Kevin's Watch

I guess the UK must seem very small to you. Perhaps that's why some Americans expect us to know everyone else in England. Sorry, but yes, the question has been asked

I have a map of the US up here on the board - I can see that TX is very large. MA is up in the top right hand corner and very small in comparison. Is Virginia VA? Long at the bottom and going to a point at the top above NC (North Carolina)? I did learn a few of the abbreviations but haven't done any US census work for a while now.

Feeling a bit restless. Want to find something to occupy myself with, but can't drum up the interest in anything to actually do it.

Glad to see you are safe, psytechnm. Birdy and Soulquest are also from the Dallas area, I believe.

It was another day for obnoxious people at work. I was in the middle of three copy jobs and this guy comes up to the counter and interrupts me and says, "I need the contractor's agreement forms and I can't find them." I ask him if he found where all the other forms were at and he looks at me like I'm some kind of moron and says, "I just told you they were NOT over there with the rest of the forms." (DID NOT) So I get on my walkie and ask Max to please meet a customer by the legal form rack. The customer says, "I'm not walking back over there because I was just there and I know they are not there. You just need to go and get them for me right now." I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and then looked the guy right in the eyes and smiled the snaggle toothed smile as sweetly as I could while shooting daggers with my eyes and then turned to the girls I was helping and said, "If you ladies can stand an interruption in the jobs I'm already in process of assisting you with, I would like to get this gentleman his forms." They were all witnessing his bad behaviour so they were all ok with it. I walked over to the legal form rack and grabbed them from their glaringly obvious spot with all the other contractor forms we offer and went back to the copy center and handed him the forms, smiled sweetly again with my face while casting dagger eyes and said, "Here you go sir, they can ring you up at the cash registers up front." Then I turned to the girls I was helping and said, "I'm sorry, what paper did you need again? I forgot which one you said when I was so rudely interrupted." I know he heard me and I really don't even care if he writes a bad review.

I did have some nice customers to make up for some of the rude ones though. This one ex art student who comes in is finding great success selling her work and she's so sweet and her work is so cool that I am really really happy for her. Sorus probably knows who I am talking about, the girl who does the really cool animals with guns cartoons. She was in and we had a nice chat and I had some other random nice people in so that was cool.

I really need a vacation though. I am so happy I am being forced to take some days off because of payroll cuts. I'm getting a four day weekend this weekend because of it. I'm actually thinking of getting a hotel just outside of the city for the night even though I can't really afford it. It would be nice to just GET AWAY from everything for one night.

In our scheduling meeting, I brought it up and if you want to use some vacation hours or sick time to cover the lost hours it's perfectly all right. That way you work short shifts but get paid the same. Granted you use vacation but it's better than a short check.

Ok, responded to Sorus's post and then it disappeared...

It's magic. (No, I didn't touch it.)

Iolanthe -- yes, Virginia is VA. If you ever need to know a two-letter state abbreviation, ask me -- I know 'em all. Head full o' trivia, that's me.... And no, Americans don't necessarily think Britain is tiny. Folks from Eastern states, particularly New England, are sometimes surprised at how big some of our Western states are. They're used to crossing several state borders in a single day....

Hahaha, even I think England is tiny, and SA is only twice the size of Texas.

--A

Next to Yorkshire, Lincolnshire is the largest county in England (I think). If I started at Stamford at the bottom and drove up to the Humber it would probably take 2 and a half hours, but that would be due to the fact that most of the roads are single track. As I don't drive that's a good guess. I know that it takes us 2 hours to York, and 1 hour 35 mins to where we turn off the A1 at Stamford to get onto the A43.

Av, my grandfather spent a year in SA in 1901/2 and sent a load of letters back. He also sent back two shells about 8 inches high which now decorate my fireplace. He assured his mother that the charge had been taken out in the letter where he says they are being brought back to England by a friend who was coming home. He described a lot of the countryside. I guess you will know why he was there.

Aliantha wrote:Iolanthe -- yes, Virginia is VA. If you ever need to know a two-letter state abbreviation, ask me -- I know 'em all. Head full o' trivia, that's me....

Thanks, Ali. I do get confused sometimes, especially with the state, county, town thing as in Lancaster, Grant, Wisconsin. Some of the old records don't always give all three which is confusing.

Then we're even. Parish? Shire? Townland? Bah.

Iolanthe wrote:

Aliantha wrote:Iolanthe -- yes, Virginia is VA. If you ever need to know a two-letter state abbreviation, ask me -- I know 'em all. Head full o' trivia, that's me....

Thanks, Ali. I do get confused sometimes, especially with the state, county, town thing as in Lancaster, Grant, Wisconsin. Some of the old records don't always give all three which is confusing.

