Fruit of the Loom

Hello World,

Many (soggy) people in the local area were surprised a few weeks ago when the media reported that this was not the wettest spring ever in these parts, especially since even then, it seemed like it had been raining for the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights without stopping, and everything that hadn't rusted was moldy instead. Au contraire! (That's French for, "Where's my life jacket?") According to the weather experts, the precipitation leader around here was June 2003. Everyone scoffed at this claim, and to a man, they all said the same thing, that they couldn't remember ever having this much rain in one season in their entire lives. I probably would have said the same thing, except that I can't say that I couldn't remember, because here are some excerpts from my notes at the time:

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June 6, 2003 -
Happy June! Of course, we all know what June is famous for, and long celebrated by singers, poets and greeting card companies the world over. Moon, June, spoon, croon and honeymoon -- yes, June is famous for weddings. And here we are, sloshing into the month of romance in our galoshes, as the blushing brides and nervous grooms take this momentous step together, on the heels of probably the wettest month this side of monsoon season in India.


June 13, 2003 -
Here we find ourselves in the middle of June already and next week, the official first day of summer will be upon us. Around here, the weather is alternating between freezing and flooding, so it's a little hard to get worked up about summer just yet.


June 20, 2003 -
Happy Summer! Around here, you can't tell it by the weather, but according to the calendar, Saturday is the official first day of summer. You know the Druids and their ilk will be out in force, meeting in their secret places, casting their special mystical spells and performing their arcane rituals to greet the solstice in appropriate style. Of course, the way things have been going, they'll be wearing galoshes and rain coats while they're doing it, but you can't have everything. This weekend, the Mets and Yankees will be attempting to play some baseball games at Shea Stadium, and whenever they play against each other, the local papers refer to it as a "subway series." Because of the weather lately, the papers have taken to calling this a "submarine series" instead. I suppose the outcome will depend on who can hold their breath the longest!


June 27, 2003 -
In typical fashion here, at least in recent memory, in our climactic conditions, we bolted right from the damp and frosty days of early spring to the sweltering blast furnace of late summer, and all in the same week. On Saturday, we had the mother and father of all thunderstorms at 3:30 PM and lost our electricity. Of course, so did our neighbors with the 100-foot tent in their backyard, and when party-goers began arriving there at 5:00 PM, they were greeted with the sounds of silence, warm drinks and uncooked food. I have to admit that Bill took an inordinate amount of sinister pleasure in the collapse of their plans, and it was certainly the quietest party the neighbors have ever had.
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So, far from sinking into oblivion in a watery grave, the water-logged spirit of June 2003 lives on to serve as a reminder, if any was needed, that things can indeed always be worse. I will say that Bill did his part, buying new windshield wipers for both of our cars, which I would have thought would not only make it stop raining on the spot, but also for months afterwards.

Of course, Sunday was Father's Day, and a perfect time to celebrate all of the fathers and father figures in our lives with their own special day and all the trimmings. Not so fast! At church, our pastor is leaving next week, and the new pastor that has been lined up was about to be ordained, so we all wanted to be a part of that very special event. For reasons that I have not been able to fathom, they picked Father's Day of all things for the ordination service, as if people wouldn't have already had other plans for the day, that didn't involve being at church for six hours, thanks not. This very nice and affable young man had been a deacon at a small church in Elmont, just on the fringes of Queens, and they were kind enough to send their van to pick us up at our church and bring us there for the ceremony. Although theirs is another Lutheran church, just like ours, I was surprised to see that they were using different hymnals than we do, and they picked a number of unfamiliar hymns and service music for the occasion. This caused unexpected problems for me, in my usual efforts to drown out everyone around me, but I still did the best that I could under the circumstances, and in fact, I did notice the nervous ushers moving the more fragile decorative items out of my range and to safety outside of the sanctuary. The service itself was lovely and impressive, and it all went very smoothly, in spite of that crazy soprano who was rattling the rafters at full throttle. Afterwards, we all went downstairs to the fellowship hall for a wonderful catered lunch, and I'm sure only the shallow and captious among us would be of the opinion that the best part was the delicious sheet cake for dessert, and I would be one of them. All too soon, it was time to bid our fond farewells to our new friends in Queens, and the van brought us back and dropped us off at our own church around 3:00 PM. It was not the day I would have picked for this event, but I was still glad to be a part of it, and I've got the strained vocal cords to prove it.

