Snippets, thirty

Here are some short pieces based on things that have happened in my life recently.

Fender Bender

Yesterday, I was walking my dog for his midday walk, and I walked past two people disagreeing over a fender bender. One was a woman in a blue car, and one was a man, parked ahead of her in a black car. The blue car woman was saying that the black car man had backed into her car and scratched it. The black car man said that the scratch must've already been there because there wasn't any blue car paint on his black car. 

I will note, quickly, that the black car was definitely parked in front of a fire hydrant.

Moving on.

Shortly after wrapping up my walk with my dog, I walked past the bickering again as I had to walk to meet someone. Now, the blue car woman was joined by a man and the black car man was joined by a woman. They were each telling their story to their new guest and that's when two police cars pulled up.

I know I'm not a law enforcement expert, but I really do think two police cars for this fender bender was just silly.

Not sure how it all worked out, I had to walk on.

Google Forms

I have been getting into using Google Forms lately. Yes, sometimes this is for work (though I need to poke those who received one of my work forms to actually fill it out this time), but they are also for fun! One is for me and some friends to organize a secret holiday gift exchange. Another is to organize watching a silly holiday romcom. 

I hope people aren't annoyed by these, but I find them quite useful, especially as they can spit out a spreadsheet to me (I'm definitely a spreadsheet girlie).

I especially liked learning that I can include YouTube videos in my Google Forms. This is proving to be handy for the silly holiday romcom form as I can include all of the potential movies' previews in one, easy place.

So, what do you use forms for? Work? Fun? Both? Some secret third thing? I'm curious!

Photo Day

I completely forgot that today was my work's photo day. Now, this is a free service that my work offers to allow us to get professional headshots that we can, if we want, use on our work's websites when there is information about us. I suppose, though I'll have to check, that I can also use the photo for my LinkedIn.

Now, luckily, I did still dress for work, so it wasn't a total embarrassment to show up to where they were taking the photos. But, I do wish I'd done my hair a little more carefully and, perhaps, put on a touch of makeup. I also might've picked a less wrinkly shirt.

Alas, despite setting reminders, I 100% forgot about photo day. 

The kind photographer did show me my photo on his camera after he snapped it, and it did look okay. So, perhaps, it all worked out as it should. But, I do worry that once I see the photo on a larger screen I'll pick out some flaws (as, to be honest, I often do when looking at photos of myself).

The last thing I'll note about this day is that my mark set by the photographer for were to stand was a floppy disk. Now, this might not seem particularly interesting, but he and I connected over being some of the few people who still remembered what a floppy disk is.

Teeth

Why are teeth so tricky? By that, I mean a lot of things. One of these things is that why are dentists and other medical doctors so different? Like, why do I have dental insurance that is separate from my medical insurance? Why is their training so different? Yes, I do realize that dentists are specialists, but so are so many other medical specialists and they go to med school and are covered by my medical insurance.

Another thing I mean by teeth being tricky is that mine, in particular, are tricky. I have relatively small teeth so I had to have two teeth built up to even be able to get braces back in middle school. Also, I have one baby tooth that had no adult tooth to replace it (on the plus side though, I also have no wisdom teeth). But another tricky thing about them is that brushing, typically, makes me gag these days (as does flossing). I have made some progress with a U-shaped toothbrush, but even that can make me gag.

Can you tell I'm headed to the dentist in about an hour?

UCPD

Mostly using this last snippet to talk about an article I read about the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) on the UChicago student newspaper (The Chicago Maroon) website. The other day I read "What Information Does the University of Chicago Police Department Make Public?" by Kalyna Vickers and Grace Beatty.

I think this was a great article and a good example of journalism.

The article wasn't directly trying to sway readers to one particular opinion, rather, Vickers and Beatty shared information that (likely) the readers didn't know (I definitely didn't) and allowed the readers to draw their own conclusions.

I learned a lot about what UCPD is required to do (or not do) and was surprised to learn that they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

I really appreciated this article and recommend those who live and/or work in UCPD jurisdiction to read it.

(Prompt by Kimisha Cassidy)

Photo by Willian Cittadin on Unsplash