Ring In The New

Hello World,

Happy New Year! And what a jolly time of year this is, with just this week sporting Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve and not to mention still the Twelve Days of Christmas, at least from the swans a-swimming and up anyway. There's already enough going on in this one week to make us all feel jolly, merry, happy, grateful, appreciated, eager and community-minded, or I don't know what it would take otherwise. Perhaps someday another movable feast like Ramadan will end up being so late in the year that it will pile up in here with everything else, and then we can feel pious besides, although I'm not sure that would add much to the festivities, what with the fasting and all. Maybe something with a little more "zing" to it, like St. Patrick's Day might be a better fit. After all, the beer is already green!

And just in case anybody was laboring under the misimpression that we have moved into that woeful transitional and "in between" period of merchandising in the wonderful world of retail, fear not. Today after work, Bill went to the supermarket and figured he would pick up some left-over Christmas candy at a discount, so he headed over to the Seasonal aisle, where he discovered to his chagrin (and this is December 30th, mind you) that apparently the season du jour is now suddenly Valentine's Day. Instead of candy canes and chocolate Santa's, the place was awash in cellophane hearts, lace doilies and cupids to beat the band. It's still seven weeks to Valentine's Day, so any candy that people buy now will have plenty of time to get stale before they present it to their heart's desire. Of course, at our house, we would have eaten it ourselves long before that point.

I do hope that everybody out there in the wide world had a wonderful holiday, of whatever persuasion might be the appropriate one, including having none at all, and spending the day at the slot machines in Atlantic City. Hey, a day off is a day off is a day off, right? We had a very nice Christmas with Mom, although the weather could have been better. On the other hand, we've been known to drive home in blinding snowstorms, so we don't like to complain about a little rain. This holiday was singular for how late we got started, as there have been times that we've gotten up at 4:00 AM to open presents, and usually we start no later than 6:00 anyway. This year, some of us were still in bed at 7:00, which is a first for us, and we even had time to play with our new toys before we left. Bill was happy to welcome a new addition to our home entertainment family, TiVo, while Santa wowed me by delivering a Teac GF-350 Multi Music Player + CD Recorder, which is something that I always thought they should have invented, but couldn't find. It's a handy stand-alone device that lets you play a regular vinyl record (in any of three speeds) and also burn it onto a CD for yourself as well. How cool is that! So for those of us who still have 300 albums, and 500 singles (not to mention those old 78's still kicking around!) and which will never be available on CD because they weren't popular enough the first time around, this is the answer to a prayer. Fortunately, it's not Ramadan, so I don't have to fast.

After playing with our toys (my first test recording, of "More of the Monkees," featured a very carefully recorded and digitally preserved skip in the first song!) we went to Mom's with the other elves, and carrying our presents with us, like Santa in a sack. This year set a new mark for bows falling off packages in record time, since they usually do so in transit, bouncing around in the car, or when we get to Mom's and they brush against other presents in the living room. This time, I found them falling off in the staging area I had set up in the guest room in our own house, before they had even made their first move downstairs, much less to the car and beyond. You can be sure that I gave them a stern talking to, although I don't mind saying, to no avail. You just can't get good help these days.

Speaking of good help, Bill tells this story about Lessons & Carols, which he serves not by standing and waiting, but by being our videographer for the event, and doing a fine job up in the balcony under very adverse conditions. He was being vigilant at his post and watching the program carefully to capture the choir, speakers, readers, soloists, bell choir, guitar group, special musical accompanists, not to mention the assorted Shepherds and Wise Men who showed up in midstream. After a while, he began to wonder why his neck was hurting so much, as it usually doesn't when he monitors what the camcorder is recording. Then he noticed that the tripod had been slowly but surely telescoping down on itself since he first set it up, with the vertical adjustment knob not completely tightened, and the weight of the camera inexorably pushing it farther and farther down due to gravity. What had started out as a fairly comfortable position for Bill ended up more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame before we were halfway through, and any further, it would have slipped behind the railing of the balcony and cut us off from view altogether. Fortunately, Bill saved the day, as he always does, and for anyone who wanted to see yet another bad version of "O Holy Night" or "For Unto Us A Child Is Born," we have that preserved on tape. And don't think I can't hear everyone out there saying, "You can't threaten ME!"

