Think Tank

Hello World,
So here we are, already at the last weekend in January, once famous for the Super Bowl, and now stripped of even that distinction, alas. I know that everyone is aware of what's happening around here, because the alarms have been going off non-stop since the temperature dropped below 30 degrees last week, and we had a couple of snow flurries. This cataclysm has been burning up the wire services, and keeping the 24-hour news stations occupied around the clock. They've actually sent out correspondents to stand outdoors and tell us how cold it is. Honestly, you'd think that no one had ever seen cold or snow in New York in January before, for all the news coverage this is getting. At this rate, I don't know what poor Lindsay Lohan is going to have to do, in order to get any attention from anyone.

I have been notified by any number of alert readers that the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill is not technically one of the animals celebrated with its own year in the Chinese calendar, but rather, a cartoon invention of Dr. Seuss in his classic book, "If I Ran the Zoo." Oh well, nobody's perfect. I apologize for any inconvenience this discrepancy may have caused, especially for those people who already had their invitations printed up. Next time, I will instruct the research department to be much more rigorous in its efforts, to avoid any inadvertent repetition of this unfortunate lapse in pinpoint accuracy that is the researcher's credo, and I ought to know. Perhaps I just had Dr. Seuss on the brain, although if I was thinking of any of his wonderful creations, it would more likely be my all-time favorite of his works, "If I Ran the Circus," which never fails to delight. (That is super-Stoo-Pendus! Stoo-Mendus! Stoo-Roarus! And when I play "Dixie," please join in the chorus.) Somehow, the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill must have slipped in there as an errant thought escaped from the zoo.
Speaking of errant thoughts, we get the following from Bill, who is always recognized for his intellectual properties as he should be, although perhaps not exactly in this way --
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Someone sent a Confidentiality Agreement from McDonald's to sign. Yikes! If any of the provisions of it were to be enforced, they would own just about everything and everyone here! My favorite paragraph specifies:
" 'Work Product' includes, but is not limited to, all products, equipment, compositions, processes, formulas, recipes, techniques, innovations, discoveries, ideas, names, concepts, developments, writings, inventions, technology improvements, trade secrets, trade marks, service marks, designs and know-how related thereto and all intellectual property and other proprietary rights, whether or not patentable, copyrightable or otherwise subject to intellectual property protection."
Gosh! They own my THOUGHTS! Sure hope they don't ask me what I THINK about that!
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Hmmm. I can tell you that there are some days that McDonald's would be welcome to my thoughts at work, and they certainly wouldn't want them, believe me. Talk about "Stoo-Roarus!"
Meanwhile, in my continuing efforts to stay awake in church during the pastor's long and boring sermons, I brought the owner's manual from the Escort with me last week, and learned a few things that should come in handy. It has a useful diagram of the dashboard which explains all of the lights and switches, so I finally know what those strange knobs are next to the door, as well as some other curiously enigmatic pictographs scattered about. The knobs are for the purpose of remotely adjusting the side view mirrors on the front doors, and the reason they didn't do anything when I fiddled with them previously, is that you first have to move the selector switch for the left or right side door, so it knows which mirror to adjust. Once the book explained that, I tried it and it worked fine. But I found it odd that the previous owner(s) apparently had so much call for adjusting the side view mirrors that they had completely worn the markings off the knobs until they were entirely blank. The car also comes equipped with an innovative feature, that is for anyone who hasn't bought a car since 1973, of interior courtesy lights that come on when you open the door, and even one that lights up the ignition switch so you can see where to insert the key. This would be a whole new step in a new direction for me, since the Gremlin doesn't have them, and I was excited to find out about it. Of course right now, the courtesy lights only seem to work if you open the rear passenger side door, and not any of the other doors, which does tend to somewhat limit the convenience of this feature, compared to opening the driver's door, for example. But I give Fabio points for trying (it's an Escort, you see, so I call him Fabio) and keep in mind that this is still a work in progress. Of course, I can take it back to my mechanic, but he's not even as old as my Gremlin, and all he seems to care about is whether the radio works or not. So first I have to pull the wires off the driver's side speaker, and then ask him to fix that and the courtesy lights. It's all a question of priorities, don't you know.
