VegemiteGrrl's Home for the Absent-Minded

I looked up a phone number on a website and then sat here and waited for the call to magically occur for about 15 seconds before I realized that I needed to take the additional step of dialing the phone myself.

That is maybe not so much absent minded as thinking I live in a magical future world where I can dial phones with my mind. I think that's a feature due to be released with iOS 9.

Have done this, but by selecting a number from a cell phone, then holding it to my hear expectantly without having pushed the button to place the call. Then studied the number very carefully to ascertain what went wrong.

Get glass out of kitchen cupboard. Fill glass with water. Return glass to the cupboard while still full of water. Spend half an hour looking for glass. End.

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, October 11, 2013 10:55 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't time spent looking for lost liquidful glasses stressful? Or is that just when one has a tendency to put such things on the ground?

xp That's not so much absent-mindedness, more like mobile phone interfaces being opaque, unclear and inconsistent about what will happen when you tap on something. Example: the 'contacts' list on my mobile only dials the number if I tap the contact name and then tap 'dial'. But on the 'missed calls' list, if I tap the contact name it dials the number straight away.

Exonerated :D ...till next time.

Veg, do you like the band the Living End?

I do! Not as familiar with their later-period stuff, but I was way into them when they first popped up

when i was a teenager i loved w/ the roll on album (which i found out about from loveline w/ adam corolla + dr drew). UNCLE HARRY PISSING IN THE BATH OOO OOO PISSING IN THE BATH.

There's a bottle of Coke in the work fridge and I can't remember if it's mine. I think it might be but I don't want to steal someone else's drink.

If this sounds reasonably normal then please note that I went to the fridge today thinking "I vaguely remember buying a Coke yesterday, I'll check the fridge" but when I actually reached the fridge and saw it there I totally couldn't remember buying it at all. I THINK I'M LOSING MY MIND.

I remember seeing a sandwich in our work fridge that never got eaten, until finally you could see the bread becoming green through the paper wrapping. I got angrier and angrier at the jerk who didn't keep up with his stuff in the common fridge until one day I remembered it was my sandwich. I had bought a 12" one on a Friday and left the uneaten half at work with the idea that I would have it Monday (why take it home only to bring it back?). If this had been any other day of the week I would have remembered but the weekend gap (may have been a 3-day weekend) was just long enough to erase it from my mind.

I have had that too! I bought some frozen burritos from TJ's once, and I thought I had eaten them but then one lunchtime I just grabbed one out of the freezer and had it for lunch and for the rest of the afternoon I was racked with guilt OH NO I ATE SOMEONE ELSES LUNCH THAT WASN'T MINE and then the other one sat there for a week and then I realized oh wait maybe they were mine after all

the exciting life of a crazyperson

Whew, it's not just me. I don't know how I went within 2 minutes from "vaguely remember buying a Coke, is there one...?" to "I don't remember buying a Coke in the past week and I have never seen this bottle before" though.

If it's still there in a few days I'll declare it mine, and hope not to see an email to the all-staff list going "I have diabetes and had a near-fatal blood sugar crash after someone stole my bottle of Coke, who would be so rude and thoughtless?!" or sth

Somewhere/time between walking into my work building this morning and lunchtime today, I lost some treasured left-overs. I remember holding the bag of empanadas in my right hand as I got on the elevator, but it was missing from my life 3 hours later. I didn't leave the building and my boss was the only one there all morning w/ me and I know she didn't eat them. What the hell did I do w/ that bag of empanadas??

I predict you will find them somewhere hilarious in a week or so.

^^^

I looked in so many hilarious places though. What's the MOST hilarious place in an office?

Your butt.

tee hee

There it was the whole time.

