You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2008.
For those of you who don’t know, OSHA is the Occupations Health and Safety Administration, which is part of the bureaucracy here in the states that set and regulates safety conditions in the work place. Our good buddies to the north have a similar agency, who’ve unleashed a series of public service announcements. Unlike most overly campy, ridiculously staged public service announcements, they’ve really hit the mark here. Who’da thunk that “shock and awe” tactics could be used to promote work safety. Check it out here, if you dare.
On the lighter side of life, there’s also this video – again a public service announcement, but this one I thought was just plain funny. Check it out here (work safe).
Also falling under the “good news” category, I was at the grocery store yesterday buying a pack of soda. The cashier rung me up and the price came out as $0.00. She looked at the screen and then looked back at me and declared, ”Huh. It must be free.” Being a cashier (of sorts) myself, I figured she was joking and was going to scan it again. She repeated what she said before, and I continued to look at her in disbelief.
“No, I’m serious,” She reiterated. Still uncertain, I asked: “So, should I like… go grab a different one or something?”
”Don’t worry about it, just take it.” She replied. I took my free 12 pack of Pepsi and wished her a good night. It was definitely one of those random things that just seem to go right every now and then. It was like I had landed on chance and just won $10 for getting second place in a beauty pageant, you know?
It just makes you think… Monopoly is a lot like life – Especially if you’re a landlord.
I’ve been running into a lot of people that I went to High School with lately. I think that’s one of the things that I thought wouldn’t happen to me as often as it has. The most recent incident was at “Too Much Love,” an event sponsored by First Avenue every Saturday night. I had been dancing in the same little patch of floor for the past twenty minutes or so when I see this polka dot dress in front of me who asks “Hey, did you go to my high school?” Breaking my zoned-out stare at the floor, I look up at her and realize that it’s Shirley, clarinet player extraordinaire.
We talked for a minute, and that was that. I was grateful that the conversation had been short and sweet. I don’t know what I would have said otherwise. Last Friday I went to buy groceries, and I ran into two more people who I knew from the music program in HS. He played Javert in Les Miserables, and she played Eponine. I didn’t put it together that they were dating until I saw them holding hands in the baking aisle. I surmised that it was probably some previously arranged relationship and not some tryst brought on by the scintillating aroma of Pillsbury Flour and Brer Rabbit Molasses.
Realizing that they didn’t recognize me, or chose not to, I rounded the corner to the Gatorade aisle, I came face to face with TJ, from civics class. Sure, we didn’t have much to say, but after a whole 30 seconds of small talk and jokes about the cost of groceries, we were left standing awkwardly in front of our shopping carts, looking for an out. It’s not that I didn’t care how TJ’s life has been going since then, it’s that I couldn’t see how it was any of my business. After a minute or so of silence, I gave him a “well, see you later then,” along with a head nod and headed towards checkout.
I wonder who I’ll have that sort of a relationship with in the future. Will it be any of my current friends, or will I always have the same reserve of high school friends to run into occasionally and then forget about?
I went to see my college advisor today. Actually, that’s not true. I went to see my major advisor today, because when I went to see her she was on the 10th floor rather than on the 5th floor. When she’s on the 5th floor, then she’s my college advisor. She can’t be both, and she has a separate room for each title.
I had several questions to ask her - and the answers I received were less than helpful. Mostly I just wanted reassurance that everything would be fine, whether I take an extra semester to finish my degree or not. My advisor said she could help out more… if I had gone to her walk-in hours on the 5th floor, not the 10th.
But on the bright side… because it was a nice day, I decided to ride my bike to the appointment rather than taking the bus. That was a welcome change of pace; I had forgotten how good it feels to bike around Minneapolis.
In other news, Barack Obama has a Reggaetone song dedicated to him. Check it out here. It’s mostly in Spanish though, so look out for that.
