Say Grace

Hello World,

Well, I'm sure by now everyone understands how I do so hate to be an alarmist, but I feel obligated to point out that we're at that point in June where if you blink, the next thing you know, it will be July. It seems impossible that 30 days have gone so fast (and I'm quite sure that they didn't seem that fast to Paris Hilton, for instance) and yet there's no denying what the calendars are plainly telling us. It's a well-known fact that calendars don't lie, and when they say the date is something, by golly, you can just about set your watch by it. That's because the darned Russkies have never expanded upon their nefarious program with Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine to include, for example, Comrade Sergei and his infernal date machine, so that we would never know what day it was, or what to expect next in terms of upcoming dates. Personally, I consider this a good thing, because it's bad enough with the weather being all screwed up as it is, without them messing with the dates besides. Otherwise, we'd all be expecting the glorious American Independence Day next Wednesday, and instead, we'd be faced with the prospect of Chinese New Year, or worse, Waitangi Day, in its place. It would do no good to complain to Comrade Sergei then, because these crazy Russians are impervious to both cajoling and threats, and all the bunting in the world won't sway them.

Speaking of important dates, our retired co-worker was back among us earlier in the week, and dropped off another list of notable dates, just like the one we already had for April, and you can just go right ahead and look it up in my note from April 13 if you don't believe me. This new list is for June and July, from her neighbor and master of minutiae, Joseph J. Cusimano. We have him to thank for pointing out three famous births on June 1 - Marilyn Monroe (1926), Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) and CNN in 1980. The Korean War started on June 25 in 1950, while on that same day in 1876, the Sioux routed the US Cavalry in the Battle of Little Big Horn. (Mind you, in ancient Rome, 2000 years earlier, any soothsayer worth his entrails would have told the generals to pick a different day for the Korean War, for heaven's sake.) Sharing the 17th are the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 and the Watergate break-in of 1972, while the 22nd finds Joe Louis being crowned heavyweight boxing champ in 1937 and Hitler invading Russia in 1941. (That didn't turn out so well for the little dictator, but if he was responsible for scuttling the development of their infernal date machine, I'm all for it.) Bowing in on the 28th are the Polo Grounds in 1911 and the New York Daily News in 1919, while 1940 saw the opening of what was referred to as the Circumferential Parkway in Brooklyn, which every other person in the world knows as the Belt. Meanwhile, standing all alone and forlorn on the 15th is the fire aboard the General Slocum steamboat in 1904, with nothing else in 200 years of American history to keep it company. For a busy month like June, you would think something else would have happened on the same day, and not left the poor General Slocum out there all by its lonesome. This would be a good time to be blaming Comrade Sergei and his infernal date machine, except that there is no such thing, and I ought to know, because I would have been the person making it up. Please feel free to visit my web log at graphicmagicmailbags.blogspot.com where you can see for yourself the whole list of notable dates for June, and welcome to it.

In other technology news, a cyber-friend recently sent me a personality quiz where you answer a bunch of questions about your favorite foods, movie genres, vacation spots, colors and hobbies, and your score matches up with a celebrity that shares the same traits that you have. Well, that's the plan, anyway, and while everyone knows by now that I'm about the world's worst test-taker, I still don't see how I can be faulted for the outrageous results of this personality quiz. (After all, I ought to know my own favorite color, thank you very much not!) According to this quiz (and I added my score up twice, so I don't think the problem can be chalked up to math error on my part) they want me to believe that I share the personality traits of Grace Kelly, as follows:

===========================
You are a lover. Romance, flowers, and wine are all you need to enjoy yourself. You are serious about all commitments and are a family person. You call your Mom every Sunday, and never forget a Birthday. Don't let your passion for romance get confused with the real thing.
===========================

Now, it would be easy to say that's 180 degrees wrong from the kind of person I am, but that would be inaccurate. The fact is, it's so wrong that after it went 180 degrees, it spun around another whole time, and ended up being 540 degrees wrong instead. Even my closest friends would admit that I have no romance in me, I'm no fan of cut flowers, and I've never had wine in my entire life, outside of Holy Communion at church. Looking at this realistically, it should be obvious to even the weakest intelligence, that if I haven't become a starry-eyed romantic and paragon of family values by now, it's clear that I'm never going to at this rate. And Grace Kelly, God bless her, is just going to have to carry on the wine-soaked, flower-strewn rocky road to true love without me, and thank you very much not. And if you see Comrade Sergei along the way, why don't you go ahead and ask him for a date, it will mess with his mind.

