Me: Gyroscopes are cool.

He: Best 1920s technology evah!

I don’t know why; I never claimed to be an expert, and half the time I don’t know the answer, either. But I’m happy to do what I can.

Now my apparent expertise seems to be expanding to include legal matters. This afternoon one of the other ladies came over to me to ask about a problem with one of her clients. A company was making monthly debits from their checking account that they hadn’t authorized—probably one of those barely-legit schemes that calls you up to “verify your information” to sign you up for something, who talked to one of the non-English-speaking employees who didn’t really understand what they were agreeing to.

They tried to call the merchant to cancel it, but couldn’t reach them. They told the bank the charges weren’t authorized, but the bank kept allowing them. It’s been going on for months.

“They shouldn’t be able to do that, should they?” asked my co-worker. “But the bank won’t do anything.”

I told her they should call the state attorney general. That’s what I’d try at this point if it were happening to my bank account; if the AG is the wrong place to call, they could at least tell me the right place. Hell, it’s not like I have any special legal knowledge.

I think I’ve figured out why they’re coming to me with questions. I often don’t know the answer, but I’m usually pretty good at figuring out where to go for the answer. So someone comes and asks me something, I don’t know either, but between the two of us we can find out. So we all get smarter together. Yay!

My monthly courses tend to follow a pattern. A day or two of anemic flow, a day when my uterus attempts to eject itself from my body, and another day or two of anemic flow. During that middle one, I carry half a dozen maxipads with me to work. Usually that’s enough.

Yesterday was the main event, periodically speaking. The cramps, the clots, the constant abdominal ache, the period shits. Yeah, guys (if you’re still reading), this is why we get cranky.

Last night I went to bed wearing a tampon and a maxipad. When I woke up the bed still looked like a scene from Hostel. Dammit. I’m not a fan of getting older, but I sure won’t miss this crap.

Just to add to my fun, the vent hose to the dryer has come loose. I don’t know who designs these things, but the screw I need to tighten to clamp it back down is under an overhang with three inches of clearance. My screwdriver is seven or eight inches long. Who the hell designs these things?!

The latest layoff was this week, when the only other male in the office besides the boss was laid off. Now we have a staff of nine, all female. I wonder how long it will be before we’re all having our periods at the same time. I bet once that syncs up the boss will start calling in sick that week.

Today I got cc’d on an e-mail the boss sent to our payroll department. Seems I’ll be getting a dollar more an hour starting next pay period. Woot! I guess this means I’ve survived the layoff tsunami.

• A turkey baster. Never used it.
• Two (2) candy thermometers. At one point I thought I might like to make homemade lollipops or truffles. Then I found out how much work is involved.
• Two (2) melon ballers. Never used. I don’t know where they came from.
• Rolling pin. I think I may have used it a few times attempting to make biscuits, which always came out like floury hockey pucks.
• Biscuit cutters. The biscuits were hopeless.
• Cookie cutters. Why do I have cookie cutters? If I ever made cookies, they were just the drop-off-a-teaspoon variety.

There’s a bunch of other shit that’s going out. The cabinets are a lot less crowded.

The Artist is following along behind me putting down new shelf paper. He does it much more neatly than I would, carefully trimming it to fit and cutting notches to go snugly around corner supports and protrusions.

I love dumping all this shit I never use. I have room to keep the stuff I have left tidy, so I can actually find it. Later today we’re going to tackle the pantry.

2012 Scientist: Temperatures are rising with incredible velocity across the globe!

Me: Temperature doesn’t have velocity!

Alpha Geek: No, no. You can’t be this outraged already, the stupidity level is only about a five. You have to tone it down so you’ll have room left for the real stupidity.

I’m so glad I didn’t pay ten bucks a head to see that movie.

Nicked from Dr. Grumpy.

One of them was a standard nondisclosure agreement. Nothing unexpected or concerning there; I work with private financial information and it’s perfectly reasonable to have me sign an agreement not to share that information around.

The other one was a non-compete agreement. I’ve never seen one, so I don’t know if it was standard or not, but it did concern me. For one thing, I’ve been doing some volunteer bookkeeping for a local nonprofit—nothing fancy, just helping them reconcile their bank accounts after they got a few months behind. But technically, under the terms of this agreement, I would not be able to do that any more. For another thing, it contained a clause about how I wasn’t to work in the field for [months/years] after my employment at this job ends. Unless this job offers some kind of severance deal to support me during those months/years, I’m going to need to find another one, and since our boss doesn’t even like us working overtime because of the cost, I’m pretty sure there’s no severance package.

But that part where it said [months/years]: that’s actually what it said. Whoever had printed out the non-compete template had neglected to replace “[months/years]” with a specific time frame. So I took that as an easy way out; I signed the nondisclosure agreement, then returned both to my boss and told him I hadn’t signed the non-compete because of the spot where it hadn’t been completed. I was kind of hoping that it would fall through the cracks and never be mentioned again, because I don’t think I’m willing to sign a document that prohibits me from earning a living.

At the time, I assumed I was the only one who’d gotten the papers to sign, because I’m the newest one there.

Just before we all left for the holiday break, two other co-workers snagged me on the way out to ask me if I’d gotten some papers to sign.

I said, “You mean the nondisclosure and non-compete agreements? Yeah, I signed the nondisclosure, but the non-compete one didn’t specify a time period so I didn’t sign that one.”

“Good,” said the other co-worker. “Good to know. Thanks!”

Apparently I’m not the only one who got them, and not the only one who was concerned. I didn’t mean to be seditious, really I didn’t…

He: I don’t know why you do the things you do.

Me: I’m sure I had a reason.

He: I’m not.