Shell Game

Hello World,

Well, I don't know about where you are, but in this area, February has been a brisk cold month full of disagreeable weather, which managed to wear out its welcome in short order, and when it finally breathes its last on Monday, I can't say that there will be a lot of people sorry to see it go. In fact, even last week we had more snow, which was supposed to be just a dusting or very scant accumulations, but wound up being more than six inches, most notably on the sidewalks, where Bill did his usual heroic job of shoveling, and with no complaints, which is the best kind. One good thing was that the implacable quagmire of left-over snow everywhere that has hounded our existence since December, finally in some mysterious fashion, seemed to all melt away in a single week, even though it has still been cold the whole time, although it did get slightly warmer from the low twenties into the mid-thirties for the most part. I think it was a combination of two things that really made the difference, the first being that we didn't have any more significant snowfalls for two weeks in a row, while before that it seemed like a weekly occurrence, and about as welcome as you'd expect on that kind of schedule. The other was that, taking advantage of the hiatus of fresh snowflakes, the city came around with bulldozers and dump trucks to pick up many of the gigantic snow mounds that had been scattered about like haystacks throughout the burg, which immediately made it easier to get around and feel like things were getting back to normal. So this last snow didn't have the same kind of impact falling on bare ground, as the same amount would have had on top of the left-over horrendous mess that was here before, and already it's just a (less than) fond memory. Sort of like February after Monday, and good riddance.

And speaking of good riddance, while I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've been catching up on things around here, I did finally do laundry for the first time in recent memory, at least in this geologic era, and I also put away clothes from the last time I did any laundry, and I can't even remember when that was, so you can imagine how long they've just been lounging around on the clothesline since then. In fact, I realized that these clothes were so old that some of them were made of fabric that had been hand-woven on looms before the Industrial Revolution, with such novelties as buttons made out of shells. I'll admit that there were many among them that I didn't even recognize as clothing of mine, and while I appreciated the jaunty pre-Colonial style about them, I really thought the powdered wig was just way too much.

And while we're here in the Colonial era, I should bring up a note that I received recently from a colleague, who was commenting on a brochure-in-progress, and complained about what she referred to as the "boarders." Now, this is where I say, "Shiver me timbers, lads!" and the captain of the brigantine rallies his crew with shouts of "Away all boarders!" in the heat of a historic naval battle on the high seas. Unfortunately, it wasn't that kind of brochure, so I can only assume that it wasn't marauding sailors that she objected to, and more's the pity, I'm sure. Although if her ire was directed to the decorative design around the outside, I would have expected her to come up with the more appropriate "border" instead, and not fall into the homophone trap where the spell-checker is never going to be able to dig you out of. And that's not just a lot of bored boarding borders, believe me.

Also not saying what they mean (one hopes) we get the following from our friends at New Rochelle Patch in a story about a fire at the historic Union Baptist Church in our fair city -

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City Manager Charles Strome said no cause has yet been determined in the Union Baptist Church fire. He said the building department will determine if the Main Street facade is structurally sound or will have to be demolished to prevent it from fall into the street.
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I'll have you know that I have actually met the City Manager in person, and I sincerely doubt that he ever said anything like "prevent it from fall," as they have paraphrased it here. Alas, for those halcyon days of yore, when there were actual editors to catch grammar lapses like this one, rather than just sending them out over the information super-highway for everyone to see, and many of us, to wail and gnash our teeth at. Or even better, those halcyon days of the future, when computer programs will alert people to these types of fundamental mistakes - where a word may be spelled correctly, but it's still the wrong word nonetheless in its context - or better still, prevent them altogether. Of course, that does rather smack of a little too much artificial intelligence on the part of the computer programs, and I think we've all seen enough science fiction movies of technology run amok to realize that sort of thing can all too easily become a double-edged sword in the wrong hands, and no good can come of it. Personally, I can tell you that I'm not going to fall ..... er, I mean, stand for it.

