All That Jazz

Hello World,

Well, if this had been a short week at work, it would have been one for the books. But it was even worse than a short week at work, because I was at work for all five weekdays, just like usually, but each day was crammed with so much idiocy and worse, as if it was only four days. In the hospital business, we call this "the worst of both worlds," and I ought to know. By the time Friday afternoon rolled around (much too late!) and I had been beset by every moron crawling out of the woodwork, plus running around and stamping out fires all week, it was a wonder that I even managed to get myself home in one piece, and not just wander around dazed and confused out on the streets. Here is a perfect example of the kind of week I was having. When I came in this morning, I noticed that someone had been in my office and left a purchase requisition on my chair, that had a note written in big black marker that said: "IMPORTANT. Please hand-carry to Purchasing." I moved it off my chair so I could sit down, and left it over by the credenza with the other requisitions that I had to look at later. Naturally, of all the requisitions in my office at that time, that one with the "Important" note on it was the one that succumbed to the remorseless pull of gravity, and fell behind the radiator. In a normal office, a person would reach behind the radiator and pull it back out. In my office, first you have to move the pile of empty cardboard boxes, the wire frames for hanging folders, the empty toner cartridges on their way to recycling, the easel pad, the step ladder, the mini blinds (from the broken back window that have not been put back yet) and yes, the famous wandering Christmas tree and left-over decorations. Now, none of these things are in my way on a routine basis, only if I want to reach behind the radiator, which I haven't had a need to do until today, thanks not. Suffice to say that today was already such a lost cause that I didn't even bother to dig the requisition out, figuring that the way things were going, whatever I did would only make things worse.

I know there must be a reason that the hospital administration is trying to drive us all nuts, although I'm not sure what that reason might be. Perhaps they're trying to drum up business for the Psychiatry department at our sister institution in Mount Vernon, or if they drive us to drink or take drugs, we could avail ourselves of their Detox or Methadone services that are always looking for new participants. I admit that I have no clue as to what is behind their nefarious plans, because I find it impossible to think like soul-less ogres. All I know is that last week, I was walking past the Cashiers and the Foundation Office, on my way to the lobby, and I noticed that all of the pictures had been removed from the walls. I really didn't think about it much one way or another, until a few days later, when I was in the same spot, and saw that they had put up what looked like large black felt rectangles where the pictures had been. I assumed that these would be the base of something else they were going to attach to it, like artwork or some kind of safety device. Earlier this week, I was walking around on the 7th floor, and heard music in the hallway, even though there was no one there, and in fact, it was in a part of that floor where there are no offices or patient rooms, just windows and a couple of chairs. As I wondered where the music could be coming from, I noticed this hallway had the same large black felt rectangles where pictures used to be, and as I walked past one, lo and behold, it turned out to be a speaker, of all things. Apparently the hospital administration, in their infinite wisdom, decided that we needed to listen to music 24 hours a day in the hallways, and not only installed this speaker system throughout the building without letting anyone know about it, but also decided unilaterally that we all wanted to listen to what could be described as "soft jazz" all the time. (NOT!) Now, I don't work in this building, and the black felt rectangle disease hasn't spread to my building yet, so if they were trying to drive me crazy, they'd have to do it quick, because I'm only in that building on my lunch hour. But I have reserved a bed in the Psychiatry unit just in case, I figure there's no sense in waiting until the last minute, when everybody else from the hospital will already be in there. Except, I guess, for those people who may happen to enjoy listening to soft jazz, and that's no jive.

Also right on top of things, I'd like to salute the Post Office, which just last week, returned to me a Christmas card that I had mailed on December 10th and which they determined was undeliverable as addressed. I would like to point out that this particular Christmas card was attempting to bring our seasonal greetings to one of our neighbors, whose house I can literally see from my front porch, and don't forget, I don't see all that well. I don't know where this envelope went from the time I dropped it at the Post Office on December 10th, until last week, but it would be no exaggeration to say that I could have left it on the front steps and it could have evolved legs and learned to walk and trotted itself right over to the neighbor's house on its own, in the same amount of time it took the Post Office to return it to me. So I would certainly like to extend my thanks to the Post Office, and in a timely manner, which I figure would be about two months from now, and that's also no jive.

Speaking of bad timing, it was on January 23, or three full days after the inauguration of the new President, and the AOL Welcome screen was awash with stories and pictures of the new First Family and everything they could think of to throw at us. You would think it would be impossible for anyone to be unaware of the change in administration, even if they had been living under a rock, or in a far distant solar system. And yet, here was a huge animated ad taking up a quarter of the Welcome screen with the blaring headline: "BUSH APPROVES HOUSING BILL!" These befuddled dolts wanted me to refinance my mortgage with them, and obviously thought it would be a clever ploy to cash in on the popularity of outgoing President Bush to entice me to click on their ad and sign on the dotted line. (NOT!) I may be going out on a limb here, but I wouldn't be surprised to find their offices full of black felt rectangles playing soft jazz all day long.

