Mouse Tales

Hello World,

Well, the time has certainly come, in fact it's long since passed, that I should be wrapping up Christmas around here, once and for all. For everyone who wondered which of our cats would be featured on this year's holiday card from us, it may have come as a shock to find two old dorky-looking people instead. It wasn't from any lack of cats on our part, because in spite of their most ardent hopes, the mother ship did not return from their home planet and spirit them away to their rightful place in charge of the universe. No, we just decided on something a little different this time around, so we came up with the idea of Bill as The Blue Boy by Gainesborough, and yours truly playing the part of Mona Lisa on the inside. That sound you hear, of course, is Leonardo da Vinci spinning in his grave, the poor dear, and I can't say that I blame him.

It will come as a surprise to no one that for Martin Luther King weekend, we went to visit our friends upstate for our usual post-Christmas mini holiday, featuring food, folks and fun, and plenty of it. It all started on Friday, when I took the day off from work to finish up some last-minute details and get all packed up and ready to go. All the gifts were wrapped and just needed to be put in the car, that is, until one of our cats decided that the two big ones were just exactly the toys she had been waiting for her whole life, and she attacked them with abandon, tearing the wrapping paper to shreds in a flash. Frankly, at that moment, I was kind of wishing the mother ship would return and beam her up also. But it didn't, and she wasn't, so I pieced them back together again as well as possible, and fortunately after years of their own pets, our friends are very forgiving. We had a quick lunch and were soon on our way, although it didn't seem at all like the middle of January, it being about 65 degrees and bright sunshine. Not that we would look a gift horse in the mouth or anything.

We set off in a carefree manner, first telling Bill's new GPS device where we wanted to go, and let the nice recorded lady navigator lead the way. It turned out that we were of two minds about the route that we wanted to take, and because we wouldn't go the way she wanted, every time she told us to turn and we didn't, she had to recalculate our route using different roads. After disregarding her instructions about six times in a row, she started to get a little testy, and we were afraid that she would just give up on us altogether, and leave us stranded on our own, and serve us right. But she stuck by us through it all, and when we finally turned where she said to, she was so happy, I thought she would stand up and cheer. She even managed to get us all the way to our friends' driveway, which is remarkable since they not only live in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of nowhere, but they are entirely surrounded by miles and miles of nowhere, that would thwart even the most sophisticated surveillance equipment in its trackless wastes. But she was more than equal to the task and got us right to the spot, which was a pleasant surprise. Even more so was finding that we could drive 200 miles north in the middle of January, and when we got out of the car, it was still 60 degrees and sunny. Because it was so warm and clear, it melted much of the left-over piles of snow around their yard, so that standing under their deck was like being in a rain squall, with water pouring between the planks overhead, while everywhere else, it was a beautiful sunny day. Even with all of our usual misadventures getting anywhere, we still managed to arrive when we said we would, only to find, naturally, that our friends weren't home, despite repeated emails and phone calls beforehand. Between the GPS lady and our supposed friends, we were starting to feel pretty unpopular.

They did come home at last, and invited us in to enjoy their Christmas decorations, which they always leave up for us, as a part of the late mini-Christmas celebration that has become a treasured tradition of our January visits. This seemed as good a time as any to open presents, so we dove right in, and came up with a wide variety of welcome treats such as clothing, gadgets, DVDs and collectibles of all sorts. When the excitement died down, we called our other friends on the other side of Albany, and made arrangements for all of us to meet at the 76 Diner in Latham for dinner. We had a nice meal, and their signature fried ravioli was as good as ever. And while it's true that we can usually clear other customers out of a room without even trying, this was notable in that this time, our waitress kept coming back and asking us if there was anything else we wanted (hint, hint) and when we continued to linger, the staff began piling chairs up on top of empty tables, and vacuuming the carpet. We didn't mind when they brushed us off with feather-dusters, but when they broke out the buckets and disinfectant, we decided to pack it in. Since Santa had brought our friends a new Wii for Christmas, we spent the evening with a few rousing frames of virtual bowling, and we even tried our hands at boxing, although that noise you don't hear is the sound of fight promoters clamoring to sign us up, believe me.

