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:
=========================
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!
=========================
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
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:
=========================
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!
=========================
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
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:49 PM
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