K-Squared Ramblings

FarPlates

You know that car game where you look at all the license plates going by and you have to come up with a word using all the letters in order? (Okay, now show of hands for the people who didn’t learn it from me.) I got bored with that and started looking for letters that could make the names of characters in books and movies. Then I got bored with that and made it that I had to see at least two from the same source at once. I used to see them all the time, and now I hardly ever do. Then again, I was living at home when I came up with this and my mom’s minivan ended up with plate letters EGW, so every time I was in that car I automatically had one plate for The Wheel of Time.

So anyway. There was next to no traffic on the commute to work this morning, and we were pacing a beat-up little black car with a blue-and-yellow plate starting with 2AEY. It took me a second to register that I could spell Aeryn with that (kind of disappointing reaction time, but LOTR outranks Farscape in my obsession list right now), and I immediately started trying to see the plate on the car ahead of it. (The combo doesn’t count if the cars are separated by more than one car in either direction, you know.) While Kelson, who had realized what I was doing, was trying to speed up to see it, the car behind AEY passed us, flashing 5BLR. Bialar Crais, anyone?

Drama queen

One of my co-workers has disappeared. She called in yesterday and said she was waiting for the electrician, and then didn’t show up. Today she called in and said she’d be in at noon, then didn’t show. She’s done this sort of thing before, but never two days in a row after being 3 hours later than usual the Friday of the week before. (Didn’t put a battery backup in her alarm clock.) Now there are reports that her cell phone was stolen and is no longer in service, and that she was in tears when she called this morning. And she won’t tell anyone anything, which is diametrically opposed to her usual TMI-inducing self. Depending on who you talk to, this is either scary or a complete sham.

So here I am, her underling, trying to make sense of the overdue messes she’s left while our supervisor is on vacation, and watching the number of voicemails on her phone creep up. Soon it’ll be full and the calls will start coming to me. What with the flu doing its KO on personnel, I’m already busy by way of being the only healthy person not on vacation. (Whee.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if this keeps up, I’ll be hard put not to ask for a raise.

ROTK review soon. I promise.

Must…control…poinging

J. Michael Straczynski likes ROTK. Kenneth Turan likes ROTK. If I bounce off the walls much more, I’m going to leave dents.

Warning: Contains Ingredients

Here’s another interesting Food Allergy Alert:

Wisconsin Cheesecake Co., Inc., is recalling 28-oz. Candy Bar Cheesecakes containing either Butterfinger, Reese’s Pieces, Peanut Butter Cup, or Snickers brands because they contain undeclared peanuts.

Now I’m not sure what’s stranger about this: the fact that someone managed to leave peanuts off the ingredients list, or that they think a recall is necessary in this case. Anyone with a peanut allergy has long since learned to avoid anything that says “Snickers” or “Reese’s.” Heck, I still have to think twice to remind myself I can eat snickerdoodles. If I see a Butterfinger cheesecake, I don’t need to look at the ingredients. I already know it’s not safe.

Eh, maybe it’s to counteract all those “well-meaning” adults who don’t believe in allergies and insist, “Oh, just one bite won’t hurt you!” — and then watch in horror as the three-year-old who was left in their charge is rushed to the emergency room. I can just imagine someone like that saying, “Oh, well, it says Snickers, but it doesn’t say it has peanuts, so it must be safe for him.”