Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Watching the Ink Dry

Because of an office date stamper, I have the most colorful hands in New York City.

I am a natural klutz, and I have been one all my life.  If a clumsy move is possible, I’ll find it and execute it with aplomb.  I can do clumsy maneuvers that most people can’t even think of.  There are a number of things I should never be trusted with, including hammers, pull-top cans, paper, stepladders, furniture and date stamper ink.

These have survived for thousands of years because I never touched them.
To make a long story short, the impressions left by our date stamper at work were starting to look sick, and I had to hit the thing pretty hard to get it to print clearly.  My wrist and I were getting tired.  I stopped, got out my little bottles of blue and red ink and went to work.

First, I had to figure out how to get the stamp pad out of the stamper.  This involved pushing the gadget together and locking it, then removing the pad.  I was fine with squeezing the thing together, but it refused to lock for me.  I swear I could hear it laughing.  It took several frustrating tries, but I finally got the freaking thing to stay put and I got the ink pad out.  The next step was to open the little ink bottles and drip enough ink onto the pad to make everything come out nice and clear without being forced to batter the desk to death with the stamper.

I won’t go into all the gory details.  I’ll just say that I ended up with ink not only on the ink pad but also on my desk blotter, a page of blank labels and my hands.  It takes several hand washings to get that stuff off, so I had semi-permanent blue and red tattoos on both hands for the rest of the day.  I looked like I worked in a flag factory.

Oh, but there’s more!

Apparently, I didn’t know the difference between dripping and pouring, because I got too much ink on the pad.

Everyone knows that ink dries faster if you stare at it.  So that’s what I did.  I held my head in my hand and stared down at the pad, willing the ink to dry.  A co-worker saw me and asked me if I was okay.  “Oh yes,” I assured her.  “I’m just watching some ink dry.”

And I wonder why people look at me funny.

Eventually, I got tired of this, blotted off the excess ink with a kleenex and put it back into the stamper – upside down.  I figured this out when it printed even worse than before.  Again, I shoved the stamper together and managed to lock it.  I had to dig to pull out the pad, because it was in upside down, but I got it out and put it back in right.

The ink was still wet, which meant that the date came out looking a little like Rorschach ink blots.  I stamped the date on some scratch paper until it started to come out looking better.


What is the moral of this story?  If you put a klutz in charge of a date stamper, you end up with ink blots and colored fingers.  What did you expect, something philosophical and intelligent?

Thursday, December 11, 2014

The Ten Best Uses for an Unwanted Fruitcake

Judging from some of the reactions I have seen, the majority of the human race in the Western World either hates fruitcake or thinks it hates fruitcake.  In the meantime, the giving of fruitcake is a Christmas tradition that goes back many centuries.  Such venerable customs are hard to stop, so most of us are exposed to fruitcake during the holiday season.  Those of us who like it (including this author) are thrilled.  Others are not.  Here are some ideas of what to do if you hate the stuff but someone sends it to you, anyway.

10.  Cut the cake into pieces, let the pieces harden to the consistency of large gemstones, paint them in bright neon colors and use them as paperweights.

9.  Leave the cake in the cupboard until it hardens to the point where it could break bones.  Use it as a decorative holiday doorstop.  You can cover it with pottery glaze if you want, but why bother?

8.  Use it for discus throwing practice.  Of course, this only works for the round-shaped cakes.  The rectangular ones can be used to play fetch with the dog.

7.  Re-gift it to that obnoxious cousin who borrowed your laptop and returned it with twenty different pieces of malware on it.


6.  Did you ever see the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?  Remember the engagement party scene?  Well, a round fruitcake makes a lovely centerpiece when you stick a plant in the middle of it.


5.  Extract all the liquor from it and use the rest of it as mulch.  You probably don’t know how to extract the liquor, but the very act of trying to do this will give you many hours of holiday fun, especially if you are sampling a nice bottle of Kentucky Bourbon at the same time.


4.  Donate it to the office Christmas party.  When half your co-workers are too drunk to know the difference, offer it to them and tell them it’s chocolate.  After Christmas, tell them what they really ate.  You can all have a good laugh.


3.  Mash it into a powdery mess and add it to the cat’s litter.  Warning:  this might cause the cat to go on a litter box strike.  Just saying.


2.  Cut it into small pieces and put each piece between two chocolate chip cookies.  Feed them to the kids, telling them it’s a new kind of Oreo.  Kids eat grass and paper.  They will be sure to eat these.

1. Eat it!  It’s good!  Really, it is!  Would I steer you wrong?  Just add whipped cream.

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