And what may be new and exciting in the world of casual dining you may wonder, and well may you wonder. Funny thing about that - after years of bemoaning the fact (loud and long, and not to mention, year in and year out) that there were no Denny's restaurants anywhere near us, so that we could only enjoy them when we traveled hundreds of miles out of our area, suddenly all that changed like a bolt out of the blue. We went to Long Island to visit my sister, and nothing unusual about that, and were planning to have lunch at the diner as we normally would. Au contraire! (That's French for "Hold the macaroni!") She said she had a surprise for us, and directed us instead to a small and crowded strip mall along Hempstead Turnpike, where they have astoundingly opened what is apparently the very first Denny's on the island, in Levittown of all places. It's in the strangest location, squeezed into this squatty and cramped block of shops, with an inhospitable parking lot that is not for the faint-hearted, believe me. But if you can somehow manage to find your way to the place after all, it's a real genuine Denny's with all the trimmings, and is doing well enough that we had to wait on line to be seated on Saturday afternoon, and there was just as much of a line when we left as when we got there. We didn't take any chances, but ordered our usual tried-and-true favorites, including their shocking blue Pacific Chiller, which tastes better than it looks, at least to me. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of the Denny's with my favorite dessert, their scrumptious coconut creme pie, but we were too full for dessert anyway. We certainly weren't going to quibble over trivialities, after literally decades of fruitless yearning for a Denny's anywhere nearby, and suddenly one just pops up under our very noses and without any fanfare. So what started out as a humdrum day for us, full of ordinary places and routine errands, instead turned into a red-letter day in our lives, and way beyond our wildest dreams coming true at long last. In fact, I got so excited that I popped off one of my shell buttons, and had to borrow one of their brochures to wrap it up in, although frankly I didn't care much for the boarders, I can tell you that, me laddies.

Elle

Still Life

Hello World,

Happy Presidents Day weekend, and I hope that you will be able to make an executive decision to enjoy a long holiday weekend full of all the pomp and circumstance that anyone could possibly want, with plenty of Hail to the Chief for good measure. Things are already better in the local area, as we had an entire week with no precipitation of any kind (in our house, we don't use the "S" word anymore, after all the fluffy white stuff we've been through) and the weather finally inched its way above freezing, so that it felt almost balmy by comparison. At work on Friday, I had to cross over the campus to another building, and it was positively delightful out, and seemed just like spring, in stark contrast to just a few days ago. In fact, it was two weeks ago, when we were still gripped in the icy fist of implacable winter with piles of snow and ice everywhere, that I heard the first spring birds and their jaunty songs of hope and rebirth in the neighborhood, and a more welcome sound would be hard to come by, believe me. Bill even spotted a robin, and as harbingers of spring, they set the standard, so it's another encouraging sign for winter-weary people yearning to break free of the arctic doldrums, or at least see the light at the end of the tunnel that's not another oncoming blizzard, thanks not.

Of course, Monday was Valentine's Day for romantics everywhere, full of hearts and flowers and plenty of chocolate, which as a gift has that "one-size-fits-all" kind of quality that makes it so appealing. We had an appointment after work and then went out to dinner, which we usually don't, so that was a special treat, followed by presents that I don't mind saying, were up to Cupid's usual standards, and not to mention, extremely delicious as well. The holiday also represented another milestone, in that it was the end of the Christmas caravan for another year, as the day before we finally exchanged gifts with the last errant family member who had not been previously available for any of the other gift-giving opportunities along the caravan route up to this point. So we can finally pack away our sugar plums and mistletoe at long last, and take down the stockings, although if anyone thinks that I'm going to trust them to the evil clutches of the furry varmints in the attic, well, you can just believe that it will all be very far beyond their grasp.

