Up To Speed

Hello World,

Greetings again from the other side of the autumnal equinox, as we have already passed that seasonal milestone and find ourselves hurtling full tilt and headlong into winter, which will be here before we know it at this rate. Of course, yesterday was 85 degrees in the local area, so it was a little hard to get into that late September vibe around here, but that's about all that we can expect from a year like this, where the weather has been not only all over the map, but must also include maps of far distant solar systems, based on some of the crazy conditions that have bedeviled us lately, and not just in these parts, but from sea to shining sea, So wherever you may be, I hope that the weather is to your liking, and if it is, you'd better hurry up and enjoy it while you can, because unlike the Energizer Bunny, it doesn't just keep on going and going and going, but is rather "hare" today and gone tomorrow, and I ought to know.

Alert readers may recall my previous note about making the hospital employees attend the Safety Fair, which served the inadvertent purpose of making me more stupid afterward than when I first walked in, so that when they gave us the exit test, I got all of the answers wrong, despite years of mandatory information courses on these very same subjects. One of the questions I got wrong was the sequence of fire alarm bells in my department, which I identified on the test as 2-2-2, which was the alarm for the building that Purchasing used to be located in, about 15 years ago. I realize that now, because when I got back to my office and checked the fire bell list, I was embarrassed to see that my answer was off by two buildings and a decade and a half at least, which is not even close in hand grenades, much less horseshoes, and would be no help at all in a fire. But I figured that I learned my lesson, and the next time, I would have the right answer at my fingertips.

So earlier in the week, when the fire bells went off, at least I knew where they were for, and I considered that a significant improvement on my part. In the hallway, I bumped into the Director of Engineering, who was talking with a bunch of other people milling around from the second floor, and he asked me if I heard the fire bells and knew where they were from. "Oh yes," I answered brightly, "The bells were 4-1 and if we're 4-2 here, then it's probably the first floor in this building." Instead of being impressed with my expertise, he glared at all of us and snapped, "So what are you all doing here? If the fire alarm says that there's a fire in the Library, which is directly below you, why are you still up here in your departments?" He went on to give us a long-winded lecture about treating all fire alarms as a real fire, not a drill, and reminded us that our ancient rattletrap of a building was constructed entirely of mud and straw, and would go up like a tinderbox in a fire, so we had to think fast if we were going to get out in one piece. After years of fire safety training at this very hospital, I couldn't take that lying down, so I asked him what we were supposed to do. After all, I pointed out, they've always told us when we hear the fire bells to stay where we are and not wander around up and down the stairs, use the elevators, or open up the smoke compartment doors, but to stay at our post and await further instructions. But he said that if the fire is in our building, we need to evacuate, and as soon as we heard the bells, we should have gone outside. At this point, I had to tell him the story of a bomb threat, years ago when we were in the other building (which turned out to be a real bomb and no joke) and when we saw everyone else from our building outside on the sidewalk, we went outside too, even though we didn't know what was going on. When the two people in charge of our department heard about it later, they had a fit and told us loud and long, and in no uncertain terms, that we were never to leave the department unattended, no matter what, unless specifically instructed by the Fire Department, and they were all set to dock our pay to drive the point home. But apparently that was then, and this is now, and he assured us that the hospital places a premium on staff safety, and would not be gratified to hear of employees being burned to a crisp, or blown apart, while staying at their desks during an emergency in their department. Normally, this is where I would say, "So we all learned something today," except that afterwards, they gave us that same quiz from the Safety Fair, and I still got all the answers wrong, that is, except for that one about the fire bells, believe me.

