Random What the What

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I had my hair colored this afternoon.
One of the products the stylist used smells like Old Spice.
So now my whole head smells like a man's armpit.

***

The second-hand store in town is small and crammed full of items for sale.  I wanted a comfortable pair of jeans, so I grabbed every pair remotely close to my size and headed for the closet-sized dressing room.  The door was open, so I moved to step inside only to find a woman already in there trying on shoes.
"Don't mind me," she said.  "Come on in!"

I blinked at her.
She smiled back.
I waited for her to catch up to the situation.

"OH!  You want to try on clothes!  I'll get out of your way."

***

My company is moving across town to new office space this Friday if all goes as planned. 
(We had been told we were moving last Friday, but things did not go as planned.)
I mentioned to the boss that I didn't think we'd have enough toilet paper in our current building to last through the end of the week.
When I mentioned my toilet paper concern to a co-worker, he told me a story about a kid in his elementary school who didn't have access to toilet paper in the boys' bathroom one day and used his sock instead.  As you might have suspected, the sock did not flush.
"Yeah," my co-worker said, "the janitor went from classroom to classroom looking for a kid wearing only one sock."

***

I've been playing a game on my phone for about two months.  It's called Ingress.  It's similar to Pokemon Go!, in fact it was developed by the the same company.  The biggest difference is Ingress seems to encourage being covert while Pokemon Go! encourages being social.  Anyway...

I kept my game activity a secret from my co-workers because 1) I didn't want any of them to start playing it and start taking all the stuff in the neighborhood that I was targeting during my lunchbreaks, and 2) if any of them were already playing, I didn't want them to know I was taking all of their stuff in the neighborhood during my lunchbreaks.

A couple of weeks ago, after I had been playing in peace for months, some new player appeared in the neighborhood and starting taking my stuff (portals).  I would take it back and rebuild it only to have it knocked down again.
I'd have been upset about it, except that the office was moving soon, and I'd be leaving this area and eventually lose all my stuff anyway.

After Pokemon Go was released last week, one of the guys in the office mentioned outloud that he chose the Pokemon blue team because it matched the Ingress team he played for.
(We shall refer to this person as Mr. Blue Team.)
What?  This was the first time I'd heard anyone say "Ingress" in our building.
Curiosity got the best of me and I 'fessed up that I played too.  Our conversation was quite interesting.

This is what he told me...

• He started playing Ingress three weeks ago.
• His friends told him to pick the team which was the opposite color of the most popular color in the area where he wanted to play.  The competition would make playing more interesting, they said. 
• He picked the Blue Team because the entire neighborhood from his house to the office building was blanketed in Green.  He would have lots to do, meaning, he'd have lots of portals to knock down and take for himself.
•  Most of the portals that were creating the big giant Green field were "owned" by the same Green player.  Mr. Blue Team was determined to take down this one player.
• Mr. Blue Team was SO vexed by this same Green player's name showing up everywhere that he complained everyday to the co-worker sitting next to him (we shall call this person Mr. Eyeroll) and vowed that he would prevail.

This is what I told him...

• I'd been playing Ingress for two months. 
• I picked the Green Team because that's the team my sons played on, and they told me I couldn't play if I chose to work against them.
• The neighborhood where I wanted to play was around the company office building so I would have motivation to take walks during my lunch breaks.  And it worked like a charm.  Without the game, I had to force myself to take a 20 minute walk.  With the game, I had to force myself to go back to the office after 40 minutes.
• After the first week of play, I realized no one came to this side of town.  Taking portals was easy.  I built big green fields that no one bothered to touch.
• After a month, I got bored because there was no competition.  So I started to venture farther out and within a week or two, I had big Green fields that covered most of a square mile.
• Two weeks after that, some Blue player came around and started attacking my stuff.  I fought it for a while, but eventually, that player took it all, and turned it Blue.

I asked him what his screen name was, and when he told me, I recognized it as the name of the player who had arrived recently and had taken all my stuff.  I realized we'd been playing against each other for weeks.
At this point, I'm not sure he understood the full scope of the situation.  Out of curiosity, he asked, "What's your screen name?"
When I told him, his jaw dropped.  He was stunned to learn that:

1. *I* had been the player that thwarted him for days before he finally conquered his first portal, and
2. It had been *my* giant field of GREEN that had inspired him to chose BLUE in the first place.

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The young computer geek had been totally vexed in a digital game for WEEKS by an almost 50-year-old mother of two.

Remember Mr. Eyeroll who had to listen over and over about how infuriated Mr. Blue Team had been with a Green Team player?  *He* was so amused by this turn of events that he thoroughly enjoyed telling everyone, "All this time, it was ROSES that Mr. Blue Team couldn't beat!"
Apparently, Mr. Blue Team had complained and vowed to a lot of people in his department.  :-)

The next day as Mr. Blue Team and I discussed the similarities and differences between PokemonGo! and Ingress, and as he and I shared game strategies, Mr. Eyeroll listened in fascination.
When we stopped talking for a moment, Mr. Eyeroll spoke up.  "I don't know what amuses me more.  The fact that Mr. Blue Team plays both Pokemon and Ingress, or that he's being out-geeked by Roses!"

I am now a company legend.

::mic drop::