You’ve been with me from the beginning of Long Time Gone.  But when I reached out to you in my hour of need, you turned your back and ignored my repeated pleas for assistance.  I suppose it’s the age old story of one outgrowing the other in a relationship.  I may be just another small fry to you, but damn I was loyal.

So, it is with some sadness and regret I say goodbye to you forever.  There’s a new blog host in my life now, Host Gator, who’s catchy little motto is “we eat up the competition.”  Blogs About, consider yourself devoured.

Not sure how long the transition will take, but have no fear, should LTG disappear for a couple of days, I will be back bigger and better than ever before.  Kinda like a bad dream.

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I had a great day yesterday throwing darts in the ASS.  Aiken Singles Series Dart League finals that is.  The top six finishers in league play met at the VFW in Aiken, SC to determine a champion and your humble blog host was among them.  The format was a round robin (each of the six played each other 3 games of 501) and then the top 4 finishers would advance to the championship round.  I took 9 of 15 legs in the semis which was good enough to move on.

In the championship round each player faced off in full 9 game matches–a total of 27 games each–and the top two finishers would earn some dough.  I went 4-5 against my first opponent, 3-6 against my second, but finished 7-2 against the third.  And through the wonder of mathematics (the guy who beat me 6-3 lost to the guy I beat by a wider margin) that was good enough for the second place prize, a cool $100.00.

If you are keeping score that was 42 games of darts.  We started at 1:30 and finished at 8:30.  At the end it was more about endurance than skill.  And I know folks joke about the athletic qualities of darters; but standing, walking, throwing, and intensely competing over such an extended period of time is both physically and mentally demanding and quite exhausting.  Plus, I’m old and fat.

But not as fat as I once was!  18 weeks into the LCHF diet plan I’ve surpassed the halfway point in reaching my goal of losing 60 pounds.  The previous couple of weeks I seemed to have flatlined, so I began walking the treadmill to get the weight loss jump started again.  The payoff was a drop this week from 251 pounds to 246!  That makes a net loss 32.5 since February 19.  Color me pleased about that.  I also managed to whittle away some of my stubborn girth, cutting my middle down to 46.5″, 5″ smaller than I was when I started the diet.  My jeans are definitely riding higher these days!

Onward and downward.

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I recently cancelled my internet service with Time Warner.  What started out as a $30 per month expense had escalated to $48 over the course of two years.  My last bill indicated that my “promotional” rate was expiring so I tried to call and find out what the hell that was going to cost me.  Several attempts resulted in a busy signal.  Which was pretty aggravating to say the least.  I mean, who doesn’t have an automated system to put you in the queue for an actual customer service rep?

Now, the cost of my satellite television with DirecTV had also risen to the point that I was paying $135 a month for a couple of hours of viewing each week (I spend as much or more time on Netflix).  AT&T had been after me to sign up for their UVerse internet and television combination package for quite some time.  Given my frustration with Time Warner’s unresponsiveness, I gave them a call.  When I hung up I had secured an internet and television package at a comparatively bargain price of only $110 a month.  Coincidentally, the amount I’m saving almost pays for the gouging I took from AT&T when I upgraded to smart phones.

Once I had the UVerse installed it was time to formally end my relationship with DirecTV and Time Warner.  Bless their hearts, neither one wanted to see me go.  I spent at least 30 minutes on the phone with each while they tried to talk me out of making the switch.  And both offered to adjust my bill back down to the initial introductory rate (for six months anyway).  And they both called back again the next day to once again plead their case for my staying on board.  But it was too late, I had given my commitment to AT&T and we are destined to stay together for at least the next 12 months.

Anyway, the Time Warner cancellation was effective on June 3.  I was told I would be receiving a $32 refund for the remainder of the billing cycle.  Now,  I have most of my bills set up for automatic deduction from my bank account which works out great while I’m out of the country for extended periods.  I closed the bank account where the Time Warner deduction was drawn (and moved to a far less sucky banking institution).  So, imagine my surprise when I received a notice in the mail from Time Warner indicating that on June 7 (four days after termination of the service) their attempt to bill my former bank $48 had been rejected.  And here’s the perversely hilarious part–they added a $30 fee for the draft being denied.  But wait, it gets even better.  The bill looked something like this:

Monthly charge for internet $48  Rejection fee $30.  Total $78.  Minus the $32credit I had coming.  Total due: $46.

