SHUT UPPP

Last Sunday Dale and I wandered over to HEB around 11 in the morning just to pick up a couple of things. When it was time to leave, all of the checkout lanes were understandably full, especially since it was a holiday weekend, so hoping to defy the odds we got into the "20 items or less" (can't type that without wanting to correct it) self-checkout lane. There were three lanes open and all three had people at them so we were next in line. How bad could this be?

OMG OMG OMG. Seriously? So, I don't think any of these people ACTUALLY had fewer than twenty items but that ended up being beside the point, because they're also not at all fit to operate the technology required for self-checkout use. First there was this guy there by himself who had a ton of produce he was trying to ring up. Apparently, he couldn't see the big "PRODUCE" icon there on the screen because he took out his celery (that's what she said?) and was looking for a BARCODE there on the stalks. Ummm...this is not going well. At the next line was more of a classic fail. The lady there had two children who were getting away while she had to take things out of her bags and then replace them, etc. because she couldn't figure out that doing things like touching the bag carousel messes with the scale and will F your stuff up. THEN she takes out her wallet and awesomely begins trying to shove dollars in the dollar slots at the ONE CHECKOUT LINE with a handmade (though still large enough for me to easily see from where I was standing) sign that said: CREDIT CARDS AND CHECKS ONLY - NO CASH BACK. At this point I began giggling gleefully and uncontrollably because it's just so damn funny and also my luck to be behind these jokers.

Maybe the best, though, was the yuppie couple at the third and final checkout lane. I still have no idea what exactly was going on, but at various points they were standing there doing absolutely nothing, then she yelled at him for...something, I don't know, and then they stood there doing nothing some more, then the poor cashier/babysitter came over and tried to help but was kind of chased back to her stand, then the cashier came BACK with a whole thing of coupons but at the same time the wife yelled "JUST HAVE THEM ZERO IT OUT!!" and ran back into the store. What?! It's all so amusing! So by now I'm laughing like an idiot because this is just so funny. I mean, these are exactly the people who used to treat me like crap when I was a cashier at Target in high school and I still see it while I'm waiting in line behind someone - the cashier is so inconsequential to them and it's "not a real job" or whatever and...you know what? It's not so easy, is it, beeyotches? Seriously, between the three of the checkout lines we stood there for a good eight minutes. Not all that bad if you're just in a regular line on a Sunday but to be NEXT IN LINE with three different people standing there utterly confounded and losing it was just hysterical.

Dale has gotten really good at making it look like he's not with me when I make no effort at all to hide when I laugh at the stupid things that total strangers do in public. Poor guy.

OH and for the record the lady with the two runaways and all the cash finally saw the sign, figured it out, and paid with a card. GAH! But at least we got her checkout lane. :-)

I don't know if this is listed somewhere in the Bro Code (I'm not a Bro...) but it SHOULD be. From now on, if you receive a blank text message from a friend, that is The Signal that they are trapped in an awkward situation (you and your ex ended up at the same party and your friend/date isn't there yet), horrible conversation (Creepy Guy From Work corners you at the grocery store and won't shut up about the TPS reports), bad date, job interview gone terribly wrong, whatever. The proper etiquette when receiving The Signal is to wait thirty seconds and then call the person with a "huge emergency". The job of the caller is then to listen patiently on the line for further instructions. For example, the person receiving the call could say, concerned, "Oh no! What happened?" It is then the responsibility of the caller to fill in the necessary silence, just to make it all a little more believeable. You could talk about your day or you could offer possible escape routes to your trapped friend. Anyway, the person receiving the call is in control here. If just a minor distraction was necessary and the awkward encounter has been diffused (ie, Creepy Guy From Work wandered off or your ex left the party while you were on the phone) then you can thank your friend and hang up. If it's something more serious, like a bad date that wouldn't end, this is your chance to escape! Politely tell your date that you've had a great time and you're sorry that you have to cut it short but (Fill in excuse here; be creative!) and you have to go rescue them. Hooray for friendship!

