myweekandwelcometoit

Friday, January 02, 2009

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

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