Samson Stories: Two-Timing

Posted in Samson by

Yesterday was Samson’s day for Doggie Day Camp. Boy was he ready to go. He was eyeing the hall closet all morning (that’s where we keep his leash) and when I opened it to get my coat, he practically did flips in the air. He bounded in the backseat and was so excited he couldn’t even sit still. I’m not sure why he was so excited. The only thing I could figure was that he couldn’t wait to see his girlfriend, Willow, the Golden Retriever. They’ve probably been messaging each other on Dog Book (doggie Facebook) and sending virtual  love licks. All the other dogs just roll their eyes at how sickly in love Samson and Willow are with each other.

So we get to PetSmart and he does his usual trick of dragging me in to the store as if I’m on a sled and he’s pulling me across the Adirondacks. He gets all checked in and I leave to go to work. I get back to pick him up around 6:00 p.m. and this is how it plays out when they bring him up front:

  • Me in a high-pitched dog/baby voice: “Hey dude! Did you have fun playing? How was your girlfriend today?”
  • The PetSmart employee:  “You mean Willow?”
  • [I nod]
  • She gets a weird look on her face and says: “He played with Karen today.”
  • Me: “Oh, so Willow didn’t come today.”
  • PetSmart Employee: “Um, no, she was here.”

[sound of record scratching and music halting]

WHAT?! His girlfriend, the love of his life, was there and they didn’t play? What on earth?

The whole ride home I tried to get the story out of Samson but he refused to talk about it. He just laid down in the backseat. Then we got home and he tried to pretend everything was ok by stealing Isabella’s food, but I knew something was up. As we were watching TV, I look over and he’s laying on the couch with his sad eyes. I pet him and ask about it. He still wouldn’t talk so I could only deduce what happened. It’s one of four possible scenarios:

  1. Willow cheated on him
  2. Samson cheated on her with Karen
  3. They had a fight, broke-up and Karen was his rebound girl
  4. The press corp got some dirt on Willow and Samson is keeping his distance because he’s up for re-election in the Fall.

My money is on #1 based on how Samson was acting. I could tell he had a broken heart. That two-timing bitch, thinkin’ she’s all that and a bag of milk bones because of her long golden flowing locks! She probably cheated with some “stud” who wasn’t neutered and she will end up preggers, drop out of school  day camp and spend the rest of her life wishing she never would have cheated on Samson.

Last night he changed his Dog Book status to single and blocked Willow before  he went to bed. 

I just hope it’s not too uncomfortable at Day Camp going forward. The other dogs will have to pick sides and that can get awkward. I’m pretty sure they’ll pick him though. I mean, he is the Mayor and, let’s be honest, there are some fame whores there.

He’ll be ok in the end. He’s a tough guy and with looks like his (he’s basically the Brad Pitt of the dog world), it won’t be long before he’s found a suitable replacement. It probably won’t be Karen though. I hear she eats poop…

Fantasy vs. Nightmare, part 2

Posted in Miscellaneous by

This Fantasy Football thing is going to kill me. I’m not even kidding. I get so worked up about it that I can’t sleep and get all stressed out. There is no way, NO WAY, I could manage or run an actual real-life football team. I would be dead by the age of 35. Or, locked up in padded room for the rest of my life.

This week I was both very stressed and very lucky on numerous occasions. Here’s how things shook out.

This week starts the playoffs in FF. Since my team (aptly named Team Trader) has been #1 or tied for #1 all season, we clinched a spot early on and were paired up against the 5th place team for the first round of playoffs. No problem, right? Should be easy to knock off the 5th place team and then continue to steamroll over everyone else.

Eh, not so much.

See, my fantasy team has been plagued by injury recently and the available players are slim pickin’s. Here’s who I had on my roster, as starters, last week:

  • QB – Kyle Orton (Broncos)
  • WR – Larry Fitzgerald (Cardinals)
  • WR – Terrell Owens (Bengals)
  • RB – Adrian Petersen (Vikings)
  • TE – Aaron Hernandez (Patriots)
  • W/R – Danny Woodhead (Patriots)
  • K – John Kasey (Panthers)
  • DEF – Atlanta Falcons

The ones in red are all those who had an injury or illness. Yeah. Half the team, and some heavy hitters. Soo…I was forced to make some tough decisions.

