More Randomness from Mr. Bartender

1. Mr. Bartender Blushes - I just had one of those moments that made me just wanna stick my head underneath my desk in embarrassment. I received a misrouted phone call that was for a different department. Being ever so helpful I suggested they speak to a particularly delightful person down in Marketing and proceeded to transfer the call over. I was gonna announce the caller to delightful person when she picked up but instead I got a voicemail saying "sorry I am out of the office at the moment..." So I got back on the line with the caller and said "well she's out of the office at the moment but she really is the best person for you to speak with. Would you like to leave a voicemail?". Caller said yes and I transferred on over to voicemail. I got off the phone and a coworker turned to me and said "um, you know that uh - she died last week, right?" Hmmm...yeah I guess I did know that but it just slipped my mind. Great! So I just transferred to a dead woman's voicemail. Ugh!

2. Mr. Bartender's Coworker Brushes - Also today a random moment with a coworker who I've always found to be a little odd. My boss and I were in his office chatting. Coworker comes in, starts looking through his desk drawers and finds a tube of toothpaste. She proceeds to spread toothpaste on her finger, brush her teeth with her finger and leave - all without saying a word. People are so weird.

3. Conversation with Mom - Nothing to add a little zest in my week like a good phone call with Mom. This week she played the role of the small midwest town gossip. Apparently she found out that a girl I went to high school with is having all sorts of troubles in life - diagnosed as manic-depressive, heavy into all sorts of drugs, mother of two kids by two different fathers and in and out of jail. This girls parent's have gotten a court order to have sole custody of the kids and in their mid 50s are raising them as their own. Mom went on for quite a bit about what a tragedy the whole situation was. I think I showed remarkable restraint by not using that moment to say "see mom, there are FAR worse things than having two gay kids".

4. Serious note - well if a dead coworker and a former classmate turned crack-whore wasn't serious enough for one posting here's a sobering report from Salon.com. We've all heard about how the biological-weapons sensors went off a couple weeks ago here in DC, and how it took a week for the government to make it public (or even communicate it to the appropriate health officials), and how at the end of the day they claimed it was just an naturally occurring environmental fluke. Salon details other possibilities such as an attempted terrorist attack gone wrong or a trial run for a terrorist group testing how well our sensors/alert system worked. One little snip-it on why the gov's story doesn't add up:

There was another troubling thing. One of the sensors that went off was located at the Lincoln Memorial on the far western end of the Mall. Another was located near Judiciary Square, roughly two miles to the east and two blocks north of the Mall. A third was at the Army's Fort McNair, more than two miles from the Lincoln Memorial down the Potomac River past the Mall, on the point of land where the Washington Channel and Anacostia River meet. The locations of the other three sensors have not been disclosed

Under the government's scenario, soil on or near the Mall somehow became contaminated with the bacteria, perhaps from the body or blood of a dead or injured small rabbit or squirrel. That soil then got stirred up -- possibly by the marchers themselves -- and floated across the Mall and beyond. Marchers and book festival attendees contacted by Salon say it was dusty on the Mall in the morning. But it rained early that day and stayed moist, making the dust theory perhaps less likely, at least after that rain.

"One sensor, I'd say maybe," says biosecurity expert Stanhope of the dust theory. "Two sensors is a stretch. Six sensors? I'm sorry, you don't have enough money to buy enough martinis to make me believe that it is naturally occurring at six different sites. I don't think you could get me that drunk to believe that."