After breakfast, and a trip to the scenic Kinderhook Post Office, we headed over to a locally famous
Antiques show being held at the Niskayuna Reformed Church, which seemed like a nice enough place in spite of its odd name, and featured dozens of dealers in their fellowship hall with a wide-ranging assortment of interesting items for all tastes. That includes crazy people who collect salt and pepper shakers, and I ought to know. Of course, I insisted that we have lunch at a nearby Denny's, which is a special treat in our travels, since we have none by us at home. Our next stop was Hewitt's, where we managed to buy $160 worth of left-over Christmas decorations for $40, and we followed that at Cracker Barrel, where all of their Christmas merchandise was 70% off, so that they practically paid us to take it off their hands. After a long and eventful day, we decided to stay in and order dinner from Four Brothers, which is a chain of Greek pizza parlors, and is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Our friends had a new DVD of old Soupy Sales shows, and it was just the right finishing touch to round out the evening in fine style. And you ought to see us do "The Mouse!"

We took the opportunity after breakfast to pack up everything and put it in the car, so we could enjoy the rest of the day without having that to deal with later. I don't know how it is that we invariably come home with more than we started with, especially since we always seem to bring everything we own with us wherever we go, but that's just the way it seems to work out. Then we ran some errands, including a trip to Hallmark, where they did not have the particular cards I was looking for, which you would expect they would, but they did have more Christmas salt and pepper shakers, which I would not have expected in the least. As a change of pace, we had lunch at Applebees, where we found limited menu options for us, made worse by their arbitrary weekend restrictions, so some items that we would have selected, were not available on Sunday, no thank you very much not. This particular Applebees seemed to be a lively combination of casual dining and sports bar, so it was pretty crowded and noisy, making our usual shenanigans practically unnoticeable in all of the hubbub. For instance, hardly anyone left when all six of us got up and did "The Mouse," in fact, a couple of people from the bar joined right in, so that tells you something right there. By Sunday afternoon, it had finally gotten very cold and blustery, and we found ourselves bidding our fond farewells quick and frost-bitten out in the parking lot, and our pictures outside of the restaurant look like an advertisement for winter coats on sale in Siberia. Of course, we all love Mother Russia, but hold the borscht, please.

We started for home and encountered no traffic to speak of, and we made the GPS lady deliriously happy by actually following her directions for a change. In fact, we used the built-in software to locate a Denny's in Danbury, where we planned to have dinner, since they closed the one in Fishkill where we used to stop on our way home. What happened instead is that on our way to Danbury, we got off highway to connect with a different road, and bumped smack into a Denny's in Newburgh off the exit ramp, that we never knew was there before. In fact, I admit I was suspicious, so I asked the waitress about it, and she said it had been there for at least 30 years, and I don't mind saying, right under our noses all this time. We were just as glad to stop there and have yet another wonderful meal, and we didn't even have to drive 30 miles out of our way to the other one in Danbury. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and the helpful GPS lady even snuck a little bit of a shortcut in on us, so we figured she wasn't mad at us after all. At home, we discovered that the mother ship still hadn't returned to liberate our cats from our clutches, and they greeted our return after three days with their usual range of reactions from bored indifference or polite curiosity to outright terror. They perked up after we started dishing out the cat food, but you should have seen them scatter when we did "The Mouse!"

Don't Fence Me In

Hello World,

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend! Of course, it seems late this year, but like a lot of these new-fangled movable holidays, it can be anywhere from the 15th to the 21st of January, and there just seems to be no way to pin these slippery devils down more than that. They don't build fences around these things, and keep them in some sort of compound where you'd be able to keep track of them, although that would be an idea that I personally would vote for, and no one would have to ask me twice. I say, give me a holiday like Christmas, or New Year's, or even St. Patrick's Day, where they just pick a day and stick with it, no matter what, and none of this loosey-goosey, higgledy-piggledy, can't-make-up-your-mind flim-flam about it. I have enough to worry about as it is, heaven knows, without chasing around after these wandering festivals, which don't even have the good manners to stay put from one year to the next. Honestly, the way they move around, you'd think they were running from a bunch of angry creditors, or worse, the FBI's most wanted list. Frankly, I've always thought that Labor Day looked awfully suspicious.

