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
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
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:25 PM
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