Tag: personal

Burning Camel

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Some days, I feel like I am burning my camel at both ends.
No, I don’t burn my candle at both ends. I burn my camel at both ends.
Back in college, I had a wooden footstool shaped like a camel.
One day, I got mad and stomped it. The footstool broke in half.
So, we tossed it on the barbecue pit and lit it on fire.
I said “Some days, I feel like I’m burning my candle at both ends.”
Charlie replied “No, you’re burning your camel at both ends.”
Okay, I guess you just had to be there.

METRO

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Imagine a disgusting, ferocious parasite.
This creature feeds on time, and when it lands on you, it sucks out twenty-five minutes of your life and flies away.
Every day, this creature comes, and no matter how hard you run or scream for it to stop, it keeps coming back.
Again, twenty-five minutes. Gone forever.
Oh, and its owner does nothing about it.
You’d be pissed off, wouldn’t you?
To me, this creature wears a METRO uniform. It is a bus driver who races through his route, several minutes early.
And leaving me behind, waiting twenty-five minutes for the next bus.

Poor Support

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I’m reading through my emails when I come across one with the subject line of Poor Support!!!!!!
I count the exclamation points – at least twenty.
Then I think for a moment… did they mean Poor Support as in they got bad support, or are they showing sympathy for Support?
Email strips the nuance out of language.
And also, for that matter, the text of the show notes here on the podcast.
I read the message and it’s just some customer bitching that they had to manage their server themselves.
You know – like the contract says.
No nuances there, folks.

Catered

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My grandfather was very sick, but he had just undergone some kind of procedure or another, and he said he felt up to calling family.
His last words to me were “Heaven will be catered.”
The next day, I was at school, and I got called into the office.
I don’t remember much after that.
Was I fifteen? Sixteen?
Today, I look in the mirror.
Too fat.
I don’t breathe the same drycleaning chemicals he did that rotted out his organs, but still…
I’ve been cutting down, eating less. And exercise.
Hold my seat, Papa Willie. It’ll be a while.

End Of Lifed

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When a server needs its drive image reloaded, we pull the old hard drive and stick a new one in there with the drive image already on it.
Well, when I say new, I really mean new to that server.
The old hard drives have to come from somewhere, right? They’re drives that are yanked from other servers, wiped clean, and then have new software loaded back on them.
And they’re marked with a tally-mark.
When a drive gets twenty-five tally marks, like this one here, it’s end-of-lifed.
Come on, pass me the hammer.
This sucker’s gonna get it good.

The Angel

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My wife didn’t go to Florida this year for Christmas, so she put up a Yule tree.
It was a fake tree, prewired with lights and pinecones. And even though it wasn’t going to shed needles, we still got a tree skirt for it.
We kept the decorations simple. And we didn’t put an angel on top.
No, that was for Piperkitty’s photo. She watched us put the tree up, but didn’t live to see us take it down.
As we take down the ornaments, I find her last tinkly collar.
I don’t remember putting it up there.
Do you?

Tiny Dancer

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As I’m sorting through my Inbox, tossing out spam and endless discussion threads, my littlest cat jumps up on top of my desk, sticks her tail in her mouth, and does a little mewing pirouette.
“Mew!” she squeaks. “Mew! Mew! Mew!”
It’s cute and silly, but after a minute of this I get a little concerned.
Is something wrong?
“What is it, Piper?” I ask.
She stops and looks me straight in the eye, tail still in her mouth.
“Mew!” she insists.
And she goes back to turning circles on the desk with her tail.
What a weird little cat.

Laundry Thieves

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I had a box of detergent, a hike from my dorm room to the laundry center, and not enough sense to get a smaller, lighter container for carrying the stuff.
But whenever I left the box in there, half of it would mysteriously vanish.
Damn thieves.
So I added instant mashed potato flakes to the detergent and left it in the laundry room.
Hours later, everybody in there’s yelling obscenities.
The room smells like potatoes. Gloppy clothes everywhere.
“Be grateful,” I said, taking my clothes out of the dryer. “In Saudi Arabia, they cut thieves’ hands off.”
I never did have to resort to the gravy mix.

Mother? Mother?

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Mother really likes to play Scrabble.
We’ve played for thirty years now. Whenever I come back home, that Scrabble board is out and ready.
So when she went into the hospital for surgery, sure enough, that Scrabble board was there on the rolling table right next to all the food cups with straws in them.
We play for a bit, and I notice she’s occasionally pushing a black button.
“It’s for the morphine,” she says.
I hold her hand, click the button a few times, and she gets way-out loopy.
Maybe now she’s fully whacked out, I’ll win.
Mother?
Mother?

Soda Bomb

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I’m an idiot.
I bought a case of Coke Zero the other day. You know, something different than the usual iced tea and water and red wine.
So I put a can in the fridge and one in the freezer.
Which did I drink? The one in the fridge.
Later, I needed some more ice, so I opened the freezer and…
Coke Zero everywhere.
I work at a place that has this sign on the break room fridge: “Do not put soda cans in the freezer or they will explode.”
I think I need one of those signs at home.