Short Cuts
Hello World,
Happy Winter Solstice! It's true that this is not the same big blowout of an event that it was back in the days of the Druids, and the dinosaurs and I ought to know, believe me, back when they really knew how to throw a party, and don't spare the grog! It may not have the same significance to people nowadays, but for anyone in the market for some good news, and looking for the silver lining in these dark days, this is one of them. Because the winter solstice represents the shortest day of the year (actually, all days are exactly the same length, but this is the measure of time between sunrise and sunset only) from this point forward, the days begin getting incrementally longer all the time, and that's about the best news we can have in the winter around here. Apart from Pitchers & Catchers, that is.
Obviously, no report concerning the local weather would be complete without a mention of last weekend's Nor'easter that blew up the coast after wreaking havoc in the mid-Atlantic states, dumping snow in double digits everywhere, with gusty winds that piled it into towering drifts, and plummeting temperatures that meant that it wasn't going to melt. We were luckier than many other localities, with accumulations around 4-6" for the most part. I won't complain about the plows, because I had no trouble getting the Escort to church on Sunday, and that's no snow bunny, not by a long shot. There was more snow at church than at home, and I brought my snow shovel to help dig out, since we needed the property all cleared out in time for Lessons & Carols in the afternoon. With a bunch of people pitching in, it soon looked ship-shape, and once the sun came out, everything seemed much more encouraging than it had earlier. In fact, there was one inadvertently funny moment that really pointed out the blizzard-like conditions of the storm in a nutshell, when I went to retrieve the mail, which is in a wooden box below a hinged door in the vestibule, and found it was entirely full of snow. In fact, the wind was so strong even in that sheltered area, that the snow in the mail box had drifted higher on one side. I certainly wasn't expecting that, and I can tell you that the mail didn't think much of the idea either, believe me.
Speaking of Lessons & Carols, it turned out to be lovely all around, in spite of being more ad hoc than usual, without a full-time music director to start pulling it all together earlier in the year. Our substitute organist was a big help, providing a seasonal prelude and postlude, and playing along with the hymns like he had been doing it all along. He also arranged for a cellist to join us, and she played along with the hymns, and also performed a few solo pieces, so that was very special for us. The congregation teamed up for a couple of duets, although one of them turned out to be only half a duet, since one half was unavoidably absent, so the other half had to carry on alone. But the long and short of it was that everything came off without a hitch, and it turned out more entertaining than any of us expected, and if the weather had been better, probably even more people would have shown up. There was the ;usual potluck afterward, with festive red tablecloths and poinsettias to brighten up the place, and the usual Lutheran practice of attempting to serve twice as much food to half as many people, like it or not. So although the program was not the grandiose and epic extravaganza of years gone by, at least we kept the tradition alive and everyone had a good time.
It had started out as a rather inauspicious sort of day, when Bill went to create his usual gingerbread house masterpiece for the holiday season, only to find that there was no frosting in the house to hold the walls and roof together. I left church in the morning in my efforts to hurry home to get ready for Lessons & Carols later, and ran into a snag when I realized the battery in the Escort was totally dead and there was no reviving it, so I had to walk home instead, thanks not. Even worse, we came home from Lessons & Carols to find the house full of smoke, and ran around in circles looking for whatever was causing it, while trying not to do anything that would cause a spark and possibly have the house blow up right out from under us. It turned out to be a likely short in an ancient malfunctioning appliance that had been smoldering long enough that it had managed to scorch the rug under it, and a scarf that was on top of it, both of which were artificial materials that made the house smell like a tire fire. It was a lucky thing that we came home when we did, because that could have been a serious disaster, if it had continued unchecked, and so when everything else seemed to be going wrong, this was one early Christmas miracle that came along just when we needed it. However, for the most part the day was so inauspicious that we never got around to lighting the last candle on the Advent wreath on Sunday, and had our own little unique event the next day, which we like to call Advent Monday, and no less welcome for being a day late, believe me.
