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.