Speaking of famous people, Bill was kind enough to alert me to some recent political developments on the international scene, and so here it is, exactly as it was ripped from the headlines (and as Dave Barry always says, "I'm not making this up") and not exaggerated for comic effect: [[ Tupua Tamasese Tupuola Tufuga Efi is elected as the new O le Ao o le Malo (Head of State) of Samoa. ]] Try as I might, I can't come up with any way to improve upon that, and don't think I haven't given it a lot of thought.

Meanwhile, in local news, we have the nice young man across the street, who is alternately selling or not selling what can only be described as the largest house in our neighborhood, and while Bill objects when I say that our whole house would fit in their living room, it would certainly fit inside their house with room left over. It would appear to the untrained observer that young Sheridan not only has too much time on his hands, and much too much money besides, but also way too much energy for a normal person. He has continued to attack the house and property with a variety of renovation projects, from paint and plants to stucco and stones, and everything in between. He seems to take the concept of "leaving well enough alone" as a personal affront, and he won't rest until every molecule of the premises is different from when he found it, or know the reason why. His current project appears to be constructing a low rock wall along the driveway, and which we've taken to referring to as "Sheridan's Wall," although probably only the dinosaurs and I remember the Emperor Hadrian anymore, much less his historic wall, and more's the pity, I'm sure. This wall seems to be for purely decorative purposes, as the only thing on the other side of it is ground cover, and it doesn't connect to any other architectural features, which pretty much renders the "wall" part of its functionality totally moot. I suppose it's as decorative as any rock wall, which is to say, not much, although all of you flower and wine loving romantics out there might appreciate its quaint charms more than I ever could. The biggest problem with young Sheridan's projects is that whenever he finishes one, you're left to worry what ghastly idea he's going to come up with next. I can only hope that he doesn't take any more ideas from old Roman emperors, or next it will be aqueducts and amphitheaters everywhere.

In other less local news, I happened to be walking through the neighborhood around the hospital last week, and found myself walking past an old ramshackle house in a tiny fenced-in yard crammed with every imaginable tacky landscape element, from pinwheels to donkey carts, from lighthouses to wishing wells, from flamingoes to garden gnomes, and back again. There wasn't the tiniest open spot that wasn't already occupied by a contented cow, cheerful frog, frisky puppy or strolling duck with her brood of baby ducklings trailing behind her. It was an overwhelming mess, and somewhat like a car accident, with a morbid fascination in spite of itself. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have noticed it at all, except that right in the middle of this disaster was a big sign courtesy of the contractor, that announced: "Home Improvements by West and Truxton." Here I'm thinking, if I do home improvements as a business, I certainly wouldn't want my name associated with this run-down hovel, which all by itself, would be so much bad publicity that the company would probably never recover from it. In fact, the next time I go past there, I expect to see a little plastic tombstone in the yard that says West & Truxton, RIP. I don't mind going to the funeral, but please don't ask me to bring wine and flowers, because everyone knows I'm not romantic. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, or my name isn't

Tupua Tamasese Tupuola Tufuga Efi
O le Ao o le Malo

Get Down

Hello World,

Happy Solstice! We've now gone past that magical time of year which officially ushers in the summer season, at least according to the meteorologists, so you know it's all downhill from here. No, wait a minute, that can't be right. Actually, the whole summer is spreading out before us like a beautiful beckoning oasis, amid the hectic and humdrum rigors of modern life, and about as welcome as Ed McMahon with that big cardboard check from the sweepstakes. So let's all get out there and enjoy all of the joys of the season, and make the most of summer while it's here. I think there's some kind of law against watermelon, lemonade and hammocks after Labor Day around here, and you certainly don't want to take any chances with getting on the wrong side of the Climate Police if you can help it. I only mention this as a public service, I'm sure you're the soul of propriety when it comes to the proper seasonal observances.

Speaking of large checks, earlier in the week, I was having another one of those days where I just couldn't seem to get out of my own way, and every other thing went badly awry. I was weary and haggard from running around and stamping out fires, and that was just in my own office. I finally packed it in at long last, having done as much damage in one day that a person could do, and headed for home a little after 5:30, and glad to put the day behind me. Out on the sidewalk on my way to the parking lot, I bumped into Terry from the Cashiers office, and I was surprised to see her at that hour, and I couldn't help but remark that it seemed that she was getting out of work rather late. "What happened?" I asked her, "Did the hospital get so much money today that it took this long for you to count it?" She laughed.