And what may be new and exciting in the wonderful world of pharmaceuticals, you may be wondering, and well may you wonder. I couldn't help but notice on the MSN home page, a story with the arresting headline: "Cipro - Tendon Rutpures." Hmmm, it certainly got my attention, that's for sure. I did remember that Cipro had been all the rage in the news some time ago, during the anthrax scare as I recall, but I had no idea what "rutpures" were, and thought it would be interesting to find out more about it. Well, it turned out that the joke was on me, when I read the sub-head to the story, which stated that use of Cipro had been linked to ruptures of the tendons, a previously undiscovered side effect of the drug. I don't mind saying that the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when there were actual standards, not like now, heaven knows, when you wouldn't find a headline using the term "rutpures" when they meant "ruptures" instead. Alas, for those halcyon days of yore, when professional people paid attention to what they were doing, or at the very least, had rudimentary software to correct egregious errors like that one.
In other news, I was involved in a project at work that entailed form letters being mailed to some of the hospital vendors, and which I would be happy to divulge the contents of, and confidentiality be hanged, except that it was all so boring that I kept nodding off in the middle of it. In any case, I was surprised to see that one of the vendors had the unlikely address of Commerce Drive in E Riverhead on Long Island. Now, I will have you know that I have been in Riverhead numerous times, and it is basically located between its own self on one side, and smack up against the Great Peconic Bay on the other side, and nowhere else to go, so I'm wondering just how much more east can East Riverhead possibly be without being underwater? I was thinking of stopping in to check it out next July when I'm on vacation in the area, but when I called them on the phone for directions, all they said was, "Glub ... glub ... glub ... "
Speaking of not saying what they mean, once again we have the crack automotive journalism team at the Wheels Extra section of our local newspaper, with their recent story about the 2010 Volkswagen Golf. They described VW's design revision of the new model as "slight of hand" and I will admit that I have no idea what that could possibly mean. Obviously it could not be the magician's friend, sleight of hand, or they would have used the right word for that instead, and not just something that was similar enough in sound and spelling. Now I'm thinking it's too bad that they don't have access to that so-called Internet thingy, so they could go ahead and really check their facts beforehand, and not have something actually printed in the newspaper that makes them look like they have no idea what they're doing. Of course, we can't ignore the possibility that they've been taking Cipro and having rutpures, or worse, working at that company in East Riverhead underwater, which could easily explain a lack of attention to detail. Around here, we call that being a few ants short of a picnic, and I ought to know. Hey, that sounds like a bunch of ants saying, "Glub ... glub ... glub," but I'm sure I must be mistaken.
Elle
Happy Winter Solstice! It's true that this is not the same big blowout of an event that it was back in the days of the Druids, and the dinosaurs and I ought to know, believe me, back when they really knew how to throw a party, and don't spare the grog! It may not have the same significance to people nowadays, but for anyone in the market for some good news, and looking for the silver lining in these dark days, this is one of them. Because the winter solstice represents the shortest day of the year (actually, all days are exactly the same length, but this is the measure of time between sunrise and sunset only) from this point forward, the days begin getting incrementally longer all the time, and that's about the best news we can have in the winter around here. Apart from Pitchers & Catchers, that is.
Obviously, no report concerning the local weather would be complete without a mention of last weekend's Nor'easter that blew up the coast after wreaking havoc in the mid-Atlantic states, dumping snow in double digits everywhere, with gusty winds that piled it into towering drifts, and plummeting temperatures that meant that it wasn't going to melt. We were luckier than many other localities, with accumulations around 4-6" for the most part. I won't complain about the plows, because I had no trouble getting the Escort to church on Sunday, and that's no snow bunny, not by a long shot. There was more snow at church than at home, and I brought my snow shovel to help dig out, since we needed the property all cleared out in time for Lessons & Carols in the afternoon. With a bunch of people pitching in, it soon looked ship-shape, and once the sun came out, everything seemed much more encouraging than it had earlier. In fact, there was one inadvertently funny moment that really pointed out the blizzard-like conditions of the storm in a nutshell, when I went to retrieve the mail, which is in a wooden box below a hinged door in the vestibule, and found it was entirely full of snow. In fact, the wind was so strong even in that sheltered area, that the snow in the mail box had drifted higher on one side. I certainly wasn't expecting that, and I can tell you that the mail didn't think much of the idea either, believe me.