I've suddenly developed this thing where I get in the shower, go to shampoo my hair, and can't remember whether I already did.

i'm convinced leave in conditioner was invented by an absent minded person. i have forgotten to rinse many times

wrote up two sandwich orders at the sandwich deli I go to every saturday. When I go, I normally I write up an order for me, and one for Mr Veg, and put my name on both.

so on Saturday they call my first sandwich. and I stand there waiting for them to call my second sandwich. i stand there and stand there until I know something's wrong and that maybe they've misplaced my orders. there's sandwiches on the counter for other people, but they haven't called another sharon.

so I ask the guy, hey do you have a sandwich order of (x) description under my name? the guy looks through the orders and says, no we don't have anything. someone may have taken yours. we have the same sandwich up here, but it's for (different name, not mine).

I pause a moment. and then I was like, um that's my husband's name and that's my handwriting, I must have spaced and put it under his name.

*scurries away meekly*

I was so embarrassed.

I bought a new padlock for the pool changing rooms, because I hate having to remember the combination on the one I currently have. I started resetting it to a combination I'd remember, screwed up the number of turns left/right, and for some reason LOCKED IT rather than using the reset key and starting again. I now own a paperweight.

:(

what kind of lock is it? it used to be that 20-30% of the internet was devoted to cracking locks.

that got taken over by cats fyi

Master Lock. In hot pink.

http://hackaday.com/2009/10/06/how-to-crack-a-master-lock/

I'll give it a go!

I was thinking about some half-remembered quote today, something like "I will allow fear to pass through me and when it's gone I will remain" and I was trying to figure out where it was from, thinking that it was some US president or other. Then I Googled it and it's the second half of the Litany Against Fear, from the sci-fi novel 'Dune'. Well at least it didn't turn out to be something from Star Trek...

right now i live at a friend's place because i'm waiting for furniture to arrive before i move. the other night i was out near my place so ithought i'd go back there to sleep. i arrived and then remembered that i still didn't have any furniture there. it was quite late so i ended up sleeping on cardboard boxes in my flat.

I just poured milk into my water instead of my coffee.

Yesterday I put my e-cigarette thing in the drawer with all my pens.

I put the remote in the fridge a couple days ago.

I forgot my yoga clothes 3x.

3x last week that is

i forgot to pick something up from my brother's house yesterday that i needed. but i cant remember now what it even was.

I was down to see Showgirls last night, introduced by a guy who's written a book about it. I bought my ticket over a month ago. Went down a little early and sat in the lobby reading for half-an-hour.

I technically wasn't early--turns out the screening was Friday night. I'm not sure if this belongs more in a General Stupidity thread. It's a fine line sometimes.

just caught myself trying to pour cold water from the fridge into my tea instead of milk :/

Hey, I used to work on the same paper as that Showgirls guy, that book looks fun. If it's any consolation, I turned up two months early for a friend's art show last year.

Today I couldn't remember if birds lay eggs or not.

psst happy birthday vg

(thought about bumping this one, but, u know)

Ditto.

At 8:30 this morning, another teacher handed me her USB so we could show a student-made film at a school assembly in the afternoon. When I went to fish it out of my pocket at 9:00, it was gone. I'd seen how much stuff was on there--a lot--so I was a little panicky. That doubled when I let the teacher know and was told she had no back-up. It quadrupled when she went on the PA and asked for anyone who might find it to return it immediately, as there was 16 years' worth of stuff on there--i.e., every worksheet and slide show and whatever she'd created in her teaching career.

Sent three different students out to search the school. When I took my class down to the gym, everyone was instructed to look down and scan the floor the whole way (must have been quite a sight). I apologized to the teacher ten times (all things considered, she was pretty cool about the whole thing). I was mad that she had no backup, and mad that I'd forfeited the right to be mad since I was the one who lost it.

Got home, took my wallet out, and it was in my right-hand pocket the whole day. I'd searched that pocket at least 20 times. It's a very streamlined USB--I think it was lodged between the folds of my wallet.

Must have been euphoric to find it though!

It seems nuts that you can have 16 years of stuff on a usb--but then I remember I've gotten nearly 8 1/2 out of mine.