It was late in the game for Father's Day after that, but the cats came through for Bill, and got their "daddy-cat" some practical household items that are always welcome, a magazine subscription which is a gift that keeps on giving all year, and of course, junk food never goes out of style, and I ought to know. There was also Pecan Danish for breakfast, although one of our cats, a smoky black princess whose nickname is MoJo, failed the first test of gift-giving by eating more of it off Bill's plate than he ate by himself. Of course, she's new to the intricacies of holiday presents, and to her way of thinking, all food is hers. Bill, who is indulgent to a fault, was happy to oblige, which is why when it comes to daddies, he's the number one pick of our crowd of picky felines, that's for sure.

I have to say that things have turned a corner in Walk Group, because on Monday, I came in first, rather than fourth or worse as I had been. Of course, that was because I went all by myself, since nobody else showed up for Walk Group, and so the entire group consisted of me, myself and I, all by my little old lonesome and that's all. I had been saying that I could never do Walk Group by myself, because I couldn't walk that far that fast even if I wanted to, and it was only the fear of being left behind crossing streets that forced me to keep up the group ahead of me. But after three weeks of strenuous effort, I wanted to give it a try and see if I could do it alone, just as an experiment, and keep up that pace the whole way by myself. I was surprised that I did a pretty good job on my own, and got back about the usual time as when the group goes together, which I wasn't expecting. I don't think that I walked as fast all along, but I found that I ran across all of the streets, since I didn't have a whole group to protect me from the traffic over the whole route that we travel. There are a lot of streets that we cross, so I think I made up some time running, even though my regular walking speed is not the quickest of the group. Since I was alone, I decided that I could make a detour at one corner that we regularly pass, and I trotted over and tapped on Bill's window to say hello. He was surprised to see me, because I don't dare stop and see him with Walk Group, since I know I would never be able to catch up with them again after that, no matter how fast I ran. So I thought that was an interesting experiment, and I was pleased with the results, which were not what I expected. I'll be the first to admit that I'm no Marathon Margie, but on Monday, I was all that Walk Group had, and I gave it my best.

I had been scouting around for something to have as an afternoon snack at work,that could serve as a pick-me-up while being healthier than a candy bar, for instance. I thought some fruit might do the trick, but I have always found fresh fruit at work very inconvenient, because it usually dribbles or requires peeling, or it has messy left-overs like pits, peels or seeds that I wouldn't want to deal with. I thought a good solution to that would be a little box of raisins, and I tried that, but found them so sticky that I either had to eat the whole box all at once and then go wash my hands, or I couldn't use anything in my office without making it sticky too. Of course, we can count on our friends at Betty Crocker to bring us Better Living Through Chemistry (actually, I think that was the motto of the team that invented dynamite for Dupont) so I decided to try some of their Fruit Roll-Ups in the variety pack and see what that was like. These snacks are individually wrapped in foil packets, so you have no idea what you're in for until you tear into the thing, which I did last week as an experiment. I took a bite out of the roll while holding onto the bottom of it with the foil packet, and found it much tougher than I expected, even grinding at it with my teeth. It had a nice flavor, but definitely more chewy than I thought it would be, giving me the idea that this snack was geared more toward youngsters with good strong teeth and energetic jaws. About halfway through, I pulled the rest of the roll-up out of the foil packet, and yes, this was the first that I noticed the clear plastic that it was rolled up in, that people familiar with the product obviously knew enough to remove before eating it with the plastic intact. Thank you so very much not, Betty Crocker, although in their defense, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a message printed on the box somewhere (in very tiny type) that warns people to unroll the roll-up and take the plastic out before eating it. As for myself, I figured that I was most likely not getting enough plastic in my diet anyway, so this was probably a good thing. After all, if I've learned one thing in Walk Group, it's not to do things by half-measures, by golly.

Elle

Step Lively

Hello World,

Well, it's certainly hard to believe that we find ourselves on the very brink of the official start of summer, the way the weather in the local area has been carrying on for the last three weeks already. It's been so cold and rainy for so long around here, that a person could be forgiven for thinking that they must have slept right through summer, and woke up to find themselves in late fall by the looks of it. According to all scientific calculations, the summer solstice is right in front of us, but all it would take would be for anyone to actually look out a window and see for themselves that the whole idea is implausible in the extreme, if not downright preposterous. There may be some starry-eyed innocents out there who are prepared to buy into this bill of goods they're trying to pawn off on us, but as for me, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, and they've got to start showing me some temperatures before I get behind this whole summer solstice malarkey, by golly.