So far, one of my favorite things about the car is that it has such teeny-tiny, itty-bitty, eensy-beensy (my father always said that) little tires, especially compared to other cars I've driven. They're like lawnmower tires, they're so small. I had a pair of 15-inch monster snow tires on the Gremlin, so I know from big tires, and to see these little toy wheels on the Escort, they are just too darned cute. They look like you could go to the movies, and they would give them away with a set of dishes. In fact, you could easily keep a spare set of them on hand, because they would take up no room at all, compared to real tires, not that these aren't perfectly adequate. I find the Escort handles pretty well on curves for the most part, although when I took it into the parking lot at work last week when we had a little bit of snow, it didn't have the kind of sticking power that I would have hoped for. It's possible that it needs a little bit more ballast to settle it down in slippery conditions. I could probably scrounge up about 250 pounds of firewood with no trouble.
But the owner's manual did have some bad news for anyone planning to use a 1993 Ford Escort in a movie chase scene, and I figure I might as well get this out of the way now, before anyone asks me later. Apparently this model comes equipped with a fuel cut-off switch, so that in the event of an accident, the gasoline doesn't continue to pour out of the tank, where a potential spark could blow everything to pieces. For all of you movie fans out there, this means that at the end of this hypothetical car chase, the Escort would not explode in a fiery crash, that mainstay of special effects wizards and stuntmen everywhere, but rather ..... well, I'm not sure what it would do instead, but it shouldn't explode. I don't mind saying that a safety feature that keeps my car from exploding is something that I can rally around, so I have no squawk with this. But they go to great lengths, and great detail, to explain how to reset this feature so that you can continue to drive the car in case it deploys at an inappropriate time, such as hitting a pothole or slamming on the brakes. Resetting the switch is a complicated procedure involving many steps, with incomprehensible diagrams as well as tools, and climbing into the cargo area from the hatchback, which is something that I would not recommend for the faint-hearted or people carrying 250 pounds of firewood for ballast. The manual makes it sound as if this switch is erroneously triggered on a routine basis, by everyday occurrences such as dents or loud noises, or perhaps even bad karma, unfriendly vibes or despair. So I've been very careful to drive around holes and bumps, maintain an even speed, and keep thinking positive thoughts, so as not to activate the fuel cut-off switch in error, and then have to go all the way around Robin Hood's barn to reset the darned thing. I'm beginning to wonder if an exploding car is such a bad idea after all.
That's about all the automotive news around here at the moment, although I'm only halfway through the owner's manual, so there may still be some surprises ahead of us yet. At least, I hope there will be some surprises, because it won't do to read something boring while I'm trying to keep awake during the pastor's sermon, heaven knows that's enough of a challenge as it is and then some. It occurred to me that someone should invent the "pastor cut-off switch," so that if they're droning on and on and on, you could give them a jolt (here I'm thinking a carefully aimed hymnal would do the trick) and stop them dead in their tracks. After all, you wouldn't want them to explode, now would you, so I believe there's a genuine safety issue at stake here, not to mention the rest of us falling asleep in the pews. But I'm determined to keep thinking positive thoughts, at least for the sake of Fabio, my Escort, as well as McDonald's, in case they're listening in. Of course, once I invent the "intellectual property cut-off switch," all bets are off.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