I have to say that we discovered one of the real drawbacks to losing WCBS-FM, the long-running local oldies radio station, was having no Christmas music to listen to in the car when we were driving to Long Island on the holiday. Obviously, we could have brought our own entertainment with us, but we neglected to do that, because we always just turn on 101.1 in the car and find it thoroughly enjoyable. Not any more, dear listeners, and if you thought that other stations would jump right in and fill the void left by their departure, you'd be very much mistaken. Obviously, JACK isn't going to play Christmas carols, because I'm sure they would rather cut off their arm than spoil their image. The religious station was playing the worst sacred music they could find, and it would have put the World Wrestling Federation to sleep, much less the two of us. The oldies station from across the border was playing some Christmas music in with their regular playlist, and the classic rock stations seemed to be playing what they usually play with no Christmas music at all. We skipped through all the channels and came up empty, lurching from one audio disaster to another, with scarcely a holiday tune that we could rally around. I don't know who decided that people didn't want to hear traditional Christmas music on Christmas, but if they had only asked me, I could have told them a thing or two. And I don't mind modern artists doing their own versions of the classics, but I don't understand why they have to do them BAD. If you're Mariah Carey or Usher, and you want to do a slow and dirge-like Christmas song, I think you should start out with a song that's already slow to begin with, and not do this treatment on "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus," because it just makes the rest of us go berserk. In slow-motion, of course.

After 36 seasons, ABC decided to pull the plug on their Monday Night Football franchise, with last Monday's game between the New York Jets and New England Patriots being their swan song. I'm sure in the off-season, when the schedules are compiled, this had all the earmarks of a powerhouse match-up, perhaps with the wild card or even divisional races being decided by the outcome. Unfortunately for the Jets, their season was practically over before it started, and so this last game for ABC was a less than ideal send-off. In an interesting coincidence, it was also the New York Jets (of course, they played in New York at the time) that played in the inaugural game of Monday Night Football, on September 21 1970, when they lost to the Cleveland Browns. Here I'm thinking that the numerologists must have had a field day, because amazingly, the Jets lost both of those games by identical 31-21 scores, which would be impossible to do if you were trying. Luckily for sports fans everywhere, ESPN has picked up the Monday Night Football mantle, so the games will still carry on, if not necessarily the tradition. If I'm the Jets, I might be thinking of giving that a pass, if they ask me to be in one of their games next year. Thanks, but so very much no thanks.

I ended up having some unused vacation time at work, and had to use it before the end of the year, so I had this week off from work following Christmas. I figured I could put the time to good advantage on a special project that I had in mind, but that whole idea just went from bad to worse, never got out of the starting gate, and ended up being very frustrating all around. By the time Friday rolled around, I was disgusted with everything and everybody, and feeling more like Darth Vader than Pollyanna. Or maybe it was Polly Vader, but anyway, it was not a pretty sight. And although it did not turn out to be the world's best week for me, I kept trying to remind myself that a week off is still better than a week at work, in spite of it all. Although it turned out that I still had to go in to the office a couple of times anyway, to wrap up some things that needed to be finished before the end of the year. So it ended up being sort of the worst of both worlds, as hard as that may seem to believe, and nothing to recommend it. Of course, at least it's not Ramadan, because without Christmas candy to tide me over, I would have already been well on my way to being on Santa's Extra Extra Naughty List for 2006, and 360 days early.

Snooze Alarm

Hello World,

Well, here we are, having arrived at that day that has been almost universally considered Christmas Eve (which is technically on Saturday, not Friday) by all and sundry, as businesses everywhere closed up shop early, and sent their grateful employees out into the wide world to relax, shop, or get an early start on the holiday spirits at their local pub. I know this is true, because I was the only person in the world still working today after 3PM, and every place I tried to call on the phone was long since closed, if they even opened at all today. Where Bill works, they had the entire day off, and only the petty and captious would begrudge those hard-working folks some well-deserved time off, while others of us were filling in for absent co-workers and putting in long hours trying to do two jobs at once. But that is all behind us now, and we can join in with the joyful spirit of the season, with chestnuts roasting on an open fire, angels we have heard on high, walking in a winter wonderland, candles in the window and carols at the spinet, fa la la la la la la la la.

A couple of weeks ago in the local area, all the media was agog with the news of an impending ice storm that was supposed to crash upon us on Thursday night and usher in untold disasters of epic proportions, especially on top of the snow we still had piled up everywhere, since it had been much too cold to melt. Everyone braced for the worst, events were canceled all over the place (including a holiday dinner by one of our other vendors) and people planned to stay home from work or school on Friday. The laugh was on us when the predicted ice storm fizzled in the face of 50 degree temperatures, leaving us with nothing but pouring rain that had the added benefit of melting most of the snow that had seemed so intractable the day before. Luckily it did, because as they reported on the news later, if all of that rain had been snow instead, we would have had accumulations between 12 to 18 inches throughout the region. You know I always say the good thing about rain, no matter how much you have, you don't have to shovel it.