But the addle-pated caravan doesn't stop there. In fact, it was on the same day that our local newspaper ran a story about actress Melissa Leo, who had recently been nominated for an Academy Award, and the article went on to state: "The 28-year-old, first-time nominee didn't seem phased at all ... " What a relief! I guess they meant that Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise didn't show up and stun the poor dear with their phasers, because anyone with an elementary education in journalism would know that the actual word they were grappling for was "fazed" and not "phased" in that context. A day earlier, our Word-A-Day calendar was trying to explain the etymology of the Greek word "mimos" and came up with this startling comment: "And what about 'mimeograph,' the name of the duplicating machine that preceded the photocopier? We can't be absolutely certain what the folks at the A.B. Dick Company had in mind when they came up with the name Mimeograph, but influence from 'mimos' and its descendants certainly seems probable." I said to Bill, they can't be absolutely certain? Did they find sketchy evidence of the Mimeograph machine carved into cave walls from the Paleolithic Era or something? I mean, the Mimeograph was only invented in the 1940's, even if the A.B. Dick Company is not still in business, there are probably people who are still alive today and know where the name came from, for heaven's sake, if anybody just asked them.

But even that wasn't the end of the addle-pated caravan for the week, not by a long shot. This was the front page story in the Wheels Extra section of our local newspaper, although I can't blame the newspaper for this, try as I might. Apparently there is such a thing as a Lancer Ralliart, a high performance vehicle which they compare to the Mitsubishi Evo. There's just no way around the fact that Ralliart is a stupid name that looks stupid, and if anyone there had any brains, they'd storm the Engineering department and yank out all of those black felt rectangles playing soft jazz all day long and making everyone stupid. Then Bill was kind enough to send me the Top MSNBC.COM Headlines, which included this gem: "Gitmo Orders Prompt Terror Debate." That's one of those fractured fuzzy-heads where the words can be both nouns and verbs, so you don't know where to put the emphasis when you're trying to make sense of it. But if they weren't trying to order a prompt terror debate, I would send them back to the drawing board on that one, like the engineers with the Ralliart. Finally, there was a story about the worsening recession, which included this line: "Citi Investment Research analyst Deborah Weinswig forecasts falling same-store sales growth at many of the major chains in 2009." I had to agree with Bill, who wondered, can you actually have falling sales growth? Is that like a rising downturn? A deafening silence? Increased scarcity? Backward progress? Poor success?Absolutely vague? Negative improvement? It's all too much for me, I'm afraid. I'd go get my ox and moron in here, but I have the feeling that they've been in the hallways with the black felt rectangles too long, and their next stop will be in the Psychiatry unit, along with the rest of the hospital staff, the Ralliart engineers, the headline writers, the calendar researchers, the Post Office, the AOL Welcome screen team, and of course, the "important" requisition behind the radiator. And all that jazz.

Elle

I Have A Dream

Hello World,

Depending on what type of folks you consort with, I may be the first (and possibly the only) person to wish you a very happy Chinese New Year, which begins on Monday, with all the usual hoopla and fanfare, and I don't mind saying, a welcome relief from the winter doldrums. People can say what they like about the Chinese, but they sure know how to throw a party, and every year, they toss a heck of a wingding that many other cultures could learn a lot from, specifically, how to have a celebration without riots, lawsuits or the stampeding of pilgrims. (I think the UN should provide remedial courses in holidays, and like sending drunk drivers to classes to learn better behavior, they should be mandatory for those nations with holidays that look like war zones and turn into international incidents every year.) They tell me this is the Year of the Ox, which represents hard work, persistence, patience, harmony and charity. Of course, patience is a virtue, and heaven knows, the world could certainly use a lot more harmony and charity, so I think we could all climb on board this Happy New Ox bandwagon and party like it's 4707!

In other holiday news, of course we have the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to thank for the recent long holiday weekend, whose rousing "I Have A Dream" speech gave us all reason to hope for a brighter future ahead, like a beautiful rainbow where all of the colors live together in harmony. The weekend would not be complete without our annual trek upstate to share a late mini-Christmas with our friends around Albany, although it would be no one's idea of logic to drive hundreds of miles north in the dead of winter. I had a dream ..... that is to say, the plan was to leave early on Friday morning, and stop for brunch at Cinnabon in the Palisades Center along the way. This worked better than expected, although I was surprised to find the Cinnabon was in a kiosk on the 4th floor, since I remembered it in the Food Court on the lower level. It was much later that I realized the Cinnabon I had been dreaming of was in a completely different mall altogether, miles away in a different city, and so my plan to stop at the Palisades Center for this purpose was based on a totally erroneous premise right from the start. The fact that this other mall also had a Cinnabon, when the whole chain seems to be closing up shop everywhere we go, was nothing short of miraculous, and which made our sweet gooey treats even more delicious somehow.

