New & “Improved” Paper Towel Holder

Several months ago in a fit of anger some chucklehead smashed the paper towel dispenser in one of the Men’s Rooms at work. Today the replacement was installed.

With the old dispenser it took 3 pulls of the lever to get what I felt was the perfect amount of towel to bring my hands to the proper dryness level, 2 feet. With the new dispenser, 3 pulls gets you close to half that total or about 1 foot of paper. Maybe this is government mandated like the 1 gallon per flush toilets or maybe everyone thinks that this will help save the planet, i.e. less trees cut down, less energy used to make the paper, less trash generated etc. As a bonus I’m sure the company feels it will save money on buying the paper towels.

Ah, Mr. Smarty-pants, wrong answer! I still need 2 feet of paper to dry my hands. The same amount of energy and waste will be produced and you will now lose money as it takes twice as long for me to dry my hands. Say an extra 30 seconds at a time. 2 trips to the bathroom a day, times 1/2 minute. times 5 days, times 52 weeks, equals 4 hours and twenty minutes. With my exorbitant salary that’s a lot of dough.

Drugstore Diagnosis

In lieu of an actual rant today I present for your reading pleasure, a guy joke:

One day, in line at the company cafeteria, Jack says to Mike behind him, “My elbow hurts like hell. I guess I better see a doctor.” “Listen, you don’t have to spend that kind of money,” Mike replies. “There’s a diagnostic computer at the drugstore at the corner. Just give it a urine sample and the computer’ll tell you what’s wrong and what to do about it. It takes ten seconds and costs ten dollars…a hell of a lot cheaper than a doctor.”

So Jack deposits a urine sample in a small jar and takes it to the drugstore. He deposits ten dollars, and the computer lights up and asks for the urine sample. He pours the sample into the slot and waits. Ten seconds later, the computer ejects a printout: You have tennis elbow. Soak your arm in warm water and avoid heavy activity. It will improve in two weeks.”

That evening while thinking how amazing this new technology was, Jack began wondering if the computer could be fooled. He mixed some tap water, a stool sample from his dog, urine samples from his wife and daughter, and masturbated into the mixture for good measure. Jack hurries back to the drugstore, eager to check the results.

The computer prints the following:
1. Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener.
2. Your dog has ringworm. Bath him with anti-fungal shampoo.
3. Your daughter has a cocaine habit. Get her into rehab.
4. Your wife is pregnant…twin girls. They aren’t yours. Get a lawyer.
5. And if you don’t stop playing with yourself, your elbow will never get better.

American’s Love Stuff

We have way too much of it. A majority of the people I know have two car garages and it is rare that any one uses them to park even one car inside. Those are really 20′ x 20′ storage sheds connected to the house. They are a place to keep toys, old exercise equipment, boxes full of old books, the lawnmower, whatever, just not cars. Once your garage is too full to even walk through you can drive, usually, less than 2 miles and for a small monthly fee, rent another 10′ x 20′ space to put the overflow. What is so amazing is that these places are hives of storage rooms, hundreds per location. Man we have too much stuff.

While watching TV this weekend I saw an ad for the latest in American storage solutions, PODS. now you don’t have to drive two miles to the hive, these people bring a cell of the honeycomb to you!

198 Miles

Because we filled up at the Inn on Friday, didn’t drive the Miata at all on Saturday and drove right home this morning, we still have a half a tank of gas left over. Mileage from the Pisgah Inn to 778 Boardman Road, Aiken, SC is 198.

Spent the afternoon catching up on Barndoor Fan Club business, washing 4 loads of clothes and catch up blogging.

While taking the bear pictures yesterday I just had to snap a picture of this Office Supply store, Sinclair’s.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $830.88
Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 133

The Wave Is Dead (Thank God)

It seems for some reason that my life has been somehow thrust into the same orbit as 9 year-old boys’ baseball teams. Tonight’s entertainment involved a trip to Asheville (most of the whole 30 miles on the parkway) to see the Asheville Tourists play baseball. No they are not 9 year-olds, but about 10 or 12 years older, the Tourists are the Single A farm club of the Colorado Rockies.

In attendance for tonight’s game was the Buncombe County 9 year-old All Star team having just won their regional tournament earlier in the day. Somewhere around the 7th inning these guys got a little bored and decided to start the wave. They managed to get a good response from the first section (probably because that’s where their parents were sitting) but each successive section saw fewer people participant until the “wave” died a speedy dead. The drop off was almost exponential, by 3 sections away it was maybe 2 people joining in. They even tried splitting up and getting a couple kids to stand in front of a section as leaders. Much to my pleasure that didn’t work either. Sorry boys, go back to playing the game.

Oh, yeah I got to drive to and from the stadium as long as I promised to go a reasonable rate of speed, determined by the passengers. Before we left the Inn’s lot I pulled out the Windex from the trunk of the Miata and gave the inside and outside of the windshield a nice bath.

Bears Oh My

We drove around all day in my sister’s Protege so we wouldn’t have to take two cars. first we went into downtown Hendersonville, NC. This is the town Diane and Allen have picked to retire to in 7 seven years. They have a neat and thriving downtown. One attraction currently running is along the lines of those artistic cows they did in Chicago several years back, only because of their locale here, they used life-sized black bears. Diane and I decided that we would take a picture of every one of the 26 bears. We got the one inside the locked bank and we got the one inside a clothing store and we snapped the one on the awning of a restaurant, but we couldn’t locate bear #5. It was not where it was supposed to be. Maybe Animal Control had to capture it because it attacked a tourist. 🙂 I’ll try and get my gallery online in the next couple of days.

That night we went out to watch some minor league baseball. The Asheville Tourists, class A farm club of the Colorado Rockies were tangling with the Capital City Bombers. The Bombers won the game 3 to 1, but the evening wasn’t a total loss. It was free cap night. The first 1,00 fans got a really nice Tourists’ ball cap (the ads were small and tasteful.) Plus, Donna’s name was pulled in a drawing so she won a throw blanket donated by a local mill. I won an oil change because we had one of the player’s signature on the right page. We gave away that prize to the couple behind us, as for sure we weren’t driving all the way back up there just for an oil change.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $830.88
Started up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 130

How Can You See?

Donna and I are up in North Carolina visiting with my sister and her husband who are down on vacation. We hooked up this afternoon and have a couple of things planned. Friday night’s entertainment was to go out to eat and go see the Music On Main Street concert in Hendersonville, NC. We are staying at the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Hendersonville is a 30-mile trip. Donna likes for me to drive and my brother-in-law graciously agreed to let me drive his car (actually it is my sister’s Mazda Protege.) It was that or take two cars because the Miata can’t seat more than two.

I love the Blue Ridge Parkway, it winds along the crest of the mountains, dipping and dodging through some very beautiful country. Plus the best part is dropping of the ridge into the valleys on roads packed with switchbacks. 🙂 It was lightly raining as we took off for our trip and the windshield wipers were kinda old so they left ugly streaks. To top it all off the inside of the window had never seen a drop of Windex in it’s life (I think it is a 2000 model) making me drive a bit slower than I could have had the roads not been wet and you could see down the road.

My brother-in-law Allen said to go slow through the windy roads as this car didn’t handle as well as his Acura. Actually it did pretty darn good, so good that he wanted to drive back. I think I might have scared him a little with my driving. I didn’t even get any tire squeal or anything.

I was kind glad he volunteered to drive back even though it took twice as long. It was dark for the return trip and the glare from oncoming cars was tough stuff. Better him than me.