a superhero's job is never done

I was sitting in my office diligently working, when suddenly, TS, whose office is next to mine, walks in hysterical. She just broke the vending machine, she said. She wanted to buy a bag of chips, but when she punched in the code, the bag got stuck. So she tried to buy the same thing again, as any normal person would.

The second bag got stuck too.

So she tried to buy it a third time. Finally, all three bags fell to the bottom. But since they were stacked on top of each other, they were blocking the door and she couldn't reach in to get them.

After calming her down and giving her a box of tissues to wipe away her torrent of tears, I went to vending machine and got them out. Since the vending machine doesn't charge you unless the bag hits the bottom, she only had to pay for one and got three. She gave the other two to me.

Needless to say, I happily accepted the payment for my services.

ingenies

Last night my firm participated and sponsored a Lawyers for Literacy event. It was a spelling bee to raise money to help kids learn how to read. Our firm had 3 summer associates on our team. I was speller 3. All the 1's for all the teams go, then the 2's, then the 3's.

During round 1.

Host: "lexical."
DK, our speller 1: "l-e-x-y-c-l-e."
Eliminated.

During round 2.

Host: "inoculate."
TS, our speller 2: "i-n-n-o-c-u-l-a-t-e."
Eliminated.

It's all down to me. I noticed the trend of easy words at the beginning of each round, so I sat second. The first girl went up and the word was "ingenious." She spelled it, "i-n-g-e-n-i-u-s." I was thinking, yup, that's correct. Wrong, she got eliminated. I was so puzzled because I couldn't think of any other way to spell it. It was my turn.

Host: "ingenious."
me: "Can I have the definition?"
Host: some random words because I wasn't paying attention.
me: "i-n-g-e-n-i....."
(long pause. I knew "u-s" was wrong because that's how the girl spelled it. But that's the only way I could think of to spell it.)
me: "e-s."
Eliminated.

Our whole team got eliminated in our first rounds. And we were the biggest sponsor of the event. Awesome.

Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too

Blogging is hard work. I often think of stuff to post and then write a quick draft but never get around to actually publishing it. I probably have 20 or so posts that will always be in "draft" form and never get published.

Here's something I found in the Mozo archives. Back in 2004, I went to visit AWA and SWA in New Mexico. On the way back, I saw these signs that said "Do not pick up hitchhikers in this area. Prison facility." Grrrrrreat.

In other news, I'm going to be in a speeling bee on Wednesday. It'll be the furst tim sinse forth graid. Hupe I winn.