Bunny Hop

Hello World,

And so here we've come to the end of yet another in a long and seemingly unending series of weeks, and before the next week is out, we'll be ushering in a whole new month, believe that or don't. The plain fact of it is that we're right at the brink of the last week in April, and although it might be premature to hope that we've left the 40-degree weather behind us at long last, it did seem equally preposterous to have days bordering on 80 degrees when it isn't even May, for heaven's sake. One thing you could say about April in these parts, it certainly couldn't seem to make up its mind what it wanted to do with itself, at least in terms of the weather. It reminded me of an indecisive teenager trying to get dressed, only instead of clothes, it had a closet full of weather conditions, and it just kept tossing them out one after another to see if anything fit. "Cold? I guess that would be okay .... oh, maybe not. Say, here's some rain, we haven't had that for a while ... Gee, that heat wave looks pretty good, I could probably pair that with some thunderstorms .... Hey, I forgot all about those snow flurries over there, that might be a nice change of pace .... That sunshine is still in good shape, but I'm so tired of the same old thing ..... Oh my gosh, where did I get all this fog, I'm never going to use all of that ..... I wonder what would happen if I tried putting high winds and hail together .... Whatever happened to that ice storm, I could have sworn it was back here somewhere ..... " Meanwhile, Comrade Mischka is at the bottom of the stairs, tapping his foot and shouting, "We haven't got all day, nyet?" At least, that's how it seemed around here, anyway.

However, I will say that all of the unconventional weather did nothing to stem the tide of spring flowers in our yard, as they put on a show in abundance of riotous color. They were like the Energizer Bunny, they just kept on going and going, everywhere you looked. There were even tulips, not just early tulips, but regular tulips, which is an innovation that I never expected to see in April, and certainly not in our yard, where our juvenile delinquent squirrels routinely chew the heads off the plants before they bloom every year. For some reason, we had a bumper crop of tulips, and in April no less, and I was just thinking to myself that it could only be the end of the world, because there was no other logical explanation. "Why, the next thing you know, there'll be grape hyacinths!" I was saying this to myself in an affronted manner, as I walked through the back yard past waves of red and yellow tulips, and just at that moment, I happened upon a whole clump of grape hyacinths, and looking like April was not a bit too early for them. Of course, everyone knows there are no standards anymore. One thing I was expecting early, but apparently isn't, would be our neighbor's beautiful dogwoods along our driveway, and which I look forward to every year. But when I wasn't expecting it, on the other side of the yard, the magnolia burst into bloom, with its snowy blossoms wafting their wonderful fragrance through the air. Right after that, the entire front yard exploded in a sea of violets, while the backyard was choking under a flood of garlic mustard, which is described by our newspaper as "a foreign invasive weed," and they're not kidding. No amount of crazy April weather was slowing those things down, not by a long shot.

This is normally where I'd be regaling everyone with tales from the Secretary's Day luncheon put on by our friends at the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce, where every year is a fun and interesting adventure, and a good time is had by all. Not so fast! I finally called the lady who coordinates the event for the hospital, and told her that I hadn't gotten an invitation, and this was the first I found out that there was a decision made that the hospital would not be participating in the luncheon this year. Now, I've been working there since 1989, and this is the first year ever that the hospital didn't send dozens of people to this shindig, so I was simply aghast at this horrible news. No boring speeches by the mayor! No goofy plaques or proclamations for local legislators and council members! No raffle prizes, bad banquet food or goodie bags! The very idea was unthinkable, and the unthinkable had indeed happened. Oh, the humanity!

Of course, it must be said that I like the luncheon as much as the next fellow, and probably more than most, but missing the luncheon was not what bothered me the most. (Although historically, the hospital's employees take up most of the tables, so I can't imagine what kind of luncheon they could have had without us.) I understand that in difficult economic times, unpopular decisions must be made to cut down on expenses, and the luncheon was just another casualty, as the Christmas party had been in December. Mostly what I objected to was that the hospital provided no alternative to recognize the secretaries and administrative professionals on their special day. There was no party in the cafeteria, no banners and goodies in the lobby, no picnic in the parking lot. At the very least, I thought they should have invited all of us to the Auditorium, where the hospital President could have given a boring speech and thanked us for our contributions to the organization, then hand everyone a paper certificate or a key chain with the hospital logo, they must have a gazillion of them, for heaven's sake. Being neglected on the one day that was invented just so that the clerical workers would not be taken for granted, well, it was a bitter pill to swallow. I was very upset by the whole situation, and decided to take the afternoon off anyway, and entertain myself in spite of having no luncheon to go to, no thank you so very much not. Bill, who is chivalrous in the extreme, was gallant enough to take time out of his busy day and treat me to lunch, which was a fun and unusual outing for us in the middle of the day. But it certainly wasn't the same as the fabled Secretary's Day luncheon of lore and legend, and I ought to know, because I would be at the forefront of its legions of disappointed fans. Honestly, first it was HealthStream, and now this. At this rate, we're not going to have anything to make fun of pretty soon.

