The reason I hear more than any other for shopping at Costco is “They will take anything back, anytime, for any reason.”

At least that’s what my brother tells me.

We let our Costco membership expire a few months ago because it was costing us too much money. Not the membership, that paid for itself. I just got tired of going in for the yummy uncooked tortillas and coming home with a car jack and a generator. That stuff adds up.

But I snuck into Costco with a friend the other day, and while he piddled around at the membership counter, I noticed a nice young lady trying to take advantage of the Costco reputation for accepting all returns for any reason.

After the woman grew first agitated with the answer she got from the customer service rep, then irate, and finally stomped out of the store, her package under her arm, I caught the eye of the woman who had been helping her.

“Um, was that woman trying to return a bag of nuts that she bought here over a YEAR ago?”

“Yeah. She said she never opened them, so we should take them back. I pointed out the long past expiration date, but that just made her madder.”

Like teachers, customer service reps are waaay underpaid. Way.

You know how I said the special effects in 2012 were so bad that when the water started pouring over the top of the Himalayas (uh huh, the water in 2012 reached the TOP of the Himalayas) I felt like I was watching the Red Sea part in The Ten Commandments?

Well, truth is stranger than fiction. The view from near my house this morning:

I work about halfway out there in that.

This is what it’s like UNDER the water:

I feel like Rick Deckard in Bladerunner. I’m sitting at my desk waiting for Edward James Olmos to tap me on the shoulder and tell me the replicants are loose.

I’m sure this happens at all places of employment, and even some fairly rigid home environments, like maybe at the Von Trapps in the early days. By “this” I mean official memos. Some with cover sheets, some without. I’m not going get into a cover sheet argument with you.

For example, here at Dunder Mifflin everybody got an official memo that went something like this:

“Hey! Anderson. No more shorts, flip flops, or beanies!”

Or something to that effect. The actual memo went on at some length.

Anyway, it’s time for me to send an official memo to the world. Or at least the portion of the world that uses public, or even semi-private, restrooms. Including outhouses.

Memo To The World:

In no event shall anyone using this or any public restroom make loud, or even audible, noises expressing desperation, relief, or celebration.

This includes the following noises, which are now proscribed:

1. Grateful Sighing

2. Crying

3. Whimpering

4. Grunting

5. Laughing

6. High Fiving

7. Pep Talks

8. Whooping

9. Polynesian War Cries

10. Absolutely No Rebel Yells

Thank you for your cooperation.

Let me just lay some some snooze ground rules.

Rule Number One: The snooze button exists so you can get an extra 7 minutes (or 10 minutes, or whatever your snooze is set to) of sleep. Don’t try to explain to me that I could just set the alarm for 7 (or 10) minutes later and just sleep straight through. If you try to do that, you clearly don’t understand the Tao of the snooze.

Rule Number Two: Rule number one shall only be excepted for one other thing. I shall not name that other thing here, except to say, the snooze could conceivably and righteously be used as a time limit for that one other thing. Some people perform better under pressure.

An egregious violation of “The Snooze,” a violation which should generally result in loss of snooze privileges, would be this–The alarm goes off, you hit (or someone hits) snooze, and rather than going directly back to sleep, you begin talking. TALKING!

There is no crying in baseball, and there is NO TALKING during the sacred snooze.

Glad I could help.

You know how awesome Tivo is, right? Or any DVR I guess, but since Tivo is what I have, Tivo is what I love.

But what I need, now is Tivo for my radio. I’ll be listening to NPR, some story about anything, really, but since I’m in my car, I’m staring out the window, I get distracted, I start thinking about my 6th birthday party that happened in the middle of a family vacation road trip in a motel in North Dakota when I got a baseball bat and a flashlight, and suddenly I hear a phrase on the radio that catches my attention, like maybe ” . . . and THAT’S how I managed to to bump up the appraisal on my house and get it refinanced.”

And I frantically start pushing buttons on the radio to rewind, as if I’m watching an episode of So You Think You Can Dance and Elenor and Legacy just did flips over the table and landed on their spinning heads. Rewind. REWIND!

Doesn’t work.

But why not? I ask you, WHY NOT?

Caught myself in a monkey trap today.

You know how the best place for sunglasses is on the little ledge between the steering wheel and the instrument panel? Come on, you know it is.

Except, sometimes, when you get in the car, the sun isn’t in your eyes. Maybe you parked in the shade or something.

So you start driving, turn a corner, and suddenly WHAM! The sun hits you full in the face. Panicked, you reach for your sunglasses. But remember, you’re TURNING. Now your arm is caught between steering wheel levers and the arms of the steering wheel.

But don’t forget, you’re also DRIVING.

So just let go of the sunglasses, pull your arm out, and turn the damn wheel, right?

Well sure. Except it’s a monkey trap. And I’m a monkey.

I was in Sunday School a while back, and while I don’t pay attention to much, Sunday School included, this perked me right up.

