3 Blurbs

Overheard In The Office The Other Day:
Near my office at work in one of the hallways, there’s some wall damage. It’s a hole that was cut by the IT guys or the electricians to pull wires. I don’t know enough about that kind of installation work to claim there’s a better way to do it or they could have done it with tools or wall snakes to avoid damaging the wall – and I’m not going to suggest that maybe after cutting the hole to get the wires pulled through where they needed, that maybe they could have patched the hole.

Side note: I’m using the term “cut the hole” loosely. Well, at least the word “cut”. It seems more of a punched or some sort of other blunt force trauma created hole. So it’s not even a professional-looking-hole-in-the-wall-in-your-office-hallway-for-electrical-installation, it’s more of a drunken-frat-party-punched-hole, if that makes sense.

I mean, maybe the IT/electricians were told not to worry about the damage, that a more mechanically inclined contractor would follow and do repair type work to the structure itself. Maybe the plan was to repaint anyways, so don’t worry about the damage, we’ll fix it when we repaint.

Side note again: we moved into this building in January 2009. I’m thinking the repainting or second mechanical contractor idea isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

But, not to worry, someone had a fix for the situation. It unfortunately became a null and void fix on January 1, 2010. When the 2009 calendar hung over the hole ended. No one has replaced with a 2010 version yet. Whoever removed the calendar made the choice that visible wall damage in the office hallway was a better look than a pretty landscape picture calendar from last year.

So, near my office at work in one of the hallways, there’s some wall damage.

There’s a gentleman in my office, who is quiet, straight-laced, never treads the line of improper or crass, and doesn’t dance the socially unacceptable line or play on innuendos. Ever. He had his hand in the hole in the wall the other day, “trying to figure out what wiring or electrical work they were doing that needed the hole.”

Overheard:
Co-worker 2 – “Hey careful, that was cut by the electricians to pull some wiring through here and they never put in a junction box, I wouldn’t go poking around in there.”
Hand-in-hole-guy – “Yeah, you’re right, I was just curious. My wife says I’m always poking my fingers around in holes I shouldn’t be.”

Really? Hand, hole, electrical wiring, finger, forbidden holes,………..must……not……….make……….shocker………….joke…………..must…………….remain…….quiet………in………..office


High In Iron:
This past weekend I spent Saturday out of town at one of my college buddy’s house. Myself and three of my best friends of all time had a boys day in, watching March Madness, grilling out for two meals, and generally finding the bottom of a-couple-too-many Miller Lites. I had green poopy a couple times on Sunday.


So That’s Everyone?
A good friend of mine and I play in a local flag football league together. He was asked to play by some friends of his from high school and then extended the invite to me when they still needed one more guy. His group of friends are all deputies in one nearby town’s sheriff’s department. Besides me and my friend, the team is actually just the department team from the sheriff’s office. Like, we’re on “the cop team”.

Needless to say, any time we get a close call in the game from the refs, there’s no shortage of conspiracy theories or claims of favoritism for the local deputies from the opposing team’s whines. Or when one guy on the other team was being a real jerk about something, one of the deputies replied with, “careful son, or we’ll see you on Friday”. That kind of stuff is funny. Or when one ref made like 7 calls in a row against us, we asked him if he was making up for a string of parking tickets or something.

I’ll add a side note here that a lot of these guys are in phenomenal shape, and work out a lot. And they are obviously very well trained in law enforcement tactics. This, unfortunately, does not project directly into football ability. But I digress.

The reason I’m writing to you here today about my sheriff football team though, is the chuckle I had at the game last week. The “nearby town” I speak of for this story isn’t a big town. And we’re on the flag football team with about 12 deputies. Last week, we were in the offensive huddle forming our play when two patrol cars went screaming by the field, lights and sirens a blazing.

“Heh, there goes Wilson and Stecker.”
“You could see the decals on the car and know which two cars that was?”
“No. They’re the only two on duty. We’re all here.”