Speaking of things we can't make fun of, alert readers may have wondered why they never heard anything about my high school reunion in 2007. Remember this graduating class was so full of party animals that they had the first reunion in 1977, a scant 5 years after graduation, when most of us were still living with our parents and acting like, well, a bunch of high school students still. Talk about the Energizer Bunny of reunions, that was certainly us, and in spades. There was a reunion every 5 years, and here again, I ought to know, because I went to each and every single one of them, in 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997 and all the way up to 2002, and I still have the party dresses to prove it. So, starting in 2006, I began checking the reunion message boards with our friends at classmates.com, waiting to get the early word on the 2007 reunion, so I could be prepared for it. Well, I checked early and often, all through 2006 and 2007, but it was all in vain, because there never was a reunion for our class, for the first time since we graduated. I would not have been surprised, if we had skipped other years along the way, or if the events were unpopular or poorly attended, but each one was a rollicking success, and all over the room, you could always hear people saying, "We should do this every year!" So for our 35th year to come and go with no fanfare, not even a smidgen of interest in having a reunion after the previous six, it was certainly unexpected and disappointingly so. I suppose we should be encouraged that the party animals from the Class of 1972 have finally grown up, but for crying out loud, did they all have to finally grow up at the same time?

These certainly have been the times that try mens' souls, not to mention secretaries, and it would be all too easy to find ourselves down in the dumps. Frankly, I've never found the dumps all that interesting, so I wasn't keen on going down there. After my "mini Secretary's Day lunch" with Bill, I decided to spend some time at Tony's Nursery in nearby Larchmont, just strolling among the beautiful flowers, shrubs and trees, plus attractive landscape elements, and enjoying a lovely day in the great outdoors. It was very relaxing, and I felt invigorated by all of the robust vegetation just bursting out all around me. In one section just outside the greenhouse, they have flats of various ground covers and low maintenance plants like vinca and clover, that will pretty much do well anywhere and no matter what. I admit that I did a double-take at the sight of pots full of Thorndale Ivy and Pachysandra, and I couldn't help but wonder if they were really selling that stuff? I happen to know people who have spent a lot of money, and countless hours of manpower, to have those eradicated from their yards, and often with mixed success, because once they get a toe-hold, they're practically impossible to discourage. It made me wonder if next, I was going to see a sign that said:
================
Now On Sale!
~*~ POISON IVY ~*~
For Those Problem Areas In Your Yard
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Well, that would certainly be an idea whose time has not yet come, and in fact, might never come, although it must be said that just being a bad idea is no guarantee of failure any longer, heaven knows. After all, we may not have HealthStream, or the Secretary's Day luncheon, or my high school reunion to kick around anymore, but by golly, the poison ivy just keeps on going and going and going .....

Bull Feathers

Hello World,

Well, I don't know about where you are, but here in our little corner of Paradise, it seems that Spring has finally sprung, that is, if extreme and unpredictable swings of weather conditions can be considered the hallmark of the season, then this must be the place. Last week on Thursday, it was about 70 degrees, followed by 40 degrees on Friday. On Saturday, it was supposed to rain all day, but instead, it turned out to be full of bright sunshine and 70 degrees, so that when I was outdoors doing yard work, I was sweating up a storm, and that was without sawing any firewood for camping. I was picking up dead leaves from last year by our front porch, and finally got so tired of getting tangled up in the extension cords from the birdbath heaters, that I just pulled them both out and put the heaters and cords away for the summer. Obviously, I'm only telling you this so that when this rash action on my part ushers in a cold snap of record low temperatures throughout the region, everyone will know who to blame. On the other hand, it was on Monday that I saw my first robin of the season, and we even have early tulips, so that's got to give us some hope for the future and a reason for living, by golly.

