~~~
Day’s Verse:
God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
“I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”
But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and as many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
Jonah 4:9-11 (context)
~~~
On Sunday I learned that potatoes sliced and prepared for scalloped potatoes do not translate well into mashed potatoes. They boil quickly, but mashing something so thinly sliced to start with simply produces lumpy potato chunks filmed lightly with butter and sour cream. Fortunately the process of eating makes it indistinguishable from real mashed potatoes quickly.
Here is a randomly-chosen picture from my Flickr page, just for the heck of it:
Tell me if the following vignette seems like strange behavior to you.
Background: In our department, we celebrate birthdays every month. The duty for obtaining the cake rotates around so one person doesn’t end up responsible for it all the time.
Story: This month, the cake person — X — asked the two birthday people what they wanted. The birthday people said chocolate cake and something rich, respectively. When the birthday cake appeared, however, it was yellow. X explained: “I don’t like chocolate cake.” At that point I wanted to say, “Well, X, good thing this isn’t about you then, huh?” Then, when offered a piece of said yellow cake, X declined: “I don’t feel like cake.” What was the point of not buying chocolate, in that case? X never ate any of the cake purchased, and the birthday people ended up disappointed.
I think this raises a few good questions:
- Why did X buy yellow cake, if X had no intention of eating it?
- Why did X’s personal preferences play any part in an activity that should have been centered on two other people?
- Why didn’t X eat the cake?
- Why did X solicit the birthday peoples’ cake requests, if only to ignore them later?
I can only explain X’s behavior two ways:
- X was being totally selfish.
- X didn’t give a crap.
Before I editorialize, what do you think?
Editorializing: [Nothing, based on the axiom If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.]
I’ve seen this random picture somewhere before.
The picture, or the subject? 🙂
APC did monthly birthday celebrations as well, though nobody was ever asked about cake. There were always two – one chocolate and one vanilla, with a few different choices for ice cream. There was an awkward $20 Amazon gift card raffle between the birthdayers of the month, and then everyone would line up to get a piece of cake JUST LIKE OFFICE SPACE.
I felt like I was outside of my body being like, “…really? This really happens!?!!”
That’s so horrible that X didn’t heed to the birthdayers’ wishes. How weird! I’d be interested to see what happens when it’s his/her birthday later in the year.
That person is #1 and #2; they kind of go together.
It was X’s birthday in September, and X asked for — but didn’t get — strawberry shortcake. I think X was resentful of the fact and maybe was thinking “Well, I didn’t get what I want, so I won’t get them what they want.” ??
This department cake day is actually in addition to the company-wide birthday celebration. For that they just get two huge sheet cakes, sometimes yellow and chocolate, sometimes a swirl. No ice cream, although in the summer we got free ice cream from an ice cream truck on Thursdays. That meant that once a month I got free cake, followed the next day by free ice cream. I always looked forward to that week. 🙂
Thus I get free cake TWICE each month!
According to my favorite cake expert, “It isn’t a cake if it isn’t chocolate.” – Shelley Koskovich, age 8
This sentiment could solve every dilemma you pose. Life CAN be simple, if you just have the right perspective!
This actually sounds exactly like an episode of the office btw. I’m sure Ian has told you that.