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After spending a few hours to clean up the banquet area, the Scrabble board came out and Chris Fosmire, Anthony Celona, and I dueled.  We played with what I call speed rules which stipulate no more than 2 minutes per move, no consulting a dictionary, but allowing the 2- and 3-letter word lists to be on the table.  While I recognize this is both slower than tournament Scrabble and more permissive its pace is break-neck compared to the geriatric version where one can consult one of three dictionaries and actively solicit advice from other players.  I had a few notable plays:

  • In my first attempt to use all 7 tiles to spell ELOPING I created the word GLOTS.  I bullshitted that this was a colloquial term for the area comprising the glottis and epiglottis.  Chris detected my bullshit and I lost my turn, and my chance at ELOPING.
  • Creating ZING to get a triple letter score on the Z led me to play ELOPER and created the word OPE.
    Chris: What does it mean?
    Me: I have no idea, it’s on the 3-letter word list.
    Anthony: Dictionary says it’s an alternate spelling of OPEN.
    Me: That’s a special type of lazy man’s elision if it’s from the South.
    Anthony: Nope, it’s apparently Middle English and was used as AWAKE is to AWAKEN.
    Me: I don’t know if I feel smarter or dumber now.
  • My attempt at scoring big.
    Me: If you leave that trailing I open, I’ll give you a dollar.
    Anthony: IRON.  Your turn.  What were you going to spell?
    Me: QUYTING, probably for the first time in recorded Scrabble history.

I’m not as angry now that I know that QUYTING is only allowed in International Scrabble competitions and not American ones.

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I couldn’t think of anything interested that had happened during the OA weekend but slowly a repressed memory returned.  I had to double check with Chris Fosmire that it had actually happened as the incident was almost somnogogic.

I was in Totem Lodge, the main social building in camp and asked Chris Fosmire when I had gotten Vigil Honor, a level of recognition in the OA and he responded late August of 2001.  Mr. Williams, a crazy machinist who’s been in the OA since the dawn of Treasure Island that perpetually wears safety glasses thought for a moment a looked at me and said: It all makes sense.

Me: What does?
Him: You got Vigil in August and four weeks later, 9/11.

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I couldn’t think of anything interested that had happened during the OA weekend but slowly a repressed memory returned.  I had to double check with Chris Fosmire that it had actually happened as the incident was almost somnogogic.

I was in Totem Lodge, the main social building in camp and asked Chris Fosmire when I had gotten Vigil Honor, a level of recognition in the OA and he responded late August of 2001.  Mr. Williams, a crazy machinist who’s been in the OA since the dawn of Treasure Island that perpetually wears safety glasses thought for a moment a looked at me and said: It all makes sense.

Me: What does?
Him: You got Vigil in August and four weeks later, 9/11.

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We’ve been going through a bit of a slimming down at work material-wise getting rid of a large quantity of excess materials, mostly by just shit canning them.  One material we use, comfort panel, is an oleophilic (absorbs oil) material and I thought it’d work great at the Camporee for an idea I’ll simply call “Paintball Art”.  I found a roll of the stuff that was marked “SCRAP” but it was a bit big.  Probably near a few thousand feet long, 5 feet tall and I’d say near 100 pounds, so not something I was going to slip into my pocket, brief case or under my lab coat.  My boss helped me orchestrate Operation:Take Something We Were Throwing Out Anyway and at the end of the day, we rolled out the stuff and dumped it in my car.  As I was returning the cart I used I was stopped by security.

Security Guard: Sir, what did you just do?
Me: I put a roll of scrap destined for trash into the back of my car.
Security Guard: But you used the tank cart, the Security Captain thinks it could have been propane.
Me: That’s ridiculous…
Security Guard: How can we tell if we don’t look?
Me: Well, the roll I took was 5 foot tall, white, had no cap, was hollow and was non-chalantly dumped into my car.  Propane tanks are four foot tall, blue and kinda explosive.

She didn’t buy it and checked anyway.  She poked the roll with her flashlight a bit, as if somehow I’d found a way to hollow out a propane tank or tried to determine how snuggably soft it was.

Security Guard: Hm…  So, how do you like the Toyota Matrix?