Bill, who is not always recognized for his poetic nature and sensitivity, objected to the inelegant name of Blue Squill for some pretty spring flowers in our yard, but he was off the mark there. We have very few Blue Squill along our driveway, and they live up to their name by being small, drab and unremarkable, and they also do not reproduce themselves widely, like other spring flowers, which is probably just as well. I had bought a bunch of them years ago from a garden catalog, which assured me these would be the first flowers to come up in the spring, since as it claimed, "They laugh at snow!" Don't you believe it. I never see them until all my crocus and half of my daffodils are already done and gone, so in terms of their credibility, I consider them the used car salesmen of spring flowers. As for their name, ah, there's another whole kettle of fish, or as Bamboo Harvester would say, a horse of a different color. (An alert reader sent me a music file with the theme song from the Mr. Ed TV show, with the note: "Well, have fun with the attachment, and remember, it's not quite as good with, 'Hello, my name is Bamboo Harvester'!" He wasn't just whistling Dixie, because as we all know, a horse is a horse, of course, of course.) If you look up Blue Squill with our friends at www.wikipedia.org, you'll be directed to a "disambiguation" page which sniffs, "Blue Squill is a much over-worked name for a variety of plants" while it appears to be holding these ambiguous offenders away from itself at arm's length with a pair of tongs. And it turns out that the supposed Blue Squill along our driveway is really Scilla Siberica, and they're welcome to it, although nobody will ever convince me that "they laugh at snow" in Siberia, since as we all know, no one laughs in Mother Russia.

So, what then do we suppose are the pretty blue flowers all over the rest of our yard that so captivated Bill's attention? Darned if I could remember, that's for sure. Like the Squill, I had gotten them years ago, and planted them in a couple of spots, but these have really taken off, and now you're just as likely to find them anywhere. I'm sure at one time, I even knew what they were called, but those days are long since past, and I simply could not call to mind what they were, although I had no lack of names I could come up with, that I knew they weren't. I searched for them online, and finally turned them up at last, with the unwieldy name of Chionodoxa Luciliae, more commonly known as Glory of the Snow. (Don't believe that one either.) I'm sure even Bill would agree that's a pretty enough name for these pretty blue flowers, and while they're not the earliest thing to come up in our yard, they do put on quite a show once they get going, and that's good enough for me.

So now that we've sorted out these confused botanicals, that just leaves us with the yellow mystery flowers at church. No matter how I searched for them, I just couldn't come up with something that looked like them, although a few things came tantalizingly close, like Chrysogonum Virginianum. However, the only place that I could find selling the little darlings was a web site called The Gay Gardener, and the way things are going in the Lutheran church nowadays, I couldn't see that we would have bought any flowers from that source, and that's putting it mildly. I happened to be at church on Wednesday afternoon so the water company could replace its meter, and bumped into some people having Bible study downstairs, and while I was at it, I asked the Pastor point blank, what were those amazing yellow flowers all over the rock garden? Quick like a bunny, he said they were buttercups, and they were just weeds, they hadn't been planted, and spread by themselves all over the place. Now, in my family, this is what we call the Grandma Tango School of Folk Wisdom, which is that if you say something quick and decisive, people assume that it must be true. It happens that we have buttercup in our yard, and plenty of it, so I wasn't falling for that, because these little beauties look nothing like buttercup. The common form, known as Meadow Buttercup, has 5-petal yellow flowers on tall stems and digitate leaves (with points like a maple leaf) while the church flowers are short 8-petal yellow flowers with round leaves, and I ought to know, because I dug one up and brought it home for research purposes. Of course, we have a yard full of juvenile delinquent squirrels, so they dug it out of the flowerpot that I planted it in, no thank you very much not, and I had to replant it in the pot and then put the pot inside a Hav-a-Heart trap for safekeeping. I said to Pastor that they looked to me like violets, but he said they don't have tubers, and I was also leaning towards yellow vinca, except for the unfortunate fact that there is no such thing. But while I was looking up Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus Acris) I came across a distant relative called Ranunculus Repens, or Creeping Buttercup, that looked suspiciously like our mystery church flowers, and which is described in wikipedia as "invasive," so the Pastor might have been on to something there after all. He said he was very happy with them in the rock garden, because they come right up, do their thing, and then go away. I couldn't help but blurt out, "They're Protestants!" and I never thought a bunch of little old ladies at Bible study could laugh so hard.