The modification to The Signal is The Time Bomb. The Time Bomb is usually texted from a secluded location: the bathroom, outside, wherever, and gives a specific time frame for the callback, ie: COUNT TO 200 AND CALL ME BACK! This is especially helpful if you're in a situation where you can't covertly send the blank text, and will give you time to get back to your table, bar stool, interview, whatever before The Call is placed.

Also I've been watching way too much HIMYM.

Yay! Because I wanted to how EXACTLY how long 'til Christmas and now you can too!

Also I downloaded a bunch of Christmas music. I know it's just now about to be September but...shut up. :oD

Ohhh best first day of school EVER! The weirdness and FAILs started at 5:00 am and just never quit. Here's the rundown:

5:15 AM, Cedar Park: COFFEE FAIL! I groggily wander in to the kitchen where my trusty coffee pot has brewed up a hot pot of some Austin Blend (bestcoffeeeverrrr). Except...what is this? There is like a teaspoon of coffee grounds in the bottom of the carafe? WTF?! I open the top of the coffee maker and LAUGH. Somehow my filter went retarded and it was all bunched up on itself. If you've heard my bajillions of weirdo coffeemaking stories before then...well, I guess you aren't surprised by this one. :-)

7:40 AM, San Marcos, LBJSC Parking Garage: PARKING FAIL! CRUNCH. Know what that sound is? It's the sound my car makes when I back it into the wall of the LBJSC garage at 5 miles an hour. OOPS. As far as I can tell though the only damage done was a very small scrape on the bumper. Still, it made me feel like a geek.

7:57 AM, The Quad: FASHION POLICE I totally passed a girl in the Quad who was wearing the following outfit: black leggings under a hot pink knee-length skirt with a white button-down shirt under a cream-colored vest. Not a joke. Unfortunately I was too sleepy to whip out my phone and get a picture but I'm PRETTY SURE I am not making this up. When I texted the description to Katie, she wrote back: Oh! First day of school in 1985!

8:00 AM, Taylor-Murphy History Building: CAN'T GO THERE Yup there's something ridiculously awesome about my 8:00 am class. I can't put too many specifics here for fear of it maybe one day somehow weirdly working its way around to the wrong person who might take offense but I will just say: Milton Waddams and the Impressive Clergyman. Ask me in person if you need more details.

9:30 AM, Evans Liberal Arts Building: VAN WILDER It was bound to happen sometime. I wandered in to the wrong class. Liked what I heard. Stayed. Naw, what really happened was that I'd already had plans to drop my Development of English class in favor of a geography class so I planned to go to the geo class that I was going to register for as soon as registration came open BUT I did indeed wander in to the wrong class. But then there was this German guy with a great accent all "Welcome to Fundamentals of GIS!" so I figured...I can do GIS for a day. It's part of my degree anyway. ;-)

12:17 AM, ELA women's bathroom: IMMEDIATE SOCIAL REJECT FAIL I didn't even know that people do this but...there was seriously a girl at school with her MOM today. Yeah - IDK either. Like there they were going from class to class and the mom was carrying a big Bookstore bag and the girl had her backpack and everything. I thought I had trouble cutting the apron strings and going off to college but never EVER in all my fear and insecurity did I think for a second to ask my mom to come with me. Never. Ever. Ever.

2:00 PM, ELA: FASHION POLICE, PART TWO Chick walked in to my last class of the day wearing ill-fitting stretchy cuffed dark blue denim shorts. I mean, there are indeed worse things that someone could wear to class. What made this a fashion fail was the white button-up sleeveless shirt she wore with it. It had all different color stripes on it and it was...TUCKED IN. Un! Flattering!! Stacy London would've had an embolism.

