Coupons and Mer-people and Bigfoot, Oh My!

Friday was an interesting day at the museum. We definitely have our fair share of crazies, but it seems they tend to travel in flocks and all come in to visit us on the same day. Maybe I should be paying attention to the moon calendar and I might find some correlations. Anyways, the first story for the day was more of a difficult customer than a crazy. She came into the museum with her husband and 2 kids (one of which was younger than 4 years old which made her free) and she had a buy one admission get one free (of equal or lesser value) coupon from the Entertainment Book. As I always have in any coupon situation, I made the cheapest admission the free one. In my mind this is standard practice pretty much anywhere you go. Well the lady pitched a tissy fit saying that whenever there is a coupon that says 'equal or lesser value' that the most expensive option is ALWAYS the free one and that what I was doing was WRONG. Oh I very much hate being told I'm wrong, especially when I know I'm right. Clearly this lady has never shopped with a coupon before either at a restaurant with an entre, or to the Payless BOGO (buy one get one) shoe sale. I was being a good employee that day and I bit my lip and just let her have her way as there were people coming in the door behind her. Her husband was standing a good distance back pretending not to pay attention to what she was doing. Poor guy.

Then of course she had a large bag. It is the museum's policy to hold large bags behind the counter unless they contain emergency medications. I told her that we needed to hold her bag behind the counter (and I wasn't being snotty about it or anything!) and she must have presumed that I was retaliating for letting her have her way with the coupon fiasco. She aggressively pulled out her wallet and almost everything out of the bag and tucked them under her arms to take with her, muttering how she didn't trust me with her stuff. Then she pushed the bag toward me and said "Well you've made this so pleasant I'll be sure to never come back here again." Haha. I hope she never does. I wish I could have gotten that in writing. At least when she turned around she instantly switched moods and was nice to her family. That was one of the first visitors for the day.

A little while later I was helping a couple of visitors that came in with their home school children. On the other side of the counter an older lady approached, interrupting asking me where my office was. I told her that my office was the desk that she was currently leaning against, but if she was looking for the 'office' for the business side of the museum that it was on the opposite side of the building (then I gave her directions). She started talking to me as I continued to help the visitors in front of me. I was only half listening to her, but I kept hearing her talk about her drawings throwing around phrases like "mer-people" and "bigfoot" and I would turn my head to her each time, hoping I was hearing her wrong. Then she was mentioning ammonites which was much more normal for our natural history museum, and that made me feel better. Before I was done helping the visitors she had disappeared from my desk and had traveled to the back 'office' of the museum. Now on the weekdays there is an awesome back desk receptionist that is a friend of mine and we both always have our gmail open and are constantly linked via gchat (instant messenger) which comes in handy in situations such as these. The following is just a copy and paste of our conversation:

Receptionist: can you call {our boss} and tell him i have a strange lady down here trying to sell people her drawing
she's not pushy, but needs to be gently told to go away
or tell him
me: he's on his way
Receptionist: thanks
Receptionist: crazy lady went in the cafe
me: ah
good to know
can't watch her there, though
or save the poor patrons that get stuck talking to her
Receptionist: i know
shes gentle about telling everyone that we should live in peace with the mer people at least...
me: haha yeah actually she was up here and I sent her downstairs... my bad... I was busy with people and she asked me where the office was... I was hoping I misheard her about 'mer' people
then she started talking about ammonites or something so I thought...maybe relevant?
Receptionist: she thinks she found an ammonite walking across the street in marysville and says she told us about it and she has a drawing of us living in harmony with the mer people and other animal spirits she's trying to sell
me: lol
I really do love people
Receptionist: yeah
me: I think I heard her mention bigfoot too
Receptionist: yeah, he was illustrated in the picture
me: should have made a photocopy of it on the copier
she probably would've charged, though
we could have hung it on the fridge in the hallway there

It was nice to have instant messenger for her to be able to contact me (silently) as speaking code over the phone to try to tell someone there was a strange person in front of her doesn't always work. Other things the drawing lady mentioned were that she had met a mer-person in her youth and had decided to be friends with all of the mer-people after that. She also mentioned that she had always had this uncanny ability to solve people's problems. She was very nice, just definitely not in the same reality as the rest of us.

I guess earlier in the week we had a gentleman come in claiming he had a fossilized dinosaur eyeball (among other things). You know, because we all know that it's the soft parts that fossilize. Then he went on a contradicting rant...something about how he didn't believe in dinosaurs. Then he went on to say that he did believe in dinosaurs and that they were hunted to extinction by humans. Oh goodness sometimes my soul just dies a little bit. I was not working when this gentleman was in, though, so this is just a third person story.

And if you are still reading at this point, that is your little glimpse into why it is so much fun to work at a museum. At least that is my opinion. :)

McDonalds Put a Job Application in My Food Bag

I don't feel like being coherent right now so I'm just going to go ahead and throw it all out there.

Last week Reid and I went and stayed at Dad's house as Chrissy, Chris, Ben and Tiffany came up to visit. It was a lot of fun. Ben is huge and more like a toddler than a baby. He sounds like a cute little girl when he chatters to himself saying 'mamamamama' and 'dadadada'. He also learned to clap while we were there. He always yells when he's clapping and looks angry, but we all just think that it is due to everyone always clapping and saying 'yayyyy' to get him to imitate us. It's his anger clapping. Chrissy informed me that at the Denver airport he was practicing his clapping at strangers.

The last couple days of the trip I got a cold. I still have it. I really hate being sick. Reid has been taking good care of me! He even bought me 2 varieties of juice last night. V8 Splash and grape juice. I suspect the grape juice was actually for him, but I'll let it slide ;) Also I learned that blowing my nose causes my glasses to fog up.

On our birthday we went out and played putt putt golf and then the day after we had a dinosaur birthday cake with our names on it! It was so cute..and tasty too of course. I like being a big kid. For my birthday Reid bought me a Motorola Droid. It is very exciting. Reid got one for himself too of course, which is a good thing so now he can tell me how to work it. He went to the store at 6am on the release date for the phone planning on buying 2 of them. I guess they told him I didn't qualify for an upgrade on the phone since I'm not the primary person on the account and it would cost $600 for me to have the phone. He came home to wake me up to tell me that he didn't get me a phone...which he didn't. He wasn't tricking me. He bought himself a phone, though. He said he was sorry and I told him to go away as at that time I needed to mope. Anyways, while I was in the shower he had gone back to the Verizon store and found a way to change the account so that we wouldn't have to pay the ridiculous $600 for the phone. Five or six trips to Verizon stores later we now both have working Droids with cute little cases. Sorry Reid. MANLY cases.

My newest obsession has been the Pioneer Woman's blog (thanks Liz! I just REALLY needed something else to keep me online for long periods of time). Basically there is this woman who was a city girl that randomly fell in love with a cowboy. She'd never even met a cowboy before in her life. It's the true story of her life and it is addicting (and funny...overall very entertaining)! I highly recommend it. I almost wish it wasn't all true because I kind of feel like a stalker. So here is the link to her love story and here is the link to the other random blogs she posts that aren't necessarily related to the love story, but are related to her life on the farm. Barbie I really think you'd like this!!

The dogs have been really clingy since we got home. I definitely think they have developed abandonment issues. It's cute but also kind of annoying. Oh well. At least Kona only ate the one thing (poor little Zoey's bed). I don't think Zoey's noticed yet.

Oh and since Reid went to Office Depot tonight I was reliant on McDonalds for nourishment. They put a job application in my food bag. I thought that was funny.