Also losing control and flipping out on the learning curve, we have the TV section from our local newspaper, and their episode synopsis of "The Cleaner" on the A&E network:

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"William attempts to help an old friend who is looking
to leave behind his heroine and speed addictions ..... "
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I understand that "speed" is a slang expression for amphetamines, but all I can come up with for a "heroine" problem would be someone addicted to SuperGirl, Scarlett O'Hara, Wonder Woman, Mother Teresa, Nancy Drew, Venus, Florence Nightingale, Guinevere, Betty Boop and Xena the Warrior Princess. Of course, your average person on the street might mix up similar words like "heroin" and "heroine," and I don't mind saying that the spell-checker is not going to help you in that case. But one presumes that they have people with a bit more qualifications working at the newspaper, who might be expected to know the difference between the two words, and not give the TV section a black eye by looking like they have no idea what they're doing. Apparently one would be wrong to presume that.

Meanwhile in the wilds of cyberspace, it's been a slow and bumpy road to learn the ropes in FaceBook, but it continues to be interesting in different ways. I've said before that it's not a place for the paranoid among us, because it's true that just about anybody can find you there, although I'm using an alias, so I'm a little harder to find than otherwise. But anyone who knows your email address, or recognizes your profile picture, can invite you to be their Friend, or request you to accept them as your Friend, even if you didn't know they were on FaceBook to start with, and would have avoided them if you did. (Of course, you can decline invitations and ignore requests, or even block someone completely if necessary, so you're not just at the mercy of everybody out there.) I was admittedly chagrined yesterday, when in spite of being many thousands of miles away in Lebanon, the former pastor of our church found me on FaceBook and added me as one of his Friends, and thanks so very much not. I don't mind saying that many words spring to mind to describe our relationship, but "friend" wouldn't be one of them, not by a long shot, and that's not just the heroine in me talking, believe me. But in the spirit of letting bygones be bygones, and taking the high road, I accepted him as a Friend, and I guess I figured, how bad could it be, after all, he's only one person. Bang! Virtually as soon as he was my Friend, my entire home page was over-run with 15 messages from him, which were all long and boring theological lectures, or stultifying articles about church controversies. Generally speaking, posts on a FaceBook page tend to follow the "Hey, how's it going" mode of conversation, and are usually as uninteresting as they are inoffensive. Frankly, I thought that was as bad as it could get, until suddenly my whole page was suffocating under the weight of essays, sermons and scholarly discourses of grave importance, and I realized that I missed all of the usual trite and vapid comments that I had come to expect and enjoy. Finally in self-defense, I had to Hide his posts, and get my home page back under control, which offered a cosmetic solution to the problem, without taking the drastic step of blocking him completely. I had to laugh when he posted this comment on my Wall:

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Good to see you here! Now, finally, we can have some wit and humour ... ; )
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Now, it must be said that from a normal person, no one would consider that to be the epitome of hilarity, but believe me, from the pastor, that's about the funniest thing he's ever come up with, and I ought to know. Of course, I just have to shake my head and say, by golly, you don't know the half of it. But I reject out of hand the notion that I will accept any old anybody as a virtual Friend, because frankly, my standards are very exacting, and in fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I'm addicted to heroines.

Elle

Floor Show

Hello World,

Well, it doesn't seem remotely possible that it could be more than halfway past the middle of September already, and by golly, that means that there's only 117 shopping days left until Valentine's Day, not that I'm trying to be an alarmist or anything. (Hey! Put down that hand grenade, and let's deal with this situation in an adult and rational manner. A few good stiff drinks should do the trick, I'm thinking.) I always say that once school starts, you may as well kiss the year goodbye, because after that, the months just fly by in a blur, and suddenly you find yourself dancing on top of tables and smooching some homeless person on New Year's Eve, or perhaps that's just me. In any case, from here on in, you'd better not blink, or you'll miss what's right in front of you, because before you know it, it will be right behind you, and you'll be on the outside looking in and wondering where it all went wrong. Consider this your September wake-up call, and don't say I didn't warn you.

