Hitting The Bottle
Hello World,
Beware the Ides of March! Whoever said that to Julius Caesar two thousand years ago wasn't kidding then, and they're still not kidding now. This is what we call "Welcome to March in New York," where in the very self-same week, it's 70 degrees so I can open the windows for the cats to enjoy watching the world go by, and the next thing you know, it's 25 degrees with six inches of sleet, slush, snow and freezing rain. No thank you very much not! It's a good thing that weather is not a popularity contest, because this week would have been voted right off the island, and on the shark-infested side of it besides. In fact, if I was the weather, I wouldn't be turning my back on anyone, and I'd be especially wary of any suspicious looking parcels, Candy-Grams or gift horses that arrived in mysterious fashion. And if I was thinking of setting off on a different career path, I certainly wouldn't waste my time trying to get references from any of my current dissatisfied customers. Especially not with that 6-inches of sleet on my resume, that's for sure.
One sure thing about spring, that never fails to charm our senses and refresh our spirits, is the sight of young men tossing around the old horsehide in Florida, and luckily, both New York teams have their own cable channels, so local fans can get their fill of this therapeutic delight. Of course, the best part is that the games don't count, so there's no stress or frustration to mar the bucolic experience, which is a significant advantage that the regular season can't match. So even when the Mets are stinking up the joint, as they are now, it's still fun to watch and everyone is in good spirits, while enjoying the beautiful weather that the announcers have been raving about all along. Ah, the Boys of Summer in Spring Training, if only you could bottle that, it would truly be the stuff that dreams are made of.
On the other side of the coin, and dashing the hopes of bright-eyed youth, we get this note from a colleague at a hospital in West Virginia --
====================================
My baby girl turned 21 today, so needless to say, I feel "mature".
I told her that it was all down hill from here.
At 15, you can get a Learner's Permit to drive,
at 18 you are considered an adult,
at 21, you can legally buy booze...
but after 21 you only look forward to turning 25
so you get lower rates on your car insurance,
and after that, your next big birthday is when
you are eligible for AARP!!
I don't think she appreciated my little speech....teehee
====================================
Speaking of birthdays, everyone knows that if our anniversary has come and gone, then my birthday could not possibly be far behind, although with this new-fangled early switch-over to Daylight Saving Time, I was concerned that like the glorious October Revolution or George Washington, my birthday might end up getting pushed back by two weeks, four hundred years and every other millennium without a Leap Day. It may have been a near thing, but Providence smiled upon me, and my birthday showed up at the usual time and with all the usual fanfare, and not a Bolshevik in sight. They might have made a wrong turn at the International Date Line and ended up with Gregor Mendel instead of the Gregorian Calendar, and if that's the case, they're probably still trying to get their chromosomes back. Of course, I'm just as happy for them to take a pass, because you know what I always say, more cake for me! First we went to Mom's on Saturday, which was technically early for my birthday, but we had a nice lunch out and enjoyed ourselves anyway. There was even ice cream and cake (with candles!) which anyone can tell you, that after the age of 10, this is certainly something that you can't count on as a routine part of your birthday any longer. But the Birthday Elves were in fine form, and I certainly appreciated their efforts and attention to detail. What with one thing and another, though, the Elves didn't quite get as far as presents, so I still have that part of my birthday to look forward to, as well as other presents coming later from other sources, so we can expect the birthday caravan to keep on rolling along at least until the end of the month before packing up its wagons for another year.
Sunday was actually my birthday, and it started with breakfast in bed, followed by presents, and by golly, if you could bottle that, it would put the drug companies and the drug dealers out of business in one fell swoop. I was happy to unwrap gifts of apparel (including footwear and accessories), household gadgets and technology, some high and others of the more medium variety. The centerpiece of the technology offerings was a new SanDisk Sansa e250 MP3 player, in a 2GB size that holds 500 songs, along with its companion Altec Lansing inMotion mobile speaker system, so you can stand it up and play it without headphones. Well, if this is dragging me into the 21st century, kicking and screaming, I have to say that I'm all for it, and the dinosaurs can like it or lump it. Of course, all modern technology comes at a price, which is not that it doesn't do what you want it to, but that it takes you all day (and sometimes the next day as well) to figure out how to get it to do what you want. Luckily, Bill is infinitely patient, as well as knowledgeable, and got everything together, as well as up and running, so all I had to do was turn it on and enjoy my favorite music. This is certainly a boon to mankind, and it's easy to see what all the excitement is about, because it puts a whole new spin on boring chores like making the bed or putting away clothes. And what it does for my mood, when I'm getting ready to go to work, is positively awesome. I tell you, if they could bottle that .....
well, it's like a theme park inside your own head, so who needs Disneyland?