Of course, last Sunday was Flag Day, and having another red-letter day was the Flag Brigade around here, who remembered to put out the flags upstairs and downstairs in the morning, and also take them back in later in the day. Even more amazing, Sunday was a nice enough day to fly the colors, instead of the pelting rain and high winds of most other days lately. In fact, one day last week, there was a severe thunderstorm in the middle of the day, and one huge bolt of lightning hit so close by that the thunder made all of us at work jump out of our seats, as well as setting off car alarms all over the campus. The dinosaurs and I can remember when it had to be hot to have thunderstorms like that, not 50 degrees like it was last week, and Bill said next there would probably be hail, while it's at it, which is something else that you only used to have when it's hot, since there are no standards anymore, heaven knows.

I don't know if this is new, but as they say on NBC, it's new to me, so I'm passing it along for anyone else who has yet to try it. The nice folks at Friendly's have their own ice cream they call Royal Banana Split, and you can buy it right in the supermarket, and I don't mind saying, I think you should. When you open the container, it looks just like any three-flavor ice cream, but in this case, looks are deceiving. It actually consists of chocolate ice cream with nuts, strawberry ice cream with fruit chunks, and in the middle, banana ice cream with swirls of fudge sauce. So all in this one handy package, you get three different kinds of ice cream, fruit, nuts and chocolate sauce, just like a real banana split, without having to assemble all of the ingredients by yourself. Around here, we call that the kind of progress we can live with.

I'm happy to report that things continue apace with Walk Group. I said to Bill that it struck me as odd that no matter how many of us went out at a time, or who they were, I always seemed to come back fourth of the group. Last week, there were two days when I actually came in second, and in my own mind, I awarded myself the prestigious "Most Improved" trophy among the participants. One day, the ostensible leader of the pack, Marathon Margie, handed out pedometers to all of us, so we could chart our progress. The first day we used them, it said I had taken 3,263 steps along our route through the neighborhood. I tried it again the next day, and found to my dismay that it had recorded no steps for me at all over the same route, since I apparently misunderstood the "lock" function on the device, which prevents it from counting any steps. Today I didn't fall into that same trap, but I noticed that it counted 3,687 steps over precisely the same distance, so I'm not exactly sure how accurate these things are. Of course, they are obviously promotional items that the hospital received for nothing, so we don't like to complain. I figure over the course of doing this repeatedly, the amount of steps will probably begin to average out to where there's a consistent enough result to be considered plausible. After all, I don't want it to be said that I received the hypothetical "Most Improved" trophy under false pretences.

One thing I found funny about Walk Group, although in an inadvertent way, happened the first time I joined them, and observed the marathoner in charge, who appeared to be an imposing and no-nonsense black woman wearing a serious suit with wide shoulder pads and voluminous hair extensions that went in every direction. That first day, when I turned purple from exertion, and came back sopping wet, she never broke a sweat, and bounced along keeping track of everyone from the front to the back of the group the whole way, like this was just a walk in the park for her. The next day, she wasn't there and we walked without her, and the following day, I wasn't able to find anyone from Walk Group, so I walked by myself. That same day, the Engineering secretary came to my office to ask about some orders, and brought someone with her that I didn't know, who was small and quiet with her hair pulled into a bun. To be honest, I paid no attention to her, since I figured that she had just tagged along with the secretary to keep her company or have a change of scenery. When we were finished, I was about to go back to my work, and was surprised to still see this stranger standing in my doorway. I was not prepared for what happened next, when she said in a small voice, "We missed you today." I must have stared at her, because she added, like she was talking to a very small and retarded child, "Today at Walk Group. We missed you." At that point, I was not only staring at her, but my eyes were bugged out of my head, and I found myself blurting out, "I couldn't find anybody!" I said to Bill that there was nothing about this person that would have reminded me of the marathon leader of Walk Group, for that indeed was who it was, and even though I ran three miles with her on Tuesday, on Thursday in my office, I would not have recognized her to trip over her. Bill said that he thought Walk Group was challenging enough without having this "shape shifter" as the group leader, and I had to admit that I agreed with him. She called me Friday morning to make sure that I didn't miss Walk Group again, and when I joined them on the patio where we start out with warm-up and stretching, I wasn't concerned that she might have changed her looks once again so I wouldn't know it was her. I said to Bill that all I needed to do was find the one person that I didn't recognize, and it was bound to be her, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened. It certainly added an element of mystery to Walk Group that I hadn't anticipated, that's for sure.

