Is this normal?

Posted on by inkbiotic

I have been sorting my room. Picking through drawers of junk – junk to throw away when I work out how; junk to re use when I think of how; junk I’d forgotten about. Anyway, I came across this, the old lithium battery for my phone that I can’t put in the bin and couldn’t work out where to dispose of it. I hope you can see from the way it’s no longer lying flat that it’s swollen up, like it’s been pumped up with a football pump.

The instructions say don’t put it in a ‘mostness or corrode environment’, but I’ve never done that! I’m not even sure what a mostness environment is.

Is it going to explode? Is it leaking toxins? Should I throw it out the window and duck down? Is it going to make me radioactive so I have superpowers? Do I already have superpowers but haven’t got to use them so haven’t noticed? You all seem smart, help me out!

Dagnamnit!

Posted on by inkbiotic

I was doing a lot of watering today. Apparently it dissolved the glue holding my boot together. All of a sudden, my boot was flapping. I was at a garden in the middle of nowhere and had no shoes to change into. Fortunately, a colleague had a spare hairband I could wrap around it. And then I had to limp home on the train, trying to not lose the sole on my shoe altogether.

Other news, I was on an escalator with some teenagers this morning and one of them pressed the emergency stop button. It wasn’t much of an emergency stop, more of a carry on for thirty seconds then trundle to a halt button. The teenagers ran off, and the five staff who all came out running a moment later paid no attention to me, but started shouting into their radios about where the kids had gone. So if you want to get away with pressing the red button, make sure there are some teenagers around who’ll get the blame.

And those are the most interesting things about my day! How about you?

Fight! Punched the wall! Woke up.

Posted on by inkbiotic

IMG_20200625_114346

Today was one of those days when I wonder if I’m out to get me.

First I dreamed about a fight. I’m not sure why I was having it, but definitely it was something heroic and Matrix-like in its cool. There were (probably) spinning kicks and majestic dodges against my huge male foe who was almost certainly evil. And then I punched him, and woke just as my fist hit the wall next to my bed. It hurt, but apparently even majestic fights are quite puny when they leave the dream world, so no damage. A definite sense of Oh you fucking idiot, though.

Then I went to work, and I had to cut back some large Euphorbia. Euphorbia can be nasty because it has poisonous sap that oozes out all over you when you cut it, but I’m lucky and don’t react to it, it’s just sticky and annoying.  What I was more bothered about was the insects living in the bed that didn’t like my invasion of their space. They started biting me, not unreasonably. But I noticed that they bit less the more sap I got on me. Aha! I thought. Nature’s insect repellent. Because of course that is why Euphorbia has toxic sap – to keep away biting insects. So I smeared some on my arms and legs and the insects left me alone. I felt so clever.

Then in the afternoon I got quite dusty and wiped my arm over my face, then carried on chopping – Mahonia this time. My eye started to sting, but I assumed it was the dust and blinked it away. But the pain wouldn’t go and was getting quite nasty. I staggered out of the bed and poured some water on my eye. A friendly builder working nearby asked I was ok. ‘I think so, I just got something in my eye,’ I said. ‘It’s not Euphorbia sap is it? Because that’s really dangerous if you get it in your eyes.’

And I realised that of course it fucking was, so I went back to base and spent the next ten minutes trying to wash the toxic sap out of my damn eye. And for anyone following this blog, yes it was the same eye that landed me in Urgent Care a few weeks ago.

That afternoon I was working in the same bed, trying to not be a self-sabotaging fool, and I looked up and saw this face looking down at me from a nearby statue. Pitying, exasperated, unimpressed, I have a feeling this statue has seen many idiots before.

But more importantly, is she holding a kitten?

statue with a weary unimpressed expression

 

 

 

 

 

You had one job!

Posted on by inkbiotic

one job

Word of the day: Bodewash – cow dung, bodge, piece of poor or clumsy workmanship

Weather: yep, there was some

Mood: yep, I had some

My title is kind of unfair, since it’s about the contractors my managers got in to lay a path, and it actually looked pretty complicated, but if the meme fits…

Over the last two weeks the builders brought about ten vehicles in, from diggers to tractors to trailers to some kind of Transformer-in-disguise. Today they arrived with a huge truck filled with grit that couldn’t fit through our gates (fascinating to watch them try for twenty minutes though) and a huge bucket on wheels that carried the grit from the huge truck to the path, and a machine that spread it, then one that flattened and rolled it. And there were ten guys who spread it out and tamped it down. The operation took all day, and was hugely impressive. We got to watch an hour of it over lunch, always enjoyable to watch other people working while you eat your sandwiches. Especially if they keep stopping to argue like these guys did. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was pointing and one guy threw his rake down.

On a couple occasions Mateo wandered over to tell them they were doing it all wrong, but he chickened out at the last minute. It was a shame to go back to work, to our more familiar machines.

When we returned to base at the end of the day, we saw the path, beautifully laid, flat, sparkly black. Stretching all the way from the managers’ office through the trees to the other managers’ office. Except for the two-foot-wide gap where there wasn’t enough grit to reach the gate, apparently the huge grit truck wasn’t huge enough.

They were all booked up with other work after today, so we’re not sure if they’re coming back.  We’re told they left in quite a hurry, taking their many vehicles with them.

Disaster! Thievery! It’s ok really.

Posted on by inkbiotic

hazard
From here

“A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid.”  Stephen King

Weather: mottled skies

Mood: good

Word of the day: La-li-loong – a thief. Originates mid 19th-20th century.

Tragedy is befalling me like I broke a mirror or hung a horseshoe upside down, but I don’t remember doing either of those things recently.

A few days ago I noticed my laptop was damaged, the casing of the screen was cracked so that it could no longer shut. It looked like I’d stepped on it, but surely I’d remember such a thing? I stuck a note along the top saying ‘DON’T SHUT’ (because I have a tendency to forget everything) and then tried to be really careful with it. It’ll hold out for a while longer, I told myself.

Then yesterday I needed to go to the kitchen to get some popcorn for dinner, put the laptop carefully on the rug, came back in my room and kicked it across the floor. Bollocks! The crack became a split and I could see the exposed wires and gleaming metal inside. Well I ate my popcorn (first things first) and then taped it up as best as I could, using an elastic band to hold it together. So that’s probably fine now. No problem.

Then yesterday evening I went out to the pub with my work mates and was having a really nice evening, lots of drunken rambling and laughter. I left my bag under a table for a while and then thought I better retrieve it, but it had gone! We looked everywhere.  Dan was annoying strangers at the pub by picking their bag up and shouting ‘Is it this one?’ to me. My boss was ranting about the evils of modern society.

I was feeling quite smug though. Earlier on when getting changed out of muddy work clothes I thought Shall I leave my keys and phone in my bag? No I’ll keep them in my pocket, just in case. So I did. And the thief is going to be super pissed off when they discover all they’ve got is an old ice cream tub with cucumber and cherry tomatoes in it, and some biros. So that’s also pretty fine too.

Phew!

laptop