In other religious news, of course, the Pope is in town, which may account for those rare moments when the Mets and Rangers both win on the same day, although I wouldn't count on that. One event on the Pope's itinerary for this visit is celebrating Mass at Yankee Stadium, and I said to a coworker that it was nice for the Pope to be a part of the stadium's swan song, since they'll be replacing the stadium next year, so having the Pope there would be a fitting highlight on the farewell tour of The House That Ruth Built. He said that it would be a little crowded to have the Pope there while they were trying to play baseball, so the Yankees would have to get out of town beforehand. On the contrary, I said, the way the Yankees have been playing, it could only help for them to be there with the Pope, and in fact, they should probably ask him to bless their bats and gloves as an added inducement to success. I call it a Papal Bull-pen.

Meanwhile across the river, the Mets have been clawing their way back up to respectability, after a sluggish start, to the delight of their devoted fans throughout the region, and especially in our house. One day last week, the Mets game was on television at the same time as the Rangers game, so we had the TiVo record the replay of the Mets game the following morning, so we wouldn't miss it. We watched the replay later, and it was just as entertaining as it would have been live, plus it had one curious feature that we were not expecting. It was later in the game and the Mets first baseman, Carlos Delgado, had struck out to end the inning. There was a commercial break, and when they came back to the game, here was the Mets second baseman, Damion Easley, at the plate. Hold the palominos! I said to Bill, "What happened to the Phillies? They didn't let them have a time at bat." Now, I will be the first to admit that I often fall asleep during baseball games, which does tend to make the contest seem confused and disjointed, but that's not what happened this time, because I was wide awake through that entire sequence. And I don't mind saying that I'm in favor of a revised game plan whereby the opposing team doesn't get a chance to hit (especially the Phillies) because I think that would really work in the Mets favor, what with their questionable pitching at the moment. We found out later that this replay was a truncated version of the original broadcast, and the game in its original form did include both teams coming up to bat in equally alternating half innings, which is only to be expected after decades of baseball tradition. But I would be less than candid if I said that I didn't prefer the new and improved version, where only the Mets get to hit, and the heck with tradition. As long as the Pope is in town, if we can get His Holiness to swing this one, that would really be the kind of Papal Bull-pen that I can live with!

I Rest My Case

Hello World,

So here we are, practically in the middle of April, and what have we got to show for it, I ask you that? On the other hand, the weather seems to be stuck back in February, with days upon damp, blustery days one after another. It hasn't seemed to put a dent in the spring flowers, which are bursting forth in cheerful waves of color everywhere you look, because their progress is based on length of day, and not temperature, or so I've been told. It must be true, because the hyacinths are outdoing themselves all over our yard, and even though I thought it was much too early, there are already windflowers, and even the tulips are a lot farther along than I would have expected by now. At church, they have pansies in their flower boxes, while in the back, the rock garden is ablaze with sunny yellow flowers, which are a mystery to me, or I'd be happy to recommend them by name. Of course, they may be some sort of special "Flora Ecclesiastica" which only grows on church property, and if you try to dig it up and plant it in unconsecrated ground, it turns into poison ivy instead. That would be my luck.

Speaking of April, probably not more than a few of us remember that Daylight Saving Time used to start in April, not back at the beginning of March like it does now, and in fact, your average person would think there would be no reason for anyone to remember this vestigial trivia any longer. Not so fast! For anyone using outdated technology, as we are at the hospital, the software is appropriately programmed to change the system time to account for Daylight Saving Time, but it only makes this change at the time DST would go into effect back when the software was developed, which in the case of Windows2000NT, is now about 10 years ago. It does no good to try and convince the computer that DST has already taken effect in early March, and please change the time accordingly, because it will have none of that, no matter what you do. So finally, Monday was a big day in our office, when our computers finally decided to join the rest of the world by springing ahead to the correct Daylight Saving Time, since the software is immovable in its conviction that DST happens in April and not March, and we reached that precious milestone at long last. I had no such luck with the copier or fax machine though, even though they are set to adjust for DST, they resolutely resisted this time-tripping tomfoolery, and stood their ground, an hour behind everyone else, with defiance etched all over their features. I finally had to reset them manually (like I have time for this!) but you could see that they were disgusted with the whole situation, and I can't say that I blame them.