It's obvious that they have no real ability to gaze into the future in the meteorological realm, or perhaps they simply have the wrong people trying their hands at it. Apparently the folks putting together the TV Section in our local newspaper have more of a bead on upcoming events, as evidenced by this startling observation in last week's Sports Highlights: "There's been plenty of unappealing nationally televised NFL games recently (witness tomorrow's Green Bay-Baltimore snoozer) ... " Somehow they already knew on Saturday that a game to be played the following day was not only going to be uninteresting, but also have no unexpected or exciting moments. If only ESPN had known that ahead of time, I'm sure they could have scheduled something else more thrilling, or at the very least, asked the Packers and Ravens to spice up their game with some trick plays, contests or ad hoc nudity. Who's snoozing now, TV Section?

Not to pick on our local newspaper, The Journal News (their motto: "When News Breaks, We're Glued To It") but also on Saturday in their Real Estate section, they ran a story about what to expect when buying a "fixer-upper" and helpfully provided pictures to illustrate their points. Under one picture, the caption read, "The small bedroom in Ossinng features pealing paint, non-insulated windows and cracked floor tiles." When I pointed out to Bill that the paint was "pealing," he replied, "Bing bong." This must be catching, because at almost the same moment, I got a note from a colleague that insisted, "A peak into your life is a special treat for me." I'm at a loss to understand what piqued her interest in peeking at my peaks, but there you have it. Also coming up short in the Spot That Homonym contest were some people who should have known better, and editing our church newsletter (feel free to visit our web site at www.holytrinitynewrochelle.org) with this alarming statement: "The Church Council has authorized the purchase of a three seat plastic coated steal bench to be permanently installed in the Prayer Garden." I certainly hope they do permanently install it before someone steals it, and not afterward. Otherwise, it couldn't help but be, in the immortal words of our TV Section, a snoozer, and of course, they would have seen that one coming.

And what of the colley birds, you may be asking yourselves? Well, we have Bill to thank for the following information, which he described as more of a can of worms than two pairs of song birds, for all his trouble. Of course, anything that's so old (and some scholars identify elements of The Twelve Days of Christmas going back more than four centuries) is bound to collect a welter of folklore, misinformation, misinterpretation and downright fraud along the way. (Various web sites are strongly divided on the validity of the claim that the song was turned into a Catholic catechism used during the Commonwealth in England when Cromwell banned religious instruction.) However, the colley birds did turn up in most versions of the old lyrics, although if you listen to recordings of the carol now, you can plainly hear the singers say "calling birds" instead. It's at the upper reaches of the days (from 7 and above) where the verses differ wildly from what we expect, with the leaping lords and piping pipers being replaced variously with hares a-running, bells a-ringing and cocks a-crowing, among other diverse offerings. But the lower number days have a consistency that has stood the test of time, although not without their own mis-translations:

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Partridge, in common with many other speckled birds, was an emblem of the evil one. Pear tree has some magical properties associated with Christmas Eve, although pear tree—perdrix (pertriz) in the French version—carried into the English language may have sounded like pear tree, ‘joli perdrix’ is a ‘pretty juniper’ or ‘part of a juniper tree’.

Two turtle doves obviously has some reference to the ‘true loves’. Having started with birds, thereafter birds were variously listed.

French Hens may simply mean rare (or foreign) fowl.

Colley-birds arc blackbirds.

Gold rings—it seems likely that as this comes among the list of birds it may mean ‘goldspinks' which are goldfinches.
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On the anti-catechism side of things, the researchers generally agree that this type of song was commonly used as part of a game of "Forfeits" where people would entertain themselves with contests or competitions in convivial gatherings. Using this song as a test of memory, one person begins with the first verse, then the next person gives the first and second verses, the next person does the first three, then four, and so on, until someone forgets a verse and loses, or forfeits a trifling gift to the hostess. Our friends at the musicdish industry e-journal put it this way:

