Mirror, Mirror
Hello World,
Not to be an alarmist or anything, but here we are at the last weekend in August already, believe that or don't. In fact, anyone with plans for summer activities that they wanted to get underway before Labor Day weekend, had better hop to it and on the double, because that will be upon us before we know it. In baseball, the pennant races are heating up, with football nipping at its heels already, with nary a nip in the air to make us think that summer will soon be well and truly over for another year. Quick! Where's that back-to-school candy?
And we're certainly not complaining about the New York Mets (in fact, just yesterday, the broadcasters announced that their magic number is 22, so that tells you something right there) but Bill and I have noticed a peculiar condition that appears to have afflicted the team this year. We're calling it The Bermuda Triangle Effect, and although it may not be new, or unique to the Mets, this is the first we've noticed it. In fact, it has happened so regularly that the conspiracy theorists out there must be having a field day. You can follow the team closely and get used to seeing the same players, for the most part in the same positions, day in and day out for weeks at a time. Then suddenly one of them gets injured, or perhaps just misses a game or two for what seems to be no particular reason. At first, during subsequent games, the announcers let you know what is going on with the player in question, who may be on the Disabled List, or sent to the minor leagues for rehabilitation, or just resting a slight sprain for a couple of days. The team fills in with another player who does a nice job in the interim, and everything carries on as usual while waiting for the original player to come back. Instead what happens [Insert the theme music from the Twilight Zone here, with Rod Serling saying, "These people don't know it ... "] is that they don't return, and no one even mentions a word about the person ever again. Just this year, it has happened so many times and to so many different players, that it has the eerie creepiness of a classic horror movie, plus the paranoid complicity of an espionage thriller all rolled into one. And not to cast aspersions on Omar Minaya, the General Manager of the Mets, but I noticed when he was being interviewed in the clubhouse and walked in front of a mirror, he had no reflection. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can just ask Victor Zambrano, Angel Hernandez, Jorge Julio, Alay Soler, Kaz Matsui, Jose Lima, Andres Gallaraga, Dave Strickland, Eli Marrero or Victor Diaz. If you can find them, that is.
Last week, Bill had some time on his hands, so he decided to take the bull by the horns, metaphorically speaking, and replace the burnt-out bulbs in the yard lights along our driveway. This can be a nuisance, because of the way the lights are constructed, so you have to completely dis-assemble them just to do something relatively simple and routine, like replacing the bulb. They have the added disadvantage that our newspaper service uses them for target practice, plus all the delivery trucks run them over when they pull in or out of our driveway. (I often do that myself, which is why I rarely use the driveway, so I don't like to complain when visitors do the same thing.) So this is a bigger undertaking than it would seem on the face of it, and Bill deserves a lot of credit for taking it on. In fact, he did a heck of a job, because I noticed that all of them were lit when I was out in the yard yesterday, which hasn't happened in months and months. Of course, it was 8:30 in the morning at the time and I was on my way to work, so I suppose there's still some room for improvement in this system, at least as far as the timer settings go.
In the middle of last week, I was at church during the day, and was surprised to find the doors locked but the alarm not set. I went downstairs to see if anyone else was in the building, so I didn't accidentally set the alarm on them, or vice versa, and when I opened the door to the fellowship hall, I heard the unmistakable sounds of tippy-tap toenails on the tile floor coming toward me. I was surprised to see a cute and friendly golden-haired dog of a sort of cocker spaniel mix, and happy to greet me with the conviviality that is a hallmark of the breed. Just then I heard the janitor calling, "Hey, Lucky! Lucky! Go find your ball! Come on, go find your ball!" Lucky seemed to think not much of this idea, and stood his ground in a complacent manner, while the janitor continued to exhort him with verbal enticements and gestures. I finally asked him who his cute friend was, and he replied that he was watching the pastor's dog while the family was on vacation, and brought him to church to keep him company while he was working. I said that I could tell right away that it couldn't possibly be his dog, because he doesn't listen, just like the pastor. The poor man laughed so hard, I thought he was going to break something.
