A New Macbook and a New Friend
Welcome back honey!This has been a fun week for the ExcuseGal. Last Saturday I finally got my very own Macbook. It's my first computer ever (aside from this pink Barbie Learning-Fun laptop I had when I was 6) and I'm already in love with it. The best part about my purchase? It turns out that my neighbor has wi-fi and he's broadcasting a totally unlocked signal. This means I have totally free wi-fi! Thanks "BEJERNUD"!
The worst part about my computer is definitely it's built-in webcam. It's not that it's low quality or doesn't work right, the reason I consider it the worst feature is that now I have no excuse for not posting video blog posts. Before I owned a computer, I was able to hide behind the shroud of poorly constructed senteinces and non sequitur images. Now every time I go to write a blog post, there's this tiny little camera staring me in the face. It's like my computer is challenging me to make a video post. Well, I accept your challenge Macbook!
Without further ado, here is the very first video post on A Good Excuse Blog!
So, I'm sure after watching that you have many questions. First one being, "how'd I land such a cutie to be the face of A Good Excuse Blog?" Well, as he mentioned (let's just call him ExcuseGuy from now on), ExcuseGuy is a classmate of mine at school. We've been in the same 3D Design class for a month and I was talking to him about my blog. He mentioned the he's studying social media and video communication, so I said to myself "I've gotta get this guy involved with the blog".
The best part about having ExcuseGuy do the video posts is that there's still no real connection to me. Since none of my friends or co-workers go to school with me, there's no way anybody who sees ExcuseGuy can link him back to me. My identity is thus kept secret so that I may continue to come up with great excuses for you all. And it's great for ExcuseGuy because he's just the conveyor of the excuses, so all his friends won't be all mad at him all the time since he's not actually using these excuses in real life. (I am).
To sum up, I, ExcuseGal, will continue to update the blog with new excuses. I'll still keep in touch with you all with Twitter and Facebook. The only change around here is that I'll be having ExcuseGuy make all the video posts for the site. If I ever get enough confidence, maybe I'll help him out on a post or two as well. Check back soon for more awesome excuses!
A Not-So-Super-Market
Started a new job at supermarket. No excuses today, just an update on the new job. I'm still keeping my other waitress job in the evenings. This one is in the morning on non-school days so that I can make enough money to actually put furniture in my apartment. Also, I’ll start to use my phone to tweet in excuses I think of on-the-job, since nobody is working in my section and it’s not nearly as busy as the restaurant I work at. Keep an eye on my Twitter stream @ExcuseGal. Love ya'll!
A Long Post About a Short Accident
Occasionally I will find myself in a situation where the truth actually sounds like a lie, so I find myself giving a lie that sounds like the truth. It’s complicated.
A few years ago my mom had asked me to go pick up some hedge that she found for free on Craigslist. She’d been re-doing the garden using only plants that she found in the “for free” section of Craigslist. I have a truck so I usually ended up going to pick up the plants that are farther away. I made it to the address with the hedge and got it loaded into the back seat of my car. I was really bottom-heavy so the guy who was getting rid of it had to help me load it into the bed of my truck. He also brought this big blue tarp (which had a padlock on one corner, WTF?) and put it over the actual “hedge” part, so the wind wouldn’t mess it up on the freeway. I drove away and told my mom that I would drop the hedge off after work. I had to go in early that day, so I was going straight from hedge-guy to work.
I got on the freeway and things were going great. I took the off-ramp to get to work but the light was turning yellow right as I made it to the intersection. I took a risk and decided to go through anyway. Unfortunately, the car in front of me did the same and didn’t anticipate that there wasn’t any space for him. He had to slam on his brakes in the middle of the inersection to keep from hitting the car in front of him. Of course, him slamming his brakes meant that I had to as well. When I did this, I heard a weird Woosh-Clink sound and then all of a sudden my entire car was washed in a bright blue light.
I couldn’t see a thing out any of my windows. I figured out later that sudden stop had shifted the weight of the bottom-heavy hedge, which sprang up toward the cab of my truck and threw the tarp over my windshield. So there I am it the middle of a busy intersection, stupid tall green hedge standing up in the back of my truck and a tarp over the entire front of my cab.
