. Sweeeet.
Who are some of your favorite characters at work?
Requests for those who utilize restroom facilities with me: