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I think the automated checkout lady at our grocery store hates me.  Then again, I think she might hate everyone.

It seems like automated checkout lines are getting more popular.  I see them at most grocery stores, Wal-Marts, etc.  When they first set them up in our grocery store, the automated voice lady seemed pleasant enough, and it was a nice change of pace from using the human-operated lines.  Our local humans are often unpleasant or generally miserable people, so I don't mind scanning items myself.

But a few months ago they changed the voice behind the automated lane, and I think she sounds a bit cranky.  She has this pompous-sounding inflection in her voice, like she's so smart just because she's invisible and everything.

Not only that, it seems like she makes a point of loudly announcing every item as I'm buying it, which can be a bit annoying.  ("Please re-scan your box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS... Please put your box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS onto the conveyor belt... Please put your box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS into a bag...")

My GPS doesn't talk, thank goodness, but I have always found those voices to be a little unpleasant, too, for the most part.  I think it would be great to be the voice behind those units.  I'd make a point of getting really annoyed with people who miss turns and so forth ("Hey MORON!  You missed the turn.  Now I have to RECALCULATE the route.  Are you HAPPY NOW?")

I'd have a lot of fun as the GPS voice.  I'd also probably try to intentionally steer people into oncoming traffic or lakes, too.  And I'd program it to say things like, "You let that old guy pass you?  Perhaps you should stop and buy a box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS!"

Come Sail Away!

I had the opportunity to go sailing last weekend, but I still don't understand the whole thing.

I have cousins who have a sailboat up at Lake Chautauqua in New York, and I had the opportunity to join them for a ride last weekend.  My brother also went along, and he shares my vast knowledge of how to operate a sailboat (not a shred of knowledge, in any form whatsoever).

I love being out on the water, and we even owned a powerboat for well over a decade.  But sailing is a whole different experience.  For one thing, it clearly defies several laws of physics.  The wind pretty much just blows in one direction, yet sailors manage to trick it into allowing them to travel in whatever direction they want.

One would think that you could put up the sail and the wind would take you whichever way it was blowing, and then you'd have to call a buddy to come pick you up in a truck at whatever shore you drifted to.  That's pretty much how it goes with hot air balloons, right?

I have no idea how they accomplish it, but my cousins were able to do some wacky maneuvers to get the boat to go where they wanted.  Sometimes this involved having my brother and me yank on various ropes.  And my cousins knew all of the technical terms for all of these things; they were always mizzening their ballasts through their daggerboards on the port side, or some such thing.

I'm not sure if we were even accomplishing anything by pulling the ropes, or whether our cousins just wanted to make us feel like we were contributing.  Maybe they were having us pull the ropes so we'd stop being inquisitive about stuff ("Hey!  What does THIS thing do?!").  Whatever the case, here it is, four days later, and my right arm still hurts from pulling on one of the ropes.

While out on a boat I generally like to relax and take in the scenery, but you don't get to do a whole lot of that while sailing.  Mostly I spent my time worrying about whether this gigantic mast was going to swing over and knock me out of the boat, which turned out to be a pretty valid concern.

At one point, one of the Andys (everyone on the boat except for me and my brother was named Andy) decided to turn around, which meant swinging the giant mast thing around.  And when they swing that thing around, you have to duck under it and move to the other side of the boat.

Or you can do like I did.  You can sit there and contemplate a route to the other side, and at the very last nanosecond duck under the mast and get stuck in a very awkward yet hilarious position while all of the Andys and my brother howl with laughter.

We did somehow make it back to the dock in one piece, and I honestly did enjoy and appreciate the experience.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go take a dinghy.

Socks of Doom

I had a harrowing experience with a pair of socks the other day.  It was so bad that I felt it was worthy of a blog entry.  That, and I haven't had anything better to blog about for a couple weeks, apparently.

So I went on a weekend excursion which involved a lot of Geocaching.  If you're not familiar with Geocaching, it's basically a sport in which we use billions of dollars of government-owned equipment to help us find tupperware containers in the woods, some of which contain valuable toys from McDonald's.  It can also involve a great deal of hiking.

I spent most of the day on Friday finding caches up around St. Marys, PA, and I wasn't going to let the fact that it was pouring down rain stop me from finding my tupperware. At the end of the day, I was rather extremely moist, and in retrospect I should have simply abandoned my clothing -- especially my drenched socks -- in the woods, or set fire to all of it, or something.  As a side note, as I was hiking through the woods, on two separate occasions I found pairs of underwear in the middle of nowhere.  I'm not sure what goes on in those woods.

Anyway, instead of burning those clothes, I stuck them in a secret compartment in the back of my Prius.  There's a little "cubbyhole" kind of thing in the hatch, convenient for keeping bug spray, windshield cleaner, illegal aliens, WD-40, etc.  This is where I tossed the Socks of Doom for the weekend.

I came home on Monday night after spending a couple days in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, and it was pretty warm for most of that time.  When it came time to extract the socks from the car, I was concerned that they might stink a little since I could already smell them a bit while I was driving.  But nothing prepared me for the amazing stench I was about to endure.

Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazi dudes were standing there around the ark, and with great anticipation they opened it up and these demons came bursting out, all honked off?  And the faces of the Nazis melted right off as the demons roared into the sky?  I think my socks were actually a little worse than the demons.  I managed to hold my breath as I held them away from my body as I literally ran them to the basement to toss them into the washing machine.  And now they're clean again.

Beyond that, there really isn't a real point or moral to the story.  But then again, I rarely have a point, do I?

Extreme Mediocrity

I don't mean to brag here, but once upon a time I was extremely mediocre at playing tennis.  Nowadays it kinda stinks because I can rarely find anyone to play with.  So I am making it my mission to train Little Smoot to be my new competition.

At the pace we're going, she'll be getting really good right around the same time that I will be dead, but that's not going to deter me.  Actually, she has made some decent progress in these past few days, so I am rather encouraged.  She does have the world's worst teacher, after all.

I tried to teach Mrs. Smoot how to play tennis a number of years ago, and it ended up being one of those famous instances where we almost drove straight to the divorce lawyer afterward.  I am not a patient teacher when it comes to anything, let alone tennis.  I just expect that people should be able to pick up a racket and automatically know how to hit a ball over a net.  But that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Mrs. Smoot will also be more than happy to tell you about the time I attempted to teach her how to drive a manual transmission car, but that's an entirely different near-divorce attorney story.  And the heck of that story is that we were already in the car, and I'm sure she would have driven us straight to the attorney's office if she had any idea how to get the car out of first gear.

Anyway, I finally got a chance to play tennis this morning against my brother.  The two of us used to spend our entire summers on the court (the tennis court, not divorce court).  We'd ride our bikes all the way into town, play tennis for a few hours, and then go grab a bite to eat at a place that served food so greasy that it would easily counteract all of the exercise we had gotten.

I am happy to say that I was still able to play in a seriously mediocre fashion, judging from our matches this morning.  Unfortunately, my brother was able to play a level or two above mediocre, and he handed my butt to me on a platter.  Things went quickly downhill after I dove for a ball and did a very impressive face plant right into the net.

During this beautiful play I did manage to get the ball over the net, and with my nose still pressed on the ground I was still able to ask my brother whether I had scored.  Of course it turns out he was able to return the ball into my side of the court, in bounds, even while laughing himself silly.

At least I can still beat Little Smoot.  For now.