Meanwhile at work, it was during the previous week that we were all at our posts and working diligently as usual, when the fire alarms went off, as they often do, and we ignored them, as we always do, in spite of years of mandatory educational training to the contrary. For some reason, the Payroll Manager took pity on us, and came down the hall to say, "Those are our fire bells, we have to leave," or we'd still be sitting there now, probably burned to a crisp right at our desks. So we grabbed our coats and locked our doors and went to stand outside in the cold, while the Fire Department tramped through the building, on the lookout for anything that we needed to be protected from. While we were huddled outdoors in the cold, the Assistant Director of Engineering asked us to fill out some fire safety questionnaires, which led the more cynical among us to the conclusion that this supposed fire alarm was nothing more than an elaborate ruse to see what we would do if the fire bells went off for our location. (Obviously, Purchasing would have failed that test and gone down with the building, no thanks to those of us who should have known better.) I make no excuses, because the fire bells ring in different numbered sequences for different locations throughout the campus, and everybody should know their own fire bell sequence, so they can recognize it and take appropriate action if they hear it. In a short building like ours, I say jumping out the window is the best bet, and from my office, I would land handily right in front of the Emergency Room entrance. How fortuitous is that! My problem with the bells is that they've moved Purchasing three times, and I still remember the fire bells from our first location, and everything since then has resisted all efforts to stick in my memory. So thanks to the Payroll Manager who put aside personal safety to rescue us from our apathy, and no thanks to the Engineering department, if this was all a put-up job and making us all go out in the cold to fill out questionnaires. And I am unanimous in that.
Also at work, I recently got a frantic phone call from one of the Executive Secretaries at our sister facility in Mount Vernon, who said she needed a verbal purchase order immediately to stave off a disaster of epic proportions. Everyone knows that I'm nothing if not helpful, so I assured her that I would be happy to assist her if she would just tell me the name of the vendor and what it was needed for. She was quick to oblige, and I would be less than candid if I didn't admit to being embarrassed by issuing a purchase order that now says in the Comments: "Emergency order for party supplies." Honestly, is it any wonder that healthcare is in the crisis situation that it is?
Every month, I have a report that I compile and make ten copies of it to hand out at a meeting. The report has two pages, and being such a friend of the environment, I copy them back-to-back and save paper. This is the first time I tried that with our replacement copier in Purchasing, and I wasn't about to trust my luck with the duplex feature, which I find woefully inconsistent on most copiers. So I copied the first page and then loaded the pages in the by-pass feeder to copy on the back manually, as I always did with our previous copier. It will come as a surprise to no one that the second page printed right on top of the first page, and upside-down to boot, so it looked really bizarre. I tried it again, and put the copies in the by-pass feeder going the other way, but then copied the first page on the front AND the back, forgetting to switch the original to the second page in between. In fact, it took me three tries to get the reports to come out right, so for you environmentalists out there counting, I wasted 20 pieces of paper to save 10 pieces of paper. It's no wonder the dinosaurs are extinct.
In other animal adventures, I was working on my computer late at night in the living room, when I started to become aware of a strange low wheezing or rumbling noise behind me. It sounded to me like the sort of menacing growl that signals a territorial dispute among the local wildlife, and since it seemed pretty close at hand, I thought it best to try and break it up. So I walked over to the patio doors that open onto our side porch, where it sounded like the noise was coming from, and I knocked loudly on the glass, trying to startle the antagonists into going their separate ways. I didn't hear the noise after I knocked, so I figured that it was a successful gambit on my part. Then I was surprised to hear the same noise, from the same place, about 15 minutes later, and I got up to take another whack at it, thinking that I could knock harder and also yell at them at the same time. This proved unnecessary once I got to the patio doors and noticed the Invisible Matriarch of our invisible kittens, Muffin, who was fast asleep on the radiator next to the doors, and soundly snoring in that unmistakable low wheezing and rumbling way that I heard across the room and thought was outside. And I realized that my knocking on the door next to her had awakened Muffin so she stopped snoring the first time, while I assumed instead that it had dispersed the combatants on our porch, which accounted for the ensuing silence from that quarter. It struck me as so comical that I couldn't help but laugh, and the look that Muffin gave me, when she woke up to find me standing right next to her with my hand poised to knock on the glass at the imaginary battling interlopers on our porch, well, if you could bottle that ..... I don't know what you would come up with, but I sure wouldn't want the terrorists to get their hands on it.