Hello World,

And so here we find ourselves, already well on our way towards the end of January, as incredible as that might seem, and don't think I don't know what you're all thinking out there. Isn't it about time for someone to be wishing us all a Happy Chinese New Year? Au contraire! (That's French for "Hong Kong Bok Choy!") People waiting for the opportunity to welcome in the Year of the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill might be disappointed to find out that this year, Chinese New Year isn't scheduled to happen until around the middle of February. So we're all going to have to find some other way to entertain ourselves until then, and heaven knows, there's little enough of that in the thick of January around here. Of course, there's always the weather to complain about, and last week was no exception, as we finally got some sub-freezing temperatures and even a dusting of snow. In fact, the other morning when the outdoor conditions were at a bracing 17 degrees, Bill noticed that the little plastic birdbath was frozen, as well as the decorative fountain being pressed into service as a birdbath, and he remarked that both of the new birdbath heaters must not be working. Au contraire! (That's French for "Shiver me timbers!") I said that I had every confidence that the new birdbath heaters worked fine, as they were still in their unopened boxes and packed away with the rest of the Christmas presents that hadn't been used yet. There's no sense rushing into these things, I always say.

Speaking of rushing into things, so far this has turned into another year where, in my efforts to take down the Christmas decorations in Purchasing in a timely fashion, I rolled the tree out of the hallway and into a spare office instead of actually taking off the ornaments and putting it away. This year, I fully intend to really undecorate it and pack it away in its various boxes, although that hasn't happened yet. Last year, I knew I would just be hallucinating to think that, so I rolled it into the closet fully decorated and just left it there, but things are better this year, and I have higher expectations in post-holiday productivity. One thing that hasn't changed since last year is that moving it out of the hallway seems to turn it into a magnet for people all over the campus to flock to its irresistible allure. People from other departments, who have no reason to be in our spare office, go in there and announce, "Oh look, it's your Christmas tree!" as if we were previously unaware of where it had wandered off to, and were just waiting for someone to point out where we'd misplaced it. I can safely state that as a conversational gambit, a traveling Christmas tree is hard to beat, try as I might.

While we're on the subject of Christmas, everyone knows that the Yuletide season is not well and truly over until we've been to visit our friends around Albany for the Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend and celebrated our own little mini-Christmas in January with them. So we left work early last Friday and packed up the car to head north, with our presents and the usual two tons of paraphernalia that we regularly carry along. The trip north was uneventful, and when we stopped at a rest area, we found that the unseasonably warm weather had eliminated that mainstay of our travels, the tour bus full of skiers. There wasn't a ski or a snow goggle to be seen from one end of the rest area to the other, and we couldn't remember that ever happening before. Frankly, it was sad seeing the ski resort operators on the side of the road with signs saying, "Will Work For Snow."

Our friends greeted us with open arms, and the hospitality that is their trademark, leaving up their Christmas decorations for us to enjoy and making us feel as welcome as Greeks bearing gifts. In fact, we were bearing gifts, and it was after Christmas, just like the Orthodox Greeks, so it was not far off the mark. As long as we were in a Greek frame of mind, we decided to have dinner at Four Brothers, which is a chain of Greek pizzerias in the area, and where it turns out, the Italian specialties on the menu bear only the slightest resemblance to their actual Italian counterparts. But it was served piping hot, and we were hungry, which always manages to cover a multitude of culinary sins in my book, and we made short work of it. After that, we went back and opened presents, which proved to be something of an embarrassment of riches, except for the fact that luckily, I'm not one to be embarrassed by too many presents. Au contraire! (That's French for "The more, the merrier!") It was well after midnight when we went to bed, tired but happy, and looking forward to another fun day on Saturday.

Not so fast! It turned out that our hostess was called in to the hospital in the middle of the night for an emergency case, and spent about four hours there before returning home just before dawn. Meanwhile, I was having an attack from The Revenge of the Greek Ravioli, and was myself up and about in the wee hours, taking Rolaids and walking around trying to settle my stomach. I found I was more comfortable downstairs where it was cooler, and there's a handy couch there where I was resting temporarily. Nothing could have prepared us for what happened next, as our friend walked in from the outdoors, which I wasn't expecting, and saw me on the couch in the basement, which she wasn't expecting, and we both just about jumped out of our skins. If either of us had been holding a banana cream pie at the time, they'd still be peeling that off the ceiling, believe me. After we each apologized for scaring the wits out of the other, we decided to turn in and try to get some more sleep, figuring that we needed it now that the shock had probably taken years off of our lives. And that was without the banana cream pies, mind you.