I was livid and got right on the phone.  And waited and waited waited for the customer service rep to become available.  When she was I explained the fuck up.  She told me she would have to transfer me to billing.  So I waited some more.  When billing got on the line I explained it all again.  She seemed to understand and put me on hold while she discussed it with her supervisor.  When she came back she advised I would have to be transferred to collections.  And yep, I waited some more.

The collections guy was quite the prick.  We argued on the phone for the better part of an hour.  His position was that it was my fault for closing my bank account without notifying them.  I responded with why were you billing me for a month of service several days after the account was closed?  See, I’m pretty certain that when I signed up I paid a month in advance.  So, when I made the payment on May 24 that carried me through to June 24.  Which is why I was told I had a $32 credit coming.  Mr. Collections Prick didn’t see it that way, but was unable to explain why I was billed for a full month on June 7.  I held my tongue pretty much (the worst I said was “this is total bullshit” and that’s pretty amazing restraint on my part).  It became apparent he was not going to be dissuaded from his position that I went from being owed money to owing money.  So, I offered a compromise (this penny ante crap wasn’t worth the aggravation).  I told him I would pay the $16 I didn’t owe, but I was not going to pay the $30 rejection fee.

Collections Prick responded “Time Warner will not waive the fee.”  I told him good luck trying to collect it, because I won’t pay it under any circumstance.  He said “That’s fine, then it will go on your credit report as an uncollected debt.”  And that’s the point where the call mercifully ended.

Time Warner Cable sucks.  Tomorrow I’ll be sending them a letter telling them they suck along with a check for $16.  I’ll also let them know that my blog and Facebook page has duly noted their general suckiness as a warning to folks so they won’t have to find out the hard way like I did. And I’ll cc the South Carolina Consumer Affairs folks who regulate utilities like Time Warner Cable Sucks, for all the good I expect that do.  And I’ll keep that letter on file to send to the credit reporting agencies should Time Warner Cable Sucks follow through on their threat.

Whew.  Glad I got that off my chest.  Hey speaking of things that suck, Value City Furniture pretty much sucks too.  To be fair, I purchased my master bedroom suite (why is suite pronounced “suit” and why do they call it that anyway?) and my bar from them and I’ve been satisfied with those buys.  So I needed a couple of side chairs for my dining room table and I went back to their showroom for a looksee.  I wasn’t looking for anything fancy and I didn’t want to spend more than necessary and I found some on display that I liked.  They were part of a five piece set (with table) on sale for $499.  I asked how much for just two chairs and was told $125 each. I’m no math wizard but that seemed unnaturally high.  Well, I guess I couldn’t expect the sale price if I wasn’t buying the set.

Anyway, I said fine, I’ll take these two.  No, I was advised, those are only for display.  We’ll have two sent over from the warehouse and you can pick them up in two days.  Ok, fine.  The deal was done and I returned on the appointed date to find a smallish box waiting for me.  “There are two chairs in that box?” I asked incredulously.  “Yes” I was told.  Which was correct as far as it goes, but the truthful answer would have been “two unassembled chairs.”  Now, if I buy cheap ass furniture from Target or Wal-Mart I expect I will have to put it together (this is especially easy to know because the display states prominently “assembly required”.  I’ve never bought crap from an actual furniture store that I had to build myself.  Which I did this afternoon.  $125 per chair and two hours of my life I’ll never get back.  That sucks.

And finally, this blog sucks.  Longtime reader(s) are doubtlessly well aware of that fact.  But I’m not talking about the writing this time.  The blog itself isn’t functioning properly.  For instance, I can’t load photos these days.  And other strange things have been occurring as well.  It just seems to be a general degradation in performance overall.  Now way back in December 2004 soon after LTG was born, I switched from Blogspot to WordPress.  And apparently I’ve never upgraded to the various iterations WordPress has gone through in the intervening years.  I’m too lazy  unqualified to do an upgrade by myself, so I opened a help ticket with my blog host BlogsAbout.com.  I was one of their earliest customers and I got lots of TLC in the beginning from the actual founder of the company.  They’ve apparently done amazingly well over the years.  And now a little guy like can’t even get a response to my pleas for help over a week later.  So, through the wonder of a Google search I’ve found another guy who says he can do the job.  All I know is that he responded within 30 minutes of my request, he did a quick looksee, and said he can fix me up for $130.  Apparently, my version of WordPress is so outdated he’ll have to go through several longish steps to get me up to speed.  Here’s hoping I’ve exhausted my quota of sucky encounters.

