The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Bobby Pins

Generally when I lose something I usually find about 3 bobby pins while I'm looking for the object I lost. Every time I pull something from my pocket a bobby pin is generally attached. The darn things just find their way EVERYWHERE. A package of bobby pins usually contains about sixty of them. One probably thinks, "Wow! Sixty bobby pins! That is more than anyone could ever use in her entire life!!!"

But somehow, a package of bobby pins lasts only about a year. The things constantly vanish. I have a few theories:

• The inventor of the bobby pin (or her/his estate) gets $0.000000001 for each bobby pin sold. At that rate, it would be worth paying someone to go out and steal them from users so they would have to buy more.


• Bobby pins are part rabbit: they breed at intense levels (which is why when you look for one you suddenly find 15), but need solitude to do so. They leave your home for a few months, and suddenly you find numerous of them in a box under your stairs. The ones that have lost the little plastic bit on the end are ready to reproduce.


• Magnetic forces of gravity. Scientists don't care so they never bothered to look into it, but the speed of the Earth's rotation around the sun combined with a thinning atmosphere has created an environment where bobby pins are pulled from their natural resting place and down to the ground... possibly even pulled down as far as the Earth's core. THIS is the blame for global warming: the finely crafted, metal bobby pins are heating up and shooting rays of heat to the Earth's surface. While scientists have been looking up to the sun for the cause of our warming Earth (oh, PS, it's below seasonal here), they really should be looking down... You heard it here first, Friends.


• Elves. The wee wankers are running about at night (or the day if your sleep schedule is a bit off) stealing the things. Originally the elves used them to create a large metropolis entirely of bobby pins. They did this after their original kingdom of popsicle sticks burnt to the ground in the Tragic Fire of 1939. In fact, some say this triggered the invasion of Poland and lead to the commencement of World War II. This is usually omitted in history texts due to the difficulty of obtaining photographic proof.

If you find constantly updating you stash of bobby pins to be too time consuming and is eating into your budget, maybe I suggest you look in the following places to replenish your stock:

• Girls' washroom.


• Hole in purse.


• Locker room floor.


• My floor. Actually, pick any room in the house.


• Church. While you're there, skim through the bible. Let me know how it ends.


• Follow around someone with an up-do. Bobby pins dribble out of hair like mushy squash from a toddler's mouth.

May your hair be fancy and grand.

Ewww, exercise.

Apparently I'm a little stuck on the English language lately (see previous post berating self-depreciating usages of the word 'just'). Disliked word of the week is exercise. So bland. So un-fun. I'm not opposed to exercise in what it is (physical movement providing health benefits?), but it undermines the activity at hand. It sounds so, "I'm going to do an activity that I don't enjoy because I have to for the benefits it offers my cardiovascular system." Once you call the activity by name, it generally sounds much more enjoyable. I don't consider biking exercise at *all*, I think of it as biking, something I love to do. Once you find a form of exercise you actually *like* doing, it starts becoming a hobby or an activity. Basically this all runs through my brain as I start going to the gym again in the winter and feel like I'm going an exercise factory or industrialised fat burner. Yawn.

Not to 100% knock on the gym. In an effort to keep myself motivation (yawn), here is a list of things I like about the gym:

• Sweating, having a bright pink face, hair frizzing out - basically looking out I was outside in the summer and having fun.


• Watching fearless boys dive off the diving boards in the pool area. (Note: I don't just stand there watching them in freaky Jen fashion, big glass windows by some of the cardio equipment look out over the pools.)


• Reading magazines.


• Occasionally watching a good tv show. Why sometimes five of the six TVs are showing sports (particularly as there are only two or three sports stations) is beyond my comprehension of basic reason. But sometimes there is good stuff on the tellies.


• Watching the guys train for whatever team they are on jump onto really high steps without falling. Seriously. Saw this for the first time a few weeks ago and they were easily (or so it appeared to be easily) hopping from the floor with their feet together onto steps three or four feet high. Actually incredibly impressive! I might hop up my stairs later and see if I can do it without falling and getting a concussion, smashing my nose, cracking my ankle, etc.


• It's pretty convenient, as far as gyms go. It's about 3-seconds across campus. AND if it's cold I can cut through one building for temporary shelter from the brutal winds that plague the university like a cheap virus in a Doctor's waiting room. (Of course, inconvenient is packing extra clothes, sneakers, etc. to take to work everyday and never showing up with just a purse and perhaps a lunch bag like everyone else. Non non, Jen Mac shows up with a kitbag containing one-third of her wardrobe. Those who don't know me appear baffled when the girl with the stuffed-full red backpack and biking helmet actually walks into an office instead of a classroom.


• Something to do. Let's be honest, hibernation levels tends to increase in the winter. Our inner bear comes out. (Apparently I would be a polar bear according to the quiz I just took. I was not pleased with the result so took a different quiz - apparently the Internet is full of "What kind of bear are you?" quizzes - and am now a black bear due to a preference of berries and fish and tailoring my answers so I wouldn't get polar bear again.) I sit in my office by myself all day. No need for me to rush home and, oh, sit around. Fuuuuun. Such a life would force me to be cautious - don't wanna have too much fun doing nothing and wear myself out. Tragic.


• Uggh... running out of points.


• Spin bikes have pedals fitted for both regular sneakers and bike shoes. Sometimes I feel like uping my geek level and bringing my biking shoes so that people have something to stare at and make fun of. I entertain in small ways.


• That's all. Even getting this many points was a stretch.

Bleh.

Plot summary: basically I go to the gym so I don't feel lazy. Laziness is vile. I understand not everyone physically can or even wishes to go for a walk along the beach, splash about in a pool... but not doing it now prevents you from having the ability to do it later. Blah blah blah.

(PS - someone in the movie I'm watching - which was released in 2006 - just had an old school printed airplane ticket that she was looking at on the way to the airport. Didn't they stop making those about a decade ago? Pfft.)

Telephone... what?

Last night au pub Shannon was explaining the game of Pictionary Telephone. I started listening to the rules, but then was overcome with distraction of memories of the original telephone game and started to get mildly stressed. For the unfamiliar, Person 1 whispers a word or phrase into the ear of the person next to her. That person whispers it to the person next to her. Rinse, lather, repeat. Eventually it gets to the last person who announces what she heard. The originator announces what was originally said. Sometimes it matches, sometimes it close, or when I played, completely different.

I hated that game.

We played it at Brownie camp with a huge group of girls. In case you missed the memo/childhood, about 5% of girls are actually mean dictators of evil, disguised in the body of a prissy 7-year-old girl. Then they recruit unsuspecting friends into their group of evil, and thus develops a group of bitchy girls that make fun of others and everyone hates. Brownies was no exception. When the word returned to the original Telephone-er one Spreader of Evil just *needed* to know where the word/phrase got so off-track and how something to stupid could had happened.

Oh, Evil Girl, it's not so necessary to be an awful person. It was obviously me who completely changed the word. The rule was you could whisper it into the person's ear only once. I don't think I had my hearing aid yet, and I don't think I yet knew to always have someone whisper in my left ear, and never my right. So I ruined the game. And it was great to have that pointed out to a Gaggle of Girls. I couldn't hear the person next to me so I sent the word "abracadabra" around the room. Recently I had read someone that it was the longest word with no vowels other than 'a'.

Eventually I got better at the game when I learned to always have people whisper in my left ear. Even better, I didn't play. Now, usually when I can't hear someone I smile and insert random chuckles where I suspect to be appropriate. Or better yet, just tell them I can't hear them. Kind of a conversation killer though, particularly if asked a question.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Telephone is an evil, vile game.