Monday 21 March 2011

Wheely Bad

Today at work I was asked to stay on all day. A 12 hour shift? Yes please.

I decided to go home at lunch to collect the soup Steven had so lovely-ly put out for me to take to work this morning but given I usually come home for the afternoon I decided to put it back in the fridge. So having left my lunch at home it's only natural they should ask me to stay on.

When working a full day we get half an hour for lunch. It takes me 15 minutes to get to/from work by foot. SO I thought a good plan would be to walk home, get the soup, get the bike out of the garage, that I inherited from my mum and step dad when they moved to Africa in February, and cycle straight back to work.

An excellent idea in theory - not so much in practice.

I've not ridden a bike for at least ten years and I hereby declare the definition of 'it's like riding a bike' to mean that something is bloody difficult, if not impossible.

I got on it and realised that the pedals have those cages on them so your feet can't come out. Do they not know me at all?! This is the girl who used to have to take her feet off her moped and place them millimeters off the ground when going round corners for fear of losing her balance. Cages on your feet is just asking for trouble.

I walked the bike a few wheel rotations (sorry distances aren't my thing) down the road and had a fiddle with the brakes. The front ones weren't working. I tried to figure out if I could get to work without catapulting myself over the handlebars. I decided I couldn't. Somehow the man in me figured out how to reattach the front brake. I had a stab at riding it a few wheel rotations and wondered how long it would take me to go back home, get into the house to get the garage key I'd posted back through the door, open the fiddly garage door, step over the ladder to get the bike in, close the fiddly garage door and walk back to work.

I thought it'd be quicker to try and ride/walk the bike to work.

I rode it about a quarter of the way down my road - getting off to get onto the pavement. (When I was about 14 I managed to fall off my bike attempting a road to pavement mount and was not going to relive it especially with vegetable soup swinging from the handlebars.) I walked it up the main road and got back on for a downhill side road. Pot holes + downhill speed = not doing that again. Three quarters of the way down the hill I decided enough was enough and wheeled that damn bike the rest of the way.

It was the start of the warm weather and I had a couple of hills to climb whilst pushing this bit of wheeled metal. You could say I was flustered when I got back to work.

The girl who's down with me on reception at the moment told me that the seat shouldn't move (I didn't mention that did I?... As you sit on it it points down - if the cross bar wasn't there you'd slide right off) and that it was a boys' bike which probably didn't help me not being able to ride it.

8.30pm came around and I forced myself to wheel the thing back. As I was making my way out of the building a staff member asked if I'd like the bike shed key for future use. I told her I'd have to learn to ride the bloody bike before I needed storage for it.

I thought I'd see if night time bike riding was a little easier but less than ten seconds into it decided I should stop before I ran over the man coming the other way (yes I was on the pavement). I stopped and pretended to be looking for something in my bag. I didn't want him to think I was cyclically challenged. I waited until he'd passed before I dismounted and wheeled the enemy home to a life of imprisonment and dust collection.

Scouring Pads and Piss Mist

On Saturday night, for a friend's birthday, we went to a restaurant in town where the lights are low both in brightness and length; the waiters kept hitting their heads on the lampshades whenever they placed anything on our table.

Whilst eating my £11 bite-sized pasta dish, which I'd chosen because it was one of the cheapest things on the menu, I found a piece of curly wire in my mouth which was, according to the manager, from a scouring pad. He apologised and took my food off the final bill. When it came to paying, our party split the bill equally. Parting with £27 for three glasses of wine is always a pleasure. I felt like I was in that episode of Friends but I was too much of a coward to say anything. Had I known in advance we'd be splitting the bill I'd have ordered a starter and a steak instead of scouring pad linguine.

Towards the end of the meal I needed a wee so I went off to the toilet. As I was urinating I was alarmed when up through the toilet bowl and out between my legs came swirling steam. This has happened to me before in nightclubs with metal toilet bowls and for some reason it made sense then - you know, warm wee on cold metal. It wasn't half as alarming as when it happened on that posh porcelain toilet in an expensive restaurant. Perhaps I expected the toilet bowl to be heated given they were charging extortionate amounts for child portion main courses.

Once back at the table I couldn't keep the steam situation to myself for long and explained what had happened to nine bemused people sat around the table. I implored them to go up to the loo to confirm that I was not a) mental and b) the holder of mutant bodily fluids. Before we left I managed to get a couple of takers for the experiment and stood outside each of their cubicles shouting through the door, 'Any steam yet?!' to which the replies were a resounding no. You could say I was left feeling like a bit of a freak.