While we're on the topic of holidays, I hope that you had a very nice New Year's Eve, and rang in 2008 in fine style, without doing anything indecorous that would land your picture on the front page of the local newspaper, or a video of your misdeeds showing up on YouTube. In the current proliferation of camera phones, we should look upon everyone else as a potential Geraldo Rivera or Jerry Springer, and be sure to give them nothing more incendiary than a polite smile and nod, or risk international notoriety of the worst sort. We were taking no chances on New Year's Eve, and gave the paparazzi nothing to exploit, as we enjoyed a quiet evening at home as we usually do. But we finally wised up and ditched the usual pre-countdown programming, because every year we say that it can't possibly be worse than the previous year, and every year, it somehow manages to do exactly that. I remember when they started Dick Clark's New Year's Eve show because everyone thought that Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians were so boring, and now it's Dick Clark's show that's not only boring but unwatchable. The rest of the stuff that's on at the same time is just as bad or worse, and every year, we just get annoyed at it instead of enjoying it. So this time around, we decided to watch a movie instead, and only turn to live television just before the countdown, so we could enjoy all the excitement of the moment, without all the rest of the tedium that goes along with it. We settled on "Blast From the Past" with Brendan Fraser, which was intelligent and funny (and I don't have to tell you how rare a combination that is, at least in movies nowadays) and we found it very entertaining, with humor and charm to spare, and even a love story. It was way better than watching a bunch of awful singers, bad dancers and dull interviews in Times Square, and we were glad to spend the holiday with yummy Brendan Fraser, rather than that vapid Ryan Seacrest for a change, and I don't mind saying, a change for the better. Now, that's a New Year's resolution I can live with.

Earlier in the week at work, I was walking around the campus at lunchtime, and couldn't help but notice, when I came around the side of the doctor's parking lot, that where there should have been a 4-foot chain link fence, and in fact, there had been one there for all the years that I have worked there, now there seemed to be only a series of metal posts in the ground, and no fence to speak of. I thought it odd, but not wildly so, since the property seems to have a life of its own, and we shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens there anymore. A little farther along, I came across a very large pickup truck, which was emblazoned with the wording: Premier Fence Installations. Call me crazy (don't you dare!) but taking a 4-foot fence and making it disappear would never be my idea of any sort of premier fence installation, and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps we had never paid these people for their fence, and they were ripping it up and taking it back. Just then, I spotted one of the workers, who was carrying a bucket of tools and a shovel, and I waved toward the row of empty posts and said, "I get it! Invisible fence!" He laughed.

Speaking of tools, even I thought we had gotten to the most elemental state in our last mention of Modern Marvels, as the show progressed from Ice and Snow to Water and finally Rocks, which as modern marvels go, were not even modern marvels to the dinosaurs, and you'd probably have to go back to single-celled organisms slithering up out of the primordial ooze before water could be considered anyone's idea of a modern marvel by any stretch of the imagination. But to give credit where credit is due, I have to admit that they really outdid themselves this time, as the TV listings for Monday set a new standard of achievement with this pinnacle of the genre: [[ Modern Marvels - Carbon ]] Well, all you can do at a time like that is tip your cap to them, because even though the dinosaurs and I said it would be impossible, they still managed to top themselves, surpassing even rocks, and getting down to the atomic level of the very building blocks of life itself. The dinosaurs are holding out for "gravity" next, but I've got my heart set on "magnetism," although that only goes back as far as the formation of the planets, so they'll probably opt for something even more metaphysical like "time," which is about the only thing that goes all the way back to before the beginning and shows no signs of slowing down. I'm thinking that would keep our friends at Modern Marvels busy for a while, say, 15 bazillion years or so.

