Welcome to another exciting installment of: (read this next part in a loud booming voice) Useless Things Cal Did at Work!!

It appeared to be a normal Monday at the King's Club, except for the fact that there were still no kids at the center. In fact, the kids weren't the only ones missing. My director was still out on vacation, one staff member was still away on her honeymoon, and another guy was away at camp. This meant only one thing for me: Find nothing to do for a few hours, then check out. I did a little work on the computer, but decided my time would be better wasted cleaning off the game table we have.

We have 3 game tables (actually we have 4, but the ping pong table is out of commision): a foosball table, a pool table, and an air hockey table.

Foosball table: A little cleaning spray and some scrubbing got most of the dirt off the mini-soccer field. I even took some time to clean off the tiny soccer players' shoes, which had gotten dirty from kicking the ball.

Pool table: I used some transparent tape as a makeshift lint remover to pick off glitter and other assorted glitter-sized trash bits off the surface. No more missed shots due to speed bumps anymore.

Air hockey table: (this took a long time) There is an electronic scoring device attached to this table, but with the beating it had recieved, it had stopped working. I tried to revive it by opening it up and poking at wires and such, but it was hopeless. Unfazed by the death of the scoring machine, I went on to work on the table. I noticed that the air output of the table had decreased quite a bit from when we got it 9 months ago. I checked out the fan and it seemed to be working fine, so I figured some of the holes on the air hockey table were clogged. I untwisted a paper clip and started piercing the airholes one at a time. I was actually getting dirt out, but then I realized there were probably 2 million holes on the hockey table. Drawing inspiration from Monster Garage, I reshaped my paper clip hole-poking-tool into a U-shape so I could poke dirt out two holes at once. I got about a third of the way through. Only 1.3 million holes to go.

The Bay Area Rescue Mission pays me to do this? Well, just a little. Emphasis on little. I know most of you working people have spent more than 10 days at work in the past year being unproductive. There are only 2 weeks in the whole year that I really have nothing to do at work, so I have to take advantage, especially if my boss is out for one of those weeks. My boss returns tomorrow. (Anytime our center is open for kids, I am the hardest worker in our department. No joke about that.)