Labor 2008

We have a whole wall in the war room (campaign command center...we weren't actually AT war) filled with quotes that will mean nothing to most people. But I thought I would pass this one along.

Some of the progressive crew who work out of our office were having a pot luck. My team and I were in the training room late one night stuffing envelopes and getting punchy when we happened to notice the board listing what people were bringing. It went something like this:

Joe - beet salad
Sally - tofu scramble
John - vegetable soup
etc, etc.

At the bottom was printed:

Brian - something random.

Mai turned to the rest of us and said "Oh my god. 'Something random' is the best thing on the menu!"

Poop talk at the table

"It's good,
It's nice,
It's interesting!"

~ Kerry on colonic irrigation

"And no one can say you're full of shit!"

~Steve is quick with the witty repartee

Well it's just not proper dinner conversation until someone brings up poop now is it?

7 Habits of Highly Effective Quotes

I have this friend, we'll call him Liam (because that's his name), who really really like those self-help, get ahead in business type books. He is especially fond of all things Stephen Covey (who wrote that 7 habits book).

Anyhoo, I got sent on a fancy schmancy training course for work about all that and Liam was so jealous. We spent a good 2 hours discussing it in a bar one night (ok trying to name all 7 in a bar one night) and then trying to explain it to others yeilding this quote:

"Stephen Covey must have unwittingly spawned a lot of suicide bombers!"

~ Liam on Habit 1: Being Proactive

Another Quotable Night at Marcia's House

I spent Saturday evening with Jen at her sister's house. This time, the quote book was a paper towel. There are some that will remain on the paper towel to protect the innocent...but a few of the suitable for public consumption quotes follow below:

* Of course, once people know the quote book is out, they are always trying to be quotable. TJ kept saying "write that down" after things he, himself, had said. This led me to remind him of the basic tenet of The Quote Book":

If you try to get on it, it's never gonna happen.

* At one point in the evening, TJ and Paul were commenting on the fact that Renee and I were drinking water. We were intermixing water and beer like the good, professionals that we are. It led us into the conversation about being properly hydrated. Paul said he drinks a Costco sized bottle of water on the way to work and Renee wondered if that was everyday or just after late night drinking, prompting this excellent rookie quote from Paul:

Hangover days? On hangover days I don't even piss until 5 PM.

* Jen's sister Cindi was the second one to bed but for some reason she wouldn't quite go to sleep. Given the mass amounts of vodka consumed, we found this to be rather remarkable. Jen -ever the nurturing caregiver, kept going up to check on her prompting this classic exchange between Renee and TJ:

Renee: Where's Jen?
TJ: She's putting Cindi to bed.
Renee: Still? Damn. Can't she just hit her over the head with something?

Wedding Quote

I went to a friend's wedding this weekend. All very lovely. I was chatting with some women I used to work with - both my age-ish, married with kids.

Also both with lovely, pale, Irish, bright-red-sun-burn-after-3-minutes-outside type skin. After a few drinks one of them turned to me and said:

Seriously, screw love and money. Marry for melanin.

I need to get some older friends

So - I have these 26 year olds that I hang out with quite a bit. Both lovely gents and I have fun with them and, most of the time, we're on the same wavelength. But Saturday night we're out and I had one of those moments where I felt like I was babysitting.

They were arguing about something and then (and I kid you not) started slapping each other upside the head across the table and tapping each other's beer to make it foam over. I was in the middle and finally had to put my arms out and stop them.

At which point I uttered what Ted (one of the aforementioned 26 year olds) determined should be a someecard:

After the pre-teen fighting stopped I looked at them and said :

"I gotta go. I need to get up early tomorrow to reevaluate my life."

* Cross posted at ProcrastiNation

Grown up dinner party quotes

Had a little dinner do the other night at ours which produced some memorable moments. I had the pleasure of introducing whiskey sours a la healy to a whole new continent of whinorhinos and after a few batches of those, a shed-load of wine and a loverly feast, the party games commenced!

“I am an implied male?"

We were playing that game where you have to guess who you are (you have a sticker on your head with a famous name on it)...
Joe was E.T.

“Jesus Christ!”

Steve actually was labeled Jesus Christ but he said this in frustration with our vague answers to questions such as ‘Am I a fictional character?’ and ‘Am I dead?’ I was gonna give it to him after I recovered from laughing but we played on.
But the funniest things always come out of Colleen for some reason...she was explaining that although she is a programmer and computery work person she is crap at actually using them.

“I can’t work the damn things at all, I just programme the belly of the beast”
“So you don’t talk to the beast?”
“No, I am the beast”

Yes colleen, you are the beast, but you are allergic to all types of fur...

“001101011001101...It’s a joke in binary!”
“You told it wrong!”

Computer dorks having a laugh. There’s always two of ‘em in a crowd...

The Secret Life of Girls

Last Friday, I went to dinner with Jenny E, LCP, LCP’s hot mom friend MacKenzie, LCP’s cousin Holland, LCP’s college buddy Tracey.

We went to Mirror for some tapas and wine. We chatted about men, children, pets, work, waxing, general genital grooming and anal bleaching.

I have two really good quotes that I need to share. Cross-post on Emotional Mullet.

LCP will correct me, but I think it was MacKenzie who was having a hard time understanding the purpose and outcome of anal bleaching.

Sensing that we needed a bit more explanation, I said,

“It is like Visine for the brown eye.”

And another …

MacKenzie, a hot-mom like LCP, was relating the troubles and issues she had with general genital grooming during and after pregnancy.*

She said,

“It was like Gorillas In The Mist. I was all Jane Goodall down there.”



*I believe this is a reference to how one must prioritze with a newborn.

Co-worker Quote

For this to make sense you need to know that there is a comedy show in NI called Give my Head Peace about the protestant/catholic divide. You also need to know that the speaker's mother is big into alternative healing and therapy and tries to force this way of life on others. When asked for the 5000th time to partake in reiki healing or some such, her daughter finally exploded with

"Give my aura peace!"

Well I thought it was funny, especially since they are both Croatian...

When the wife's away...

Packing is stressful. Unpacking is a pain. Colleen likes to leave her suitcase on the floor for several weeks until I give in and do it for her. But this time after our xmas trip to DC, she unpacked most of it right away, but not quite all of her bad habits have been cured by my incessant nagging. She sill disrobes at night by dropping everything where she stands, leaving me to compare her upbringing to that of a barnyard animal.

Last night I had occasion to ask what the house would look like I wasn't here to nag and force her to unpack and put things away etc. This was the answer I kind of expected:

"Remember those three months you were in America? I lived like a monkey, flinging my shit and bras."

I laughed so hard my ribs hurt. Needless to say the suitcase is still on the floor with some monkey shit in it.

Parent Quote

Its a different generation people, it really is. Us kids today (yes I know how old I am) took those drunk driving commercials and the 17 kids that died in our high school from it fairly seriously.

Colleen in particular won't drive if she's even touched the booze. But not my dad, he's probably better at most things slightly drunk anyway. It has always bothered Colleen that he'll think nothing of driving home after things like New Years Eve etc... and she said so at one point in the car with him which produced this great line:

"If you're not nervous when I'm driving, YOU'RE the one who's drunk!" ~ my dad

so proud...