Meanwhile at work, we have recently gotten the latest copy of our in-house newsletter, Esprit de Corps (yes, it's true that name does sound a lot more like "corpse" than you would expect a health care provider to saddle itself with) as opposed to our OTHER newsletter, Sound Health, which is more for the community rather than the employees. In the message from the President and CEO, we find that the hospital has hired a consulting firm to improve our image. What it actually says is, "As a national healthcare consulting and management organization, the Studer Group has the experience to help us build a framework that will maximize our efforts to create a culture of excellence." I love the way they can string all of those words together and still convey absolutely no meaning whatsoever. And while I can state without fear of contradiction that our President and CEO bears no resemblance whatever to Omar Minaya, when I saw him walk past a mirror in the hallway last week, he had no reflection.
When I first started working at the hospital, shortly after arriving on the Mayflower with the rest of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, I was assigned to the large employee parking lot at the bottom of the hill, where the bulk of the staff of 1,600 park their cars for all shifts during the day and night. This is a good sized lot in a sprawling L-shape with rows upon rows of spaces and easy access. I used to park all the way at the end, with the squatters and weirdoes, where the weeds grow up through the broken asphalt and unexplained detritus shows up in mysterious piles from one day to the next. When our department was relocated to another building, all of us were re-assigned to a different parking lot, right outside our office which was certainly convenient. When our department moved again, we were all re-assigned again, this time to what I refer to as the stupid little lot across from one of the doctors residences down the block. The stupid lot is small and cramped, hard to get into and even harder to get out of, and is so undesirable for parking that even when they leave the security gate up, there's no danger of unauthorized vehicles sneaking in there illicitly. That's why it continually amazes me that there is never a time, since I've been in that stupid lot, that there hasn't been at least one abandoned car sitting in a heap with no license plate, broken windows and flat tires, taking up space that could be put to better use. I would expect that to happen in the big lot, where you have thousands of cars coming and going (and some of them instead, coming and staying) every day of the week, but in the stupid little lot, there's only 40 spaces to start with, and the idea that two of them could be filled with abandoned cars is just incomprehensible. If you had that same proportion in the big lot, it would translate into something like 80 spaces full of abandoned cars, which would be ridiculous in the extreme, even for the employer of last resort. And while I hate to be a busy-body, I finally had to complain to our Director of Security. Of course, he didn't have time to do anything about it, because he was too busy building a framework to maximize our efforts at creating a culture of excellence, don't you know.
Not to be an alarmist or anything, but here we are at the last weekend in August already, believe that or don't. In fact, anyone with plans for summer activities that they wanted to get underway before Labor Day weekend, had better hop to it and on the double, because that will be upon us before we know it. In baseball, the pennant races are heating up, with football nipping at its heels already, with nary a nip in the air to make us think that summer will soon be well and truly over for another year. Quick! Where's that back-to-school candy?
And we're certainly not complaining about the New York Mets (in fact, just yesterday, the broadcasters announced that their magic number is 22, so that tells you something right there) but Bill and I have noticed a peculiar condition that appears to have afflicted the team this year. We're calling it The Bermuda Triangle Effect, and although it may not be new, or unique to the Mets, this is the first we've noticed it. In fact, it has happened so regularly that the conspiracy theorists out there must be having a field day. You can follow the team closely and get used to seeing the same players, for the most part in the same positions, day in and day out for weeks at a time. Then suddenly one of them gets injured, or perhaps just misses a game or two for what seems to be no particular reason. At first, during subsequent games, the announcers let you know what is going on with the player in question, who may be on the Disabled List, or sent to the minor leagues for rehabilitation, or just resting a slight sprain for a couple of days. The team fills in with another player who does a nice job in the interim, and everything carries on as usual while waiting for the original player to come back. Instead what happens [Insert the theme music from the Twilight Zone here, with Rod Serling saying, "These people don't know it ... "] is that they don't return, and no one even mentions a word about the person ever again. Just this year, it has happened so many times and to so many different players, that it has the eerie creepiness of a classic horror movie, plus the paranoid complicity of an espionage thriller all rolled into one. And not to cast aspersions on Omar Minaya, the General Manager of the Mets, but I noticed when he was being interviewed in the clubhouse and walked in front of a mirror, he had no reflection. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can just ask Victor Zambrano, Angel Hernandez, Jorge Julio, Alay Soler, Kaz Matsui, Jose Lima, Andres Gallaraga, Dave Strickland, Eli Marrero or Victor Diaz. If you can find them, that is.