Of course, the previous week was no better when it came to disasters, notably my infamous memo being distributed with the wrong date on it. We have an alert reader (thanks, Linda!) to thank for this cogent commentary on the subject:

===========================
Did ‘anyone’ notice the date on your memo??
From my experience with memos I sent out at school, no one read them, much less caught any typos!
===========================

I'm sure she's right about that, because I was in Administration yesterday, and spotted their copy of my memo posted on the bulletin board by the fax machine, and when I pointed out the typo in the date, they all cheerfully admitted that they never noticed it. Somehow, that's refreshing and depressing all at the same time.

Speaking of depressing, of course, there's always the news. That is, except for the parts where it's inadvertently funny in spite of itself. I happened to be skipping past a TV news segment on health, and a pretty young correspondent from the news station was interviewing a doctor about a common prescription medication and its potential side effects, one of which she described as a "persistent cough that comes and goes." Okay, you can call me a linguistic stickler if you like (don't you dare!) but the dinosaurs and I can remember a time that the word "persistent" would not be used to describe something that comes and goes, in fact, that would be basically 180 degrees from what the meaning of the word would refer to. Then yesterday in our local paper's Life & Style section, the headline on the front page screamed: "Can Rap Regain Its Swagger?" And here is the first that I'm finding out that people are apparently concerned that rap music has somehow gotten too genteel (!!!) until it's lost all credibility with its core audience. From what I hear of it, if this is anyone's idea of "too genteel," well, I may as well just go join the rest of the dinosaurs in the tar pits, because this would just be too much for me. And finally, we can thank the AOL Welcome screen for bringing us what I consider the news story of the week, complete with pictures, of protesters in Switzerland, of all places, demonstrating against racism and fascism, by way of having office chair races. Please don't ask me to explain this, because it doesn't make any more sense than that. The picture shows motley teams of men, in abbreviated swimsuits, sneakers and helmets, with one seated in a standard office chair on wheels, being pushed through the streets by his team-mate, no doubt with the tumultuous accolades from opponents of racism and fascism cheering them on to ever greater glory. Frankly, how office chair races can accomplish increases in diversity and freedom on an international level is a concept that continues to elude my best efforts to pin it down, but I will say as a news story, you just can't beat it with a stick.

Meanwhile, in automotive news, we get the following from Bill, who is always alert to the presence of serendipity around him:

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I got to Dennis's this morning to find the place parked nearly solid -- space for only one car, which was me, tucked across the very end of the apron. The odd part was, not only were there two 3-wheeled baby carriages waiting in the garage, apparently for service, but a large portion of the space was taken up by a 70's-vintage white hearse. White. Whoever heard of a white hearse? I went inside and said, "I guess you guys fix everything from the cradle to the grave, hunh?"
============================

Well, I don't know about you, but I can't think of any way to improve upon that. In other vehicular matters, it will come as news to no one that this was one of the worst years for allergies, and anyone could tell what the trees were doing in the spring, if like me, they found themselves driving what could only be described as a green fuzz-mobile instead of their usual transportation. I know this is no peculiarity of the Escort, which is navy blue, because the same exact thing happened last year to the Tempo, which was a deep solid black, except in the spring, when it was fuzzy green all over. In any event, that time of year has obviously passed, because now when I walk outside, I find myself unlocking the door of a tan dust-bucket instead, and I can't say the change has been all that much of an improvement. Even when it rains, and we've had some serious downpours recently, it only manages to somehow re-arrange the dust, and create trails of tiny rivulets along the windows, without actually washing any of the dust off the car at any point. I can see that my only choices will be to buy myself a green and tan car, or to move some place where they have a local weather condition that makes cars turn navy blue. Or perhaps it just needs to stay down in the dumps. (Get it?!)

Of course, everyone knows that I have a Teac GF-350 that copies vinyl records onto CDs, sometimes with the unintended consequence that you very carefully digitize and preserve for posterity the pops, hisses, scratches and skips of the original material, and thank you very much not. This can be a hit-or-miss proposition, but I've been making progress at about the rate of two steps forward for each step backward. While digging through our vast assortment of albums for songs to copy, I was frustrated by a lack of organization in the collections, especially the singles. Instead of just putting the records in order by title, which any normal person could have done in a reasonable amount of time, I decided to create a document that listed all of our 45s, with the name of the artist and the titles on both sides of the record. It may come as a surprise, even to people who already think we're just a couple of lunatics, that between us we actually have over 400 singles, and in a testament to the diversity of musical tastes in this wide world, very few of them are duplicates. (As a word of warning, I will say that I do have this list and will not hesitate to send it, with the proper provocation, so scoffers beware.) Typing this much information into a table, I don't mind saying, after a while I was just getting cross-eyed and couldn't think straight. I had a simple process of keeping it in alphabetical order as I went along, so all I needed to do with each new title was insert it in between what would have been the song that would come right before it, and the one right after it, which any schoolchild could do in a snap. But hundreds of titles into this thing, I found that I simply could not alphabetize any more, and lost all ability to interpolate the new entries into the rest of the document, without moving them several times, higher or lower, and sometimes both. It would not be an understatement to say that this was a humbling experience, and the best that can be said about it is that at least it's over. (I said to Bill later that the one good thing about making lists of records is at least you know you're never going to get any more of them at this point.) After all, I wouldn't want to come down with a bad case of the (navy) blues and have to go join the Escort down in the dumps.

