Um, can I have my pen back?

I'm a sucker for writing implements: pens (roller ball, gel & felt tip), mechanical pencils, markers and I believe I mentioned my college obsession with paint pens. Due to this, one of my biggest pet peeves is pen borrowing. Mainly because while most people have mastered the art of borrowing a pen, few have yet to acquire the skill of returning it.

Here's a perfect example that made my blood boil: one afternoon, I was sitting in Panera Bread eating lunch, but mostly taking advantage of their free Wi-Fi. That day, Panera was accepting applications for staff positions. They had set aside the big table for people to fill out apps and another couple of tables for brief interviews. I happened to be sitting across from the big table.

Well, I and my Broccoli Cheddar soup were minding our own business when a girl in a seriously tight Baby Phat t-shirt and jeans ensemble (her lucky job-hunting outfit?) approached my table and asked to borrow my pen. My first instinct was to claim that I didn't have a pen on me. Unfortunately, it was sitting in plain sight on the table (Dang it!). I could have still said no, but I'm not comfortable being that blatant a douche bag. So, I begrudgingly said, "sure" and handed over my precious, precious pen.

The whole time she filled out her application, I stole glances her way, ready to snatch back my pen the moment she finished. I also wondered if she thought wearing a t-shirt that exposed her midriff would give her the competitive edge she needed to obtain a job making sandwiches. But then I shook it off because her apparent ignorance of proper job-interview attire was really none of my business.

Anyway, she finally completed her app, and I half expected her to take the pen with her to the interviewing table (because I get it that people sometimes totally forget the pen that's in their hands). But she didn't do that. She set the pen down and walked away.

C'mon, really? It didn't jog her memory that the fancy pen she just sat on the table belonged to someone? Not once did she think, "Hey, where did I get this pen from?" OK, maybe she was focused on her upcoming interview. Or maybe she was distracted by the loss of circulation in her legs due to her tourniquet-tight jeans. (At a job interview! I can't stress that enough!)

In any case, my pen sat naked and alone on the table, but not for long. To add insult to injury, another applicant immediately sat down and started using my pen like it was Panera's community pen.

Now, I didn't blame the guy that was using my pen since he had no idea of what just happened. And I guess that I could have held off retrieving it until after he had completed his form. But surely I was not going to run the risk of having my pen passed from person to person until someone walked out with it!

We had finally reached the level of douche bag that I was comfortable being. So, I walked up to the guy, politely but firmly reacquired my pen and, on the way back to my table, punched Ms. Hot Thang in the back of her head 3 or 4 times during her interview. Then I calmly went back to my soup because you don't want those bread bowls to get too soggy.

Alright, I might have made up that head-punching part. It's not like she didn't deserve it, though.

Rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated.

How many times have you watched a TV show and said, "That would NEVER happen in real life!"? I'm talking about shows where circumstances perfectly align to create the most ridiculous scenarios. Here's an example: the characters of a show mistakenly believe that another character has died, and all attempts to find the truth just lead to more and more confusion.

So many incredible details would have to fall into place for this to happen that this couldn't possibly occur in reality. The writers of this program should really reduce their daily crack intake.

But before we organize that intervention, I should mention that the above example was not taken from a hilariously macabre episode of Three's Company. This really happened to my nephew Steven.

Last Thursday, Steve and I were sitting around having a conversation, when his cell phone kept ringing. First it was his Dad, then one of his sisters. He nonchalantly mentioned that many of his siblings and cousins were trying to reach him because... wait for it... they heard he was dead.

To my credit, I managed to not swallow my tongue in shock and used it to ask what the hell he meant by that. He explained that an old friend of my Dad, "Mrs. Jones," heard that Steve had died in his sleep. In a coincidence that could only happen on TV, Mrs. Jones just happens to live on the same block as Steve's paternal grandmother. So, she contacted his grandmother to extend her condolences and get more details.

Understandably, Steve's grandma was very upset by this news, especially since it was coming from a neighbor and not a family member. I can only guess that she got on the phone and called everyone she knew to find if this was true. She couldn't call either me or my sister (Steve's Mom)-- who could have easily dispelled this rumor-- because we had changed our phone numbers a while back and never got around to giving it to her (our bad).

The family that Steve's grandma did get a hold of tried calling Steve on his cell, correctly assuming that a living Steven would answer his phone. But like a perfectly timed plot twist, Steve by this point was on the job, where he has to keep his cell off, and was thus unreachable.

Eventually, Steven gets off work, answers his 30 trillion voicemails and everything ends with a nice freeze-framed sitcom chuckle.

Except that it doesn't. Not yet. Mrs. Jones apparently was very thorough. I stated earlier that she was a friend of my father. Well, they became friends through our old church. So, when Mrs. Jones tried to find out more about Steve's demise, she didn't stop at family. She also called several old church members, some of whom are members of my current church.

By this past Sunday, the rumor had spread throughout my church. If I had gone to services that morning, I could have nipped it in the bud. But of course, my life is now a sitcom, and I skipped church that day. As a result, my sister and I found ourselves hosting a surprise afternoon visit by two well-meaning church members, who wanted to make sure we were "holding up in this time of loss." It would have been awkward if it wasn't so hilarious.

Well, I guess this finally ends this week's TV episode, titled "Steve's Cashed It In... Or Not." Let's hope it's not a two-parter.

Sexual Chocolate Studly Man-Steak

Told Kerry that I mentioned him in my last blog entry. He insisted that this is how I should describe him from now on. Above is (more or less) my mental image of this.

Where's my purse?!