I traded Orton for Jon Kitna (Cowboys), which proved to be an awesome move and probably saved me this week – lucky break #1 that he was available.

T.O. was set to start so I kept him in. I also left Petersen and Hernandez because they were questionable right up until game time and after what happened a few weeks ago when I mistakenly benched Peterson, I was a little gun-shy about sitting him out just yet.

This is where all the stress starts. In the first quarter, T.O. aggravates his knee injury and is not only out for the rest of the game, but also the rest of the season. This left me with a big fat ZERO in the points column for him. So much for “Batman and Robin”. That’s when I started stressing about Hernandez. If we was out too, then I’d have 2 zero spots unless I could find a decent replacement. I looked and there were no good tight ends available so I was left to take a risk with him. It worked out because not only did he play, but he played well and got me lots of points – lucky break #2.

By this point, it’s Sunday night and all the games have been played except for the Monday night game between the Vikes and the Bears. I only have 1 person left to play – Petersen. I look at the match-up and I’m beating my rival team by 8 points. That’s not a lot and he also has one person left to play on Monday – Johnny Knox of the Bears. I knew this would be a nail biter.

I scour the boards and no one knows if Petersen will play or not. I figured that he will come through for me like he did before so I try not to think about it too much. I go on with my day, enjoy my evening with the family and then decide to turn on the MNF pregame show only to hear that Petersen is not playing. CJ and I look at each other with wide eyes and he says 3 words, “You better hurry!” I dash downstairs and pray to God I can find someone to fill his spot. Turns out, I have Toby Gerhart sitting on my bench, who just happens to be Petersen’s back-up in real-life (lucky break #3). I quickly switch ’em and then start breathing again.  

The game starts and Gerhart gets the ball in the first 2 plays and I’m thinking, “Yes! This is working out awesome!” I relax and head out to meet up with the girls for some cheesecake (Godiva Chocolate at the Cheesecake Factory. So good. I die.). I head home and casually check my phone to see how the match-up is working out. I am behind my rival by 1 point! 1 stickin’ point! But it was the end of the 3rd quarter so there was still time, but not much.

I get ready for bed, kiss CJ and Samson goodnight and climb under the covers. But I can’t sleep. My heart is racing. My mind is racing. I have to know. I won’t be able to sleep until this is all over. No matter how it ends up, I have to know before I go to dreamland or else I’ll be plagued with nightmares (turns out I was anyway. Oh well).

So I check my phone again. I am now ahead by 2 points and there are 6 minutes left in the game. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! I turn the TV on and anxiously watch. By the time it’s all over, I had won the matchup by 4 points and the hair of my chinny, chin, chin. Turns out Knox either didn’t get much play or was pulled out in the 4th quarter, which saved my butt. Lucky break #4.

I peed my pants a little and then ran out to exclaim my happy news to CJ.

He looked at me like I was crazy and promptly told me I need a support group.

Whatever – you can’t rain on my parade Donnie Downer! I won, I won, I won!

Now, it’s on to the semi-finals. I play a tough team and will probably be knocked out, but not before I have several small heart attacks, a stroke and vomit from all the anxiety.

Maybe I do need help.

Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m overly-competative.

HI SARAH!

P.S. Kudos to team CBBroncos for a great game. You gave me a run for my money J.S.!!

Annexed: Mystery Science Theatre

Posted in Annexed by

In this edition of Annexed: a mysterious caller, The real Strangler, a science experiment, scales, and good-byes.