All around me me I could hear drivers honking and speeding past my truck. I tried to get out of the way, but people were passing me on both sides. I couldn’t drive anywhere anyway since I couldn’t even see in front of me. Once I heard a lull in the traffic, I opened the passenger door a little to pull the tarp inside and start driving again. Unfortunately, right when I opened the door, I hit a biker who was riding past between the cars. Luckily, I hit him just after he had passed my car, so it wasn’t brutal enough to send him flying head-over-heels or anything. I did knock him down though.
At this point, I just had to give up with the tarp and go to check on the biker. I told him I was really sorry and I helped pick him up (he was a cutie too). We exchanged information and he said he wasn’t really hurt, just surprised. I finally took the tarp off my windshield and shoved it into my front seat, then I got back in my truck and drove back to my mom’s house to deliver her stupid bush. Originally I was going to go straight to work and deliver the bush afterwords, but this thing had caused enough trouble for one day and I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.
All in all, I was an hour and a half late to work. In all the confusion, I hadn’t even called to mention that I’d be late. My boss was pretty pissed off, so I told him I had broken down on the side of the freeway and my phone battery died while I was calling AAA. I guess since I looked exasperated and smelled like car exhaust, he figured I must be telling the truth. So, next time you find yourself in an amazing-but-true situation, remember sometimes a simple lie is better than the complicated truth.
The Power of a Good Excuse
A while ago I learned a very important lesson that changed my life forever. I work as a waitress at a major franchise restaurant (similar to Chilli’s or TGI Fridays) and I usually work the dinner shift. Unfortunately, I also go to school during the day, which leaves me with almost no time to get from class to work. I usually show up at work very hungry and left with like no time to have a snack.
So this one evening I made it to work with a whopping 2 minutes to spare. Since I had the extra time, I decided to munch on some of the tortilla chips we serve to customers. Our chips are SUPER salty and I usually need to have some salsa on them so I don’t die of dehydration. We offer a mild salsa and a hot salsa. They can be told apart by the color of their containers; Mild salsa goes in the yellow container and Hot salsa goes in the red container. Some jerk must have mixed up the containers because I had some salsa from a yellow container and it nearly disintegrated my tongue! My eyes started to water up so much you’d think I Oprah had just given me a brand new house.
I scrambled for glass of water but, finding no such refreshment, I was forced to scarf down a few more handfuls of chips to try to put out the raging inferno in my mouth. I guess one chip went down the wrong pipe because pretty soon I was having a major coughing fit. So there I am: hunched over next to the time clock, heat-induced tears streaming down my face, coughing like a cat with a 2-ton hairball in it’s throat.
It’s right about this time that my manager walks by. He see’s me like this and tells me I’m crazy if I think he’s going to let me work when I’m this sick. Before I could explain that I was simply suffering a tortilla chip induced seizure, he practically pushes me out the door and I’m back in my car before I know it.
Drinking a bottle of water I found buried in the back seat of my car, I was finally able to stop coughing and crying. As I sat there and replayed the event in my head, I realized how incredibly powerful an excuse can be. Because of a simple cough and some watery eyes, I now had the entire Friday night to do whatever I wanted. I ended up being “sick” for the entire weekend and when I came back to work on Tuesday, people all told me how much they had missed me and were glad I was feeling better.
Some people may say that pretending to be sick to get out of work (or school, or anything) is dishonest, but I like to think of it as an “instant-gratification micro-vacation”. I think it’s more dishonest of society be expected to work 40 hours a week, week after week, year after year only to get 14 days of vacation time . Or be forced to attend school for an average of nearly 10 months, only getting a 9 lousy weeks for a summer break. By leveraging the awesome power of excuses, we can all craft our destinies to be what we want, when we want!
I will be updating this blog daily with new excuses for your everyday life. These excuses are practically guaranteed to get you out of just about any possible 
situation that may come up. From “excuses to leave school early” to “excuses for getting out of a speeding ticket” and everything in between, you’ll find it here at A Good Excuse Blog. Best of all, I can vouch for each excuse’s effectiveness because I have personally used just about every one of them successfully. If you have a particular excuse you’re looking for, feel free to email me at ExcuseGal@AGoodExcuse.org . Until tomorrow y’all!