Mixed Up
Hello World,
Well, this is turning into a busy week full of events and occurrences that would amaze and confound lesser beings, and all we can hope is that we're all up to the challenge. It all began, of course, with April Fool's Day on Saturday, with its practical jokes and trifling mischief. After that, we had the switch-over to Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, which is always fraught with peril and the potential for disaster. This coming Sunday is All Cats Favorite Church Holiday, known to the rest of the world as Palm Sunday, so you know I'll be there and stocking up for the home front, if only to keep them from biting my ankles by coming home empty-handed. Then at sundown on Wednesday is the beginning of Passover, which will be over-lapping Easter the following Sunday, except for those tardy Orthodox Greeks, no doubt. So you can see that there's already plenty going on to keep people busy and on their toes, if not entertained.
But wait, there's more! If you act right now, we'll also throw in these other special days at no extra charge, that's right friends, they're perfectly free! I have it on good authority that April 4th is Vitamin C Day, which commemorates the discovery of Vitamin C in 1932. I was also alerted by any number of people that on April 5th, we had two different opportunities during the day to observe the time as 01:02:03 04/05/06, and I'm thinking that the numerologists would be having a field day with that one. (Get ready for D-Day this year, when you can have two chances to see the time as 06:06:06 06/06/06 for what it's worth.) Also having field days, baseball fields that is, Monday was Opening Day in many cities around the country, always a welcome sign of Spring and this year no different. And we have our friends at Glenlivet, makers of fine distilled spirits, to thank for Wear A Kilt To Work Day on April 6th, which raises money for charity, one supposes, based on the idea that people will pay money to have their co-workers' knobby knees and scrawny shins exposed for all the world to see. Personally, I would think you'd raise more money from people paying their colleagues NOT to Wear A Kilt To Work, but I guess that would take all the fun out of the day, such as it is.
Speaking of fun days, we had one last week that began with patchy ground fog, so the car windows were all coated with dew early in the morning. We were assured that this would burn off, which it did, and was followed by bright sunshine and no clouds to be seen. At lunchtime, I mentioned to our temp, "I hate to be an alarmist, but I just noticed that it's snowing," and sure enough, the air was filled with swirling flakes, apparently out of nowhere. I came back from lunch amid more bright sunshine and not a cloud in sight. By mid-afternoon, it was raining, and I said to our bookkeeper that we were having an entire year's worth of weather, all in one day. It was like they were just throwing darts at a board, and couldn't decide what kind of weather to hit us with next. What a mix-up.
Of course, we're all familiar with Russia's glorious October Revolution, which thanks to the change-over to the new calendar, is now celebrated in November, or vice versa, I can never remember which. I was reminded of that recently when I looked up from my March Madness brackets and found the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight and Final Four still going at it in April, and creating a major sports misnomer in the process. Something's gotta give here, guys. If you want to call it March Madness, and it takes too long to finish before the end of the month, you have to start earlier. Running it over into April is not the solution, when you've already got the name picked out.
Meanwhile, for those among us for whom shopping for costumes and accessories is a year-round activity not limited to October, I was not surprised to hear from my online friends at Star Costumes to check out their seasonal offerings, but even I was not expecting this screaming headline --
============================
Up Coming Events to Celebrate
or a Reason to Part!
============================
Hmmmm. More a reason to proof-read, I'm thinking. Then there's this headline that Bill loves from The Journal News of last week --
==================================
Crash Victim Improves
Croton man, 49, died in Route 9 accident
==================================
Frankly, that doesn't seem like much of an improvement. We had to read that story twice, in order to figure out that they were talking about two different people from the same accident. Nice reporting job there by the crack team at TJN. Not to pick on our local paper, which unfortunately is an easy target, let's take another bite out of the hand that feeds us. After I complained about the tasteless China Boy noodles, Bill asked me if the label called them Genuine Chow Mein Noodles made at the Genuine Chow Mein Noodle Factory in Brooklyn Heights or something like that. Instead it turns out that the China Boy noodles are packaged by our friends at the Everfresh Food Corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that world renowned hotbed of Asian cuisine. You can tell that because also on their label is a recipe for China Boy Oriental Dip, which includes soy sauce, garlic powder and ground ginger mixed into a base of sour cream. Of course, everyone knows how much sour cream they use in authentic Chinese cooking. (NOT!)
And people can say what they like about Bill (don't you dare!) but he is nothing if not accommodating to my whims, no matter how, well, whimsical they may be. So he set off on a hunt to find another brand of chow mein noodles that I might like better and came back with some from our friends at Streit's, who assure us they have A History of Baking Kosher Products for Over 75 Years. Perhaps I'm the only one who finds it funny that their chow mein noodles have a notice on the package that they are Not For Passover Use. (Dang!) It certainly begs the question of what do Jewish Asians do for chow mein noodles during Passover. Although I think a better question would be, how much of a problem is it that people are mis-using Chinese foods during Jewish holidays, that they have to warn them off with labels on the packaging? Oy veh, grasshopper.
Earlier in the week at work, our bookkeeper was wrestling some heavy boxes out of the closet in the hallway, when one of the fellows from my department was passing by. Not wanting to seem ungentlemanly, he said, "Hey, do you need a hand with that, Jean? I can get our secretary to help you out." Jean told me that story later, so I could appreciate his thoughtfulness at pitching right in and volunteering me to be her helper, and in absentia, no less. I said it was just par for the course, and all that we could expect from a week like this, where I called Housekeeping to request soap and paper towels for the ladies room, and instead they sent over someone to vacuum. There's a joke in there somewhere, but in the immortal words of Schlomo Wong, it's "Not for Passover Use."
