Winter Wonderland
Hello World,
Happy March! I always say, there's nothing like 10 inches of snow to start your week off with a bang, and that's what happened here on Monday, when many people were ready to hope that we had already seen the last of Old Man Winter in these parts, no thanks so very much not. After that, they turned on the deep freeze, which was so uncharacteristic of March in New York that a person couldn't help but wonder if it was beginning to look like the Revenge of the Reporter Who Got Bit by the Groundhog, rather than just the usual six more weeks of winter. It finally started to ease up by Friday, but everywhere you go, people still have that wary, haunted look, as if they don't trust what Mother Nature might be getting ready to throw at them next. And with the way the weather has been going, with tornadoes in the plains, snow in the deep south, and wild fires out west, you honestly don't know where to go to get away from these crazy conditions. Personally, I figure my best bet is to move in with our old nemesis Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine in the Kremlin, because then at least I'd know what was coming.
Also this week, Tuesday was our anniversary, and we went out to dinner to celebrate, which had its good points and bad points, and was not the unalloyed joy that we might have preferred. After that, we came home and opened presents, which included apparel, books, music CDs, household items, jewelry, plants, and a new HP H470 mobile color printer, which weighing in at a hefty 15 pounds, is my idea of "mobile" only in the sense that you could plop it on a rolling luggage cart and drag it around with you. On the other hand, I always say that any day that includes presents and eating out is a good day, so by that criteria, our 26th anniversary was a rousing success.
The next day, we paid a visit to our accountant for the preparation of our annual taxes, which was not as "taxing" (get it?!) as we might have feared, in spite of the climate of economic doom and gloom all around. Since we weren't overly thrilled with our anniversary dinner from the night before, that was reason enough for us to try again, and so we stopped at the diner on the way home, and had a better dinner than the previous one, and glad of it. What with all the snow, and appointments, and celebrations, and a lot of other things going on, it turned out to be a long week that made Friday all the more welcome when it finally rolled around at long last, and not a moment too soon, believe me.
Speaking of moments too soon, it should come as a surprise to no one that this weekend will be the beginning of the dratted Daylight Shifting Time, which contrary to its actual name, does not "save" any daylight, but merely shifts a confused populace around it, by forcing them to get everywhere an hour earlier. Everyone knows that I'm no fan of this cockamamie folderol under the best of circumstances, but trying to foist this on a bunch of grouchy Christians in Lent, first thing on Sunday morning, is just asking for trouble, and I don't mind saying, they're bound to get plenty of it. Even in this technologically advanced age, something that would seem as simple as automatically adjusting the time to account for DST seems to be way beyond the abilities of electronic equipment everywhere, so everyone either has to reset the time manually on everything they own, or learn to live in the varying time zones between their watch, computer, alarm clock, car radio, microwave, answering machine, fax machine, cell phone, digital camera, copier, VCR, alarm system, appliance timers and cable TV boxes. At the hospital, even the employee time clocks, which cost a fortune, do not automatically adjust for the biannual change in time, so that when you do the time cards later, it appears that everyone came in an hour late on Monday. (In a normal place with Engineering staff on the job 24/7, you might expect it to be someone's responsibility to go around and reset the time on the clocks before everyone starts to arrive for their regular shifts on Monday morning, but somehow that never seems to happen.) With all of the various equipment scattered about the campus, in offices and nursing units and clinical areas in different buildings, it can take a month or more for everything to get to being all the same time once again, only to find ourselves doing the exact same thing all over again in reverse, later in the year. People can call me a hidebound reactionary (they'd better not!) but it certainly makes me doubt the process of evolution, that a supposedly advanced civilization is still mired in the tar pits of Daylight Stupid Time, and no end in sight. At this rate, I expect that beetles will finally stop falling into water bowls, while future generations of mulish human beings will still be torturing themselves with this chronological rift twice a year for no reason. You can bet that somewhere, the dinosaurs are laughing themselves silly.