We were talking (and by we, I mean everybody else, I was paying more attention to whatever was on my Kindle at the time) about genealogy and what people call “The Spirit of Elijah” which means, I guess, whatever makes people even WANT to do genealogy. A spirit I don’t have, by the way. So clearly I’m no expert.

Anyway. Someone announced that they knew someone who had traced their ancestry all the way back to Adam. Seriously. To ADAM.

Now, let’s leave aside all the obvious stuff. Let’s not talk about the historicity of the Bible, or the obviously symbolic and remarkably symmetric genealogy listed in Mathew and Luke, or even whether Adam was an actual person or whether there was death before the Fall.

Forget all that.

Let’s just focus on the idea that before about 150 years ago, record keeping wasn’t exactly, shall we say, stellar. Let’s just say that tying your “line” into royalty is about as reliable as using records from some blogger posting his family tree on the Internet.

Let’s just say that the idea of actually tracing your family tree to “Adam” is about as fun as the idea of God playing cards with the Devil for a man’s soul. It’s a terrific story.

But,  back to my point in saying all this.

Because the punch line is this: Three others in the room immediately offered that they, too, had traced their family tree back to Adam.

One even shrugged and said “It’s not that hard.”

Kim and I spent Saturday evening at Mark’s house for a little holiday get together. Many nice people were there. The food was awesome. When we have get-togethers, we tell the guests that “the chips are in the cupboard, the salsa is in the fridge.” You know the food will be good when the hosts spend five minutes explaining each dish. Rachel had help with the grunt work, but she was clearly the maestro behind the food.

Speaking of food, you know you’re fat when someone singles you out in the white elephant gift exchange to give you a fat suit. Thanks Jonnie.

What, you think I’m kidding?

When Jonnie’s turn came, he waded into the pile of gifts, grabbed the one HE brought, and walked directly over to me and said “I’ve been thinking you need this.”

Yup. It’s a Gold’s Gym reflective slimming suit. Not as in, it has a slimming effect if you wear it. Well, maybe that. I mean, you don’t look thinner if you wear it–no, you GET thinner if you wear it. And not because it’s reflective. I assume it’s reflective so that drivers won’t run me over if I wear this outside in the dark.

If ANYBODY ever wore this suit outside, dark or not, drivers would actively seek them out for vehicular manslaughter. And they’d probably beat the rap.

In case you can’t read the text at the bottom, it says this: “Sweat away the pounds as you exercise.”

Really? I need a fat suit and a fancy box to tell me that? “If your exercise makes you sweat, that’s a good thing.”

And the back:

Let me recap the message:

Sweat away the pounds as you exercise with this attractive looking suit.

Covering your arms, torso, and legs, it can help you slim  your entire body fast.

Gold’s Gym goes on to say that their 40 plus years of experience and expertise helped them come up with a suit that covers the arms, torso, and legs. If only it covered my feet.

At least it’s slimming. Right?

I played in more than a few turkey bowl games over Thanksgiving weekend.

Okay, I played in exactly a few turkey bowl games. As long as you agree that a few equals 3. I’ve always said a couple is 2 and a few is 3. Anything more than that is just Hrair.

Anyway.

The first bowl was early Thanksgiving day, with a largish group, and somehow, not sure how, but somehow, the teams ended up being a bunch of 17-22 year old guys on one side, and on my side, we ranged from old guys like me all the way to 11 year olds like Holden. I’m not complaining. Just explaining.

Sometime around the middle of the game, I lined up on offense, and as people were calling out their coverage assignments, one of the boys in the prime of youth on the other side of the ball called out “Hey! I’ve got brown. I’ve got BIG BROWN!”

Confused, I looked around, trying to spot whoever was big and wearing brown. Or maybe we had someone brown playing with us and I hadn’t noticed.

Until it dawned on me to look down at my shirt.

I was wearing my usual plaid Costco shorts, a long sleeve white t-shirt, and a BROWN “more cowbell” t-shirt on top.

I looked around again. Yup. I was the only one wearing brown.

Apparently, Big Brown was me. He is I, and I am him, slim with the tilted brim.

I’m thinking my quest to hit 200 lbs is over. I’ve been to the gym or on the spin bike in the basement almost every day since.

If I don’t nip this in the bud now, I’ll be Big Brown for the rest of my life. Which, in that case, would be very short. And would probably void my life insurance policy.

Big. Brown. Oh hell.

I just used the giant stapler by the fax machine for the first time (I’ve been here for about two years).

Turns out, we don’t have some ordinary, run of the mill stapler. We have a stapler that would make Milton Waddams burn down our building to get it back.

And not because it staples really well. I don’t even know if it does.

What I do know is that I will never ever get sick from our stapler. Because it’s antimicrobial.

Imagine my relief that if I get sick from something in my office crawling with microbes (like, say, the bathroom door handle. Or the bathroom sink. Or the bathroom anything. Or my phone. Or my computer. Or my pen. Or my . . . ), it absolutely won’t be the big communal stapler.

I guess I’ll staple stuff more often.