Next Friday: Stealing a propane tank.

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I had nothing to do today.  Even less than yesterday’s nothing.  Then Chris Fosmire told me that I’d have to scan in some 1000 large mechanical drawings and that I should hold tight until they figure out how to get Adobe Acrobat to load on the machine. Ha ha, score.
9:00 AM – Not loaded
10:00 AM – Not loaded
11:00 AM – Not loaded
12:00 PM – Lunch
1:00 PM – Bacon nap
2:00 PM – Not loaded
3:00 PM – Loaded, computer crashes
4:00 PM – (OS) Not loaded
GOAL!!!!

I doubt it’ll hold through Wednesday, but if it does, I might feel a little worse about skipping church

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Chris:  Terry, you look a little woozy.
Me: I think the bacon’s getting to me.

–30 minutes later–

Chris:  You look a lot better, what’d you do?
Me: Bacon nap.

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I ran out of work today.  Normally, when I run out of work I start poking around looking for things to clean before I’m given some Sisyphean task like scanning our back catalog and then deleting the files.  I asked around, no one had anything.  I waited, I asked around, no one had anything.  Someone had something, I did it in 5 minutes and that was after stretching it out.  It got to the point where Chris Fosmire was essentially having conversations through me requesting status updates.  I’d walk to someone’s lab, ask them how they were doing, they’d start explaining, stop and just call Chris creating a net increase in the amount of work.  At around 1 PM I had enough and walked into Chris’ office.
Me: Chris *obvious stalling cough* I need to leave and *his eyes perk up* visit the store for…
Chris: *Emphatic that I’d be leaving* Okay, that’s fine, have a nice day.
Me: But I didn’t even tell you where I’m going.
Chris: I’m sure I can figure it out.
Me: But…. okay.

I hope it keeps up tomorrow so I can go to the pants store.

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I got into work about 3.5 hours late today in a last-ditch attempt to cram in enough sleep to kill my cold and was still at work around 6:00 PM when Chris Fosmire walked in with a bucket of square buttery-looking cookies.  Chris grabbed a cookie and his coffee, sitting down in his Chair of Science and began coughing so I simply tried one.

I experience bad food like most people experience car accidents (and vice versa); I see that something terrible is about to happen and I try to summon my reflexes to avert disaster but usually fail.  On the other hand, when I’m about to get into a car accident (or run over kittens, another story) I take my hands and feet off the wheel and pedals, respectively and brace for impact.  I could hear the screams from the bundle of nerves with the painful task of transferring disgust-ions (the fundamental particle of crappy food) to my brain and back.  The cookie was supposed to a cinnamon butter cookie but was something far more sinister.

  • I think the cinnamon was replaced with pepper
  • I think the vegetable oil was replaced with Italian dressing
  • I think the flour was replaced with shredded sandpaper

Chris and I were unsure what to do with these infernal cookies until inspiration struck.  We put it in the marketing department breakroom with a innocuous sign that said “Thank You!” without saying who it came from.  Worse than a baby at the doorstep.

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I got into work about 3.5 hours late today in a last-ditch attempt to cram in enough sleep to kill my cold and was still at work around 6:00 PM when Chris Fosmire walked in with a bucket of square buttery-looking cookies.  Chris grabbed a cookie and his coffee, sitting down in his Chair of Science and began coughing so I simply tried one.

I experience bad food like most people experience car accidents (and vice versa); I see that something terrible is about to happen and I try to summon my reflexes to avert disaster but usually fail.  On the other hand, when I’m about to get into a car accident (or run over kittens, another story) I take my hands and feet off the wheel and pedals, respectively and brace for impact.  I could hear the screams from the bundle of nerves with the painful task of transferring disgust-ions (the fundamental particle of crappy food) to my brain and back.  The cookie was supposed to a cinnamon butter cookie but was something far more sinister.

  • I think the cinnamon was replaced with pepper
  • I think the vegetable oil was replaced with Italian dressing
  • I think the flour was replaced with shredded sandpaper

Chris and I were unsure what to do with these infernal cookies until inspiration struck.  We put it in the marketing department breakroom with a innocuous sign that said “Thank You!” without saying who it came from.  Worse than a baby at the doorstep.