And speaking of things that are beyond my grasp, this is one that I would not have figured to be in that category in any way, shape or form, up until now. It was years ago that I inherited a chair at work when I changed offices, because my old office was too hot, and I left my desk and chair behind to make a clean break of it. This was not a bad chair, as chairs go, but as chairs go, this one wouldn't - it simply didn't want to roll for beans. After using it for a while, I noticed that two of the casters would roll, but refused to swivel, so that you could go in one direction, but not another, unless you got completely up and turned the base of the chair in the direction that the casters would go. One day I remembered that when I moved into the office, and was re-organizing the furniture, I discovered a box of casters, which I put in the credenza to keep them out of the way. I decided to dig them out, and hoped that they would solve the problem, but I soon found out that there was a reason they were still in the box and not on the chair, because they didn't fit. All at once it dawned on me that I could just as easily buy a box of replacement casters that would fit, and after all, how expensive could it be for five lousy casters, and make my life so much easier - why, it would be a bargain at twice the price. Not so fast! Apparently casters have become "fashionable," and you now need a masters degree in Chairology in order to figure out what casters will fit what bases, and on what surfaces, and with what safety features, and on and on and on. I read all the descriptions, and picked out a set that I thought would do the trick, but when they came, the stems were too long to fit the base of the chair, unless I wanted to disassemble the decorative sleeves that covered the base so it didn't look unfinished. In a fortuitous coincidence, two of the sleeves were missing anyway, so I banged out the two bum casters that wouldn't swivel, and replaced them with two of the new casters, on the theory that it would at least have to be an improvement. It's true that the stems stuck up above the base and looked unsightly, but the casters worked a lot better, so I considered it a fair trade-off. After a while, I decided that I now knew enough about casters to pick out the right ones from a catalog, so I could replace all of them, and enter a whole new world of carefree mobility in the office of the future. So once again, I found myself with a box of replacement casters, and this time, that came along with two sets of stems to suit whatever the hypothetical chair base might throw at the unwary office worker. Amazingly enough, it turned out that the stems that would fit the chair base wouldn't fit the casters, and vice versa, so I ended up with yet a third box full of replacement casters that wouldn't work on the same stupid chair. I finally had to throw in the proverbial towel, and recognize that replacing the chair casters was obviously way beyond my meager capabilities, and required a mystical and arcane super power that I did not possess, and probably never would possess, and I should just give it up as a lost cause. Honestly, for the amount of time and effort and money that I have spent in trying to replace the casters on this chair, I could have long since built my own chair from scratch and be done with it already, and get on with my life. Still-life, that is.

Last week, I wanted to use the phrase "winter of our discontent," which is certainly well-known enough to anybody, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what comes after that, so I looked it up online. Of course, Shakespeare can be a more than a little abstruse, and the Internet is awash in pedantic sites about The Bard, and stuffed to the gills with pedagogues. Luckily, I stumbled upon our friends at http://www.enotes.com/, who were happy to oblige, and no dry and fusty pontifications for them, by golly, this was the James Bond of Avon - shaken, not stirred:

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Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this son of York;And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Richard, the future king, opens his play not by protesting his discontent, but by celebrating an upturn in his family's fortunes. His brother Edward IV—they're sons of the Duke of York—has wrested the English crown from Henry VI and the Lancastrian house. So those who simply quote "Now is the winter of our discontent" are doing these lines a disservice, since the "now" actually modifies "made glorious" (i.e. "The winter is now made glorious summer"). To translate more loosely: "The oppression of our family, which made life like a long winter, has been turned to a summery contentedness now that my brother is king." Edward's emblem is the sun, and the radiance of his glory has dispelled the clouds that "lowered" (frowned) on the House of York. Richard's string of metaphors runs adrift, though, when he begins talking about burying clouds in the ocean.
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I just love their sly editorial comment (on Shakespeare, no less!) about the metaphors running adrift - as opposed to "aground" - with the clouds in the ocean. Stuff like that just tickles me.

And speaking of running adrift, as it were, I'm sure that everyone will be glad to hear that we've turned yet another corner in the ongoing Verizon saga at our house, which has so far had a lot more corners than I would have originally supposed. In fact, this one might lead a more optimistic person to imagine that the winter of our disconnect really was now to be made glorious summer and dispel the frowning clouds over the House of "No-Bell" in the bosom of the airwaves at long last. I came home from work on Wednesday and picked up the phone in the bedroom, and what to my wondering ears should appear but a dial tone, of all things, which has been sorely lacking, lo these many weeks on end over end, and then some. We were agog with amazement at this revolutionary concept, only about a mere hundred years after the invention of the apparatus in the first place, and here it was, on our very own phone. Our euphoria was soon cut short when we realized that with the dial tone, we could indeed make calls out, but we still couldn't get any calls in, which I suppose made it good for us, but bad for the telemarketers, which is what I would describe as a mixed blessing. After all, we can't expect much in the way of economic recovery if people can't call us on the phone to sell us insurance, aluminum siding, chimney cleaning, or carpet shampooing, so I'd say that Verizon still has their work cut out for them on this problem. As for me, I refuse to get all excited about having a dial tone at this point, after all, we've been known to have dial tone for two days at a time on several occasions already, only to have the rug pulled out from under us later. And let's not forget that I know a thing or two about rugs, believe me, and still have three boxes full of replacement chair casters to prove it.