Meanwhile, in local sports news, that wailing noise you hear is the sound of legions of odds-makers paying off customers who bucked the trends and bet against the Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Colts, who unaccountably lost their playoff games, to the distress of their disappointed fans. A beneficiary of this unexpected outcome was the New York Giants, picked by just about nobody to advance past the Cowboys to the next round of the playoffs, so either the Cowboys couldn't face the prospect of freezing to death in Green Bay next week, or we have to accept that the Age of Miracles has not passed. On another frozen subject, after I complained about them last week, the New York Rangers actually won a game, but we knew all along it was too good to last, as they promptly lost their next one, making a strong case that the only team they can beat is the Montreal Canadiens, who lost to them twice in two weeks, and were probably their only wins in the last 12 games. Because we watched both of those games back to back (thanks, TiVo!) we couldn't help but notice something highly peculiar about the Montreal team. (Okay, I have to admit that only I noticed it, because I'm an obsessive compulsive finicky fuss-pot face, and Bill is merely humoring me.) The Canadiens have 6 players (out of 18 skaters) whose last names start with "Ko," which is uncommon enough as it is. There's Koivu, Komisarek, Kostopoulos, Kovalev, and not one, but TWO people named Kostitsyn, who happen to be brothers, not surprisingly. In the entire NHL, with dozens of teams, there are only 21 players altogether whose last names start with "Ko," and of those 21, six are in Montreal, which I personally think must set some kind of record for bizarre coincidences. At the NHL website where they have the team rosters, they very helpfully also provide each player's position, jersey number, height and weight, date of birth and where they're from, I suppose because inquiring minds want to know. It's easy enough to identify the ones from USA and CAN, and there's also plenty from RUS, and thanks to the Kostityn brothers, even I could figure out that BLR would be Belarus. I already knew that Saku Koivu was from FIN, and it wouldn't surprise me to find players with funny-sounding names coming from CZE or SVK, which I would guess to be the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But then I spotted someone from SVN, and I said to Bill that I reject out of hand that anyone from Slovenia is playing in the NHL, and that's all there is to that. And while I'm okay with CZE for the Czechs, then who the heck is CHE, who also showed up on the roster? Of course, everyone knows how Bill excels at research challenges (just ask him for the demographic information for Allison Park, Pennsylvania, please!) and he said that according to our new friends at the RootsWeb genealogy site, CHE is Switzerland, of all things. Now, just you hold on a minute there! I can take a joke as well as the next fellow, but you've got to go a pretty long way around the alphabet before you can explain how CHE can be translated into any part of Switzerland, no matter how you look at it. Bill said he thinks they're too busy making cuckoo clocks to come up with the right abbreviation for the country, and I will only say that I think he has that half right. Sort of like the Premier Fence Installation people, who came to the hospital and un-installed a fence we already have, and between you and me and the fence post, this is what you call something lost in the translation, and I ought to know.

Rat Race

Hello World,

On the face of it, the idea that it could already be the second week in January would appear to be nothing more than a cruel joke at our expense by the nefarious Comrade Sergei and his infernal date machine, but as jokes go, this one is no laughing matter. All indications point to this being the middle of January, as unthinkable as that might seem, or perhaps, alarming might be the better term under the circumstances. Of course, it doesn't help that the weather has been all over the place lately, ranging from frigid temperatures and blustery winds, to brilliant sunshine and 60 degrees, then chilly and pouring rain, all in the same week, so you just don't know what to expect next. One thing we weren't expecting, although we certainly should by now, Bill and I were at the supermarket on January 4th, and the seasonal aisle was awash in red satin hearts, Cupids and more lace doilies than you could shake a heart-shaped lollipop at, even if you wanted to. There was a veritable cornucopia of Valentine's Day candy of every description, and many which defied description, presumably to suit every taste and price range. It wasn't even Epiphany, and Christmas had been summarily dismissed like a cashier caught with his hand in the till, and relegated to the dust-heap of ancient history in this up-to-the-nano-second culture. Alas, poor Christmas! Now we'll have to wait until at least July before they start dragging out the candy canes and holly garland again.

It seems that ever since we came up with the idea to record the Rangers games, and only watch them if they win, they haven't won a game since, which we personally believe is part of a wide-ranging conspiracy on the part of our TiVo so that it doesn't have to waste valuable disk space by recording things that we want, but instead has more room to record the things that it chooses for us, which we invariably don't want to see. It's not that the TiVo is such a slow learner, although that's what they would like you to believe. More likely, the TiVo people are being paid off by the folks at "Lingo," "The Nanny" and "How It's Made" to keep recording these programs for us, and convince us that we like them, in spite of our repeated indications to the contrary. Of course at this point, we probably would watch "Dirty Jobs" or "Iron Chef," or whatever it would take to appease the TiVo gods and salvage whatever is left of the Rangers season, but it may already be too late. I'm thinking the ratings for "The Nanny" in Detroit must be through the roof.

