The Neti Pot

I have had several people tell me how great they feel after using a neti pot. I suffer from allergies on a daily basis, and this thing is supposed to gently wash all the allergens out of my sinuses. I’m interested.

Allow me to describe the experience. The instructions say it is okay to warm the water for 10 seconds in the microwave. I figure if 10 seconds are good, 30 are better. I go to the sink, tilt my head to the side, stick the penis-shaped tip to one nostril, and pour. It was like pouring McDonald’s hot coffee in my nose. It didn’t come out the other nostril, but instead went down my throat. It tasted bloody horrible.

I try the other side. This time, the solution doesn’t go anywhere. It just fills up my sinus. I feel like I’m drowning. The CIA should abandon waterboarding and just use neti pots to coax information out of detainees. When I did get the water to come out, most of it wound up on the floor.

The instructions say to use the thing twice a day for best results. I’m thinking this is a going in a drawer never to be seen again.

The Year They Cancelled Christmas

I don’t know about you, but my Christmas was a bust.  I went to visit my parents.  My stepdad was sick when I arrived.  I stayed at mom’s just long enough to see my brothers open their gifts.  Then, I had to go over to my dad’s house.  I was planning on going back and forth between my parents’ houses over the holiday.

The next morning, I called to see what time my mom’s family was going to be at her house only to find that she and my two brothers were sick–as in vomiting and Hershey squirts.  She told me under no uncertain conditions to stay away.  I told her she didn’t have to tell me twice.

So I got to spend the holiday with my dad.  That was actually a good thing, since I don’t get to see him much.  We had a great visit.

Chick-Fil-A Overdose

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 100 times: I’m never eating at Chick-Fil-A again! And yet I always eventually go back. I love it so much.

I especially heart the cookie and creme shake. It puts all other shakes to shame. I just wish they had a smaller size. Everytime I have one I immediately feel like I want to vomit. It’s really that good.

Help Desk Oxymoron

I guess I’m on my outsourcing soapbox today. My company has outsourced it’s help desk to India. Today, not one but two of my coworkers have had bad experiences trying to obtain help.

One was on the phone for thirty minutes trying to get his password reset in one of the applications we use. That was comical enough, but the second call was hilarious.

One of the first things the help desk agent asked was if my coworker was calling from Australia. I can understand how you might confuse a Southern Oklahoman accent with an Australian one. At this point I couldn’t resist. I started sending instant messages to him with phrases to utter so she might better understand. Phrases such as “G’day, mate,” and “Throw another shrimp on the barbie.” Then when the agent couldn’t understand what the problem was, I suggested he say “There’s a fuckin’ herd of kangaroos attacking the data center!”

Great, I just locked my account. Now it’s my turn to call. I’ll tell them I’m Russell Crowe.

Angry At Amazon

Amazon has had six rounds of super cheap Christmas deals. I was selected to participate in round six which was for a $400 Kitchenaid mixer for $69. They had 500 of them. The buying started at 8:30 AM.

So this morning I hit the snooze button twice before remembering about the sale. Then I leapt out of bed and flew into the shower without even touching the floor. I took a shower in thirty seconds flat. I probably used a cup of water total. I put my clothes on while shaving and brushing my teeth.

I made it to work with fifteen minutes to spare. I logged into Amazon and was presented with a countdown timer. I was set.

When the counter reached zero, a button appeared saying “Add Item to Cart”. I clicked it. After a few seconds the order confirmation screen appeared…with the non-sale price. Having never done this before, I confirmed the order thinking it might still give me the discount. It did not.

Cursing loudly, I went back and hit the add button again. After waiting for thirty seconds, the web page refreshed with the message “All items have been sold.”

I called customer service. Call me a racist, but nothing aggravates me more than when customer service is outsourced to someone who’s first language is not English. It’s so un-American. The guy I got on the phone spoke pretty good English, but when I tried to explain that Amazon had cheated me, he had no idea what I was talking about.

If I could have strangled him through the phone, I would not have hesitated.

They really could just have customer service handled by a physical brick wall because it would have been exactly the same experience. I gave up and asked him to cancel my order. At least he understood that.

Voting Trouble

I believe Oklahoma has one of the best voting systems in the country. However, when I got to the polling place this morning, the Scantron machine was broken! They were having everyone put their ballot in a box marked “trash”. The word “trash” had been scratched out, but you could still read it. There was also a woman standing beside it, reassuring us all votes would counted later. She looked like an Obama supporter. I guess we’ll see what happens.

News of the Weird: Tulsa Edition

The news here in Tulsa has been crazy the last few days. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think we’re living in the Twilight Zone.

First, gasoline actually fell below $2/gallon. When it was nearly $4/gallon this summer, all of these gasoline “experts” came out of the woodwork, repeating the mantra “Gasoline will never be less than $3 again.” These “experts” were really just randomly chosen people that wanted to be on TV, apparently.