Joy In The Morning

Hello World,

Happy Flag Day Plus One! Of course, Thursday was the day that all of us amateur vexillologists could be expected to run up the colors and fly our flags with giddy abandon, and long may they wave. And I can assure you that "vexillologist" is a real word to describe someone who studies flags, for which we can thank our friends at the Page-A-Day calendar, and their careful selection of a timely word for June 14. (Please feel free to stop by their web site at www.pageaday.com and see for yourself.) Although the weather in the morning did not look promising, it refrained from raining, and so the local scene was improved with my upstairs and downstairs flags adding their patriotic hues to the neighborhood. I had gotten a new flag bracket for the upstairs flag, because I wanted to move the flag to a different spot and wasn't keen on trying to remove the old bracket and move it, and having a whole new bracket eliminated that extra step. Instead of waiting until I had more time to devote to it, I hurried up and banged it into the wall using an assortment of bent and raggedy mis-matched nails, and I was concerned later that a good stiff breeze might carry the flag and the bracket right off the house and sailing away to who knows where. So it was with no small measure of relief that I came home from work yesterday, to find Old Glory right where I left it, and none the worse for wear. Re-attaching the flag bracket in a more dependable manner, using sensible wood screws, is a project for another day.

In local sports news, I can report with some certainty that there will in fact be joy in at least half of Mudville, because the Mets and Yankees are playing three games in the June version of a Subway Series, and no matter which team wins, it will make at least half of the home-town fans happy. Right now, the fans who need the most cheering up would be the ones of the national league franchise (The Underdogs) more so than fans of their cross-town rivals (The Overdogs) who already have plenty to cheer about. In an interesting coincidence, both teams are also in a race to build a new stadium, as both Shea Stadium and the venerated Yankee Stadium are being replaced by new ballparks that should be ready for baseball by 2009. So it should be interesting times ahead, at least for fans of new arenas. I don't know if that would necessarily constitute joy in Mudville, but I suppose if your favorite team is going to lose anyway, at least the fans can have a fancy new stadium to be miserable in.

The following may not qualify as sports news, in fact, it's apparently not news at all. Our friends at the AOL Welcome Screen, where illiteracy is no barrier to hiring their writers, wanted me to check out their reports about World Cup cricket coach Bob Woolmer, who died under suspicious circumstances in Jamaica last week. Their gambit to entice me to delve further into this story was a screaming headline on the Welcome Screen that wondered, "WAS COACH REALLY STANGLED?" Although I know absolutely nothing about the case, I can state categorically that since the beginning of time, nothing has ever been "stangled" to death, and the only thing being stangled in this situation was the poor abused English language, may it rest in peace. The story goes on to state that Jamaican officials rejected reports of drugs or poisons being involved, and they never mentioned strippers, so people supposing that the writers had meant "spangled" instead of "stangled" were left with their own disappointments, and more's the pity, I'm sure. Talk about no joy in Mudville, and then some.

In other international news, and this of a more joyful nature, we have this other AOL News headline that gushed: "Thousands Cheer Bush's Arrival in Albania." Of course, what they didn't say was that the people cheering were in Washington DC at the time, and glad to get rid of him. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Actually, the press reported that he got such a tumultuous reception in Albania, you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd be out of his mind to come back here, where every other pundit is taking pot-shots at him. This is sort of the White House version of Paris Hilton. Without all the spangles, of course.

