The Creep Capers

Hello World,

Well, I don't know about you, but I find it hard to believe that next week is Thanksgiving, of all things, and while I hate to be an alarmist, I have to point out that the Sunday after this one is Advent already, so that has to tell you something right there. (Except, of course, for the God-less communists in the KGB who may be monitoring my email, and heaven knows their name is legion, who don't realize that means there are only four Sundays until it's actually Christmas, by golly.) In fact, I was stopped in the hallway at the hospital by a co-worker who announced that radio station 106.7 has already started playing Christmas music, and I need hardly point out, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. That may not be the end of the world as we know it, since the pernicious effects of "holiday creep" have been with us for years by now, but it's certainly a wake-up call for those of us who may not be as prepared for the jolly old elf and his reindeer octet as we might like to be at this time. Once again, it's the poor Pilgrims that get short shrift, and their shrift has been getting shorter and shorter every year it seems to me, and at this rate, it won't be long until like poor Christopher Columbus and Armistice Day before them, they're relegated to the dust heap of holiday history, remembered only by the purists and crackpots, although the dinosaurs and I prefer to be called "traditionalists," thank you very much.

Speaking of holidays, I recently stumbled across a seasonal surprise that I wasn't expecting. I've gotten used to the idea that certain games in FaceBook offer topical rewards to their users, like spooky decorations for your farm, or pumpkin pie in your restaurant. I hadn't seen any of that being available at my zoo, which seems to be a more serious application, that always seems to be lecturing us about habitat destruction and extinction. But I was at my zoo last night, watching the virtual patrons wandering around enjoying the exhibits and amenities, when I spotted some small brown things trotting along that I had never seen before. I had to zoom in on them, but sure enough, they turned out to be turkeys mixed in with the visitors, and that was when I noticed that some of the other guests were dressed as Pilgrims, in that unmistakable style so unexpected in a 21st century zoo, that's for sure. For people who take themselves so seriously, this was about the funniest thing I could think of for my zoo to be doing, and I got a real chuckle out of it. Especially since they obviously fought off the encroachment of "holiday creep" with their Pilgrims and turkeys, instead of stuffing my zoo full of elves and reindeers, and if that doesn't give us all a reason to be thankful, I don't know what would.

In other holiday news, I heard from an alert reader (thanks, Sam!) who had this observation to make about Halloween:

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In the subject of Halloween, I'm sure you've noticed how it has become more popular than ever. Also, that the celebration has changed since we were kids. Thanks to the real-life horrors of today, "trick or treat" has somewhat fallen by the wayside. The days when a kid wandered alone for blocks to the houses of perfect strangers has gone. However, that has been replaced by other things, most of them borrowed from Christmas. We sent Halloween Cards even when we were kids (or rather received them from Grandma) so that's not new. In relatively recent times, people have been decorating their houses with orange lights and other Halloween-y things. There are all sorts of decorations, things that move and make sound, even Halloween ornaments. One day, I was in a convenience store and saw a "Halloween Gingerbread House Kit." Now, I like gingerbread and am happy to see its availability outside of Christmas, but this made me coin a phrase: "the Christmasization of Halloween." I wonder what's next?
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Hmmmm. I think he may be on to something there. Of course, I say that as a person who has obviously lost her mind completely, and I have the award certificates to prove it. In YoVille, my virtual character Gigi has a virtual apartment, and I can buy furniture and accessories for it. I thought I could resist the door mat that says: HI, I'M MAT, but it proved to be too much of a temptation for me, in spite of all my efforts to talk myself out of it. I wish I could say that my feeble sales resistance had hit a new low at that point, and then rebounded sensibly from there, but that would be very far from the case. So when I saw the other door mat that says: NICE UNDERWEAR, I didn't even bother trying to talk myself out of it, because I knew it would be no use. I admit that I'm easily amused, and I find things funny that other people consider just plain weird or worse, but I thought those were great, and every time I go back to the apartment, it gives me a laugh. I realize that this would not improve my reputation among the more sophisticated social circles, or endear me to the more genteel elements of society, and in fact, even Gigi is pretending that she doesn't know me.