Speaking of September wake-up calls, our good friend Miss Rachel Alexandra did it again, by running away with the prestigious Woodward Stakes, out from under the noses of her older and more experienced male counterparts, who could only watch in wonder from behind. This race is held every year at the scenic Saratoga race course in upstate New York, and because we were upstate when it happened, we noticed that up there, it was a huge media event, and a person could not get away from the coverage, no matter how hard they might have tried. It would come as a surprise to no one that her jockey was Calvin Borel, this year's darling of The Double Crown, which I guess is when you win two out of three races in The Triple Crown, and the media turns you into an overnight sensation, even if you've been riding horses for decades. She held off a hard-charging Macho Again at the finish, who is a horse that I don't know, but she also left Mine That Bird and Summer Bird in her wake, who had won the other two races in the Triple Crown when the filly wasn't entered in the field. The newspaper reported that this race was her "... ninth consecutive victory, all but clinching Horse of the Year honors." At this rate, probably the only people who will be glad to see her retire will be the bettors, because she's such an odds-on favorite every time she races that no one can make any money off betting on her. I suppose that's one problem with being a sure thing, or as they say in the horse racing business, a "shoe-in."

On the topic of shoes, it reminds me of something that happened at work recently. Everyone knows that the Purchasing department is always located in the most undesirable spot on the hospital grounds, and the salespeople will tell you at other hospitals that they call on, it's usually in the basement next to the Morgue. It happens that our Morgue is in the tunnel next to the Boiler Room, which must have been considered too much prime real estate for the likes of Purchasing, so they decided instead to remove it to a separate out-building on the campus, a centuries-old fire-trap constructed of mud and straw that predates the invention of elevators, as well as numerous other modern conveniences, like thermostats. But even though I'm nowhere near the main hospital building, I make a point to go over there every other week and pick up the piles of time cards from Administration and carry them back with me to Payroll, which is right next to us in the same hallway, and save them a trip from Administration, while also getting the cards to Payroll sooner. This makes people happy on both sides, and gives me a chance to suck up to a couple of our high-powered departments, where I can revel in their appreciative cries of: "Thanks so much ..... uh-h-h-h-h-h ..... whoever you are!" For the sake of the punch-line of this story, I reiterate the two salient points: I go to Administration every two weeks, and I work in the Purchasing department.

So you can imagine my surprise last week, when I dashed into Administration to pick up time cards as usual, and discovered that the carpeting had been ripped out and replaced with new wood laminate floors, starting immediately inside the door from the hallway. Luckily for me, I noticed this in time as I ran in from the hall, and I stopped short on the threshold, thereby narrowly averting disaster with only microns to spare. I realized that if I had continued as I had been going, I would have had to change into a cartoon character and turn around in mid-air, because if I had landed unexpectedly on the new wood floor at full throttle like I was going, I would have skidded all the way through the department and down the hall right into the President's office, which would have been an unpleasant surprise for both of us, believe me. In fact, while I was standing there waiting for the time cards to be ready, several people came charging into the department like they normally would, and slipped right inside the door, so they needed to grab onto the receptionist desk to steady themselves. I realize that the hospital is always looking for ways to drum up business, but frankly, I think this is taking the tactic a bit too far. And as I said, I'm not only in Administration every other week, but I work in Purchasing, so I wouldn't expect me to be the last person to find out that we had new floors installed and be none the wiser. I was thinking of filing a grievance with the Cartoon Character Board of Ethics, but I have the feeling that they were behind this project right from the beginning, if only for its comic potential.

I have to report that Bill took exception to my previous note, as far as the weather was concerned. He pointed out that for years, I have complained loud and long about Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine making our lives miserable, yet when we had an unprecedented three beautiful days for Labor Day weekend, I peremptorily handed off the credit to the “weather trolls” instead, and he thought that was a bum rap for the poor Comrade after all this time. He may be right about that, and I'd be just as happy to give credit where it’s due, but personally, I happen to believe that our old nemesis Comrade Mischka was away at the time, receiving some sort of award for the stupefyingly miserable weather in May and June, and had nothing to do with Labor Day in any way. My feeling is that the wretched minion who was left in his place was not equal to the task (and to be honest, who would be?) and simply fell asleep at the switch, forgetting to turn on the raining frogs and plagues of locusts ahead of time, so we were free to enjoy three glorious days without the usual weather histrionics that the Kremlin regularly tosses our way. I'd be willing to bet that by now, the unfortunate minion responsible for this catastrophic slip-up has probably been relegated to the salt mines of Siberia, for a good long time, and I'll bet he’s also not thinking much of those raining frogs and plagues of locusts besides.

