Heart Of My Hearts

Hello World,

What a difference a week makes. We had some warmer weather, and a few sunny days, and in most places, last week's blizzard is just a fond memory. Okay, maybe an unpleasant memory, but at least most of the snow is gone, gone, gone, good-bye, woh-woh, my baby done left me flat like the tires on my rusted-out pickup truck in some bad old country and western song. All right, maybe not exactly like that either, but you get the general idea. Instead of getting up early like last Monday to shovel out cars and risk life and limb in treacherous conditions, Monday this week was not only a holiday for us (HOORAY!!!) but going to work on Tuesday was a snap, with clear skies and smooth sailing all the way. Of course, it was a short week, and held true to form as they always seem to do, but it still had it all over last week, in spite of it all. And I would personally like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Lincoln for giving birth to future presidents when they did, because things had reached a point where I really needed a day off, or else it was going to get pretty ugly. Of course, I think they actually gave birth to at least one of them under the old calendar, but let's not open up that whole can of worms again.

Speaking of holidays, we don't want to ignore Valentine's Day last week on Tuesday, which we welcomed with open arms, like we would Greeks bearing gifts and glad of it. The estimable Valentine's Day elves (Cupid-ettes?) brought Bill books, DVDs and junk food, while I was happy to get candy, some nice warm fuzzy gloves and even more hand-made earrings. How any one person can stand so much wonderfulness, I'll never know. Although I do have to admit, especially lately, that having an excess of wonderfulness in my life hasn't exactly been much of a problem around here, and that's putting it mildly.

I did take advantage of the long weekend to plunge ahead and move my desk and computer cart out of the tiny cramped den and into the living room, and without any major disasters. Although I will say that it has not been the most popular thing anyone could do in our house, at least as far as the invisible cats are concerned, because apparently at night, they come out and romp in what they consider their very own big, dark, empty playground. Sharing their space with (gasp!) members of the Enemy Camp is suffered with thinly veiled ill will, and I can feel their steely glares and baleful glowering without actually being able to see them. In fact, it's only the smell of the smoke, as the wheels turn in their diabolical little brains, that makes me realize that they are plotting some dastardly evil revenge for this outrageous invasion of their territory. Unfortunately for me these days, in a battle of wits, I don't care much for my chances against six wily felines, especially of the invisible variety.

Meanwhile at work, after what only seems like six long years in Purgatory, but was actually only six long years in the hottest office in my entire building, I finally couldn't take it any longer and told our Vice President that I had to move into another office before I did anything rash. Heat rash, that is. He suggested the empty one next to mine, and I jumped at the chance. It's slightly larger than mine, and has two big windows plus a cavernous closet (or rather, it would have, if it didn't have a fully decorated Christmas tree in it right now, for some incomprehensible reason) but its main attraction is that it's always cooler than my office, regardless of any other extenuating circumstances. Bill, who as everyone knows, is always willing to pitch in and lend a hand, came with me on Sunday to push some of the furniture around, and during the week I called up the Engineering, Telephone and Computer departments to make arrangements for the electricity, phones and network connections that I would need in my new place. If anyone had asked me, I would have said that I have about as much pull around there as a worn-out girdle (by golly, there's an article of habiliment that's lost on young people nowadays) but not so! They all showed up within days, if not hours, of my calling, and got everything set up and ready for my big move next door. The best part is that because it's so close to my office, I really only have to move with myself and my computer, and I can leave everything else in place and just move it as I need it. Although, I suppose it should be said that the actual best part is that there aren't any invisible cats already in the other office for me to infuriate with this move, unlike at home.

Speaking of work, ya gotta love this story of Murphy's Law in action. People may not believe this, but it was really not our intention with re-programming the phones in the department, to make it impossible for our callers to reach us, although at times, that did turn out to be one of the unintended results. At one point, I had asked the tech to come back and help us make one small change to the system to improve its usefulness, which he did cheerfully and with admirable efficiency. Then he said he was going to make all the lines busy, and see if an incoming call would ring up to our special "emergency number" when he called us, and sure enough, he did and it did, without a hitch. That whole testing process took at the most 15 seconds, when anyone else calling us would not have gotten through during the entire day. He then went on to try a few other things to make sure that everything was working just the way we wanted it, and I was not surprised to see my voicemail light blinking, because I assumed that he had left me a test message as part of his efforts. It was only because I made this assumption that I didn't bother to retrieve that message right away, and was alternately amused and alarmed later when I did listen to it and found that instead of the phone tech, it was no less a personage than the Executive Secretary for the President of the hospital, who chose that 15 second span to call me, and ended up in my voicemail even though I was sitting right there at my desk the whole time. Mind you, Her Executiveness, who wouldn't know me to trip over me in the hallways, probably has a reason to call Purchasing on the average of once every 18 months since I've been working there, and still managed to pick the only 15 seconds of the year when she couldn't reach us even though we were all right there. I tell you, you couldn't have planned that yourself any better, if you'd had a whole year to do it. The phone guy and I enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a big laugh over that one. Who's invisible now, big shot?

