No But Really I Probably Washed Several Hundred Dollars Off of My Hand

Today's hot-button issue around the office was my bicycle.  I mentioned to the receptionist that the president had told me to get the apartment bicycle in working condition and the company would pay for it.  I asked what I should do--get an estimate on the refurbishing it needs or pay to get it fixed and submit a receipt, or should I just get cash from the company and bring them the change?  So at 9am she called over to the accountant who said he couldn't dole out the money because that hadn't been mentioned to him by the president.  So then our receptionist took it straight to the top and called the president and asked him to call the accountant and set things straight.  THEN the accountant called her back and said that I should take the bike to a shop, and get an estimate on the repairs and also the price on a new bike, because we'd go with whichever one as cheaper.  Then all day long people talked about that bicycle.  Did it need new tires?  Was it rusty?  Is it big enough for me?  Does it have a light ("the police around here are strict about bicycles without lights after dark!")?  Does it have a basket?  Is it self-cleaning?  Will it roast a ham?  How many horsepowers does it have?  Does it come in red?  What if cats spoke Japanese and people meowed?

By the end of the day (and I do mean END--people were still talking about it at 5:45) we decided to take it to the nearest shop and have them fix it up and if they needed money right then I'd get a receipt but if they would accept payment upon completion I would just take the quote to the office.  But I refuse to go alone, so I won't have a fully-functioning bicycle until probably Saturday.  I mean, I can ride it, but I think it has a slow leak in the back tire and I can't ride after dark and I think it's out of gas.

Aside from that, I operated a different machine today.  It was a teeny-tiny cute version of one of our much much larger machines.  It even fits on a table-top!  I'm hoping that you can also purchase it with options like "Hello Kitty Accents" and a soothing voice that walks you through the operating procedures.  Oh, I forgot the most interesting part; we were coating a solution onto thin strips of various metals.  This top-secret solution comes in tiny bottles that each hold about 1/5 of a cup.  Each bottle costs around $5000.  We had four of them.  So in one hand, we were able to hold $20,000 worth of solution.  And on one tabletop I was able to spill $4000 worth of solution.  JUST KIDDING!  I didn't spill any because I didn't handle the bottles.  I was like "no thanks."

We ran the tests in a sealed box inside a sealed room inside a sealed building.  It felt a little like a tesseract.  But this expensive solution was really expensive, so we took great care to control the humidity and temperature.  But after each test strip, we opened the box really quickly and I took a picture of the test strip with an iPhone.  It was all very calamitous and exciting.  Then at the end, we threw it all away and burned down the building.  THAT'S how top secret it was.