i'm quite different from most of the guys i work with. this is typical. but usually not as pronounced as my current situation. in the eyes of my colleagues i'm prissy, snobbish, delicate and several other decidedly negative terms, by their estimation at least. the only thing i could say about them is they are men, real, un-concentrated men.

the other day one of the uber-men informed me that if i mentioned UNIX one more time (they are a microsoft shop) a certain three of them were going to drag me out back and kick my ass. they don't know UNIX and aren't entirely comfortable with what such a change may hold for their future employment in this firm. i confidently told him i could defend such an attack. curious, he asked what 160 pounds of me was going to do against the combined 2,000 pounds of their three-man gorilla-squad. i would simply act like your pummeling aroused me, sexually. his countenance changed quite visibly. he admitted that this just may work.

Tonight a friend working on his masters was complaining about the cost of books and how much more significant it seems when it is coming out of his personal budget and not his parent's checking account. Everybody then reminisced on the end of semester ritual where you would sell books back to the university and how those monies never seemed to make it back into ma and pa's checking account. One girl sitting quietly to the side said in an almost whisper how she would buy books for classes she wasn't even taking so she could get extra money back at the end of the semester. The room fell silent and then erupted in overwhelming acceptance and disbelief that no one else had thought of that. I love the simple variations of life and the people who invent them.

my sister-in-law told me a story about a friend of hers who wanted to go out and eat at mcdonalds (addictive agents in the fries and all) but didn't have any jack. so what's a girl to do? make a tuna and salsa sandwich, pretending it's a royal with cheese? i thought not as did this enterprising young lady. her solution involved going to her pantry, pulling a gob of canned goods off the shelf, cleaning off the lids (smart move) and returning them to her local grocery. HmmmmMmmmm! this IS a tasty burger.