Saturday morning, we called our other friends and met for lunch at Denny's, which is always a special treat that we look forward to in our travels. Then it was off to Cracker Barrel, where I was disappointed that they had put away their Christmas merchandise, and their Valentine's Day offerings did not include any of the collectible items that I was seeking. After that, we further bolstered the local economy at a nearby mall, and then drove miles out of our way to a bigger Hewitt's garden center than the one we usually patronize, only to find that the bigger one was already closed for the day, of course. Since it was getting late, we put that off for another time, and elected to take our chances with dinner at a new Italian restaurant that had just opened in the area. The food was not exceptional, apart from the carozza, which is an appetizer that is such a rarity on menus, that you would expect it to be made from some exotic and expensive ingredients, instead of bread and cheese. The service was oddly haphazard, considering that when we were there, the staff outnumbered the customers by a wide margin, which does not bode well for its success in the neighborhood. But Saturday was still better than Friday, as we all slept through the night, with no emergencies, digestive upsets or banana cream pies to disturb our slumbers.

It was cold on Sunday morning, which was just enough to frost over the cars, and also the hundreds of tiny, crooked wooden steps that our friends have fiendishly installed in their front yard as a public menace. I out-smarted them this time, by clambering down them on my hands and knees, but not their poor dog, who went nose over tail all the way down, and never knew what hit him. Seriously, if he had been carrying a banana cream pie at the time ..... oh well, you get the idea. So we scraped the ice off the cars and packed up our belongings, so that we could leave directly from our excursions and not have to come back and pick things up. We decided that our friends were much too alert and peppy, so we made them watch our Christmas video, featuring all 10,000 maniacs, I mean, all of our very boring cats and Christmas decorations at home and at work, which did the trick of putting them right to sleep with no trouble at all. We roused them up in time to meet our other friends for lunch at the diner, located handily nearby the bigger Hewitt's that we hoped to get to before they closed for a change. This actually worked out, although we found that their Christmas decorations had been so picked clean that it wasn't really worth the trip, and we probably could have just gone to our usual smaller Hewitt's right from the start, the way things turned out. By the time we left there, it was cold and dark, with little pellets of freezing rain pinging off of the cars in the parking lot, and making us wish for hot chocolate, a crackling fireplace and a toasty afghan to curl up in. We said our farewells and hopped in the car, hoping to drive out of the bad weather as we made our way south. That didn't seem to be the case, and we decided to take the Rhinecliff Bridge and leave the Thruway behind, as the traffic and conditions were considerably less than ideal. Bear in mind that the one galvanizing thought that had kept us going through the whole long ordeal was that we would soon sit down and enjoy a wonderful meal at the only Denny's within 75 miles of home, when we reached the juncture of the connecting highways around Fishkill.

Au contraire! (That's French for, "Put down that banana cream pie!") When we got to the intersection where the Denny's should be, it noticeably wasn't. We drove around for 20 minutes trying to find it, and finally came across its dark and abandoned hulk in an empty parking lot with nothing but the sound of crickets on every side. We were stunned, not to mention crushed, because we had just been at this very Denny's at Thanksgiving weekend, and there was no indication that it was about to fold up its tents, so to speak, and steal away into the night. And yet here we found ourselves, in the dark and hungry, with no Denny's to console ourselves with. We ate at a nearby Wendy's instead, but it was not at all the same thing, and really spoiled that part of our trip home, which is something that we always look forward to with eager anticipation. I said to Bill that the only option I could see would be for him to call and pick a fight with our friends, so that we didn't have to go back and see them again, because the idea of not having dinner at Denny's on the way home was unthinkable.

It was nice to have Monday off from work after all that (thank you, Dr. King!) although the rest of the week followed true to form for short weeks, and we all know how I feel about them by now. But we had a good time with our friends, and made it there and back without incident (except for the Dastardly Disappearing Denny's Disaster!) so I suppose we should count our blessings and not go flying off the handle. Especially not while holding that banana cream pie!