Beware the Ides of March! Whoever said that to Julius Caesar two thousand years ago wasn't kidding then, and they're still not kidding now. This is what we call "Welcome to March in New York," where in the very self-same week, it's 70 degrees so I can open the windows for the cats to enjoy watching the world go by, and the next thing you know, it's 25 degrees with six inches of sleet, slush, snow and freezing rain. No thank you very much not! It's a good thing that weather is not a popularity contest, because this week would have been voted right off the island, and on the shark-infested side of it besides. In fact, if I was the weather, I wouldn't be turning my back on anyone, and I'd be especially wary of any suspicious looking parcels, Candy-Grams or gift horses that arrived in mysterious fashion. And if I was thinking of setting off on a different career path, I certainly wouldn't waste my time trying to get references from any of my current dissatisfied customers. Especially not with that 6-inches of sleet on my resume, that's for sure.
One sure thing about spring, that never fails to charm our senses and refresh our spirits, is the sight of young men tossing around the old horsehide in Florida, and luckily, both New York teams have their own cable channels, so local fans can get their fill of this therapeutic delight. Of course, the best part is that the games don't count, so there's no stress or frustration to mar the bucolic experience, which is a significant advantage that the regular season can't match. So even when the Mets are stinking up the joint, as they are now, it's still fun to watch and everyone is in good spirits, while enjoying the beautiful weather that the announcers have been raving about all along. Ah, the Boys of Summer in Spring Training, if only you could bottle that, it would truly be the stuff that dreams are made of.
On the other side of the coin, and dashing the hopes of bright-eyed youth, we get this note from a colleague at a hospital in West Virginia --
====================================
My baby girl turned 21 today, so needless to say, I feel "mature".
I told her that it was all down hill from here.
At 15, you can get a Learner's Permit to drive,
at 18 you are considered an adult,
at 21, you can legally buy booze...
but after 21 you only look forward to turning 25
so you get lower rates on your car insurance,
and after that, your next big birthday is when
you are eligible for AARP!!
I don't think she appreciated my little speech....teehee
====================================
Speaking of birthdays, everyone knows that if our anniversary has come and gone, then my birthday could not possibly be far behind, although with this new-fangled early switch-over to Daylight Saving Time, I was concerned that like the glorious October Revolution or George Washington, my birthday might end up getting pushed back by two weeks, four hundred years and every other millennium without a Leap Day. It may have been a near thing, but Providence smiled upon me, and my birthday showed up at the usual time and with all the usual fanfare, and not a Bolshevik in sight. They might have made a wrong turn at the International Date Line and ended up with Gregor Mendel instead of the Gregorian Calendar, and if that's the case, they're probably still trying to get their chromosomes back. Of course, I'm just as happy for them to take a pass, because you know what I always say, more cake for me! First we went to Mom's on Saturday, which was technically early for my birthday, but we had a nice lunch out and enjoyed ourselves anyway. There was even ice cream and cake (with candles!) which anyone can tell you, that after the age of 10, this is certainly something that you can't count on as a routine part of your birthday any longer. But the Birthday Elves were in fine form, and I certainly appreciated their efforts and attention to detail. What with one thing and another, though, the Elves didn't quite get as far as presents, so I still have that part of my birthday to look forward to, as well as other presents coming later from other sources, so we can expect the birthday caravan to keep on rolling along at least until the end of the month before packing up its wagons for another year.
Sunday was actually my birthday, and it started with breakfast in bed, followed by presents, and by golly, if you could bottle that, it would put the drug companies and the drug dealers out of business in one fell swoop. I was happy to unwrap gifts of apparel (including footwear and accessories), household gadgets and technology, some high and others of the more medium variety. The centerpiece of the technology offerings was a new SanDisk Sansa e250 MP3 player, in a 2GB size that holds 500 songs, along with its companion Altec Lansing inMotion mobile speaker system, so you can stand it up and play it without headphones. Well, if this is dragging me into the 21st century, kicking and screaming, I have to say that I'm all for it, and the dinosaurs can like it or lump it. Of course, all modern technology comes at a price, which is not that it doesn't do what you want it to, but that it takes you all day (and sometimes the next day as well) to figure out how to get it to do what you want. Luckily, Bill is infinitely patient, as well as knowledgeable, and got everything together, as well as up and running, so all I had to do was turn it on and enjoy my favorite music. This is certainly a boon to mankind, and it's easy to see what all the excitement is about, because it puts a whole new spin on boring chores like making the bed or putting away clothes. And what it does for my mood, when I'm getting ready to go to work, is positively awesome. I tell you, if they could bottle that .....
well, it's like a theme park inside your own head, so who needs Disneyland?
