Would you like some parking lot with your queso?

I thought crockpots were supposed to be one of this century's finest inventions. Sure they are easy to use - you throw in all of your ingredients, turn the dial to either high or low, put the lid on and let it do it's magic. That's precisely what I did.

But the inventor of this kitchen masterpiece never thought about the ease in which to LUG THIS THING AROUND!

I told you before, and I'll tell you again, funny stuff finds me, no matter where I am or what I'm doing.

So today we are having a food day at work to honor a long-time employee who is leaving us for the sunnier skies of Florida. My contribution to today's feast is chili con queso. A simple concoction really, cheese, ground beef, ground sausage, salsa, etc. - all thrown in the crockpot to warm into a melted heart attack. I decided to pack my crockpot and chips into a two-handled wicker-like basket to aid with hauling it into the office. I decided to pull around to the back door of our building, drop it off in the hallway, and retrieve it after parking my car down in the lower lot. Well, when I pulled the basket out of my car, the handle gave way, and conqueso spilled all over the place, especially on the blacktop.

By the back door.
Where many people, including students, walk by.
Conqueso on blacktop.
A rather large mound of it.
Picture that.

It was all over my hands and splashed on my pants on shoes. I didn't know what to do except use foul verbage. Which I did. A lot. I put the basket mess inside the back door in the hallway and proceeded to park my car, one handed, as my right hand was covered in what appeared to be cheesy vomit. After parking my car, I retrieved one of Joonya's dirty baseball shirts from the back of the trailblazer and used it to wipe off my hands. I then went up to the building, passing the mound of conqueso now oozing all over the parking lot, and started to laugh. Like a crazy person.

I carried the basket o'mess into my office and was greeted by Techtard, who saw what I was bringing in and started with..."Oh no, oh no..." followed by full blown laughter. I told her what happened and the first thing out of her mouth was..."Can you see it from the window?"

More laughter.

We ran to the window just above where the incident took place. We're on the second floor so we had a birds-eye view of the mess. You could see it, clear as day. More laughter, and now an audience gathered because everyone in our office wanted to see what we were howling over.

Then one of the maintenance guys appeared. He was strolling into work with his coffee mug in tow, looking down at this hazmat site, shaking his head in disgust. We all lost it. It couldn't have been funnier. I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face. We watched him come back with a cardboard box and a flat piece of cardboard, using it to scrape the mess off the pavement and into the box. I sincerely owe him an apology. I'm sure he had no idea what he just scooped up. He had to help me one other time during an ACT testing day when one of our examinees decided to shit themselves in the hallway while leaving the test. I'm not kidding. It was, by far, the worst smelling excrement I've ever been privy to. I felt like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Who, in their right mind, shits themselves while walking down the hall, in a sea of 200 high school kids? I was dumbfounded. I still am. That was one of the most bizarre days I've ever experienced.

But back to the queso incident. It took me a half-hour to clean up the crockpot and myself. It smells like a Mexican fiesta in my office. I bagged the basket up in a trashbag and threw it out. There was no way it was salvagable. The remaining queso is now warming on the counter in the back of our office. The other half is stinking up the trash room in a cardboard box.