I realize that I have a reputation, and well-deserved at that, as a Luddite, but things have certainly changed in the wonderful world of shampoo, since the dinosaurs and I used to take ourselves down to the shores of the primordial ooze and wash our hair by beating it against the rocks. Back in the day, there was shampoo, and your choices were to like it or lump it. Then someone decided that we needed different shampoos for Dry, Normal or Oily hair, which you would think would pretty much cover all the bases in terms of hair variety. Naturally not! It wasn't long before they decided that we needed a specialized shampoo for each hair type from extra-fine and limp, to damaged and frizzy, and everything in between. The shampoo aisles are awash with products promising extra body, color protection, special emollients, clarifying, vitamin enriched, hypo-allergenic, volumizing, protein formula, extra shiny, essential oils, herbal extracts and Herbie the Love Bug. Wait a minute, I think I made that last one up. Anyway, I had gotten a couple of new shampoos from the nice folks at Avon of all places, and one of them is their special Energizing formula. I don't mind saying right up front that I do not happen to be of the school that believes that my hair requires any more energy, whatever that means, and in fact, I'm slightly unnerved at the prospect of this potentially over-energized hair keeping me awake at night with its rowdy parties and wild shenanigans, much less carrying on during the day with reckless abandon. And I despair of being able to take it to church, where any evidence of enthusiasm above the level of a polite smile is considered "too Pentecostal" by a bunch of grouchy Lutherans. I admit that I just don't go along with these new-fangled ideas in hair care, and that's a plain fact.

In typical fashion for a short week, we found ourselves beset with noisy youngsters at the diner, and essentially stalked by a woman in CVS, who somehow managed to be underfoot at every turn, no matter where we went. At one point I said to Bill, "The world is too much with us," and he asked what that was from, so I replied, "Shakespeare," since everyone knows I'm such an authority on everything. It turns out instead to be from a William Wordsworth poem of the same name in 1807, and the editors go to great pains to explain that "He revolutionized English poetry with the publication of Lyrical Ballads..." and his determination "...to write in simple, straightforward language for the common man." The whole thing appears to wrap up with this deathless prose:

I'd rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

And I couldn't help but say to Bill that if this is anyone's idea of simple language for the common man, then I should just slink back into the primordial ooze with the rest of the dinosaurs and give it all up as a lost cause. I mean, I can take a joke as well as the next fellow, but don't throw Proteus and Triton at me and say it's for the common man. At least until after I've used my special poetizing shampoo with lyrical ballad extracts.

Let It Snow

Hello World,

Well, for those of you out there who might not live in the local area, if you've been watching television at all, you know what kind of week we've been having around here. The snowstorm that was predicted to be just a nuisance for commuters on Friday turned instead into the Blizzard of 2006 on Sunday, setting a new record of almost 27" of snow in Central Park, since they began keeping records in the 1870's. I would like to point out that when everyone else has been saying, "Oh, this has been such a warm winter and now we're going to have an early spring," I kept saying over and over that there was plenty of winter left to come, and I wouldn't pack up the parkas and snow shovels just yet. But even I couldn't put any stock in the forecast, as I said to Bill, because the idea that we would have so much snow that they would actually cancel church on a Sunday that I had to Usher, was just too impossible to imagine. But sure enough, even the diehards threw in the towel and gave up the ghost. The Holy Ghost, that is.

