Fit As A Fiddle
Hello World,
Well, people in the local area could be forgiven for wondering if there hasn't been some ridiculous mix-up in the calendars around here, because although all indicators point to it being October 19, it certainly seems as if the temperatures have been in the 70s and even 80s all week. For a normal late October in New York, we might consider this kind of unseasonable weather an anomaly, except for the fact that there are no standards anymore, heaven knows. In fact, it was just a couple of days ago in The Journal News that they ran a front-page story on a report about historic Playland amusement park in Rye, and the headline actually stated: "In Spite of Fatalities, Park Safety Has Improved." Frankly, if this is the improvement, I'm not sure that getting this story on the front page is going to be the public relations bonanza that the park administrators might have hoped for. And here I'm also thinking, that the county officials behind this report must have a completely different concept of safety than I do, and they're welcome to it.
Not rolling out the Welcome Wagon, on the other hand, one of our older cats had developed a large and unsightly abscess on the side of his face, which not only looked bad, but caused him to make a horrible rasping and wheezing noise, so that it sounded like you were in the same room with Darth Vader from Star Wars. ("Luke, I am your Tootsie!") During this ordeal, and for reasons known only to himself, he decided to move from where he had taken up residence as the kitchen cat, and relocate into the living room, where he pounced on the piano like a drowning man on a life preserver. Since this had been the haunt of our invisible cats, this scattered them in all directions, as they had no idea what to make of this grotesque interloper in their midst, and weren't about to find out. Later I found all the invisibles had re-congregated together on the pump organ instead, which I thought was a peculiar musical coincidence that I could not have predicted.
Meanwhile at work, Bill was busy making name pins for the likes of individuals with names to conjure with, such as Ferdesha Bauson, Casonia Fielding, Chaquita Tolbert and Colthidia Winslow, but I said I could top that, and without even trying. Earlier in the morning, I got a call from one of our nurses who wanted to order an orthopedic brace for someone (and here, she spelled the name for me, and with good reason) with the extraordinary moniker of Kwadwo Ofosubenefo, and I can assure you that's no typo. I'm not exactly sure where our friend Kwadwo hails from, although the deepest recessed quadrants of the Alpha Centauri nebula would sound about right to me.
Also at work, a committee that I belong to had been asked to perform a skit about patient satisfaction at a luncheon later this month, so we had put together a script and assigned parts, and did some read-throughs until we thought it was just right. We scheduled a dress rehearsal for today, and made sure that everyone had the most updated script, and knew when and where the rehearsal was taking place. Of the 7 people who had been assigned parts in the skit, only 3 showed up for the dress rehearsal, and so we filled in with 4 other people who showed up, but didn't know the lines. We had about half of the props, but needed to imagine the missing ones, and there had been no arrangements made for microphones or lights, even though at a previous rehearsal, all of these issues had been discussed. It seemed to me that this whole situation entirely defeated the purpose of having a dress rehearsal in the first place, when we didn't have the right people, props, or audio-visual equipment necessary. Of course, one wants to make allowances for amateur productions put on by well-meaning people, but this quickly scaled new heights of futility. We arrived to find the auditorium a little too warm to be comfortable, and this was not helped by the WIC FIT program, which apparently takes place every day in the auditorium, and was already set up with their exercise mats and dumb bells, pulsating disco music, plus 30 sweaty moms and kids all stretching and jumping around on the floor while we were on the stage rehearsing. This was certainly not a match made in heaven, in fact, the exact opposite place springs immediately to mind, and only the fire and brimstone were missing. I will say that no matter what happens during our skit at the luncheon, distraction won't be one of our problems, because we have already got that part all nailed down.
Recently. Bill sent me a picture of a very pretty young woman, and wondered if I knew who this might be, which I didn't, so he explained --
===============================
This lovely woman has her own, very LARGE website and here's a small section of it:
According to Yulia Tymoshenko, Kyrylenko never demonstrated double standards. She reminded that V’yacheslav Kyrylenko is the head of the largest party which is included in NU-NS bloc. "And that is why it seems logically to me, if political council made such decision, it has the ground", - said the leader of BYuT. She reminded thus, that candidature of V’yacheslav Kyrylenko on position of speaker should be supported by political council of the whole NU-NS bloc.