Elle

Ring Leader

Hello World,

Happy (almost) Valentine's Day! As the happy occasion dawns on Monday, I wish you copious amounts of sweet treats, romance, and lace-trimmed apparel to make the holiday a very special one for you in the annals of Cupid's handiwork. As for myself, I'll take mine in chocolate, and plenty of it, and thanks ever so. I can't say that the cats are much to be counted on for events like this, as their taste runs more along the lines of bat-a-birds and catnip mice, but fortunately Bill makes up for their shortcomings, and then some, so no worries on that score. After all, I already have enough bat-a-birds and catnip mice to last me a lifetime, believe me.

Speaking of lifetimes, it seems a very long time ago that there was anything worth watching on television, and we find ourselves in that dreaded time of year between the end of football and the beginning of baseball, when we have to make do with basketball and hockey, or give up on televised sports altogether for the duration. Not even the Pro Bowl in front of us, since they moved it to before the Super Bowl for some inexplicable reason, and thanks so much not. There isn't even arena football or winter baseball to fall back on, like there used to be, which although seriously unlike the real thing, were still entertaining on their own merits. It's hard to believe that cable sports networks will take time up in their schedules to show high school field hockey, and yet nobody could keep arena football up and running, to give us something to look forward to over the winter. In any event, I suppose the good news is that Pitchers and Catchers will be reporting to their respective spring training camps in the South next week, and after the kind of winter that we've been through in this area, if those aren't the most beautiful words in the English language, well then, I just don't know what it would be. There's nothing like the return of the Boys of Summer to give us all a reason to hope in better days ahead.

Of course, the big sports news was the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl last Sunday, and bringing home the aptly named Vince Lombardi Trophy back to where the home-town fans naturally feel that it belongs. It was quite a game, close enough to be interesting, and with the odd turnover here and there to keep it from being dull or predictable, as these big games so often are. Then there are always the infamous Super Bowl commercials, which are alternately hilarious, controversial, adorable or offensive, and sometimes, all at once. In fact, something else that fits all of those categories happened last week, I think on Saturday, when they announced the MVP for the NFL 2010 season, although why they would pick a time like that for this particular announcement is a mystery to me, I'm sure. It turned out the overwhelming favorite was Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, so apparently the outcome was no surprise. Now, please remind me again, where exactly were they on Sunday? Oh yes, that's right, they were at home watching the Super Bowl on TV, having been eliminated from the playoffs by the JETS in January, and to Mr. MVP, no thanks so very much, and plenty of it. This is my idea of a bad call, and I don't mind saying that I am unanimous in that. Or in the immortal words of Branch Rickey, "we could have done that without you, Ralph."

And while we're on the subject of things that make no sense, I would like to inform everyone that we have turned a corner in our lack of telephone service at home, and in fact, I invite everyone to give us a ring and get it right from the horse's mouth, as it were. It was obviously beyond their abilities at Verizon to actually repair the telephone service, so instead, they inserted a recorded message on our line, with what sounds suspiciously like a semi-literate goon who announces: "Da numba you have cawd is terminally outta service. Please try again." I can promise you that it is extremely entertaining, as recorded messages go, and well worth the cost of the call. I'd be less than candid if I didn't say that we both would have preferred having the phone service fixed, especially after this has been going on almost three months at this point, but I have to admit that this quixotic message is a close second as a consolation prize, and has proved to be extremely popular among people we know who have tried to reach us recently. As hope springs eternal in the human breast, we have not given up on the idea that Verizon is still trying diligently to repair our telephone service, and what the goon - excuse me, I mean the recorded announcement - is actually trying to express is that the number is only "temporarily" out of service, and not "terminally," which is what it sounds like. At least that's our hope, and although this has been the winter of our discontent in the field of telecommunications, we are looking forward to it turning into the glorious spring of our jubilant contentment, as we return from the land of the incommunicado, and leap once again into the sunshine of ringing bells and answering machines, like the rest of the civilized world. After all this time, I can tell you that I will never be so happy to hear people trying to sell me aluminum siding or chimney cleaning again in my whole life, and if anyone wants to sell me insurance or shampoo my carpets, I would probably remember them in my will at this point. What the heck, I've got to leave all those bat-a-birds and catnip mice to somebody.