Meanwhile at work, I actually took down the little Christmas tree in the hallway, and put it away with all of the decorations, last week and all in one fell swoop. This is in stark contrast to previous years when we had instead the famous wandering Christmas tree, that would get rolled out of the hallway into a spare office or closet, and just stay like that for the entire year, until it got rolled out again for the next Christmas. In fact, it occurred to me that this is probably the first time since 2003 that this has happened, so I consider it a pretty big deal. Alert readers may recall that at the end of 2004, I was on jury duty for two months and only came to work at night and on weekends. It was in 2005 when our clerk was injured at the end of the year and didn't come back for 6 months, and in 2006 after she had retired, I was still breaking in the replacement clerk with decidedly mixed results. So it would not be overstating the case to say that we've really turned a corner in our job situation for the new year, which would be considered a big improvement at least by some of us. I happen to know that I, for one, am unanimous in that.

Last week, I finally took the bull by the horns, figuratively speaking at least, with the plan to re-arrange my computer cart or know the reason why. The cart is only about 36" wide, but includes a hutch so that it's almost 5-feet tall, and has a variety of shelves, slots, cubbies and trays to fit your computer and all of your assorted peripherals all in one handy spot. It even has wheels, so that you can roll it from one place to another, but mostly that comes in handy when you want to push it away from the wall to get at the back of the equipment. And that was basically where my problem was, with the rat's nest of wires, cords, lines and cables all tangled up in a Gordian Knot of impenetrable complexity, coming out of the back of every piece of hardware or accessory, and sometimes two or three at a clip. And I don't mind saying, the rats didn't think much of it either. It had gotten to the point where any time I shifted anything on the cart, the speakers would both go flying, because their cords had gotten so enmeshed in the whole quagmire that they could just barely reach the surface of the desk and stay there only tenuously. When I first moved this cart into the living room, it was fine with the computer and monitor and printer, and even with the speakers and a scanner and modem, it was still manageable. But then we signed up for DSL, and between all the wiring for that and the router, plus the second printer and USB hub, it had all gotten to be just too much. So one day, I just pushed it out from the wall and sat behind it, unplugging everything and separating all the cords to make the most direct connections possible between the computer, the power strips, the hubs or wherever things needed to go. I grouped adjacent plugs on the same power strip, and segregated out anything like lights or radios that were nearby, but not physically attached to the cart. When I was finished, there was plenty of room for everything, and I needed a lot less length of wiring to make all of the connections, so I tied up the excess cords with twisty-ties and tacked them up out of the way. Of course, it looked great, very neat and presentable, but the acid test came when I turned everything back on, and I was relieved that it all worked fine after all that. I haven't had a bit of trouble with it since the restructuring, and the speakers have managed to stay put for a change, and a welcome one at that. And from now on, the rats are on their own.

For anyone who was wondering what's new and exciting in the wide world of signs these days, and well may they wonder, we can always count on Bill to give us the inside scoop, in the true spirit of truth and justice, with no regard to his own personal safety. He had this to say about an order from one of their customers who wanted signs for his restaurant, and it all began when his boss took the order over the phone from someone named Nazieh, which as Bill would like to point out, even someone with the IQ of a houseplant " ... might question something that someone named 'Nazieh' said. But not our resident suit!"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
But I did have two bright spots (at other's expense, so there goes my karma!)
The sign says:
=====
ALPS MANAGEMENT
EMPLOYEE MEAL POLICY
Breakfast
Sandwich, Small Drink & Hash Browns
Discluding Breakfast Deluxe