Well, this is turning into a busy week full of events and occurrences that would amaze and confound lesser beings, and all we can hope is that we're all up to the challenge. It all began, of course, with April Fool's Day on Saturday, with its practical jokes and trifling mischief. After that, we had the switch-over to Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, which is always fraught with peril and the potential for disaster. This coming Sunday is All Cats Favorite Church Holiday, known to the rest of the world as Palm Sunday, so you know I'll be there and stocking up for the home front, if only to keep them from biting my ankles by coming home empty-handed. Then at sundown on Wednesday is the beginning of Passover, which will be over-lapping Easter the following Sunday, except for those tardy Orthodox Greeks, no doubt. So you can see that there's already plenty going on to keep people busy and on their toes, if not entertained.
But wait, there's more! If you act right now, we'll also throw in these other special days at no extra charge, that's right friends, they're perfectly free! I have it on good authority that April 4th is Vitamin C Day, which commemorates the discovery of Vitamin C in 1932. I was also alerted by any number of people that on April 5th, we had two different opportunities during the day to observe the time as 01:02:03 04/05/06, and I'm thinking that the numerologists would be having a field day with that one. (Get ready for D-Day this year, when you can have two chances to see the time as 06:06:06 06/06/06 for what it's worth.) Also having field days, baseball fields that is, Monday was Opening Day in many cities around the country, always a welcome sign of Spring and this year no different. And we have our friends at Glenlivet, makers of fine distilled spirits, to thank for Wear A Kilt To Work Day on April 6th, which raises money for charity, one supposes, based on the idea that people will pay money to have their co-workers' knobby knees and scrawny shins exposed for all the world to see. Personally, I would think you'd raise more money from people paying their colleagues NOT to Wear A Kilt To Work, but I guess that would take all the fun out of the day, such as it is.
Speaking of fun days, we had one last week that began with patchy ground fog, so the car windows were all coated with dew early in the morning. We were assured that this would burn off, which it did, and was followed by bright sunshine and no clouds to be seen. At lunchtime, I mentioned to our temp, "I hate to be an alarmist, but I just noticed that it's snowing," and sure enough, the air was filled with swirling flakes, apparently out of nowhere. I came back from lunch amid more bright sunshine and not a cloud in sight. By mid-afternoon, it was raining, and I said to our bookkeeper that we were having an entire year's worth of weather, all in one day. It was like they were just throwing darts at a board, and couldn't decide what kind of weather to hit us with next. What a mix-up.
Of course, we're all familiar with Russia's glorious October Revolution, which thanks to the change-over to the new calendar, is now celebrated in November, or vice versa, I can never remember which. I was reminded of that recently when I looked up from my March Madness brackets and found the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight and Final Four still going at it in April, and creating a major sports misnomer in the process. Something's gotta give here, guys. If you want to call it March Madness, and it takes too long to finish before the end of the month, you have to start earlier. Running it over into April is not the solution, when you've already got the name picked out.
Meanwhile, for those among us for whom shopping for costumes and accessories is a year-round activity not limited to October, I was not surprised to hear from my online friends at Star Costumes to check out their seasonal offerings, but even I was not expecting this screaming headline --
============================
Up Coming Events to Celebrate
or a Reason to Part!
============================
Hmmmm. More a reason to proof-read, I'm thinking. Then there's this headline that Bill loves from The Journal News of last week --
==================================
Crash Victim Improves
Croton man, 49, died in Route 9 accident
==================================
Frankly, that doesn't seem like much of an improvement. We had to read that story twice, in order to figure out that they were talking about two different people from the same accident. Nice reporting job there by the crack team at TJN. Not to pick on our local paper, which unfortunately is an easy target, let's take another bite out of the hand that feeds us. After I complained about the tasteless China Boy noodles, Bill asked me if the label called them Genuine Chow Mein Noodles made at the Genuine Chow Mein Noodle Factory in Brooklyn Heights or something like that. Instead it turns out that the China Boy noodles are packaged by our friends at the Everfresh Food Corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that world renowned hotbed of Asian cuisine. You can tell that because also on their label is a recipe for China Boy Oriental Dip, which includes soy sauce, garlic powder and ground ginger mixed into a base of sour cream. Of course, everyone knows how much sour cream they use in authentic Chinese cooking. (NOT!)
And people can say what they like about Bill (don't you dare!) but he is nothing if not accommodating to my whims, no matter how, well, whimsical they may be. So he set off on a hunt to find another brand of chow mein noodles that I might like better and came back with some from our friends at Streit's, who assure us they have A History of Baking Kosher Products for Over 75 Years. Perhaps I'm the only one who finds it funny that their chow mein noodles have a notice on the package that they are Not For Passover Use. (Dang!) It certainly begs the question of what do Jewish Asians do for chow mein noodles during Passover. Although I think a better question would be, how much of a problem is it that people are mis-using Chinese foods during Jewish holidays, that they have to warn them off with labels on the packaging? Oy veh, grasshopper.
Earlier in the week at work, our bookkeeper was wrestling some heavy boxes out of the closet in the hallway, when one of the fellows from my department was passing by. Not wanting to seem ungentlemanly, he said, "Hey, do you need a hand with that, Jean? I can get our secretary to help you out." Jean told me that story later, so I could appreciate his thoughtfulness at pitching right in and volunteering me to be her helper, and in absentia, no less. I said it was just par for the course, and all that we could expect from a week like this, where I called Housekeeping to request soap and paper towels for the ladies room, and instead they sent over someone to vacuum. There's a joke in there somewhere, but in the immortal words of Schlomo Wong, it's "Not for Passover Use."
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 10:07 PM
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