Yesterday, it didn't stop raining all day, and even I didn't feel like going outside, and I consider myself made of sterner stuff than the rest of Walk Group. On another occasion of inclement weather, I found Walk Group had re-convened on the 8th floor in an empty conference room, and exercised to a workout video instead. It seemed a nice enough video from Prevention magazine, which I originally thought would be a low-intensity routine for older adults. It turned out to be anything but that, and was not only grueling, but much longer than I expected. About half of the group bailed out and sat around acting as our cheering section, which they can't do when we're walking, or they'd be left behind, blocks away from the hospital. After about 40 minutes, I finally had to pack it in, and worn to a frazzle, while the Prevention team was still jumping around and kick-boxing like a bunch of alien mutant exercise cyborgs and not real people.

So I admit when it was raining yesterday, I was not looking forward to a repeat performance with the Prevention Boot Camp, and I climbed the stairs to the 8th floor with a lack of enthusiasm that spoke volumes. I can only surmise that others felt the same way, because that day Walk Group consisted of me and Margie, all by our little old lonesome's in the conference room, and no one else showed up the entire time. In an unexpected twist, it turned out that she had neglected to bring any exercise videos with her, so the two of us spent 30 minutes pretty much just jumping around aimlessly, trying to remember moves from other exercise tapes that we had seen, and getting a workout that could be described as whimsically unstructured. I would be less than candid if I didn't say that I still considered it an improvement over the Prevention video, but after all, it wasn't me that nixed the idea, because I would have gone right along with it if she had brought it with her again. I'm not sure if we can claim the credit for inventing a new fitness regimen, which I'm calling "Imaginary Aerobics," but I think I can safely say that it's a step in the right direction.

Elle

Walk This Way

Hello World,

Well, there's certainly nothing to be said about the weather in the local area this week, because as incredible as it might seem, it was a mirror image of the exact same weather we had last week, with the same low temperatures, pouring rain, gray skies and dank, clammy conditions more suited to October in Seattle, rather than the honeymoon month famous for brides and graduates. This is no one's idea of June in New York, and I ought to know, believe me. In fact, when we were at the diner last week, one of the staff mentioned that relatives were staying at their cabin in Lake George, and reported that they were having snow there, and don't forget, this is in June. It's times like this that you realize that you just don't know what to expect next, but there's a pretty firm chance that it won't be good.

Speaking of things that are not good, a former member of our church recently went on to their final reward, and I received several different obituaries from different people, who all wanted to make sure that I found out about it. In what can only be described as mass hysteria, or perhaps a widespread mathematical hallucination, all of the obits listed the key dates as 1929 - 2009, and reported the deceased as 70 years old. I don't mind saying that I personally have trouble with math, and yet even I can tell that's wrong without even trying. Somehow I expect better of the people who are putting together obituaries, but it's really true that there are no standards anymore, heaven knows.

Speaking of church, the wife of our pastor has been working at the United Nations in New York City for many years, and was recently re-assigned to Beirut, Lebanon, which couldn't help but make a person wonder if they weren't trying to tell her something. (I'm thinking, this is sort of like your boss coming up to you and saying something like, "Why don't you climb inside the trunk of this car, and we'll have this Mafia hit man shoot some ventilation holes in it for you?" I mean, getting shipped off to Beirut cannot be seen as the plum assignment of the diplomatic corps, like Buckingham Palace or the Vatican, for instance.) Our pastor has plans to follow along right after her, and will be leaving at the end of June, and while I would normally say that our gain is Lebanon's loss, this time I'm not so sure. The pastor is so enormously boring, I'm thinking it can only help to reduce tensions in the Mideast, just by virtue of him being there, and all he has to do is open his mouth. If they would just put him in a room with the political negotiators, everyone would fall asleep instead of arguing with each other. Personally, I think they should send him to the Palestinians to travel around with the guerillas, who I believe would all take vows and go live out their lives in a convent, just so they wouldn't have to listen to him anymore. It could literally change the cultural landscape of the region at a stroke, after centuries and centuries of violence, because there is no antidote for the stultifying dullness that radiates around him like a fog of soporific stupor. I always said that our church could have been much more successful if we had used this to our advantage, by inviting people to events at no charge, but then making them pay to get out, once the pastor started talking. Sure, we're going to send the pastor over to Lebanon for nothing, but just wait until they want to send him back, and we can name our own price and get whatever concessions we can think of. We'll have the entire Arab world over a barrel, and there won't be anything they can do about it. I'm thinking that 25c for a gallon of gasoline sounds pretty good to me for starters.

