Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Some Updates

Monday the 13th- My meeting with other moms about the Homeschool Enrichment Program went exceedingly well. Afterwards I went out and mooched a bale of hay and got a bag of apples. I made apple butter from them that night and canned them the next morning!
Tuesday the 14th- Went to my housecleaning job and I didn't feel like I made any progress. I hate that. I really want to do a spectacular job and sometimes no matter how hard I work, stuff just doesn't show. Oh well, I do what I can do,, you know? That evening we went to a skating birthday party. Fun stuff!
Wednesday the 15th- Spanish class, my kids are dorks, I'm going to leave it at that. After that we came home and got our hovercraft for Science Club. I can't wait until someone sends me some pictures of that contraption because it ROCKS! Really, it was so cool.

OK,, so I have a few complaints about stoopid people.
The Walmart Lady
I ran down to Walmart the other night to get a bit of 5mil plastic for the skirt on our hovercraft. I asked the lady if I could get about 5 feet cut. She grabs her yard stick and scissors and follows me to the rolly rack that has all the plastic and flocked back table cover and the like.
She's trying to measure this 60in wide plastic off the roll with a YARD STICK. She didn't act like she wanted me to help her at all! She kept on giving me that "I'VE GOT IT" huff when I'd offer to hold it taught for her.
Ok,, whatever,, except it's imperative that I not come home with less than 55 inches of the stuff. If she cuts it wrong then I'm bringing it back.
She awkwardly cuts it and takes it to the desk to remeasure it.
I'll let you guess if she did or not.
Answer: No.
48 inches.
She says "I don't know how I did that!" and "I'll just have to try again!"
So we saunter back over to the rolly rack and she pulls out more plastic. Now the roll that I want is all the way at the bottom. I start to mention to her that she should pull it all the way out and then measure it when another walmart lady walks up. They both start to struggle with the measuring of this plastic when I say
"you know,, the tiles on the floor are exactly 12 inches"
WML #2 says "No they aren't"
and by now these women had started to make me nervous because I could see that there was very little plastic left on the roll so I said "Yes they are!"
I grab the yard stick (from the floor, not out of her hand) and measure a tile on the floor
"see, they are exactly 12 inches. If you pull out the plastic, line the bottom up with a row of tiles, and then count up 5 tiles, you'll have 5 feet and the piece will be exactly plum"
They both looked at me like I was an alien.
WML#1 handed me the scissors. I KID YOU NOT.
So we take the piece back over to the table and she acted surprised that it worked!
This is not rocket science people.
Then it gets really good. This stuff is sold by the foot, not by the yard like everything else in the fabric department. She looks over at her conversion chart and says "5 feet isn't a yard and 2/3rds" and I said "sure it is".
She argued and argued with me AND the conversion chart!
She finally charged me for a yard and 2/3rds. Here's the kicker....
It's $1.97 a foot, not a yard. She charged me $2.60 for the entire piece instead of $9.85.
Pure genius.

Fire Station Lady
We needed a slick spot to test our hovercraft. I never imagined when I conceived of making this thing that it would be SO LOUD. I didn't want to run it in the library, you know.. the Shhhhh factor.
So I walked up to the fire station to see if they would let us use the garage floor for about 15 minutes. I talked to a little guy and he said he didn't think that would be a problem, just go upstairs and make an appointment.
Fine.
I go up and talk to the secretary. I tell her what we're doing and why we need the floor.
You'da thought that I was asking to disenbowl kittens or karate chop kindergartners. Every time I pleaded with her she would say "oh no, I don't think so, someone could get hurt, we can't have things floating in here"
"It DOESN'T FLOAT LADY", "you get farther off the floor when you walk!"
"oh no, there's too much liability with that"
OMG. Omg omg omg omg.
I shoulda just showed up and and asked for forgiveness later. I really want to show the boys that to follow procedure and be nice but seriously,, it's really REALLY difficult when people are idiots.
We ended up doing it at the library btw. They are SO good to us!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Appetizer recipes. Now THAT is right up my alley!
----------------------------------------------------------------

No comments: