Clown Day was a huge success, except for the fact that students on our campus couldn’t have cared less that a clown walked among them. I’m still calling it a win because no one threw a pie at me.

I’ll recap the day and then let you enjoy the movie trailer we produced to commemorate events. I’m submitting it to Sundance. They take everything.

The day began with my clown assistant sister Marlene collecting me at my house. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat later, and she immediately chastised me for putting too much of everything on the bread. I can’t do anything right.

We piled in the car and headed to work, getting noticed by no one. We clowned around in my office with everyone who came to get an eyeful. Took video and pictures and then headed out to our first stops.

No one said anything to us. And I looked like this. I don’t get it either.

Students, if anything, simply glanced and put their heads back down. Only one student spoke. “Run! Run away!”

Wow. Tough crowd.

We headed for visits to various buildings on campus, stopping at my satellite office, where I followed a grad student back to hers, saying “Would you mind if I followed you back to your desk? in the creepiest way possible. Until I told her who I was, she would not look me in the eye. Note to self. Creepy is only fun for the clown.

Before we knew it, lunch time! We headed to a deli nearby, where I had my first and last PBJ sandwich. I know I made it wrong. I know I used the wrong jelly (strawberry), but that didn’t matter. I was a “mouth feel” thing. Jelly too slimy. Make clown sad.

So my videographer graciously offered me half his BLT sandwich. Bacon good. Make clown happy.

The rest of the afternoon was more of the same: Students not caring, but friends and co-workers loving it.

By 3PM, my clown assistant and I were exhausted. Clowning is much harder than I thought it would be. You always have to be ON. We felt OFF by then and decided to head home.

Made a quick visit to my clown assistant’s workplace for pictures. Found out that her co-worker’s son is a campus police officer where I work and got the email that I sent warning that a clown would be on-campus (can’t be too careful).

Can you imagine the morning briefing? Be on the lookout for a clown today. She’ll be unarmed and hilarious.

So what did I learn by clowning all day?

• A clown can hold her bladder for eight hours and not suffer any ill effects.
• She can also eat a whole pizza for dinner by herself.
• No one’s butt looks good in a clown suit. Hourglass figure? Forget it.
• A blue afro rocks.

Thanks go again to my sister for helping me with picture-taking and lugging all my clown paraphernalia around. Clowning is hard, but I think clown assisting is harder.

Jason Slipp, my good friend and co-worker, filmed and edited the following movie trailer. Thanks for your creative spirit, time and talent! (Movie to come in a later post).

Here you go!

Many of you know that this Friday, January 20th, is Clown Day.

The day I agreed I would go to work dressed in full clown gear after you donated so much to my food bank fundraiser.

Let me tell you, it’s hard being a clown. But it’s also some of the most fun I’ve had in my life.

In the past weeks, I went shopping for just the right clown suit, makeup, a wig the size of a basketball, white gloves, a dozen balloons and a tote bag to keep all my girly clown things secured.

It took me four attempts at a face to land on one I’m happy with. YouTube videos helped, and so did pictures on the Internet and makeup packaging. I started out with a dreadful Joan Crawford face, but wound up with much more cheerful one in the end.

I took my clown self for an “in public” test drive yesterday, visiting my mother first. I had to call and warn her that she would not recognize my fully-painted face and to please not attack me with a baseball bat.

I drove around town before and after and waved at anyone who would look at me. If you have a bucket list, put clowning on it! It’s a laugh a minute!

All but one person waved back or smiled.

That one person who didn’t?

He flipped me the bird at an intersection.

I think he needed a hug. If you can’t smile back at a clown, you’re dead inside. That’s all I have to say about that.

So that you can all follow along with my clownal shenanigans, I’ve set up a Facebook page that you can “Like.” I’ll post pictures and updates as often as possible.

I’ll also blog about it after, with plenty of photos and video.

You are as much a part of this as anyone I run into that day. I hope you enjoy following along with me for the ride.

Thank you again for making the food bank fundraiser a huge success!

We’re embracing the crazy again at The Junk Drawer. If I gave you the chance, what would you dare me to do? Something gross? Something scary? Something embarrassing?

If I offered the power to choose one of those things, and I promised to do it on camera, would you pay for the opportunity?

Read on and see how the crazy works.

Bill White, a columnist from my local paper, The Morning Call, sponsors a fundraiser every year for a food bank in our area.

He’s also responsible for one of my family’s most-anticipated holiday traditions – visiting elaborately decorated homes on a Christmas lights tour that he designs based on reader submissions.

He drives by every nominated home and publishes a tour of the very best ones, including driving directions to take from house to house. It’s a huge deal around these parts and my family picks one of the routes to enjoy every year.

What’s really fun is that Bill turned his fundraising efforts and the lights tour into a challenge for his readers to collect as much as possible for a chance to win a personal tour with him.

Those who make the largest donations to the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Lehigh Valley get to be driven around in style to see homes on the tour.

And I want a tour!

Here’s where you come in.

If I can reach my fundraising goal of $750 by December 14 that should guarantee me and my family a tour with Bill.

AND! My sisters and I are willing to match your gifts (up to $250).

What’s in it for you besides spreading Christmas cheer? YOU. GET. POWER.

Your reward for making a donation is to vote on which of the following you’d like to see me do. I MUST DO whichever one receives the most votes.

1. Eat my first ever peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Many of you know I find these two foods together a rather disgusting combination. I’ve gone my entire life without one, but I’d make an exception if it meant others could go a little less hungry.

2. Ride a horse. Some of you may recall this being on my list of 10 Things I Don’t Have the Guts To Do. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. And the horse should be, too. Do horses have weight limits?

3. Wear full clown gear to work all day. Face paint, big red shoes, wig. Everything. I will work as normal on my clients’ computers, go to meetings, and eat lunch with strangers. In public.

If you’re willing to donate, please use the ChipIn tool below to make a secure contribution. And THANK YOU!

Then leave a comment indicating which task you’d like me to do. If I hit my goal, I’ll get the job done and post back with a video of me in action.

REMEMBER: ALL DONATIONS DUE BY DECEMBER 14! That’s not a lot of time, but I know you can do it.

You have the power!

My team was recently moved to new offices at the university where I work. We’re now housed behind rows and rows of stacks at one of the two campus libraries.

Taped to the door of our makeshift kitchenette is this “Carrel Policies” note, apparently written for library patrons in 1972, where I suspect it remains as a reminder of how far technology has come.

To wit:

Did you see it? At the bottom?

OK, here’s the part of the show where we find out who’s old enough to have lugged a typewriter to the library to work on a paper or other scholarly work.

Also, how far out of alignment is your back?

Ahhh, the good ‘ol days. No thanks!

I have eyebrow OCD.

No, I’m not one of those women who plucks her eyebrows until there’s no hair left and then have to pencil in new ones. That’s just freaky and wrong.

I will, however, obsess over a wayward, disobedient hair and won’t be able to function until it’s plucked and gone.

You know that hair, right? The one that sticks out so long it starts to curl like a question mark, when all the other hairs are lying down flat like good little hyphens? Yeah, that one.

I did find this, though. It’s a Swiss Army card. I think you use it if your office gets hit by an avalanche and you have to MacGyver your way out.

Lookie here. We have scissors, a letter opener/blade, a pressurized ballpoint pen, a magnifying glass, an LED light, four screwdriver tips and TWEEZERS.

Score!

When I get home to a normal pair of tweezers, I even out and shape up my brows like I should have done sooner.

I make a mental note to buy a spare pair of tweezers so I can keep one at work because I’m pretty sure I’ll see another question mark – or worse, an ampersand – and I want to be ready for that bad boy.

&

Yeah. It could happen.

I had a nightmare last night. One of the sweaty, high-anxiety, glad-I’m- awake-now variety.

It wasn’t about being chased by an ax murderer. It wasn’t about finding myself taking a college exam that I hadn’t studied for. It had no vampires, ghouls, ghosts or zombies. Nothing monstery.

It was far, far worse.

It was about accounting.

Bookkeeping.

Ledgers and missed deadlines.

Yeah. I know. It was that bad.

I haven’t worked in a university accounting office for twelve years, and yet last night I found myself back there and freaking out about a month end close.

At the end of each month, I ran a report that automatically redistributed the months’s utility and maintenance charges to all the fraternity and sorority building accounts.

A percentage of the services bill was allocated to each building based on its square footage. It was a pain to do because the data entry was tedious and time-consuming.

Plus, one wrong number and the program would fail. If the percentages didn’t equal 100%, the whole thing would explode and you didn’t have enough time to recover. You’d have to fix it the next month.

In my nightmare, I realized I went eight months with old percentages. Incorrect ones meant nobody was billed correctly and now I’d have some ‘splaining to do.

THE HORROR!

In my dream, I told my boss about the problem and started crying. There’s no crying in accounting! Luckily, she was understanding and I could dab my tears away.

The nightmare ended well, but still had me in a tizzy. That I could even be thinking about that job after 12 years away is horrifying and probably something for which I still need therapy.

I’m debating whether to contact the person who replaced me in that office. To warn him or her that a decade from now, they’re going to find themselves still worried about numbers. Scary, screwed-up, blood-thirsty numbers.

My advice? If you see a giant, ax wielding calculator leering at you from the shadows of a dark alley, RUN!

So do any of you ever have nightmares about things or places that stressed you out a hundred years ago, but that can’t possibly hurt you now?

I have a new love in my life. Don’t worry. There will always be bacon.

My new love and I met while I worked on a colleague’s computer. She noticed I was admiring something on her desk, which I used while I worked.

The attraction was instant and I fell hard. Be still, my heart.

When I finished my work, she gifted me with one.

So what is my new love?

A pencil.

But not just any pencil.

It’s a Pentel OE519 automatic grippy pencil with a twist eraser and deliciously bold 0.9 lead thickness. Oh, yeah, baby.

Hello? Are you still with me?

You fainted, right? I know! I did too!

And I almost had a meltdown yesterday when I couldn’t find it in my desk. I thought someone stole it. I wouldn’t blame them. I mean, it writes like a dream, very sturdy and forgiving — you can press really hard and not break the tip.

It’s smooth like a pen. A pen. But it’s not!

Don’t hate me because I have a groovy new pencil.

Hate me because I won’t let you use it.

Seriously. Try it and I’ll cut you.

Have a nice day.

A co-worker of mine sneezes so violently I’m afraid his spleen may come flying out one of these days. And it startles me every time. I told him “Geez, dude. Ring a bell before you do that.” Was that rude of me? I think it was a little bit rude.

I went to a church bazaar at lunch with another co-worker this week. It was their last day, so they handed us grocery bags and said “Anything you can fit in this bag is one dollar.” So we loaded our bags with a lot of stuff and paid our dollar on the way out, thinking all the while “We really should pay more than a dollar. This doesn’t feel right.” When we left, the handle of my co-worker’s bag came off, the bag fell to the floor and broke her ceramic bundt pan. Clearly, Jesus would have wanted us to give more generously.

I went to my credit union to deposit a check. While signing paperwork at the table near the teller windows, I dropped a pile of deposit slips, the flip-calendar thingy and then my purse, and I hit my head on the corner of the table picking up all the dropped items. A clerk sitting at a nearby desk rolled her eyes at me. I’ll give you an eye roll, lady. To add insult to injury, the ink in the pen chained to the table ran out. Tuesday was not a good day for me.

Those who follow me on Facebook know now that my husband puts mayonnaise on everything. This week he put it on pizza. Commence vomiting.

The reporter from NPR who interviewed me on-air about Windy the Plastic Bag emailed me Monday to ask how she was doing up in her tree. That both cracked me up and warmed my heart. Incidentally, when all the leaves on Windy’s tree come down, I’ll post new pictures of her. What’s left, that is.

Someone in my blog audience got her first boyfriend and she stopped commenting here. I miss her. But her boyfriend adores her, as well he should, and so it’s all good. But still. Sniff. Pass me a tissue.

The student assistant who works in my office is 6’ 4” tall. It means that he can see over the partition to my cubicle. He’s caught me more than once doing something I shouldn’t by peering over it to ask a last minute question. So now whenever I’m shoveling, say, six miniature Halloween candy bars in my face, I have to make sure he’s really gone before I begin another session wherein I disgust myself for all I can eat in one sitting.

I know I made a co-worker green with envy when she watched me back my car into a parking space in one quick, perfect action. I’m an excellent back-in-parker-inner. Admit it. You’re jealous, too.

Hope you guys had a good week! Don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead on Sunday. Or is it back? Whatever. Just turn it whatever way you feel and hope for the best.

Hey, peeps! I’m home from a business conference I attended in Norfolk, Virginia. Oh, sweet blog, how I’ve missed you!

Here are some random observations I collected along the way:

1. A garden shed with a crucifix slapped over the door and a hand-painted sign counts as a church in the south.

2. I almost threw my back out unloading pillows from my bed every night. It is possible to have too much comfort and too much poof.

3. If the conference staff puts out chafing dishes every day full of delicious bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and buttery biscuits, and you get accustomed to it, when they start putting out stuff like this…..

this is how much of it you will take.

4. Apparently, the Tyson plant somewhere in Virginia has a Chicken of the Month award for birds on good behavior. We saw a gaggle of them feeding outside the factory on the front lawn.

If death row chickens knew how to fly at a decent clip, they could, you know, leave.

5. The south doesn’t breed tail-gaters or speeders, and everyone politely lets you into a lane when you need to get there. Unlike in the north, where drivers will sooner shoot out your tires than show you the least bit of courtesy. North, take a lesson.

6. After going insane being on the road for eight hours, when your driving companion leaves your neighborhood to return the rental car, and you follow behind, you will  laugh so hard you cry when you see her make the first turn the wrong way and wind up in the suburban abyss for an extra ten minutes it kept her from getting the hell home already.

7. Having a panic attack while riding on a leisure yacht going only 2 knots per hour will get you laughed at by total strangers.

8. Having a conference badge hanging around your neck and swinging off your boobs will get you unintentionally ogled by total strangers trying to read your name and university, printed in teeny tiny typeface.

9. Four cups of coffee in the hotel room the morning of the drive home, plus four more during conference events and one more on the way home is sort of too much. It also gives you the crazy eyes, an unforgiving bladder and lead foot.

10. Coastal cities rock it with the seafood. And so do seafood restaurants.

11. That guy who was stuck to my trunk on Philadelphia’s I-95, in the rain and on a shoulderless stretch, can go to hell. You proved that I had every reason to fear driving on that highway and ruined any chance of me ever attempting it again.

12. Southern hospitality is alive and well. When your fat ass knocks over a dozen formerly organized pashmina scarves from a display in a gift shop — not once, but twice — the cashier will apologize to you for the incidents. You will feel like a dumb northerner and pray she doesn’t have a blog of her own.

I’m glad to be back! Missed you guys!

In my line of work, I find myself cleaning malware off my clients’ computers two or three times a week. Sometimes that involves an entire reinstall of Windows, applications and data. You have no idea what I’d like to do to the people who spend their time invading computers with their crap programs.

I’m not a violent person, but let’s just say my punishment would involve burying them in sand up to their necks and unleashing an army of hungry fire ants. It may also involve gasoline, a match and maniacal laughter. OK, so maybe I am violent.

The one thing that’s troubling for users when they acquire malware is that they feel almost physically violated. Some look like they’re going to cry. All are annoyed, and rightly so. Yet others react to it as though I told them they have a case of head lice.

This is what the discussion feels like when I inform them of their infection:

Client: I have what?

Me: You have head lice.

Client: How did I get it?

Me: Likely a website.

Client: But I’m careful.

Me: Head lice is everywhere.

Client: How can I prevent it?

Me: It’s hard to avoid it.

Client: But I haven’t been hanging around sites with head lice.

Me: You wouldn’t really know it if you were. Lots of normal-looking sites have head lice.

Client: How do I get rid of it?

Me: I clean it with head lice remover.

Client: Will it work?

Me: Not always. Sometimes we have to chop off your whole head. It could take hours.

Client: So if you get rid of my head lice and I lose my whole head, can you at least save my data?

Me: Yes.

Client: Wow, I really want to punch those stupid people who gave me head lice.

Me: I’ve got it covered. See these fire ants?

* If you have a bout of head lice on your Windows PC, you can remove it easily (most of the time) with the free Malwarebytes program. It’s best to run it in Safe Mode.

This morning at work I took an elevator to a lab I’m responsible for maintaining. Two service workers from a copier rental place got on-board with me.

They asked if I worked in the building.

“Yep. What’cha need?”

“We’re here to pick up a copier in Room 61.”

“Oh, that’s great. I’m headed down to Room 51 myself. I’ll take you to the room.”

We arrived at the pickup location and I unlocked the door for them. Inside was a giant copier on wheels, the kind that can do every task imaginable in addition to copying.

The guys checked the serial number to make sure it was the right copier and it was.

They thanked me for letting them in the room and asked if I wouldn’t mind signing the pickup form.

“Sure. No problem.”

I signed and dated the form and then because the guy wanted to send one to the department who requested the pickup and keep one for himself, he asked me this:

“Do you have a copier I can use?”

Hand to God.

This post is more for my benefit than yours.

I’m taking a two-week vacation in early June. Everyone who knows it asks me where I’m going.

While I’d like to say I’m jumping on a plane to take me to some faraway place, the truth is I’m headed to a dark, dank corner of my basement.

I plan to lock myself down there for at least the first week so I can finally get my book off the ground.

No sunlight.

No fresh air.

No email.

No cats.

No husband.

No TV.

No distractions.

Just me and my laptop.

I’ve been wanting to write a book for the last couple of years and I settled on the subject matter only recently. You’ll probably all be mad at me for not telling you what it’s about, but I’m superstitious and feel that if I tell you, I’ll jinx myself.

I also feel if I announce publicly that I’m going to venture into book territory, I’d better actually DO IT.

So send me your good vibes that despite being surrounded by dusty old Christmas decorations, furniture we don’t use, kitty litter boxes and bugs falling on my head, I will still feel creative enough to knock out a few thousand words a day of decent book material.

I consider this venture the hardest thing I’ll ever do, but probably the most rewarding.

If you’ve ever tried to write a book, I’m open to advice and suggestions, but I’m scared you’ll all tell me it’s a waste of my time.

You know what?

Lie to me.

Today a laptop was delivered to me for virus/malware removal. Before I got started on my work, I wanted to clean the laptop because the screen was kind of funky and so was the keyboard.

I spritzed a little cleaner on a cloth and wiped down the screen and then went all crazy on the keyboard.

A little too crazy.

With one quick swipe, the CAPS LOCK key went sailing.

Cray-ap!!!

Keys on regular USB keyboards are pretty easy to snap back on, but laptops are a different animal.

Why?

Because this is what the the underbelly of a laptop key looks like.

Ridiculous, huh?

I tried everything.

I Googled how to replace keys on the make and model of this particular laptop. I did find one link, with pictures and everything, but this key mechanism looked nothing like the pictures.

And so I sat there for half an hour studying it, trying eighteen ways to get it to clamp down.

I figured that the two thin metal pins went through the holes on the left and right sides, as shown above. That much seemed straightforward.

But that white thing above it that looks like a tiny toilet seat needed to hook over a very small metal anchor on the side closest to me. But no amount of fiddling or carefully applied pressure would get it to snap on!

I enlisted the help of my co-workers who tried for a few minutes, but quickly gave up.

“You’re screwed. Can’t be fixed.”

Just then, a hardware tech happened into my office and so I showed it to him.

“Oh, that’s messed up,” he says. “Better have Keith (another tech) work on it. He’s great at fixing these things. Better yet, just give me the serial number and I’ll get a new keyboard from Dell and come back to put it on.”

I didn’t exactly want to do that because my client was really short on time this week and I doubted he’d have time allow more work on it.

So I emailed Keith and sent him the picture.

“Is there any way I can fix this myself?” I asked.

“Oh, man. Those are nasty. But if you bring the laptop down, I’ll try to fix it,” he said.

I really wanted to fix the key myself, especially because I’d broken it and felt like a royal doofus. I also since found out that the laptop wasn’t under warranty anymore, so getting a new keyboard would cost money. Money spent that would be my fault.

I finally gave up the fight and called the client. I left voice mail that I’d cleaned the malware off the laptop and also cleaned the keyboard, which resulted in the loss of the CAPS LOCK key. And then I begged for forgiveness and told him that we’d have to deliver the system to the shop for repair and that I was sorry for the inconvenience.

My apologies took up the entire 3-minute voice mail limit before I was unceremoniously cut off.

About ten minutes later the client showed up.

Laughing.

“Kathy, that key has been broken for years.”

And right then and there, my head exploded all over the wall. I gathered up my brain and pieced it back together much better than I was able to reassemble the CAPS LOCK key.

And that was my Monday.

How was yours?

Sometimes luck taps me on the shoulder, introduces itself and shakes my hand.

Luck paid me a visit in 2004 and sent me to Paris.

I was sitting at my desk at work, fighting an urge to raid the snack machine downstairs. The urge won and so I grabbed my wallet and headed out the door.

On my way downstairs, I spotted a fraternity student sitting at a table by the elevator, selling raffle tickets for a charity fundraiser.

The sign on the table read “Win a Trip to Paris!”

Curious, I walked over to the table to get more information.

“Tickets are $5 each,” the student said.

Digging through my wallet, I was disappointed to find that I had only a few singles and change I planned to use in the snack machine.

“Will you be around later this week?” I asked.

“Yep, til Friday,” he said.

“Good.” I told him I’d be back later with enough cash in hand for two tickets.

The next day I found the student, paid him $10, filled out a form and received my tickets. A note on the back said the winner would be announced a few weeks after that, and it included a URL with more raffle information. I stuck the tickets in my wallet.

Weeks went by.

And nothing. No phone call to say I had won. Oh, well, better luck next time, I thought.

But then I remembered the tickets in my wallet and thought maybe the winner would be announced on the web site for the contest.

Maybe someone I know won. That’d be nice for them.

And so I pointed my browser to the web site, which revealed an animated image of the French flag.

The caption read “Click here to see who won!”

I clicked on the flag.

The French national anthem began playing over my speakers and the image dissolved gradually to reveal this:

I immediately felt a rush of adrenalin and almost started crying. It was me!!! At least I thought it was me. Feeling like a game show contestant who’d just won a car, I thought for a moment maybe I wasn’t really staring at my own name on the screen.

Winning big things makes you take leave of every last one of your senses.

So I did what crazy game show contestants do. I got up and, arms flailing, ran over to a woman who worked outside my office. “Nancy!!!! Go to this web site!!!! Does it say Kathy Frederick on your screen too?!?!?”

I swear to God I did that and you can ask Nancy. Just don’t ask her how stupid she thought I was at that very moment. She’s such a nice lady, she wouldn’t be honest with you anyway.

There we were, looking at my name and listening to La Marseillaise, letting it all sink in.

Wow. A trip to Paris for ten bucks. You just can’t beat that.

I called my husband and didn’t even say hello when he answered. I simply shouted “Pack your bags! We’re going to Paris!”

He let an expletive slip and we hooted and hollered for a good five minutes, not believing my good fortune.

I contacted the student organization who sold me the tickets and they apologized for not notifying me by phone earlier. They confirmed my prize, told me to contact travel services to make arrangements and the rest is history.

It was the trip of a lifetime.

And all because luck pulled up a chair and gave me a fine How d’ya do?

This month marks my 25th anniversary working at a local university.

Before y’all gasp and pity me for working at one place so long, I haven’t worked in the same job all that time. I’ve held several different positions in two vastly different departments, so it hasn’t been boring and I haven’t gotten stale.

Last week I was notified by the HR department that, as a gift for my years of service, I may choose between two kinds of $425 hand-crafted solid maple chairs.

Not a bad deal. They are very nice chairs, except I know deep down I will never sit in them because I’m not 93 years old.

Obviously, I would have to make a decision based on the seating preferences of someone else in my house:

Meet Shadow.

Her first favorite spot to sit is in the kitchen sink.

Her second favorite spot to sit is on a junky chair we keep in the dining room.

Shadow, my dear, you just got an upgrade.

I decided to go with the second chair since the rocker will probably slide on the floor every time she jumps on it and bang against the wall as a result of her girth.

The stationary chair will serve her well.

Of course, something tells me she’d be happier sleeping in a $2 hand-crafted cardboard box.

Too bad. She’ll just have to suffer in luxury.