Meanwhile at work, we recently found ourselves being caught up the maw of federal regulations that required all employees in health care organizations to have mandatory emergency preparedness training on the principles of the National Incident Management System. This is a process developed by the federal government that can be used to respond to large-scale disasters such as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, and one of its key components is standardizing terminology and procedures, so that multiple jurisdictions or authorities can work together cohesively and accomplish better results. The complete NIMS training, which is required of all emergency personnel, such as soldiers, police officers or fire fighters, is actually 18 hours of classes. For those of us farther down on the emergency response scale, such as secretaries, the program has been condensed to 7 hours, which everyone at the hospital was required to attend in one 3-hour class and a follow-up 4-hour class. Being the good employee that I am (especially when it's mandatory) I had already attended the first class in May, and was scheduled for the second class last week. I left the second class with my brain so full that it would have been impossible to absorb one more iota of data without my whole head just exploding from the pressure. In retrospect, I realize now that I really should have gone straight home right then, because trying to do anything else under those conditions could only be considered a lost cause, and sure to invite disaster, perhaps on an epic scale. Instead of going home as I should have, I decided to send out a memo to all departments at all four facilities in our health system, notifying everyone that the Print Shop would have reduced hours for vacation coverage in July, so that people would anticipate their printing needs accordingly, which is a notice that I send out on a routine basis. What was not routine about this one, though, and for which I blame my brain over-load from the mandatory class, was that it was dated June 8, 200. Mind you, I went to all the trouble to have this notice distributed to 2,300 employees in 400 departments in four institutions in two cities, and only realized afterward that it had the wrong date on it, which is pretty close to being a disaster on an epic scale for the work I usually do. Now, to be fair, the dinosaurs and I happen to remember the 200's very fondly, especially those sunsets over the Nile, but I would be less than candid if I said that I had any joy in Mudville over this lapse in the pin-point accuracy that I strive for. Mighty Casey has indeed struck out.

On the other hand, we have Bill to thank for this brilliant insight into the hospital's inner workings, which is remarkable considering that he doesn't even work there.

=================================
I hope you at least get to nap at the mandatory. Hey -- maybe they'll have some prizes left over from the blood drives that didn't happen. If YOU won one, they'd probably cancel the mandatories too, so sign in at least twice (you gotta be in it to win it!) Good luck!
=================================

Of course, we all know how I worry when things like this start to make perfect sense to me! Also at work, I happened to bump into our retired co-worker (you remember Helga!) who was at the hospital earlier in the week, visiting her son who works in our Pharmacy downstairs. She was bemoaning the fact that her son was so busy, working full-time at our hospital, plus filling in per diem at other sites, and a variety of other claims on his time that were just getting to be too much. When he needed to take some time off for a family obligation, no matter how he juggled his schedule with the other staff, he despaired of getting the days off that he needed. When I saw her in the hallway, she threw her hands up in an exasperated manner and said, "I'm afraid this time, he's really pasted himself into a corner." I have to admit, that's a mental picture that's going to stay with me for a long time, in spite of my best efforts to shake it loose.

We're one of the happy families in TiVo-Land, and have been for more than a year. We use it to record programs that we like, and it also has a handy feature that you can pause, rewind or slo-mo even live TV programming, which is great for sports. TiVo is always looking out for our best interests, and routinely records programs on its own that it thinks we would like, based on the past history of shows that we've recorded. One that it is sure that we like is on The Discovery Channel, called "How It's Made," and we would hate to hurt the TiVo's little feelings, but we really don't find this show all that interesting. Each episode takes a very cursory look at the manufacturing process for some common items, such as hiking boots, solar panels, computer chips or jelly beans, but it's so simplistic and scatter-shot that it entirely fails to engage your attention. But TiVo, bless its little misguided heart, is convinced that this is the show for us, and keeps recording it for us anyway, and we watch one every now and again. We recently saw one about how they make what the narrator referred to as "ice resurfacing equipment," and I'll let that sink in for a moment while you think about whatever in the world that could mean, because even if you watch a lot of ice hockey, as we do, it's a long way from there to figuring out that they're describing what everyone else in the entire world calls a Zamboni. Apparently they didn't have permission to use the registered name of the product, which like Polaroid or Jello, is extremely hard to describe without using the name that everyone knows it by. It reminded me of the old brain teaser of trying to describe a spiral staircase without using your hands. If it was up to the people at "How It's Made," when the New York Rangers would be having a special ceremony during one of their games, they would make the public address announcer change his comments to: "At this time, we ask that you please direct your attention to the ice resurfacing equipment gate" instead, and 20,000 people would look at each other and scratch their heads. Now, that's my idea of no joy in Mudville!

Paris In The Spring

Hello World,

Well, it's certainly a sad state of affairs around here when you don't even have the weather to complain about, and that's a plain fact. Even I would have to say that the conditions have been very pleasant for days on end, with warm sun and gentle breezes, and nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, if Paris Hilton hadn't gone back to prison, there'd be nothing whatsoever to talk about, and this whole note would quickly degenerate into a motley assortment of bad limericks and cookie recipes, and I'm sure no one wants to see that. So thank you, Paris Hilton, for providing the tabloid fodder that keeps the media occupied, and making the world safe from a lack of celebrity indiscretions.

