in the line of duty

Silly things I have done in the line of duty:

• painting large purple handprints every ten feet along the sidewalks of downtown Fredericton (with a permit and everything);
• donning a gas mask and elbow length gloves to use scary cleaners on popcorn machines at Empire Theatres every Sunday;
• crossing a flooded river pantsless;
• helping a customer elude an imaginary following menace that had been pursuing him across Canada (at Boldons);
• receiving multiple calls on a special Avis (rental car) CEO line in the middle of the night from a man who pretended he wanted to rent a car in order to tell me about his mother and wife, who were apparently competitive mudwrestlers in the sub-Saharan African mud wrestling circuit.

Also, Angus and I spent about two hours this afternoon discussing ways to indulge his habit of making itemized lists. It turns out that he has a barcode scanner, for complicated Forbes-related reasons, and we may take an afternoon and make a scanned catalogue of the entire household's books when we are moved into the new place. He then explained a complex system for tracking the contents of the fridge, which eventually led to discussions of RFID tags, special twitter feeds to send "buy milk" alerts to cell phones at appropriate times, and data-mining the collected information in order to optimize shopping days and generate lists.

Real life update: I applied for a job at the university library that I am really hopeful about. I've always wanted to work at the library, and I'm actually qualified for this job, so that's a good sign.
Also, Kate, of the NBCC, called me this morning looking for my help manning a special tent at the big craft festival this weekend. I've been feeling pretty crummy about having left them in the lurch to go digging, so I pledged eight hours Friday and Saturday to help her out (and incidentally get paid). Hopefully it will salve my conscience and smooth things over with the council, and pay is pretty exciting too. It basically just means that packing is going to have to be a little more intense tonight and tomorrow, which is fine, because I'm not really doing anything else.