It occurs to me that despite not speaking the language and being generally ignorant culturally, my life in Korea is so much easier than here.  Things in Korea just don’t seem to suck nearly as much.

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Seen on facebook:
In the 1930s maverick astronomer Fritz Zwicky was passed up on being awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the neutron star, even though he was the one to originally predict that there must be such a thing, apparently the astronomy community was very seclusive and elitist at the time and preferred that one of their own be recognized for this achievement rather than the one who actually discovered it.

Zwicky then published a catalog of galaxies and in the opening he described the elite of the astronomy community as “spherical bastards” because: “they are bastards any way you looked at them.”

I’d call this an *ahem* universally excellent insult…

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So, this whole NSA snooping thing has me somewhat flummoxed.  The government says the program is necessary to protect us from those that would do us harm.  Is freedom and liberty too high a price to keep us secure and safe?  So, I asked my friend Patrick whether we could trust the politicians to secretly use the information they are gathering in accordance with our Constitutional protections.  He said:

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

I said that’s a good point Patrick, but lives may be at stake here.  Shouldn’t we just go along to get along?  He was pretty adamant in his response:

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

Hard to argue with that.

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Although technically speaking it’s more accurate to say I’m not getting anywhere at a brisk pace.  3.5 miles per hour to be exact.  Yes, I’m back on the treadmill again.  I fear I’ve hit a plateau on weight loss through diet alone so I’m going to try and kick the ol’ metabolism up a notch or two and see what happens.

Onward and downward.

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…or maybe Itaewon.  Although I suppose it could be argued that one leads to the other.

Speaking of being paved with good intentions, this week’s weigh-in finds me at 251 pounds.  Down one from last week, which is exactly 1/3 of the previous week’s weight gain.  I was a little sinful, having made a (sugar free) banana pudding.  And then proceeded to eat the whole damn thing in one hellacious sitting.  I reasoned that eating it all at once would be no different than enjoying the same amount spread over several days.  That must have been satan talking, because I know better.  So, now I have repented and have refocused on my efforts for a heavenly weight loss.

I’ve been watching the television series Arrested Development on Netflix and enjoying the hell out of it.  It’s #16 on the list of best written television series.  In the episode that ended season one the family is doing the low carb diet thing which made the jokes especially funny to me.  Anyway, highly recommend this show.

And now I must get on the road to Aiken for a long ass day of darts exercise.  Onward and downward!

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“I don’t always travel to Bali, but when I do I enjoy drinking a Bintang beer from a frosty Bali Hai mug.  Poolside of course.”

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Exotic dancers in Bali.

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At the risk of turning this otherwise mundane and generally pointless blog you’ve come to know and expect into a worthless compilation of diet news, I can’t resist linking to this story about the latest Beverly Hills weight loss craze–the tongue patch.  The way it apparently works is they sew a plastic patch onto your tongue which makes eating solid food extremely painful.  The doctor selling this $2000 surgery reports his patients lose up to 30 pounds a month.  That’s the power of a liquid diet so he says.

Of course, my problem is I’m drinking too much liquid–mostly of the beer variety.  I’m quite certain those Korean beers I consumed in great quantity are what caused my massive weight gain to begin with (light and/or low carb beers are not commonly found and the American imports cost twice as much as the local brews).  So, the tongue patch is not really an option for me, especially given my well-developed aversion to pain.

Today I took Jee Yeun to the GNC store so she could restock her supply of fish oil.  She also bought something called Biotin, which is apparently some kind of B-vitamin supplement.  According to Jee Yeun that 100 year old woman we met (I wrote about her here) swears by the stuff.  I guess we’ll see, but I reckon it can’t hurt either.

