Take Me Out To The Ball Game
Hello World,
Happy Memorial Day Weekend! I hope this holiday will find you happy, memorable, and full of days of the weekend variety, where you can take advantage of all the festivities that are offered in your locality for this momentous occasion. Weather permitting, many of us expect to be flying the colors upstairs and downstairs, that is, if the flag brigade reminder squad does its job to remind the flag brigade to do so. I don't mind saying that these are challenging times for the reminder squad, which finds itself being more and more of a misnomer these days, if not an outright fraud.
Speaking of names, many people may be aware that the New York Mets play at Shea Stadium, without having any idea who the structure is named after. Since we live in the New York metropolitan area, and watch the Mets regularly, we were more surprised than anyone to find that they're busy building a new stadium, and in fact, you can see the construction cranes and heavy equipment right outside during the broadcasts of the games. Because it's being built in the parking lot, the announcers are encouraging people to take mass transit to the games, and since it won't be finished until 2009, it should be pretty messy there for a while. That's all they've told us so far, so we wondered what it would look like, and what it would be named after. The current stadium is about 40 years old, cheerless, cavernous and symmetrical, holding around 55,000 seating capacity, and was named after William Shea, the attorney who was considered instrumental in returning a National League franchise to New York after the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1959. Nowadays, they tend to build odd quirky little bandboxes that are deliberately mis-shapen and include all sorts of nooks and crannies, such as short porches in left field, and architectural elements like gardens, waterfalls, patios, picnic areas and luxury suites throughout. Then they give them silly names like Oriole Park at Camden Yards, or name them after corporate sponsors like Corel Center or Petco Field, or even worse, so you really don't know what to expect. But we've been seeing a lot of commercials for Washington Mutual Bank, which lately has been calling itself WaMu, so we're thinking that in three years, we'll be looking at some squatty little retro playpen with the unwieldy name of The Park at WaMu Fields in Flushing Meadows or some such nonsense.
We've been having a plague of locusts at work ... excuse me, I meant to say that the auditors are back and hard at work doing their auditor-type things, which I'm sure are very important, useful and well worth the price we're paying for it. Because they review and investigate our finances every year, they need to have access to our Finance department, and perhaps for this reason, Finance maintains a series of empty offices in the hallway to accommodate them when they come. For reasons known only to themselves, they give them the offices that are as far away from Finance as possible, while still being in the same building, and as close to Purchasing without actually being right inside of our department. We find this a nuisance, because they tend to do things like leave food in our refrigerator, use our microwave, or take over our conference room for impromptu meetings without asking. An even bigger problem is what I refer to as the "musical chairs" aspect of the invasion, which unlike traditional musical chairs, has no musical cues to alert you to the dangers. Because at some times more of these people show up than others, we have to be on the lookout for them spiriting away chairs and tables from us when no one is watching. This time, there were fewer of them, and the reverse happened, where they dumped excess chairs on us that were obviously in their way. I put them in my old office temporarily, but I was determined not to get stuck with these white elephants indefinitely. Today when I came back from lunch, I noticed that the Housekeeping department was moving one of our Accounting people to a new office further down the hallway, and we all know how nature abhors a vacuum, so as soon as that office was empty, I quick like a bunny grabbed those excess chairs and plopped them right in there. While I was at it, I grabbed three stacking chairs that had been dumped on us by a previous invasion of the auditors, and left those as well. I ended up with a net gain of minus 5 chairs, and consider that a good day's work all around. Music, maestro, please!
Speaking of work, one thing I never noticed about my new office before I moved into it, compared to my old office, is that it's not only on the sunny side of the building, but also on the noisy side of the building, since it overlooks the Emergency Room, whereas my old office had a view of the alley between two buildings. The distinction was never more obvious than on Tuesday, which was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, and with my window open, I could hear the sound of birds chirping in the trees and the leaves rustling in the breeze, and a nicer day could not be hoped for. In fact, it was a classic example of a day that you would not expect to be attacked by terrorists, so you can imagine my surprise when suddenly there were crowds of people running and screaming at full volume under my window from down the block on their way to the Emergency Room. Apparently the hospital was conducting a bio-terrorism drill, and in the staging area under my window, they had set up a rudimentary shower to hose off the "victims" of the attack, while others dressed in space suits were helping people into what appeared to be black plastic trash bags, and still other employees played the part of dead bodies being carted off on stretchers. I will say that all of the noise and ruckus really got everyone's attention in Finance, and pretty soon, there was no one left in the hallway except the auditors, because everyone else was in Purchasing watching the carryings on down below us. Personally, I thought there was way too much laughing for your average bio-terrorism attack, not to mention, mugging for the photographer who was recording the event, especially among the dead bodies. And although the person in charge of the drill had a megaphone, I found it was only nominally effective in getting people to do what he told them to do, and usually required him to say everything twice. Of course, many of the participants were department heads like the Pharmacy director (who made an excellent corpse) or Admitting registrar or Ultrasound supervisor, and everyone knows that they never listen. The amazing thing to me was that the first we knew of this drill was when people started running and screaming under my window in the middle of the day, and it made me wonder that people might not think we were really under attack. Mind you, when they were re-paving the doctor's parking lot earlier in the year, and the lot would be closed between midnight and 7:00 AM, we all got no fewer than six broadcast voice mail messages to remind us about it, every day for a week ahead of time. But for this full-scale bio-terrorism extravaganza, there was not a peep out of anybody at any time, and so if people were going to jump to the wrong conclusions, that was just too bad. I don't know how effective it was as a bio-terrorism drill, but in terms of entertainment value and negative productivity, it would be hard to beat.