Then, some guy in Broken Arrow (a Tulsa suburb) gets mauled by a friggin’ liger! I didn’t even know what a “liger” was–I had to look it up. It’s a cross between a lion and a tiger. How cool is that (the animal, not the attack)? I didn’t even know we had anything like that in the United States, much less in Broken(down) Arrow. Now I’m afraid to go walking in the park at night (yeah, like I do that anyway) less a freak of nature (no, not a sex offender, although that is certainly a possibility) leaps from the bushes and mauls me. Sadly, the guy died from the attack. Update: I’ve just been informed the liger is in a cage, so if you go for a walk in the park, you only need to worry about sex offenders.

Third, there was a story about a guy seeing his ex-girlfriend at a Brookside (a neighborhood in Tulsa) bar with a bunch of other guys on Halloween night. He went ape-shit. A scuffle broke out. At this point, it seemed like any other night at a Tulsa bar. Then it turned ugly. As the girl was leaving the bar, the ex decides to try to run her over with his car. Of course, after a night of drinking, his vision probably got a little blurry. He missed the girl, and ran over five other people instead, killing two of them. Even worse, he fled the scene on foot (are you kidding me? how dumb is this guy?), while leaving the two victims pinned under the car. Jesus! If you’ve got the balls to actually run someone down like a deer, at least stay with the car until the police arrive. It’s not like they can’t trace the license plate back to your house, asshole.

My Werewolf Mask

When I was a kid, I got a latex mask of a werewolf one Halloween. I also had a fabulous cape. I was like this scary-cool werewolf superhero.

I can’t remember why, but I spent that Halloween at my grandparents’ house. My grandparents lived on a hill overlooking a major highway. I was outside playing that night, when I saw a group of about five boys cross along the fence of my grandparents’ property to the rocky overhang. They were much older than me, and they were acting suspicious. Two of them were carrying a carton of eggs. I had to see what they were up to, but I didn’t want them to know I was there. My ultimate goal was to scare the living shit out of them.

There was a hedge that I took shelter behind just a few feet behind them. I worked it out in my head. Whenever they came back this way, I would spring from the bushes, and they would all pee their pants. The plan was fool-proof.

The boys hurled the eggs at the passing cars. When they actually made contact, they sounded like gunshots. The boys laughed and “egged” each other on. Then, one of the cars they hit slammed on its brakes. And the driver got out and started up the hill after them.

One of the boys yelled, “Shit! Let’s get outta here!” I grinned with anticipation. The trap was about to be snared.

As soon as they got close to the hedge, I sprang from my hiding area, growling my scariest werewolf growl. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back and covered in the remaining eggs. I guess a four-foot tall werewolf really wasn’t as scary as I had imagined.

Crocs

I ordered a pair of Crocs the other day that look more like regular shoes and less like rubber duck feet or wedges of Swiss cheese. They are still ugly, but less ugly than before. And my feet don’t hurt when I walk in them. They are quite the rage in the nursing home.

The problem with the pair I ordered is they kinda squeak when I walk in them. It sounds like I’m farting. I got to ride down in the elevator the other day with my boss. I took a step. Fart! I grinned, blushing. I stepped again. Fart!

There was an uncomfortable silence. “It’s my shoes!” I exclaimed. He said “Uh, okay,” but I could see he didn’t believe me. Maybe they’re called “Crocs” because they were started as a joke and didn’t think anyone would actually wear them.

Woman Nearly Killed By Paint Scraper

Every once in a while, I see a woman zipping up and down my street on a motorized wheelchair. I’ve never had the opportunity to speak with her, but I finally got to meet her Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the meeting was less than ideal.

Let me back up.  David had taken the step ladder over to his mother’s house the day before and forgot it there. So while he went to retrieve the ladder, I was outside scraping paint off the south side of the house. The woman in the wheelchair quietly pulled up behind me. “It’s about time you started painting that house!” she shouted. I jumped a foot, nearly falling off the painting platform I was standing on. “It’s the eyesore of the neighborhood! You’re bringing the property values down! You’re house looks like a crack house.” Naturally, this instantly set my blood a-boiling. Thoughts of murder filled my head. My grip tightened on the paint scraper as if it were a knife.

Now, it is true the house is currently an eyesore that is long overdue for a paint brush. We’ve been working on the job for about two years now. It would have been over much sooner, but I don’t like to be outside when the temperature is greater than or less than 73 degrees. In Oklahoma, that only leaves a couple of weeks in the spring and a couple in the fall. I’m thinking it will be done some time before 2012.

Anyway, I turned around, fully prepared to scrape the face off of this bleating sheep behind me. To my surprise it was the woman in the wheelchair. For a split second I wondered if she had spouted off to the wrong person, he’d broken her legs, and this was how she came to be in her current situation.

The shouting stopped when she saw my face. “Oh, you’re not who I thought you were,” she apologized. At this point she seemed very embarrassed, and she couldn’t wait to get out of there. She introduced herself, explained that she had mistaken me for David and she’d been kidding him for quite a long time about the house, and then she left. If her wheelchair had been able to peel out, it would have left rubber the entire length of the driveway. It was a good thing no cars were coming because I don’t think she looked before she jumped the curb and headed out into the street.