Friday, January 14, 2011

I think I know where she gets it ...

By now you all know I'm a spaz.

Evidently, my genetics in this area are pretty strong because my daughter is following gloriously in my footsteps.

My wife and I just barely started her in dance classes.

(Tangent)
This is mainly because when she saw her first example of a dance troupe performance during the holidays, she was MESMERIZED.

I kid you not, her eyes were glued to the stage for at least 30 minutes. That was followed by a slightly breathless request, "Mom, can I do that too?"

Normally, I would say the only time we've seen her hold that still is when she is asleep, but I'd be lying.

Even when she sleeps, she tosses and turns like she's in a wrestling match.
(End Tangent)

Well, her new dance class just had a performance, and we got two free tickets to attend. Using it as a Daddy/Daughter Date opportunity, I took her to the concert.

It was more fun to watch her during the performances. The entire time, she sat on the edge of her seat, giggling excitedly during each dance. When they finished, she would immediately clap as fast as her little hands could handle. Then she'd look at me with these pleading puppy dog eyes and ask, "Is there going to be another one, daddy?"

I'd reassure her that another one would start in just a minute, and when the music kicked in, she would squeal delightedly and grab my arm.

She was more excited about this than when Santa gave her one of those ridiculous unicorn pillow pets for Christmas.

Like I said, she is definitely a spaz, and I'm pretty sure I know where she gets it.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Josh Groban is my new favorite person

Anyone who does something like this should be named king of the world for a day.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Glorified Monkey

So, there is a part of my job that involves printing letters to students.

A LOT of letters.

All at once.

On a tight deadline.

These letters are generated at another location and sent to my printer remotely. I have now participated in this process twice, and I can now say with complete authority that every time, something (or multiple somethings) goes wrong.

I will spare you with the details of the comedy of errors that occurred this time (over multiple days) and favor you with my favorite train wreck.

Once I finally got the letters printing, one group kept coming out on two sheets of paper, when it should have fit on one. With more than 1,000 letters shooting out of my printer, I didn't want to be accused of singlehandedly cutting down the entire rain forest, so I tried to cancel the print job and re-run it.

It sounds easy, right?

Unfortunately, because it is sent remotely, the only way to cancel it is to hit the little orange button on my printer. Usually, these particular jobs are sent over in batches. So, pushing the button once cancels an entire group of letters from printing.


But since this is me we're talking about, that didn't happen. The universe always likes to throw me curve-balls, just to see if I'm paying attention.

In this case, all of the letters came over as individual print jobs. That meant that to cancel the 1,000+ letters, I had to hit the cancel button 1,000+ times.

In between each button press, I also had to wait while the printer processed my command. As a result, I spent my afternoon doing the following:

"Press"

... pause ...

"Press"

... pause ...

"Press"

... pause ...

"Press"

I felt like one of those chimpanzees trying to get into the space program at NASA.