While we're on the subject of the imaginary male figures in our lives, alert readers may have noticed on the AOL Welcome Screen that it’s the 13th birthday of the AOL Running Man, and long may he wave. They ran an entire feature about him, which was interesting and informative, and they also suggested that we would all be able to follow the adventures of Running Man on Twitter, believe that or don't. Not only that, but he has apparently been nominated for the 2009 Madison Avenue Walk of Fame for mascots, icons, logos or slogans, and AOL asked us all to vote for Running Man so he could be enshrined on the Walk of Fame as befits his celebrity status in honor of his 13th year of iconography. (And you can just go right ahead and visit their web site at www.advertisingweek.com and see for yourself.) Well, when it comes to climbing on board that bandwagon celebrating imaginary characters, no one has to ask me twice, so you can be sure that I'm ready to jump all over this one with all the fanfare and hoopla that a non-existent nobody would deserve. And if he doesn't win, the worst he could do is mess up my email, at least I don't have to worry about raining frogs and plagues of locusts.

Speaking of non-existent nobodies, I have the following telephone story to relate. Certain people at the hospital (and I was one of them, so it wasn't a very exclusive fraternity) were given cell phones with a two-way radio feature, so we could get in touch with each other without using the cell phone part of it, which tends to interfere with the monitoring equipment in the clinical areas like ICU and the Emergency Room. I don't use it as a cell phone, although it can be used that way, but I don't really understand how. I don't remember the phone number on it, which is a ridiculously complicated number, and I certainly never give it to anyone, not only because I don't understand how to use the phone, but also because I am convinced that the number was probably re-assigned to me from being previously assigned to some South American drug dealer, with my luck. Whenever it rings, I figure it’s a mistake, so I don't answer it, and the callers don't end up in voice mail, so I'm sure they weren't trying to reach me in the first place. But it rang yesterday and I didn't recognize the calling number, so I didn't answer it, but I was surprised later to see that I had a voice mail message. You don't have to go looking for your voice mail messages on this particular phone, because it keeps warbling at you when you have a message, and doesn't stop until you listen to it. At the time, I was in the middle of a task that I needed to concentrate on, and the repeated warbling was getting on my nerves, so I finally picked it up and put it away in my desk drawer to keep it quiet. At that point, it became so faint that I wound up forgetting all about it, and packed up and went to lunch without a care in the world. It was only much later that I remembered the voice mail message was still waiting for me, and by then, I could only hope that it was not anyone hugely important that I ignored all day, or some extreme crisis that had required my immediate attention. So it was late in the day when I finally got around to playing the message, and which they have managed to turn into a tremendously complicated process, involving multiple menu options, buttons and voice commands, like I'm trying to get into the vault at Fort Knox or something. After all that, the message turned out to be someone speaking Spanish, and although I couldn't understand a word she said, it sounded suspiciously like someone trying to sell me aluminum siding or life insurance, thank you so very much not. So I guess you could say that the joke was on me that time, and all I can do is grin and bear it, because I already know that I can't count on the Cartoon Character Board of Ethics.

Elle

Dive Right In

Hello World,

Well, I don't know about where you are, but in the local area, it would seem that when nobody was watching, the weather trolls have come along and turned the clock back to June, because once again we find ourselves having the most horrible cold and rainy conditions, just like two months ago when we all got blue in the face complaining about it. It had finally warmed up in August, so that we had a brief glimpse of actual summer, after waiting for it in vain in June and July, and we were finally starting to forget how bad it had been. But Friday dawned gray and dreary, with gusty winds and pelting rain, and temperatures diving into the 60's, feeling more appropriate to the blustery frostiness of March than early September. People who last week were decked out in flip-flops and tank tops were scrambling for their winter coats and fuzzy boots, and if the ice cream truck had shown up for its daily rounds, people would have thrown rocks at it. Alas, for those halcyon days of yore, when the seasons used to change gradually, melding from one into the next as a seamless transition, not crashing in on us unexpectedly with a swing of 20 degrees overnight.