Panty Raids

Hello World,

Greetings, salutations and felicitations for you and yours, in your scenic and wonderful neck of the woods from our little corner of paradise, and I hope that 2007 has been treating you well so far. Of course, it does no good to complain, because apparently no one is in charge of these things, as we have learned to our chagrin, lo these many long years gone by and then some. Personally, I think all new years should come with some sort of warranty protection, just like every other new thing, and you should be able to return them if they turn out to be defective, and not be saddled with the thing for a whole year, after it's already shown its true colors. In fact, if they had the Federal Calendar Genome Project, then people could “pre-order” the type of year that they would like, based on certain features that they would like to include, or exclude, of their preferences. Of course, everyone knows that I would be in the market for a year with no Daylight Saving Time, and good riddance.

So here we are, already at the second week in January, believe that or don't, and because they pushed back the SuperBowl to February, we're still in the preliminary stages of the professional football playoffs. Alas, there is no joy in Mudville (honestly, does anyone else remember that besides me any more?) as the New York Jets were eliminated from the wild card playoffs by their arch rivals, the New England Patriots, while the New York Giants followed suit soon after, at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles. (They managed to do this without Donovan McNabb, who as you know from a previous note, was identified by a local radio personality as playing for the Phillies, which must have surprised baseball fans everywhere.) The Jets had a surprisingly successful year under their new head coach, and although their departure out of the playoff picture was much sooner than they might have hoped for, I'm sure they packed their bags and headed for home with a sense of satisfaction and the optimistic cry of “Wait until next year!” upon their lips. Meanwhile, the Giants decided not to wait until next year, and they already got a jump on losing next season also, when they not only renewed the contract of their wretched head coach, but gave him an extension for the year after that as well. So I guess we can count on seeing the Giants out of the playoffs until at least 2009, which is probably just as well, so that the Jets can enjoy having the media spotlight all to themselves for a while. Go, Gang Green!

Of course, being practically the middle of January already, everyone realizes that we are inching ever and ever closer to those three most beautiful words in the English language: Pitchers and Catchers. In fact, Bill said that there's a sign outside of Yankee Stadium that counts down the days to the return of the Boys of Summer, and earlier in the week, it said 36 days. Hallelujah! Now, this is my idea of good news, why the heck isn't this on the front page of the newspaper, instead of blizzards and bombings and Britney Spears without her underpants? I mean, there's only so much bad news that people can take, and then you've got to give them some reason to keep on living, and I figure the crack of a bat on a ball within the next few weeks should do the trick. No, don't thank me. I consider it a public service to spread good news whenever I can. Of course, you know what I say: If January is here, can Arena Football be far behind? I think not!

Everyone knows how Bill loves a research challenge, and the new year is not just going to sneak up on him and get away with anything, not on his watch anyway, so we have him to thank for the following seasonal tidbit:

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On one of my visits to Wikipedia. I started at Auld Lang Syne (which they insist is pronounced "sign," not "zine") and wandered through Hogmany (Scots' New Years celebration) and even made a quick detour to Flies Cemetery (which is a pastry filled with raisins and the name is a joke -- the raisins are the "flies" buried in the "cemetery" of pastry!) Anyway, the following section held such oddities that I had to copy it out and send it:

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"Auld Lang Syne" is usually sung each year on New Year's Eve (Hogmanay in Scotland) in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and English speaking Canada at midnight and signifies the start of a new year. In the United Kingdom, it is played at the close of the annual Congress (conference) of the Trades Union Congress. Also, in many Burns Clubs, it is sung to end the Burns supper.

It is used as a graduation song and a funeral song in Taiwan, symbolizing an end or a goodbye. In Japan, too, it is used in graduation, and many stores play it to usher customers out at the end of a business day. Before the composition of Aegukga, the lyrics of Korea's national anthem were sung to the tune of this song. In the Indian Armed Forces the band plays this song during the passing out parade of the recruits.