Usually we stay overnight with our friends, but they had suffered some property damage in a storm, so instead, we checked into the Econolodge in Rensselaer, just outside of Albany. It seems like we've stayed in so many different hotels over the years, that we're turning into our very own AAA travel guides, where we can compare the quality and cost of all sorts of places, and not all of them favorably, I can tell you that. The last time we stayed at a hotel in the area, it featured what they referred to as a "one room suite," which meant that the seating area was separated from the sleeping area by a low divider with decorative columns. It was attractive, but didn't serve the purpose of actually isolating the areas into separate rooms, which is what we wanted, so we decided to try some place else this time around. The joke was on us when we got to the Econolodge and discovered that their King Suite was nothing but one humongous room with two king-sized beds, and the only separate area where you could close the door was the bathroom. Apparently "suite" doesn't mean the same thing in the hospitality business that we think it does, as we have been learning to our dismay. At least it had the advantage of being inexpensive, and it's certainly the largest room we've ever stayed in, and came with free WIFI and breakfast buffet as well. It had a big flat screen TV and DVD player, refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, and seating areas that included a desk, table and chairs, convertible sofa, love seat and recliner. Even with two huge beds, all of the furniture seemed to be swallowed up in the enormity of the space, and I also can't remember staying any place that had no pictures or even a mirror on the walls. But when we arrived, we were greeted by the resident cats, who in spite of the frigid weather, made us feel warm and welcome.

Two of our friends were working on Friday, but the other two were at liberty, so we had made arrangements to visit with them after we arrived. You can imagine our surprise when we drove over there, only to find the driveway full of heating contractors replacing the furnace and air conditioning system, while the lady of the house was recovering from having a colonoscopy earlier in the day. This did seem more like the Nightmare on Elm Street, rather than the dream date we had anticipated, and about as unwelcome as your average horror movie monster besides. I feel it's only fair to point out that they were the ones who had in fact invited us to visit them on Friday afternoon, since they were going to be home anyway, and why they picked this same time for their colonoscopy and furnace replacement was just a big mystery to the both of us. It reminded me of that old song where they sing, "Consider yourself, part of the furniture," because we certainly didn't feel like company under the circumstances.

When our other friends got off from work, we all went to the nearby 76 Diner, where we've been before and knew what to expect. Not so fast! Apparently they decided to replace their menu with a new and improved version, which notably did not include our personal favorites of fried ravioli and raspberry iced tea from previous visits. We asked the waitress, who said they were still available and was just as happy to serve them to us, making us wonder why they would go to all the trouble and expense of having new menus printed without items that they were still serving. We managed to get in and out of there without causing a ruckus, which is unusual for us, and left full and happy, with left-overs to boot. We went back to our friends' house and played with their Wii, which is how I discovered that even worse than my regular driving is my virtual driving in the Super Mario Go Kart game, and where no cow is safe. (It did no good for them to climb the trees, because I ran into the trees anyway.) Since everyone was still way too alert, I showed them my annual Christmas tour video of our decorations and cats, and that put them out like a light. Sweet dreams, everyone.

In the morning, we had belated Christmas presents in our motel room, which is not the same as sitting around the fireplace at our friends' house, but couldn't be helped. After a scrumptious lunch at Denny's, we stopped at Cracker Barrel, and were surprised that they had already replaced their Christmas merchandise with Valentine's Day and Easter instead. Anyone who thinks that would stop me from picking up some souvenirs, doesn't know me very well. From there, we headed for an interesting emporium that was new to us, called Aunt Katie's Attic (and please feel free to visit their web site at www.auntkatiesattic.com and see for yourself) which is in an old house along the highway in Scotia, and filled to the brim with an endless variety of vintage items, from A to Z and back again. They have an entire wall full of nothing but cookbooks, and their displays of retro appliances, kitchen gadgets, hardware and garden tools are just like an amazing time capsule from the past. Bill loved the alcove decorated as a 1950's kitchen, straight out of The Donna Reed Show, and complete with everything except the pearl necklace. I found the most adorable hand-made Christmas earrings, and had to get a pair of trees and stockings for only $4 each. A bigger surprise was finding so many salt and pepper shakers that I already have in my collection, which has never happened to me before, any place I have ever been. Of course, I also found plenty of new ones, and the biggest problem was narrowing down all of the choices to a (more) reasonable quantity. Here is another place that we were greeted by the resident cats, although these have the more sensible idea of staying indoors, compared to the motel cats out in all sorts of weather.

