The amount of running in the office has drastically increased in the last two days

So there I am running on a path that follows a river at 6:45 in the morning in a town in the middle of nowhere. Up to this point I haven’t seen a single person (rightfully so since it’s ungodly early), but all of a sudden there are three people and a dog a little ways down running on the path towards me. Well, two of them are running, the other woman and her dog were meandering. I notice that I’m on a collision course with the dog so I veer to avoid it. At the last moment, the dog also changes course and RUNS RIGHT INTO ME, forcing me to stop running, trip over my feet a little bit, and put my hands out to prevent myself from kicking him in the face. Obviously the other two joggers see it all happen and I’m pretty sure I caught one of them snickering. Someone was clearly playing a cruel joke on me to have the only other 3 people awake in Durham witness my humility. (Please note that I tried to draw this situation out using Microsoft Paint, but even this one was beyond my ability.)

Graffiti on a boathouse in Durham – Carter beats the devil
(Do you think they mean “beat” in a physical way or just metaphorically? I like to think it’s the former because then I can picture the devil curled up in the fetal position on the floor pleading for Carter to stop punching him in the nose with his brass knuckles.)

Sign posted on a telephone pole in Edinburgh – Man Animals Party (telephone #)
(Even I can’t think of what this sign possibly means.)

Right. So the pizza flavoured scotch. My friends and I took a tour of the smallest single malt distillery in all of Scotland. Luck was once again on our side and we ended up on a tour with about 30 people all over the age of 80. I wasn’t so interested in hearing about the scotch-making process since this will never be part of my useless fact canon used to impress people at parties, so I hung back and took pictures. As we passed by one of the big vats filled with a bubbling, yeasty liquid, my ridiculous mind started thinking some ridiculous thoughts. What would happen if you dropped something in there? Would they fetch it out? Would they scrap the whole vat and start over because of contamination? What kinds of things would they deem “start over-able?” Because I am obnoxious, I felt I had to ask the tour guide these questions, after the tour had ended of course. (Unlike 90% of the people in the distillery, the guide was maybe 21 and had a sense of humor enough to laugh at himself when he made the faux pas of referring to their cream scotch as Bailey’s, so I knew it would be okay.)
Unfortunately, when I asked “What would happen if, say, I dropped a piece of pizza into the vat?” he looked at me incredulously and I could just tell he assumed that’s exactly what I had done. So I back peddled.
“No, no, no! Don’t worry. I didn’t ACTUALLY drop pizza in there. I’m just asking what if.”
He was still taken aback by this question (and wasn’t at all put at ease when I followed it up with, “Okay, well what about a camera? Or a hot dog with no bun?”).
He replied, “I don’t know, but I can find someone who does.”
So he went up to the old man behind the store cash register, who happened to be wearing a kilt, and asked him the question. Again, I was met with a face that said, “Oh my god, you dropped PIZZA in our SCOTCH??? Who is this elfin-like person who dares to contaminate our century old alcohol?” So now both the tour guide and I are assuring the decrepit old geyser that there is no trace of pizza in his precious scotch. He stumbled a bit but managed to form some kind of sentence with the gist that if whatever I had/hadn’t dropped in there had a strong enough flavour that yes, it would change the flavour of the scotch. They didn’t really answer my question of whether they would throw all of the liquid away and start over, but at this point I was getting death stares from my friends and knew I had to say thank you, cut my losses, and get the hell out of Dodge before they call over more people in kilts.

In short, don’t bring pizza to distilleries.