In the Philippines, it is well known and sung at celebrations like graduations, New Year and Christmas Day. Also, before 1972, it was the tune for the Gaumii salaam anthem of The Maldives (with the current words).

In Portugal, France, Spain and Germany this song is used to mark a farewell. It is also used in the Scout movement for the same purpose, but with lyrics that are a little different.

It has also been used on other occasions as a farewell. One occasion that falls in this category was in October 2000, when the body of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau left Parliament Hill in Ottawa for the last time, going to Montreal for the state funeral.

The song is also the official corps song for the Kilties drum and bugle corps.

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Playing people out of Japanese department stores? The national anthem of Korea? The Gaummii salaam??!! This is great stuff!
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Well, so there you have it and I guess we all learned something new. So if one of your New Year's resolutions for 2007 was to learn something new every day, there's one thing that you can cross off your list for today. You're entirely welcome, I'm sure.

Last Saturday, the local temperature set a new record of 70 degrees for the day, which is going way above and beyond “unseasonable” into a whole new category. And with blizzards in the Midwest, people must really be wondering what the heck is going on around here with this darned weather. We happened to be off visiting my Mom at the time, and we got ourselves some sandwiches and drinks at the deli, which we enjoyed at a nearby park, sitting at some handy picnic tables in the sun, and watching the locals indulging in their favorite pastimes of tennis, basketball, paddle-ball and more. It was beautiful and balmy, and a rare treat for the beginning of January in these parts. Of course, everyone knows that I always say, when it's warm in December, you can count on snow in April, so don't say I didn't warn you. We'll be wearing parkas and winter boots at Easter, and nobody will be glad then that it was so nice and warm four months ago at Christmas, you can just mark my words.

Speaking of Christmas, since it was so warm over the weekend, it seemed the perfect time to take in the outdoor decorations, unlike other years when I've had to chop the wreaths out of the ice around the porch lions, and dig through piles of snow to retrieve the red and green plastic covers for the yard lights. This was way better. Bill, who is not always recognized for his Herculean efforts but should be, took all of the lights off the tree and managed to wrestle it outside without loss of life or limb, which is not an accomplishment to be scoffed at, especially with the size of the tree and its unpredictable tottering tendencies. It should be in the backyard now, laying down by the compost, until I'm ready to remove the branches and add it to the firewood rack. But since the time that we stood it up in the living room, only to find it falling down on its own, frankly, I'm afraid to look at it in the backyard where it's supposed to be laying down, and find that it's decided to stand up instead. There are some things, like Britney Spears' underpants, that we're better off just being blissfully unaware of.

And while we're on the subject of the Christmas tree, we happened to uncover an interesting occurrence that we were heretofore not privy to, before this season of holiday jollity and jingle all the way. Now, the invisible cats have been living with us long enough at this point, that we have long since given up on the idea of trying to figure out what they're thinking, and not for lack of trying. Unlike real cats, the invisible cats seem to have no sense of curiosity or playfulness, and they appear to have no interest in anything that we do, or have around the house, for the most part. In the beginning, it surprised me that we could lug a 10-foot evergreen into the house and stand it up in the living room, to the bored indifference of the resident felines. We were used to house cats, who found the tree an irresistible delight, whereas stray cats are more of the “take it or leave it” frame of mind. Every year, we would put the tree up, and the strays wouldn't even glance in its direction, presumably because they had already seen plenty of trees outdoors and found them wanting as objects of interest. But since I moved my desk and my computer cart into the living room last January, I've been spending much more time in there than before, and so it came to pass that in the evenings, I couldn't help but notice that two of our most invisibles, Coco and Captain Midnight, would come out of their hiding places and sit under the tree after dinner. They didn't sniff at it, or try to climb it, or even curl up in the downy softness of the cotton batting making snow-like mounds in the village under the tree, like normal cats. (I have to point out that this last one was mostly because there is no village under the tree with mounds of cotton batting to curl up in.) But there they were every night, and don't think that I don't have plenty of dark and blurry pictures to prove it. They would just sit right there, under its protective canopy of branches, just as happy as, well, invisible cats under a pine tree. In fact, it occurred to me that this may have been going on for years, without us being in the living room at night to see it. And the funny thing of it is that all this week, when I've come downstairs after dinner, here are the two of them still in the same spot on the living room rug, just as if the tree is still there, which it hasn't been since Sunday afternoon. I can still see the indentation of the tree stand in the carpet, and one of the cats sits on one side of it, and the other cat sits on another side, just like they did before, only now they're wide out in the open, and obviously not caring for it all that much. In fact, it must be said that they've been glaring at me with a glowering expression in their steely gaze as the chief villain in The Great Christmas Tree Heist, no doubt wondering what other purloined objects I might have swiped recently. Honest, I was nowhere near Britney Spears' underpants!