Lunch
Sandwich, Fries & Drink
Discluding Angus Burger, DBL QLBs
10 pc. Chicken Nuggets & 5 pc. Chicken Selects
If Dollar Menu is chosen, still one sandwich, frie and dessert.
=====
Well, I made some changes, not discluding "discluding" itself. He can be SO funny. Later on he came over to ask me why people are now pronouncing things differently (like saying niche as "neesh" instead of "nitch"). He said it sticks in his wife's crawl. I said I bet it would!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Well, we can't hope for much in the way of Bill's boss being bumped up the ladder, or lured away by another company, since he's the owner of the business. But I can tell you that if Nazieh ever gets tired of the food service industry, he can always get a job at CVS, where I'm sure he would fit right in. I say that because we were there Friday night after dinner, and bought a variety of items, as we always do. The helpful cashier was packing our purchases into a plastic shopping bag, but didn't want to over-stuff it and perhaps cause an accident. But Bill, who is nothing if not ecologically minded, told the young man that he was sure it would all fit in one bag, and we would be very careful with it on the way to the car. The cashier was quick to oblige, fitting the rest of the items in around the sides, and then in a textbook example of defeating the purpose, proceeded to double-bag it by slipping it inside a second bag, and handed the whole thing to us with a smile. Yes, I could see our friend Nazieh's fingerprints all over that transaction, and I have no doubt if he was working there, that just like my computer cart, he'd soon have the place all tied up in knots. Discluding the rats, of course.

Crazy Days

Hello World,

So here we are already in 2008, believe that or don't, all shiny and new, like a precious gift just waiting to be opened. For those of us who pay attention to these things, the best part so far about January is that it's already a couple of weeks past December 21, which is the official First Day of Winter (or "NAMBLA" as Jon Stewart always says) and once you get beyond the Winter Solstice as we have, each successive day gets just a tiny incremental bit longer than the previous day, bringing with it just a little bit more sunshine into our dreary lives. I don't know about you, but I can certainly use more sunshine, especially in the dead of winter, when everything is cold and bare. Migratory birds and retirees go to Florida in the winter for the warm weather, and while I don't mind the cold so much, I could do with a lot less of the dark, believe me. I've been thinking that houses should come with storm windows that have early-morning and late-afternoon lights that make it look as if it's still light outside, instead of pitch black, so that it didn't seem like you were spending half of your time in a cave or a coal mine. Call me crazy (don't you dare!) but it's the kind of thing that just might catch on.

Speaking of things that didn't catch on, last week our friends at AOL Money & Finance were kind enough to provide a handy list of "2007 Departures: You Won't See These in 2008." The list included 18 entries such as the McRib sandwich, Coca Cola Blak, NFL Europe, the Nintendo Game Cube, House & Garden magazine, infant cough & cold medicines, Topps Meat, the Dodge Magnum, grape-flavored Pop Tarts, CompUSA, the Bombay Company, Eckerd Pharmacy, Cingular, Levitz Furniture, NetBank, "The Sopranos" cable TV show and Bob Barker hosting "The Price is Right." I'm sure I can safely speak for all of us when I say that I hope you got your licks in on these things when the getting was good, because we won't have them to kick around anymore in the future, and that's not just the Pop Tarts talking, by golly.

For anyone who may have been concerned about the current state of my mental deterioration, and their name is legion, believe me, I am happy to reassure one and all that I am officially no longer a crazy person. For the past six months, ever since I got back from vacation and found that our Clerk had been re-assigned to another department, I have been running around at work like a lunatic, trying to do two jobs, putting in ridiculous hours (gratis) with no appreciation, and just generally wearing myself to a frazzle and driving everyone around me totally nuts. But I made it clear that I was not going to do that indefinitely, and once we rang out 2007 at the end of December, all of this whole nonsense was going to get rung out right with it. So starting now in January, I actually went to work when the department opens, not an hour earlier, and I packed up and left when the department closed for the day, just like a normal person, and not some deranged kook toiling away in the dark with the sounds of the Housekeeping night staff echoing through the empty hallways. I even went to the cafeteria to have my lunch, rather than choking down crackers at my desk, and my mind was composed enough to actually read a book, as impossible as that might seem. In fact, compared to how I usually feel about short weeks at work, I thought this was a great week, and I sailed through it in a relaxed and cheerful manner, without the grinding pressure of unrealistic expectations. I know that people would scoff at the idea that I would turn into a normal human being after all this time, and well may they scoff, but so far my motto in 2008 is "Not A Crazy Person" and it works for me!