Anyway, I browsed the store while Jee Yeun found her stuff and came across these:

By golly, “a clinically studied white kidney bean extract” that “decreases the caloric impact of carbs!”  Does it actually work?  According to Wikipedia in three double blind studies folks who used Phaseolamin lost significantly more weight than the placebo group.  Will it work for me?  I don’t see how it could hurt.  Mind you, I’m sticking with the low carbohydrate regimen but hopefully this will help counter my “liquid diet” problem.  And if it assuages the pangs of guilt when I have the occasionally slip (did you know Wendy’s is selling soft-serve ice cream in a waffle cone?) then it is worth it at twice the price.  Truthfully, the bottle only cost me 23 bucks for 120 humongous tablets, which is just about the price for two buckets of beer.  And who can put a price tag on peace of mind?

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…and tanning.  That’s the ticket.  I sure hope my before and after photos come out this good.

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Via Althouse comes this story about an unfortunate tweet saying fat folks should not bother applying for the PhD program since they obviously lack the self discipline necessary to complete a dissertation.  Professor Geoffrey Miller of NYU tweeted: “Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth.”

As is wont to happen, some folks (whether fat or not) took offense to the remark.  Miller doubled down saying finishing a dissertation is “about willpower/conscientiousness, not just smarts.”   Later when the heat got too hot, he deleted the offending tweets, but the damage was done.

Now poor Dr. Miller is being accused of various and sundry crimes against nature, including being a proponent of eugenics. Even worse, he is now the target of the worst kind of retaliation–mockery!  There’s even an aptly named blog “Fuck Yeah! Fat PhDs featuring photographs of “fatalicious” PhD candidates from institutions across our great nation.

I’m personally too fat and lazy to weigh-in (ahem) on the subject, other than to say I’m glad Dr. Miller is down with the low carb regimen. Althouse gives the issue her lawyerly analysis here and here.

I will just say that my personal journey to the scales this week revealed that I’ve gained 3 pounds, putting me back up to 252.  I wasn’t totally surprised, because I had a week of some pretty hellacious beer drinking.  Beer is liquid bread after all.  And even though I confine myself to the almost tasteless low carb variety (2.6 grams of carbohydrates per 12 oz bottle), the carbs do add up.  Especially when you drink 12 beers or so in one sitting.  Hey, I had company.  A soldier friend who is getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan.  So we had much to discuss!

So, shame on me.  At least I can be thankful that I’m not pursuing a doctorate degree.  Unless they offer one in the age old art of beer guzzling.

Onward and (hopefully) downward.

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Just completed the final episode of The Big C, a Showtime series starring Laura Linney as Cathy, a 40-something wife and mother diagnosed with melanoma.  Suffice to say it didn’t end well.  Or maybe it did.  Dying is inevitable and as Cathy went through all the classic stages of the end game she demonstrated a dignity, humor, grace and finally understanding and acceptance that was quite inspiring.

Painful to watch in places, especially this last one.  Brought back some painful memories of my best friend and soulmate Linda’s passing (I wrote about her here), and the deaths of my parents as well.

Now that I’m getting on in years my own mortality looms ever larger and the uncertainty of what I might do with the time I have left sometimes seems like an unwanted passenger.  But, my life is mostly good even if the possibilities are no longer limitless.  And I’m getting much better at not dwelling on the small stuff.  Much.

Anyway, it’s a good watch if you are so inclined.

Cathy Jamison: Why can’t anything ever go the way it’s supposed to?
Lee: It did. Just didn’t go the way you wanted it to. 

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…feel sarong?

Going native in Bali.

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Mom and dad in 1950.  I was still 5 years away from being a twinkle in the imagination.  Time is a one way street of course, but as I grow older it seems the past looms ever larger.

Well, at least I’ve already chosen my funeral music.  I’m in no hurry to get there, mind you.

Time, flowing like a river
Time, beckoning me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the sea

Till it’s gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore 

–Alan Parsons

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It’s Memorial Day so of course today I’m remembering the brave men and women who answered our nation’s call to duty and paid for our freedom with their blood.  I wrote about one of them, my great Uncle Frank, last year.  Have a read if you are so inclined. 
Back home from a weekend of darts action in lovely Greenville, South Carolina.  I’d like to say I’m seeing noticeable improvement in my game, but I’m still throwing entirely too inconsistent to be truly competitive at tournament level play.  There were some islands of brilliance in a vast sea of mediocrity, but nothing worth blogging about.  Well, two things I’ll call progress.  I’m over the jitters of playing against outstanding darters, and I did manage to advance to the third round in singles cricket which was one of my goals going in.  Yeah, that qualifies as setting the bar pretty low.  But it’s my damn bar to do with as I please, right?