Last week, Bill had some time on his hands, so he decided to take the bull by the horns, metaphorically speaking, and replace the burnt-out bulbs in the yard lights along our driveway. This can be a nuisance, because of the way the lights are constructed, so you have to completely dis-assemble them just to do something relatively simple and routine, like replacing the bulb. They have the added disadvantage that our newspaper service uses them for target practice, plus all the delivery trucks run them over when they pull in or out of our driveway. (I often do that myself, which is why I rarely use the driveway, so I don't like to complain when visitors do the same thing.) So this is a bigger undertaking than it would seem on the face of it, and Bill deserves a lot of credit for taking it on. In fact, he did a heck of a job, because I noticed that all of them were lit when I was out in the yard yesterday, which hasn't happened in months and months. Of course, it was 8:30 in the morning at the time and I was on my way to work, so I suppose there's still some room for improvement in this system, at least as far as the timer settings go.
In the middle of last week, I was at church during the day, and was surprised to find the doors locked but the alarm not set. I went downstairs to see if anyone else was in the building, so I didn't accidentally set the alarm on them, or vice versa, and when I opened the door to the fellowship hall, I heard the unmistakable sounds of tippy-tap toenails on the tile floor coming toward me. I was surprised to see a cute and friendly golden-haired dog of a sort of cocker spaniel mix, and happy to greet me with the conviviality that is a hallmark of the breed. Just then I heard the janitor calling, "Hey, Lucky! Lucky! Go find your ball! Come on, go find your ball!" Lucky seemed to think not much of this idea, and stood his ground in a complacent manner, while the janitor continued to exhort him with verbal enticements and gestures. I finally asked him who his cute friend was, and he replied that he was watching the pastor's dog while the family was on vacation, and brought him to church to keep him company while he was working. I said that I could tell right away that it couldn't possibly be his dog, because he doesn't listen, just like the pastor. The poor man laughed so hard, I thought he was going to break something.
Meanwhile at work, we have recently gotten the latest copy of our in-house newsletter, Esprit de Corps (yes, it's true that name does sound a lot more like "corpse" than you would expect a health care provider to saddle itself with) as opposed to our OTHER newsletter, Sound Health, which is more for the community rather than the employees. In the message from the President and CEO, we find that the hospital has hired a consulting firm to improve our image. What it actually says is, "As a national healthcare consulting and management organization, the Studer Group has the experience to help us build a framework that will maximize our efforts to create a culture of excellence." I love the way they can string all of those words together and still convey absolutely no meaning whatsoever. And while I can state without fear of contradiction that our President and CEO bears no resemblance whatever to Omar Minaya, when I saw him walk past a mirror in the hallway last week, he had no reflection.
When I first started working at the hospital, shortly after arriving on the Mayflower with the rest of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, I was assigned to the large employee parking lot at the bottom of the hill, where the bulk of the staff of 1,600 park their cars for all shifts during the day and night. This is a good sized lot in a sprawling L-shape with rows upon rows of spaces and easy access. I used to park all the way at the end, with the squatters and weirdoes, where the weeds grow up through the broken asphalt and unexplained detritus shows up in mysterious piles from one day to the next. When our department was relocated to another building, all of us were re-assigned to a different parking lot, right outside our office which was certainly convenient. When our department moved again, we were all re-assigned again, this time to what I refer to as the stupid little lot across from one of the doctors residences down the block. The stupid lot is small and cramped, hard to get into and even harder to get out of, and is so undesirable for parking that even when they leave the security gate up, there's no danger of unauthorized vehicles sneaking in there illicitly. That's why it continually amazes me that there is never a time, since I've been in that stupid lot, that there hasn't been at least one abandoned car sitting in a heap with no license plate, broken windows and flat tires, taking up space that could be put to better use. I would expect that to happen in the big lot, where you have thousands of cars coming and going (and some of them instead, coming and staying) every day of the week, but in the stupid little lot, there's only 40 spaces to start with, and the idea that two of them could be filled with abandoned cars is just incomprehensible. If you had that same proportion in the big lot, it would translate into something like 80 spaces full of abandoned cars, which would be ridiculous in the extreme, even for the employer of last resort. And while I hate to be a busy-body, I finally had to complain to our Director of Security. Of course, he didn't have time to do anything about it, because he was too busy building a framework to maximize our efforts at creating a culture of excellence, don't you know.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:19 PM
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