Speaking of silly things, it was in Sunday's local newspaper that they ran a front page story about the Jonas Brothers appearing at a movie theater in West Nyack, for the premiere of their 3-D concert film. The audience response was electrifying, although they stopped short of giving it a name, like what they would have described back in the old days as "Beatlemania." The reporter interviewed two sisters, among the screaming and cheering fans, who had burst out crying at the sight of their idols, up close and in person, right in their midst. The story described one of them as being " ... overwhelmed to tears, and practically speechless. 'They're cute, and I like their music,' she eeked out'." Seriously, eeked is what it said. I would appreciate if you would just go right ahead and supply your own punch line here, because with something like that on the front page of our newspaper, I find myself also being overwhelmed to tears and practically speechless.
On the subject of speeches, I inadvertently discovered the reason behind the new and improved shorter sermons that we've been enjoying at church recently. Alert readers may recall that our music director retired at the end of last year (and strenuously denies that our ineptitude at Lessons & Carols had anything to do with it) and so we've had a series of substitute musicians since then, while we look for a full-time replacement for the position. Apparently, one of the people filling in on a semi-recurring basis has a train to catch after church, so that if the sermon runs too long, our organist would have to run out while we're still having communion, and not make it to the end of the service, much less play the recessional for us. So it turns out that what years of complaints, and wholesale falling asleep in the pews, failed to accomplish in the pulpit, the simple expedient of a musician catching a train has turned into reality at a stroke, sort of like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin at midnight. Obviously, it would have been better to discover this secret much earlier in the pastor's tenure, which would have saved us all a lot of time and aggravation, not to mention being bored into a stupor over the course of many years, and I ought to know. But just like Daylight Screwy Time, once those precious hours have been wasted, there's no getting them back, to use again for some better purpose the second time around, although I don't mind saying, that would be the kind of Daylight Saving Time that I could really go for in a big way, and that's not just a lot of Wabash Cannonball, believe me. I'd love to stay around and work up the details, but frankly, I'm all eeked out.
Elle
Happy March! I always say, there's nothing like 10 inches of snow to start your week off with a bang, and that's what happened here on Monday, when many people were ready to hope that we had already seen the last of Old Man Winter in these parts, no thanks so very much not. After that, they turned on the deep freeze, which was so uncharacteristic of March in New York that a person couldn't help but wonder if it was beginning to look like the Revenge of the Reporter Who Got Bit by the Groundhog, rather than just the usual six more weeks of winter. It finally started to ease up by Friday, but everywhere you go, people still have that wary, haunted look, as if they don't trust what Mother Nature might be getting ready to throw at them next. And with the way the weather has been going, with tornadoes in the plains, snow in the deep south, and wild fires out west, you honestly don't know where to go to get away from these crazy conditions. Personally, I figure my best bet is to move in with our old nemesis Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine in the Kremlin, because then at least I'd know what was coming.
Also this week, Tuesday was our anniversary, and we went out to dinner to celebrate, which had its good points and bad points, and was not the unalloyed joy that we might have preferred. After that, we came home and opened presents, which included apparel, books, music CDs, household items, jewelry, plants, and a new HP H470 mobile color printer, which weighing in at a hefty 15 pounds, is my idea of "mobile" only in the sense that you could plop it on a rolling luggage cart and drag it around with you. On the other hand, I always say that any day that includes presents and eating out is a good day, so by that criteria, our 26th anniversary was a rousing success.
The next day, we paid a visit to our accountant for the preparation of our annual taxes, which was not as "taxing" (get it?!) as we might have feared, in spite of the climate of economic doom and gloom all around. Since we weren't overly thrilled with our anniversary dinner from the night before, that was reason enough for us to try again, and so we stopped at the diner on the way home, and had a better dinner than the previous one, and glad of it. What with all the snow, and appointments, and celebrations, and a lot of other things going on, it turned out to be a long week that made Friday all the more welcome when it finally rolled around at long last, and not a moment too soon, believe me.