Going Around In Circles

Hello World,

Happy New Year! Unlike many other cultures, Americans don't give their years names, like animals or mythological figures, so I can't wish you a Happy Year of the Water Buffalo or a Happy Year of the Squid or even a Happy Year of the Cyclops, and more's the pity, I'm sure. No, in this country, we tend to lay back and take things as they come, and just let the cruel hand of fate sneak up on us and do what it will. I mean, if you were going to give names to years, and you found yourself coming up on the Year of the Toilet, at least you'd know what to expect, right? So the best I can do is wish everyone out there a very Happy 2007, and after that, you're on your own.

This has certainly been an eventful week for comings and goings, seeing the end of Presidents, dictators and Godfathers. (Of soul, that is, because Papa's Got A Brand New Harp!) Violating the "comedy rule of three," one of our cats also decided to jump aboard that bandwagon and shake off this mortal coil, no doubt angering the Comedy Gods, and frankly, we weren't all that thrilled with it either. In the spirit of community relations, we made our mechanic happy by de-commissioning the Tempo at long last, in a move applauded by those shallow and captious individuals who prize safety over sentimentality, and don't think that I don't know who you are. So this has been anything but the "same old, same old" around here lately, which is about all you can expect when the time comes to ring out the old and ring in the new.

Speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice a large feature story in the Wheels section of our local newspaper about the 2007 Chrysler Sebring, with this opening salvo in giant type: "Taking the desire to be different in a whole new direction, Chrysler style." You can imagine my surprise, then, to find this blaring announcement accompanied by a picture of the world's most mundane little silver doorstop with four doors and a spoiler. Naturally, I assumed that this was some sort of mistake, or perhaps an ironic commentary on the sad state of automotive design, but it appeared to be neither. The article begins with this fulsome praise: "It's new and it's definitely different. Daimler Chrysler has once again shunned convention by creating a new sedan with rule-breaking looks." Here's where I'm thinking, that is, except for the part where it's a little silver doorstop with four doors and a spoiler, and it looks like every other car that's out there nowadays. It continues: "The inspiration for the '07 Sebring's sheetmetal comes from a variety of sources. The front clip and the hood appear inspired by the company's Crossfire two-seat sports car, while the side view is reminiscent of the Dodge division's compact Caliber. It's only when the rear end comes into focus that you'll find a slight relationship with the outgoing model. Taken in total, this mosaic of shapes moves the Sebring far apart from the regulation cookie-cutter styling that proliferates the sedan ranks." (!!!) (!!!!!) So it doesn't have cookie-cutter styling, apart from the fact that it looks like three of their other cars. This is the point at which I'm shaking my head and wondering if this isn't some kind of a sick joke, then I must be the one going crazy. Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, they wrap up with this classic clincher: "Without a doubt, Daimler Chrysler has taken a bit of a gamble with the Sebring's edgy styling that, for some buyers, could take some getting used to." Oh, I give up! Nurse, please have those nice young men in the white coats just cart me away. Preferably in a little silver doorstop with four doors and a spoiler, if you please.