Mystery # 1 – Alan:
On Monday, one of the teams (the one that The Strangler and Bob are on) had a conference call. Seems pretty typical in an office right? Well, what wasn’t typical was that some random guy named Alan called in. He announced himself and then came that awkward moment of, “Who is this guy? Is he invited? Should I know who this is?” and frantically searching your brain for the answers. There were none. No one knew who Alan was. So, the call proceeded. Afterwards, after everyone had hung up, the gang came running out and said “Who’s Alan?” Still no one knew. We determined that it was a Conference Call Crasher. You know, people who dial in to random conference calls just to mess with those on the line. What a fun idea! So we decided to try it. On our  next departmental meeting, Bob announced himself as Alan. It threw our manager off a bit but then he recognized the voice and said, “Bob, is that you?” We’re going to continue crashing conference calls and pretending we are supposed to be there.

  • “Hi this is Alan!”
  • “Alan?….um, this is the XYZ Project meeting. Are you on the right call?”
  • “Yep, Mike sent me.”
  • “Oh. Um, what department are you with?”
  • “[static]I’m with the [static] department”
  • “Oh, ok….”
  • The meeting proceeds…Alan interrupts the agenda, “Hey this is Alan. Are we going to talk about the baseline?”
  • “Well, no, that’s not on the agenda.”
  • “Well that’s why I dialed in. Here let me just tell you that we need to see some dates soon or we won’t support this project.”
  • “Oh well um, we’re not quite there yet Alan but I’ll see what I can do. What department are you with again?”
  • “[static] the [static] department”
  • “I’m sorry what?”
  • “Ok this is getting ridiculous. That’s it, I’m  hanging up and talking to Mike about this!” [click]

Mystery # 2 – The Strangler:
Ok so you all know that I call my British co-worker “The Strangler”. It started as a funny  joke because she can be a hard ass. Well, it’s not so funny anymore. Turns out The Mall has its own Strangler and this person is leaving us morbid notes at our desks!

This was the first item to show up:

In case you can’t tell, it’s a Christmas Card. It’s actually the card that the Brit left for Bob. But, when we came back from lunch one day, Bob returned to his desk to find it like this! How alarming! We all brushed it off as a joke, until this appeared on Bob’s desk the next day…

WTF!? This is no longer funny and we’re all a bit on edge. But, since both items were on Bob’s desk, we all felt solace in the fact that The Strangler (or T.S. ) seemed to have a thing for Bob. Hey, better him than me right? Or so I thought.

This was found on my monitor yesterday…

Are we seeing a pattern here people? Obviously T.S. has a calling card and he’s now aiming his antics at me!

So far nothing has happened today so maybe it was a lark. I’ll keep you posted…

Science #1 – The Experiment
Remember how I told you last Friday that I was going to conduct a very intricate experiment this week? Well here it is. Basically, I laid 3 random objects in various spots around The Mall. The goal was to see how long they would stay before being taken or moved.

Here are the items and their locations:

A quarter: I placed a quarter on the floor, next to one of the planters. It was visible but out-of-the-way enough that it wouldn’t be too obvious.

Post-it Note: I stuck a post-it to the wall next to the cafeteria. It was lower on the wall and somewhat inconspicuous. I wrote “You’ve been Annexed :)” on it.

Candy bar: the last item was a mini, somewhat stale, candy bar. I placed it on the back of a bench.

I laid the items out at about 2:40 p.m. on Monday. My plan was to check on them every day for progress. **NERD ALERT**NERD ALERT** I even made an Excel spreadsheet to track my data!  Late afternoon I was hungry for chocolate and almost went back out to snatch  my precious little morsal back, but I resisted. I didn’t want to taint the experiment! When I left that night around 5, I could see that the quarter was still there. I didn’t go check on the other items. Tuesday morning I came in and could see that the quarter was gone. Around 9:30 a.m. I went to check on the other items and they were gone too.

Conclusions: Either The Mall has a cleaning crew that removed all the items OR Scooter snagged ’em all up and stowed them away in his bathroom-stall-shrine to me. One of these days I’ll send Bob in to the bathroom to check the stall and verify that last point.