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Twelve Days of Christmas," Traditional, 16th Century.
Okay, let's get the two most popular myths out of the way: the dozen days are December 26 through January 6, and there is no hidden religious meaning to the lyrics. It's simply a song that's also a memory game. Little brother sings a line, you sing two lines, Aunt Lucy sings three lines, and so on around the room. This passed for a good time in 1590. The "four calling birds" are another popular misconception. It's actually "four colley birds" (or blackbirds). Besides the seven swans a-swimming and six geese a-laying, there are more birds in the lyrics than you might think, as "five golden rings" actually refers to ring-necked birds, such as pheasants.
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There are many examples of these memory games or songs of this nature in historical records, and The Twelve Days could certainly be one of them. Or not, as the case might be, but the true answer to that may lie shrouded in mystery and lost to the mists of time. Not to mention, speckled birds in a juniper bush. And if even Bill can't get the poop, the whole poop, and nothing but the poop out of all this, then what hope do the rest of us have, I ask you that? I say we forget the whole thing and go have some candy canes and eggnog, and Happy Pheasants to All, and to All, a Good Night.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Hello World,

Well, we've really gotten to the crunch time now, and anyone who isn't ready for a visit by the jolly fat man in the red suit, had better hop on the stick and pogo themselves right out to do that shop-until-you-drop thing before it's too late. The holiday will be upon us in scant days, and you don't want to show up empty-handed while loved ones are gazing at you with that look of hopeful anticipation. Speaking of being late for the holidays, usually any time within the last few weeks, it would be the time to be wishing our Jewish friends a very Happy Hanukkah (which thanks to Adam Sandler, we now know we can rhyme that with "smoke your marijuan-ica and drink your gin & tonic-a," which is a new approach to the Festival of Lights as far as I know) except for the fact that this year, the people responsible for the Jewish calendar apparently took a page out of the Greek Orthodox book, as far as lagging behind the rest of civilization, and Hanukkah doesn't even start until sundown on the 25th. At some point, these winter movable holidays will get so far behind schedule that they'll catch up with the movable holidays in the spring coming in too early, and we'll have the Easter Bunny handing out chocolate-covered dreidels, with Santa sliding down the chimney to find a snack of latkes and Mogen David wine instead of cookies and milk. I'm telling you, no good can come of this.

In local seasonal news, we did go out and get our Christmas tree last week, and it's a beaut. We always get an extremely large tree, and some years, they simply don't have any nice looking large trees, but this year we were lucky to have a good selection of them. It's not the widest tree we've ever had, but it has a lovely shape, and when Bill put the lights on it, it made it look perfectly symmetrical from all sides. This is important, because our tree is right out in the room, and you can walk all the way around it, so we have no place to hide a "bad side" if we buy a problem tree. But it looked just beautiful, and we were very pleased with the results, all the way until the next morning, when we came downstairs and found that "someone" (for "someone," read "invisible cats" throughout) had apparently pulled all of the lights off of the lower branches and played with them. Some of these lights have decorative plastic covers that look like Santa, snowmen or peppermint candies, and these were scattered all around the floor in rakish profusion. Bill is a good sport, and hung the lights back up on the tree, only to find when we came home from work, that the same "someone" had been there again during the day, with similar results. When Bill turned on the switch to light the tree, we noticed that some of the lights went trailing off the tree, right into the center of the room, sprawling along the rug in a jaunty manner, all lit up and blinking merrily under the coffee table. It was so funny. People with cats will tell you that you have to expect this sort of thing, however, I would like to point out that we do not have a single cat right this minute who wasn't already with us last year at this same time, and last year, we couldn't get anyone to show any interest in the Christmas tree, at gunpoint. I have no explanation for this sudden change of heart on the part of our feline friends, although I have come to learn that logic is indeed wasted on cats.

While we're in an illogical mood here, I noticed the following curious items in our newspaper's TV section last week. Apparently there is a cooking show on one of our local PBS stations, and it is called "Everyday Food" and the topic for last week was "Asparagus Tart." I simply can't begin to imagine what kind of lifestyle a person would have to engage in, to the point that asparagus tart would be considered "everyday food." The mind reels. The other one was even better, where their review of "That 70s Show" described the characters going out to dinner. It continued, "The owner gives them a hard time, and Randy reiterates by stealing Fatso the Clown, the restaurant's mascot ..." For everyone who believes they should have used "retaliates" instead of "reiterates," please contact the Journal News at LoHud.com and apply for the job of editing their TV Week. A grateful nation thanks you.

Speaking of grateful, we had an early Christmas present here earlier in the week. For several months, we had noticed a very dashing stray cat in our yard, among the usual assortment of straggly and beat-up tom cats that we usually have. This one was a very distinguished looking brown and white long hair, and much friendlier than your usual stray. We thought he might have been related to our brownish long hair, Muffin, so this "ragamuffin" newcomer came to be called RaggMopp. We hadn't seen him last week, when it was so bitterly cold, and hoped that he was someplace warm. Then he showed up on Sunday night, limping badly, and eating like he hadn't ever seen food before. I said to Bill this was no kind of weather to turn out an injured cat, especially with those tough old tom cats out there looking for trouble, so we kept him inside overnight and brought him to the animal hospital on Monday. It was a lucky thing we did, because when the vet examined him, he found that he had been seriously injured in a fight or accident, and his whole underside was raw and bleeding. It was so bad that they ended up keeping him all week, cleaning out his wounds and treating him with antibiotics. We weren't surprised to find that he had already been altered, because he had all the earmarks of a "previously owned pet," rather than a stray, and we've had enough of both to recognize the differences. But we were surprised, and appalled, to find that his previous owners had him de-clawed, and then tossed him out on the streets, with no way to defend himself or even catch his own food. Needless to say, we consider ourselves very lucky that things worked out as well as they did, and as for RaggMopp, I expect that this will be just about his very best Christmas ever. Ho Ho Ho.

Now that we're in a holiday frame of mind, I may as well mention a curiosity that I came across in a book that I'm reading of historical romances taking place during the Christmas season long ago and far away. In this tale, the feisty dowager, Lady Kirkwood, has set her guests to a scavenger hunt where they must provide a reasonable facsimile of the items described in the carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas," with a prize to the winning team. So off gallop the dashing lords and spirited ladies, rounding up turtledoves, golden rings, pipers and milkmaids, in reckless abandon. Now, it's true that most people are not that familiar with the top of the list, since due to the structure of the song, you only hear the 12 lords a-leaping once, the 11 ladies dancing twice, the 10 pipers piping three times and the 9 drummers drumming four times. But just about everybody in the world knows the bottom half of the group, staring with the five golden rings and going all the way to the partridge in the pear tree, because those sections are repeated so many, many times. The part that surprised me was when she described the participants as trying to collect what she referred to as "four colly birds," or blackbirds, and which I always thought was "four calling birds," or what I would consider song birds. Of course, we all know how Bill loves a research challenge, so I have no doubt that he will get to the bottom of this yuletide discrepancy in no time. At least before the 12 lords a-leaping, 11 ladies dancing, 10 pipers piping, 9 drummers drumming, 8 maids a-milking, 7 swans a-swimming, 6 geese a-laying, 5 golden rings, 4 [fill in the blank] birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Stamp of Approval

Hello World,

Greetings again, across the miles and through the miracle of modern technology. Somehow, it still seems so early in the month, and yet this Sunday, anyone who isn't prepared to light the third candle on their Advent wreath would be badly out of step with the rest of the Christian world, for that is what we have come to. On traditional wreaths with three purple candles and one pink one, this Sunday is when you light the pink one, and the day has a special Latin name that means, "Let's have some more eggnog!" or something like that, I'm pretty sure. Of course, in our house, we use whatever old broken and beat-up left-over candles that the cats have knocked out of their holders and fallen behind the furniture, because once they're not decorative anymore, we may as well burn them. So this year, our wreath contains the non-standard arrangement of two pinks, one blue and one green candle, with the blue one standing in for the pink on this special upcoming Sunday. Somehow, I just can't seem to get the cats to break one pink and three purple candles in any one year, I don't know why that is.

Well, that same storm that's been dumping snow and tossing off blizzards all across the Midwest finally arrived here today, in our little corner of the world, and made such a mess of the morning commute that it was pitiful to behold. Of course, everyone already knows what I think about shoveling snow before going to work, but today I didn't even bother, because they said the bulk of the snow was still ahead of us. I had no trouble getting out from in front of our house, but after that, it was one problem after another. The street outside of our neighborhood has a tiny rise, and it was all the Tempo could do to get over that crest. Every time I had to make a turn, I slid sideways through the intersection, even on roads that were perfectly flat. I took the busier way to work, on Route 1, thinking that it would have gotten more attention from the plows and sanders than my usual off-the-beaten-track way to work. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that it had not even one lane clear, and it took everything the poor Tempo had to slog through the snow and slush to get across town to the hospital. When I got to the turn where I go to the parking lot, I couldn't even FIND THE STREET to turn into, because no one had plowed the street or shoveled the sidewalks, and it was just a solid blanket of white, with even the tire tracks and footprints obliterated by the snow and wind. And I never noticed before that there are no distinguishing features along the curb, like a street sign or lamp posts, to remind you where the street is if you can't find it. Luckily for me, the street opposite it, that goes to our Emergency Room, was in better shape and I realized that once I could see that, the turn I was looking for had to be exactly across from it, so that's how I gauged where to go. Of course, I slid sideways through it, but at least I was in the right place when I did. When I came back out from the parking lot later, I saw that a taxicab had lost its traction in the snow and was just sitting and spinning its wheels in the middle of the intersection, right under the blinking light for the Emergency Room entrance, and even though the intersection is perfectly flat with no topological features to cause problems, that cab was simply going nowhere and fast.

The hospital did its usual laissez-faire job of cleaning the streets, parking lots and sidewalks around the campus, which as we all know is part of their nefarious plan to drum up more business for the Emergency Room among the staff and unwary visitors to our area. The fact that I finally got to my office without serious injury, I consider nothing less than a miracle, and chalk it up to divine intervention. Much of the hospital staff lives nearby, so getting people to work in the snow is not really all that difficult, but it was still a quiet day all around for the most part. I had a few people call in and say that they couldn't even get out of their neighborhoods, and as I was watching the snow pelting down from my office, it was easy to believe. When I was using my computer at about noon, and just happened to glance out the window, I noticed all at once that the sun was out and the sky was a brilliant blue with happy little puffy clouds. Naturally, I assumed I was hallucinating (which is something that I consider an occupational hazard) or that there was some sort of strange optical illusion outside my office window, so I walked down the hall to another window on the other side of the building, and was amazed to see the same thing. I admit that I don't like to pick on the dastardly Comrade Mischka and the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, especially this close to Christmas, but I defy anyone to come up with another explanation for that. Thanks nyet!

I realize that I may as well just give up on the idea of Christmas, because there is no escaping the fact that I am going straight to Hell, without even the hand-basket, and not passing Go and collecting $200 or anything else. Every week, I would sit in church while the Pastor gave these sermons which were not only interminably long, which I don't mind so much, but also pointless and boring, which I do, until half of the people just nodded off, and the rest of us wanted to pull our hair out. At first, my mind would just wander, and I would make up shopping lists in my head, or think up reminders of things I needed to do later. But then as he droned on and on, I would begin to resent the time that I was wasting there in the pew as a captive audience to his ramblings, when there were so many other things I could have done in that amount of time instead. This is where the little cartoon Devil sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, and all of us good Christians are supposed to ignore him and pay attention to the little cartoon angel on our other shoulder, but I didn't. I realized that I could bring things to church with me that I didn't have time to do at home, and do them during the sermon in this block of time when I was otherwise just sitting around and staring at the walls. Interestingly, once I brought something with me to do, I didn't find his sermons too long at all, in fact, they seemed to fly by, while I was organizing my movie list, updating my book reports and balancing my bank statements. In fact, one week when he was winding down to a close and about to say, "Let us pray," I almost waved my hand and said, "Hey, couldn't you just ramble on for another five minutes or so, and let me wrap this up?" Oh, I can see that there's just no saving me at this point.

Recently I was at a web site where I needed to fill out a form, and they assured me that this was the simplest thing in the world. In fact, they couldn't begin to tell me how simple this would be, I would be astounded at the simplicity of it, and nothing at all to be apprehensive about, no, no, certainly not, it was the very epitome of simpleness. All I needed to do was follow the simple instructions, and I would be all finished with no trouble at all, and not to mention in a trice, or maybe even a bice (or whatever is even shorter than a trice) through the miracle of modern technology. So here they come along with their instructions, and honest to God, the very first thing it says is: “Follow these three (4) simple steps.” To say that my confidence in this undertaking was shaken right from the very beginning would be putting it mildly. Needless to say, everything went downhill from there, as the very process of filling out this form caused my computer to repeatedly freeze up, time out, toss off a variety of error messages and finally crash. In fact, rather than being finished in a trice, or even a quice or whatever is longer than a trice, not to mention the simple walk in the park that they promised, I found this turning into one of those long-distance trials worthy of my annual quest for costume parts. So it would appear that this web site and I were definitely of two minds when it came to how simple this form would be to fill out. And thank you so not very much.

It's been a well-recognized phenomenon that every year the Easter Seals people try to outdo themselves in coming up with uglier and uglier seals to foist on an unsuspecting public. It gets to the point where they're honestly so horrific that there's no way that you could put them on an envelope and send them to anyone, even someone you hate, like the cable company. This just bears out that tried and true old adage that you get what you pay for, and I say the Easter Seals people can keep them. I don't like to complain about things people send you for nothing, even if they are hopelessly ugly, but I don't expect to find the Post Office, of all people, doing the same thing. Every year, it's like they have a contest to see who can come up with the most horrible Christmas stamps, and every year you think they can't get any worse, but then they do. If they do wreaths, they're ugly wreaths; if they do toys, they're ugly toys; if they do Santa, they're ugly Santa's; if they do the Madonna and Child, well, who knew there were so many ugly versions of that, too? Honestly, it's like they have a special Ugliness Task Force that picks these things. So last year when they had a very nice collection of cute snowmen in a coil of 100, I snapped it up and thought it would be an ideal accent for our very special Christmas cards that Bill lavishes his time and talents on every year. What I hadn't noticed when I ordered them, but did when I got them, is that they're apparently some peculiar sort of new self-adhesive stamps they refer to as "liner-less," and when you pull them apart, they have no waxed paper backing behind them. Now don't think that I can't hear the wheels turning in everyone's heads out there, and you know I was thinking the same thing, how can this possibly work? If they're self-adhesive and sticky enough to stay on an envelope, then they would stick to the stamps underneath them in the roll. If they don't stick to the stamp below them, then why would they stick to an envelope? I'm no Luddite, but I don't go for this sort of loosey-goosey, whack-a-doo folderol, and you can mark my words that no good can come of it. I did use them for our Christmas cards, but I have to say that I have no confidence in this working at all. So, if you were expecting to receive a seasonal card from me, and didn't get it, at least now we know why. And in the immortal words of Comrade Mischka, "Thanks nyet!"

Where's The Fire?

Hello World,

Happy December! It doesn't seem possible that a whole year has gone by since the last time I said that, but here we are, like it or not. We've been having some very brisk weather these days, and in fact, last week some of our northern neighbors had snow, so we're starting to get a lot of those indications that the holidays are creeping up on us, slowly but surely. Well, maybe not so slowly, after all, this coming Sunday is the second Sunday in Advent already, which would have seemed impossible just a few weeks ago. Pretty soon, we'll all be awash in egg nog, candy canes and chocolate Santa's, although personally, I go more for red and green M&M's when it comes to holiday snacking, and which I also find have many fine therapeutic qualities as well. And you know what they say about chocolate, it's not just for breakfast anymore!

Speaking of the holidays, we had one of those little seasonal jollies at work recently. On Monday of this week, we got a call from the President's secretary who said that she hadn't heard who from our department would be going along on a holiday dinner given by one of our medical products vendors on that Wednesday the 30th. All four of us looked at each other sideways, and said that we hadn't said we were going, because this was the very first we were hearing of it. It turned out that none of us could go on that date, but we said they should go ahead and have the dinner anyway, when actually what we felt like saying was thanks so much NOT for letting us know about it sooner. They told us later that they were going to reschedule, although we doubted that they decided that on our account. Yesterday, I saw the sales rep for this company that was hosting the dinner, and he said that he had also gotten a call from the President's secretary, but on Tuesday the 29th, asking him what time was the dinner on the 30th, and he basically said the same thing we did, that this was the first he was hearing about it! He had to break it to them gently that after he suggested taking us all out to dinner, no one got back to him with a date, or how many people were coming, so naturally, he didn't make any reservations or anything. Somehow they decided on their own that it would be the 30th and then told no one about it, including the person who was supposed to be making the arrangements, and then they called him the day before to ask him what time. The poor guy just kept shaking his head, and mind you, he's been calling on us for years now, so you think he'd be hard to surprise at this point.

Speaking of surprises, and unpleasant ones at that, a few weeks ago when I was leaving church and went to set the alarm, I noticed that the yellow trouble light was lit on the display panel, which is never a good sign. Usually it means that the telephone has no dial tone, which happens now and again at church, where the local squirrels seem to make a career out of chewing through our wires, perhaps due to some special "squirrel attractant" that the phone company applies to them as a way to drum up more business. But when I picked up the phone in the office, the dial tone was fine, and none of the doors were ajar, which can also make the trouble light come on. I did notice that the alarm display panel had no date and time, perhaps due to a power failure, and it made me wonder if that might be the problem. So I figured, how hard can this be (don't answer that!) and instead of Daffy Duck showing up and shouting, "Shoot me now! Shoot me now!" I fiddled around with the display to try and find out how to set the date and time. After much fruitless fiddling, and lots of beeps and boops that got me nowhere, I inadvertently set the alarm to Fire Drill, and the alarm downstairs went off shrieking and whooping, and would have raised the dead, if there had been any in the neighborhood at the time. Meanwhile, I was running around upstairs like a total lunatic, wondering if there was any way to at least turn the volume down, so that if I was going to have my very own personal fire drill, as I seemed to be doing, at least I could do it more quietly. I was actually hoping that as a drill, it would do its thing for a few minutes and then stop, figuring that we would have gotten the hang of it by then. But after many long minutes, that seemed like hours, dragged on, I realized that it wasn't going to stop by itself. Try as I might, I couldn't find any way to stop it, so even though it was Sunday, I had no choice but to try and reach the alarm company and ask them to help me. Luckily they were right there and helped me to get it to stop, and even helped me set the time and date, which was a good thing, because I never would have found that on my own. But they said that just by talking with me on the phone, they could tell that there was something wrong with the system (the alarm uses the same phone line as the regular phones at church) and since we have a service contract for it, they said they would send out a technician on Tuesday.

Originally when I had called Customer Service on Sunday, and told them I couldn't turn off the Fire Drill, they said I might have to turn the whole system off at the alarm fuse box. That really gave me pause, as I had no idea where I would find such a thing. I mean, they have so many places they can hide stuff like that, and I didn't remember seeing anything like that anywhere. The nice helpful staff told me it would be a gray box with a lock, and at that, I had to laugh, because I knew that even if I could find the darned thing, there would be no way to locate the key for it, especially the way things go at church, which I don't mind saying, is a building that seems to have a life of its own. Luckily, they were able to help me on Sunday without resorting to the lost cause of using the fuse box, which was a good thing, because otherwise, the fire alarm would probably still be going off even now. On Tuesday morning, I met the service technician, Martin, at church, and of course the first thing he asked me was the location of the alarm fuse box, and I said I had no idea, but we could poke around for it. Martin must do this a lot, so he followed the wires from the display panel, and had no trouble uncovering the alarm fuse box in the boiler room. He said, "It's this gray box with the lock." I said, "I'm not sure we'll be able to find the keys for it." The punchline to this story, of course, is that the brilliant minds at my church LEAVE THE KEY IN THE LOCK, so anyone can open the alarm fuse box. I'm thinking that the burglars would find this extremely helpful.

Meanwhile in the building where I work, the door from the courtyard opens right into the stairwell on the landing between two flights of steps, which is not only highly inconvenient, but can be dangerous as well. With the door open, people can't get past it to go upstairs or downstairs, and you very often have traffic jams at that spot, as people juggle around each other to go in, out, up or down from where they started. It's even worse on payday, when you have many more people going in and out of the building than usual, to and from the Payroll department upstairs on our floor. So yesterday when I came in, and saw someone coming down the steps toward me, I held the door open, but wanted to find out if the young man was going outside, or continuing downstairs instead, because for one the door needs to be open, while for the other it needs to be closed. So I said, "Are you going out?" as I was holding the door. He replied, "Hello." I'm sorry, I can't give you a prize for that answer, but thank you for playing our game!

I may as well say right now that I have no ax to grind with any of the large and/or monolithic technology vendors, whether they are purveyors of computer hardware, software, electronic services or any combination of the above. I admit that I'm no technophile, but I'm no Luddite either, and I realize that we all need to be willing to change with the times, or be left behind like my dear old friends, the dinosaurs, and how I do miss them, especially at the holidays. But one thing that I just can't understand is why there are perfectly good and useful features, for instance, in Windows95 that are completely eliminated in Windows98, which has its own other useful features tossed out in Windows2000, whose other useful features have been stripped from WindowsXP. I don't see why the programmers can't retain the features that were already built in, such as fonts and screen savers, and add the new ones in the new version to them, rather than starting all over again with only new ones. I hadn't realized when we upgraded at work to WindowsNT that I would be leaving behind all of the screen savers and desktop themes that I had enjoyed in Windows98, and for no good reason that I could ascertain. In fact, I would have expected the reverse to be true, since we all know how they love to give you tons of extra 'fluff" applications in upgrades, rather than anything useful that people might actually need. ("New Ext-Tay lets you see your Instant Messages in Pig Latin! Plus bonus smiley icons of your favorite NASCAR drivers!") I would think that having a wide variety of screen savers would be right up their alley at Microsoft, in terms of irrelevance plus counter-productivity. Now the screen savers are so bad, you may as well do actual work instead, heaven help us. Personally, I'm opting for some holiday-themed junk food, and devil take the hind-most.