Meanwhile, anyone who braved the elements on Monday to get to their jobs had nothing but complaints about the local roads, but I would have to say that at work, they somehow managed to outdo themselves by not only doing nothing, but actively making things worse. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I saw dump trucks coming and leaving more snow than there was to start with. Of course, the hospital certainly has a plan in place for snow storms, if only because they have a plan for everything that might or might not actually ever happen in our environs. Their snow removal plan can be summed up in one word: Spring. This is why it's so very hard for the rest of us to understand why we have 50 people working in the Engineering department, not to mention, a Bobcat and at least two tractor-like vehicles with plow attachments, and skids upon skids full of rock salt clogging up the hallways by Receiving, if no one is going to do anything about the snow around the campus. I think they have one little old lady volunteer who shovels out a path for the President of the hospital, from his car door to the front entrance, and after that, they figure the rest of us can just fend for ourselves or die trying. I mean, it's only a hospital after all, it's not like we have to stay open 24/7 or anything ridiculous like that.
While we're on the subject of work, it was a few weeks ago that I found myself being hounded by someone in Finance, who in a weird coincidence, has the same name as a famous fictional character on a long-running TV show. This is a serious young man, and lest anyone think that he would find humor in this situation, well you can believe me that they would find themselves woefully mistaken, and I know that from first-hand experience. Anyway, he was after some purchasing transaction report that our clerk would do, but didn't because she's on the DL for the time being, and it was before the temp arrived, so I told our Vice President that it was not a happening thing. He said I should go ahead and just "make up some number" for them to use, and get them out of my hair without actually having to do the report. I decided to do one better, and take the last three months of reports, add the totals together and divide by three, to get an average of what could reasonably be expected in any given month. I did that and turned it over to Fred Flintstone with a happy heart. I was more surprised than anybody when he came back to my office that very same day, with the unwelcome news that when he added up the actual purchasing transactions, he came up with $23,570.14, while the report I gave him said $58,319.62. Everyone knows that I'm much too polite to laugh (although it was a near thing!) but even I had to wonder why we've been adding up this whole report, just to give it to someone who apparently adds it all up all over again, instead of just letting them add it up for themselves in the first place. And I said to Bill, if I had asked someone to do something they obviously didn't want to do, and then they gave it to me later with an error factor of over 200%, why would I bother to go back to them and expect them to correct it? I mean, you don't have to win the World Poker Tour Championship bracelet to realize that you have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, and that's not just a lot of yabba dabba doo.
One day at home, I found myself saying, probably for the hundredth time, "In my next life, I'm not going to put all the stuff I use most in the smallest room of the house." We have an enormous living room, four good-sized bedrooms, dining room and finished attic, most of which are just piled with irrelevant nonsense, while our itty bitty den is crammed with three computers, five bookcases, four file cabinets, four turntables, four printers and a 300-pound marble statue, not to mention the old family double-pedestal wooden desk. Mind you, all this is in a room that already includes a fireplace, bathroom and bay window, besides two doors and a 48-inch-long pipe radiator, so you can imagine that wall space is at a premium. So I finally decided, "Enough is too much already!" and made up my mind to move at least my desk and computer out into the living room, where there would be some elbow room for a change. It was at this very moment that Bill spotted a couple of small storage cabinets that were being unceremoniously tossed out by the hospital, and I thought, why that would be a handy addition to my plans, perhaps keeping one at work and using the other one at home. I scoped them out the next day at lunchtime, and they seemed in good shape and none the worse for wear, and a manageable size to be able to move them, in fact, one of them even had wheels on the bottom. (By now, I know that everyone is wondering where Daffy Duck is in this whole scenario.) You notice how all of these elements together had inexorably lulled me into a false sense of security. So one night after work, I pulled the Tempo into the courtyard by the dumpster with the idea of wrestling the cabinets into it. Not so fast! It occurred to me later that I suffer from a chronic malady that could be described as "auto dysmorphia," which is that I have a totally distorted idea of the actual size of the car that I'm driving. What appeared at first to be two small and innocuous cabinets that anyone could pick up and put into a car, instead when I attempted to do just that, somehow transmogrified themselves into some dense and gargantuan monoliths, which no amount of wrestling was ever going to fit into the Tempo at the same time. They turned out to be much too heavy to handle, so putting one in the back-seat was out of the question. The one with the wheels was so much bigger than I thought, that I knew it would never fit in the trunk either. I finally jammed the smaller one into the trunk, with nothing but brute force and some bungee cords to hold the trunk down, and manhandled the bigger one into the front seat, kicking and screaming, not to mention, using language that would make a longshoreman blush. I think we've all been down this road before, so it will come as a surprise to no one that after I was finished and could actually close the passenger side door, there wasn't enough room in the front seat to move the shift lever in the console to anything but Park and Reverse. ("Calling Daffy Duck!") When I finally got home (I did not drive in reverse the entire way) Bill, who is the soul of patience, unloaded the recalcitrant cabinet for me, so at least I could drive like a normal person while I decided what I wanted to do next with my ill-gotten gains. And I think we can all expect for my birthday, that he will give me a tape measure to keep in the car, that I can use as a sort of reality check before I come up with any more of these hare-brained schemes, especially if Daffy Duck isn't going to show up when he's supposed to.
I know everyone thinks I'm exaggerating when I say that you take your life in your hands when you try to cross the street from the hospital to the parking lot, but even with the yellow blinking light at the Emergency Room entrance, traffic comes flying at you from every direction there is, and occasionally from some there aren't. There are six streets that all converge in what turns into a very busy intersection, and you honestly need mutant alien eyeballs up on stalks above your head to swivel around 360 degrees and see everything coming before it slams into you at 90 miles an hour, because no one pays any attention to where they're going. I'm always very careful when I cross, and look all ways, and even still, I almost got run over this morning. Apparently, this driver who had already pulled through the intersection, decided for whatever reason, to back up and take another swipe at the pedestrians in the crosswalk from behind, and nearly ran me down from a direction that I wasn't in the least expecting. I mean, it's bad enough looking out for the traffic that's going the right way, without having to keep out of the clutches of traffic that's going backwards. I tell you, you just can't make this stuff up.
I find when it's very cold out, the skin on my hands gets so dry that it cracks, and I'm sure the cheesy soap they give us at work doesn't help either. So I try to remember to use hand lotion before I go to bed, to try and repair some of the damage, while "sleep knits the raveled sleeve of care" and all that. Last night, I must have put on a little too much, and even though I thought I rubbed it in well enough, it was apparently not, because when I went to turn off the light on my night table, the switch kept slipping through my fingers and wouldn't turn. I finally had to get a paper towel and use that to turn the switch with, just so I could get to sleep. After all, I'm unraveling fast enough these days without losing sleep besides, and if you don't believe me, just ask Fred Flintstone.