Speaking of moments too soon, it should come as a surprise to no one that this weekend will be the beginning of the dratted Daylight Shifting Time, which contrary to its actual name, does not "save" any daylight, but merely shifts a confused populace around it, by forcing them to get everywhere an hour earlier. Everyone knows that I'm no fan of this cockamamie folderol under the best of circumstances, but trying to foist this on a bunch of grouchy Christians in Lent, first thing on Sunday morning, is just asking for trouble, and I don't mind saying, they're bound to get plenty of it. Even in this technologically advanced age, something that would seem as simple as automatically adjusting the time to account for DST seems to be way beyond the abilities of electronic equipment everywhere, so everyone either has to reset the time manually on everything they own, or learn to live in the varying time zones between their watch, computer, alarm clock, car radio, microwave, answering machine, fax machine, cell phone, digital camera, copier, VCR, alarm system, appliance timers and cable TV boxes. At the hospital, even the employee time clocks, which cost a fortune, do not automatically adjust for the biannual change in time, so that when you do the time cards later, it appears that everyone came in an hour late on Monday. (In a normal place with Engineering staff on the job 24/7, you might expect it to be someone's responsibility to go around and reset the time on the clocks before everyone starts to arrive for their regular shifts on Monday morning, but somehow that never seems to happen.) With all of the various equipment scattered about the campus, in offices and nursing units and clinical areas in different buildings, it can take a month or more for everything to get to being all the same time once again, only to find ourselves doing the exact same thing all over again in reverse, later in the year. People can call me a hidebound reactionary (they'd better not!) but it certainly makes me doubt the process of evolution, that a supposedly advanced civilization is still mired in the tar pits of Daylight Stupid Time, and no end in sight. At this rate, I expect that beetles will finally stop falling into water bowls, while future generations of mulish human beings will still be torturing themselves with this chronological rift twice a year for no reason. You can bet that somewhere, the dinosaurs are laughing themselves silly.
Speaking of silly things, it was in Sunday's local newspaper that they ran a front page story about the Jonas Brothers appearing at a movie theater in West Nyack, for the premiere of their 3-D concert film. The audience response was electrifying, although they stopped short of giving it a name, like what they would have described back in the old days as "Beatlemania." The reporter interviewed two sisters, among the screaming and cheering fans, who had burst out crying at the sight of their idols, up close and in person, right in their midst. The story described one of them as being " ... overwhelmed to tears, and practically speechless. 'They're cute, and I like their music,' she eeked out'." Seriously, eeked is what it said. I would appreciate if you would just go right ahead and supply your own punch line here, because with something like that on the front page of our newspaper, I find myself also being overwhelmed to tears and practically speechless.
On the subject of speeches, I inadvertently discovered the reason behind the new and improved shorter sermons that we've been enjoying at church recently. Alert readers may recall that our music director retired at the end of last year (and strenuously denies that our ineptitude at Lessons & Carols had anything to do with it) and so we've had a series of substitute musicians since then, while we look for a full-time replacement for the position. Apparently, one of the people filling in on a semi-recurring basis has a train to catch after church, so that if the sermon runs too long, our organist would have to run out while we're still having communion, and not make it to the end of the service, much less play the recessional for us. So it turns out that what years of complaints, and wholesale falling asleep in the pews, failed to accomplish in the pulpit, the simple expedient of a musician catching a train has turned into reality at a stroke, sort of like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin at midnight. Obviously, it would have been better to discover this secret much earlier in the pastor's tenure, which would have saved us all a lot of time and aggravation, not to mention being bored into a stupor over the course of many years, and I ought to know. But just like Daylight Screwy Time, once those precious hours have been wasted, there's no getting them back, to use again for some better purpose the second time around, although I don't mind saying, that would be the kind of Daylight Saving Time that I could really go for in a big way, and that's not just a lot of Wabash Cannonball, believe me. I'd love to stay around and work up the details, but frankly, I'm all eeked out.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:51 PM
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