Wedgie

Hope you had a relaxing Thanksgiving break. I ate too much, as usual. And not just on Thanksgiving day. And there was a bit of family drama, as usual. Some things never change.

I have a few "floating holidays" to use up by year's end, so (new) bossman let me take Wednesday and Friday off. The company I work for only recognizes Thursday as an official holiday and as such, we're given floating holidays to use instead. Sort of like "personal time off" days. If I worked for the city/county/state, I suppose Friday would've been considered a holiday.

The family tradition to go shopping on Black Friday took a bit of a strange twist this year. No, we didn't get up at oh-dark-thirty to fight the rest of the Wal-Marters for their $400 HP laptops. Instead, we used our Target "10% off" card. Like, all day. At 3 different Target stores. (Those of you with the Redcard know about the 10% card mailed to you after every time you accumulate $1000 in Redcard charges. We seem to get one of these 10% cards every other month. Yikes.) It seems like every Target store carries slightly different merchandise. Sometimes the prices are a bit different, especially on their clearance items. You know how I like trolling the store's outer endcaps for clearance items. Wheee.

Ok, so we didn't go to just the various Target stores in the area. It just seemed that way. It was amusing to watch the news and catch the Renton Walmart store (south of Seattle) in the national news, showing the crush of human bodies at the electronics section of the store. Bizarre shopping behavior.

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(Seattle specific story. Skip if bored)
On Saturday night, after dinner at my favorite hole-in-the-wall Green Village restaurant, we took a drive into downtown Seattle to check out the lights and such. Strangely enough, we found a parking spot right in front of Westlake Center, right by the Macy's holiday "star". As we strolled over to Nordstrom and Pacific Place, 5th Avenue was cordoned off with police tape. Everyone was gawking at the two Monorail trains, stuck on the corner near the Westlake Center station. Apparently they collided. Up on the 3rd floor of the Westlake Center, at the north end of the food court, there was a huge crowd gathered at the windows, watching the firetruck ladders extend up to each of the trains. All 84 passengers had to be evacuated individually down the firetruck ladders. There's a few good stories and pictures here.

The way that the Monorail tracks converge near the Westlake Center is probably one of the most stellar feats of poor engineering. The tracks are spaced apart from each other far enough throughout the 1 mile route from the Seattle Center to Westlake, but then at the Westlake station, the tracks converge closer together such that (by design) only one train can be at the station at a time (in order to accomodate the loading ramps). The train drivers have some sort of protocol so that a collision can be avoided. It's been this way since 1988, when Westlake was built. But something happened Saturday night and the collision resulted in a wedgie. It looked like the blue train was tilting and could've fallen off the track and onto Olive St or 5th Ave below. Strange.

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Since it was sunny yesterday, we did our Christmas tree shopping. At Home Depot, we picked up a nice Noble Fir. They were selling 7 to 8 foot Noble Firs at 49 bucks. Several of the trees with the "7 to 8 foot" tag were actually a bit taller than 8 feet, and the one we found was really closer to 9 feet tall. And heavy. For some strange reason, the Home Depot workers were quite helpful. Part of their Christmas tree duty includes trimming off an inch from the trunk, wrapping the tree in their plastic netting, and helping the poor individual load the thing into/onto their vehicle. To throw the tree onto the Pilot's roof rack seemed like a two person "clean and jerk" weightlifting move. A couple of bungie cords to hold the tree in place, and we're off.

The diameter of the tree trunk is about 5 inches, just barely fitting our tree stand. The house now has that fresh pine scent.

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At Restoration Hardware, I was going through their gadget table and came across one of those "kinetic flashlights", where you shake the thing to create a bit of energy to power the little LED lightbulb. As I was experimenting with the flashlight, I couldn't help but notice that the motion used to charge the flashlight was exactly the same arm movement used to masturbate. It must be a man's invention. I put the flashlight down and quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching.