Going Rogue At The Company Dinner

  Through out our long and crazy history, people have always found ways to keep the chaos that is life at bay.

  Whether it be using a burnt stick to mark on a cave wall how many apples you lent to the cute but loud couple in the cave next door or charting the constellations to see if you should ask out that girl you saw in the market or downloading that app that helps to keep all your contacts backed up, people will always find a way to make things organized.

  That is why I am a big fan of the list. A list is such a simple thing, yet the help it provides is beyond measure. They take up very little space, all your thoughts are easily accessed and you can jam it in your pocket and go. Also, my favorite part of a list is being able to check things off of it.

  During the holidays, lists are literally my lifesavers. Without a list there is a pretty good chance my brother won't get a present or my niece would get the same exact toy I bought her last year for Christmas. Do you know how hard it is to try and explain why Santa Claus brought the same present two years in a row? It's not as easy as you might think.

  Lists even found their way to my job. Every year around Christmas time, my boss, Larry, takes around a sign up list for the annual Christmas party. This way the company gets a fairly accurate count of how many people are attending the party. It also helps to ensure two people don't bring the exact same thing. At least, it theoretically should have.

  I was a little late to the party because I had decided to call my girlfriend and talk to her for a bit. She had been working some insanely busy hours as of late, and I just wanted to tell her good night before she went to bed. So, by the time I made it to the party, everyone would already be eating.

  As I walked to the break room my mouth started to water a little from all the food I remembered seeing on the list. There was going to be ham and southwestern spaghetti, all sorts of pasta salads, desserts and the such. Last year there was so much food, people were able to not only get seconds but a pretty healthy serving of thirds as well.

  I pushed open the break room doors like an old west gun fighter who just entered the local saloon. My eyes quickly scanned the room until they found the food table. The first thing I noticed was a large ham with pineapple rings around it. It looked so delicious. I was going to take a big helping of that followed by...my eyes drifted down the table in a growing disbelief... followed by baked beans. And baked beans. More baked beans. Baked beans. Baked beans... and finally some kind of marshmallowy thing.

  Literally, there was a total of 8 baked beans on the table. There was no southwestern spaghetti or pasta salads, and the only dessert looked as is it might have come from another planet or escaped from some secret government testing facility.

  What was this? How did this happen? There was a list. I saw the list. There was only one person who had been marked down for bringing in baked beans. Confused, I cut a few slices of ham and took some baked beans. I passed on the mutant marshmallow creature and found a spot to sit next to the guy who was supposed to bring in the southwestern spaghetti. I needed to know what had occurred that caused everyone to go rogue and abandon their original choices.

  As a guy who works several jobs I find I have become very adept at pulling information from people in a gentle and friendly manner. This is basically how the conversation went:

  Kevin: Hey. Where were you at? Foods almost all gone.
  Me:  Yeah speaking of food, where the heck is that southwestern spaghetti at you have been bragging all week about.
  Kevin:  Ran out of time, so I just stopped at store and picked up some baked beans from the deli. It looks like a few other people had the same idea as me.

  And that was pretty much the same reason everyone else gave as to why there were enough baked beans on the food table to make manually inflating a hot air balloon seem possible.

  I know it seems like maybe I am making too big of a deal out of this, but I find it hard to believe this lack of list etiquette isn't bothering other people as well. After all, the point of the list was to ensure there were lots of different foods to choose from. Not to see if we could break the world record for the amount of baked beans that can fit on one table.

  This year, I suppose, there is little I can do about the baked bean situation this year except try to avoid anyone who went back for second and thirds until we are outside in the fresh air... but next year, oh next year my friends, there will be consequences from going rogue.

  Perhaps the company would allow us to ban baked beans outright or maybe some form of suspension without pay would be more appropriate. I guess we will just have to wait and see what the company would be willing to do and how firm of a stance they are willing to take.

