Down For The Count
Hello World,
Happy Leap Day! Now that's something that you don't hear often, because Leap Days are rare enough, and even more rare to appear on a Friday along with the rest of my notes, so this is indeed a red-letter occasion and one for the books. This is a big day for anyone born on February 29th, since they have so few opportunities to celebrate their birthdays on the actual day they were born, but as special days go, Leap Day has failed to develop enough traditions or rituals to make it worth celebrating by the general population. I suppose that's better than taking a page out of the books of some other holidays, and following in the unwelcome footsteps of the Waitangi Day riots or St. Patrick's Day lawsuits, or even the Ramadan pilgrim stampedes, but it would be nice to have something more fun and festive to look forward to every four years, instead of just confusing all the calendar makers for nothing. Speaking of which, at work they had to circulate a memo to all departments, alerting them that the time cards had arrived from the payroll processing company with the wrong date on them, and to please use them anyway, in spite of saying March 2 instead of March 1. Honestly, you'd think a place that does payroll for a living would be used to the idea of Leap Year by now, which has been in effect for centuries already, and wouldn't go ahead and print up all their time cards with the wrong dates, as if it would be beyond their abilities to plan for something that happens regularly every four years and right on schedule every time. This is about on the same order of surprise as sunrise, or Spring, or even death and taxes, which is to say, no surprise at all.
Speaking of surprises, in the local area the winter had been so mild and pleasant for the most part, that many of us were surprised to see actual snow last week, with enough accumulations and messy conditions that would have closed schools all over the region, except for the fact that they were already closed for winter break anyway, and a good thing, too. I braved the conditions and went to work, where it was business as usual at the hospital, since practically nothing keeps medical people from getting to their jobs. Where Bill works, they closed for the day, so he got to spend the day at home, playing with his new snow-thrower for the first time since he got it at Christmas. He turned it loose on the walks and even our long and winding driveway, and was satisfied with the results. Later in the day, the snow turned to freezing rain, and the snow plows came along and made their snow piles in front of the house, so Bill shoveled out a space for the Escort the old-fashioned way, because that would have been beyond the snow-thrower's abilities. But for what it is capable of handling, it did a fine job, and at least Bill had a chance to try it out and see how it works, after sitting around in our living room for two months and not a flake in sight.
In the Sports section of our local paper on Thursday, there was a story about a young man who won the boys slalom at the New York State high school ski championships in Lake Placid. The article actually starts with this shocking assertion: "Mahopac senior Billy O'Connor has been making trips to the Adirondacks with his family for countless years." I said to Bill, "No, he hasn't!" After all, the kid is only 17 years old as it is, and he couldn't have gone to the Adirondacks before he was born, so even I would have no trouble at all counting the entire sum total of these supposedly "countless" years, starting at 17 and working my way backwards. In fact, I could probably do it in record time. It might not occur to the local sports reporters that the expression "countless" is more appropriately used for seemingly limitless quantities of things, like sand on the beach or stars in the heavens, and certainly not high school athletes who aren't even old enough to vote, much less drink. As a matter of fact, I'm three times the age of this youngster, and I could still count all the years that I've done something in my life, because human life-spans are just too short to use the term "countless" about them, even for the math-challenged among us, and I ought to know.
Meanwhile at work, the people in charge of our Patient Satisfaction Team decided to videotape our skit on Patient Satisfaction, as it had been presented live at the management luncheon in October, and they thought that having it preserved for posterity would be useful for educational purposes. So they notified everyone on the committee that the taping would take place this morning, at an empty room on the 7th floor, and we should all meet there at the appointed time and be prepared to reprise our roles for the camera. Anyone who remembers the vicissitudes of this skit from the first time around will not be surprised to learn, obviously, that didn't happen, and in spectacular fashion. This is the same skit, with 7 speaking parts, and this time, only two of the people showed up for their parts, plus one other person from the committee, which achieves a new level of failure even for this skit's standards, which were pretty darned low to start with. We used the three people we did have, and then sent the team leader out in the hallways to round up any available staff who could fill in for the missing four other parts, including the grouchy patient, who is central to the plot. Since the hijacked staff outnumbered the committee members, our team can't even take the credit for it, although we were lucky that the emergency fill-ins played their parts well and cheerfully. Between setting up, gathering props and equipment, rehearsing (which didn't help, by the way) and actual taping, it took almost two hours to record what amounts to a 5 minute skit. I'm sure we all did the best we could, but I can't imagine how bad the finished product is going to look, no matter how they try to fix it in the editing, I'm afraid that it would be beyond saving at this point. One thing I am sure of is that YouTube is certainly not waiting for this to see the light of day, and that would be putting it mildly.
