itinerary poopers

I work in an office building with five floors, and a few years ago someone in my office told me that they go to a different floor to poop.  I think the rationale was that when you stink up a bathroom, people won't recognize that it was their coworker who did it, but I'm adding a little to get to this explanation because it wasn't fully articulated.

We have several offices on our floor, and a few such as a bank and an office of lawyers and accountants have customers who visit throughout the day, so there are a lot of people who use the floor bathroom who I don't recognize. This being said, in the past few days I've witnessed two different men walking from a different floor into our bathroom to poop.  So, while I thought before that travelling to poop was a quirky activity that only one guy did, I'm noticing a small pattern.

I'm not bothered by the fact that some people might decide it's better to go to a different floor than the one they work on to poop.  Everyone has their thing.  I'm perplexed though, because I'd be more embarrassed for someone to notice I'm going from a different floor to poop in their bathroom than I would be for a coworker to notice I stunk up the bathroom.  Am I alone on this?

everlasting deodorant

A while back--around fifteen months to be exact--Golden bought me a two-pack of deodorant. This isn't ground-shaking news, but I've long believed that my deodorant lasts longer than usual, so I decided to keep track of precisely how long it actually takes me to use up a typical stick of deodorant. The last stick I used lasted from mid-October, 2016, to this past Sunday (January 14, 2018).  I thought it took a year-and-a-half for me to get through a stick, but fifteen months is still pretty close.

I started to think that maybe everyone's deodorant habits are like mine.  However, a quick online search returned people in forums stating their stick would last anywhere from one to six months.  That immediately makes me second-guess whether I'm a walking case of B.O., but I really don't think I am.

I think the reason I use less is the same reason I don't wear cologne.  I find the scent overpowering, so I am sparing in my deodorant use.  My sense of smell is a bit more sensitive than average, so I consciously try to avoid adding too much strong scent to my person.

I'd ask how long everyone else's deodorant lasts, but that might be too personal of a question.  So, I'll ask a related question instead.  Does fifteen months for a stick of deodorant seem excessive, or about right?

fiber

When thinking about today's topic, my mind keeps going to the old SNL skit below.

When I started watching my calories this past March I very purposefully avoided putting too many rules in place.  I figured if I started trying to manage carbs, or sugar, or anything else I'd eventually give up.  So, I kept it to simply managing calories, and that was a very effective approach for me in cutting weight.

In the course of managing my calories I noticed a side benefit to this as well that minor digestion issues that regularly flared up for me largely died down.  Over time, I have concluded that this is because my fiber intake has increased some as I've started eating more low-calorie fruits and vegetables.

This confused me a little since the way fiber helped me seemed to be the opposite of what it's reputation is.  I was visiting the bathroom less frequently rather than more.  The jokes I had always heard were always about how fiber kept you chained to the toilet.

With this evidence behind me and having learned about some of the purported benefits of a high fiber diet I decided a few weeks ago that I would increase my fiber intake.  If increasing my fiber intake a little helped out my digestion increasing it a lot would make it even better, right!?

WOW, have I learned a life lesson!  Specifically, it is not wise to increase your fiber intake between 50% and 75% overnight.  The body has to adjust to this new way of life.  Fiber has to be stepped up gradually.  The problem is, this is hard to do.  Too much fiber produces just so much gas (Sorry for that detail!), but too little fiber will not adjust my body to being able to handle the volume of fiber I need to have in my diet.  Furthermore, it's not always easy to know whether I've properly hit my fiber target.

So, I'm hopefully at the tail end of this adjustment period.  Having gone through this, I really don't ever want to fall off the fiber wagon because it'll be painful getting back on.

automated bathrooms

A couple of months back I was in a store or restaurant bathroom with NJ and he stuck his hands under the sink expecting it to automatically come on.  He knows how manual sinks work—our house bathroom sink is a typical manual one—but he is accustomed enough to automated sinks in businesses that it makes sense to him to expect one.  In related news, I am feeling old.

This has to be something that all parents face with some regularity, but it is always odd to realize how different things are for my kids' generation compared to mine.  This is not in the interest of viewing one generation as superior, or spoiled, or disadvantaged.  This is just in the interest of comparing experiences.

There are more obvious differences as well.  My kids will grow up with different music than I did, with different TV shows than I did, and with the Internet.  For whatever reason, the ready availability of automated sinks in store bathrooms throughout their lifetime is what strikes a chord with me.

bad call

Earlier this week I walked into the bathroom at work and noticed someone I have not seen before. That is not too uncommon since there is a conference room on our floor that another company frequently uses for training.