  Now if you will excuse me I am going to see if the vending machine upstairs has any cookies, because I am not going near that marshmallow stuff with out a sword and the head of Medusa to protect me.

 

The Adventures of A First Time Tuber

  Life should be an adventure. We shouldn't be happy to just sit back on the couch and watch everything pass us by. That being said, there is one important rule to remember. No matter how much you plan or think you are ready for something, you never really are. Trust me.
  It had been an interesting week. At both jobs I had been running nonstop, and couldn't wait for the weekend. Kelly, my often mentioned girlfriend, had bought this deal through Living Social for us to go canoeing on Mirror Lake for a couple hours. Definitely, a relaxing Saturday. We hadn't planned anything for Sunday, so when a woman I work with started to excitedly describe her tubing trip down the Sugar River, I knew that was what we were going to do.

  I had never been, but Kelly had been tubing before and it hadn't been the best experience. Mostly because she was sick the majority of the trip. Being a good boyfriend, I saw the opportunity to not only provide her with another chance to go tubing, but also to make this trip a million times better than her last one. Whether I did or not  isn't for me to say. But hey...she made it back alive so there ya go.

  We arrived at S & B Tubing around noon. Since, neither Kelly or I had a tube, we needed to rent one. A quick internet search showed that S & B was the most popular choice for rentals and launching said tubes. We were both excited for our adventure. Which took a little longer to get under way because I just assumed I would be able to pay with a bank card. Nope, they were a cash only operation.

  Tip number one when planning an adventure would be to always carry some cash. Otherwise you get to play an impromptu game of "Guess Which Business Has A Cash Machine".

  It took us about ten minutes, but we finally found a cash machine. We rented three tubes. One each for Kelly and I, the third was for the cooler. The man giving out the tubes told Kelly the ones with the S & B logo spray painted on them were the fastest ones. It took a few minutes for Kelly to realize the tubes all were the same. Logo or no logo. A little disheartened Kelly didn't pick up on his joke, the man quickly led us to the launch and tossed us a few pieces of long string. Which was perfect, because we wanted to tie all of our tubes together.

  I think my excitement was showing, because Kelly told me I should get on my tube first. Virgin tuber here folks. So, like a little kid jumping into a pile of leafs, I launched myself into the air aiming for the center of that tube. I sailed towards the center of the tube and then passed right over that and splashed down hard into the water. Trying to save a little face, quickly I stood back up, completely soaked, and this time climbed into my tube with a little more car e.

  Kelly showing her ninja skills simply fell perfectly right into the center of her tube. We were set. We were off and floating. We were...OH CRAP! My phone was in my pocket. My hand instantly shot into my sopping wet pocket and pulled out my phone. I prayed I had stood up quick enough so no water had a chance to get into my phone. However, seeing three water spots inside the display screen made that prayer useless.

  Later when I started telling people I fell into a river with my cell phone, they would all inquire why I didn't put my phone in  a Ziploc bag and then put it in the cooler. My answer was simply, I had never been tubing before. I never even thought about it. All I wanted to do was get a few awe inspiring nature shots, and some goofy pictures of Kelly and I lazily drifting.

  We did end up getting two photos documenting our trip, but not until the very end of the trip. I spent the next four hours trying to dry my phone out without any luck. Ah well, I can let Sprint take a look at it tomorrow.

  That brings us to tip number two, which is simply if you have a camera or cell phone or something you don't want getting wet, toss it in a Ziploc bag. Otherwise, every time you tell the story people will look at you like you are the dumbest person on the planet and ask you why you didn't.

  Oh well, I am a true adventure seeker and I wasn't going to let a broken phone ruin my day. Besides, could anything be worse than breaking a $300 cell phone? I didn't think so either. It's kind of amazing how wrong one person can be in a span of just a few hours.

  I will say for the next hour things were going pretty smooth. The sun was shining nice and bright and we had just seen an eagles nest. This was that awesomeness I was talking about. Everything was perfect. Then we rounded a bend and encountered the man Billy Bob Thornton must have modeled his Sling Blade character after.

