Wednesday's Failed Attempt At Chinese Delivery...

We found this really good Chinese restaurant in the hood called Hong's Szechuan Chinese. According to Yelp folks, Hong's is very highly rated, but the service is akin to the Soup Nazi.

Knowing that the owner-lady isn't very pleasant, we were ready for her. I must have said "thank you" no less than 20 times. But, Yelp, was right, she wasn't very pleasant. When we ordered the Hot-n-Sour soup, Poppy asked how hot on the spice the soup was. Owner-lady got this look on her face and said "It's hot. It' hot sour soup." (read between the lines... You f__king idiot!)

The problem is, the food is NOMMY! The salt-n-pepper pork chops are out of this world. The veggie deluxe is the best I've ever had.

We know they are closed on Thursday because we tried to order on a Thursday and found out the hard way. Since last night was Wednesday, this was not a problem. We got out the to-go menu and started highlighting all the tasty treats we were going to order. When we order, we get enough for two meals so we get a lot of food. We were all ready to order; Poppy dialed 6-6-5-5-6-4-8...it rang and rang and rang. They must be busy so we'll try again in a few minutes...it rang and rang and rang. Hmmm, starting to get a little worried.

A little disappointed, we went to Plan B, which is Thai from Vandine. Good, but not Hong's, not to mention, a totally different ethnic food. So we picked out a bunch of items from Vandine's to-go menu. But I had to give Hong's one more try...it rang and rang and rang. More than a little disappointed, Poppy called in the order to Vandine's. Everything kind of tastes the same. Looks good though:



Normally, I'd be all over boycotting Hong's, but it's just too good. We will not give up!

Some of you will remember that I was working on THE PROJECT FROM H.E.L.L. Well, I'm still working on it. Yesterday, Boss-Karen, Attorney-Andrea and Attorney-Tim had a conference call with the Assistant United States Attorney-Guy about a settlement conference. After they came out of the call, I could hear Boss-Karen calling my name. At first I was excited; she wanted something, but then I realized where she came from and I knew it couldn't be good.

Turns out the US Attorney-Guy's office happens to be very short staffed and they want to detail Laurie and me to their office to help them assemble some exhibits to a response to summary judgment. This is also an 11th hour request, as most requests seem to be when you're dealing with government agencies. The document is due to the court either by 5:00pm, Friday evening or midnight, Friday evening.

Some of you may know that I'm a very, very routined person and don't exactly deal to well with surprises. So when Boss-Karen approached me with this, my first response was NOOOOOOOOO! I said things like "Why can't they get a temp? I'm still working on this stupid project! I've got my own job to do!!" Since Boss-Karen and I have been working together for many, many years, she knew I would have this response so she pretty much just stood there until I was done with my hissy fit.

It was decided that Laurie and I would go down to the US Attorney-Guy's office after lunch. We arrive at the Federal Building and finally get through all the security. We had been instructed to go to the 9th floor, only the 9th floor reception area is empty and there is a sign that says "There is no receptionist here. Please go to the 11th floor." Well, we're not about to go to the 11th floor only to have to come back down to the 9th floor.

We decide we'll go use the restroom instead and then deal with how we were to get in. So after we do that, we see a gal headed into the secured door of the 9th floor office, right where we need to be. I get her attention and tell her we are to report to the Legal-Assistant-Gal. She tries to find the Legal-Assistant-Gal, but no luck.

After about 10 minutes, a woman comes into the reception area with her lunch and looks at us; says "Are you from the Trust." We way "Yep." She takes us into the office.

I'm not going to go into much detail here...or I'd have to kill all of you. Let's just say that Laurie and I were basically left there with little to no instruction and a piece of paper with names and numbers all over it, a bunch of binders and some computer disks. Laurie was to copy all the junk out of the binder and I was to print out selected pages from the disks.

The copy machine is the biggest thing I've ever seen! It even has a light on the top of it that looks like a siren light. Laurie is in her heyday cause she loves this kind of stuff. Come to find out from the Legal-Assistant-Gal who gives no instruction, The Machine is also the printer. She pressed about 20 different buttons to show us where the pages that I had qued up were, but said "We'll print those later, all at once."

So I finish my part. Laurie was still copying but she was at a place where she had to assemble some stuff and since we were using the same Machine, I had time to print out my stuff.

I tried to remember the sequence of 20 buttons that Legal-Assistant-Gal had pressed. I was where I think I needed to be and then I hit the button that said "Select All" since I wanted to print all that I had qued up. What I didn't realize is The Machine has a memory and there was stuff still stored in there from a few days back...to the tune of over 2,000 pages. Okay, all this stuff that is printing is highly confidential and not for my eyes so I'm starting to freak out. Laurie is on the floor basically laughing and about to twiddle in her pants. I'm pressing every button in every sequence trying to stop The Machine. The light on the top of the machine is spinning red and I'm afraid it's going to make a noise!

Luckily, I was able to cancel the job, but just as I cancelled it, a new one would start printing and there were 44 qued up to print. Do you remember that seen with Jane Fonda in 9-5 when she was in the copy room? Well, that's what it looked like!

Now I'm sweating. Laurie is still laughing. I finally figure it out and basically delete all of the old stuff from the printer que. Now I have to shred everything I've just printed before Legal-Assistant-Gal catches me. Probably won't happen since we've only seen her once since we arrived there.

Okay, I get it all shredded and Laurie is now calling me Fraulein Shredder. We finish everything we were given to do. We were supposed to be there all day, but it was only 2:30. We went to Legal-Assistant-Gal and told her we were done. She sent us back to our office cause they're not ready for us. We work too fast.

We'll be going back either this afternoon or tomorrow for more fun.