With all of the food options in the area, we wouldn't expect to stand on line for a meal, but we wanted to go to the 99 Restaurant, and that joint is jumping on Saturday night. We squeezed into a booth and had a nice dinner, but you can tell when a place is really busy, because the waiter keeps coming around to ask if you want anything else, hoping that you'll get the hint and leave already. We ran some errands after that, and then packed it in for dreamland after a long and eventful day. In the morning, we were surprised to find that it had snowed overnight, but it didn't stop us from opening birthday presents with two of our friends, who both have birthdays in January. Then we brought donuts and coffee to our other friends, and had a chance to play with their new remote controlled helicopter, although obviously, after my disastrous driving in the Super Mario game, they weren't going to let me near the thing. They also brought out an old Furby interactive toy from 1998, that they just discovered laying around and long forgotten in an old closet, and while I'll admit that we're easily entertained, it was really interesting to see all of the things that he can say and do, especially after all this time and with the original batteries besides. He was still talking when we left, I guess making up for lost time stuck in the closet, and I have the feeling that he was not just going to fade away and be forgotten a second time, without having an awful lot to say on the subject.

We wrapped up our day at Hewitt's, a chain of garden centers where we buy discount Christmas decorations every year, and we were not disappointed. I always say there's no such thing as too many angels or Christmas lights, and we were happy to find some that we really liked. By the time we left, it was bitter cold and snowing, and the pictures that I took of everyone outside look like nothing so much as an advertisement for the Burlington Coat Factory. As we headed south, we were hoping to drive out of the snow and into better weather, but it only changed into freezing rain instead, which was not as much of an improvement as we hoped. We stopped at the first rest area on the Thruway, and found that half of the place had no electricity, so the Gift Shop was closed and the Starbucks, but Nathan's was open. In the bathrooms, the electronic sinks were working, but not the paper towel dispensers or hand dryers, and Bill said all the men walking out of the facilities were holding their wet hands up in front of them like doctors scrubbed for surgery. We stopped at the next rest area after that to buy some souvenirs and snacks, and glad to find them fully powered. An even more welcome sight was Denny's, where we like to stop on our way home, and had another wonderful meal, which is something that we will never take for granted, as long as they refuse to build any Denny's near us.

The rest of the trip home was sloppy driving conditions, and more traffic than we expected, but uneventful, and we finally arrived back at home, safe and sound. After three days, even the cats were happy to see us, or perhaps it was just the plates of cat food that we gave them, but they were certainly happy about something. We were happy to be home too, although it's always in a bittersweet way, when we realize that the Christmas season is truly over, once we come back from visiting our friends in January, and after that, the rest of the winter just sort of stretches out in front of us like an endless trail of dirty laundry, and not much to recommend it. Even worse, after driving home in all the snow flurries and freezing rain the whole time, there was enough accumulation here that we had to shovel the next day, which has never made our list of favorite things to do, and at this rate, never will. It was a good thing that we both had Monday off from work, thanks to Dr. King and his Great American Dream Machine.

Elle

Hot Air

Hello World,

And so here we find ourselves, already past the Ides of January, and if you're anything like me, nothing to show for it besides. Of course, there’s no point in complaining about snow in this area in the middle of winter, but it does seem to me that we've had more episodes of snow, going back to November even, than we usually do around here. Some years, we have fewer snowstorms but with higher accumulations in each one. This time around, it seems like we've had a lot of small storms instead, and although it’s not usually a lot of snow, each one is its own little nuisance, and no thank you so very much not. Last week, we had another one of those storms that begins as powdery snow and then changes to freezing rain, so Bill said that there was no point in cleaning the snow off the Escort, because after that, the windows would just be solid ice. To that, I replied that at least I knew where the ice scraper was, and we had a good laugh over that. But I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me sooner that I should just move the ice scraper from the door pocket to the seat organizer I have on the passenger side, which has many useful pockets for just this very purpose, and is extremely handy for loose objects like maps, sunglasses, tissues, umbrella and even the squeegee. So now the ice scraper has a place of its own, and everything is in its place, and it goes without saying, all’s right with the world.