2:58 PM, ALKEK STEPS: RETURN OF THE FASHION POLICE! Ugh, was there some "Wear your ugliest outfit" contest that I wasn't aware of going on today? Do these people dress in the dark? WHAT IS GOING ON!? Girl comes walking down the Alkek steps in a bright yellow top with a purple cami-vest thing (couldn't really tell what was going on there) over it. Ok...I could let that go. But she had paired it with skinny jeans that were kind of loose around her thighs but skinny on her calves (think AC Slater pants!) and had light blue seams sewn down the front of either leg, from hip to ankle. Bottoming out this atrocity were pointy black boots, worn UNDER her skinny jeans. OMG. Barf.

3:06 PM, LBJSC GARAGE: TX STATE'S BANK ACCOUNT FTW! It now costs $10 to park your car in the LBJSC garage for eight hours. WTF?! Texas State, really? You hike up my tuition higher than my financial aid will pay, you charge an arm and a leg for perimeter parking and don't run enough buses to carry everybody, you raise the price of a one-way bus ticket from Austin to San Marcos to $6 (it's now cheaper to drive my car to San Marcos, gas-wise), AND you're gonna charge me ten bucks to park in your garage? I hate you. Can't I just give you my spleen, my pet unicorn, and my firstborn child and call it even? Jeezah!

So there's my day in a nutshell. Crazy, I know! Best first day of school ever, though, because now I remember why I started this blog to begin with. It's the ridiculous! And the awesome! And oh how I've missed it.

I made this Mexican casserole thing for dinner (which, if you're reading this, COME OVER because there's tons and tons of leftovers) and decided that guacamole would go well with it so I whipped some up and apparently the jalapeno I used was, like, super jalapeno because I've washed my hands like four times since then and I am STILL randomly burning my mouth and eyes by accident. Uncool!

In other words, the job search is going meh and school starts on Wednesday. All in all, I just want the weekend! Not a good sign on a MONDAY. K TTYL.

So I drove to Belton today to come see my grandma and because we're going to Arlington tomorrow to see my great aunt Pat (it's her 82nd birthday!) and there was some CRAZY FREAKY weather on the way up here! Like, we're talking this massive electric storm with tons of cloud-to-ground white and blue lighting all over the place and thunder that was shaking my car and about halfway through it the rain started coming down in buckets like God decided to water his lawn today and his sprinkler was stuck on the "SUPER HIGH" setting. Really, really kind of scary.

So after actually SEEING lightning hit some stuff, I got a little freaked out: what do you do when lightning hits your car? I remember that it's ok because the rubber tires ground your car so you're safe inside, but wasn't there something else? Like don't turn your car off/on, don't open the door, don't touch the steering wheel, don't sneeze, SOMETHING else?? What was it?! Eek, I don't remember! And, not wanting to get my stuff shocked (I have an uncle who was once struck by lightning. He lived and is supposedly none the worse for wear but I don't want to join that club!) I grabbed my phone which was going in and out of service throughout the whole thing, and texted some of the people I thought might be helpful in such a situation. HERE is what my darling friends wrote back:

ME: What do you do if your car gets hit by lightning?
KATIE: Electric car? :!)
DALE: Don't know. I think panic would be good!
BEN: Die?
BEN: Play the lottery?
BEN: Find Jesus?

You are all absolutely UNHELPFUL!! The only helpful person was Andrew who correctly told me to STAY IN MY CAR if it got lit up. And then eventually (after I got to Belton and was safely inside the house) Dale called to tell me that not only do you stay in the car you also apparently have to open the door and then bunny-hop out of it so that you don't touch the car and the ground at the same time which will apparently shock your stuff. So thanks Andrew for taking care of your friend('s wife, LOL) and also I guess Ben for making sure I didn't get out of my car with an umbrella. Blar.

My official new hero? Whoever randomly put this picture on TV for no apparent reason what so ever during a broadcast of The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. Not that I *watch* that show, I saw it on The Soup, and when I did I laughed and laughed and had to rewind and watch and laugh some more. And so I give you...SPAGHETTI CAT!


Ta!