On the other hand, I'm not doing as badly as the person who called me at work last week, and when I answered the phone and identified myself, tossed this opening salvo at me: "Fifteen minutes okay?" Since I had no idea who was calling, and I didn't remember making any immediate plans with anyone, I was reluctant to agree to what I considered a curious query on their part. The best I could muster under the circumstances was, "I'm sorry?" Totally unfazed, the caller plowed right on ahead: "Fifteen minutes. It's Mike. You said I should call you when I got here." I found myself saying, "Ummmm" while I was trying to determine the best way to unravel this apparent case of mistaken identity in the simplest way. Growing suspicious, my new quasi-friend Mike demanded: "Isn't this Stella?" Oh no, I assured him, and once again identified myself, more clearly this time, with the name of the hospital and the department that he had inadvertently called while trying to hook up with the elusive Stella. That seemed to straighten things out in his mind, so that he could take steps to correct the discrepancy that led him to inviting me to meet him in quarter of an hour, and frankly, I don't know which of us would have been more surprised. But he really had me going there for a minute, I can tell you.

Also at work, these have obviously been challenging times for our crack (or is that, cracked?) staff in the IT department, and no place for the faint-hearted, which I might call an understatement of mythic proportions, but I wouldn't want to offend my friends the dinosaurs. Lately it seems that anyone whose computer is connected to the hospital network has experienced one problem after another, from balky and unpredictable performance, all the way to outright failures, often at the most inopportune moments. I said to Bill that for an entire week, it seems that my computer crashes every single day, and sometimes more than once in the same day, at all different times and while I'm doing different things, which is what first led me to suspect that the problem was not with my computer, but the server it's connected to. (It was my complaints about these daily crashes that led one co-worker to quip that at least I knew what to expect on a regular basis, which was not exactly the kind of empathy I was hoping for.) Yesterday I happened to bump into one of our IT techs in the hallway of our building, where he was being abused by irate users having computer problems that made it impossible for them to do their work, some of which, like Payroll, have a specific time-frame in which things have to be completed, and no excuses. It made me realize that my computer problems were inconvenient, but not critical like these other departments, where everything they did depended on their computer working right all the time. They were busy calling him names and giving him a hard time, so when I went by, I said hello to him just like a normal person, and because he looked like he could really use a friend, I added that I wasn't going to turn on him, and would be glad to be in his Fan Club besides. He beamed, like this was the first nice thing anyone had said to him all year, but it caused one of his abusers to observe sourly that being in his Fan Club must be awfully lonely. Now, that is what I call just plain stone cold.

Mind you, if I was going to complain at that moment, I would have mentioned the repeated notifications that I've been getting in my incoming email every day, purportedly from the System Administrator, with the arresting subject line: "Undeliverable - Returned Mail." Normally, this would mean that the hospital server was unable to deliver some of my email that I had sent to a vendor, or someone else at the hospital, and I would check the body of the notification to see which message of mine needed to be re-sent or follow-up with a phone call instead. But every time it's been the same thing, which is some spurious misinformation of a supposed message from me to those close personal friends at penis_nexus.com (AS IF!) that didn't get through. (I don't doubt it!) Anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm all full of those tricks, sending email every day from work to any place called penis_nexus.com, so you can imagine how thrilled I am to be getting these notifications every day that "my" messages to them were undeliverable, thanks not. Frankly, I'm a busy person, and I don't have time for this sort of inconsequential nonsense, I can assure you. After all, it's the third week in November, and with "holiday creep" the way it is, I'd better hurry up and start getting ready for Easter. Now where did I put that Easter Gingerbread House Kit?

Elle

Gal Friday

Hello World,

I guess this would be as good a time as any to remind everyone to beware of Friday the 13th, which has snuck up on us this month, but fortunately for the last time this year. I've been saying all along that 2009 has been a terrible year, what with even long-standing companies going under, and waves of demises among the celebrated and obscure alike, until we're all just about afraid to see what fresh new horror each morning may bring. (We're feeling particularly snake bit here, because the most invisible of all of our Invisible Cats, Captain Midnight, his own invisible self, just breathed his last, making him the third of the original invisible five that we've lost in this year alone.) I guess we should have realized right from the start that this would be one of the worst years ever, when we noticed that there would be not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR Friday the 13th's in 2009 -- February, March, August and November -- which requires a very specific alignment of months and days that probably hasn't happened in decades. I keep saying, apart from the Yankees, no one is going to remember 2009 fondly, and all the rest of us will be more than happy to see the tail-end of it in December, and not a moment too soon, as well as good riddance, and take your Friday the 13th's with you while you're at it.