In The Mood

Hello World,

Happy February! And I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone very happy Opening Ceremonies, because today is the day that the 2006 Winter Olympics get underway in Turin, Italy, which has apparently been renamed Torino for the occasion. I'm thinking that would surprise the centuries of pilgrims who journeyed there to revere the Shroud of Turin, but there you have it. In fact, the Shroud of Torino sounds like some sort of a motorcycle gang, and I'm pretty sure that Starsky & Hutch drove a souped-up Torino in their TV show. So at least for the Shroud people, my feeling is that changing the name of the town at this point lacks a certain wonderfulness, and I don't mind saying, no good can come of it. You watch.

The good news about the Super Bowl being in February now is that by the time you get to the week after the Big Game, you're a lot closer to those three most beautiful words in the English language, "Pitchers and Catchers." Why, at this rate, baseball season will be right on top of us before we know it. In fact, just yesterday, the newspaper had a story about the Yankees, I suppose, to get us in the mood. Although I feel it's only fair to point out, as I was trying to do to a co-worker when I said that we needed to start behaving ourselves in time for Lent, anyone expecting Lent soon would be surprised to find out, as I was, that Ash Wednesday is not until March 1st, believe that or don't. That tells you something right there about how late Easter is this year, and the baseball season will probably be three weeks old before then. So even though Pitchers and Catchers are right around the corner, Lent isn't, and for once we can all enjoy a decadent and indulgent Valentine's Day, without incurring the wrath of grouchy Christians who had given up chocolate for Lent. Let the junk food begin!

Meanwhile, in the "Things That Make You Wonder" category, we have the following, from a story in The Sound Report, which is a tiny local weekly paper for New Rochelle. The front page story was about a two-alarm fire at a house, where they made special mention of "...the blaze's intensity, fueled by asbestos shingles notoriously known to firefighters as 'gasoline siding'." Did I miss something somewhere along the way? Hasn't asbestos been historically used for its fire retardant properties, in construction, protective clothing and safety equipment?? How is it that all of a sudden now it's turned into a hazard to mankind, by short-sighted incompetent bureaucrats and foisted on an unsuspecting public, like aluminum wiring or lead paint??? I just can't figure that out. And I don't mind saying, I'm with Bill these days, when he says he's getting pretty darned sick and tired of all this revisionist history, thank you very much not.

