•  Wingdings, only my child would write something using hieroglyphics.

• Polar Cup, which must still live on the hearts of many because I get a lot of emails and comments about the Polar Cup. Does it still exist? Have you been there? Have you ordered the itty bitty super tiny one?

• AT&T U-Verse vs Time Warner Cable, clearly people don’t know which service to go with. I have U-Verse and it’s pricy, but we love it. The phone service (which we barely use due to the cellphones) is WAY better than Time Warner.

Makin’ copies

There are times that my daily office life could be an episode of The Office. This is one of those times.

Yesterday we were in a meeting at work, and we were discussing the new ISO project. Both myself and my dad had received separate emails from the ISO trainer with documents that we needed to go over during the meeting, making any necessary corrections.

I printed out all of my documents, fed them into the copy machine, input that I needed four copies and then pressed the green button. The copies are automatically collated, all I needed to do separate where the new set of copies began, and then hand them out.

My dad didn’t make copies for everyone ahead of time, so we took a break during the meeting so he could go make his four copies.

He brought the copies back into the conference room, where he began to neatly sort all of the collated copies into about seven different stacks of the same copy.

Page one.  Page two. Page three. Page four. Page five. Page six. Page seven.

Page one.  Page two. Page three. Page four. Page five. Page six. Page seven.

Page one.  Page two. Page three. Page four.

And then my dad said something like: “You know, it sure would be nice if the copy machine would put all the pages together for you.”

Page five. Page six. Page seven.

My brother: “It does. You put them all in the copy, punch in how many copies you want and then press start.”

Page one.  Page two. Page three.

And that’s when I realized what was going on here. The copy machine HAD collated all of his copies, but he was UNCOLLATING them into separate like piles, while saying that he sure wished the copy machine would do what he was undoing.

Page four. Page five. Page six. Page seven.

Dad: “It does?”

Page one.  Page two.

Me: (uncontrollable laughter, you know, the kind where if I were drinking something it would be shooting out of my nose by this time)

Page three. Page four.

My brother: (giving warning that I’m laughing so hard that I just might pee my pants)

Page five.

Me: (trying to say that I just returned from the restroom and my bladder is empty)

Page six.

And as my dad is carefully placing the last page down into the pile he realized what he just did.

Page seven.

There is a risk of forgetting how painful my experience was with my brand new bike rack with each passing day, here is what happened:

Saturday morning the kid and I took the dogs to the boarding kennel while my husband loaded the car. When we arrived home he was almost done putting the bike rack on the trunk of my Honda Hybrid. It was a brand new, fresh out of the box, Saris Bones 3 bike rack and it was supposed to be a piece of cake.

There are 6 straps that secure the rack to the trunk, and he said to me, “I sure hope this is secure enough,” which I took as an open invitation for “why don’t you give it a try for awhile.”

That was not what he meant.

And I found that out when I started to monkey around with the straps and opened the trunk while it was connected, which is NOT the thing to do because it just means that you have to start all over again.

After about an hour of re-setting up the bike rack and then tightening and readjusting we finally were ready to put the bikes on it. The instruction sheet wasn’t that great, and we’d never done this before, and it was hot in the garage, and he was fuming mad at me for opening the trunk after he had the rack attached (Rightfully so, but I had no idea that you installed it on a closed trunk). We were both so pissed off that if a cheery person would have walked up the driveway to say hello, they’d have gotten their heads bitten off within seconds.

We got the bikes on, got into the car, and headed towards Door County. It wasn’t until about an hour into the drive when I found the line in the instructions that said to tie off the straps at the clamps. So we tightened the straps and then tied them off. This didn’t stop me from worrying about the bikes falling off the back of the car for the rest of the drive. I had visions of them sliding onto the Interstate and then causing a huge accident.

They didn’t. We arrived without incident.

On the way home we had no problems getting the rack on the trunk, nor did we have any problems getting the bikes on there either. Everything was tight and secure, and then we pulled over in Sheboygan to fill up for gas. My husband accidentally popped the trunk instead of pressing down the lever to open the door to the gas cap.

Oh shit.

At first we tried to just undo the straps to the bike rack to shut the trunk, but that didn’t work. So then my husband stood there and held the bike rack with all three bikes on it while I tried to shut the trunk, but it wouldn’t shut. Finally he had to put the bikes down and I had to balance them while they were still attached to the rack.

While I did that, he and a kind gentleman determined that the latch to the trunk was broken and that was the reason it wasn’t closing. A third man came over to offer his help and it turned out that he had rope in truck that he could use to tie our trunk shut, then they put the bike rack back on the trunk and we set about to tighten and tie all the straps again.

We had to drive home for the last hour like that. I was already worried that the bikes were going to fall right off the trunk to begin with, and now the trunk was broken. It was not good, and I was anxious mess.

I freaking hate that bike rack.

And it cost me $95 to get a new latch for my trunk too.