Speaking of Lessons & Carols, it turned out to be lovely all around, in spite of being more ad hoc than usual, without a full-time music director to start pulling it all together earlier in the year. Our substitute organist was a big help, providing a seasonal prelude and postlude, and playing along with the hymns like he had been doing it all along. He also arranged for a cellist to join us, and she played along with the hymns, and also performed a few solo pieces, so that was very special for us. The congregation teamed up for a couple of duets, although one of them turned out to be only half a duet, since one half was unavoidably absent, so the other half had to carry on alone. But the long and short of it was that everything came off without a hitch, and it turned out more entertaining than any of us expected, and if the weather had been better, probably even more people would have shown up. There was the ;usual potluck afterward, with festive red tablecloths and poinsettias to brighten up the place, and the usual Lutheran practice of attempting to serve twice as much food to half as many people, like it or not. So although the program was not the grandiose and epic extravaganza of years gone by, at least we kept the tradition alive and everyone had a good time.
It had started out as a rather inauspicious sort of day, when Bill went to create his usual gingerbread house masterpiece for the holiday season, only to find that there was no frosting in the house to hold the walls and roof together. I left church in the morning in my efforts to hurry home to get ready for Lessons & Carols later, and ran into a snag when I realized the battery in the Escort was totally dead and there was no reviving it, so I had to walk home instead, thanks not. Even worse, we came home from Lessons & Carols to find the house full of smoke, and ran around in circles looking for whatever was causing it, while trying not to do anything that would cause a spark and possibly have the house blow up right out from under us. It turned out to be a likely short in an ancient malfunctioning appliance that had been smoldering long enough that it had managed to scorch the rug under it, and a scarf that was on top of it, both of which were artificial materials that made the house smell like a tire fire. It was a lucky thing that we came home when we did, because that could have been a serious disaster, if it had continued unchecked, and so when everything else seemed to be going wrong, this was one early Christmas miracle that came along just when we needed it. However, for the most part the day was so inauspicious that we never got around to lighting the last candle on the Advent wreath on Sunday, and had our own little unique event the next day, which we like to call Advent Monday, and no less welcome for being a day late, believe me.
And what may be new and exciting in the wonderful world of pharmaceuticals, you may be wondering, and well may you wonder. I couldn't help but notice on the MSN home page, a story with the arresting headline: "Cipro - Tendon Rutpures." Hmmm, it certainly got my attention, that's for sure. I did remember that Cipro had been all the rage in the news some time ago, during the anthrax scare as I recall, but I had no idea what "rutpures" were, and thought it would be interesting to find out more about it. Well, it turned out that the joke was on me, when I read the sub-head to the story, which stated that use of Cipro had been linked to ruptures of the tendons, a previously undiscovered side effect of the drug. I don't mind saying that the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when there were actual standards, not like now, heaven knows, when you wouldn't find a headline using the term "rutpures" when they meant "ruptures" instead. Alas, for those halcyon days of yore, when professional people paid attention to what they were doing, or at the very least, had rudimentary software to correct egregious errors like that one.
In other news, I was involved in a project at work that entailed form letters being mailed to some of the hospital vendors, and which I would be happy to divulge the contents of, and confidentiality be hanged, except that it was all so boring that I kept nodding off in the middle of it. In any case, I was surprised to see that one of the vendors had the unlikely address of Commerce Drive in E Riverhead on Long Island. Now, I will have you know that I have been in Riverhead numerous times, and it is basically located between its own self on one side, and smack up against the Great Peconic Bay on the other side, and nowhere else to go, so I'm wondering just how much more east can East Riverhead possibly be without being underwater? I was thinking of stopping in to check it out next July when I'm on vacation in the area, but when I called them on the phone for directions, all they said was, "Glub ... glub ... glub ... "
Speaking of not saying what they mean, once again we have the crack automotive journalism team at the Wheels Extra section of our local newspaper, with their recent story about the 2010 Volkswagen Golf. They described VW's design revision of the new model as "slight of hand" and I will admit that I have no idea what that could possibly mean. Obviously it could not be the magician's friend, sleight of hand, or they would have used the right word for that instead, and not just something that was similar enough in sound and spelling. Now I'm thinking it's too bad that they don't have access to that so-called Internet thingy, so they could go ahead and really check their facts beforehand, and not have something actually printed in the newspaper that makes them look like they have no idea what they're doing. Of course, we can't ignore the possibility that they've been taking Cipro and having rutpures, or worse, working at that company in East Riverhead underwater, which could easily explain a lack of attention to detail. Around here, we call that being a few ants short of a picnic, and I ought to know. Hey, that sounds like a bunch of ants saying, "Glub ... glub ... glub," but I'm sure I must be mistaken.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 1:29 PM
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