Fortunately for me and my wife, most of our friends fall into two categories: either they also have pets, or someone in their family is allergic to animals. So everybody who hadn't been to my house in months and months was delighted to see all of our cats and dogs again. This is always a double-edged phenomenon from my perspective, because the pets (the dogs in particular) go positively insane basking in the attention. It makes me feel downright neglectful as their owner, but I take some solace in that fact that at least the beasts are finally getting some interaction, and apparently haven't lost their capacity to appreciate human affection.
Of course the dogs can barely manage to do even that right, because as soon as one of them gets petted the other one starts whimpering and whining out of jealousy, and if anyone should shift their attention from one to the other the whimpering and whining in protest for the cease-petting is even worse. Luckily my friends are both indulgent and ambidextrous (at fur-stroking, at least).
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As my friends were leaving, I diverted my buddy Clutch through the kitchen to show him something the little guy had brought home from school. The Montessori class had done an entire monthlong unit on architecture and cities, and each child had picked a kind of building to design and incorporate in their model city. This was one of those big deals that included notifying the parents and scheduling an after-work ribbon-cutting ceremony for the unveiling of the entire model city, which my wife and I duly planned on attending (I ended up going but my wife was unavoidably detained at work, alas.)
At any rate, I was somewhat excited to see the results of the kids' work, at least partially because of my own geeky interest in creating buildings and other types of terrain for use in tabletop wargaming. I'm always interested in picking up new techniques and exposing myself to potential inspiration.
But the joke was on me because the model city of Popperville ended up being a collection of cardboard boxes, each painted one solid color with tempera paint. And really, what else did I rightfully expect? The Montessori class is three and four year olds. The teacher, to her credit, walked the kids through all kinds of lessons over the course of the month, teaching them about blueprints and having kids draw their own, then moving on to the actual buildings, etc. I'm sure it was very educational. Nonetheless I couldn't resist telling the little guy that he could make his building, which was a white cuboid that he informed me was a house, look even more house-like if he drew on other details like windows and doors. And the little guy agreed that sounded pretty cool, and did so.
I showed the enhanced House v 2.0 to Clutch, who is also a tabletop wargamer, and he immediately pointed out that the door and window had been drawn on upside down. Meaning when the box was oriented with the door touching the ground and the window above it, the open end of the box was facing up, which means the building has no roof for little gaming figures to stand on top of. I had noticed that too, and in fact that was why I had wanted to show it to him in the first place. So that worked out.
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Another amusing bit about the whole Popperville setup, real quick. The children each picked a type of building, and some of them picked similar if not identical concepts, and then of course all of the buildings were identical featureless boxes painted in an assortment of colors. And distinctions between, say, a house and a store were made via accessories culled from the assorted toys in the classroom play areas. So little mom or dad figurines in front of the houses, and a dress-up shoe on top of the shoe store, &c. There were also printed signs identifying which student had worked on which building and what kind of building it was.
I noticed that Popperville seemed to consist mainly of houses, toy stores, and candy stores. Which of course made me chuckle and think about pre-kindergarteners' tenuous grasp of retail economics. But then I thought about it some more and realized that I have lived plenty of places (present address most def included) where there has been more than one toy store within the zip code, and if not multiple candy stores at least a few ice cream parlors and dessert-focused bakeries. So, out of the mouths of babes and all that after all.
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Hey you know what else is fun? Making sport of my oblivious co-worker, Ms. Nonsense!
Nothing too egregious this week, but probably the most groan-worthy moment came on Thursday, when the office held a pizza lunch fundraiser for the upcoming holiday party. I bought my ticket in advance, foolishly assuming that they would end up getting the pizzas from one of the many local restaurants which offer approximations of "a decent slice". Oh, when will I learn. The fundraiser pizza was Domino's, which, despite all of their recent ad campaigns about completely reinventing themselves, is still terrible! But I sucked it up for the cause and ate the pizzesque lunch rather than demanding my money back. (I am not entirely sure they would have refunded it in any case.)
Right, so, Ms. Nonsense also attended the pizza lunch and afterwards I heard her, as she returned to her cubicle, asking a gentleman who sits right across from her why he hadn't partaken. And he very straightforwardly told her that he didn't care for Domino's. Ms. Nonsense seemed legitimately surprised by this admission. I more or less thought that it was common knowledge that Domino's is the worst, but apparently someone not liking Domino's was not the kind of thing which would have occurred to my colleague. And she then proceeded to defend Domino's (which she insisted on calling "Domino Pizza") with, I swear to the ends of the Italian food pantheon, her primary argument being that she liked it just fine. And just to add insult, she elaborated on how she had had the supreme, and it had meat and veggies.
OK, just to recap, guy she works across from self-identifies as at least enough of a pizza snob (represent!) to look down on "Domino Pizza" and not only does this blow her tiny mind but she also assumes he might not know what is meant by the arcane toppings terminology "supreme". Can't make this stuff up, guys.
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