Of course, everyone knows that I have a well-deserved reputation as a non-psychic, always last with the story, and I was only kidding in a previous note where I said that this year could be a "reverse Triple Crown" in horse racing, where the three big races are all won by a different horse each time. And yet, that's exactly what happened, and I don't pretend to claim any credit for seeing it coming. The TV listings describe it this way: "If a Triple Crown hopeful manages to overcome the packed field of the Kentucky Derby and the short rest leading up to the Preakness, it must next surmount race distance in the Belmont Stakes. The race's 1-1/2 mile length has proven to be the undoing of many a Derby-Preakness winner, including Big Brown, who finished last in the 2008 Belmont, a first for such a horse." The big story at the Belmont this year was jockey Calvin Borel, who was trying for a personal Triple Crown, by being the winning jockey at all three races, on different horses. Having already won the Derby on Mine That Bird, and the Preakness with Rachel Alexandra, he was back on Mine That Bird for the Belmont with high hopes of success. The newspaper said that he would be the first jockey in history to accomplish this feat, making it even more rare than a horse winning the Triple Crown, which has only happened 11 times, with the last being Affirmed in 1978. This could have been a Cinderella story for the ages, with a fairy tale ending to go down in history.

What happened instead was a surprise to everyone, as 11-1 shot Summer Bird (ironically, another colt of Birdstone, just like the favorite Mine That Bird) ran away with the thing by nearly 3 lengths. Suddenly, Calvin Borel became a non-story, and it seemed like nothing interesting was going to come out of the race. Not so fast! In what turned out to be even more of a Cinderella story, the winning jockey on Summer Bird was none other than the veteran Kent Desormeaux, who was on nobody's mind this year, but that wasn't always the case. It seems that last year, the racing world was agog for Big Brown, and sure enough, it was the very same Kent Desormeaux, who rode the horse to big victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 2008, setting the stage for the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years, and considered practically a foregone conclusion at the time. We already know that Big Brown finished dead last in the Belmont, owing to a foot injury, which must have been a bitter disappointment, especially to the jockey, who had already won the Kentucky Derby three times in his career, and the Preakness twice, but never the Belmont. So of all the long-shots to come out of nowhere and snatch the last jewel of the Triple Crown right out from under the nose of Mine That Bird, it turned out to be the horse's half-brother, and ridden by the jockey who lost the Belmont last year after winning the first two races. I'm telling you, you just can't make this stuff up.

In other sports news, the hospital invited us to join an exercise group they call Around The Sound Walkers, which they said would walk outdoors from 12:30 - 1:00 in good weather, and walk indoors when the conditions were unfavorable. I had already been walking around the hospital campus by myself during my lunch time, but I thought I would check out the group and see what it was like. The first day, I went to join them in my usual work clothes and with what I considered my sturdy sneakers. I was thinking this would probably be a ragtag group of older women, out for a meandering stroll, and easily thwarted by cold, heat, wind or cloudiness. Instead, I found 12 young ladies in workout wear, who set off at a blistering pace around the neighborhood, so that I had to trot to keep up with them. When I walk around the hospital, I stick to the perimeter of the campus, so that I don't have to cross streets and take my chances with the traffic. But these girls went marching off blocks away in every direction, regardless of motor vehicles in our path, which made it critically important for me to stick together with them at all costs. I figured that even the most homicidal driver wasn't going to run over all 13 of us walking ladies, especially the pathetic little runty one at the back, trotting to keep up with the rest. Every time we got to a corner, they turned even farther away from the hospital, making me wonder just how far we were going to end up walking in 30 minutes. When I explained to people later where we had walked, everyone said the same thing: "Oh, you couldn't have walked up the Second Street hill!" which is apparently locally famous for its steep incline. I had never heard of it before, but I do know that I thought I was just going to drop dead, and it's a wonder that I didn't. When we finally got back to the hospital, they expect everyone to run up the 15 steps and clap, like we've just won some sort of prize or something. As for myself, I felt like I had been hit by a truck, and everything I was wearing was just sopping wet. My face had gone from being bright red, to purple, to a color that can only be described as not being found in nature. My sturdy sneakers, which had started out zipped to the top, had unzipped themselves along the way, as I stamped along with the group, trying not to get left behind. The leader of the group, who runs marathons for the heck of it, said that we went about 3 miles in 30 minutes, and I really felt every bit of that. It was certainly not the walk group of sissy old ladies that I was expecting, that's for sure.

