Year In And Year Out
Hello World,
Greetings of the season to you, and hopefully the bright and shiny new year of 2010 is treating you a whole lot better than what was happening in 2009, and by a wide margin, that's for sure. New Year's Eve in these parts was bitterly cold, and all of those tourists who flocked to Times Square to watch the ball drop really earned it this time, because it must have been excruciating out there on the street all day and all night. We did the sensible thing and stayed home, where the most precarious thing we have to cope with is the appallingly bad television programming at the time. Every year, it continues to amaze me that the New Year's Eve shows can run the gamut from bad to worse, to outrageously abysmal, without ever reaching a level that could be described as even mediocre, much less good in any way. Fifty years after Guy Lombardo was hooted off the airwaves for being old-fashioned and boring, they still haven't come up with anything that is interesting to watch and competently presented. I always say, it can't possibly be as bad as last year, and yet somehow it always manages to be even worse, and don't forget, we've got 100 cable channels, so we are not limited to just a few choices, even in different languages. It's stupefying to me that after all these years, no one has come along to rescue New Year's Eve television from the schlock-meisters that seem to have a stranglehold on it now. Our usual defensive strategy is to watch a movie of our own, that we've been meaning to see but haven't gotten around to, and only switch to live TV at the big moment just to watch the ball drop, and then skip around a bit to see which channels are doing what, and where. The results are usually so awful, and so quickly, that we're soon ready to pack it in and give it up as a lost cause, and hope perhaps in vain, that next year will miraculously be better, although that part has yet to happen. But we got a chance to see "Die Hard With a Vengeance," which we had been looking forward to, so the whole evening was not a total loss after all. And if anyone in the scientific community wants my opinion, instead of wasting taxpayer money on whether Pluto is a planet or not, they should be inventing a way to bring Guy Lombardo back from the dead, and I personally would be happy to give them a couple of those funky new Sacajawea dollar coins to get them started.
Even though I was on vacation the week after Christmas (HOORAY!!!) I still went in to work in the afternoon of New Year's Eve, because I was waiting for a form that I needed to fax before the end of the year. It was only about 3:00 PM when I got there, and thought I could wish a Happy New Year to my coworkers before it was too late, but I found the entire building was deserted, with not a soul in the place except for my little old oh, lonesome me. I also needed to stop off and pick up some papers at church, and it came as an unpleasant surprise, after it had snowed the night before, that the part-time maintenance person hadn't cleared the sidewalk in front of the church, or the steps. (By golly, $100 a week doesn't get you much these days!) Then I remembered that I still had the snow shovel in the car from Lessons & Carols, so I decided to take some time and make a stab at it, but it was back-breaking work. The snow wasn't deep at all, but by then it had all been trampled down and froze to the sidewalk, so that the poor shovel just couldn't budge it. I did the best job I could under the circumstances, and then tossed around some salt to hopefully make some inroads where the shovel had failed, but it would be no one's idea of their finest hour in public works administration, and not by a long shot, believe me.
While we're in the holiday mood, if even Epiphany has come and gone, which indeed it has, I guess everyone knows that can mean only one thing, and that is that it's time once again for the wandering Christmas tree at work. Every year, I mark a date on my calendar to put away the tree and decorations in our department, and with the best intentions of sticking to it, but it seems like it's always too hectic and disorganized at the time to really give this project the effort and attention that it requires. As a result, I usually end up grabbing at the decorations with both hands and yanking them off whatever they're attached to, then throwing everything willy-nilly into a pile in my office until I have more time to deal with it properly. The tree itself is on a rolling cart covered with a festive tablecloth, and it's all too tempting to just roll it out of the hallway, still decorated with all of its holiday finery, and put it somewhere out of sight for the time being. We don't have as many of those "out of sight" places as we used to in our area, so right now it's in the back of my office, while all the jumbled decorations are tossed in a heap on the credenza. I guess the best that can be said about it is that at least Phase I of the undecorating process has been completed, and we've paved the way for the eventual implementation of Phase II, and hopefully sooner rather than later, although I'm not promising anything, you understand.
Speaking of Christmas trees, I recently found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, with inadvertent consequences. Last Sunday at church, the congregation was encouraged to take home any unclaimed poinsettias that had graced the chancel with their lively color during Advent, and after those were cleared out, the rest of the decorations soon followed along right after them. Most were carefully packed away and put safely in the balcony for another year, but the Christmas tree is live, so it had to be put outside at the curb, theoretically to be picked up by one of the city agencies empowered with that authority. Apparently everyone involved in the process of lugging the tree outside either lived in a different part of town, or else didn't have a holiday tree of their own, because when the question was raised about when the city comes around to pick trees up, everyone looked at me. I immediately piped up and said I had no idea when trees were picked up, because we always put our trees out in the backyard and I cut them up for firewood, which in retrospect, was probably a big mistake, because suddenly everyone was clamoring for me to take the church's tree home for firewood as well. Not being able to come up with a graceful way to extricate myself from the situation on short notice, I agreed to take it home, and here was one of those instances where what seemed like a nice manageable sized tree in the sanctuary, inexplicably transformed itself into a great hulking mass when we tried to stuff it into the poor Escort, which may never be the same, although I have to say that it smells great.