Everyone knows by now that we have a new telephone system at the hospital, with all new phones and even shiny new telephone numbers to go with them. I just found out that our old numbers are going to be in effect for 15 months, I suppose, to give all of us time to notify everyone and replace their stationery and business cards with the new information. Many of the internal extensions for departments or individuals have remained the same, for instance, in Purchasing where I work, which I found very handy. But other numbers were changed, and to help the staff keep abreast of the changes, there was an interim telephone directory posted on the hospital's web page, so everyone could have access to the most up-to-date information available. I thought this would be a useful document to have on hand, so I downloaded it to my computer, and then printed it, and even entertained the idea of making extra copies for some of our small sister departments that I knew did not have computers to access this information. That idea went by the boards at lightning speed, when I found the interim directory weighed in at a hefty 77 pages, so I printed up my own copy and left it at that. It very conveniently lists the outside line and extension number for each department or person, plus the new number, or the same number if it stayed the same. So far, my favorite part is that when you look up Administration, you find the President is identified as Barbara Langbein, who is one of the secretaries, and Mr. Spicer, who is our CEO, listed as her assistant. The hospital wags were quick to point out that the directory finally got it right, giving tacit acknowledgment to the power behind the throne. You go, girl!

Also at work, alert readers may remember when I went to one of the employee blood drives in the Auditorium, and was surprised to find it quiet and sparsely attended, after swearing off them 6 months earlier when I went to one that was crowded and raucous. (In fact, it was in my note from 10/28/05, so you can just feel free to go right ahead and look it up, and I'll wait ..... dum de dum de dum de dah dah de dum ..... ) Anyway, so few employees showed up for that one that the coordinator of the event said that I stood a very good chance of winning one of the raffle prizes, but of course, I scoffed at that ridiculous notion, because everyone knows that I never win anything. You can imagine my surprise then, when I got a call afterward saying that I had in fact won a prize, and when I hurried over to the Lab to pick it up, it turned out to be a very lovely tabletop fountain that is decorative as well as functional. I was going to bring it home and set it up, but despaired of finding some place that I could enjoy it without the cats reducing it to a shattered wreck. Then I realized that where I really needed its soothing serenity was at work, so I put it on the corner of my desk, where it is a constant joy and a conversation starter par excellence.

I was reminded of all of this recently when I called to make an appointment to go to the Blood Bank, since they discontinued the employee blood drives, and so if you want to donate, you have the option go on your own. They assured me that Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend would be just fine, and so I left work early to walk over to the other building, and even though I arrived at the appointed time, they kept me waiting for an hour and then said that they couldn't take me. Even worse, they had already subjected me to the whole pre-registration regimen, such as the interminable paperwork, plus taking my blood pressure and temperature, as well as the finger stick which I hate, and after all that, they told me to come back Tuesday instead. So I trudged back over there on Tuesday afternoon, and started all over again with the paperwork, blood pressure, temperature, finger stick and all the rest of it, before they finally got their pound of flesh, or rather, pint of blood for their troubles. In any case, it was while I was speaking with the nice friendly phlebotomist that I told her about winning the tabletop fountain at one of the employee blood drives, and I was so surprised since I never win anything, and for the first time, it hit me all at once. That employee blood drive in October 2005 was the very last one they had at the hospital, and there hasn't been one since. A rational person might think that was an overly extreme way to make sure that I wouldn't win any more raffle prizes, but the alternative theory strikes me as being too coincidental by half. By golly, I knew all along there would have to be some ugly repercussions for the slip-up that let me win that fountain, and it took until just now for me to realize that they did away with the whole program just because of that. Now, you can call me paranoid (don't you dare!) but I always say that the complete lack of proof just goes to show how well the conspiracy is working.

In other news, we have our friends at the page-a-day calendar to thank for the following, and please go right ahead and visit their web site at www.pageaday.com and see for yourself.

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According to a Sydney name tag distributor,
the most popular cat names in Australia are
strikingly similar to those in the United States.Among the top five names for females of both
countries are Lucy, Missy and Misty; for males,
Max, Sam and Simba rank in the top six spots. ===========================

Well, it's true that we had a family cat who was an orange tabby and named Lucy by a relative, and one of our current cats is named Max, but I can't say that any of those names really hit the mark for me. Missy? Sam? What kind of names are these for cats? I find myself alternately amazed and appalled at the names that people foist upon their pets, and it's a wonder that pet psychiatrists aren't doing a bigger business in fretful felines and mopey mutts. I realize that not everyone would go for some of the names that we have come up with over the years, like Baa-Baa or Copernicus, and I also understand the appeal of a name that has suddenly come into vogue, like Yoda, Kermit, Fonzie or Paris Hilton, for example. But spare me from people with so little imagination that they call their white cat Snowball, their black cat Blackie, or any cat Fluffy, Kitty or Missy, for heaven's sake.