Science #2 – The Scales:
Remember how I told you all that The Mall has 2 scales in it? Well I figured it was high time to put them to the test so I  marched out and jumped right on. The first one I tried was the  one downstairs:

I had to search for the coin slot. What’s that? There are directions and arrows clearly marked on the sign, directing me to said slot? Whatever. If I had followed those directions I wouldn’t have found this:

click to view larger image

What a find! Apparently someone had weighed themselves just minutes before I arrived and forgot to take their printout with them! Suh-weet! Naturally I snagged it and here’s what I gleaned:

  1. The person was 232.6 lbs (or 105.5 kg) but should weigh 158.0 lbs or (71.7 kg). Conclusion – this person is overweight by about 75 pounds!
  2. To keep up that weight, this person needs to continue eating 3489 calories a day.  Conclusion – this person eats a lot.
  3. To lose weight, they should eat 2370 calories daily. Conclusion – even if trying to lose weight, this person would still eat a lot!

Now it was time for me to weigh myself. I put my quarter in and stepped on the scale. It greeted me and then asked a series of questions:

  1. Adult or child? (I answered adult. I know this is debatable sometimes with my mental state, but my body is adult sized)
  2. Male or female? (Female, like, duh)
  3. Small, medium or large build? (I went with medium)
  4. Height (5’7″ – I can hear my sister now shouting “no you’re  not – you’re 5’6”!! Hey, it’s my experiment so I’m including the extra inch dammit!)
  5. Social Security Number (###-##-1234)
  6. Username/Password to my bank account (Hahayouwish/notonyourlife)
  7. Did I want to also get my lucky lotto numbers? (I said no because it would have cost me another quarter and I only had 2 – one for this scale and one for the other one. This would be a good time to shout out to Bob for loaning me the quarters! Thanks dude!)

Then it did its little magic and spit out this:

click to view larger

 Here are my results:

  1. I weigh 140 lbs (63.5 kg) – it says to allow 5 – 10 lbs for clothing…I’m going to allow 10. What?
  2. My ideal weight is 148.0 lbs (67.1 kg). In case you didn’t bother with the math, that means this thing thinks I’m underweight! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Tell that to my muffin top!
  3. If I want to maintain this weight, I should eat 2100 calories daily. Finally I have permission to pig out!
  4. If I want to *gain* weight, I should eat 2220 calories daily. Not only permission, but encouragement! Thank you Mall Gods!

Then it told me to enjoy my day. Are you kidding? I get to eat 2200 calories! You bet I’m going to enjoy my day!

Next I went to the other scale:

I had saved this one for last because it was the cute one with Bugsy on it. No bonus printout on this one so I put my quarter in, and it promptly ate it and didn’t turn on. The damn thing doesn’t work! I could have used that quarter to get my lucky lotto  numbers!!! Stupid bug…

Theatre #1 – Good-byes

One of the Indians left this week. He was the leader of the pack and a royal pain in the butt on many occasions. But overall he was a nice guy and it was kind of sad to say good-bye. It was also the first indication that these projects will not last forever and while I will be happy to migrate back to the west office, a part of me will miss this place. Despite the unpleasantness of the surroundings, our little group has a lot of fun. Someone told me last night that they would love to work here because it looks like we have a blast all day. And we do. But it’s also a lot of hard work. We have to be silly and goofy to get through the other crap. Eases the stress.

Also said goodbye to The Brit today, but this is just temporary. She is heading back home to visit family and friends for the holidays. She’ll be gone for 2 weeks and we’ll miss her terribly. But this also means we can totally dog’s breakfast with her stuff whilst she’s away! [If she’s reading this she literally just had a heart attack because a) I used English slang and b) she’s picturing us touching her things].

Here she is at the airport – making sure she is fully prepared for a trip abroad. She has the basics covered – beer and medication  

Before the beer...