In other mobility news, we get the following story from Bill
=====================
I just remembered the Welcome Screen headline I wanted to pass along:
->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<-
All-Electric Cars Will Soon Be RealitySee 6 That Promise 100 MPG or More
->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<-
-- I thought charging them up might be a problem
but not if AOL is going to sell electricity by the gallon!
=====================
I'm thinking this is an innovation in energy transactions that Con Edison has never considered, and frankly, I don't even mind buying my electricity by the gallon, but it better be the good stuff, by golly. Meanwhile, I wound up at the end of the year with enough unused vacation time left-over, and the hospital doesn't let you carry it over, that I was able to take off most of the last two weeks of December, and not return to work until January. I didn't even have to go in as I usually do for payroll, since my time off fell in between pay periods, so that was even better. Unfortunately, by the time I did get back to my office, it looked like an explosion at a paper mill, and I had to wade through stacks of documents just to find my desk, which basically needed to be shoveled off before I could even start to dig down to the surface. Since the previous Friday was a holiday, when we normally would have done time cards, by the time I got in on Monday, it was already a day late and I needed to get the ball rolling on this process, and no excuses. For no discernible reason, everyone seemed to get out of the time card habit in the two weeks that I was off, and as I went around to gather up the cards, the people that I asked for them would stare at me with their mouths hanging open, and an utter lack of comprehension in their expression that was as mystifying as it was unwelcome. It was as if we hadn't all been doing time cards every other week for at least the 20 years that I have worked there, and probably 100 years that the hospital has been there, and yet, everyone was looking at me as if I was a three-headed polka dot space alien asking them for dilithium crystals to power my rocket ship or something equally arcane. I always say that my taking time off from work is what we consider a "mental health day" for everyone else there, but this time around, they seemed to take advantage of my absence to enjoy some "mental derelict time" and conveniently forget everything they were supposed to know how to do when I got back. It turned into something of an unexpectedly long and frustrating day, and if I really was a three-headed polka dot space alien with a rocket ship, that would have been the time that I certainly would have been happy to hop in and take off for distant galaxies, believe me. Of course, I first would have had to stop and fill up with a few gallons of electricity, because after all, there's really no such thing as dilithium crystals.
Elle
Greetings of the season to you, and hopefully the bright and shiny new year of 2010 is treating you a whole lot better than what was happening in 2009, and by a wide margin, that's for sure. New Year's Eve in these parts was bitterly cold, and all of those tourists who flocked to Times Square to watch the ball drop really earned it this time, because it must have been excruciating out there on the street all day and all night. We did the sensible thing and stayed home, where the most precarious thing we have to cope with is the appallingly bad television programming at the time. Every year, it continues to amaze me that the New Year's Eve shows can run the gamut from bad to worse, to outrageously abysmal, without ever reaching a level that could be described as even mediocre, much less good in any way. Fifty years after Guy Lombardo was hooted off the airwaves for being old-fashioned and boring, they still haven't come up with anything that is interesting to watch and competently presented. I always say, it can't possibly be as bad as last year, and yet somehow it always manages to be even worse, and don't forget, we've got 100 cable channels, so we are not limited to just a few choices, even in different languages. It's stupefying to me that after all these years, no one has come along to rescue New Year's Eve television from the schlock-meisters that seem to have a stranglehold on it now. Our usual defensive strategy is to watch a movie of our own, that we've been meaning to see but haven't gotten around to, and only switch to live TV at the big moment just to watch the ball drop, and then skip around a bit to see which channels are doing what, and where. The results are usually so awful, and so quickly, that we're soon ready to pack it in and give it up as a lost cause, and hope perhaps in vain, that next year will miraculously be better, although that part has yet to happen. But we got a chance to see "Die Hard With a Vengeance," which we had been looking forward to, so the whole evening was not a total loss after all. And if anyone in the scientific community wants my opinion, instead of wasting taxpayer money on whether Pluto is a planet or not, they should be inventing a way to bring Guy Lombardo back from the dead, and I personally would be happy to give them a couple of those funky new Sacajawea dollar coins to get them started.
Even though I was on vacation the week after Christmas (HOORAY!!!) I still went in to work in the afternoon of New Year's Eve, because I was waiting for a form that I needed to fax before the end of the year. It was only about 3:00 PM when I got there, and thought I could wish a Happy New Year to my coworkers before it was too late, but I found the entire building was deserted, with not a soul in the place except for my little old oh, lonesome me. I also needed to stop off and pick up some papers at church, and it came as an unpleasant surprise, after it had snowed the night before, that the part-time maintenance person hadn't cleared the sidewalk in front of the church, or the steps. (By golly, $100 a week doesn't get you much these days!) Then I remembered that I still had the snow shovel in the car from Lessons & Carols, so I decided to take some time and make a stab at it, but it was back-breaking work. The snow wasn't deep at all, but by then it had all been trampled down and froze to the sidewalk, so that the poor shovel just couldn't budge it. I did the best job I could under the circumstances, and then tossed around some salt to hopefully make some inroads where the shovel had failed, but it would be no one's idea of their finest hour in public works administration, and not by a long shot, believe me.