While we're on the technology front, alert readers may remember that for my birthday, I had gotten a new 19" monitor, and it's a beauty, a sleek black V7 model D1912 with LCD screen. Earlier this week, I hooked it up to my computer, and what a life-changing experience that is. My previous monitor was not old, and it was certainly not small at 17 inches, but the new monitor is so big and bright and sharp, it's just a totally different viewing sensation. Even though I'm still using all the same programs, and visiting the same web sites, everything looks shiny and new, and because it's so big, everything is so much easier to read than before. When I first set it up, I watched a slide-show of some of my pictures, and I said to Bill later that on the new monitor, the pictures looked better than when I took them in the first place. Even though the screen size is larger than my previous monitor, because the new one is LCD, it's almost completely flat, so it weighs next to nothing and takes up practically no space at all. I remember when I found out at work what a drawback that can be, if like me, you tend to use the top of your monitor as a "holding area" for loose papers that you don't know what else to do with, or you tape things to the sides of the monitor so you remember them. These new-fangled models don't have enough flat surfaces you can do that with, and it takes some getting used to, before you can find other places for your errant papers. So that's one thing that I miss about my clunky old monitor, but I wouldn't give up my new one for anything, now that I've seen what a difference it makes, when everything is big as life and bright as day.

Meanwhile, taking another swing at the Irish songbook, we have one of our alert readers to thank for the following information:

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About your message about Irish Songs, Danny Boy was written by a Brit who had never been to Ireland. At one of the Irish Fests we go to in June, they had the Clancy Brothers as some of the entertainment, and they noted that Ireland is famous for their happy war songs and sad love songs.
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Hmmm. There certainly seems to be room for improvement in that scenario, I'm thinking. Also on the topic of room for improvement, I'm sure that many people scoffed when I said that it was a losing proposition to try and play baseball in certain cities in April, in spite of what the schedule-makers think, so I may have been the only person not surprised to see this on the AOL Welcome screen this week:

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DENVER (AP)
Thursday's Atlanta Braves - Colorado Rockies game
at Coors Field was postponed because of snow
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Well, I rest my case. Speaking of resting, what with all the stress and confusion of modern life, you might think it would do a body good to engage in the age-old, time-tested remedies of meditation and other Eastern relaxation techniques. Not so fast! If you look up Meditation with our friends at www.wikipedia.org, as Bill did, you'll find this surprising and sobering information:

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A growing body of clinical literature is now starting to address the phenomenon of meditation-related problems. Several side-effects have been reported, including uncomfortable kinesthetic sensations, mild dissociation and psychosis-like symptoms. From a clinical study of twenty-seven long term meditators, Shapiro reported such adverse effects as depression, relaxation-induced anxiety and panic, paradoxical increases in tension, impaired reality testing, confusion, disorientation and feeling 'spaced out'. The possibility that meditation might trigger strong emotional reactions is also reported by Kutz, Borysenko & Benson. Therefore, meditation might cause serious side effects, even among long-term practitioners, and might even, in some instances, be contraindicated. Particularly in the Chinese Qigong tradition, stories of unguided practitioners or inexpertly guided students developing chronic mental and physical health problems as a result of their attempts at meditation training are not uncommon. The identification of this syndrome has led to the inclusion of a category called Qi-Gong Psychotic Reaction.
========================

Panic? Psychosis? Depression? Hey, I don't need to meditate for that, it comes walking right into my office, every day of the week. I've never heard of such a thing as "relaxation-induced anxiety," which either sounds like the world's worst oxymoron, or the frat boys at Yale are pulling our legs with a meditation spoof that snuck past the censors at wikipedia. Why, the next thing you know, they'll be telling us that there's no such thing as Flora Ecclesiastica after all. Oh, wait a minute .....

A Horse of a Different Color

Hello World,

And so here we are in April already, and while many days have been abundantly sunny, the one thing that keeps our thoughts from turning to spring is that the temperatures have certainly not cooperated, with readings consistently in the 40s and worse. As a change of pace, then we'll have a day where it gets up into the 50s, but with booming thunderstorms. I tell you, it's been enough to make any self-respecting harbinger of spring just crawl right back inside their burrow and give it up as a lost cause. And yet, in spite of it all, those very harbingers are already out and about, and doing their best to dispel the gloom that the inclement weather has left in its wake. The returning spring birds are out in force and chirping their nesting songs at full voice. The crocus have been peeping out of the cold earth for almost a month, but now they're really putting on a show, in riotous profusions of color. Last week, we had our first jonquil in the backyard, and although I thought it was too cold, right after that a couple of our daffodils opened as well. At work, the forsythia is well on its way, at least on the sunny side of the campus, while along our driveway, I find the pretty anemones and blue squill have joined the party. These welcome reminders of better days ahead are like a breath of fresh air, and give us all reason to hope for a brighter tomorrow. At least, that's what I told myself last week when the bird bath heaters got disconnected accidentally, and both bird baths froze overnight. Et tu, Comrade Mischka?