In fairness to the weather trolls, it must be said that they really outdid themselves on Labor Day weekend, as we had three of the most glorious days that I can remember having in a row, practically forever. Each one was more perfect than the last, and anyone with plans for the weekend, like us, could only regard this bonanza with a mixture of awe and wonder, like winning the lottery. Especially the way things had been going all year, with some of the crappiest weather I can remember week in and week out, the odds against this happening must have been astronomical. In our case, the weather made a big difference to our plans, since we had been invited to visit friends and swim in their pool, which by its very nature, has a limited range of weather conditions that are conducive to this. In fact, I would consider ourselves to be experts on this subject, without even trying. These friends live on the outskirts of Albany in upstate New York, and we go to visit them regularly, every year like clockwork, around the holidays in November and January. At that time of year, the Albany area is little more than a frigid wasteland of snow and ice, and when we go to their house, their pool is nothing but a fond memory, buried under the frozen tundra of their backyard. And every year, while we're drinking hot chocolate in front of the fireplace, we always say that we should come back up in the summer, so we can go in their pool for a change, but then we never do. So this year, when the call went out to come up for a swim, we grabbed our swimsuits and sunglasses, and hit the road so we could dive right in.

Not so fast! Our plan was to leave early Saturday morning, so that we could arrive there around lunch time, of course making time along the way for a stop at Cinnabon for one of their delectable cinnamon buns, which is a rare treat that we indulge in when we travel, since there are none at home. Unfortunately, Bill called on Friday night from the gas station to say that his car had no brakes, and so our plans for Saturday morning went out the window, and the Cinnabons right along with them. Our mechanic said that he would come in on Saturday to fix the brakes, which he did and we were grateful, but with the result that we didn't actually get underway on our trip until after 2:00 PM, and in our haste to make up lost time, we didn't make a single stop along the way. We reached our friends just about at dinner time, and while I'm a person who will go swimming at any time, they felt that tomorrow would be better. Since we got there so late, we went ahead and checked into our hotel, La Quinta in Latham, and then went to the nearby 76 Diner for dinner, where we have been before and it did not disappoint. From there we stopped at a locally famous ice cream emporium, and enjoyed some sweet treats of the season while the getting was good. After that, we went back to their house and made them watch a video compilation that Bill had assembled from the pictures we took with his swim mask-camera from my vacation, which they seemed to enjoy, although it was hard to tell because they were all snoring so loudly. All too soon, it was way past our bedtime, so we hurried back to the hotel and turned in after a long and eventful day.

La Quinta turned out to be a nice enough place, and the price was certainly right, considering that it had plenty of amenities like a microwave and refrigerator in the room, WI-FI, fitness center, business center, indoor pool, hot tub, and breakfast buffet included in the room rate. In fact, some of the rooms had Jacuzzi's built right into them, as we found out when our other friends from the area decided to stay at the same hotel when we were there, and they declared their Jacuzzi worth the stay all by itself. Somehow without ever setting foot in the place before in our entire lives, and sight unseen, the hotel reservations staff knew exactly which room to assign to us, and we hit the dreaded tri-fecta of the elevators, the ice maker and the vending machines all within easy reach of our door, and thanks so very much not. This happens to us so often when we travel that you can't help but wonder if there's some sort of huge conspiracy afoot, and that dire consequences of epic proportions would ensue if we were ever to be moved more than twelve feet from the groaning elevators, the grinding ice makers, and the snap-crackle-pop of vending machines at all hours of the night and day. At this rate, we'll probably never find out, because that's where they always put us, no matter where we stay. I thought the room was nice and comfortable, and Bill liked the TV, and I don't mind saying, he has very high standards. In the morning, we had breakfast in our friends' room, since it was bigger, and the buffet was a nice assortment of items, such as bagels, waffles, toast, muffins, rolls, Danish, donuts, hard-boiled eggs, cereal, yogurt, fruit, juice and coffee. We weren't there long enough for a dive in the pool, but I went and took pictures, and it looked lovely and inviting, with an outdoor patio where you could relax in the sun after a swim. I was glad that I went and checked it out, because I had one of those serendipitous discoveries that make travel so worthwhile.

