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Bake Sale
Posted on November 26, 2008 by dray in Stories
I'm usually a morning person but not so much when I'm functioning on minimal sleep. The last few days/weeks have been a vacuum of sleep for various reasons and have also drained a good portion the emotional fuel-supply as some of my closest friends are leaving the country and other stuff.
I'll spare you the details but sufficed to say I'm not a morning person right now. In fact right now I'm that guy who wears a dark black Ralph Lauren winter tuque over most of his head and avoids making eye contact with any passerbys mostly because he's not 100% sure that his eyes are open; or that he's even awake.
This morning I played "imaginary dream-land" with my alarm clock snooze button for an hour, which puts me to work a half-hour later than I like to be. It was fun though, between the constant chiming of the alarm (in dream land it's actually a velociraptor hovering in circles above me and screeching) I'm pretty sure I was somewhere outdoors in a hot tub on top of a snowy mountain with a clown. I know it sounds a little odd, but we were having a great time; that clown makes a hell of a cup of hot-chocolate.
In real life I'm scared of clowns so I'd be ok with that situation just substitute the clown with 5 of my best buds (or a girl)1.
On the bus to work I was fascinated by the conversation the trainee bus driver and her trainer were having. I would have engaged them in the conversation except for (a) it wasn't actually interesting; my lack of cognitive processing ability only made it seem like it was.2 and (b) I couldn't lift my head out of the position required to stare at the floor. And I still wasn't sure if my eyes were opened.
I did experience a momentary twinge of joy when the trainee bus driver drove the bus up onto an embankment and had to let us all off.
My day gets a little better though at this point.
I made my way to work and after a couple minutes realized that I was quite hungry. Hungry with no food.
Finding a toonie and a loonie in my pocket I figured I'd head upstairs to the Business Student's lounge to grab a quick candy bar from the vending machine.
As I approached the lounge an overwhelming odor penetrated my nostrils. I'd recognize the smell anywhere – pancakes!
I got my hopes up, and entered the room. As I did so my life instantly changed to a scene from "any college dorm movie ever made". Spanned across four 8-foot tables was a massive pancake breakfast; complete with all possible human stereotypes including, but not limited to:
- Clean-cut "guy in charge" with a great smile and an illogical joy to see you (think Fred from scooby doo).
- Attractive but ditsy blonde pancake cook who is secretly in charge of the whole thing and much smarter than she looks
- Confused and pimply red-haired kid who doesn't seem to have an actual purpose but it's college so everybody likes him enough to be around anyway
- Slightly confused but overly-cool asian guy pontificating something seemingly simple but somehow confusing to him (in this case, "what's the best way to get the pancakes out of the pans and onto peoples' plates").
- Vixen-like Santa.
- I have to say that or people are gonna start to "wonder" about me [ƒ]
- They were talking about skiing. Talking about skiing in Vancouver is basically like talking about the weather anywhere else (note: talking about the weather HERE is really interesting). Everybody skis or snowboards and yeah-yeah blah blah, "oh! you know somebody that tore their ACL? REAllY? Me tooooooo!" (Good grief). [ƒ]
- P.S. I'm not saying that baking specifically has anything to do with being a woman, seeing as how the best baker I know is my housemate Andrew. I'm just pointing out that of the women who are here, many are into baking; and as far as I can tell, none of the men are. Although it's not like I know most of these people anyway [ƒ]
- If you are a part of the Sauder School of Business Human Resources Deptartment, General Administrative Staff, or my department's Management Staff, please note that this blog was written from 09:55 to 10:10 on my mandatory paid 15 minute-break
[ƒ]
They saw me when I walked in and Fred from scooby-doo said, "HEY! WAN'T SOME PANCAKES!" I skiddishly moved toward the all of them, still having a bit of trouble getting my head to actually stop bobbing and looking at the floor. Attractive ditsy blonde saw my hesitation and shouted "AND THEY'RE FREE!". This was enough for me to go over and chase the overly-cool Asian guy around the table until he figured out how to give me my pancakes. I then scurried out of there, avoiding getting my picture taken with the Vixen-like Santa, which I think was the point of the whole thing.
Lucky I got there early in serendipitous fashion.
I made my way further upstairs to the 7th floor for coffee at the faculty coffee lounge. I was happy to find upon arrival that today is the day of the big grand yada yada Bake sale. There are probably about 300 people working for the Sauder School of Business in this building. Probably 225 of them are women. Probably 1/2 to 2/3 of them are excellent bakers.3. This is not a bake-sale you want to miss. And luckily for me I had an unused-toonie and loonie in my pocket.
Outcome:
A full belly and a good story. And I'm still dead tired after 4 cups of coffee. But I'm pretty sure I'm about 8 seconds away from an insane sugar rush.4
you were going to eat a candy bar for breakfast but got deterred by pancakes and a bake sale?! hahaha – too funny, LeDan.
and for the record, i’m writing this response on the last 2 minutes of my legally required coffee break as well.
Firstly – who would “wonder” about you Dan? A group of friends in a hot tub is one of the better things in life that should not be discouraged by insecurity. But like you say, a hot tub with 1 women may be better.
Also, I propose a bake off between any male who claims to bake better that the opposite gender to resolve the gender issue once and for all. I maintain that while it is not something that women “should” do, they are still just better than us at it! Don’t know why -they just are.
I think Andrew and I should have a bake off. Remember the pumpkin cake?!
why were the pancakes free?