Normally you'll find only the city and state on addresses. No one bothers with the county. It's generally only important to know if you are unfortunate enough to come to the attention of local law enforcement

This morning , I woke up with a funny feeling in my pants. So slipped my hand down there, probed around with my fingers, and found something terrible.

A tick!

The how and why of it leaves me clueless. But that was a disturbing way to wake up He was just crawling around when I found him, so I am glad I wke up just then.

Yuck. You reminded me. I had one once, at school camp, right at the top of my leg. I had to go to Mr Wingham (normally the music teacher) to have iodine on it, then he squeezed it with some tweezers and eventually it fell out. He said that if it had been left in it would have laid eggs inside me, even if I had only knocked the body off it would still have laid eggs.

It later occurred to me: Ticks lay eggs with their heads????? I think he was pulling my leg.

For those keeping score at home, they have confirmed 11 tornadoes in the Dallas Fort Worth region from Tuesday. The Forney tornado was rated an EF-3 (Enhanced Fujita scale) with max winds around 150 mph. They were two EF-2 but mostly EF-0s ratings for the other 10.

My neighborhood was lightly hit compared to the others, but I heard the sound of chainsaws be used almost constantly today and yesterday.

Glad you're okay, psytechnm! Hope our other Texas Watchers will check in soon...

Iolanthe, I think your music teacher needed a health and science course.

psytechnm wrote:The Forney tornado was rated an EF-3 (Enhanced Fujita scale) with max winds around 150 mph.

I would have thought that, being Texas, they would use the Fajita scale ...

Yes, I know. I am smacking myself for you all.

wayfriend wrote:

psytechnm wrote:The Forney tornado was rated an EF-3 (Enhanced Fujita scale) with max winds around 150 mph.

I would have thought that, being Texas, they would use the Fajita scale ...

Yes, I know. I am smacking myself for you all.

Ay de mi...

in this part of texas (just an hour south of Houston) we worry about hurricanes. we get tornadoes very rarely. once in the last ten years that i can remember and it wasn't a large one.

we are about five hours from dallas, five hours from austin and five hours from Corpus. and not that far from New Orleans.

I managed to make it through the day without any major rude people. Caitlin and I narrowly avoided this crazy woman who has been coming in and demanding we look stuff up for her on the internet and call places to see if they have stuff in stock, usually stuff not related to our store. She's very loud and insistent and often cuts in front of people falls back on "language issue" excuses when you tell her no outright. Caitlin told her she didn't have time right now to help her and she was insisting on wanting to know when she could come back and Caitlin said she didn't know. She then walked up to me while I was in the middle of a conversation with a customer and demanded that I help her and I pointed to the customer I was with and the two waiting in line and said she would have to wait until I was done helping them. She kept demanding how long so I told her I didn't know so she left. Compared to her usual visits this was quite tame. I think she's realizing we aren't going to let her bully us anymore.

Other than that it was a pretty quiet day.

shur-Lord Gudatetris wrote:This morning , I woke up with a funny feeling in my pants. So slipped my hand down there, probed around with my fingers, and found something terrible.

A tick!

The how and why of it leaves me clueless. But that was a disturbing way to wake up He was just crawling around when I found him, so I am glad I wke up just then.

Ugh....I've had ticks down below before. It was a trip to Arkansas, and we had gone swimming in the river and running around the fields. I think I had about 4 in a place you really don't want living creatures of the insect variety.

I had a tick at my hairline (ON MY HEAD ) when I was a kid. Mom took me to the local beauty school to get my hair cut, and the student beautician found it. I have no recollection of how she got it off me.

As for today -- happy Easter weekend, to them what celebrates it, and happy Passover to them what celebrates *that*. And happy Friday to all us happy Pagans, atheists and agnostics, and anybody else I missed.

A Catholic co-worker asked me yesterday, by way of making conversation, whether I was doing anything special for Easter. I stared at her for a few seconds and then said, "No, I'm done. Our holiday was a couple of weeks ago." Then later she told me that my comment reminded her of a relative who is Greek Orthodox, because he doesn't celebrate Easter at the same time she does, either.

This bothers me for a couple of reasons:
1. Paganism is *nothing* like Orthodoxy.
2. Pagans don't celebrate Easter at all.
3. We had nearly the same conversation at Christmas.

So my question is this: Given that I have to keep a civil working relationship with her, what are my options? We share a calendar with another secretary; should I put the Pagan holidays on it? Should I have said to her, "No, I'm not doing anything special for Easter. Are *you* doing anything special for Passover?"

Maybe I should do a separate post...