Speaking of days, one good thing about the temporary return to Standard Time from Daylight Saving Time on November 1st was that my computer at work finally caught up with the rest of humanity, and I'm no longer living in two separate time zones at my desk. It had already "fallen back" from DST a week or so ahead of schedule, and there's no convincing Windows 2000NT that the switch-over to and from DST happens on a different time-table than it used to, back when the operating system was young and dewy fresh. It just makes up its own mind to change the system time, by golly, whether the rest of the world follows along or not, and you just have to wait it out until the time in the real world shifts so that it matches the time on the computer. At least that's one less area of confusion in my little world, where things are already bizarre enough, heaven knows. Of course, everyone knows that I always say that reality is a two-way street, and if reality wants to find me, it knows where I am, although it goes without saying that it shouldn't come unarmed. Or as they say in the old Westerns: "There's a train leaving town at three o'clock. Be under it."

Just when we thought our days of surprises were behind us, along comes a coupon in the mail, very carefully addressed to me, wishing me a happy birthday by name, and offering me $20 off my meal at The Melting Pot in White Plains. Now, I'm not one that normally looks a gift horse in the mouth, but since this is November, and my birthday is in March, I couldn't help but wonder what my close personal friends at The Melting Pot were thinking. It's true that this chain of fondue restaurants would not necessarily be our cup of tea, but I might have taken them up on their birthday offer after all, except that the coupon expires at the end of December, almost three months before my actual birthday in March, which is way too premature even for my tastes, and I'm usually the one who says any excuse for a party. But I'm afraid they'll have to fondue without me this time around, because as bad as 2009 has been, the last thing I need is two birthdays in one year, and that's a fact.

Last week in my incoming email, I noticed a message from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, announcing a protest against NASA for conducting experiments on primates, as well they should. The odd part was that right below that was a message from church about some religious controversy, entitled "Statement From The Primates Council," which is apparently what they call the group of Anglican bishops. To be fair, I admit that I know nothing about these Anglican bishops, so they might actually be monkeys after all. But I thought it was such a weird coincidence to have two messages in a row featuring the word "primates" in the subject line, and not only not related in any way, but using the term in two completely different and wildly divergent senses of the definition, at least that's my guess anyway. After all, it's been a long time since the infamous Scopes trial, where the anti-evolution contingent insisted: "You can't make a monkey out of me." Of course, it's possible that anything goes in the Anglican church nowadays, and Darwin might have the last laugh after all.

For anyone who thought that nothing good could come from a place saddled with the unappetizing name of Fishkill, have I got a news flash for you. Last weekend, we traveled there to meet friends from upstate, and stayed at the lovely Hotel Sierra, and found it very much to our liking in every way. (You can feel free to go ahead and visit their web site at www.hotel-sierra.com and see for yourself.) In our travels, we find many hotels that describe their rooms as "suites," but this one really lived up to the name, with actual doors separating the different areas of the room from each other. It includes a complete kitchen, with full-size refrigerator, stove, sink, microwave, coffee maker, toaster, and cabinets full of cooking utensils and serving pieces. There's a big television in the living room, along with a sofa and armchair, plus another one in the bedroom, which also has a full-length mirror that is a handy feature often lacking in hotels. The rooms have free Internet access, both wired and wireless, and we took it for a spin with both of our laptops with excellent results. Although the hotel is centrally located just off a main road, we found our room quiet and comfortable, and for once, we were so far from the elevators, ice dispensers and vending machines, that it was almost like we made the reservations under an assumed name. ("Why, those aren't the Dollisons at all! Don't put them next to that motorcycle gang!") They have a cozy lobby that looks like a rustic lodge with a fireplace, and behind that is a lovely and spacious gathering spot where they serve a breakfast buffet in the morning, and turns into their pub at night. For the price (around $100) we found the accommodations to be an exceptional value, and way above what we were expecting. Unfortunately, the indoor pool was closed for repairs during our stay, but that and the hot tub would have been just the cherry on top of a wonderful treat that was as welcome as it was unexpected.