While the guy was at the sink, though, he did something that I consider a faux pas in a public bathroom. The guy took a phone call and proceeded to carry a conversation just standing there in front of the sinks.

I am the type of person where, if Golden is carrying a phone conversation and I am in the bathroom I do everything I can to block bathroom-specific noise. I have also let calls hit voicemail when I was in the bathroom rather than trying to carry a conversation in that environment. There is just something weird about hearing a flush over the phone. This is why I could not figure out why the guy didn't quickly head for the door once the call came in.

So, if I call you in the future and you are temporarily indisposed, you can let it hit voicemail. I don't mind.

quit stalling

Everyone knows that you aren't supposed to park in the handicapped spot unless you are handicapped. If you are ticketed, the fine is very expensive, and if you aren't, you will probably earn the ire of most who notice you walking healthfully from the parking lot to wherever you are going. I don't park in the handicapped spot, but I do one other similar thing and I am trying to determine how equivalent it is.

In the bathroom at my office there are two stalls. The one that is furthest in the corner is a handicapped stall and the other one is a standard stall. I have noticed that most, but not all, people use the handicapped stall when they have the option. I like using that one as well, too. The main advantage is that the handicapped stall feels quite a bit more secluded than the regular stall.

The question I have is, is there a problem with using the handicapped stall when the regular stall is unoccupied? There are no people on my floor who require a handicapped stall, so this should only be an issue if someone is visiting the office, like a customer or a job candidate. Is the possibility for someone needing to use a handicapped stall a big enough possibility that I shouldn't? Is this like using the handicapped parking spaces in front of the building?

bathroom solitude

I prefer that when I visit the bathroom that the fewest possible people are there. I can deal with other people in the bathroom, but solitude is the ideal.

Since my office is on the path that most of the people at my work have to take to get to the bathroom, this provides me a distinct advantage in choosing when to take a break. While this is generally a positive, I have noticed that people walk by my office a lot. More than once I have stood up to visit the facilities, and in that split second someone strolled by my door in the same direction that I want to go. When this happens I usually decide to hold it a little while longer.

Also, some of the people in the office do not have to walk by where I sit to get to the restroom, so if I figure out that more than one person is already in the bathroom or headed to the bathroom before I get there, I typically turn around and come back later.

I know this is a little quirky, but it is how I operate.

a nice repose

I do not have too much to say this weekend, so this will be short and light.

As Golden mentioned on her blog, we have been working on the bathroom for the last two weeks. I should get the major stuff done today, meaning I expect to have the toilet and sink reinstalled by the time I go to bed. If this works, I am hoping that my next post will be a walkthrough of the transition that has been our bathroom.

Aside from the obvious fact that we have been without the service of a toilet and sink in our only full bathroom for the last two weeks, two other things have made this project feel like it has been going on forever. The first is that the cold spell that was snapped yesterday started roughly when we started the project. The second is that colds that everyone in our family has had and that we are just now completely getting over started roughly when we started the project. It is not just the end of the renovation that I am excited about.

Hopefully, the next time you see a post life will be a little more stable.

dumb moments in business

I don't have anything too original this weekend. We leave to see family for the holidays tomorrow morning, so rather than taking the time to compose something fresh I am leaning on an article I read recently.

Fortune posted its list of 101 dumbest business moments of 2007, though I have to say that calling all of them business moments is quite a stretch. Even so, here are some of my favorites.

#7: Toilets Combust
A Japanese company named Toto offered repairs to thousands of its customers' toilets after three of them catch fire.

#13: Not Such a Small World
The "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland has to be closed so that the water channel that passenger boats travel on can be deepened. This has become necessary because the ride has been getting stuck when loaded with heavier passengers.

#22: Death of Cold
A funeral home in Scotland has to address reports that employees used the ashes of some of the dearly departed to spread over slippery sidewalk ice. The employees didn't go as far as Keith Richards (#28) claimed he did, though, when he stated that he snorted his father's ashes.

#38: Is Your PC Running Too Well?
An IT security consultant takes out a Google ad with the text below. Over four hundred people click on it.

Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!

#51: They Took Candy from Her Too
When a nine-year-old girl sent a letter to Steve Jobs with ideas of how to improve the iPod Nano the response was a letter from Apple's legal counsel telling her not to send any more letters.

#53: Ouch
A Japanese arm wrestling game breaks three people's arms.

#58: Which Border Should We Head To?
Taco Bell advertises in Mexico City that it does not pretend to serve Mexican food.