 

After the beer

Theatre #2 – Zombies

So, we often refer to The Mall as the Dawn of the Dead because it’s so. freakin’. empty. We joke about zombies being around. Some zombie skin even showed up on The Brit’s desk the other day (and it touched her spoon. When she discovered this her head exploded and then she got a new spoon). Well, funny thing – yesterday we were eating lunch at John’s and there was a big family at the table next to us (big as in there were a lot of them, not that they’re fat. Although, John’s food could contribute to that too…). One of the gals had 2 kids with her and when they were done eating she told them to go out in the mall and play, which pretty much meant run around screaming. At one point they came in to get a drink and I heard the boy say, “Next time, can I be the zombie?”  Beautiful.

Bonus items:

Before I wrap up, I have to mention 2 other things. First of all, the Greater Omaha Area Bowling Association put up some holiday decor. Hey, someone’s got to!

And finally, this is what I saw when I walked in to the bathroom after lunch:

Apparently someone didn’t have the $.25 needed and were badly in need of a diaper feminine pad so they broke in and took one. Maybe they should have looked around the mall first. You can sometimes find a quarter or candy bar lying about…

Until next week….you’ve been Annexed!!

Sponsor Team Trader

Posted in Volleyball and Team Trader by

Team Trader is looking for sponsors and it could be YOU!

Many sports teams have sponsors that pay their membership dues for them and in return, the team wears promotional gear and if it’s a bar/restaurant, eats there after games. Well Team Trader is interested in having a sponsor. Here’s the deal:

Your company will…

  • Pay our team dues for the spring ($306)
  • Buy us team t-shirts that have your logo on them (optional)

We will…

  • Wear the team t-shirt with your logo on it (if applicable)
  • Advertise for your company on this blog (see image in sidebar)
  • Dine at your restaurant/bar after at least 2 games (if applicable)

It really is pretty easy. If you’re interested, contact me at teamtradermom@gmail.com or post a comment to this blog with your contact info.

Thanks!!

Team Trader Thursday – The Pics

Posted in Volleyball and Team Trader by

Well guess what – volleyball was canceled tonight! Boo!! Hiss!! Turns out the courts were double booked or something like that. Whatevs, talk to the hand. But it worked out because that gave us gals more time to chat, eat and drink at Granite City!

The dinner was actually kind of poetic in a way and ended up mirroring our season. We started out with 11 people who were going to come and then throughout the day, one by one, they dropped like flies. We went from 11 to 8 to 6 to 4. Yes, that’s right, there were only 4 of us die-hard Traderettes that ended up at the “last-night-of-volleyball-celebration-dinner”. We had lots of fun though – and the pics to prove it!

So here is the first one – don’t we look all cute?

Courtney, Sara, me and Cindy F.

Now the second one was supposed to be a silly one of us each striking a different volleyball pose – you know, one person setting, one hitting, one passing, etc. Well as I was trying to explain this to the girls, the waitress decided to keep taking pictures!

So we have this one…

Court and Sara look good, and Cindy would too if she wasn’t blurry. I however look like I am pleading with the girls to indulge me and do a silly volleyball pose. “Please? Come on, it’ll be fun! It’s a Team Trader tradition!”

And then there’s this one:

“Look, I’ll show for you how this concept will work. See how I’m pretending to set? Now won’t you guys try it? What? You won’t? Well too bad! I’m the captain and I say we’re gonna do it dammit! Drop and give me 15!!!”

I think the other girls were just laughing that the waitress was out of control at this point, as if her fingers were moving independently from her body and continuing to take pictures.

And finally we get this one:

See, isn’t that cute? It was worth all that we had to endure to get there, never mind that I had to break out the threats.

So that’s it. Volleyball ended on a down note in the sense that we didn’t get to play. But at least we still got to hang out. And in 3 weeks, we’ll be back on the court, ready to dominate!

P.S. No, I’m not wearing Green Bay Packers colors on purpose. We all have Team Trader t-shirts that we were planning to wear tonight. I didn’t want to have to rush and change my whole outfit when we got to the gym so I wore my TT shirt underneath my sweater all day at work. I thought the yellow and green worked but apparently it just made me look like an overzealous cheesehead. Should have worn black over it. At least then I would have been an overzealous Steeler, which I am.