Not far from Fishkill is scenic Cold Spring, which is locally famous for attracting tourists to its array of quaint and quirky shops, that run the gamut from dollar stores to the height of luxury, and everything in between. Since we were tourists, naturally we hurried on over there, and glad of it. (You are also welcome to go visit their web site at www.coldspringliving.com and see for yourself.) The main road in town has shops on both sides, and you could easily spend the entire day there and not see everything, because there are so many stores and they all have such interesting items that are collectible, curious, vintage, heirloom, or sometimes, all of them at once. Unlike Woodstock or Sugar Loaf, it isn't a haven for crafts, and you don't find artisans making their own soap or candles or kites or sculptures out of driftwood and seashells. Many of the shops describe themselves as antiques dealers, but their wares would remind you more of a gigantic flea market, than actual high-end antiques from centuries past. The sidewalks are crammed with benches for the weary, and there are also places to eat, so no one has to leave just because they're tired and hungry. The road slopes downhill toward the train station, and from the top, it's easy to see the majestic Hudson River just beyond the tracks, with graceful undulating hills in a sweeping vista on the other side. At first glance, it appears that the train tracks present an insurmountable obstacle to the riverside, but they've provided a handy tunnel that goes under the tracks and delivers you to a lovely esplanade along the water, complete with gazebo and cannon, and a view that is worth the walk. It was a lovely day, and we wouldn't have missed it for anything.

For dinner, we decided against eating at the hotel pub, and went to the nearby 84 Diner instead. Afterward is when it would have been nice to splash in the pool, but under the circumstances, we had to find other things to amuse ourselves with. During the repair process, the hotel had made arrangements for their guests to use the facilities at a local health club, but I'm afraid that the reputation of the six of us is not only well deserved, but precedes us everywhere we go, and turning us loose in a health club would be irresponsible, bordering on criminal negligence. We would not only get thrown out of the pool in record time, I'm sure, but the health club would probably ban all visits by hotel guests in the future, and that really wouldn't be fair to everyone else. So we had to be satisfied with some bad videos and then call it a night. In the morning, we availed ourselves of the breakfast buffet, which was hot and delicious, and included a wide variety of items, even omelets cooked to order. After that, the budget-conscious among us headed for the nearby Goodwill store, where we snapped up some bargains while doing our part for the local economy. We hadn't come up with a particular plan for Sunday afternoon, since we had already seen Cold Spring on Saturday, which was just as well, because it turned out that our friends had to meet with a contractor working on their house, so it ended up that the party broke up sooner than we expected. We bid a fond farewell to our friends, but it was such a lovely day that Bill and I decided to scout around for something else to do while we were there.

On our previous visit to the area in October, we did not have a chance to visit the locally famous Newburgh Mall, so we decided to check it out while we had some time on our hands. It was easy to find, and turned out to be a crackerjack mall, full of fine shops of every description, and handily located all on one level, for the escalator-challenged among us. We poked around window-shopping in the different retailers, and even bought some things that struck our fancy. By then it was late enough, and we were already in Newburgh, so we headed over to Denny's, which is one thing that always makes traveling so rewarding for us. We've been to this particular restaurant many times in our travels upstate, so it surprised us when it took the GPS two tries to find it, since her first attempt seemed to be luring us into some ominous-looking forest, like we had wandered into some chainsaw massacre movie by mistake. But we soon got that squared away, and glad for another chance to enjoy a treat denied to us at home, so we made the most of it. After that, the trip home was uneventful, and we stopped at the supermarket to pick up some sandwich fixings for a light supper, so we wouldn't have to think about cooking after a long weekend. The cats were supremely indifferent to our return, which is a good thing, because then we know that we haven't stumbled into the wrong house by mistake. We came home tired but happy, with just our memories and souvenirs, and plenty of them, to console ourselves with. So if you're ever in the area, I can heartily recommend the Hotel Sierra and Cold Spring as tourist destinations worthy of the name, and sure to please the most discriminating connoisseurs of fine living and sophisticated excursions. Unless it's Friday the 13th of course, and then all bets are off.