#59: They Made It up in Volume
Radiohead puts an album online and asks people to pay what they think the music is worth. Less than forty percent of people who download pay anything.

#66: Your Other Left
Three different patients have operations on the wrong side of their heads in one hospital in one year.

#69: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
A whistleblower alerts Exelon Nuclear to people working on a security contract sleeping on the job. Exelon then gets rid of everyone on the contract, including the whistleblower.

#75: Can't Get Rid of the Old Man Smell
A homebuyer who got the house from a bank who had repossessed the house finds the previous owner mummified inside the house.

#87: It's in the Bag
SkyWest is forced to apologize to a passenger who had to urinate into an air sickness bag when he was disallowed from using the restroom.

#99: She Must Not Have a Sub-Prime Loan
The senior vice-president of marketing at Century 21 predicts that the 2007 housing market will be one of the best in the past 30 or 40 years.

take a cold shower

This is the time of the year when I start to notice that the house is not perfectly warm when I wake up. So to combat this, I like to hurry through my morning teeth brushing and shaving to get into my warm shower. It is one of the few of my typical morning rituals that I look forward to.

A couple of days ago I had a rude awakening when I hopped into the shower. The water was not cold, but it certainly was not warm enough to offset the temperature of the air around me. I turned the nob for the cold water all the way off, but the water still did not warm up. This was a disturbing turn of events since we just replaced our water heater a month ago.

Golden later noted that NJ had for a brief moment gotten to the water heater temperature control nob and twisted it. She was not sure what the temperature was supposed to be set to, so she could not just return it to its previous setting. Unfortunately, I don't know the right setting either.

So, until I determine that my morning shower is comfortable, I will be bumping the heat up on our water heater every day. It's a hassle, but it is worth the effort.

this halloween

Yesterday was NJ's first Halloween in a costume. Golden had picked a cow costume for him. He even had a cowbell (so, no, he didn't need more cowbell). He didn't really like wearing the costume, but he did look good in it.
I debated whether to recycle a costume to wear at work for a while. I finally decided on putting together a "royal flush" costume that consisted of a purple robe, a scepter, a crown (with a toilet handle), and a toilet seat. Generally, in judging a costume for an adult I think there are three things to consider.

1. Cleverness/Originality
2. Appearance
3. Nerdiness/Obscurity of Subject Matter

As is usually the case, I think my costume was relatively strong in originality, but was a little weaker in appearance and was a bit nerdy. Fortunately, in my office originality is more valued than appearance or avoiding nerdy subject matters.

I used spray paint to make my crown and scepter gold. I should have thought twice before doing this. I had a splitting headache all day and I am convinced it is from being in my office throughout the day with those two items.

Also, I carved a pumpkin. As should be obvious, it is a pumpkin inside a pumpkin inside a pumpkin. I though it was an original idea, but my understanding is that this was discussed last year, so it must have soaked into my subconsciousness. Regardless, this is the result.
While it was a fun enough Halloween, I am always content to have completed the holiday.

the bathroom comfort scale

I have been thinking lately about the fact that I don't like to follow people into public bathrooms. Sometimes I have to, but I am a little uncomfortable doing this. I have also given a lot of thought to how standard certain bathroom discomforts are. As such, I have devised a grading scale. It is specific to the men's room because that is the one I use. For the record, my comfort level is no higher than four.

• Comfort Level 1: Unwilling to use the public restroom at all if anyone else is in it.
• Comfort Level 2: Will use urinal when in need.
• Comfort Level 3: Will use a stall if no one else is in the restroom.
• Comfort Level 4: Will use a trough urinal when other people are in the restroom.
• Comfort Level 5: Will use a stall even if there are other people in the bathroom, but will take a stall toward the back of the bathroom.
• Comfort Level 6: Not at all uncomfortable about using a trough urinal.
• Comfort Level 7: Will proudly march to an open stall with newspaper even when all other stalls are used.
• Comfort Level 8: Will strike up conversations with the person in the next stall.

I am sure that I missed some steps in my scale and I know that it does not take women's bathrooms into account. Still, it works for my purposes.

summer trip: day three

Miles so far: 776

The first day of the trip, while we did a lot of travelling on the road, still felt like a vacation. The last two days have not. There have been good moments, so this isn't all bad. I will try not to make this come across too negative, but I am not going to lie, either.

