(Don't) Walk On By

Something occurred to me, today, while reading another knitter’s account of how they surreptitiously touch strangers’ knits:

People might think I’m creepy.

Poker? I Hardly Know Her...

SO…every christmas my mom gives me lottery ticket (a scratch off). Every year I don’t win.


This year I didn’t bother scratching it off, til this morning.

It’s some poker thing. I know nothing about poker. But you have to make the best hand on the card to beat “the champ”.

Anyhoo…I scratch it off and almost died because I think I’ve won five hundred dollars with two pairs (3s and 8s). Then I look again and I realize I’ve won a million dollars (two pairs, Ks and 8s). the Champ doesn’t have anything.

I show our intern because…well…he’s a straight guy who plays poker with his friends in the dorms, and he confirms that it looks like I won a million dollars.

So I run down to the convenience store in our building. Wait on line. Text CawfeeMate that he may be married to a millionaire. we cyber-gag.

When the guy at the counter scans it, it comes up LOSER. So I’m trying to explain that I won and he’s like NO. if it doesn’t scan as a WINNER you LOST.

GOOD DAY, SIR.

So I walk upstairs...all dejected...and try to figure out how I lost. when the champ has no pairs, no three of a kind, no straight; just a bunch of random diamonds.

Poop.

Flush.

Yarn Charades

Once upon a time, I was the assistant manager of a mall music store (Sam Goody, if you’re old enough to remember them). I thought it was going to be fifty shades of Empire Records, but alas, it was not. Oh it had it’s fun moments, to be sure, but Rex Manning never came to visit and schtupp the resident minx, nor did manager look like Anthony La Paglia. It was just another mall job; Hollywood lied to me again. The best part of the job, by far was not chasing shoplifters through the mall, but playing Name That Tune with the customers:

Customer: I’m looking for a song. I don’t know who sings it.
Me: ok…do you know the lyrics..?
Customer: I don’t know who sings it, but it kinda sounds like two guys
Me: gotcha. Can you hum it.
Customer: random tuneless humming and mumbling of lyrics
Me: um. What about the chorus…?
Customer: something about “bright eyes”
Me: do you mean “turn around/bright eyes”..?
Customer: YEAH!!!
Me: um yeah...that’s Bonnie Tyler; Total Eclipse of the Heart
Customer: Great! Gimme the single!
Me: the song is 15 years old; there’s no single
Customer: oh…then forget it.

Bear in mind, this was before iPhones with Shazam or Soundhound or Songify. I was Shazam. Better than that: I was CawfeeBoy: Music Detective, able to use my ridiculously eclectic music taste (and those of my friends who I’d call when stumped) for good and help those who needed it; I was performing a public service for those in need. i used to love those customers, but mostly because I felt superior to them for their ignorance. Never did I think I’d ever become one of those customers.

Spinning a Yarn

I think I may have hit the “point of no return” with my interest in the “fiber arts”. I mean, I’m definitely hooked on knitting and have, very recently, observed the merits of knowing how to crochet; I even dabbled with it last week, on a scarf I was determined to keep from being completely hideous. No, what I’m talking about is finally reaching that point where other people, not involved with knitting/crochet would cock their muggle eyebrow and question my sanity. You know the point I’m talking about; every hobby/activity has one. a point where the hobby/activity/interest almost looks like “religion”; take the Trekkies:

1. watching the occasional episode of Star Trek while high
2. watching them all (chronologically) on Netflix, straight
3. joining an online discussion board about Star Trek
4. attending a convention
5. naming your pet after either a character/actor
6. attending a convention in costume
7. writing “fan fiction”
8. traveling to another state to attend a convention
9. having a Star Trek themed wedding*
10. naming your child after either a character or actor*

right around #6 is when people might organize the intervention.

Darn Tootin

Please note that this post is pieced together from a couple of“Private Messages” I sent to a gal from Ravelry, with some original content thrown in for back-story and stuff.

My wait for my elusive needles is finally at an end (or, at least, it was). Last week I got an e-mail from the lady (and you know I don’t throw that word around lightly*), who owns DyakCraft, saying my last order (placed November 1st-ish), was shipping; a few days later, I got the shipping notification from Stamps.com.