ALIC Presents: Clippety Clobbered

I really enjoy my job, but going through the same motions day-in and day-out can get incredibly monotonous over time. So I am always looking for things to break up the day and make me laugh. One of the most consistent sources of success in this endeavor is reporting claims. I work for a workers' compensation company, so we cover employee injuries that happen on the job. Part of my job is reporting the claims we recieve to a national database for statistical reporting, rate adjustments, etc. To do this I get to read how each incident happened and the nature of the injury. I then assign it a bunch of standardized codes and total how much money we paid out for each aspect of the claim. In doing this, I often come across bizarre circumstances that can't help but make me laugh. Here are some recent ones that I just had to share.

(To maintain confidentiality I will not name names or companies in these incidents)

1) An employee was feeling nauseated so they ran to the bathroom to throw up. While over the toilet they fainted from disgust and fell onto the toilet, lacerating their head. They were later discovered passed out next to the toilet by a coworker. (Kind of sad, but pretty funny.)

2) An employee was carrying a box and slipped on ice. The box flew from their hands and smacked a coworker in the head. Two claims, one incident aka: two birds one stone (or box).

3) An employee working in a warehouse area was wearing a baseball cap and hoodie, with the hoodie pulled up on his head. Due to his restricted vision, he didn't see a large beam and walked straight into it,causing a laceration on his face.

4) (This one takes the cake.) A glasswork employee was trying to break a piece of thick plate glass. To do so, he removed his shoes, stood on the glasswork table and stomped on the glass, resulting in multiple injuries and lacerations to the feet. (I want to know what this guy's thought process was. And I want to fire him for idiocy.)

What Happened To My Goat?!

Working in the creative industry opened my eyes in a way that is both a blessing and a burden. What am I talking about? Well why don't you just ask Michael what it is like to watch a movie or TV with me?

"Green screen!" "That's totally c.g." "This scripting is horrible." "Was this ad made in 1992?" etc. etc.

Alright, maybe I've turned into a bit of a marketing/movie snob. So sue me!

Anyways, we usually watch Netflix so I am not burdened with the 9 out of 10 bad commercials every break, but I have been watching Hulu and am cursed yet again with commercial viewing. Every once in a while there is something that is totally freaking awesome, but most of the time they're just a waste of time off of my TV show. Why do I only get 43 minutes of Grey's Anatomy istead of a full 60? I feel totally jipped. When commercials come on I feel the same way I feel when I get a giant wad of newspaper in my mailbox full of useless ads to "Current Resident" or a "**S@tisfy Your L@dy!" spam email. (By the way crappy marketers, I'm a woman who doesn't care about satisfying other women.)

I'll stop ranting and raving there (because I could probably go on for ages) and move on to the reason for this post. My recent Modern Family marathon on Hulu has been continually interrupted by my painful viewing of this ad from Heifer International.

So let me get this straight:

Someone donates their goat (which I don't know about you, but we just have too many around to handle these days) to a family. This goat then provides the family with milk and wool and eggs (??...perhaps it was a goat/chicken hybrid that awesomely lays eggs AND is a goat) and they sell their products which then makes them money. {yay!} Then their goat has a baby (via immaculate conception?) and they now have two goats. So now that nice family gives the baby goat to their neighbors, and eventually everyone in town has a goat. (Which according to the numbers in a village with say, 15 families and factoring in that the baby would have to mate with it's mom and for the sake of ease saying that only girl goats were born and there was one boy goat AND that immediately after being born the goat then conceives that same day...it would take just over 2 years). Then everyone will have goats, consequently enabling the supply & demand principle which means the price of wool and milk and eggs (?) would get driven down. The lack of profits and income would then drive everyone back into poverty, requiring them to eat their goats to survive.

I think I will just send them the money that it would cost to ship a goat halfway across the world instead. Thank you for wasting 30 seconds of my life Heifer International. And if people like this are in charge of saving third world countries, I'm seriously skeptical if we will ever be able to pull them all out of poverty.

Eyebrows

Getting up at 7am and being alone in the bathroom while I'm getting ready often leads to my mind wandering. This morning I had a particularly interesting thought, "Why do you think God gave us eyebrows?"

So I thought about it, and came up with these three reasons.

1. "He wanted us to be able to show emotion with more than just our eyes and our mouth."

2. "Maybe He thought our face was too blank with just a forehead and eyes, so He needed one more thing to put there."

3. "He knew that some day, girls would want to wear makeup, and they needed a line so that they knew where to stop."

I think that all three of these answers are correct and have complete validity.


Also, what does it mean that God DIDN'T give Whoopie Goldberg eyebrows?
(Stop trying to suck up to Him, Whoopie. He's already made up his mind.)

He Got Down on One Knee

Ok, so I thought I'd do a little bit of catching up, although everyone already pretty much knows this stuff it's good to get it written down. For posterity's sake, right?

Obviously a lot has happened in the past months. Michael and I got married and I am now Mrs. Sarah Nelson. I am absolutely head over heels in love with my handsome, amazing, supportive husband. He makes me laugh and love life every day. Basically, I love my Michael like a fat kid loves cake :)

Here's the beginning of our story....


Our Engagement

Michael and I had known we wanted to get married for quite a while, and I knew he had the ring...but it seemed like I had to wait FOREVER for it to happen. Ok, maybe not forever....but that's how I remember every day feeling :) Then on March 8, it was Michael's birthday. I had a whole scha-bang planned out. I surprised him at work with balloons and his favorite ice cream from the Creamery, Raspberry Cream Cheese. Then I went to his apartment and decorated it with streamers and Happy Birthday banners. That night we went to Texas Roadhouse (steak is his favorite) and had a scrumdidlyuptious meal. Then I gave him some headphones and new shoes he was wanting. After all that we went back to his place and had a party with friends and Cold Stone ice cream cake. I thought I'd done a pretty good job...