Wednesday did not start off well because NJ woke up at 5:20 and did not go back to bed. As everyone who reads this blog should have figured out, this ruined Golden's day more than mine. We left Bloomington on schedule and met my cousin south of Chicago. She had a baby three to four months ago and she lives a half mile from one of the roads on our planned itinerary, so it would have been wrong for us not to meet somewhere and take pictures of each other's baby. NJ is just short of twenty pounds at a year and MJ (his cousin) is seventeen pounds at less than four months. Golden and I did not help NJ out too much in the size department.Golden's grandparents and her aunt and uncle live a little south of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her grandmother somehow got the idea that we would be in town Wednesday evening rather than Thursday evening, so we were under considerable pressure to get to Michigan as quickly as possible.

The good part was that we all enjoyed playing games at Golden's aunt and uncle's house on Thursday night. The bad part was that NJ had been battling a fever all day and got real hot (about 102 degrees). We had to rush him to the hotel and try to cool him down.

It doesn't sound like much, but Golden and I agreed that Thursday kicked our butts.

Today we visited one of Golden's friends from college and her two kids (pictured below) over lunch. Her husband is in Iraq right now with the Army, so I think she is interested in anything to get out of the house. It was a nice break for us as well.We went back to see Golden's family after that visit and eventually ended up at her grandparents' apartment. We spent most of the afternoon there before going out for supper. As we were driving back to the apartment, Golden noted that NJ's diaper was leaking. Bad. Really bad.

We had to throw away the clothes that NJ was wearing, and six adults spent about a half hour getting the car, the car seat, and NJ bearable (still not actually clean). The one really funny element to the story was that, while everyone else was heavily involved with cleaning up NJ's mess, Golden's grandfather was preparing his fishing rod as if he had no clue what everyone else was doing. He was so focused on wanting to go fishing, he wasn't phased by anything else that was happening. After the quick cleaning job, we came back to the hotel to clean NJ and the car seat better.

So, the current situation is that NJ is still feverish and our vehicle now smells like the inside of a heavily-utilized cattle car. I am hoping that in short order we can upgrade the situation to mildly warm and a cattle car that has not been used for a while.

wipe

Some of the guys in my office have been ordering food out a lot lately. I have had to resist joining the crowd because eating out is considered one of the biggest budget busters in existance. I did go in for a sub from Jimmy John's a week ago, though.

The napkins that come with a Jimmy John's sub remind customers to wipe after eating. While I found these instructions pertinent, I also determined that the instructions can be just as pertinent in other situations.

The pictures below are a little blurry, but the long and short of it is that I placed the "Wipe" napkin on the inside of one of the bathroom stalls at work in case anyone needed a reminder.

a few updates

This is just a quick update on the status of things in my world and stuff I have posted on recently.

Since NJ is our priority, I'll mention him first. We're getting pictures of NJ done tomorrow. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but it has proven difficult to time pictures so that he doesn't have a bump on his head. Last week under my care he crawled head-first into the back door.

Regarding school, I got an email today saying that the four-credit reduction in my MBA program's requirements applies to anyone graduating December 2007 or later. That will save me almost a semester's worth of work and just short of two thousand dollars once textbook prices are considered. I'm ecstatic.

While I'm talking about school, I'll mention that I am two weeks from the end of the semester. I think I officially mentally checked out two weeks ago, so that's probably not a good thing. Anyhow, two weeks from this Thursday I can start going to coffee night again at Homers. The hiatus feels like it has been longer than the few weeks that it has been.

Regarding the site, I decided to take the poll down for now. It wasn't getting used much and I wasn't really happy with the appearance. I may put another one up in the future, but I need to think it out more before I do that. The last poll results are below.

Regarding my exercise routine, I should probably be doing more. I have walked quite a bit, and I actually did some physical work at work on Thursday. I don't know how a person is supposed to take the time to exercise with a job, school, a baby, and Kansas weather (which kept me indoors this week), though. It seems I have more pressing concerns than my body.

poll results

As long as I am doing polls I intend to give my thoughts about the voting, why I created the polls, or stuff that really has no relevant importance.

Blog Polls
My whole point in doing this poll was to verify that the idea of putting a poll on this site wasn't universally reviled. The overwhelming response was--well, there was no overwhelming response. Therefore, I proceeded as planned.

A Problem
Since I did my John and Jane post I thought I'd see how people would respond to someone with a problem. The majority would apparently use sarcasm. No one would try to fix the problem. I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for real help unless I'm looking for someone to mock my problems.

Gotta Go
The selections were rather evenly spread. The options weren't nearly comprehensive, though. It's always funny to see someone use the side of the road or a tree.

Looking at Me
This was an attempt at humor late one night. Enough said.

what a waste

Johnson County Wastewater has an option to pay one time a year rather than once a month. It saves hassle, so I always go ahead and pay it that way. Because I only pay it once a year, though, I don't see the bill that often.