The day after Christmas, I had to go in to work briefly to finish the payroll for the weekend staff, and was greeted with the sight of the chimney covered in a bright blue plastic tarp, and the area beneath it roped off with yellow tape. So it should be interesting times ahead in the courtyard, I'm thinking, as that chimney demolition and reconstruction project gets underway, to the delight of hospital employees and visitors alike. I was just thinking that there's been way too much productivity lately at work, and this should certainly slow things down to a crawl.

Speaking of work, yesterday morning I was accosted by a woman driving past the lot where I park (or, "the boondocks" as we call it) and away from the hospital, asking me how to find the main entrance. Because she was already going in the wrong direction, not to mention out in the boonies, which is rife with one-way streets all handily pointing away from the hospital, I could think of no easy way to direct her there, except by getting in the car with her and showing her the way. So I climbed in and brought her safely to the front doors, where we disembarked after a successful landing. She thanked me profusely, explaining that if she seemed flustered, it was because she was anxious, being that she was late for a stress test. Perhaps you have to work in health care to find that sort of irony amusing, but it made both of us laugh out loud.

Everyone already knows what I think of short weeks at work, and this was a textbook example of one, in spades. Today I had to attend a meeting in the morning, and when I got back to my office, I simply couldn't get out of my own way and back on track. Adding insult to injury was a series of phone calls that began with the nice lady calling from the animal hospital, who began, "I hate to bother you at work." I assured her that she was not bothering me, and was able to help her with her inquiry. Then I got a call from the accountant that we use at church, who also said she hated to bother me at work, and I assured her likewise that she was not bothering me. Finally, the Pastor also called me and said he hated to bother me at work, and while I also assured him that he was not bothering me, I admit that at this point, I did it through clenched teeth. The way things were going, I figured that the next person who called and said they hated to bother me at work, I would just yell, "GOOD!" and hang up on them. Now you can go bother someone else, after all, I'm sure there's plenty of bother to go around.

Of course, millions of people saw the ball drop in Times Square on Sunday night, so it must really be January, although you couldn't prove it by the weather around here. It's been in the 50s all week, and they said over the weekend, it could reach close to 70 degrees, which is not only ridiculous, but unprecedented. This had been just about the warmest December on record, and also set a record for the latest first snowfall, since here it is, going into the second week of January and we've yet to see our first flake of the season. I would say that our old pal Comrade Mischka was up to his old tricks at the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, but meteorologists assure me that it's El Nino that's behind this instead. (No, that's not Comrade Mischka's kooky Brazilian cousin, but a weather system that blows a lot of hot air. Sort of like Washington, DC, except without all the traffic jams.) It made for balmy conditions in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and even a light rain didn't put a damper on the festivities. We watched it on TV, where every year I can't believe that the show could be any more boring than the previous year, and every year they somehow manage to outdo themselves in stupefying boringness. I said to Bill that I remember all those years ago, when they came up with alternative programming to greet the New Year, because people thought that Guy Lombardo was too boring, and I can't imagine that it could have been any worse than what we're stuck with nowadays. We ended up watching the local Spanish-speaking station usher in 2007 instead, in typically extravagant fashion, which was a lot more entertaining, even though we didn't understand a word of it. At least they seem to understand that cleavage is a universal language.

All in all, this week had its share of ups and downs, and then some. But at least the Christmas tree didn't fall down, which is my new standard for deciding if it's a good week or not. In discussing the ill-fated Christmas Tree Caper, Bill said: "I especially liked the idea of checking the gravity in the living room next year. We obviously need a gravitometer from whoever makes them (probably not easy since I just made that up.)" So there you have it, folks, a new household appliance that no modern family should be without, just waiting to be invented and snapped up by an adoring public. Well, don't just sit there, these things don't just invent themselves, you know. I'm afraid that I can't help you with that, because I'm already working on a revolutionary idea for a little silver doorstop with four doors and a spoiler that I'm hoping to sell to Daimler Chrysler, so once again, you're on your own. And a grateful nation thanks you.