Of course, there must be some sort of regulations that stipulate you must tell people how deep is the pool, and they very helpfully build this information right into the tile floor around the pool, so that you can tell what the depth is at different spots, just by looking at the numbers next to the pool. It didn't occur to me that there might be the same regulations that would apply to hot tubs, or that it would matter to anyone how deep the hot tub might be, since all you do is sit in it, and I wouldn't think the depth would be an issue. But sure enough, there I was taking pictures in the pool area, and in a sunny corner is the hot tub, and right around the outside, the built-in tile says: "2 Feet 6 Inches Deep" right there for all the world to see. It's there in two different places around the hot tub, just so there's no questions or misunderstandings, and in a third spot, the built-in tile announces: NO DIVING. Well, I have to admit that was one of my favorite parts of our stay there, that the hot tub installation crew felt compelled to warn people off diving into this 30-inch pool, or that there would actually be people stupid enough to do it in the first place. Of course, they say that travel is broadening, but I didn't realize that it could be flattening as well.

Once breakfast was behind us, we checked out and after waiting a whole day, we couldn't wait to jump into our friends' pool at long last. It was cool and beautiful, serene yet stimulating, and more than worth all the time and trouble, effort and aggravation to get there. We splashed and cavorted, played with pool toys, swam and floated to our heart's content. Unlike the hotel, they even allow diving, so there was plenty of that going on too. We also made some more memorable underwater videos with Bill's swim mask-camera (hey, wake up!) and whiled away a pleasant afternoon in the sun without a care in the world to disturb us. It was a really special time for us, and we were so glad we finally got the chance to visit our friends in the summer for once, rather than always being up there in the dead of winter and tramping through snow drifts.

After a long day of sun and fun, we decided to go for a bite at the nearby Circle Diner, where everything was delicious, or it might just have been that we were all tired and hungry. Since our friends already had a Wii entertainment system, we weren't expecting them to get an Xbox as well, but they did, so we spent some time trying to sink battleships (and failing), trying to shoot down airplanes (and failing), and generally making a strong case that if it were up to us to repel a foreign invasion, well, it would be safe to say that everyone should probably brush up on their Martian. We also tried our hand at football, and while the rest of the league has nothing to worry about, I have to say that if Chicago is depending on us for their success, I frankly don't care much for the Bears' chances over the course of the season, especially since we couldn't even figure out how to get the quarterback to throw a pass. So we were 0-for-3 in computer games, and it was too late to go swimming again, so we decided to pack it in and quit while we were behind.

As usual, we left later than we planned, and were surprised at how much traffic we ran into on the highway, being Sunday night of a holiday weekend, when we would have expected the traffic to be on Monday night instead. Even though it was late, we couldn't pass up dinner at Denny's on the way home, and it was worth waiting for, although I was disappointed that they didn't have my favorite dessert, their scrumptious coconut cream pie, and had to settle for cheesecake instead. The rest of the trip home was uneventful, and even better was having Monday off from work to relax and recuperate after a long and busy weekend. The only thing better would be a hot tub to steam away the cares of the day, in fact, if there was one here now, I'd be happy to dive right in and bring along the swim mask-camera for good measure. Okay, now stop all that snoring!

Elle

Friend or Foe

Hello World,

Happy September! This really is Labor Day weekend, and we have the spirit of the stalwart Samuel L. Gompers to thank for a holiday on Monday, and long may she wave. So for everyone who has the day off to rest from their labors, relax and enjoy yourself, if only for the sake of the working class heroes who fought for our right to party like it's 1894. Or as they say in the IWW, the Wobblies wobble, but they don't fall down. Of course, that was in the days before Tequila became so readily available, and I'm not so sure that they'd still be saying that today. In any case, any excuse for a party is good enough for me, I don't mind saying, and I don't need to get hit over the head with the lumpenproletariat to be in the holiday mood. It's probably just as well, because at this point in my life, if I wobble, I usually do fall down.

