Room Service
Hello World,
Happy September! I hope that you enjoyed yourself over the long holiday weekend in the spirit of Samuel L. Gompers and rested from your labors. Around here, the weather wasn't much to speak of, at least on Saturday, no thanks to Tropical Depression Ernesto, in a year that has exhibited an unwelcome consistency of storms with high winds and drenching rains that flood streets, topple trees and take out the power and phone wires along with them. In fact, it was reported in the newspaper that they expect 100,000 customers in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties to be without electricity for most of the week. We found our lights blinking on and off repeatedly on Saturday, punctuated by a series of unsettling "BOOM" noises from down the block, but in the end, they stayed on and we didn't lose our power. Even our cable TV service that blacked out for a few hours returned on its own without having to wait for the service technicians on Monday. At the time, we thought this was a good thing, although with the way the Mets ended up playing over the weekend, it was more of a mixed blessing than we had anticipated. But I said to Bill that we were already having a better weekend than people we saw on the news all along the Southeast, being evacuated from their homes by firemen in Ernesto's wake. Considering that it was not a full-blown hurricane, it certainly caused all sorts of problems, and wouldn't win any popularity contests by a long shot. In fact, if I was Ernesto, I'd be thinking about wearing a wig and dark sunglasses the next time I showed up any place.
Fortunately, Sunday and Monday were much nicer, and people with plans for the holiday could salvage what they might from the rest of the weekend. Monday was nice enough to put the flags outside, and we flew them with gusto, lending that patriotic air to the neighborhood and adding some much needed color to the local landscape. Next to the vacuum cleaner, nothing seems to rattle the cats more than seeing someone walking around with a flag on a pole, which even when it's rolled up, seems to suggest an instrument of diabolical torture in their tiny minds. They go flying in every direction when I carry the flag from the library out to the front porch, in spite of the fact that they've never actually come into contact with it and they see me do this at least four times a year. So here's something else that wouldn't win any popularity contests, at least around our house, for reasons known only to the feline residents and they're not talking. (At least not to us, although I have every reason to believe that they are in almost constant communication with the mother ship that will be returning them to their home planet at some future date.) I even remembered to take the flags back in after dinner (yes, on the same day!) which is a noteworthy accomplishment that should be recognized and not taken for granted by more able-minded individuals.
One thing we were glad to see over the weekend was the return of Cliff Floyd to the Mets lineup, after he had been out for an extended time with a foot injury. He continued to have some problems with it, however, and was unable to return to playing every day, as originally hoped. Before one of the games, he was interviewed about the injury, and he actually said: "Well, I'll tell you, it is what it is and all I can do is ride it out and see what happens, because this is not my first time at the rodeo, and at the end of the day, I just have to put it all on the table and give it everything I've got." It made me wonder if he was actually on the Disabled List and taking rehabilitation in Florida for four weeks, or whether the team just packed him up and sent him off to cliche school instead. I mean, it's not easy to string together all of those idioms, all in a bunch in one sentence like that, and for you non-professionals out there, please don't try this at home. Remember, this is not Cliff Floyd's first time at the rodeo.
I recently had occasion to purchase a set of jumper cables, and was I surprised to find out that this is not as easy as it sounds. Apparently I'm the only person who doesn't realize that everyone else in the world calls them "booster cables," so an online search for "jumper cables" basically turns up a whole lot of nothing, except for accessory cables for your laptop. In fact, these seem to come in a wide variety of options, which is probably a good deal for your laptop, although I would tend to doubt its effectiveness at starting cars. Luckily I happened upon our friends at Battery Mart in Virginia (and I'm sure they'd be downright tickled to have you visit their web site at www.batterymart.com and set a spell) who had just what I was looking for and were as eager to send it right out for me as I was to get it. Now, here is where I have to say that my new friends at Battery Mart and I are of two minds on this issue. I'm thinking of heavy-duty jumper cables as being thick, dense and about as indestructible as anything you can get your hands on, and if you tossed them loose in a package and sent them off in a truck, what's the worst that could happen to them? Not our friends at Battery Mart, where they may have sentimental feelings for the little darlings, because they wrapped up this 20-pounds of cables in a large cardboard box with about 9 cubic yards of Styrofoam packing peanuts, so in case God forbid anyone dropped them, the precious lovelies wouldn't get bruised. To their credit, I have to say that the cables did arrive in the most pristine condition that anyone could ever imagine, not that pristinity (is that a word?) is much of a selling point when it comes to jumper cables, I wouldn't think. Now I love my new friends at Battery Mart, but when it comes to packaging, this is what I say: It's a good thing they don't sell mirrors!
