MORE SHORT TAKES

Thank G-d, I live in this country for a little over twenty years. In this time I have managed to "adapt" to the good life. Sometimes, however, I still find myself in funny situations. One ordinary working day, I was doing "my usual": eating lunch and filing. For the "vegetable component" of my meal, I brought in a can of peas, which I just opened, and then proceeded to consume straight out of the can. Couple of guys stopped by to chat, and both of them were duly horrified by the fact that I was eating cold peas. A moment of mutual amazement: they can't comprehend my consumption of cold canned legumes, and I can't comprehend their astonishment. Ah, chuck it off to my childhood; after all, they will never appreciate the beauty of procuring deficient food items, or the deliciousness of the "Oliv'ye" salad due largely to those cold peas.

As heard on Leno: apparently, there is such a thing as "beady eye vegetarians". Translation: if something has "big, sad, soulful eyes" like a cow, it will not be eaten. If something has tiny beady eyes like salmon, it will be. Leno jokingly added that that sounds very LA: if you do not look just right, you would be eaten!

There are a few people in our office who are a bit on the neurotic bend. But one time somebody went a bit too far. Yours truly had to stay late to put the final touches on the payment requisition to the much respected New York City Department of Design and Construction, which, aside from preparing the said requisition (which is no mean feat), also requires submitting it in four copies. So, I went to the lower level to run those copies, and upon my return discovered that somebody took their evening routine a bit too seriously: they shot the lights, set the alarm, and locked all doors. And here was I, standing on the over side of the glass door, hugging the effing triplicate copies of the payment requisition, and longingly looking on my coat, which was hanging on the other side of the door (and which apparently the neurotic co-worker, busy with regular routine, failed to observe).

One of our junior architects was looking forward to his long weekend for about a month, and he was very vocal about it. On the Friday of his departure he mentioned his early leaving only about six times. Finally, that time arrived; he collected his belongings, and run out the door, barely remembering to say good bye. So, imagine my surprise when he re-appeared about fifteen minutes later. Poor schmuck was so excited; he left all his electronic devices at the office.

The closest book store to our office is Border’s. Unlike earth-sustainers, I do not see any harm in taking a plastic bag when needed, and then saving it for future use (and unlike them, I do not yell about it). Anyway, I had a good accumulation of Border’s bags in my drawer, and I used one of them to put my leftovers in the fridge. Next day, I went to check the fridge for those leftovers, and saw another Border’s bag in there. Ah, I thought, somebody else is doing the exact same thing. But then something about this other bag drew my attention; imagine my amusement when I realized that the second bag was also mine, and contained something else that I brought to the office and forgot about.

It looks like establishments serving kosher burgers have interesting concepts of what constitutes what. If you ask for well-done, you are going to get it burned. If you ask for medium, you are going to get it well-done. Just don’t request medium-rare, if you are not in the vicinity of a grill when you receive your order, because usually it requires additional cooking.

Recently, I had two separate and unrelated discussions with two Obama supporters. Both of them expressed total disbelief and incredulity upon discovering that it looks like our current so-called President’s IQ is only about 127. Speaking of somebody’s brilliance!

As told by one of my co-workers. He has a friend who is a social worker. At her place of employment, they do not get reimbursement for the cell phone usage; instead, they just get twenty five dollars a month towards whatever cell phone expanses they may incur. So, one day, when she realized that her battery was low, she just connected her phone to one of the office outlets, and continued with her work. Her supervisor, upon observing this, accused her of “double-dipping”, since she already receives her twenty five bucks for this. To which she replied that she would love to disconnect her charger, providing that the supervisor would take care of all the clients who would be unable to reach her in the event of the phone dying. Ah, administratium at work; what a thing of beauty!

Another gem from Leno’s monologue: “Recently, Iranian doctors discovered that drinking hot tea may cause throat cancer. This is the first thing they are not blaming on the Jews.”