Alert readers could be forgiven for being justifiably skeptical at my assertion in my previous note about taking down the holiday decorations at work, especially in light of literally years worth of stories about the “wandering Christmas tree” that simply moved from one office to another, for weeks at a time while still decorated, and in and out of the closet besides. In spite of my best intentions, I would have to admit that the claims of taking down the decorations could be considered somewhat premature, or perhaps preliminary might be a better description. The truth of the matter is that the decorations were in fact taken down from the various walls, windows, file cabinets, refrigerator, mirror and assorted whatnot where they had been placed in early December, but have not yet reached that stage where they have been actually put away in their respective bags, boxes or protective containers to this point. In reality, anyone walking into my office, as our retired co-worker did yesterday, would find a dizzying array of decorative items, including the tree, all jumbled together in a haphazard manner along the credenza and windowsills in my office, and looking very festive indeed. My explanation is that this is preparatory to them being put away for real, although whether that would be in the short-term picture or more of a long-term project may be difficult to ascertain and remains to be seen. Or this may be what they refer to in technology circles as “vaporware,” which are things that are planned, and even publicized, but which never actually come to fruition. Which, as Bill will tell you, is a small town in New Jersey, and one that I know all too well, that’s for sure.

Speaking of work, it was earlier in the week that I was sitting at my desk busily moving piles of papers from one place to another, when I heard the unmistakable “whoosh - clunk!” of a window letting go of its moorings, and crashing down to the bottom of the frame, thanks to the remorseless pull of gravity and for which the friction holding it in place was no match. This is a good sized double-hung window with heavy metal frames in the back of my office, which I don't open because it has no screen, and I'm sure that my office would be over-run with pigeons in no time. I have another window by my desk, which not only has a screen, but has the added advantage that it will stay open by itself with friction, so you don't have to hold it up with a stick, or worry about losing your fingers when it comes crashing down, like most of the other windows in this old rickety fire-trap of a building. The back window has an air conditioner installed at the top, so the top part of the windows only goes up as far as the bottom of the air conditioner, and it was taped in place, and propped up with a piece of wood, countless years ago. Apparently, the years took their toll, as years will do, the wood disintegrated, the tape let go, and suddenly here’s the window slamming down to the bottom with nothing to hold it up, and nothing behind it but the great wide world outside, on the eve of predicted record-breaking freezing temperatures to come. Probably in a normal business with 50 people in their Engineering department, a person could call and have someone hurry over to take care of this problem, but even I'm not delusional enough to expect that kind of service here, where I already know that it takes 4 weeks just to get a copy of a door key. So I climbed up on the little file cabinet in front of the window, removed the mini blinds and surveyed the situation, which was the first that I have ever really looked at that window since I've been in this office. My original plan was to use the bottom window to prop up the top window, but the window frame didn't have enough of a lip on it to brace anything against to keep it up. Apparently these new-fangled windows won't go past each other in the tracks, so that in order to raise the front (bottom) one to get to the back (top) one, you have to lift them both together, which is certainly a handful for one small person standing on a file cabinet, and I ought to know. Since neither window would stay up with the friction that it was designed for, it was basically a three-handed job, trying to hold up both windows, while at the same time, build a 16-inch tower of scrap wood in the rear window track to support the back window snug against the bottom of the air conditioner, and believe me, that third hand would have come in very handy at a time like that. By the time I left, I was grimy and sore, but I had gotten the window back to within a half-inch of where I wanted it, and not only didn't break anything, but didn't get hurt in the process. And even more luckily, it was a good thing that the air conditioner has its own bracket holding it up, and is not depending on the window to keep it in place, or we really would have been in trouble when the wood and the tape let go, and not to mention the people below it, even more so. That’s the thing about gravity, by golly, it works whether you want it to or not.

Speaking of new-fangled things, our local newspaper had a listing in among their Best Bets from the TV Section that had me shaking my head. “LOST: The wait is almost over, and since it’s been a while since we've been to the island, ABC reairs last season’s finale to refresh fans’ memories in anticipation of next week’s season premiere.” Reairs? REAIRS??? What kind of a word is “reairs,” I ask you that? I realize that there’s a seemingly insurmountable compulsion nowadays to eliminate hyphens under all circumstances, regardless of how confused and muddled it makes the words as a result, but heaven help us, you can't just go around using words like “reairs” and “deicing” and “reignited”with no hyphens and expect anyone to understand what they're reading. Somewhere along the line, the Anti-Hyphen Brigade has lost sight of the fact that the purpose of written language is to communicate, and eliminating all of the hyphens, whether necessary or superfluous, has the effect of making things even more incomprehensible, rather than less so. They're so busy throwing out the baby hyphens with the hyphen bath water, that they've left us all up to our “reairs” in nonsense like “deionization” and “coequals” until you're just about ready to have your head reexamined, if not worse. And don't even get me started on rearranging.

