Pillow Talk

Last night, my poor sweetie had an awful time getting off to sleep, mostly because I kept entering random fits of hysterics. Not over nothing, mind you, but because she was being funny. At one point, we had the following conversation:

Her: The kitten has an evil plot to kill me.

Me: This is true, yes. She's decidedly wicked.

Her: Do you know what would happen if I died?

Me: What?

Her: Not only would you be a widow, but you'd also be a homeless immigrant!

Then she proceeded to giggle nonstop for about a half hour. So it wasn't entirely my fault. Of course, I had to get my own back, but I didn't realize an opportunity would present itself quite so quickly.

We have this clock in our bedroom:

That strange circular part at the back isn't a government periscope, as you might understandably suspect at first; instead it projects the digits up onto the ceiling, so you don't have to roll over to see what time it is. In related news, we had a power cut earlier in the week, and I had yet to reset the clock.

I turned to her and said,

Me: Honey, look, it's 5:55 (the time it was displaying on the ceiling)

Her: Umf? (looks up) Maybe it's upside down.

Take a small moment to ponder that.

I'll wait.



Right-Side Up


Upside Down

Lost in Translation

I love listening to two of my colleagues converse. They're both from the former Soviet Union, and it's just much easier for them to discuss problems in Russian than English. So we can all just be sitting there working when the room is suddenly filled with Russki dulcet tones.

Of course, in our business, not everything is translatable. So I will often hear (and no disrespect to any Russians, but I can't think of how else to write this):

Каков IP address?

and

Только Select выбор и поместите это в Cursor.

I find it all very amusing, and it reminds me of a time long ago, where I sat in a German movie theater to watch Independence Day for the first time. In German. I didn't understand a great deal of it at the time (although given its genre, most of the words were unnecessary), but what sticks out in my mind is the random utterances of "Mr President," "Big Mama," and "Independence Day" thrust into a slew of guttural vocabulary.

I've still never seen that in English.

Feminism is the new L word

In a conversation with a very male co-worker...

T: Yeah, the first time I went to college, I just didn't care at all. I just wanted to get wasted with my friends, so I didn't bother with course selection and ended up with some really crappy courses. I took Women's Studies one semester.

Me: Women's Studies? You?

T: Yeah. At first, I thought it was going to be great because my instructor was cute, but then it turned out she was a huge...

*pauses to look at me uncomfortably*

Me: What, T? She was a huge what?

T: Erm...Feminist?

*uncomfortable silence*

T: I sucked at that class.