People may or may not be wondering how things are going with our new temp at the hospital, and I will say that my attitude about work has certainly taken a turn for the better. I'm more relaxed and less harried, and I don't feel as overwhelmed and hopeless as I did a month ago, so that's the good news. On the flip side, I admit that it is true that I'm actually working longer hours, and part of that is the amount of "prep" time it takes for me to get things ready for her to do, which really eats into the time I have to do my own work. So whereas before there was one person trying to cover two positions, now we basically have two people both doing one job. Please let me know when this starts to make sense to you. In spite of it all, though, I still feel it's an improvement, if only because I don't feel so pressured or put upon. Why, I haven't thought about blowing anyone's brains out all week.

A better question to ask would be, "So how's that new phone system working out there?" And to that, I can answer that it's been a rousing success, and if only we had done this years ago, my whole life would have been completely different. At first, I wasn't expecting that much of a change, except that if I wasn't able to answer all the calls that came in at the same time, at least they would collect in my voice mail and I could retrieve them later. What actually happened was as baffling as it was unexpected. All we did, essentially, is add a menu greeting that says to Press 1 for one person, or 2 for another person, etc. We didn't say, go away, don't call us, there's no one here to take your call or anything unfriendly like that. So you would figure we'd get the same volume of calls as before, but that they would be directed in more specific ways to the people who could help them best. But that isn't what happened at all. Now, it’s like the phone never rings. Where previously I had to scramble to keep up with all the calls coming in, now it's become a very minor part of my day. What I notice most is the total lack of nonsense calls that I haven't gotten since it started. I have not gotten one single solitary call from any vendor about unpaid invoices, which used to be a huge component of my day. I don't know if they take their chances with the buyers instead, or just give up and call Accounting (or their lawyers) but I haven't spoken to a single one in two weeks. The bulk of my day used to be calls from other departments, who for whatever reason, decided that I was the right person to answer such queries as, “What's the extension for PCU?” “Who's the sales rep for the forms company?” “How do you spell the name of the new NCC in Maternity?” “I work in Medical Records, what's my cost center?” “I can't reach Payroll on the phone, do you know if they're out to lunch?” “Have you seen the courier?” “What was that P.O. number that you gave me yesterday?” “Is the Housekeeping supervisor there?” “Is the copier guy coming today?” “How's Helga feeling?” “What's the zip code here?” “How late is Receiving open?” “What should I do with this invoice?” “No one answers in the Mail Room, is Sally off today?” “Are we on credit hold with the water company?” And I realize now that it used to just go on and on like that all day, and it's no wonder that I couldn't get any work done. So now I'm thinking, without getting the instant gratification of calling someone to get an immediate answer to a question that you shouldn't have been asking them in the first place, I guess they say to themselves, “Well, I can't wait for anybody to call me back with that information, so I suppose I can look it up myself, or God forbid, get up off my lazy butt and go over to the department that I should have called in the first place.” Who would have believed that just giving people a menu greeting would have made all that much difference, but honestly, in two weeks I haven't gotten any of those calls that used to be pretty much my whole day. And I really never noticed before what kinds of stupid phone calls I used to get, until they stopped, like turning off a light switch, that Friday with the new phones. I mean, I realized that everyone in the world used to call me with stupid questions like the extensions of other departments, or their own cost centers, but it hadn't occurred to me how much of that there was during the day until it stopped happening. It's actually eerie not to keep answering questions like that all day. In fact, even the temp said to me, “You're like the Answer Man, you should put up a sign,” because people still walk over from other departments to ask these questions.

And don't think I don't know what everyone out there is thinking. How could we have had the phone guy in our area working his magic, and climbing all over and under our desks, with the Christmas tree still set up and decorated in the spare office? Riddle me that, Batman! The sad fact of the matter is that I finally got so tired of it somehow always being exactly where someone needed to go, that I cleared a space for it and pushed it directly into the closet, just as it was. Now it looks even more as if I actually took it down and packed it carefully away for the season, although once again, nothing could be further from the truth. And we already know that having the temp there hasn't managed to free up any time during my day, so at this rate, it doesn't look good for it actually getting packed up and put away for real. Although I admit to harboring fantasies of turning this job over to the temp, who seems to go at everything like a house afire (with asbestos shingles, no less!) and would have that tree all packed up in jig time.