Once I knew what to expect, I got better prepared for my next outing with the walk group. First I changed into some spare clothes that I brought from home, and sneakers with sensible laces that wouldn't unzip as I was going. Since I knew the route, I was better able to pace myself the whole way, and did a better job of keeping up with the group, rather than trotting to catch up from the rear. Even better, the marathon lady wasn't there, so even though the pace was still fast for me, it was at least 10 minutes slower overall, which seemed like a big improvement compared to that first time. After just a few times out with the walk group, over the last two weeks, I noticed that my stamina had improved so that even when the marathon lady was in charge, I was still able to keep up the pace better and better each day. But it's still very challenging, and a lot more strenuous than anything I would do on my own, if I wasn't terrified of getting run over by myself, if I don't stick together with the rest of the walkers. I've been telling people in my office that I expect the walk group would be a great way to lose weight, if it doesn't kill me first.

Yesterday I was surprised when the marathon lady jogged up to me and said something about how I was the resident professional in the group and putting the rest of them to shame, and I had no idea what she was talking about. It was only later that it occurred to me that the spare clothes I had brought from home included one of many promotional T-shirts for the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge 5K Run, which they would hand out as freebies every year at the Secretary's Day Luncheon, and I have at least one of them for each year, in a dizzying variety of colors and designs. This well-known race attracts serious runners from all over, and somehow she must have thought that I was one of them, and not just a secretary taking advantage of a free handout under false pretences. I obviously had to set her straight, although I would have thought that turning purple on the Second Street hill would have been enough of an indication that I was no one's idea of a serious runner, if not the unzipped sneakers. I'm sure I could get the pastor of my church to vouch for me, but then I'd have to find some way to wake the poor woman up again.

Elle

Picture Perfect

Hello World,

Happy June! There's no sense in complaining about the weather around here, heaven knows, because just when you think that it can't possibly get any worse, that's exactly what it does, and apparently without irony. Of course, I can't say that adding irony to the mix would be any sort of improvement, in fact, if I was looking to improve the personality of weather, I think remorse would be a much more appropriate trait to develop, and that goes double for the dinosaurs, believe me. But it seems that we are stuck with the weather the way it is, and no amount of complaint is going to make a dent in it at this point, and more's the pity, I'm sure. I keep saying to Bill that the time will come soon enough when we're all complaining about how hot it is, but so far, I keep saying that through chattering teeth and stamping my feet to keep warm. I can tell you that if this June was a magazine, I certainly wouldn't renew my subscription, and that's putting it mildly.

Not complaining about the weather, and also apparently without irony, the flowering plants and shrubs around our yard seem to be taking quite a shine to it. There's not really all that much that happens in our yard at this time of year, once all the spring bulbs and early blooming trees have finished, and all the regular trees fill in so much that there's too much shade for a lot of things. But we've had some early roses, whose fragrant beauty is always welcome, including our sprawling wild roses that seem to be everywhere at once. Even the new rosebush that I planted last year in the infamous "rosebush graveyard" came back for another season, so that was a pleasant surprise. The mountain laurel and flowering almond are putting on quite a show, with dainty pink flowers in profusion. Meanwhile the lawn, which should technically be grass, is littered with buttercups everywhere, their jaunty yellow flowers like dappled sunlight in every direction and in any kind of weather. The backyard is awash with clover, and some other sort of ground cover with tiny purple flowers, that I think is too pretty to be a weed, but obviously spreads too fast to be anything desirable. Speaking of undesirable, if there was any market for false asters, we'd have it made, because we have them in abundance, and beyond, and as for false chrysanthemums, even more so. Interestingly, with the buttercups all doing so well, I was surprised not to see the little creeping buttercup that I brought home from church last year as a research project, although it must be said, it would have been easier to keep track of that if I had any idea where in the yard I had planted it, so I could keep an eye on it. Like so many things in this world, that may be lost to posterity, and if it doesn't come back by itself, I will certainly not know where to look for it.

