Got a meeting in the ladies room - I'll be back real soon
SHUT UP AND LISTEN TUESDAYToday’s SHUT UP AND LISTEN TUESDAY is dedicated to the ladies of the office loo (aka, lavatory.)
Office bathroom etiquette 101
1. If you do a victory dance in one of the stalls that includes loud foot stomping, arm rustling, and chanting (ie, “Oh yeah, it’s my birf-day, oh yeah, get busy!”), check to see if there are others present before you begin. Otherwise, you’ll feel REALLY DUMB when you suddenly realize that there are feet in the stall right next to yours.
2. If the janitor is foreign, learn a snippet or two of her native tongue. Por ejemplo (for example),
translating the phrase “There’s plenty of toilet paper in this stall” could come in handy. Every few hours in our office bathroom, our Spanish-speaking janitor comes in to change the toilet paper in the three stalls. For some reason my body has the uncanny ability to want to “drop off los ninos” right before the janitor comes in to change the toilet paper. So when I am sitting there in peace and trying to get the deed done, all of the sudden I’ll hear her come in - garbage bags rustling, walkie talkie hissing Espanol, keys jingling. She'll barge into the other stalls and change the toilet paper out of its metal holders using loud and unnecessary force. Because she has to check all of the stalls, she'll sit there and wait for me to finish. Sometimes she'll talk on her walkie talkie. This makes it, um, hard to concentrate. The moral of this story? It really sucks to be in mid-poo while there's somebody else in the bathroom who is waiting to change the toilet paper AND if you can't tell her that there's plenty of toilet paper already in the stall it makes it even more sucky.
3. If you tend to sing or talk to yourself or talk on your cell phone while in the loo, refrain. The stall is not like your car - it isn't soundproof.
I want candy
I'm happy to announce that there were in fact no Oompa Loompas at the Scharrfen Berger chocolate factory. Even though it would be strangely cool to have a personalized Oompa Loompa song detailing all of my transgressions and imperfections, it would certainly not be cool to disappear forever after being carried off in a crazy dragon boat on the chocolate river.
The tour was fun and highly educational, but seeing the factory itself was anti-climactic. None of the machinery was on 'cause it was a Saturday. I didn't even get to see the chocolate bars roll out on the conveyor belt. The first part consisted of a 40 minute lecture where we learned the history of Scharrfen Berger chocolate and the proccess of their chocolate making. Fun facts you probably didn't know about chocolate:
1. Cacao beans grow in rain forest conditions. They require tall trees to grow above them and debris on the grown below 'em to grow.
2. The cacao fruit grows directly on the
trunk of the tree. The tree looks alien with the fruit jutting out of the trunk. Weird!
3. The only place cacao beans grow in the United States is Hilo, Hawaii.
4. Cacao trees require pollination by insects called midges in order to produce fruit. Midges fly into the cacao flowers to hide from other insects, and while they are in the flower they inadvertedly pollinate it.
I then got to taste lots of different types of chocolates, yum! One of the founders of Scharffen Berger formerly owned a vinyard, so their chocolate contains a combination of many different types of beans and results in a taste that changes as you eat it. Like wine, the chocolate has a distinct taste when you intially first start eating it, then it changes as it melts down in your mouth, and then has another distinct taste upon finishing it.
TF and I left the factory with chocolate coursing through our viens. A few hours later at home, we both realized that for some reason we were in an exceptionally really great mood. Yes, it could've been because it was a Saturday or it could've been because I'm leaving for Maui in a few days or it could've also been because I escaped being spirited away by the Oompa Loompas, but there also is a possiblity it could've been because of the "feel good" properties that chocolate contains. Lots of people experience a happy lift after they've eating chocolate. Chocolate contains more than
300 known chemicals - there's gotta be something in there that's responsible for making me feel so damn good after I eat it! It could be the caffiene (although it's only present in less than 1%), or theobromine (another stimulant), or phenylethylamine (say that fast five times.) Phenylethylamine is related to amphetemines, but don't worry, kids - chocolate is not the gateway drug to crack.