While we're in the holiday mood, if even Epiphany has come and gone, which indeed it has, I guess everyone knows that can mean only one thing, and that is that it's time once again for the wandering Christmas tree at work. Every year, I mark a date on my calendar to put away the tree and decorations in our department, and with the best intentions of sticking to it, but it seems like it's always too hectic and disorganized at the time to really give this project the effort and attention that it requires. As a result, I usually end up grabbing at the decorations with both hands and yanking them off whatever they're attached to, then throwing everything willy-nilly into a pile in my office until I have more time to deal with it properly. The tree itself is on a rolling cart covered with a festive tablecloth, and it's all too tempting to just roll it out of the hallway, still decorated with all of its holiday finery, and put it somewhere out of sight for the time being. We don't have as many of those "out of sight" places as we used to in our area, so right now it's in the back of my office, while all the jumbled decorations are tossed in a heap on the credenza. I guess the best that can be said about it is that at least Phase I of the undecorating process has been completed, and we've paved the way for the eventual implementation of Phase II, and hopefully sooner rather than later, although I'm not promising anything, you understand.
Speaking of Christmas trees, I recently found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, with inadvertent consequences. Last Sunday at church, the congregation was encouraged to take home any unclaimed poinsettias that had graced the chancel with their lively color during Advent, and after those were cleared out, the rest of the decorations soon followed along right after them. Most were carefully packed away and put safely in the balcony for another year, but the Christmas tree is live, so it had to be put outside at the curb, theoretically to be picked up by one of the city agencies empowered with that authority. Apparently everyone involved in the process of lugging the tree outside either lived in a different part of town, or else didn't have a holiday tree of their own, because when the question was raised about when the city comes around to pick trees up, everyone looked at me. I immediately piped up and said I had no idea when trees were picked up, because we always put our trees out in the backyard and I cut them up for firewood, which in retrospect, was probably a big mistake, because suddenly everyone was clamoring for me to take the church's tree home for firewood as well. Not being able to come up with a graceful way to extricate myself from the situation on short notice, I agreed to take it home, and here was one of those instances where what seemed like a nice manageable sized tree in the sanctuary, inexplicably transformed itself into a great hulking mass when we tried to stuff it into the poor Escort, which may never be the same, although I have to say that it smells great.
In other mobility news, we get the following story from Bill
=====================
I just remembered the Welcome Screen headline I wanted to pass along:
->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<-
All-Electric Cars Will Soon Be RealitySee 6 That Promise 100 MPG or More
->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<- ->^..^<-
-- I thought charging them up might be a problem
but not if AOL is going to sell electricity by the gallon!
=====================
I'm thinking this is an innovation in energy transactions that Con Edison has never considered, and frankly, I don't even mind buying my electricity by the gallon, but it better be the good stuff, by golly. Meanwhile, I wound up at the end of the year with enough unused vacation time left-over, and the hospital doesn't let you carry it over, that I was able to take off most of the last two weeks of December, and not return to work until January. I didn't even have to go in as I usually do for payroll, since my time off fell in between pay periods, so that was even better. Unfortunately, by the time I did get back to my office, it looked like an explosion at a paper mill, and I had to wade through stacks of documents just to find my desk, which basically needed to be shoveled off before I could even start to dig down to the surface. Since the previous Friday was a holiday, when we normally would have done time cards, by the time I got in on Monday, it was already a day late and I needed to get the ball rolling on this process, and no excuses. For no discernible reason, everyone seemed to get out of the time card habit in the two weeks that I was off, and as I went around to gather up the cards, the people that I asked for them would stare at me with their mouths hanging open, and an utter lack of comprehension in their expression that was as mystifying as it was unwelcome. It was as if we hadn't all been doing time cards every other week for at least the 20 years that I have worked there, and probably 100 years that the hospital has been there, and yet, everyone was looking at me as if I was a three-headed polka dot space alien asking them for dilithium crystals to power my rocket ship or something equally arcane. I always say that my taking time off from work is what we consider a "mental health day" for everyone else there, but this time around, they seemed to take advantage of my absence to enjoy some "mental derelict time" and conveniently forget everything they were supposed to know how to do when I got back. It turned into something of an unexpectedly long and frustrating day, and if I really was a three-headed polka dot space alien with a rocket ship, that would have been the time that I certainly would have been happy to hop in and take off for distant galaxies, believe me. Of course, I first would have had to stop and fill up with a few gallons of electricity, because after all, there's really no such thing as dilithium crystals.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:16 PM
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