Elle

Super Bowl

Hello World,

Happy November! The new month started on Sunday, so we're well into it by now, The weather has been surprisingly nice, that is, surprising to anyone who knows of the black-hearted ogre behind the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, whose nefarious schemes know no bounds. Although Bill did recently send me a news story about Chinese scientists who were trying to make it rain in order to alleviate a drought in the parched north, but instead created a blinding snowstorm, and thanks so very much not. At our house, we call this "too much of a good thing," and a perfect illustration of how the government not only doesn't give you what you need, but goes out of its way to give you what you don't need or want, and can't use. For our Chinese friends, this is what we generally refer to as "your tax dollars at work," and while the farmers were possibly not all that pleased with their results, at least the ski industry was probably happy as clams. But it just goes to show you that Comrade Mischka remains at the top in the field of weather histrionics, because he would have not only thrown snow at this drought, but uncorked his stash of fire and brimstone, raining frogs, boils, pestilence and plagues of locusts. These poor Chinese scientists have a lot of catching up to do.

Speaking of the weather, this is all I have to account for Halloween at our house this year, which because it was warm and on a Saturday, I expected to get record numbers of trick-or-treaters, and looking forward to them. Alas, although it stayed warm, it poured rain all night, and washed out any hopes of a return to the glory days of Halloween in our neighborhood, when it wasn't uncommon to get 100 callers or more. The rain put an end to that, and when all was said and done, I had given out a mere 37 goodie bags, although I have to say that I gave those stalwart folks extra credit for going out in such bad weather. This was the smallest turnout we've had since 2001, after the events of 9/11 served to make the normal frivolity seem unthinkable. Considering the tiny sample, I couldn't believe that I would have two of any costume, and I was expecting a whole night of singles. It didn't work out that way, as I had 4 princesses, three fairies, two Batgirls, two ninjas, two cats, two babies, two Lightning McQueens from "Cars" and two Dorothys from the Wizard of Oz. That meant over half of our visitors were duplicates, which I would have thought would be impossible out of such a small total. Of our single costume choices, there was only one Michael Jackson, Scream, Ariel the mermaid, Grim Reaper, Queen of Hearts, Frankenstein, Batman, skeleton, jester, soldier, pirate, vampire, zombie, cheerleader, nurse, ladybug, and my personal favorite, the McDonald's French fries. One person arrived with no costume (give them credit for coming out in the rain anyway) while another was a cartoon character called Ren 10, and someone else claimed to be dressed as singer Debbie Lovado, both of which were unfamiliar to me. For the record, our last decade by the numbers looks like this:

2008: 65
2007: 94
2006: 82
2005: 89
2004: 96
2003: 63
2002: 53
2001: 31
2000: 113

I found this year particularly disappointing, because I really had high hopes for it, with the warm weather and being on a Saturday. When it was all over, I had to dis-assemble over 60 goodie bags, which I had painstakingly crafted with five different candies and a small toy, like I always do, but usually I give more of them away than I get back at the end. I dragged the left-over candy in to work, and normally I would say that we'd be eating piles of it for the next six months, except that I work with packs of vultures, where they will eat anything that stops moving long enough for them to catch it, and they tore through all of it in a snap. It was at work that I found it even more depressing, when coworkers living in other parts of town said that they still had lots of callers like other years, but not where we were, and then I felt even worse. Oh well, as they say in major league cities all over the country in September: "Wait until next year."

Speaking of baseball, fans of the local pinstripe franchise had to be gratified at the way the post-season turned out, and a fitting christening for a brand new stadium, especially after missing the playoffs entirely only a year ago. I think that's the kind of turn-around that we can all get behind, although I feel it's only fair to point out that it's all downhill from here. And while we're on the subject of turning things around, I have to say that the new smoking shelter in the courtyard (or "the goldfish bowl," as Bill calls it) has been more popular than I would have expected, although since they said it was for the use of participants in our substance abuse program, I haven't seen one single solitary person from that unit in the courtyard at any time. They're easy to spot, since everyone on that floor wears distinctive strawberry-colored scrubs, and you usually find them in clumps, like a strawberry patch. But there hasn't been a strawberry in the goldfish bowl since they finished building it, so either the country has finally won the war on drugs and the program was disbanded, or there's some other explanation for the strawberry deficit disorder in the courtyard, that has made our fish bowl glass anything but rose-tinted. I'm sure I don't know, after all, I only work there.