I've just typed 'steam when urinating' into Google and it comes up with very few corresponding results. What's listed is mostly about cats or poodles pissing on carpets. Not only that but it also asks if I actually meant 'stream when urinating'. It is worrying that Google knows so little about my steaming problem that it feels the need to ask me if I'm actually searching for the correct thing.



On the second page of results there is this Urban Dictionary definition of 'piss mist'...



Delightful. I shall remember that next time I piss on a fire.

Thursday 17 March 2011

Just Browsing

In a bid to get thick and lustrous eyebrows I have been indulging in a bit of threading. This may seem like a blatant oxymoron but apparently, and this currently seems like an urban myth to me, there are ways of encouraging brow growth using this lovely hair-removal technique.

I've been a couple of times before and both times I came out with eyebrows way too thin (you could say I was left thread-bare hahaha) as I hadn't been engaged in any kind of consultation beforehand as to what I wanted from the brow grooming. If I were to describe them with punctuation I'd say I came out with brackets when all I wanted was quotation marks: a bit of size variation to spice up my face a smidge.

My eyebrows before all this threading business began. Looking at them, I think I actually preferred them. (Please excuse the eye makeup - I was going to a party dressed as a Christmas tree.)

Today I took matters into my own hands and drew the brows of my dreams in pencil on a Post-It note to show the brow people.

The Post-It Note of Dreams.
(It seems the Christmas tree eyebrows weren't far off. Why did a mirror not inform me of this?)

 The lady looked at the sketch and set to work. During the experience she intermittently took a pair of scissors and had a little snip here and there. Sat with my eyes closed and head back I started daydreaming that she was taking the scissors to my nostrils to begin snipping at not my nose hair but the skin where the nostril meets the main part of the nose. Thankfully I was consciously daydreaming otherwise there's a chance I may have screamed out accusations at the unsuspecting threading technician. That would have been a hair removal story to tell the grandkids. I still ended up coming out with eyebrows a bit thinner than I'd like but they're becoming a bit less bracketey and headed quotation-markward.


To get the shape I want I have to manipulate my forehead.
                            

Neat.

OK, OK, we get the message. You've got eyebrows.

And at least my nose is still in tact (not that you'd know it from these photos).

Thursday 10 March 2011

Oh Crap

I'm on an evening shift, at a point where I've done all my work and can now peruse the internet whilst a Drink Impaired Driver's group plays out in one of the meeting rooms. My job now is to be here in case of an emergency. If that panic alarm goes off I have to go in there to assess the situation and decide whether the police/ambulance/fire brigade need calling (I'm probably not the best person to do this given my laid back approach to most things).

But as it happens I find myself in a bit of an emergency, in need of a plumber. I am currently on a break from flushing the toilet and waiting for the water level to go down. After nearly a year of inadequate bowel movements I have finally got my poo-jo back and have been blocking toilets here, there and everywhere. Mainly at work. The week before last I managed to do a turd so large I flushed five times to no avail. That day I was doing a split shift so I went home for a few hours and then came back. On visiting the toilet later that evening I saw my numerous flushes had made little impact on the brown torpedo and there is no doubt it had been used since my encounter with it. It took a further toilet brush attack and a few more flushes to get it down.

Tonight I have managed a similar feat. I went for a number two about but did not think to check if it had gone down. I had to go again at and on lifting the lid saw my extravagant use of toilet paper had not made it down an hour and a half before. I didn't think to flush it before attempting another evacuation so when flushing it afterwards I managed to cause an upsurge of water and the view of two poos too large for the meagre toilet bowl to take. A few flushes and toilet brushes have made no impact and after staring at the water level for a few minutes it looked like it wasn't going down. I thought perhaps it may be a case of a watched bog never unblocks so I came downstairs to give it some space to do its business.

I thought I may as well comment on the whole fiasco while I wait.

I shall now go and see if any progress has been made. (I also need another poo - I wonder if all the chocolate I've eaten today is causing this excessive amount of excrement)...

I have been defeated. Not only by the toilet refusing to unblock but also the fact it has been discovered by someone in the building who has taken the time to fashion a 'toilet blocked!' sign and found some sellotape to stick it up. (Sadly I have no camera phone to document this turn of events) The annoying thing is I didn't realise this staff member was still in the building and there's a chance he'll have heard me speeding my way up the stairs to cause the vandalism. I am crossing my fingers this doesn't encourage an email to be sent out to the entire building in the morning.

I just never learn do I? 

p.s. I used another toilet for my 3rd poo of the evening and managed not to block it. That's one less 'toilet blocked exclamation mark' sign that needs making.