Yes, that woman is actually Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine. She has a website that is in Ukrainian but that automatically translates itself into Russian and English if you click on one of the tabs. So you gotta love those translations -- staggeringly opaque! And everything it doesn't quite get it leaves in quotes, including "Nasha Ukraina" which even I don't have trouble with -- "nasha" is "our". Anyway, that's the fun of being Prime Minister, I guess.
Interestingly enough, I tried re-translating some of the Cyrillic text from my new Ukrainian pal's page and the Russky translators just threw up their hands. Ukrainian must be JUST different enough that the automatic things can't get it. For instance, I noticed that the Ukrainian page and English pages had different stories on them for some reason. One of the items had what appeared to be a really old picture of Yulia so I thought I'd try translating part of the item. The headline came out:
For the right to provoditi I bustle dodomu they were beaten odnoklasniki. Spogadi about shk?l'n? Timoshenko's fates
So I gave up. No use beating a dead dodomu odnoklasniki, I always say. (But at least they don't mind the occasional plate of spogadi, I guess.)
===============================
And here we are, tossing more brickbats at those online translation services again, which is a bad habit that I thought we all agreed to give up for Ramadan. Fortunately, I believe that Ramadan ended in the last few days anyway, and just in time for Halloween, what a relief! I'd suggest that everyone hurry out there and grab themselves bunches of seasonal fun-sized goodies, before the Moslems snap them all up. Of course, you want to enjoy them in moderation, so you don't make yourself sick and wind up in the hospital, which as a holiday destination, is extremely unsatisfactory. And don't forget that I work in healthcare and patient satisfaction is my game, so I ought to know. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, or my name isn't -
Kwadwo Yulia Ferdesha Casonia Chaquita Colthidia Winslow-Tolbert-Fielding-Bauson-Tymoshenko-Ofosubenefo
Well, people in the local area could be forgiven for wondering if there hasn't been some ridiculous mix-up in the calendars around here, because although all indicators point to it being October 19, it certainly seems as if the temperatures have been in the 70s and even 80s all week. For a normal late October in New York, we might consider this kind of unseasonable weather an anomaly, except for the fact that there are no standards anymore, heaven knows. In fact, it was just a couple of days ago in The Journal News that they ran a front-page story on a report about historic Playland amusement park in Rye, and the headline actually stated: "In Spite of Fatalities, Park Safety Has Improved." Frankly, if this is the improvement, I'm not sure that getting this story on the front page is going to be the public relations bonanza that the park administrators might have hoped for. And here I'm also thinking, that the county officials behind this report must have a completely different concept of safety than I do, and they're welcome to it.
Not rolling out the Welcome Wagon, on the other hand, one of our older cats had developed a large and unsightly abscess on the side of his face, which not only looked bad, but caused him to make a horrible rasping and wheezing noise, so that it sounded like you were in the same room with Darth Vader from Star Wars. ("Luke, I am your Tootsie!") During this ordeal, and for reasons known only to himself, he decided to move from where he had taken up residence as the kitchen cat, and relocate into the living room, where he pounced on the piano like a drowning man on a life preserver. Since this had been the haunt of our invisible cats, this scattered them in all directions, as they had no idea what to make of this grotesque interloper in their midst, and weren't about to find out. Later I found all the invisibles had re-congregated together on the pump organ instead, which I thought was a peculiar musical coincidence that I could not have predicted.
Meanwhile at work, Bill was busy making name pins for the likes of individuals with names to conjure with, such as Ferdesha Bauson, Casonia Fielding, Chaquita Tolbert and Colthidia Winslow, but I said I could top that, and without even trying. Earlier in the morning, I got a call from one of our nurses who wanted to order an orthopedic brace for someone (and here, she spelled the name for me, and with good reason) with the extraordinary moniker of Kwadwo Ofosubenefo, and I can assure you that's no typo. I'm not exactly sure where our friend Kwadwo hails from, although the deepest recessed quadrants of the Alpha Centauri nebula would sound about right to me.