It took many years, but I finally had enough of being cramped and in harm's way with my computer in the den, where there was no room for anything and everything was covered in plastic in case of unexpected drips from unpredictable overhead sources. I pushed the couch from one wall to another, and relocated my desk and computer equipment to the living room, where there was plenty of room to spread out and no questions about the integrity of the ceiling. Instead of piling everything precariously on top of each other, now I could assemble bookshelves and cabinets all along the wall to hold things that I needed, and everything was easier to store, to retrieve and to use regularly, than the rat's nest I was working with previously. I was very happy with the improvements, and bid farewell to the den without a backward glance, and glad of it. It's only lately that I've begun to truly appreciate the disadvantages of this move, and although it hasn't tipped the scales to the point of returning to the den, it has got me thinking about the trade-offs. I always thought that there was no place in the house as cold as the den in the winter, although Bill says that early in the morning, he has to wear his jacket in the kitchen. But my desk was in front of the bay window, which is technically outside of the house, and you can believe me when I say that it feels every bit of it. But at least the den is small, and if you turn on a heater, it doesn't take long to make the room warmer, and you can close the doors so the warmth stays in with you. I found out that the living room is just about as cold as the den, but being a capacious 20' x 40' there's no way to heat the room up enough to be warm, no matter what you do. In one of those perverse twists, it's also unbearably hot in the summer, and unlike the den, is also too large to cool with a window air conditioner to get any relief. So these were two problems that I didn't have in the den, that I wasn't anticipating when I moved. But I found that it all paled in comparison to the major problem with the living room, which is that it has no doors. Actually, it has plenty of doors, but it lacks the key element of a door that would close it off from the rest of the house, because it has a very large and unobstructed archway that opens onto the front hall. In our family, this means that whatever you do in the living room, you'd better plan on having lots of company, because there's no chance that you'll be doing it without at least some of the cats "helping" you. This includes what we think of as our "regular" cats, as well as the ones we have of the "invisible" variety and everything in between. This help can take many forms, but most common is the desire to sit on the keyboard, play with the mouse, knock papers on the floor, or climb into my lap so that I have to reach over them to type. This is all well and good when time is not of the essence, but often this element of help is not a good fit with my need for speed and productivity. Since there is no way to close the cats out and away from where I'm working, my options are limited. To get the offender off my lap, my first step is usually to stand up. This has the desired effect only insofar as the cat gets off me, but then wastes no time in taking my place on the chair instead. Now my options are even more limited, which is that I can share the chair with them, drag another chair out of a different room, or stand up and type. Having tried each of these at one time or another, I can say without reservation that they have nothing to recommend them, and I ought to know. For people out there keeping track, we file this under the "out of the frying pan, into the fire" category of improvements.
Speaking of dubious improvements, here is where Chevrolet and I part company, as I recently saw a full-page feature article in the Wheels Extra section of our local newspaper for the new and improved 2007 Chevy Avalanche. Avalanche???!!! Excuse me, but could anyone possibly think that name conveys a positive image of power and performance in a family sports utility vehicle? Am I the only one who finds a totally negative connotation immediately springing to mind instead, with shrieking winds, tons of cascading debris and relentless gravity all converging to leave a wasteland of death and destruction in their wake? What's next from Chevy, the Earthquake? The Volcano? The Monsoon? I mean, there are simply some words that are without any positive associations, and Avalanche is one of them believe me, and to name your product after them is just asking for trouble. Avalanche, indeed.
And so here we have come to the end of another short week at work, and everyone already knows what I think about those short weeks. However, I will say that since we have our new person in Purchasing, Hosanna, my weeks are certainly not as crazy as they used to be, which has been a great benefit not only to my sanity, such as it is, but even more so to my beleaguered co-workers, who had been urging me to take some time off as a “mental health day” for themselves. But now, thanks to the miracle of modern herbal supplements, not to mention Hosanna, I've been doing a creditable job of behaving like a normal person, which would have seemed laughable four months ago. The staff may not have welcomed me back from the "Mentally Disabled List" with open arms, but at least they don't still give me that same "deer in the headlights" look as before, so I'm hoping that I can put it all on the table and give it everything I've got. After all, this is not my first time at the rodeo.
