Ma Bell
Hello World,
And so here we are, coming up to the end of February already, and nothing to show for it. If things keep up like this, it will wind up being just like last year, and I'm sure nobody wants that to happen. I don't know about other places, but around here, we managed to have not one, but two snowstorms in the same week, which is a concept that I find has very little to recommend it. For one thing, it interferes terribly with my wood chopping activities, because I can't cut up firewood in the snow. Everyone knows that I carry my own firewood with me when I go camping, but that wood starts out originally as fallen tree branches and old Christmas trees, and doesn't just cut itself up, you know. I like to saw wood in the winter, so as not to get so overheated, and also there's no pesky bugs. Of course, people who use chain saws can saw anything they want, anytime they feel like it, but I use a hand saw, and in order for that to work, you have to wait until the conditions are right. Snow-covered logs may look decorative, but they don't cut well, so that's a chore that will have to wait for another time.
Last week, I started developing those unmistakable signs of getting another cold, and you can believe me when I say that I didn't think much of this idea, on top of being sick at Christmas and this not even 2 months later. But there was obviously something else going around, because so many people also got sick, and many of them had also been sick at Christmas like I was. My co-workers at the hospital were sick, other members at church were sick, and the folks that I would speak to on the phone from other companies were all telling the same story. I was thinking that there was no escaping the fact that this has been a bad winter for illnesses across the board. Then suddenly in a recent issue of The Journal News (their motto: "Little Do Scoop") we find the estimable Ellen Goodman weighing in on this very same topic:
==============================
A particularly nasty little virus has taken down
two member of my family, and brought Sen.
Hillary Clinton to the floor in the middle of a
speech. The senator, however, picked herself up
and went off to her next speech, thereby proving
that she was suffering from "presenteeism."
Presenteeism isn't an ideology, a doctrine or any
other "ism." It's the opposite of absenteeism. It's
the practice of coming to work when you should be in bed.
==============================
I love that! I'm so glad that there's a word for it, because I think presenteeism is just so perfect. And while we're on the subject of things that are where they shouldn't be, I can tell you the story of my recliner. I don't like to complain about my recliner, because we got it nearly 20 years ago from the Salvation Army, so you know it doesn't owe us a thing at this point. So when the springs became "unsprung" on one side, I figured that I would just have to grin and bear it, although it was really too lopsided to be considered comfortable in any way. But everyone knows how Bill loves a challenge, so one day when I was at church, he turned the recliner upside-down and took a swing at re-attaching the springs to their brackets. Now I will admit, if anyone had asked me what I thought someone would find, if they turned the recliner upside-down and looked inside, that there would probably be a fair amount of vitamins and the like, because I'm always dropping my pills into my lap, and from there, they dribble down the side of the seat cushions and out of reach. And that did in fact turn out to be the case, as Bill retrieved a wide assortment of pills from the inside cavity of the recliner, and no surprise there. But I would be embarrassed to tell you how much silverware was also down there, such a ragtag collection of forks, spoons and knives that made it look like a family of trolls had taken up residence in there. The amazing part is that I not only don't remember losing all of these implements (and which you would have thought we would have missed long before now) but also some of which would have seemed impossible to work their own pointy way into the recliner without being deliberately put there. I've never known silverware to exhibit those sort of telekinetic properties before, but you can be sure that I'll be watching them a lot more carefully from now on.
Friends of ours are having renovations done to their home, which began in May of last year, as these things often do, with high hopes and enthusiasm. The contractor originally said that the project would take 12 weeks, and he would be finished by August. Our friends are no fools, and hoped instead to see the project completed by Christmas at least. Now 10 months later, and way over budget, the renovation is still dragging along with no end in sight. Most of that time, they've been living in two rooms with no kitchen, and subsisting on a diet of crockpot meals and Chinese take-out. Under the circumstances, you would expect their families to be supportive and sympathetic. Instead, they regale them with statistics such as, "Do you realize that the whole Empire State Building was constructed in only 18 months at the height of the Depression? And meanwhile, your measly little renovation has taken more than half of that time and isn't even finished yet." Our friends console themselves with the thought that there were 60 fatalities during the construction of the Empire State Building, while their project has a flawless safety record so far. Although, if I was their contractor at this point, I wouldn't turn my back on anybody.
In this bad weather that we've been having lately, I thought I would give our feathered friends a little bit of an extra treat, so I sent Bill off in search of bird bells at the supermarket. We were surprised to find that a person could go to two different Stop-N-Shop stores and find no bird bells to be had anywhere. After the second fruitless expedition on this quest, Bill announced that he was giving Stop-N-Shop the "no bell" prize, and no thank you very much.
Meanwhile at work, I had a woman call me today who said that she had placed an order on our web site and needed to speak with someone about the microscope she wanted. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not usually at a loss for words, but this had me completely speechless. I honestly didn't know where to begin. I finally told her that we are a hospital, and generally speaking we don't sell things, and as far as I know, you can't place orders on our web site. To her credit, she didn't argue with me, as she saw the logic of my explanation. But when I told her the phone number that she called, she said it was the number she had been given, so I suppose we can look forward to getting more of these calls in the future. I guess the thing to do would be to stock up on microscopes now, which might turn into a nice little fund-raiser on the side. Here's my microscope pun for today: More power to ya!