Also at work, I had a visit from part of our crack Engineering team, who thought they were breaking the news to me that one of their clerical staff had left, and was replaced by another young lady from the Engineering department at our sister institution in Mount Vernon. I was way ahead of them on this one, since I had already heard about the departure, and I also already knew the incoming lady, from conversations with her at the other hospital. The fellows explained that they were helping her get settled in, and what they were trying to convey is that they were bringing her along slowly, so she would fit in comfortably, instead of setting her loose in the midst of total chaos and dumping everything on her at once. At least, that's what I think they meant, because what they actually said was, "We're trying to weed her in gradually." Now, I've heard of things being "weeded out," but this concept of "weeding in," I have to admit is a new one on me, and one that tends to obscure, rather than illuminate, whatever their meaning might have been with that odd turn of phrase. I suppose only time will tell if she takes root, or sprouts, or whatever it might be that would demonstrate that they did a good job of weeding her in. Personally, I'm looking forward to this process coming to fruition, and even now, I'm germinating a truck patch full of bad agricultural puns to dig up for it, E - I - E - I - O!

And so what may be happening in the wonderful wide world of weather you might wonder, and well might you wonder, especially nowadays. Alert readers may remember a "mystery" Christmas present for Bill that was going to arrive after the holiday, since Santa's elves could not contrive a way to disguise it enough so that delivering it to the house would not spoil the surprise. It showed up at our front porch on Wednesday with no mystery about it, since from the time it left the truck, it was apparent to anyone from pictures and descriptions all over the box on every side and in several languages, exactly what it was. That is, a handy new electric snow thrower from our new friends at Snow Joe (and please feel free to visit their web site at http://www.snowjoe.com/ and see for yourself) where they assure us that its manageable size and reliable habits make it the perfect solution to our winter weather woes. This would be in stark contrast to our unwieldy and cantankerous gas model, which has never really warmed up to the idea of throwing snow to any great extent, and basically refuses to operate under any inclement conditions that include, for instance, cold or snow. We had high hopes for our new Snow Joe, and looked forward to trying it out at the next flake-fulness opportunity, to see what it could do with our sidewalks and driveway. But alas, what is more likely to happen is that having this at our house will almost certainly guarantee a total lack of snow, at least in our neighborhood, for the rest of the winter and probably for years beyond. I suppose in its own way, that's about the best kind of snow thrower anyone could have, the kind that entirely prevents it from snowing in the first place.

In the true holiday spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation, Bill feels I would be remiss if I didn't re-visit the situation with our disappointing Christmas movie experience, and let the record show that the problem was not with "Holiday in Handcuffs," which we also saw just before Christmas, and also fits the category of a "newer Christmas movie that was unknown to us, and with an uncertain pedigree ..." In spite of its title, we found it a fluffy seasonal confection starring the delightful Melissa Joan Hart (late of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" fame) and the very handsome Mario Lopez as the unwilling love interest, whose rugged good looks would seem to be at odds with the fact that he is completely unfamiliar to either of us. Frankly, we didn't expect much of it, but were pleasantly surprised, and felt it was sweet without being cloying and funny without being stupid, which is certainly rare enough to be remarkable. No, our holiday disappointment came in the form of the legendary "A Christmas Story," which we had never seen before, and has apparently become a classic of epic magnitude, that has been hailed by critics and beloved by audiences worldwide. Of course, it's true that you can't argue with success, but there's no accounting for taste, and people can call us crazy (they'd better not!) but we just didn't like it, in spite of all the accolades that have been heaped upon it over the years. So I'm happy to set the record straight on the holiday movie fiasco, and not cast aspersions on Melissa Joan Hart, or that hunky Mario Lopez, who can put the ho-ho-ho into my holiday any time.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help but notice recently when I was checking my email, that I had received a note which identified itself as The Latest From Vista Print, with this arresting subject line -- [[ "Looking To Personalize Your Business Cards?" ]] Gee, I hope so! Here I'm thinking, it wouldn't make much sense to have business cards that weren't personalized, for heaven's sake, or just had blank lines where you needed to fill in all the information for yourself. In fact, it wouldn't be a gross exaggeration to say that business cards are the very epitome of personalization, since their sole purpose is to identify the person they belong to, and if our friends at Vista Print think that they can make any money by selling bulk generic non-personalized business cards, I'm afraid that I might have some very important news for whoever came up with that idea, and it would not be good. I might argue that only a crazy person would go to all the trouble of having business cards printed that were NOT personalized, so you know they couldn't be for me, because after all, everyone knows that I am -

Not A Crazy Person