Last week, I found myself running behind schedule in any number of areas, and as a result did not retrieve my incoming email on Wednesday night as I usually do. By the time I checked it on Thursday night, I found I had 92 incoming messages. Fortunately, at least 40 of them turned out to be from my close personal friends at JC Penney, Amazon, the Popcorn Factory, 1-800-flowers, Barnes + Noble, Broderbund, Lane Bryant, Classmates and the like. Earlier today, I was telling this story to a co-worker, and when I got to the part about the incoming messages, she exclaimed, "Ninety-two messages! How did they all fit?" Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not generally at a loss for words, but I will admit that at this conversational gambit, I was simply dumbstruck and found myself staring at her with my mouth opening and closing, but no words would come out.
You can always tell when it's spring in our neighborhood, because the contractors start to show up in droves, and we find the houses around us getting new roofs, siding, plumbing, paint, windows, electricity, patios, kitchens or landscape elements. The young man across the street from us is more the do-it-yourself type, and recently had two skids of bluestone delivered to his driveway for some purpose or another. Perhaps he expected to have some left over, because we came home from work one day to find that he had used a bunch of it to create a sort of rustic curb all across the front of his property in the street. (Years ago, we discovered that making your own curbs out of portable materials is a chancy proposition at best, especially when the snow plows come through, but young Sheridan likely has no experience with this aspect of the plan.) Previously, he had ripped all of the pachysandra out of a slope on one side of his yard, and planted small azaleas and spring bulbs in its place. Today when I left for work, I noticed that he had begun piling up bluestone along the slope around the new bushes, sort of like building a diagonal wall that leans against a hill. Actually what it looks like is a man paving his yard over, and I can't say that I care for the effect all that much so far. I mean, I like landscape elements as much as the next fellow, but this strikes me as a little too much of a good thing. And while I don't so much mind the short porch in left field with the picnic area, I have to draw the line at the billboards, and that's all there is to that.
Happy Memorial Day Weekend! I hope this holiday will find you happy, memorable, and full of days of the weekend variety, where you can take advantage of all the festivities that are offered in your locality for this momentous occasion. Weather permitting, many of us expect to be flying the colors upstairs and downstairs, that is, if the flag brigade reminder squad does its job to remind the flag brigade to do so. I don't mind saying that these are challenging times for the reminder squad, which finds itself being more and more of a misnomer these days, if not an outright fraud.
Speaking of names, many people may be aware that the New York Mets play at Shea Stadium, without having any idea who the structure is named after. Since we live in the New York metropolitan area, and watch the Mets regularly, we were more surprised than anyone to find that they're busy building a new stadium, and in fact, you can see the construction cranes and heavy equipment right outside during the broadcasts of the games. Because it's being built in the parking lot, the announcers are encouraging people to take mass transit to the games, and since it won't be finished until 2009, it should be pretty messy there for a while. That's all they've told us so far, so we wondered what it would look like, and what it would be named after. The current stadium is about 40 years old, cheerless, cavernous and symmetrical, holding around 55,000 seating capacity, and was named after William Shea, the attorney who was considered instrumental in returning a National League franchise to New York after the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1959. Nowadays, they tend to build odd quirky little bandboxes that are deliberately mis-shapen and include all sorts of nooks and crannies, such as short porches in left field, and architectural elements like gardens, waterfalls, patios, picnic areas and luxury suites throughout. Then they give them silly names like Oriole Park at Camden Yards, or name them after corporate sponsors like Corel Center or Petco Field, or even worse, so you really don't know what to expect. But we've been seeing a lot of commercials for Washington Mutual Bank, which lately has been calling itself WaMu, so we're thinking that in three years, we'll be looking at some squatty little retro playpen with the unwieldy name of The Park at WaMu Fields in Flushing Meadows or some such nonsense.