While we're on the subject of television, we were watching The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last week, and he mentioned that he was having problems ever since he dropped his cell phone into a cup of coffee. The way he described it, now his cell phone is jumpy, and his coffee tastes like porn. That may not make a lot of sense, but it is much funnier when you say it with a Scottish accent, believe me. I think it was on the same program that he had as his guest, the comedian Richard Lewis, who complained that his wife’s real name is so ill-suited to crying out at passionate times of ecstasy, that once in the heat of an intimate moment, instead of using her name, he found himself unaccountably yelling, “I love you, ladies and gentlemen!” That may not make a lot of sense either, but at least you have nothing to worry about from the Anti-Hyphen Brigade, blast their dastardly little reairs.

Elle

Brain Teasers

Hello World,

Well, so far 2009 has seemed like nothing so much as a pale imitation of the same stuff we were trying to get away from in 2008, except in one regard. At the local Sunoco station down the block, where the price of regular had been creeping down consistently until it reached $1.87/gal, just this week and without fanfare, it jumped back up to $1.92/gal instead. It was even worse at the Exxon station around the corner, where the regular had bounced back up to $1.99/gal, and one more little hiccup would send it right back over $2 once again. I don't mind saying that this is not the direction that I want to see in my gasoline prices, although to be fair, we'd have to admit that it was fun while it lasted. I certainly hope that going forward, 2009 has a little better trick up its sleeve than that one, or it will find itself wearing out its welcome in record time. 2010, anyone?

Speaking of tricks, I found that I had inadvertently played "Hide The Thimble" with myself a few weeks ago, and could not have been more surprised. It was one of those days where it rained, and then got very cold, and later we had some snow flurries, and by the time I got back to my car in the parking lot, the frost on the windows had set up pretty hard and as much as it tried, the poor ragged squeegee proved to be no match for it. "Aha!" I found some of my tiny little brain cells saying to each other. (I really try not to pay any attention to the addled and deluded little dears, because they really perform no useful function, but fortunately there's too few of them to cause any real problems.) "There must be an ice scraper in this car, I can use that instead!" (You see how it's these almost tantalizingly lucid moments that can fool an unwary individual into thinking that some of this gray matter has some actual relation to reality, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth, believe me.) Now, it's true that I've been known to drive more than one car, and to be totally honest about it, I've been known to drive more than two or three or even four at one time or another. And some of them have had their very own supplies of tissues, wiper fluid, squeegees, umbrellas and maps, while others had to share among different vehicles, and it seemed that whenever you needed a particular item, it was invariably in another car at that moment. And so it was that I looked high and low for the ice scraper in the Escort, while getting myself sleeted on the whole while, and came up empty, finally deciding that the supposed ice scraper which should have been there, must be in some other car instead.

It was weeks later, when I was trying to go to work in my bulky winter coat, and the seat belt got caught for the umpteenth time on something hanging halfway out of the door pocket, and getting in the way every single time I got in the car, until I just about wanted to scream. And I looked at the door pocket, and for the very first time, I actually saw it not just with my eyes, but it finally penetrated all the way into those few tiny and addled brain cells that were rattling around in the vast emptiness, and sure enough, it was the ice scraper that I put there so it would be in a handy place when I needed it. (If only THAT had worked!) And it certainly looked for all the world, just like something that had been trying its level best to get my attention all along, and not just fade into oblivion and be forgotten, because it managed to catch onto the seatbelt not on occasion, but every single time I got into the car, and each time I would look at it and get annoyed, without it ever registering in my brain that it was the ice scraper that I would be looking for, one of these nasty days in bad weather. And even when I really needed it, and basically had to scrape the ice off with my fingernails because the squeegee just wasn't stiff enough, I still didn't remember that I growled at the ice scraper every day in the door pocket, and never recognized it for what it was. I'm sure you can understand now why I never bother to rely on those few poor addled brain cells that I have left, because they really are no use to me whatsoever, except perhaps for sentimental reasons. Frankly, I'm depending on science to come up with the portable external brain that I can just carry around with me, of course with my luck, whenever I would need it, it would probably be in the other car instead.

In what may yet turn out to have been a disastrous mistake, or just a serious miscalculation on my part, I ended up taking off about a week and a half at the end of the year, and even though I did go in to work on a couple of days to handle a few time-sensitive items, it was still pretty much total chaos when I finally got back to my office for real on Monday of this week. It was along about Wednesday morning that a colleague called to welcome me back and wish me happy new year, and he asked how it felt to be "back in the saddle." Oh no, I assured him, that was not at all the case in any definition of the term. The best that could be said so far would be that I was more or less in the same barnyard as the horse, but was so removed from anything that could be described as "back in the saddle," that I would have to admit at the moment that I couldn't even be sure where the saddle had gotten to in my absence. I had spent the better part of three days just digging through the piles upon piles of assorted papers that had accumulated in my office, simply in order to find the surface of my desk to begin with, and after that, spent most of my time just moving a pile of papers from piece of furniture to another, without actually doing anything with it. I told him at this point, I'd just be glad to find out that I remembered how to ride the horse in the first place, if I ever did find the saddle and climbed back into it at last. And we already know that I can't count on that portable external brain, no thanks to modern science, and which would probably be in the other car anyway.

