Wii Won!

So last night Seth and I got all dolled-up and went to my company holiday party. We got to the Hilton hotel downtown at the end of the "social hour" and to our dismay the parking at the hotel was full. So, we hurried and parked across the street in a pay lot. The line to pay at the little kiosk was huge and people are generally clueless about how to use them, so I convinced Seth to just forget about it... we'd come back and pay later.

We get inside, find a table and go about eating and socializing with my co-workers. After a lag in the conversation, Seth decides he should go pay the parking fee and I go stand in line to get us some drinks.

When I finally got back into the main dining room, I noticed they'd started calling out names for a prize drawing. I walked over to our table and everybody was like, "Karen! They called your name! Go up there!" At first I thought they were just screwing with me, but then realized they were being serious. "What? What did I win?" "Just go up to the front of the room and draw a number!"

So I walk up to the front and draw a card from the lady standing there and wait for a moment with all the other "contestants." About this time Seth comes back and has a confused look on his face. I motion for him to come over and proceed to tell him they'd picked us to compete in a dance contest. I wait until I see the panicked look on his face before I tell him that no, we're not really in a dance contest, I've just won something and I'm waiting to find out what it is. He breathes a sigh of relief, tells me to win the Wii, and sits back down at the table.

I'd chosen prize #4 so it didn't take them long to get to my number... yup, you guessed it! I won the Wii! It was awesome! I never win anything! (ok except for that one time when I was like 8 years old and won a giant box of chocolates from Kara Chocolates at the mall). Anyway, we'd kind of been wanting a Wii, but not bad enough to actually fork out the money to buy one (hello, fishing stuff is way more important), but now we have one and it was FREE! Sweet! I hooked it up last night but we didn't actually play it. We just relaxed and basked in the faint glow of its gloriousness. Or maybe it was just the red "power" indicator light.


Anyway, we're totally going to be onto you if you suddenly start coming over to visit us. And we decided we're cool with that.

Visions of Pizzas

I had another Papa Murphy's dream last night. It's become a phenomenon I don't quite understand. Making pizzas was my very first job. I was 17, and to tell you the truth, making pizzas was one of the funnest jobs I've ever had. And I still have dreams about working there.

Actually the dreams are usually more like nightmares. I find myself out of a job and have to go back there to work or I go into a store on a busy night and stay to help them out because I feel sorry for them. There are always tons and tons of customers and everybody is getting pissed off because we're so backed up and can't make the pizzas fast enough. Or it's closing time and people just keep coming in.

Last night wasn't quite the nightmare the Papa Murphy's dreams usually are. I'd gone back there to work and I still had my same amazing pizza making skills. I was surprised that I could still remember what went in a calzone and how to roll the edges. And all of my old friends were there.

I've never had a dream about any of my other jobs. I've had people I work with appear in dreams, but I've never actually dreamed about being at work. Isn't that weird? And here I am, over 10 years later, still dreaming about making pizzas.

Then I Wake Up & Realize it Was All Just a Bad Dream

It is approximately 10 miles from my desk at work to the cafeteria... give or take a couple miles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. In fact I enjoy a leisurely stroll every now and then to stretch my legs and get a glass of water.

There's one part of the path to the cafeteria that can be a bit awkward for a socially inept person like me. After making a couple short turns to get out of my little office area, I'm faced with a very long hallway. Not just any hallway. This hallway reminds me of the ones they show in horror movies... you know what I mean... some disheveled girl is limping down a long corridor lined with closed doors and as she runs the hallway just gets longer and longer while some crazy lunatic is at her heels trying to chop her up with an axe. Yeah, this hallway is just like that. Except worse.

Because almost every time I walk down this hallway, there is one single person walking towards me. Once this person is about 40 yards away, they're close enough to make eye contact. Do I have to maintain eye contact this whole distance? If I look away or look down, do I come off as snobbish? At what point do I smile? 20 yards? 5 feet? Do I hold the smile the whole time? The situation is escalated if it's someone I know, which is about 50% of the time. When is it appropriate to say 'hi'? I've had people say hi to me when they're oh, a good 25 yards out. Isn't that a little extreme? You can hold an entire 10 minute conversation just as you're passing!

There's probably at least a good 30% or more of you reading this that are wondering why I would ever even worry about such a thing. You're the percent of the population that would be deemed an "extrovert." You never give a second thought to these situations because they just come naturally to you. I, on the other hand, am an extremely introverted person. I worry about these things. I'm the kind of person that dreads talking on the phone, even to my own family members because I'm sure I won't have enough things to talk about and will come off as boring or disinterested. Welcome to my world. The world of a girl who is almost 30 years old and doesn't know how to walk past people in a hallway or talk on the phone.

Venting

So it's 3:30pm on Friday afternoon. I get to go leave work in exactly one hour. The way this last hour has been, the weekend can't come soon enough. Seth just happens to be taking a nap right now and I'm really pissed off and I need to gripe to somebody so you all get to listen.

As many of you know, I'm an x-ray technician. I work in the R & D department so I get to help build and test all the new x-ray equipment before it goes out to regular production. So about an hour ago I was working really hard trying to make the rest of the day go by fast. The thing I was working on was a radiator-like machine called a heat exchanger. This particular heat exchanger weighs about 70 lbs. It's not easy to handle.

This heat exchanger runs on oil, so when I first build it, I have to fill it up with oil and make sure there's no air bubbles in it. That's because when it gets hooked up to an x-ray tube if there's bubbles in the system, it'll make the x-rays look bad. It'll make the doctors think you have a big tumor. The oil filling process is not fun. There's long hoses flying everywhere and I have to man-handle the heat exchanger to rotate it and shake it to get all the bubbles out. It's not a pleasant experience on a normal day and today was worse.

There are 2 oil connections. One is for the oil to go in, one is for the oil to go out. I got the "oil in" hose connected and was in the process of connecting the other hose when the stupid connector got stuck open and began gushing oil everywhere. ARGH! I finally got the damn thing shut off but not soon enough. The heat exchanger and cart it was sitting on were covered in oil as was the floor. My clothes were somehow spared, but at that point it wouldn't have made any difference. I wanted to scream really bad words and smash everything on the floor.

So, I've spent at least the last half hour trying to clean up the huge mess. I was hot and sweaty and tired and pissed and then I got paint thinner on my jeans and I just want to go home. I finally got the heat exchanger filled up all the way which was no easy feat. For some reason (I wonder why...) today it felt like it weighed 500 pounds and things just weren't working. I decided I'll finish it on Monday when I've had time to forget this unpleasant afternoon.

I need a vacation.