Came home and hit the scale for my weekly weigh-in and was pleased to see a loss of three pounds.  That brings me down to to 249.  Glad to put those 250s behind me, hopefully forever.  Total weight loss thus far is 29.5 pounds, pretty nearly half of my 60 pound goal (see, I can set the bar high too).  Oddly enough, my girth measurement is up one inch to 47″.  It boggles my brain to lose weight and get bigger at the same time.  Jee Yeun says it’s from all the beer I drank this weekend.  Well, I did put away some brewskis, but they were of the low carb (2.5 grams per bottle) variety.  I’m more inclined to think it was the watermelon I scarfed down, which was pretty much my only major diet violation this week.  Ah well, I guess the old saw that less is more has proven to be accurate in this case.  Onward and downward!

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…is that the question?

It was the best of posts, it was the worst of posts.  Bloggers of the world unite!

No, I have no idea where I’m going with this blog post.  Apparently the latest grammatical faux pas is to call something you write on your blog a blog.  As opposed to a post on your blog.  Me, I’ve never been a slave to grammatical correctness but this whole kerfuffle strikes me as much adieu ado* about nothing.  A tempest in a teapot.  And don’t even get me started on the overuse of cliches.  Personally, I avoid trite phrases like the plague,  but that’s just me.

But seriously, I don’t see why this whole “blog versus post” issue matters enough for someone to actually to actually blog about it.  Or to warrant writing a post on your own blog in response.  I have a blog and sometimes I even write some worthless crap and post it here.  My mother used to say “oh, I loved that blog you wrote today.”  I’d dearly love to hear those words again.

Anyway, when I see something that strikes my fancy I’m liable to blog about it with a post like this.  Can’t we all just get along?

*Thanks to Kevin Kim for noticing my brain fart.  Sometimes I’m too smart by half.  I knew what I was trying to say, why I wrote it the way I did is a mystery.  Kevin generously would have let me play it off as an intentional gaffe, but when your wrong your wrong.  And yes, you’re right, that last one was intentional.  I guess it might be wise for me to keep y’all guessing whether I’m really that ignorant or just bad at being funny…

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Back home from my weekend jaunt to Walt Disney World in Florida and here are some random thoughts on the experience.

I am a Disney agnostic which sets me apart from the fanatics and haters.  And me and Disney go way back.  Disneyland in California opened a month before I was born, and I grew up living less than ten miles from the park.  Back in those days you paid a small admission fee to enter the park and then paid for each ride individually.  Or you could purchase a book of ride coupons called a “Valu-Pak”.  The rides were all graded A-E, with A being the least popular (cheapest) and the best rides (Matterhorn Bobsleds, Jungle Cruise, etc.) requiring the much coveted “E ticket”.  Now, my grandma worked as a housekeeper in a motel near Disneyland and the tourists would leave unused coupons as a tip (cheap bastards) when they checked out.  Usually there were only crappy A and B tickets, but once in a while she’d bring home some books with some D’s and on a few joyous occasions we would score a magical E ticket.  So, even though we were comparatively poor I’d visit the Magic Kingdom at least a couple of times a year.  Hell, in high school Disneyland was was a great place to take your girl on a date.  There was this nice sit down restaurant (with waiters and everything) inside Pirates of the Caribbean that never failed to impress, well I was gonna say impress the pants off a virgin, but that never happened.  For me at least.  I had more success in that regard going to the beach to watch the submarine races.  But that’s another story.