Of course, not every harbinger of spring is as welcome as, well, a breath of spring, and I ought to know. It was on March 30th, not even April mind you, that I saw the first dandelion in the yard, as big and yellow as brass, and twice as bold. For heaven's sake, the hyacinths aren't even out yet, I certainly don't expect to see dandelions at this point. But I suppose just like the revised Daylight Saving Time schedule, some meddlesome bureaucrat has come along and saddled us with dandelions that start extra early in the spring and last even longer in the fall, no thank you very much not. ("Perk up your Thanksgiving centerpiece with our special Marathon Dandelions, the new hardy variety that laughs at frost and snow!") The other thing I was not expecting to see this week was a moth, flitting around outside the hospital, and although the sun was out, I can't believe that he was all that thrilled with the temperature, which was hovering around 50, and that just barely. On the other hand, he might have found a patch of dandelions, and been just as happy as a clam, for all I know. A special early spring clam, of course.

Something else that didn't wait until April, but got a jump on things in March, was Opening Day for baseball teams around the country, and for their legions of fans, life is once again worth living. It might seem ridiculous for the Mets to open their season on March 31st, but at least they were playing in Florida at the time. The Yankees tried the same thing in the Bronx, and were soundly rained out, and not to mention, cold besides. Whoever thought that baseball could be played anywhere in the North, in March or November, without a domed stadium, is just living in some sort of fool's paradise, where climate is not a factor, or perhaps expects the weather to just blithely cooperate, as we all know the weather is so famous for. (NOT!) Another possibility is that the schedule-makers have never actually set foot in places like New York, Boston, Cleveland or Chicago in any month that has an "R" in it, and as a result, have no idea what the actual conditions are really like. Sort of like a major league shellfish, only with a considerably smaller brain. In fact, it was probably that same shellfish, I mean schedule-maker, who came up with the idea for two teams to open their season with a series in Tokyo, of all places, a week ahead of everyone else. That probably sounded like a really good idea, at least to the rest of the crustaceans, while they were hanging around the reef, no doubt after they had a bit too much of that early dandelion wine. I suppose after enough of that, just about anything would sound like a good idea, which certainly explains a lot about what's wrong with the national pastime these days.

Speaking of things that are wrong, we have an alert reader (thanks, Sam!) who is eager to set the record straight on classic tunes from the Irish songbook:

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Actually, that last Irish song is "I'll Bring You Home Again, Kathleen" and, like many Irish songs, it's about Death! The narrator is bringing Kathleen home to bury her. "Danny Boy" is about a parent lamenting a son's departure. In the last verse, the parent says that by the time Danny returns, he or she will be dead. It's always interesting hearing late verses of songs, like one of the verse of the Star Spangled Banner which has the line, "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pollution." Take that you limeys!
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Well, what can you expect from a bunch of people who can't even throw a parade without catastrophe, I ask you, and I think we all know the answer to that. I suppose it just goes to prove that you can get the Irish to sing, but you can't make them be happy doing it, which is like that famous old aphorism that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink green beer. Or as they say in Dublin, "Erin go neigh!"

Speaking of horses, Bill has an online calendar with daily trivia, interesting factoids and a wide variety of useless information. Last week, they informed us that the real name of Mr. Ed, the famous TV horse, was Bamboo Harvester, and try as I might, I can't think of anything to add that would improve upon that.

Meanwhile at work, I was trying to schedule a meeting of about 20 people next week, so I sent everyone an email and asked them for their availability. I heard back from one young lady right away, with this curious response: "You can take me out of your list for this committee I am not part of anymore, I haven't been sorry for not letting you know, Thank you." Well, sweetheart, I'll just bet you haven't been sorry for not letting me know, so thanks to you too, so very much not. This is our standardization committee that I've been pulling together for almost 20 years, so you would think that it had long since lost its power to surprise me at this point, but if anyone thought that I saw that one coming, they would have been very much mistaken. In fact, even now, I have no idea what she meant by that, and I'm certainly not going to ask her, because everyone knows that I have a long-standing policy against using logic with irrational people. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, or my name isn't -

Bamboo Harvester