When I paid our yearly bill last night I noticed that it gets shipped to Kansas City, Missouri. Why is that? Shouldn't it get shipped somewhere in Johnson County? Does Johnson County ship sewage to Kansas City as well? That gave me an idea for some potential mottos for KCMO, if the city were actually receiving our sewage.*

• Kansas City: Taking Johnson County's crap since 1936.
• Kansas City: Send us your money. No ifs, ands, or butts.
• Kansas City: A city is a terrible thing to waste.
• Kansas City: What you smell is progress, among other things.
• Kansas City: Flushed with opportunity.
• Kansas City: We're number 1 and number 2.
• Kansas City: It's what you make of it.

* Mottos do not reflect the author's actual opinions of the fine metropolis of Kansas City, Missouri.

personal constellations

Pepi: "Tell me more! I want to know all the constellations!"
Homer Simpson: "Well, that one's Jerry, the cowboy. And that big-dipper-looking thing is Alan... the cowboy."

Like the above quote from The Simpsons attests, people like to see familiar things in randomness. Few of the constellations look anything like what they are supposed to portray, but that has not kept humanity from seeing fish, or scorpions, or twins, or bulls, or hunters up there. I am apparently no different.

Any time I visit the bathroom or I lay in bed and have the chance to look at a wall, ceiling, floor, or anything else that looks textured or dotted or splotchy, I see a face or animal or something like that. It is not voluntary. I assume most other people are like that, though I also assume that some people are more prone than others to let their attention be pulled to what might be seen in the texture of a wall.

I find it fascinating that, even though I might look at the same wall day after day I will see something different each time. I usually can't even find the face or animal that I noticed the previous time I looked at that patch of wall.

Sometimes I will be so intrigued about some new character that I noticed on the wall that I get spaced out and get lost in imagination about what that character might be doing in his or her current pose. A few days ago in the shower I determined that the Uncle Sam character that my mind had put together was himself lost in thought with his head turned away from me and leaning on his elbow. Kind of like a nonchalant cowboy.

trough luck

In visiting the Boulevard Drive-In on Friday I was reminded of one of my pet peeves. I cannot stand using trough urinals. Boulevard has two that are next to each other, so it is kind of like one long trough urinal. In talking with Golden I got the impression that she did not know much about the joys of trough urinals. For those like Golden who have limited experiences with these urinals, I found the following picture on Flickr.I personally don't know what the real value of a trough urinal is. Is it really worth saving the extra one or two hundred dollars that installing individual urinals will cost? They tend to show up in more rustic locations like campgrounds and high school football fields, but I have run into several in my lifetime.

There are probably guys who don't care one way or the other about standing shoulder to shoulder with other guys while they pee, but I am not one of them. From the expressions on the other guys' faces who have to go through this, I don't think most of them care for it all that much. Most suffer through because they have no other choice.

My limited experience with women's bathrooms and changing rooms is that much more thought goes into privacy there than in men's rooms. When I was a kid I used to visit a small park on Lake Oahe in South Dakota. The park was small enough that it did not have any bathrooms, but it did contain changing facilities for those who wanted to swim at the lake. The area designated for men was simply a large room with a long bench circumnavigating it with no real means of privacy. I disliked this, but figured there was no other way. Then one day I went with some friends to the park when we had it to ourselves and checked in on the women's changing area while I was there. I was shocked to find that rather than both sexes getting the same treatment, individual stalls had been erected so that the women could change in privacy.

I have one thing to say to people who are considering bathroom design in construction projects. Just say no to troughs.

cheesed

Every once in a while I get sick to my stomach at night and can only get comfortable enough to sleep by -- um -- spending some time in the bathroom. This hasn't happened to me for several months, so I figured it was something that had been temporary and that I was past. That was until a couple of nights ago when it happened again. It was only then that I deduced the root cause.

One of my favorite late night snacks is cheese and crackers. I usually eat colby or cheddar, but I have been known to use cream cheese as well. The crackers have to be saltines. The very thought of a slice of colby between two saltines makes my mouth water.

As my face was hovering over the toilet bowl something occurred to me. Those offerings that I had given to the porcelain altar in the past have always been very similar. Every time I had gotten sick I had eaten saltines and colby cheese shortly before. I was satisfied with that discovery, but it was only an hour and a half later that my stomach was satisfied enough that it would let me go to sleep.

Does this mean that I will not be eating colby and crackers any more? Of course not. It just means I won't gorge myself on half the package of cheese like I did that night.