After all the chaos Michael took me back to my place and we decided to take Toby on a walk because he'd been pent up inside all day and night. We walked over to the duck pond near my apartment and sat down to talk. I asked Michael if he had a good birthday and if he'd gotten everything he wanted. And he said "no"!! I remember thinking he was such an ingrate...what else could I have possibly done besides hire a plane to write "Happy Birthday Michael" in the air over Provo?? He said there was one more thing he was wanting, and that he needed me to answer a question..then he got down on one knee and said "I'd be honored to have you as my wife. Will you marry me?" Suddenly it all made sense...and apparently he had the ring out for quite some time before I even noticed it. I was too excited and barraged him with kisses.


We were engaged for 3 months and married on June 10th. More info on the wedding and some lovely pictures to come. Until then, enjoy this typographical interpretation of mine and Michael's story that I made for our wedding website!

Kayak to China

So my friend Luke and I were talking at work about biking, and I told him I bike way more than him...but on an elyptical at the gym. In fact that I could have probably biked to China by now via elyptical. He said there way no way that was possible, and okay, maybe it was a slight exaggeration on my part. So to debate this we got onto Google maps to see how far away China actually is by getting directions from the United States to China.

So Google Maps gave us 133 easy steps to get to China. But a few weren't so easy.

Steps 1-30: Drive all the way up to the Washington Coast.

Step 31: Kayak across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii.

Step 32-46: Drive across the Hawaii islands?

Step 47: Kayak across the rest of the Pacific Ocean to Japan.

Step 48 - 104: Driving all over Japan until you get to the southern tip.

Step 105: Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean.

Step 106-133: Drive to the center of China.


....I don't know about you, but I think I'd rather dig to China than spend 38 days and 2 hours going 11,329 miles which includes Kayaking and Jet Skiing across the entire Pacific Ocean.


My directions, 2 steps.

1: Drive to closest airport.
2: Board plane to China.


On the positive side this google search was so entertaining that it distracted Luke from proving me wrong about my elyptical track record :)

My Acceptance to Hogwarts

I haven't blogged in a million years and thought this would be a good ice breaker....





It's official, I have received my admittance letter to Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Let me explain:

The other day I received a letter in the mail at work. It wasn't from our company and it wasn't to anyone at our company. There was no return address on it, just an address to a lady in Colorado, which was apparently undeliverable. Weird....how did it end up at our office? So I wrote return to sender on it thinking the post office would dispose of it or do something with it. I put it in a big blue postal drop box and washed my hands of it. Then, today, I received the same letter again!! How did it find it's way back?? It's incredible!! It's like putting a blank envelope in the USPS drop box and having it show up at your house twice. So my theory is that somewhere in invisible ink or in that USPS scan bar in tiny print it says:

Mrs. S. Nelson
The Cupboard Under the Stairs
American Liberty Insurance

On a more serious note though, I will be accepting my spot at Hogwarts. I think I will be buying an owl and I suspect my wand will have Unicorn hair inside of it. Please let me know if you would like a souvenir of your own from Diagon Alley.

Yo Quero...Mi Root Beero!!!

So Michael and I made a late night fourth meal run to Taco Bell yesterday night. Nothing suits the late night munchies like some cheap mexican food and hot sauce. As we pulled up to the drive-thru menu we were stared down upon by the Five Buck Box advertisement.

This isn't the first time I'd had an encounter with the alluring five dollar deal. We'd first met when he was much larger...a five foot window printable on the glass front of another Taco Bell. Since that first encounter Michael and I had discussed several times what a good deal the Five Buck Box is because the Crunch Wrap Supreme by itself is almost $3. So for an extra $2 we could get some new burrito, a soft taco, cinnamon twisties and a drink...only an idiot would say no...right?

So we excitedly ordered the Five Buck Box with a root beer. After much anticipation the drive-thru girl handed us a bag of food. A BAG??? Where's my box?? It's called the Five Buck BOX. Okay, so maybe they are trying to save a little money...it's hard economic times for everyone, even the corporate guys at Taco Bell. I get it. Whatever. You could at least make your advertising match the actual product. Bag is a B word....call it the Five Buck Bag! Or maybe the Five Dollar Deal. Don't get my hopes up that I'm getting some spiffy movie-theater-esque box to eat out of and then leave me high and dry!

Anyways, so then Michael takes a sip of our drink and it's not Root Beer!! It's Pepsi!! Sick! How hard is it to get an order right with two things? A five buck box with a Root Beer. I know all the late night Taco Bell employees at best are community college kids with a baggy of marijuana in their pocket for their lunch break...but I mean come on. Michael's 7 year old sister could do your job!

Needless to say, at this point we are thoroughly disappointed and we have yet to even partake of the cheap taco goodness. So we get home and start out with the new burrito...some kind of beef burrito with spicy fritos. I was skeptical, and I should have been. It was beef with the nastiest curdled milk tasting cheap cheese and soggy fritos. I took one bite and wanted to spit it in the trash. Of course the crunch wrap and soft taco were good. And who doesn't enjoy a good cinnamon twisty fix? But after the emotional roller coaster I'd been on for the rest of the meal, I felt more like we had purcased the Five Dollar Disappointment.

So to all you late night Taco Bell-ers, or just Taco Bell consumers in general...I'd say, yes, order the Five Buck Box. Just realize you don't get any nifty box, throw out the nasty frito burrito before you even take a single bite and make sure the person you're ordering from speaks English and gets the drink right. Then maybe you can have the euphoric experience with the Five Buck Box that we were never lucky enough to have.