Moving right along, of course Muslims the world over were glad to greet Ramadan on August 21 and which continues for 30 days until September 19, where you can party like it's 622, that is, as long as you don't have any fun, which seems to be frowned upon during Ramadan. I maintain that this kind of observance will never catch on in this country, until they start to include more entertainment value, like green beer, presents or fireworks at the very least. Meanwhile in other religious news, the major governing body for Lutherans in the country, the ELCA, held their church-wide assembly August 17-23 in Minneapolis, and passed the resolution from their Human Sexuality Task Force, which paves the way for the ordination of gay clergy. It was shortly after that on August 19 when a tornado ripped through downtown Minneapolis, knocking the steeple off the church where the assembly had been meeting just hours earlier. I figure you can just go ahead and supply your own punch-line here, because that story obviously speaks for itself and doesn't need any help from me.

Speaking of help, I would very much not like to thank the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, in my continuing efforts to renew the Highway Use Tax permit for the Storeroom truck at work. We use this rental truck to ferry our supplies from the Storeroom in Mount Vernon to all of our different facilities, and when the permit came up for renewal, we were contacted by our rental company saying that they could process the renewal for us, as long as they had the password on the renewal application form. Not having the form, I contacted the bean counters in Albany to get the information that I needed. Not so fast! Apparently I wasn't on their list of approved contacts for our business, so they couldn't give me the information, despite the fact that I am the person who has been sending in the quarterly reports and tax payments every quarter for the past 5 years. I made several phone calls and spoke to many different people, but they all said the same thing, that it had to be an officer of the corporation on their approved list. I finally asked them who from the hospital was on their approved list, and at that point, they sort of hemmed and hawed and admitted that they didn't actually have any information in their database about our hospital's management, but they knew it couldn't be me, because I was just the Purchasing secretary, and it had to be one of the officers. "But," I pointed out with what seemed to me to be unassailable logic, "If you don't know who our officers are in the first place, heck, anybody could call you and say that they're Joe Blow the CEO of the hospital, and you would have no way of knowing if that was right or not." (I didn't say that it could just as easily be the cleaning lady, and I would have asked her, except that no one ever comes and cleans in our building.) They refused to budge, and the most that I could get them to do was to resend the application form, and hope that it would somehow find its way to me the second time around, instead of vanishing among the different buildings and 1,600 employees, thanks to the mentally-challenged volunteers we have sorting our mail. Two weeks later, I still didn't get it, so I called and asked them to send another one, and maybe the third time would be the charm. I'm thinking at this rate, it would be easier to walk over to the main building and ask the cleaning lady to call them and say that she's Joe Blow the CEO of the hospital and be done with it, because everyone knows that I have a long-standing policy against using logic with irrational people.