Mind you, in an interesting coincidence, and it might have been that same note about the employee blood drive from October 2005, I stumbled across this intriguing remark: [ I was reminded of that earlier in the week, when I was accosted by a co-worker in the lobby who wanted to show me pictures of her three cats, Angel, Max and Sam. ] Now, honestly, some times you just have to shake your head and wonder. As for myself, I have to figure those Aussies are on to something after all.

Meanwhile, for people who may be wondering what's new and exciting in the world of higher education, and well may you wonder, well, you may wonder no more. Our friends at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies (or NAMBLA, as Jon Stewart always says) have sent us their summer course offerings so that we can all "Make the Most of Summer," as they describe it, "With more than 1,000 opportunities to reshape your future, you can expand your horizons with thought-provoking courses that keep you intellectually sharp, current and competitive." Even the dinosaurs would admit that I'm on board with the idea of keeping intellectually sharp, current and competitive, but along those lines, I admit that I was baffled to discover some of their highlighted suggestions, such as Folklore of New York, Persian, Mini Intensive for Philanthropists, and Improvisation Workshop, which would appear to the untrained observer to fly in the face of this whole sharp, current and competitive concept. Of course, I realize that it's been a long time since the dinosaurs and I were in school, and a lot has certainly changed since then, and not all of it for the better, I can tell you that. But I can still remember a time when a course about Writing A Screenplay In 10 Weeks would be no one's idea of keeping intellectually sharp, current or competitive, and that's just all there is to it. Unless you're Paris Hilton, that is.

Party On

Hello World,

Happy June! There's no other month like this one, to charm the muse of poets and songwriters alike throughout history, with countless verses that croon, spoon, tune, moon, dune, loon, noon, soon, goon and prune. Not to mention, balloon, tycoon, festoon, raccoon, saloon, cartoon, platoon, typhoon, spittoon and Officer Muldoon from "Car 54, Where Are You?" (Now there's another one of those references that's lost on young people nowadays, and more's the pity, I'm sure.) You certainly can't do that with April or August, and don't even get me started on October, for heaven's sake. So June stands alone in the pantheon of doggerel du jour, and here we all are, standing right along with it, and probably sooner than any of us expected. Be that as it may, there's no turning back now, so let's all round up our pontoons and dragoons, especially if they're maroon in the afternoon, and sing a song to June.

Last week, we got a frantic phone call from a new neighbor, saying that they had lost their cat Benji, and the children were distraught. They left a flyer in our mailbox with Benji's picture, and he was a cute enough cat for a house pet, but nothing out of the ordinary. These people are so new to our little enclave that we haven't actually met them at any neighborhood functions, although our reputation seems to have preceded us, and while they stopped short of accusing us of "cat-napping" their beloved feline, they did seem to consider it a distinct possibility. I had to call them back and say we hadn't seen Benji in our yard, and since our cats stay indoors, he could not have gotten mixed up with our brood in their comings and goings. In fact, since we took in Smokey Joe last year, we haven't seen a single cat in our yard of any description, from battered old toms to dainty pampered pusses, or anything in between. In what can only be described as a miraculous turn of events, Benji was discovered locked in the basement of the house across the street, while the owner was away, and survived on his wits alone, until he was rescued 10 days later. The family basically greeted his return as if they had won the lottery, and the owner of the empty house just as glad to get rid of him, and we were all glad to hear a happy ending to a story that had a lot of potential for disaster. Other things may have gone wrong during the week (just ask the Ottawa Senators) but around here, the angels were working overtime on the Benji Caper, and came up with the right size miracle just in the nick of time.

Meanwhile at work, the JCAHO inspectors have come and gone, and the National Guard was not deployed to seize control of the campus and prevent us from practicing medicine, so I suppose we must have passed muster and are not considered a detriment to the health of the community after all. What a relief! In fact, the administration was so giddy at the results that they provided complimentary breakfast and lunch for all employees on Tuesday, and even tossed a pizza party for the night shift as well. Of course, I found out later that they followed this up with lay-offs on Friday, so I guess this turned out to be one of those "good news, bad news" kinds of situations in the end. But at least the hospital passed its inspection, and achieved accreditation, and for those of us who still have jobs, this is reason enough as a cause for celebration.