And so here we are, coming up to the end of February already, and nothing to show for it. If things keep up like this, it will wind up being just like last year, and I'm sure nobody wants that to happen. I don't know about other places, but around here, we managed to have not one, but two snowstorms in the same week, which is a concept that I find has very little to recommend it. For one thing, it interferes terribly with my wood chopping activities, because I can't cut up firewood in the snow. Everyone knows that I carry my own firewood with me when I go camping, but that wood starts out originally as fallen tree branches and old Christmas trees, and doesn't just cut itself up, you know. I like to saw wood in the winter, so as not to get so overheated, and also there's no pesky bugs. Of course, people who use chain saws can saw anything they want, anytime they feel like it, but I use a hand saw, and in order for that to work, you have to wait until the conditions are right. Snow-covered logs may look decorative, but they don't cut well, so that's a chore that will have to wait for another time.
Last week, I started developing those unmistakable signs of getting another cold, and you can believe me when I say that I didn't think much of this idea, on top of being sick at Christmas and this not even 2 months later. But there was obviously something else going around, because so many people also got sick, and many of them had also been sick at Christmas like I was. My co-workers at the hospital were sick, other members at church were sick, and the folks that I would speak to on the phone from other companies were all telling the same story. I was thinking that there was no escaping the fact that this has been a bad winter for illnesses across the board. Then suddenly in a recent issue of The Journal News (their motto: "Little Do Scoop") we find the estimable Ellen Goodman weighing in on this very same topic:
==============================
A particularly nasty little virus has taken down
two member of my family, and brought Sen.
Hillary Clinton to the floor in the middle of a
speech. The senator, however, picked herself up
and went off to her next speech, thereby proving
that she was suffering from "presenteeism."
Presenteeism isn't an ideology, a doctrine or any
other "ism." It's the opposite of absenteeism. It's
the practice of coming to work when you should be in bed.
==============================
I love that! I'm so glad that there's a word for it, because I think presenteeism is just so perfect. And while we're on the subject of things that are where they shouldn't be, I can tell you the story of my recliner. I don't like to complain about my recliner, because we got it nearly 20 years ago from the Salvation Army, so you know it doesn't owe us a thing at this point. So when the springs became "unsprung" on one side, I figured that I would just have to grin and bear it, although it was really too lopsided to be considered comfortable in any way. But everyone knows how Bill loves a challenge, so one day when I was at church, he turned the recliner upside-down and took a swing at re-attaching the springs to their brackets. Now I will admit, if anyone had asked me what I thought someone would find, if they turned the recliner upside-down and looked inside, that there would probably be a fair amount of vitamins and the like, because I'm always dropping my pills into my lap, and from there, they dribble down the side of the seat cushions and out of reach. And that did in fact turn out to be the case, as Bill retrieved a wide assortment of pills from the inside cavity of the recliner, and no surprise there. But I would be embarrassed to tell you how much silverware was also down there, such a ragtag collection of forks, spoons and knives that made it look like a family of trolls had taken up residence in there. The amazing part is that I not only don't remember losing all of these implements (and which you would have thought we would have missed long before now) but also some of which would have seemed impossible to work their own pointy way into the recliner without being deliberately put there. I've never known silverware to exhibit those sort of telekinetic properties before, but you can be sure that I'll be watching them a lot more carefully from now on.
Friends of ours are having renovations done to their home, which began in May of last year, as these things often do, with high hopes and enthusiasm. The contractor originally said that the project would take 12 weeks, and he would be finished by August. Our friends are no fools, and hoped instead to see the project completed by Christmas at least. Now 10 months later, and way over budget, the renovation is still dragging along with no end in sight. Most of that time, they've been living in two rooms with no kitchen, and subsisting on a diet of crockpot meals and Chinese take-out. Under the circumstances, you would expect their families to be supportive and sympathetic. Instead, they regale them with statistics such as, "Do you realize that the whole Empire State Building was constructed in only 18 months at the height of the Depression? And meanwhile, your measly little renovation has taken more than half of that time and isn't even finished yet." Our friends console themselves with the thought that there were 60 fatalities during the construction of the Empire State Building, while their project has a flawless safety record so far. Although, if I was their contractor at this point, I wouldn't turn my back on anybody.
In this bad weather that we've been having lately, I thought I would give our feathered friends a little bit of an extra treat, so I sent Bill off in search of bird bells at the supermarket. We were surprised to find that a person could go to two different Stop-N-Shop stores and find no bird bells to be had anywhere. After the second fruitless expedition on this quest, Bill announced that he was giving Stop-N-Shop the "no bell" prize, and no thank you very much.
Meanwhile at work, I had a woman call me today who said that she had placed an order on our web site and needed to speak with someone about the microscope she wanted. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not usually at a loss for words, but this had me completely speechless. I honestly didn't know where to begin. I finally told her that we are a hospital, and generally speaking we don't sell things, and as far as I know, you can't place orders on our web site. To her credit, she didn't argue with me, as she saw the logic of my explanation. But when I told her the phone number that she called, she said it was the number she had been given, so I suppose we can look forward to getting more of these calls in the future. I guess the thing to do would be to stock up on microscopes now, which might turn into a nice little fund-raiser on the side. Here's my microscope pun for today: More power to ya!
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:43 PM
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