Also at work, I had been taking a walk around the hospital campus recently and was surprised to see a Christmas tree at this late date, that had been discarded and left at the curb. For anyone who might have supposed that it was just any old evergreen or pine branches being cleared out of someone's yard, I can assure you that it still had a string of Christmas lights attached to the branches when I saw it. I went past it a few times in my travels, and after I noticed it was still there a week later, I started to feel sorry for it, and after that, my mind just totally snapped. I found myself thinking, by golly, it's a Christmas tree, I could drag it to the parking lot and take it home, then cut it apart for firewood, because they burn great. I'm thinking by the end of February, it must be good and dry, plus it would be a nice manageable apartment-sized tree that would be a snap to bring home and saw apart. So then instead of Daffy Duck showing up ("Shoot me now! Shoot me now!") like he should have, after work I grabbed hold of it and dragged it all the way down the block to the parking lot, where its true nature finally reared its ugly head. Far from being a little and manageable 5-foot tree for a small apartment, it proved itself to be at least a 7-foot behemoth with a large no-nonsense trunk, and way too heavy to just toss in the back of the Escort with abandon. In fact, even with all of the seats folded down, and the trunk on the dashboard, the beast wouldn't fit in the car, and I had to break off all of the top branches to close the hatchback. Trying to drive with this unwieldy cargo taking up 90% of the interior was an arboreal experience that I would not care to repeat, and when I finally got home, I found that it was impossible to wrestle it out of the Escort without using my loppers to cut off the lower branches and pull it out the front door. I left it in the backyard, with its tattered string of Christmas lights trailing after it, and I have to say that my enthusiasm for sawing it apart has definitely waned to a considerable degree. And I know that no matter how many countless years I may have the Escort, I will never get all of the pine needles out of it, or should I say, countless pine needles.
Happy Leap Day! Now that's something that you don't hear often, because Leap Days are rare enough, and even more rare to appear on a Friday along with the rest of my notes, so this is indeed a red-letter occasion and one for the books. This is a big day for anyone born on February 29th, since they have so few opportunities to celebrate their birthdays on the actual day they were born, but as special days go, Leap Day has failed to develop enough traditions or rituals to make it worth celebrating by the general population. I suppose that's better than taking a page out of the books of some other holidays, and following in the unwelcome footsteps of the Waitangi Day riots or St. Patrick's Day lawsuits, or even the Ramadan pilgrim stampedes, but it would be nice to have something more fun and festive to look forward to every four years, instead of just confusing all the calendar makers for nothing. Speaking of which, at work they had to circulate a memo to all departments, alerting them that the time cards had arrived from the payroll processing company with the wrong date on them, and to please use them anyway, in spite of saying March 2 instead of March 1. Honestly, you'd think a place that does payroll for a living would be used to the idea of Leap Year by now, which has been in effect for centuries already, and wouldn't go ahead and print up all their time cards with the wrong dates, as if it would be beyond their abilities to plan for something that happens regularly every four years and right on schedule every time. This is about on the same order of surprise as sunrise, or Spring, or even death and taxes, which is to say, no surprise at all.
Speaking of surprises, in the local area the winter had been so mild and pleasant for the most part, that many of us were surprised to see actual snow last week, with enough accumulations and messy conditions that would have closed schools all over the region, except for the fact that they were already closed for winter break anyway, and a good thing, too. I braved the conditions and went to work, where it was business as usual at the hospital, since practically nothing keeps medical people from getting to their jobs. Where Bill works, they closed for the day, so he got to spend the day at home, playing with his new snow-thrower for the first time since he got it at Christmas. He turned it loose on the walks and even our long and winding driveway, and was satisfied with the results. Later in the day, the snow turned to freezing rain, and the snow plows came along and made their snow piles in front of the house, so Bill shoveled out a space for the Escort the old-fashioned way, because that would have been beyond the snow-thrower's abilities. But for what it is capable of handling, it did a fine job, and at least Bill had a chance to try it out and see how it works, after sitting around in our living room for two months and not a flake in sight.