Happy September! I hope that you enjoyed yourself over the long holiday weekend in the spirit of Samuel L. Gompers and rested from your labors. Around here, the weather wasn't much to speak of, at least on Saturday, no thanks to Tropical Depression Ernesto, in a year that has exhibited an unwelcome consistency of storms with high winds and drenching rains that flood streets, topple trees and take out the power and phone wires along with them. In fact, it was reported in the newspaper that they expect 100,000 customers in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties to be without electricity for most of the week. We found our lights blinking on and off repeatedly on Saturday, punctuated by a series of unsettling "BOOM" noises from down the block, but in the end, they stayed on and we didn't lose our power. Even our cable TV service that blacked out for a few hours returned on its own without having to wait for the service technicians on Monday. At the time, we thought this was a good thing, although with the way the Mets ended up playing over the weekend, it was more of a mixed blessing than we had anticipated. But I said to Bill that we were already having a better weekend than people we saw on the news all along the Southeast, being evacuated from their homes by firemen in Ernesto's wake. Considering that it was not a full-blown hurricane, it certainly caused all sorts of problems, and wouldn't win any popularity contests by a long shot. In fact, if I was Ernesto, I'd be thinking about wearing a wig and dark sunglasses the next time I showed up any place.
Fortunately, Sunday and Monday were much nicer, and people with plans for the holiday could salvage what they might from the rest of the weekend. Monday was nice enough to put the flags outside, and we flew them with gusto, lending that patriotic air to the neighborhood and adding some much needed color to the local landscape. Next to the vacuum cleaner, nothing seems to rattle the cats more than seeing someone walking around with a flag on a pole, which even when it's rolled up, seems to suggest an instrument of diabolical torture in their tiny minds. They go flying in every direction when I carry the flag from the library out to the front porch, in spite of the fact that they've never actually come into contact with it and they see me do this at least four times a year. So here's something else that wouldn't win any popularity contests, at least around our house, for reasons known only to the feline residents and they're not talking. (At least not to us, although I have every reason to believe that they are in almost constant communication with the mother ship that will be returning them to their home planet at some future date.) I even remembered to take the flags back in after dinner (yes, on the same day!) which is a noteworthy accomplishment that should be recognized and not taken for granted by more able-minded individuals.
One thing we were glad to see over the weekend was the return of Cliff Floyd to the Mets lineup, after he had been out for an extended time with a foot injury. He continued to have some problems with it, however, and was unable to return to playing every day, as originally hoped. Before one of the games, he was interviewed about the injury, and he actually said: "Well, I'll tell you, it is what it is and all I can do is ride it out and see what happens, because this is not my first time at the rodeo, and at the end of the day, I just have to put it all on the table and give it everything I've got." It made me wonder if he was actually on the Disabled List and taking rehabilitation in Florida for four weeks, or whether the team just packed him up and sent him off to cliche school instead. I mean, it's not easy to string together all of those idioms, all in a bunch in one sentence like that, and for you non-professionals out there, please don't try this at home. Remember, this is not Cliff Floyd's first time at the rodeo.
I recently had occasion to purchase a set of jumper cables, and was I surprised to find out that this is not as easy as it sounds. Apparently I'm the only person who doesn't realize that everyone else in the world calls them "booster cables," so an online search for "jumper cables" basically turns up a whole lot of nothing, except for accessory cables for your laptop. In fact, these seem to come in a wide variety of options, which is probably a good deal for your laptop, although I would tend to doubt its effectiveness at starting cars. Luckily I happened upon our friends at Battery Mart in Virginia (and I'm sure they'd be downright tickled to have you visit their web site at www.batterymart.com and set a spell) who had just what I was looking for and were as eager to send it right out for me as I was to get it. Now, here is where I have to say that my new friends at Battery Mart and I are of two minds on this issue. I'm thinking of heavy-duty jumper cables as being thick, dense and about as indestructible as anything you can get your hands on, and if you tossed them loose in a package and sent them off in a truck, what's the worst that could happen to them? Not our friends at Battery Mart, where they may have sentimental feelings for the little darlings, because they wrapped up this 20-pounds of cables in a large cardboard box with about 9 cubic yards of Styrofoam packing peanuts, so in case God forbid anyone dropped them, the precious lovelies wouldn't get bruised. To their credit, I have to say that the cables did arrive in the most pristine condition that anyone could ever imagine, not that pristinity (is that a word?) is much of a selling point when it comes to jumper cables, I wouldn't think. Now I love my new friends at Battery Mart, but when it comes to packaging, this is what I say: It's a good thing they don't sell mirrors!