Speaking of celebrations, last weekend was Memorial Day of course, although it's getting harder to tell nowadays, because the local newspaper has pictures of people having what they call Memorial Day parades starting at the beginning of May, and continuing along pretty much every day until the end of the month. If there's ever any doubt in your mind when the actual holiday weekend is to occur, you must not be one of the thousands of lucky individuals invited to my sister Linda's justly famous and long-standing Memorial Day Weekend Barbecue, still going strong in its 35th year, rain or shine. Linda makes sure this happens at the right time every year, and sends out notices to far-flung friends and relatives, who then descend on the sleepy town of Stone Ridge in upstate New York, for three days of fun, food and frivolity Literally hundreds of people from near and far show up for this shindig, not just from across the country or other continents, but there's also parking for spaceships across the street, so that tells you something right there. Many guests arrive with their tents and sleeping bags, and camp out in the back of the property by the creek, for up to a week and make a whole vacation out of it. Some people have been coming for so long that they got married and had children, and now their grown-up children are married and coming with their own children. As an annual event, its popularity and staying power would be hard to beat, in spite of conditions that often range from blistering heat to torrential downpours, and frequently on the same day. I was there on Saturday with my sister Diane, when the weather was lovely, the company convivial, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. The usual activities were going on, such as volleyball, horseshoes and Frisbee golf, as well as arts and crafts projects for the less athletically inclined. At one point in the festivities, I found myself in the company of our illustrious "Hostess With The Mostest," my sister Linda, who said that she was glad that I could come and next year, I should bring Bill with me. I explained that Bill was more at ease in small groups, and not at all suited to large crowds of raucous strangers. "Oh, I know just how he feels," insisted my sister, surrounded as she was by a mere 500 of her nearest and dearest acquaintances, "I'm not a party person." [I will admit at this arresting statement that I was rendered speechless, so you'll have to supply your own punch-line here.]

Diane and I went there and back without incident, and even the traffic was unremarkable, although it was a long drive and a little too warm to be comfortable. This was because, although the Escort is equipped with air conditioning, I discovered that it didn't have quite enough "oomph" (please excuse the technical jargon there) to cool the inside of the car while still performing its primary function of propelling the car forward, especially uphill. This is my idea of an air conditioning system in name only, and one that the environmentalists would love, but I would have preferred something chillier. The weekend weather held up nicely for all three days around here, and even though they predicted thunderstorms on Monday, I was able to fly the flags upstairs and downstairs all day, without having to rush out and rescue them from the rain. This was in spite of the fact that I had already tempted Fate, not to mention the Weather Gods, by not only filling up the bird baths, but also watering the plants in the flower beds, so as you can imagine, I was expecting monumental storms of epic proportions. I suppose the Weather Gods must have been otherwise engaged in Indianapolis, raining on the Indy 500 as they so often do, and therefore were not a factor here on Monday, in spite of my bird baths. It was nice to have a day off from work, and good flag-waving weather besides. If only I'd had some bunting.

Of course, after that it was one of those short weeks at work, and this turned into a classic example of one, and a sharp reminder, if any was needed, of exactly why my feelings about short weeks can only be described in terms that are on the FCC's list of forbidden words. Apart from the usual chaos at work, including gearing up for the new telephone system this weekend, I fell victim to a couple of ugly financial setbacks that I wasn't anticipating. One of the features of the new postage rates is that the cost is based not only on the weight of the object, but also its shape, so that there is a surcharge for items that have non-standard dimensions. I had to mail a CD in a cardboard diskette mailer, and didn't know what it would cost for the shape or extra weight, so I took it to the Post Office on Tuesday to get the right postage for it. I don't know what I was expecting the nice friendly woman to say about it, but I know I wasn't prepared to hear that it was 80 cents (!!!) because my mouth dropped open when she told me that. Heck, even at today's gas prices, you could drive an awfully long way on 80 cents worth of gas, and drop off the diskette in person, which would make it only highway robbery, rather than a Pony Express hold-up. Although I felt like going home and pulling the covers over my head, instead I made the mistake of going to the supermarket, and walked blithely to the check-out with two bags of Chinese noodles and a package of Dixie cups, and when the cashier said it was $11, I almost fell right over on the spot. If this is part of the government's plan to nickel-and-dime us to death, they certainly got their money's worth out of me on Tuesday, and I've got the skid marks on my wallet to prove it. I realize now it's a lucky thing that we can drive to the gas station to fill up, because if we had to pay for it to come to us through the mail, we'd turn into a nation of pedestrians overnight, and our cars would be nothing more than decorative landscape elements. I don't know about you, but I would hang bunting on mine.