Also at work, a committee that I belong to had been asked to perform a skit about patient satisfaction at a luncheon later this month, so we had put together a script and assigned parts, and did some read-throughs until we thought it was just right. We scheduled a dress rehearsal for today, and made sure that everyone had the most updated script, and knew when and where the rehearsal was taking place. Of the 7 people who had been assigned parts in the skit, only 3 showed up for the dress rehearsal, and so we filled in with 4 other people who showed up, but didn't know the lines. We had about half of the props, but needed to imagine the missing ones, and there had been no arrangements made for microphones or lights, even though at a previous rehearsal, all of these issues had been discussed. It seemed to me that this whole situation entirely defeated the purpose of having a dress rehearsal in the first place, when we didn't have the right people, props, or audio-visual equipment necessary. Of course, one wants to make allowances for amateur productions put on by well-meaning people, but this quickly scaled new heights of futility. We arrived to find the auditorium a little too warm to be comfortable, and this was not helped by the WIC FIT program, which apparently takes place every day in the auditorium, and was already set up with their exercise mats and dumb bells, pulsating disco music, plus 30 sweaty moms and kids all stretching and jumping around on the floor while we were on the stage rehearsing. This was certainly not a match made in heaven, in fact, the exact opposite place springs immediately to mind, and only the fire and brimstone were missing. I will say that no matter what happens during our skit at the luncheon, distraction won't be one of our problems, because we have already got that part all nailed down.
Recently. Bill sent me a picture of a very pretty young woman, and wondered if I knew who this might be, which I didn't, so he explained --
===============================
This lovely woman has her own, very LARGE website and here's a small section of it:
According to Yulia Tymoshenko, Kyrylenko never demonstrated double standards. She reminded that V’yacheslav Kyrylenko is the head of the largest party which is included in NU-NS bloc. "And that is why it seems logically to me, if political council made such decision, it has the ground", - said the leader of BYuT. She reminded thus, that candidature of V’yacheslav Kyrylenko on position of speaker should be supported by political council of the whole NU-NS bloc.
Yes, that woman is actually Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine. She has a website that is in Ukrainian but that automatically translates itself into Russian and English if you click on one of the tabs. So you gotta love those translations -- staggeringly opaque! And everything it doesn't quite get it leaves in quotes, including "Nasha Ukraina" which even I don't have trouble with -- "nasha" is "our". Anyway, that's the fun of being Prime Minister, I guess.
Interestingly enough, I tried re-translating some of the Cyrillic text from my new Ukrainian pal's page and the Russky translators just threw up their hands. Ukrainian must be JUST different enough that the automatic things can't get it. For instance, I noticed that the Ukrainian page and English pages had different stories on them for some reason. One of the items had what appeared to be a really old picture of Yulia so I thought I'd try translating part of the item. The headline came out:
For the right to provoditi I bustle dodomu they were beaten odnoklasniki. Spogadi about shk?l'n? Timoshenko's fates
So I gave up. No use beating a dead dodomu odnoklasniki, I always say. (But at least they don't mind the occasional plate of spogadi, I guess.)
===============================
And here we are, tossing more brickbats at those online translation services again, which is a bad habit that I thought we all agreed to give up for Ramadan. Fortunately, I believe that Ramadan ended in the last few days anyway, and just in time for Halloween, what a relief! I'd suggest that everyone hurry out there and grab themselves bunches of seasonal fun-sized goodies, before the Moslems snap them all up. Of course, you want to enjoy them in moderation, so you don't make yourself sick and wind up in the hospital, which as a holiday destination, is extremely unsatisfactory. And don't forget that I work in healthcare and patient satisfaction is my game, so I ought to know. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, or my name isn't -
Kwadwo Yulia Ferdesha Casonia Chaquita Colthidia Winslow-Tolbert-Fielding-Bauson-Tymoshenko-Ofosubenefo
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:28 PM
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