  He was just there standing in the middle of the river. The water came up to his waist, so I'm guessing it wasn't to deep. He wore a gray t-shirt and held a 40 ounce can of beer in his hand. As we neared him he looked down at the water and said, "The fish are biting my legs. It used to hurt but now it's not so bad. You should put your feet in the water too. Don't be afraid."

  We tried to engage him as little as possible, but that discourage him in the least bit. The five minutes it took to drift by him felt like an eternity, and we learned more about Mr. Sling Blade than either of us ever wanted to know. The most interesting story was how he was on his way to court in Colorado when a wild dog chased him off a bridge.

  Luckily, as we came to the next bend, Mr. Sling Blade's calls to "stick your feet in the water!" slowly faded away until all we could hear was the sound of birds and random insects.

  Happy to be alive, the next three hours were exactly how I expected floating down the river to be. Sure we passed people who were for my best guess, going to the bathroom in the river and a guy who was daring his girlfriend (I think) to take her top off. Which according to Kelly she did. My tube was facing the other way, so I don't know if she did or not. All I know is thanks to my tube facing the opposite direction, I am pretty sure I avoided a devastating "did you look" slap.

  It wasn't until we were about five minutes from the end of our trip that our biggest surprise hit. For some reason I started wondering why I hadn't felt my truck keys poking me in the leg or at least pressing against my skin. I was pretty much folded in half so I figured the odds were good I should have felt at least one or two jabs. I'm sure the guys out there know what happened next. I slapped and pressed against my pockets like a mad man hoping to feel them. When that turned out to be a bust, I dug into them like there was gold in dem der pockets. Still a bust. I asked Kelly if she had them. Nope. OH SON-OF-A..... wait a minute. I suddenly had this feeling that when I changed from my shoes into flip-flops, I didn't lock my truck. Okay, thank God. I bet they are right next to my shoes inside the truck. Everything was going to be fine.

  Fast forward twenty minutes, Kelly is standing with me outside my truck looking very unhappy. It could have been the fact that she wasn't feeling very well or it could have been the fact I had just realized my truck keys were at the bottom of the river. Yep, the ending of our trip was pretty much doomed to be sucky from the very beginning. Go life. Oh, and to make things complete, the only working phone we had was Kelly's and that was inside my truck. So, calling for help was going to be a breeze.

  As I mentioned before, we are great adventurers, so we eventually came up with a plan. A quick call to the local police department and thanks to a kindly police officer, we had access to my truck and Kelly's phone. We also learned that because I didn't use my key to unlock the doors, every time we opened one of them, my panic alarm would wail for about 10 minutes straight. I'm sure the neighbor was lining up with their pitch forks and hot tar to thank us for that one.

  Kelly called two of her friends, to come get us. Let me tell you guys. There is no better way to score points with some of your girlfriend's closest friends than to have them drive 40 minutes on a Sunday to pick your stupid ass up. BFFs forever.

  We figured since we had a forty minute wait we would grab some food. There was a small family diner called Gabrielle's near J & B Tubing, so that's where we went. The food was pretty good, and our waitress made sure our drinks were always full.

  In all the travelling I have been doing lately there is on thing I have definitely noticed. Small town diners and restaurants give you amazingly large serving sizes and the prices are very reasonable. So, before you stop at a McDonald's or Taco Bell, give the local family run restaurant a try.

  Oops... I got side tracked. Where was I again?... Oh yes, Kelly's friends picked us up and drove us all the way back to Madison. Then Kelly and I immediately climbed into her van and drove back to get my truck.

  After saying goodbye to Kelly and a very long, long day, I drove home with two things I was positive of. One, I owed her big time. And two, I totally suck at planning romantic-fun activities. On a positive note, at least she didn't get hurt or die. That has to count for something, right?...right?...Anyone?