In other news, or rather lack of it, I recently got a list of personality traits from a cyber-friend in West Virginia that were based on the month of your birthday. I get a lot of stuff like this, and I'm always glad to play along, although I admit that I'm more than a little concerned about mine, as follows --

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MARCH - Attractive personality. Sexy. Affectionate. Shy and reserved. Secretive. Naturally honest, generous and sympathetic. Loves peace and serenity. Sensitive to others. Loves to serve others. Easily angered. Trustworthy. Appreciative and returns kindness. Observant and assesses others. Revengeful. Loves to dream and fantasize. Loves traveling. Loves attention. Hasty decisions in choosing partners. Loves home decor. Musically talented. Loves special things. Moody.
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So, if you've been paying close attention, it says that I'm "Sexy and affectionate," while also being "Shy and reserved." I'm "Naturally honest" plus "Secretive." It appears that I "Love peace and serenity," except for being "Easily angered" and "Revengeful." In fact, I seem to be all over the map here, according to these people, so it's no wonder that they wrap this up with the aptly succinct description: "Moody." I'll say! If I had any more moods, I'd be in a strait-jacket! Anyway, I did thank her for sending along my laugh of the day, although you know what I always say about things that are too true to be really funny. I guess it's sort of the way that firefighters think of asbestos shingles.

Happy New Fire Dogs

Hello World,

Hong Kong Bok Choy! Yes, the time has certainly come, and not a moment too soon, to welcome in the Chinese New Year and wish everyone in our viewing audience very Happy New Fire Dogs for 2006. I actually thought that the beginning of what is politely referred to as Asian Lunar New Year, or most likely by Asians as Tet, was still ahead of us, because usually it makes more of a splash in the local media when the time comes. This can be a difficult holiday to nail down, since it ranges anywhere from mid-January (for instance, January 22 in 2004) to as late as February 18 in 2007. This year, it started off with its usual bang on January 29, and when it comes to throwing a party, well let me just say that the Asians are no Moslems, that's for sure! In fact, they could give the Irish a run for their money, except for the part about the green beer and the protests. Many places where you can look up information about Chinese New Year call this the Year of the Dog, however, several specify Fire Dogs, rather than just any old dogs, so it goes without saying that I would be sending out special good wishes to one and all for very many and prosperous Happy New Fire Dogs!

This is shaping up to be a busy week, what with the beginning of a new month, plus Chinese New Year, Groundhog Day and the SuperBowl on Sunday. I should also put in a plug for the Souper Bowl of Caring, which is a great idea of young people collecting money to help feed the needy, so if you see any of them on Sunday, be sure to give them a generous donation. Speaking of food, Bill and I just loved this recent entry in our Word-A-Day calendar for 2006, and you're welcome to visit their website at www.pageaday.com -

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The word "Frankenfood" was coined in 1992 by English professor Paul Lewis, who used it in a letter to The New York Times in response to the decision of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to let companies market genetically altered food. "Franken-" is an allusion to Frankenstein, and like the monster in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenfood has met with hostility. Not everyone is against it, but the word itself tends to have a derogatory slant.
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We've been trying to come up with an example of a word that begins with "Franken-" that doesn't have a derogatory slant, but so far the only one that suggests itself is Frankenberry cereal, where the monster is more timid than terrifying. Personally, I think we can accept as a given that whenever anyone coins a word by putting "Franken-" in front of it, their purpose is pretty clear in trying to create an expression with a derogatory slant.

While we're on the topic of slanted things, I may as well say that I would probably get a lot more done on my computer lately, except for a severe ergonomic challenge I've been subjected to recently. One of our smaller and more timid cats, who would like to be known as Miss Princess Smudge, had been out living large with the invisible cats downstairs, and had so much trouble with them that she nearly starved to death before we moved her out of their reach into the den. My computer is also in the den, although previously this posed no conflict of interest among the involved parties. But all of a sudden, and here we can't rule out the possibility of Asian Lunar influences, she has made the unilateral decision that my use of the computer absolutely requires her participation. Of course, any cat can sit on top of the mouse, or walk on the keyboard, or stand in front of the monitor, or even plop down in your lap and thereby make it impossible to get any work done. Smudge takes this a step further, or should I say to a whole new level, by climbing up my back and laying down full-length across my shoulders behind my head. Obviously, the only way this works is if I hunch forward and put my head down, so she doesn't roll back down and fall off behind the chair. Now with my chin in my chest, I have to roll my eyes all the way up just to see the monitor, and because I'm leaning forward, I have to pull my elbows back just to reach the keys to type. I must look like some sort of grotesque cartoon character from a science fiction story
about deformed mutants enslaved by their computers or something. I will say that my productivity at home was never all that high to begin with, and this has really put a crimp in it, in more ways than one.

