Kitchen Gadgetry Before a Disturbance in the Office

The Hand Blender
I got a new hand blender. This is a great new thing in my life. It's not the FIRST hand blender I've had. I had another one, but somehow lost it. I lost a kitchen appliance. And since I never have taken it out of the kitchen, I don't know where I lost it to. I looked everywhere: above the fridge, in the fridge, the cabinets, the shelves. It's a small kitchen; my apartment is about the size of most peoples' homes, and I still lost my hand blender.

The new one has attachments. Oh boy. I love attachments. The hand blender's first use was to make a milk-shake. I wanted a blueberry shake. Plan? Put vanilla ice cream, frozen blueberries, vanilla extract, and milk in a cup and blend it into a perfect ice cream drink. Mmmm.

However, reality presented me with coffee ice cream, vanilla extract, soy milk, and 6 month-old frozen pineapple.

Here's a word of advice: never, ever mix coffee ice cream, soy milk, and frozen pineapple. The tastes work together much in the way that Fidel Castro, Pat Buchanan, and Russel Crowe would if put into a room. Which is to say that the tastes all declared war against each other and fought later on in my stomach.

I also used it in making an omelet. Using the food processing attachment, I put in some different kinds of cheese and a link of cooked sausage (chicken and turkey sausage from Trader Joe's). Though I thought it would sort of chop and grind everything up into large tasty chunks (or morsels of goodness as I was hoping), what I got was an extremely bizarre paste that strangely resembled (in taste, odor, color, and consistency) hummus. But it was cheese and sausage, not mashed up garbanzo beans. I still put it in my omelet.

All through the day I thought about the bizarre things that I could grind up into a paste.
1) bananas, cherries, and steak
2) chewing gum, raw fish, and an onion
3) frozen pineapple, frozen green beans, and scraps of rubber
4) raw eggs, tomatoes, carrots, and an old wrist watch
5) yogurt, cottage cheese, chicken hearts, frozen tater tots
Then, I could take these pastes to work with tortilla chips and see how many people would eat them.

The Office Visit
A friend from my gym came to visit me at work today. She begged and begged, and repeatedly told me she wanted to see what a government tax office looked like. She really really wanted to see it. I tried describing it: "Imagine a bunch of office supplies surrounded by cubicles." I showed her pictures of highlighters and pens. She STILL wanted to see my office. I told her there was nothing special about it, but we set up today as the day she'd come down and check it out.

Her hopes were high, and I kept telling her, "No, it seriously sucks. I hate it, and there's nothing there to see." But she kept thinking it would be some great magical place. To make up for this, I put together a souvenir package (the Government Office Tour 2005 Souvenir Package). I gave her an official United States Government Calendar, a keychain with the agency's logo, some tax publications, a seizure tag (used to mark property in asset seizures), a booklet entitled "How Do I Make My Federal Tax Deposits?", and a little plastic dinosaur. This seemed to make up for the lameness of my office.

When she came in, she called. But as I walked to the door, the asshole of the office said, "Uh, Ryan...You have someone waiting for you." I brushed past him into the hall and down to the elevators where she waited. This guy later remarked, "My head spun around like in the Exorcist." Yeah, that fat fucker needs to spin his ass into the fucking Weight Watchers. Perverted fat fuck.

All the guys were gawking at her and I took her up the hall with me, and we ran into my friend, Jeb.

Jeb just stood there staring. I said, "This is Jeb." He put out his hand. "Jeb, this is Bernicia." They shook hands and she said it was nice to meet him. He just stared at her and smiled, then walked right back into the office.

I was only AUTHORIZED to take her into a separate interrogation room off the main office. It had a window looking into the office. When we went in there, I said, "That's the office. We can go now." But then these guys--coworkers--stood there looking at her, smiling, and waving. One kept walking back and forth looking at her, and then he walked up and opened the door.

"Hi, I'm Frank," he said extending his hand. I told him she wasn't authorized to go into the office; we were in the interrogation room because she wanted to see the office.

Frank poo-pooed me and said to her, "Oh, of course you can come in the office. Friends and family members can come in. Come on in!" and she walked through.

Shit. This will result in a 'talking to' by tomorrow. At least my manager was out to lunch, but the 'talking to' WILL happen. Somehow, management will find out. It's not that I'm afraid of getting fired; I just hate being lectured to. I took her by my desk and showed my portrait of Willie Nelson (sort of a star in the annals of United States tax history), as well as my huge mess of papers. Then I got neurotic that my manager would walk in, so I pulled her out the door.

Then we ate Cuban. Mmmm. Cuban.

When she left and I went back into the office, it was like I'd brought in a celebrity. People who hadn't even met her were asking about her. Everyone, and not just guys. A female coworker/friend even said, "You have to get her back here. I need to see what they're all going on about."

I told them she was a CFO of a corporation. And this normally quiet, calm, and extraordinarily polite woman laughed, and said, "What kind of CFO?"

"Well, she's an officer of the corporation. I told her she was liable for the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty if...What are you laughing at?" And indeed, my coworker was laughing.

This religious woman, who I'd never heard say any work even remotely resembling profanity said, "I thought you were going to say, 'Chief Fucking Officer.' Because you always say things like that."

"But I meant Cheif Financial Officer...so I guess I always don't say things like that."

Jesus Christ.