It was Thursday morning that one of the ladies from Finance came downstairs for a cup of coffee, and found me taking the Christmas ornament off the little refrigerator in our break room, whereupon she sighed and asked if I was taking down the decorations already. "There's no 'already' about it," I retorted with some asperity, "After all, it was Epiphany on Tuesday." (For the KGB agents monitoring my email, the Christmas season is traditionally considered to continue until the Feast of the Epiphany, or the arrival of the Three Wise Men in Bethlehem on January 6th, making it a convenient point to wrap up the holiday and pack away all the trimmings for another year.) At home, I took the opportunity to bring in the wreaths that we put around the stone lions on our front porch, and also gathered in all of the red and green plastic covers on the yard lights, to be stored away safely in the attic. In an interesting coincidence (although I have to admit that "interesting" might be a misnomer in this case, and in fact, the word "aggravating" springs immediately to mind) it was pouring rain on the day that I first put on the yard light covers, so that the tape didn't want to stick to the wet plastic, and it was also pouring rain when I went out to take them back in, and this time, the wet tape didn't want to let go of the plastic. I don't know why, but I could have sworn I heard the ice scraper in the Escort snickering.

Every year, I'm one of those people with a new Word-a-Day calendar, which we both find very enlightening, and nowadays there's the added feature that you can also sign up for one of their online calendars at no charge, using a special promotional code that's included with your regular calendar. Last year, I signed up for their Joke-a-Day, and had it emailed to my work address, where I figured I could use some humor, and that's an understatement, believe me. This year, I decided to try something different, so I opted for their Trivia-a-Day, only to find that instead of being a trivia fact on each page, it was a trivia question every day, and you were directed to a separate web page for the answer. At my job, we have email through the hospital server, but no Internet access, so I discovered too late that I could read the trivia question they sent me, but had no way to see the answer. Unfortunately, I said to Bill, you get what you pay for, because they provide this virtual calendar for free, and once you pick one, there's no way to change it. Bill agreed that 365 trivia questions with no answers would be way too much like a cruel and unusual form of torture over the course of a year (and not that I need any more of that at work either, believe me) so he wrote a nice note to the folks at Workman Publishing Company and appealed to them on my behalf, to rescue me from this technology-challenged trap that I had gotten myself into. As it was, Bill said that explaining my problem to the calendar people made it sound like I really do work in a third-world country, and not in one of the government or charity offices either. I guess they took pity on me, because they very kindly switched my calendar selection to one of their other choices without this same interactive element, and I've been enjoying it every day ever since. In fact, I'd love to tell you what was on the page for today, but I'm sure you can understand that my brain is in the other car.

Elle

Good News Travels Fast

Hello World,

Happy New Year! They had big stories in the newspaper about how no one is going to shed any tears as we bid farewell to 2008, as many things went wrong throughout the year, from the mundane to the monumental. They made a particular point that the Yankees, Mets and Jets would certainly appreciate some more favorable outcomes in the coming year, compared to how their fortunes panned out this time around. (Although to be fair, we can't lay the blame for that entirely at the feet of poor disreputable 2008, as the Yankees, Mets and Jets have been having the same sorts of outcomes for several years, and I don't mind saying, no end in sight, so just shaking off the dust of 2008 might not solve all of their problems after all.) They also included a great quote from Abraham Lincoln, who said: "The occasion is piled high with difficulty." Ya gotta love it! Anyway, I do send along my best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year, and that 2009 is everything that you could ever hope for and more. May all of your news be good.

This would be as good a time as any to thank you for your lovely Christmas card, which we really enjoyed. The snowman was so cute with all his sparkly snowflakes, and the hat and mittens were too adorable. We don't get that many cards, so it's always a special treat to find a little bit of sunshine in with our regular mail, and that's not just a lot of jingle all the way. Thanks for thinking of us and sending a little cheer in our direction.