Speaking of being lost to posterity, one thing that is not, and in fact, was unexpectedly resurrected from obscurity, is the neighbor's ugly fence. I was surprised that I couldn't find any record of it on my computer, because I remember at the time complaining about it long and hard, and I'm sure that anyone who knew me at the time heard all about it, because I certainly didn't keep it to myself. When a search of even my oldest files didn't turn it up, I was completely stumped, and just didn't know where else to look. Then it occurred to me that I have so many pictures of the fence over the years without even trying, because it just seems to be in the background of so many pictures that I take in our yard, of flowers, or snow, or even packing up the car to go on vacation. So I figured that I could look back through old pictures to the earliest pictures I have with the fence in the background, and then whatever pictures are before that with no fence, that would narrow down the timeframe for the fence to have been installed. That sounds like a lot of drudgery, but actually it was pretty quick going, because it was easy to skip through most pictures and only look at the ones with flowers, snow or the driveway. Ironically, and I don't use that term lightly, it turned out even better than I anticipated, because apparently we knew the fence was imminent, and so I have a bunch of pictures just of the new fence, complete with before, after, and some half-way. So now I can state for the record that the neighbor's ugly fence was installed in August 1993, which makes it older than I thought it was, but even still, I think a fence (probably) that expensive should be able to stand up without its slats falling out for more than 15 years, or I'd be complaining to my fence company, if it was my fence. And I would like to remind everyone that this was back in the days of real film that you had to pay for, and pay to have it developed and printed and all that jazz, and here I have 10 pictures of the neighbor's ugly fence, including two that were nothing but the empty space where the hedges had been removed and the fence hadn't even been put in yet. So that was an interesting stroll down Memory Lane, and a good use of some old-fashioned research to find the right answer after all these years.

While we're on the subject of research, this year's Belmont Stakes might be one for the books. It really is true that the filly who won the Preakness, Rachel Alexandra, will not be running at the Belmont, which invites the possibility that Mine That Bird could win two races out of the Triple Crown, since he already won the Kentucky Derby. If he does, he could have legions of trivia buffs set their favorite search engines buzzing with queries about any previous "Jockey Triple Crown," which would be the same jockey riding the winning horse in all three races, but the horses are not the same. So far, the same jockey has won the Kentucky Derby aboard Mine That Bird, and the Preakness atop Rachel Alexandra. Now he'll be back on Mine That Bird for the Belmont, and while the horse can't win the Triple Crown at this point, it might be a red-letter day for the jockey, and a fascinating tidbit of "horse-lore" to thrill the trivia-minded through the ages. But the Belmont is usually the spoiler to Triple Crown hopefuls, so we'll see if Mine That Bird can turn the tide and ride into history, however historically off-handed it might be.

In a surprising turn of events, especially for the way the weather has been lately in the local area, it must be said that the Flag Brigade had no trouble flying the colors, upstairs and downstairs, on both Memorial Day (observed) on May 25, and traditional Memorial Day on May 30, and long may they wave. It can't be taken for granted that the Flag Brigade is going to remember to put the flags out on the correct day, or once having done so, to remember to take them back in again that same evening, so this was indeed not one, but two red-letter days in the life of the Flag Brigade around here, that's for sure. And on the topic of notable days, I happened to be standing in the hallway and discussing weighty business matters with a co-worker, but as so often happens, after a while it devolved into more of a comic interlude full of quips and jests, which had both of us laughing. At one point, the senior bookkeeper stepped out of her nearby office, wagged her finger at us, and announced in a mock stern voice: "Do you mind? I'm trying to work here!" To which I retorted: "Well, that would be a first." She laughed. So in spite of the weather, I guess it's safe to say that the Age of Irony has not passed, and remorse is only for those people whose telegram has gone astray and they have to send the message again. I realize that's a hopelessly outmoded analogy that is sure to be lost on the young whipper-snappers of today, but just like finding the fence installation pictures from 1993, sometimes the old ways are the best after all.

Elle