We've been having a plague of locusts at work ... excuse me, I meant to say that the auditors are back and hard at work doing their auditor-type things, which I'm sure are very important, useful and well worth the price we're paying for it. Because they review and investigate our finances every year, they need to have access to our Finance department, and perhaps for this reason, Finance maintains a series of empty offices in the hallway to accommodate them when they come. For reasons known only to themselves, they give them the offices that are as far away from Finance as possible, while still being in the same building, and as close to Purchasing without actually being right inside of our department. We find this a nuisance, because they tend to do things like leave food in our refrigerator, use our microwave, or take over our conference room for impromptu meetings without asking. An even bigger problem is what I refer to as the "musical chairs" aspect of the invasion, which unlike traditional musical chairs, has no musical cues to alert you to the dangers. Because at some times more of these people show up than others, we have to be on the lookout for them spiriting away chairs and tables from us when no one is watching. This time, there were fewer of them, and the reverse happened, where they dumped excess chairs on us that were obviously in their way. I put them in my old office temporarily, but I was determined not to get stuck with these white elephants indefinitely. Today when I came back from lunch, I noticed that the Housekeeping department was moving one of our Accounting people to a new office further down the hallway, and we all know how nature abhors a vacuum, so as soon as that office was empty, I quick like a bunny grabbed those excess chairs and plopped them right in there. While I was at it, I grabbed three stacking chairs that had been dumped on us by a previous invasion of the auditors, and left those as well. I ended up with a net gain of minus 5 chairs, and consider that a good day's work all around. Music, maestro, please!
Speaking of work, one thing I never noticed about my new office before I moved into it, compared to my old office, is that it's not only on the sunny side of the building, but also on the noisy side of the building, since it overlooks the Emergency Room, whereas my old office had a view of the alley between two buildings. The distinction was never more obvious than on Tuesday, which was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, and with my window open, I could hear the sound of birds chirping in the trees and the leaves rustling in the breeze, and a nicer day could not be hoped for. In fact, it was a classic example of a day that you would not expect to be attacked by terrorists, so you can imagine my surprise when suddenly there were crowds of people running and screaming at full volume under my window from down the block on their way to the Emergency Room. Apparently the hospital was conducting a bio-terrorism drill, and in the staging area under my window, they had set up a rudimentary shower to hose off the "victims" of the attack, while others dressed in space suits were helping people into what appeared to be black plastic trash bags, and still other employees played the part of dead bodies being carted off on stretchers. I will say that all of the noise and ruckus really got everyone's attention in Finance, and pretty soon, there was no one left in the hallway except the auditors, because everyone else was in Purchasing watching the carryings on down below us. Personally, I thought there was way too much laughing for your average bio-terrorism attack, not to mention, mugging for the photographer who was recording the event, especially among the dead bodies. And although the person in charge of the drill had a megaphone, I found it was only nominally effective in getting people to do what he told them to do, and usually required him to say everything twice. Of course, many of the participants were department heads like the Pharmacy director (who made an excellent corpse) or Admitting registrar or Ultrasound supervisor, and everyone knows that they never listen. The amazing thing to me was that the first we knew of this drill was when people started running and screaming under my window in the middle of the day, and it made me wonder that people might not think we were really under attack. Mind you, when they were re-paving the doctor's parking lot earlier in the year, and the lot would be closed between midnight and 7:00 AM, we all got no fewer than six broadcast voice mail messages to remind us about it, every day for a week ahead of time. But for this full-scale bio-terrorism extravaganza, there was not a peep out of anybody at any time, and so if people were going to jump to the wrong conclusions, that was just too bad. I don't know how effective it was as a bio-terrorism drill, but in terms of entertainment value and negative productivity, it would be hard to beat.
Last week, I found myself running behind schedule in any number of areas, and as a result did not retrieve my incoming email on Wednesday night as I usually do. By the time I checked it on Thursday night, I found I had 92 incoming messages. Fortunately, at least 40 of them turned out to be from my close personal friends at JC Penney, Amazon, the Popcorn Factory, 1-800-flowers, Barnes + Noble, Broderbund, Lane Bryant, Classmates and the like. Earlier today, I was telling this story to a co-worker, and when I got to the part about the incoming messages, she exclaimed, "Ninety-two messages! How did they all fit?" Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not generally at a loss for words, but I will admit that at this conversational gambit, I was simply dumbstruck and found myself staring at her with my mouth opening and closing, but no words would come out.
You can always tell when it's spring in our neighborhood, because the contractors start to show up in droves, and we find the houses around us getting new roofs, siding, plumbing, paint, windows, electricity, patios, kitchens or landscape elements. The young man across the street from us is more the do-it-yourself type, and recently had two skids of bluestone delivered to his driveway for some purpose or another. Perhaps he expected to have some left over, because we came home from work one day to find that he had used a bunch of it to create a sort of rustic curb all across the front of his property in the street. (Years ago, we discovered that making your own curbs out of portable materials is a chancy proposition at best, especially when the snow plows come through, but young Sheridan likely has no experience with this aspect of the plan.) Previously, he had ripped all of the pachysandra out of a slope on one side of his yard, and planted small azaleas and spring bulbs in its place. Today when I left for work, I noticed that he had begun piling up bluestone along the slope around the new bushes, sort of like building a diagonal wall that leans against a hill. Actually what it looks like is a man paving his yard over, and I can't say that I care for the effect all that much so far. I mean, I like landscape elements as much as the next fellow, but this strikes me as a little too much of a good thing. And while I don't so much mind the short porch in left field with the picnic area, I have to draw the line at the billboards, and that's all there is to that.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:51 PM
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