Now that I’ve digressed, let me head off on a tangent.  Mr. Boothroyd was my seventh grade math teacher.  During the summers he was a “guide” on the Jungle Boat attraction at Disneyland (which he would brag about in class). For some unknown reason he disliked me.  Well, to be completely honest back in the day I could be a bit of a smartass and my mouth earned me a paddling from more than one teacher.  But it was different with Boothroyd.  He would mock and humiliate me.  We were a working class family in an upper middle class school district.  And Boothroyd would actually make fun of my clothes in front of the rest of the class.  I guess it was a tradition for him because he hated my older brother as well.  My father was in route sales back then supplying packaged foods to catering houses, including salads and desserts.  Boothroyd told my brother (again, in front of the whole class) if he didn’t study harder he’d grow up selling Jello out of a truck just like his dad.  Bastard.  To this day I can’t ride the Jungle Cruise without thinking of that prick.  Ironically, just before I entered government service I was working in route sales supplying ready-made sandwiches to convenience stores.  I did pretty well at it too.

But let’s get back to Disney World shall we?  These days you buy a park pass (about $90 per day) and all the rides are included.  The rides are mostly better and the lines longer than I remember.  In addition to the Magic Kingdom, you can visit Epcot (my personal favorite) Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and the Animal Kingdom.  These parks are surrounded by Disney owned hotels and resorts.  In fact, the whole complex at some 47 square miles is larger than San Francisco and all privately owned by the Disney company.

Now, Walt Disney was a visionary and by most accounts a truly great American.  I certainly admire him.  But the Walt Disney World we visit today is decidedly not what he had in mind.  The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) as conceived by Mr. Disney was to be a “community of the future” designed to stimulate American corporations to come up with new ideas for urban living.  In describing his city, Walt Disney is quoted as saying: “EPCOT will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are emerging from the forefront of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed. It will always be showcasing and testing and demonstrating new materials and new systems.”

Alas, Walt Disney died while his dream city of tomorrow was still on the drawing board.  After his death, the Disney Company scrapped his vision and went with the money making theme park/resort hotels concept.  And you really can’t argue with success, today Disney World is the world’s top tourist destination and it provides employment for over 66,000 people.

But what really prompted this overly long post is this simple fact: it works.  Although I had visited Disney World several times in the past, this was my first experience staying in a Disney resort and doing the package deal (including multi-day theme park tickets).  What impressed me was how seamlessly and smoothly the whole thing comes together.  I drove down, but if you fly in a Disney bus picks you up at the airport and delivers you to the resort, free of charge.  You don’t mess with your luggage, they bring that separately and deliver it to your room.  When you check in, you are given a “key to the world”.  Not only does this key open your room door, it serves as your ticket to all the theme parks, and allows you to charge anything you desire to purchase with a simple touch of the key (same concept as the T-money system in Korea).  That key is all you ever need during your entire visit.

Disney also provides complimentary bus service to anywhere and everywhere in the park.  The buses run on time, they are clean and comfortable, and the drivers are friendly.  Well, EVERY employee I encountered during my weekend stay was smiling and courteous without exception.  No detail goes overlooked, and it just all comes together in the most extraordinary way.

And that’s the thing.  Walt Disney World is for all intents and purposes a small city (albeit with an incredibly transient population) and they get it right in a way real cities can never seem to manage.  Why is that?   Absent evidence to the contrary, I’d say it is more proof that the private sector can do almost everything the government can do, only better.

So there you have it.  My point that is.  Which I could have made in the first two paragraphs and saved you all this pain (assuming you actually made it this far).  But what can I say, after 34 years with the federal government I even blog like a bureaucrat.

“Grandpa went to Disney World and all I got were these crappy Mickey Mouse ears”

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Back in those long ago days of the 1980s I had reached a stage in my career where I enjoyed the services of a secretary.  It also so happens that she was the only person in the office who had a computer on her desk (it was a Wang).  My desk was equipped with a Dictaphone, a nifty device into which I would speak my thoughts, hand a tape to the secretary, and in a hour or two, I would have those words composed and formatted into proper business correspondence.  Well, truth be told, I’d usually have to edit two or three times to get it right–turns out what you say is not necessarily how you would write it.

And sometimes how you say it is just flat out wrong.  I have words in my vocabulary that I know and understand, but have never actually heard in conversation.  So, one day my secretary comes to me and says “boss, that word you keep using–’as-certain’–is pronounced as-ser-tain.”  Then she laughed.  And told the rest of the staff, who laughed as well.

So, I learned humility and developed some tolerance and compassion when I see stuff this:

But I still laugh.

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