In the Sports section of our local paper on Thursday, there was a story about a young man who won the boys slalom at the New York State high school ski championships in Lake Placid. The article actually starts with this shocking assertion: "Mahopac senior Billy O'Connor has been making trips to the Adirondacks with his family for countless years." I said to Bill, "No, he hasn't!" After all, the kid is only 17 years old as it is, and he couldn't have gone to the Adirondacks before he was born, so even I would have no trouble at all counting the entire sum total of these supposedly "countless" years, starting at 17 and working my way backwards. In fact, I could probably do it in record time. It might not occur to the local sports reporters that the expression "countless" is more appropriately used for seemingly limitless quantities of things, like sand on the beach or stars in the heavens, and certainly not high school athletes who aren't even old enough to vote, much less drink. As a matter of fact, I'm three times the age of this youngster, and I could still count all the years that I've done something in my life, because human life-spans are just too short to use the term "countless" about them, even for the math-challenged among us, and I ought to know.
Meanwhile at work, the people in charge of our Patient Satisfaction Team decided to videotape our skit on Patient Satisfaction, as it had been presented live at the management luncheon in October, and they thought that having it preserved for posterity would be useful for educational purposes. So they notified everyone on the committee that the taping would take place this morning, at an empty room on the 7th floor, and we should all meet there at the appointed time and be prepared to reprise our roles for the camera. Anyone who remembers the vicissitudes of this skit from the first time around will not be surprised to learn, obviously, that didn't happen, and in spectacular fashion. This is the same skit, with 7 speaking parts, and this time, only two of the people showed up for their parts, plus one other person from the committee, which achieves a new level of failure even for this skit's standards, which were pretty darned low to start with. We used the three people we did have, and then sent the team leader out in the hallways to round up any available staff who could fill in for the missing four other parts, including the grouchy patient, who is central to the plot. Since the hijacked staff outnumbered the committee members, our team can't even take the credit for it, although we were lucky that the emergency fill-ins played their parts well and cheerfully. Between setting up, gathering props and equipment, rehearsing (which didn't help, by the way) and actual taping, it took almost two hours to record what amounts to a 5 minute skit. I'm sure we all did the best we could, but I can't imagine how bad the finished product is going to look, no matter how they try to fix it in the editing, I'm afraid that it would be beyond saving at this point. One thing I am sure of is that YouTube is certainly not waiting for this to see the light of day, and that would be putting it mildly.
Also at work, I had been taking a walk around the hospital campus recently and was surprised to see a Christmas tree at this late date, that had been discarded and left at the curb. For anyone who might have supposed that it was just any old evergreen or pine branches being cleared out of someone's yard, I can assure you that it still had a string of Christmas lights attached to the branches when I saw it. I went past it a few times in my travels, and after I noticed it was still there a week later, I started to feel sorry for it, and after that, my mind just totally snapped. I found myself thinking, by golly, it's a Christmas tree, I could drag it to the parking lot and take it home, then cut it apart for firewood, because they burn great. I'm thinking by the end of February, it must be good and dry, plus it would be a nice manageable apartment-sized tree that would be a snap to bring home and saw apart. So then instead of Daffy Duck showing up ("Shoot me now! Shoot me now!") like he should have, after work I grabbed hold of it and dragged it all the way down the block to the parking lot, where its true nature finally reared its ugly head. Far from being a little and manageable 5-foot tree for a small apartment, it proved itself to be at least a 7-foot behemoth with a large no-nonsense trunk, and way too heavy to just toss in the back of the Escort with abandon. In fact, even with all of the seats folded down, and the trunk on the dashboard, the beast wouldn't fit in the car, and I had to break off all of the top branches to close the hatchback. Trying to drive with this unwieldy cargo taking up 90% of the interior was an arboreal experience that I would not care to repeat, and when I finally got home, I found that it was impossible to wrestle it out of the Escort without using my loppers to cut off the lower branches and pull it out the front door. I left it in the backyard, with its tattered string of Christmas lights trailing after it, and I have to say that my enthusiasm for sawing it apart has definitely waned to a considerable degree. And I know that no matter how many countless years I may have the Escort, I will never get all of the pine needles out of it, or should I say, countless pine needles.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:44 PM
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