Meanwhile at church, the annual meeting has come and gone without having to call out the Riot Squad, which is always a good sign. There were the usual controversies, from the usual culprits, which I suppose has a certain perverse consistency to it that we should find reassuring after all these years. But it didn't deteriorate into a full-blown, brass-knuckles free-for-all as it's been known to do in previous years, and in fact, it ended very amicably, although later than most of us would have liked. For the fact that it ended when it did, we have to thank an unlikely source, because at 4:00 PM, the local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous showed up for their weekly meeting in the church basement, and since they rent the space for that time, we couldn't very well keep them out. So we basically had to fold up our tents and steal away while Pastor was still in mid-blather ... er, I mean, still delivering an important lecture about some worthwhile idea or another, and much to the gratitude of all present. And I don't mind saying that I've had enough experience with invisible cats to know that the combination of grouchy Lutherans and anonymous alcoholics was just never going to work.

I found myself driving around for a few days this week with a note stuck under the windshield wiper of the Tempo, because I kept forgetting to take if out and see what it was. When I finally did, it turned out to be an advertisement for something called DJ Swurv at the Felt Lounge in town, where I was welcome to join them on Friday from 10PM to 4AM, as long as I was 18 years old. (I wouldn't want to tell them that I'm usually fast asleep by 10PM nowadays, and staying up until 4AM is definitely a thing of the distant past at this point.) They also specified that I had to be 21 to drink, and they promised me "Experienced Shotgirls," although they also mentioned their tight security, so I wouldn't get the wrong impression of this place. My favorite part was where they outlined their dress code for this shindig by saying, "Neat attire: Leave Constructs, Sneakers and T-Shirts @ Home." Bill and I are on board with the shoes and shirts thing, but we don't have the faintest idea what in the world a "construct" might be. And yet, it's obviously such a common and problematic item of apparel that they have to tell people not to wear it, whatever it is, on the very invitation that they're trying to get people into the Lounge in the first place. Of course, I realize that we are woefully out of touch, and every so often, something crops up that just points out even more so, how out of it us old fogeys really are in today's fast-paced world.

On the other hand, this pales in comparison with a story in our local newspaper on Wednesday, which brings to light this startling development in our fair city: "Two men accused of making a pornographic film in front of an open window are facing misdemeanor public lewdness charges. They were accused of making a gay pornographic film in a rented home at 157 Davenport Avenue in plain view of numerous bystanders who had gathered on the street, police said." You know I always want to say to people who are intending to embark on a life of crime that they might want to consider another career path, if this is the best idea that they can come up with. There's a reason that we have a famous old saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, and now we can add to that, or make porno movies in the living room. These guys must have skipped over that part in the "Porno for Dummies" guide.

On Saturday, we had gone to visit Mom on Long Island, and no one could have asked for a more glorious day, especially in the dead of winter (or did I miss something?) when it was sunny and a balmy 60 degrees. Mom wasn't up to eating out, so we went to Friendly's for lunch and brought her back one of her favorite menu items to enjoy at home. At least, that was our original plan, but when our waitress came to take our order, instead of asking for a Fishamajig sandwich, Bill announced to the lass that he wanted a "Thingamajig" from the Senior Menu to take home with us. So we said to Mom later that we had no idea what they might have given us, because we asked for a "Thingamajig" and there's no telling what the waitress thought of that strange menu choice, or how the kitchen staff might have interpreted that. They might have given us a container full of table scraps, or worse, or for all we know, maybe there is something on their menu called a "Thingamajig" and heaven only knows what it's made out of. Anyway, we had a good laugh about that, and luckily it turned out to be just what she wanted after all. That was a good thing, because we certainly don't want to foist any Frankenfood on anyone, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way.