Meanwhile in local news, our hometown newspaper got off to a bang in this bright and shiny new year, with a front page story about motorists who reported a body along the side of the road near an overpass in Garrison. The police responded, and originally surmised that the deceased had been the victim of a hit-and-run accident, however, the Medical Examiner later alerted the police that the cause of death was gunshot wounds instead. (You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to put anything over on the Medical Examiner in Garrison, by golly.) Not missing the significance of this turn of events, the article went on to state: "Investigators are now calling the case a homicide." (Did I hear the spirit of Abraham Lincoln say, "DUH?!") Now, I will admit that it's all too tempting to poke fun at our local newspaper, and I'm not usually one to take pot-shots at such an easy target, but even I was surprised at what happened next in this story. Hard on the heels of deciding to pursue the investigation as a homicide, the reporters inserted a quote from the Putnam County Sheriff's Chief Inspector, A. Gerald Schramek, who allegedly said for attribution: "The investigators are interviewing people and looking for forensic evidence." What a relief! For a minute there, I was afraid that their approach to a homicide in Putnam County was to throw a Tupperware party and give away fresh baked brownies or something. I'm glad that they've apparently watched enough police procedurals on television that they managed to come up with that idea about evidence instead. I said to Bill that a quote about interviewing people and looking for evidence was kind of like the Sesame Street version of a police investigation, and in my mind, is the type of comment that falls into the category of something that "goes without saying." There's a reason why they have that expression in the first place, although it would probably come as news to our friends in the Putnam County police department, where belaboring the obvious might be all in a day's work and just another service they provide, along with Tupperware and brownies.

In other local news, and this closer to home and therefore twice as surprising, our friends at Metzger Pineapple Products mailed out a large and bulky envelope to Bill, which was very precisely addressed to him with his full name including his middle initial. I suppose that's why neither of us was expecting this particular envelope to have a screaming headline across the front, in bold print and capital letters:
============================
Now YOU will be at least
2 dress sizes smaller this time next month!
============================
I had to tell him that frankly, I've never cared for him in those large size dresses that he wears, so I'd be just as happy if it works. But I've got news for our friends at Metzger Pineapple Products, who probably know just about as much about losing weight as they do about what kinds of clothes my husband wears, and I have to say, that's not much.

Speaking of things that are not news, or even new, somehow this story was overlooked in all the pre-Christmas excitement from last month. One weekday, more or less out of the blue, I decided to run some errands at lunch time, and get them out of the way so I didn't have to do them on the weekend instead, when I was already busy with extra choir practice and other holiday preparations. I ran out of my office to the parking lot, threw everything into the Escort, turned the key and was greeted with the unmistakable sounds of silence, and not even crickets, just total dead silence. There wasn't a click, a whine, a sputter, a wheeze or a rattle, and not a single light came on anywhere. It was like climbing into an abandoned car that had been rusting out in the junkyard for 10 years, and trying to start that. And don't forget, I had just driven this car to work that very morning, not four hours ago, so this was a perplexing and unwelcome turn of events. I walked a few blocks over to where Bill works, and told him that I couldn't understand how the battery could have gone so dead in a few hours, so that there wasn't even a sound or a light to be had, from one end to the other. We walked over to our mechanic's and explained it to him (Bill said it was obviously a bad sign when both of us were walking to his garage, rather than driving) and he joined us in walking back to the parking lot to take a look at it. It wasn't a bad day for walking, because it wasn't uncomfortably cold, but it had been raining all morning, and was still drizzling when we came back to the hospital. Because we came back a different way, this was the first I noticed the lines of people coming out of the building where our Clinic is located, and jamming up the sidewalk for two whole blocks going all the way up the hill. Our mechanic took one look at them, and said that they must be running some special free clinic there, like blood pressure screening or flu shots, and everyone came out for that. I found that a little hard to swallow, but there was no denying the mobs of people standing out in the rain, and not by themselves, but carrying infants and toddlers in profusion. Personally, I didn't see flu shots being such a big draw to attract that volume of people, especially in bad weather, and with all of their offspring in tow.

The problem with the car turned out to be a bad alternator, which drained the battery and had to be replaced, but fortunately the battery was fine once it was recharged. On my way back to my office, I stopped in the Storeroom and in making conversation with the staff, mentioned the lines of people outside the Clinic and several blocks past it. Oh yes, said Luis, one of the stock clerks, he saw that people started lining up at 10 in the morning, and there had been crowds of people outside all day long. I asked him what kind of free clinic they could be having that would make so many people come out in bad weather, but he shook his head and said it was no clinic, they were having Pictures With Santa in the auditorium. Did I laugh!

Christmas was on Thursday last week, and where Bill works, they were also closed on Friday, so I took the day off as well. I also decided to take off the following week, including New Year's day and the day after, so that ended up being a nice chunk of time to relax and get some things accomplished, although I did go in to work on a couple of occasions to wrap up some loose ends. I went in earlier today to collect time cards, and bumped into our bookkeeper from down the hall. She's used to seeing me in more serious business attire, but today I was decked out in some lounge wear that was neat but definitely casual. She wagged her finger at me in mock indignation and sniffed, "You're not supposed to come to work in your pajamas!" I shrugged and said, "Didn't you get that memo?" She laughed. Apparently it was news to her.

Elle