What's Up With That?

by Tom Kuzeja - March 10, 2000

What's Up With That?

I'm Clod... Tom Clod

I'm losing it as I get older. Eye/hand coordination, clear thinking, common sense... what I had of these things seems to be evaporating more quickly than the water from a freshly sprinkled lawn during the town water ban on a hot summer day. It's obvious that my sense of humorous analogies is gone too (assuming it was ever there to begin with). What's up with that?

I get in to the office early. I'm usually sitting at my desk at 6:30 am. I like to be a good doobie and put on a fresh pot of coffee a little later on for folks as they start trickling in around 8:00 or so. The other day, I had everything all set:

1. Put coffee in the filter
2. Put filter in its holder
3. Put holder in the machine.
5. Press the brew button and walk away for 5 minutes.

4. Put empty coffee pot on bottom burner. Ooops! Wait, that step was supposed to come before the walk away for 5 minutes step! When I returned, all I saw was a big, brown puddle soaking into our new carpet. Oh yeah, what a feeling. So at this point, I had a choice. I could have either smashed the empty coffee pot against the floor and claimed that it burst into flames as the hot coffee hit it or I could "fess up". I pondered this while I pulled off about 4 or 5 paper towels at a time and then tried to soak up as much coffee out of the carpet as possible. Having gone through an entire roll of paper towels with minimal impact to the damage done, I figured I had little choice but to fess up.

That was the down-stroke for the 'L' on my forehead. Now for the cross-stroke.

This morning, I figured I would wash the coffee pots before brewing the coffee. One of the pots was pretty clean and the other one had baked on coffee from sitting on the burner overnight. So, here I am, washing the relatively clean one while the cruddy one soaks. We have this pot cleaner sponge on the end of a plastic wand and it seems to do a great job. With the first pot finished, I turn my attention to the baked on pot which has turned into a soupy brown mix of coffee, soap suds and water.

Never plunge a sponge-on-a-wand into a small mouthed coffee pot that is filled to the brim with a muddy liquid mix.

The resultant tidal wave of spooge, in accordance with Murphy's Law, had only one place to go: the crotch of my pants... my light tan pants.

6:30 AM, big brown liquid stain all over the front of my pants, customers coming in today... swell. And to top it all off, I have to go to the bathroom now... really really really bad. But there is no way I am going to do that until my pants dry out because that's all I need... to exit the bathroom with... you get the picture.

So, how's your day going?

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