In other work news, yesterday was the Environment of Care Safety Fair (their motto: "Be Prepared, Not Scared") upstairs in the Nursing Education department, which ran from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and all the employees were invited to attend. That is to say, I thought we were all invited to attend, until I didn't go, and that set in motion a chain of events that included phone calls, voice mail messages, email and sending people to the department in person, to make sure everyone went, since it was mandatory. Well, there's no sense in telling us that we're invited to attend, as if we have a choice in the matter, when what you mean is that we have to go because it's mandatory, and should have just said that in the first place, thanks so very much not. So when someone came over to retrieve me, I dropped what I was doing and walked all the way over to the Safety Fair in the other building, so I could be prepared and not scared. The main thrust of the event was to alert everyone that the emergency codes were changing next week, and give out the new codes and colors that would be in use at the hospital. Anyone who watches television is aware that Code Blue is for cardiac emergencies and Code Red is fire, but there are several others, such as Code Yellow for bomb threats, Code Orange for hazardous material spills and Code Black for severe weather. Our hospital is adopting the codes that are being standardized in New York State (there are no federally standardized codes) which should be less confusing in the long run. There were also presentations about fire safety, security precautions, emergency preparedness, hazardous materials, equipment safety and evacuation plans. It would be easy to tell you which one was the most popular, because emergency preparedness was giving out fun-size candy bars, and people were all over them like flies. The person who came over to get me assured me that it was fun and would take about 10-15 minutes. But I was there in a crowded and stuffy room for an hour, and not much enjoying it, I can tell you that. Even worse, it apparently managed to suck all of the brain cells out of my head, so that I actually knew less about safety when I left than when I had arrived, which I think would have been the exact opposite of their intention. I know this because they made us take a test before we could leave, and in spite of 20 years of taking courses on mandated information, I believe that I got every question wrong on the test, including my name and telephone extension. It was amazing to me that there were no questions about safety issues that I'm very familiar with, like how to use a fire extinguisher and where the emergency command center is located, but instead included questions that were confusing and arcane, even after working there for so long. Although I have said before, and I stand by this, that if people are depending on me to organize the evacuation of patients in an emergency, frankly, I don't care much for the poor patients' chances, and that's a fact. Oh well, as I said to Bill, at least now they'll know better than to call on me in an emergency, that's for sure.

Also at work, I got a call from a salesperson, the kind with the gift of gab that could talk the ears off a wooden Indian. (Now THERE'S an expression that's lost on young people today, and more's the pity, I'm sure.) I had explained to him that he needed to contact the person in charge of our department, whose office is at one of our other facilities, and I had given him the phone number, as well as the person's name, which happens to be a rather difficult one, even when you spell it for people, which I do often. He was profuse in his thanks, and also asked for the fax number, which I gave him. And then, not leaving well enough alone, he carried on glibly: "And so I suppose then that his email address would be something like 'rick [dot] desiderario @ ssmc [dot] com,' would that be right?" Well, as a matter of fact, no, our email addresses are nothing like that at the hospital. But it amazed me that someone would try to guess anyone's email address out of the blue like that, it would be like trying to guess someone's phone number from knowing their street address or birthday. Thank you for playing our game, please step out of the booth.

While we're on the subject of email, I had gotten an invitation from a cyber-friend to join them on FaceBook, the social networking site where friendly people go to meet and greet. I thought it would be interesting, and I found the sign-up process to be simple and seamlessly automated. When you tell it who you are, where you work and went to school, it goes out all by itself and rounds up people already on FaceBook that you may know, asking you if you want to add them to your list of Friends. I was so impressed, because sure enough, it really did find people that I know from email, people from my school and coworkers from the hospital, just like that. Now, it must be said that it also finds people that I would prefer to avoid, like the pastor who recently left our church to go to Lebanon (and not a moment too soon) and people selling used trinkets on eBay. One of the suggestions that FaceBook decided that I wanted as a Friend turned out to be someone from my hometown, who for all I know may have turned his life around and become a pillar of the community, but was such a juvenile delinquent when I was in school that his name was legend in our neighborhood. Parents would chastise their misbehaving children by asking: "Do you want to grow up like Sonny Stallone?" which was enough to put the fear of God into even the most recalcitrant youth, because there was nothing worse that we could imagine. We all figured that it was a foregone conclusion that Sonny would be in prison, or dead, by the time the rest of us were graduating or getting married and settling down, and there was no future for this sociopathic misfit. So you can imagine my surprise, and by that I mean chagrin, when FaceBook chose him as someone to offer me for my list of Friends, and it made me wonder just what kind of disreputable blackguards that FaceBook thinks I consort with, when this is their idea of a suitable Friend for me. Well, I've got news for FaceBook, because I am not so desperate for companionship that I need them to go out and drag in every wretch from the gutter to be my Friend, and if that's the best they can come up with, then they can just keep their suggestions to themselves. After all, I may not know my own name, or my extension, or how to evacuate patients, but by golly, I still have standards.

Elle