So, I'm sitting at Duffy's Tavern with my nephew Kerry at his birthday brunch last Sunday. I'm enjoying all the crab legs and mimosas I can handle, when a couple of girls ask to squeeze past us in order to get to a table. Fine, fine, no problem. It's kind of what you expect at a downtown Chicago bar-- packed in elbow to elbow.

But wait! One chick has a suitcase with her! Not some cute carry-on. It's a BIG ASS piece of luggage! Big enough to fit a 5-year-old inside (although I'm pretty sure the police frown on that type of behavior).

Has she ever been inside a Chicago bar? Have any of her friends? Someone should have explained to the girl that downtown bars have very little floor space and no one wants to trip over her crap, so she needed to leave her metric ton of worldly possessions somewhere else or not come at all.

So, now I need to get my purse off the back of my chair because heaven forbid she knock my new Coach purse to the floor! When I reach back for it, my purse is not there. Crap, it's already on the floor, then. Wait, no! I don't see my purse anywhere!

Oh no! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Why did I leave my purse on the back of my chair, where I couldn't keep an eye on it?

What am I going to do now?

Sigh. OK. Let's backtrack. When did I see it last? That's right. I was digging through it just a few minutes ago, looking for an embarrassing childhood photo of Kerry to share with him and his friends on this special day (I am so his favorite aunt). Did I get the photo out yet? No, I was interrupted by some girl with her super-sized Samsonite trying to get past me.

Wait a minute...

My purse is in my left hand. I've been spinning around in a panic, shouting "Where's my purse?!" And it's been in my hand the whole time!

Luckily, since the music is so loud, the only people who have heard me act like an idiot are my BFF Regina and Kerry, who will probably rag on me about this for quite a while. That's fine. I still have that photo.

She must get lost. A lot.

When you temp for a living, you get to meet a lot of interesting people. And by "interesting," I mean to say "functionally insane." I guess you can say that on some level everyone is sanity-challenged, including me (did I mention that I temp for a living?). But it's my blog, so I've decided that I am the sane person in the room. And the voices in my head agree with me, so there!

Anyway, this brush with the bizarre occurred during my first week on a temp job. "Abby" was showing me the ropes. As she trained me on what I was to do, Abby handled a multi-line phone and juggled several responsibilities at the same time without breaking a sweat. All in all, she was a very competent person. So there's NO WAY someone like that would open up a can of CRAZY, right?

Well, during a slow moment in the day, Abby complimented me on my manicure. I thanked her and said that if she was interested, I had it done at the nail shop across the street, just north of this building. I tried to point in the direction of north, but the area where we were sitting did not have any windows, and being new to the job, I didn't have my bearings. Abby, surprisingly, did not know either; however, she mentioned that she had a compass in her desk that could help us.

A compass? Really? This wasn't a temp job at the Timberland Outlet Store. This was a paper pushing job at your standard office building. There was no conceivable reason why anyone would need a compass. But no worries: I'm sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for her having a compass. Maybe it was a keychain. Or maybe it was part of some novelty paperweight. Or heck, maybe she was an avid hiker and liked to keep her compass/GPS locator with her at all times because she never knew when the urge to go hiking would overcome her and she liked to be prepared. Whatever.

So, imagine my shock when she pulled a mouse pad out of one of her desk drawers. A MOUSE PAD. One of those little flat pieces of foam and cloth that you place under your computer's mouse to make it glide easier. A. MOUSE. PAD.

It was one of the company's promotional mouse pads-- it was circular and had a pattern of a compass printed on it. It represented the company's slogan which was something like, "using this company's products is going in the right direction." But it couldn't have been more not a compass. And yet I sat in stunned silence while this very accomplished woman ROTATED THAT MOUSE PAD clock-wise and counter clock-wise, trying to "adjust" it so that it faced north. After several long seconds, Abby finally gave up and said to me, "I guess this won't help."

No, I guess not.

[Note: I am completely joking when I say "the voices in my head." I once made that joke with a casual acquaintance, and she looked at me funny for the rest of the evening. Please don't assume that it is a cry for help. I let my drinking do that for me. KIDDING!]

Why, hello sweetie!

Hello and welcome to my brand-spanking-new blog. I have decided to (finally) create my own blog for two reasons. First, I have a need to write things down. Have you ever seen a movie or TV show where some teenage girl writes wistfully into her diary? Well, I was that girl. For a long time. I was also that girl with the journal in college. Oh, you know the girl I'm talking about. Her journal was tragically COOL-- it had entries in at least three different colored inks that included not only her ingenious scribblings, but also personal sketches and taped-in excerpts of her favorite articles and pictures that SIGNIFY her life (think: the lead characters' journals in the 1997 movie The Saint, only with more paint pen designs and holographic stickers).

My second reason for this blog is that somewhere along the line, I decided that I was funny. You can blame my friends and family for encouraging this. They've always laughed in all the right places during my anecdotes-- leading me to believe that I am a natural comedienne. Or at least wildly amusing. If they did this based on some misguided sense of affection, then every single friend/family member is to be held fully responsible for the (allegedly) abundant lack of humor found in this blog. [List of transgressors available upon re... uh, will sue if I name them.] So, if you feel compelled to state in my Comments Section how unfunny I am, then I say you are free to express that opinion. Just remember that I am just as free to ignore it.

Alright now. Here is what you should expect from a blog called A Mundane Life... with Jokes: mundane stuff (SURPRISE!!). Okay, okay. What I mean is that I intend to post anecdotes of the funny, strange and baffling things that happen to me in my regular, ordinary, plain-brown-paper-bag of a life. I will also describe in detail the many pet peeves that I have acquired over my 39 years. I should also admit that while most of my posts will be about current events, I will occasionally dip into my past for funny stuff. So, to the people in my life who may have heard those stories exactly one zillion times: tough.

Smooches,

Diana