Two Old Stories About That USB Drive:

-I've come home from my then-job helping run a community college RTVB department computer lab. I empty my pockets and find that my pendrive is missing. I look everywhere, even going to the extent of calling a student in the class I handed the lab over to that evening, asking him to look around the room. He finds nothing. I freak. A little while later, I take my pants off for the night, and feel a suspicious shape in the leg pocket. In my rush to get away from work, I put the pendrive in the cargo pants pocket I otherwise never used for anything (except for, er, work keys I thought I lost/were stolen another time).

-I was having to do some work in the campus library, and in my rush to leave (notice a trend?) I later am just certain that I forgot to remove the pendrive from the computer. I head back to school, check in with the (very nice) student shift assistant, who finds under the check-in desk a lost and found box devoted just to discs and pendrives. There's at leas 15 of the things in the box, but alas not mine. She tells me she's sorry and how bad she feels for me to lose all my work. I go home and the next morning, having now made my peace that I've lost so much work, I'm emptying my little waste basket located right under the table from the tin baseball card can I keep pens, pencils, and the pendrive in, and...the day before, I had gotten out of the library with the pendrive. I made it home and as I emptied my (hip) pockets, I tossed the pendrive into the can and it BOUNCED OUT and landed in the trash. I subsequently move the trash can, and this never happens again.

Is that a pendrive in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

I had cargo pants on too today. People kept telling me to check the lower two pockets, but I knew it wasn't there--I never use them, never even unbutton them. I keep a bulky George Costanza set of keys in my left pocket, so I was sure the USB came out with the keys at some point. That's happened to me before.

(More relieved than euphoric, but that too.)

HB VG!

Yes!!! Happy birthday!

Happy birthday VG

Not a USB key, just a regular key, but at work there's a storage area that's secured with a metal door and a high security key. A couple of weeks ago I was walking home from work and realised that I still had the key in my pocket, so I had to go back (there were people working late who would have needed access to that area). No problem, but the building is at the top of a 1 in 4 hill, so I ended up staggering back into the office completely out of breathe.

It's a very streamlined USB--I think it was lodged between the folds of my wallet.

The key is one of those very flat types without the serrated edge, like a swimming pool locker key. I think it actually got stuck in the edge of my wallet.

Happy Birthday!

Jeez, back in early February, I was heading out the door to work around 5 a.m. As I went to grab all my usual stuff (wallet, keys, phone, ipod) I realized the wallet was gone! Although I could theoretically drive to the bus stop without my license, I couldn't get on the commuter bus without my bus pass. I checked in all the usual places and when I couldn't find it, my heart started racing and my shirt instantly soaked with sweat. It didn't help that I had gotten pretty drunk the night before (not the usual for a weeknight) and was feeling a bit hung-over.

I woke my wife and told her. We both started tearing the house apart. Lifting up the couch and the bed to see if it had fallen underneath. Cleaning up shelves. There were so many variables! At one point the night before, my son had accidentally knocked over a vase on the shelf where I keep my stuff. Had that caused a chain reaction and sent the wallet flying across the room or something? The last place I could honestly remember having the wallet was at the liquor store, where I had stopped on the way home. Had I lost it in a liquor store parking lot? Good god...

I had to call out of work that day and spent the entire morning cleaning, shifting things around, and pacing back and forth around our small house. When it hadn't surfaced by noon, I decided to give up and cancel my cards. Fortunately, I had just received one replacement credit card in the mail that I hadn't activated yet, so I only had to cancel one credit card and my debit card.

I drove up to the MVA and spent a couple hours waiting in line and replacing my driver's license. I got back in the late afternoon and headed upstairs to the bedroom. Right in front of my face, in a spot where I knew I had looked before, was the wallet! I had somehow just FAILED to see it.

Fortunately, I had the one credit card. I recovered my bus pass, library card, voter registration, some other random wallet crap. The debit card however, took almost a month to arrive. I had the misfortune of cancelling it right in the aftermath of the great Target credit card hacking scandal, so the credit card manufacturing facilities were all backed up.

my shirt instantly soaked with sweat.

I hate it when that happens. That creeping realisation that I might have screwed up again, and then suddenly my shirt is sopping wet like a dish rag.

happy birthday, vg :)