Meanwhile at work, it was during the previous week that we were all at our posts and working diligently as usual, when the fire alarms went off, as they often do, and we ignored them, as we always do, in spite of years of mandatory educational training to the contrary. For some reason, the Payroll Manager took pity on us, and came down the hall to say, "Those are our fire bells, we have to leave," or we'd still be sitting there now, probably burned to a crisp right at our desks. So we grabbed our coats and locked our doors and went to stand outside in the cold, while the Fire Department tramped through the building, on the lookout for anything that we needed to be protected from. While we were huddled outdoors in the cold, the Assistant Director of Engineering asked us to fill out some fire safety questionnaires, which led the more cynical among us to the conclusion that this supposed fire alarm was nothing more than an elaborate ruse to see what we would do if the fire bells went off for our location. (Obviously, Purchasing would have failed that test and gone down with the building, no thanks to those of us who should have known better.) I make no excuses, because the fire bells ring in different numbered sequences for different locations throughout the campus, and everybody should know their own fire bell sequence, so they can recognize it and take appropriate action if they hear it. In a short building like ours, I say jumping out the window is the best bet, and from my office, I would land handily right in front of the Emergency Room entrance. How fortuitous is that! My problem with the bells is that they've moved Purchasing three times, and I still remember the fire bells from our first location, and everything since then has resisted all efforts to stick in my memory. So thanks to the Payroll Manager who put aside personal safety to rescue us from our apathy, and no thanks to the Engineering department, if this was all a put-up job and making us all go out in the cold to fill out questionnaires. And I am unanimous in that.
Also at work, I recently got a frantic phone call from one of the Executive Secretaries at our sister facility in Mount Vernon, who said she needed a verbal purchase order immediately to stave off a disaster of epic proportions. Everyone knows that I'm nothing if not helpful, so I assured her that I would be happy to assist her if she would just tell me the name of the vendor and what it was needed for. She was quick to oblige, and I would be less than candid if I didn't admit to being embarrassed by issuing a purchase order that now says in the Comments: "Emergency order for party supplies." Honestly, is it any wonder that healthcare is in the crisis situation that it is?
Every month, I have a report that I compile and make ten copies of it to hand out at a meeting. The report has two pages, and being such a friend of the environment, I copy them back-to-back and save paper. This is the first time I tried that with our replacement copier in Purchasing, and I wasn't about to trust my luck with the duplex feature, which I find woefully inconsistent on most copiers. So I copied the first page and then loaded the pages in the by-pass feeder to copy on the back manually, as I always did with our previous copier. It will come as a surprise to no one that the second page printed right on top of the first page, and upside-down to boot, so it looked really bizarre. I tried it again, and put the copies in the by-pass feeder going the other way, but then copied the first page on the front AND the back, forgetting to switch the original to the second page in between. In fact, it took me three tries to get the reports to come out right, so for you environmentalists out there counting, I wasted 20 pieces of paper to save 10 pieces of paper. It's no wonder the dinosaurs are extinct.
In other animal adventures, I was working on my computer late at night in the living room, when I started to become aware of a strange low wheezing or rumbling noise behind me. It sounded to me like the sort of menacing growl that signals a territorial dispute among the local wildlife, and since it seemed pretty close at hand, I thought it best to try and break it up. So I walked over to the patio doors that open onto our side porch, where it sounded like the noise was coming from, and I knocked loudly on the glass, trying to startle the antagonists into going their separate ways. I didn't hear the noise after I knocked, so I figured that it was a successful gambit on my part. Then I was surprised to hear the same noise, from the same place, about 15 minutes later, and I got up to take another whack at it, thinking that I could knock harder and also yell at them at the same time. This proved unnecessary once I got to the patio doors and noticed the Invisible Matriarch of our invisible kittens, Muffin, who was fast asleep on the radiator next to the doors, and soundly snoring in that unmistakable low wheezing and rumbling way that I heard across the room and thought was outside. And I realized that my knocking on the door next to her had awakened Muffin so she stopped snoring the first time, while I assumed instead that it had dispersed the combatants on our porch, which accounted for the ensuing silence from that quarter. It struck me as so comical that I couldn't help but laugh, and the look that Muffin gave me, when she woke up to find me standing right next to her with my hand poised to knock on the glass at the imaginary battling interlopers on our porch, well, if you could bottle that ..... I don't know what you would come up with, but I sure wouldn't want the terrorists to get their hands on it.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:13 PM
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