It took many years, but I finally had enough of being cramped and in harm's way with my computer in the den, where there was no room for anything and everything was covered in plastic in case of unexpected drips from unpredictable overhead sources. I pushed the couch from one wall to another, and relocated my desk and computer equipment to the living room, where there was plenty of room to spread out and no questions about the integrity of the ceiling. Instead of piling everything precariously on top of each other, now I could assemble bookshelves and cabinets all along the wall to hold things that I needed, and everything was easier to store, to retrieve and to use regularly, than the rat's nest I was working with previously. I was very happy with the improvements, and bid farewell to the den without a backward glance, and glad of it. It's only lately that I've begun to truly appreciate the disadvantages of this move, and although it hasn't tipped the scales to the point of returning to the den, it has got me thinking about the trade-offs. I always thought that there was no place in the house as cold as the den in the winter, although Bill says that early in the morning, he has to wear his jacket in the kitchen. But my desk was in front of the bay window, which is technically outside of the house, and you can believe me when I say that it feels every bit of it. But at least the den is small, and if you turn on a heater, it doesn't take long to make the room warmer, and you can close the doors so the warmth stays in with you. I found out that the living room is just about as cold as the den, but being a capacious 20' x 40' there's no way to heat the room up enough to be warm, no matter what you do. In one of those perverse twists, it's also unbearably hot in the summer, and unlike the den, is also too large to cool with a window air conditioner to get any relief. So these were two problems that I didn't have in the den, that I wasn't anticipating when I moved. But I found that it all paled in comparison to the major problem with the living room, which is that it has no doors. Actually, it has plenty of doors, but it lacks the key element of a door that would close it off from the rest of the house, because it has a very large and unobstructed archway that opens onto the front hall. In our family, this means that whatever you do in the living room, you'd better plan on having lots of company, because there's no chance that you'll be doing it without at least some of the cats "helping" you. This includes what we think of as our "regular" cats, as well as the ones we have of the "invisible" variety and everything in between. This help can take many forms, but most common is the desire to sit on the keyboard, play with the mouse, knock papers on the floor, or climb into my lap so that I have to reach over them to type. This is all well and good when time is not of the essence, but often this element of help is not a good fit with my need for speed and productivity. Since there is no way to close the cats out and away from where I'm working, my options are limited. To get the offender off my lap, my first step is usually to stand up. This has the desired effect only insofar as the cat gets off me, but then wastes no time in taking my place on the chair instead. Now my options are even more limited, which is that I can share the chair with them, drag another chair out of a different room, or stand up and type. Having tried each of these at one time or another, I can say without reservation that they have nothing to recommend them, and I ought to know. For people out there keeping track, we file this under the "out of the frying pan, into the fire" category of improvements.
Speaking of dubious improvements, here is where Chevrolet and I part company, as I recently saw a full-page feature article in the Wheels Extra section of our local newspaper for the new and improved 2007 Chevy Avalanche. Avalanche???!!! Excuse me, but could anyone possibly think that name conveys a positive image of power and performance in a family sports utility vehicle? Am I the only one who finds a totally negative connotation immediately springing to mind instead, with shrieking winds, tons of cascading debris and relentless gravity all converging to leave a wasteland of death and destruction in their wake? What's next from Chevy, the Earthquake? The Volcano? The Monsoon? I mean, there are simply some words that are without any positive associations, and Avalanche is one of them believe me, and to name your product after them is just asking for trouble. Avalanche, indeed.
And so here we have come to the end of another short week at work, and everyone already knows what I think about those short weeks. However, I will say that since we have our new person in Purchasing, Hosanna, my weeks are certainly not as crazy as they used to be, which has been a great benefit not only to my sanity, such as it is, but even more so to my beleaguered co-workers, who had been urging me to take some time off as a “mental health day” for themselves. But now, thanks to the miracle of modern herbal supplements, not to mention Hosanna, I've been doing a creditable job of behaving like a normal person, which would have seemed laughable four months ago. The staff may not have welcomed me back from the "Mentally Disabled List" with open arms, but at least they don't still give me that same "deer in the headlights" look as before, so I'm hoping that I can put it all on the table and give it everything I've got. After all, this is not my first time at the rodeo.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:35 PM
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