Something else new in the courtyard is the security system that was recently installed on the employee entrance to the back of the main hospital building. It consists of automatic doors with a card reader, so that you are required to swipe your identification badge through it in order for the doors to open, and since this has always been one of the busiest entrances anywhere on the campus, it has really had a huge impact, and I don't mind saying, not a positive one. It would not be an overstatement to say that this has turned out to be one of the most unpopular innovations that has ever been introduced at the institution, and don't forget, this is a place that believed doing away with raises was a good idea. Of course, it's easy to rally around the idea of increased safety by limiting access to the building to people with valid ID badges, but I'd be obliged if anyone could explain to me the purpose of making people swipe their badges to get OUT of the building as well, thanks not. Now, in a normal business, the staff would simply adjust to the new routine and get on with their lives, but that's not the way we operate at the employer of last resort, not by a long shot, and I ought to know. I find the new security system has created two possibly inadvertent side effects, which both result in lower productivity, but from opposite directions. One is that people just avoid that entrance altogether, and walk all the way around the campus to get into the building from a different door without that security feature, so that it takes a lot longer to get from anywhere to anywhere else during the normal course of the day. The second is that people stand around and wait on both sides of the door, like an elevator, until someone comes along who will swipe their badge to open the doors, and then everyone else goes in or out all at once. This also takes a lot longer than it used to, since so many people are now avoiding the area, there's fewer chances to ride someone else's coat-tails, and practice safety-in-numbers through the security gauntlet. I admit that I'm one of the people ducking the new system, so the first time I needed to go to the other building after they implemented this nonsense, I went down an extra flight of stairs in my building and into the basement, then took the tunnel over there, which runs directly under the courtyard and thus bypasses the new safety blockade. Unfortunately, when I got into the main building and took the stairs back up from the basement, I forgot where I was, and came out at the wrong floor, so I had no idea what I was doing there. Just when you think that we can't possibly have any lower productivity than we already do, somehow something always seems to come along to bring the place to a standstill, and this is certainly a rose-tinted, strawberry-patched example of that, and that's no fish story. Well, maybe it is a goldfish bowl story, after all.

While I'm telling stories, for anyone who may be curious about the various components of the clown costume, it was the red foam (official Bozo the Clown) nose that arrived first, in the tiny postage stamp-sized package that weighed nothing, and made me wonder if I would be going to work in an X-rated costume this year. The outfit came with the jumpsuit costume, a detachable neck ruffle and matching hat, but did not include a clown wig, which I thought it did, and was a late and disturbing discovery when I found that it didn't. In my naivete, I thought this would be a simple deficiency to rectify with plenty of time before Halloween, as even supermarkets and drug stores carry costume fundamentals like wigs that you can pick up at the last minute, but luck wasn't on my side this time around, as I struck out at the local stores. But my online costume source came through in a pinch, which worked out even better, because I really got exactly the wig that I wanted, rather than settling for whatever left-over wigs were still on the shelves. In management, this is referred to as a "win-win" situation, while in (goldfish) bowling parlance, of course, it would be a strike.

Tying these last two themes together, we come to another favorite story from Halloween at work last Friday. I was surprised at how popular the clown costume was, and I had fun everywhere I went. I tramped to every different building, and tried to see everyone I could in one afternoon, bringing smiles to the weary and squeaking at the forlorn. I was such a big hit that it would be easy to forget that it's only because people are so starved for entertainment at the hospital, that they're much more easily amused than the general public. But sometimes, the (clown) shoe is on the other foot, as when I came around a corner from the cafeteria, and bumped into a couple of doctors outside of the Anesthesia department. They looked me over impassively and then one said to the other: "Well, obviously the new swipe system doesn't work!" Ya gotta love it! Anyway, I guess this is what you call being a big fish in a small bowl, and please remember that while strikes are good in bowling, they're bad in baseball, so kindly adjust your rose-tinted glasses accordingly.

Elle