Elle

Pull A Rabbit Out Of A Hat

Hello World,

Hong Kong Bok Choy! It's time once again to wish everyone a very healthy and prosperous Chinese New Year, and don't spare the dim sum! We have now roared out of the Year of the Tiger, and hopped into the Year of the Rabbit, which may sound timid and uneventful, but this is very far from the case. The year has been described thusly: "In Chinese mythology, the Year of the Rabbit symbol represents longevity and it is believed that the Rabbit enjoys a close relationship with the moon. Westerners may refer to the man in the moon, but when the Chinese peer up at the moon, what they see is the Rabbit standing by a rock, holding a cup that overflows with the elixir of immortality. As symbols go, this is considered one of the finest." As far as people born in the year: "Although generally calm, gentle and loving, Rabbit people can be very ambitious and intuitively know how to get ahead in the world. They are good listeners, kind and sweet by nature, and are therefore often sought out as popular and trusted friends. Generally noted for their physical beauty, Rabbits like to surround themselves with beautiful things. They have a good eye for art, design and fashion, and are usually at the top of anyone's Best Dressed list. Others may call the Rabbit timid, but those born under this sign rightly view themselves as wise and cautious. Because a Rabbit’s overall approach is calm and considerate, they make excellent teachers. Coupled with their organizational skills, they are well suited for supervisory positions. They are detail-oriented and happiest when engrossed in intellectual activities. However, since they are basically reserved creatures, they do not thrive in competitive environments." You share your birth year cycle with the likes of Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Angelina Jolie and Jane Seymour. So anyone born in the years of 1903, 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999 or 2011, this is your year, so get out there and party like it's 4709, 4708, or 4648!

Of course, Tuesday was Groundhog Day, and depending on which famous groundhog prognosticator you subscribe to, they either did or did not see his or her shadow, meaning we either will or will not have six more weeks of winter. But a good time was had by all, and no groundhogs were injured during the course of the event, so I consider that a success even if an unanimous decision was not reached on the shadow hypothesis. And as everyone knows, Sunday will be Waitangi Day once again for our friends Down Under, although with the explosive situation in the Middle East at the moment, I'm not sure how much attention the world is going to pay to the usual riots and controversy surrounding this annual South Seas donnybrook, and probably just as well.

And speaking of donnybrooks, we find ourselves finally staring down both barrels of Super Bowl Sunday at long last, which this time around will pit the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Green Bay Packers, both of whom are no strangers to the gridiron winter classic by any means. The mavens in the NFL hierarchy, in their infinite wisdom, decided to hold the Super Bowl in Dallas this year rather than Florida, ostensibly because the weather is about the same, and also to make use of a brand-new stadium that was just built for the Cowboys. Only part of that worked out, because it's true that the stadium is still there, but it seems to be surrounded by about 6 inches of snow in every direction, thanks not. In fact, yesterday I called one of the hospital vendors in San Antonio, and their recorded message said they were having a snow emergency in the area, and I should expect wait times on hold to be longer than usual. People can say what they like about the vagaries of cruel fate, or the gods toying with us, but personally I prefer to believe that this only goes to prove that our old nemesis Comrade Mischka is really a Jets fan after all.

I should also report as a public service that the week after next will bring us Valentine's Day on Monday, for anyone who is not yet prepared to sweep their loved one off their feet with the perfect romantic gift, they've still got some time to pull the rabbit out of a hat, as it were. (No, not Angelina Jolie, let's not be ridiculous here.) This is another year where we have lucked out, and find that Cupid's special day is not falling during Lent for a change, so we can indulge in all the pleasures of the occasion without guilt or restraint, and don't spare the chocolate. In fact, Ash Wednesday isn't until March 9, making everyone wait for Easter until April 24, which is about the latest that I can ever remember it, and a quick search online shows that it hasn't been this late since before 1982. There's apparently a very arcane and mystifying computation for arriving at the date of Easter every year, and our friends at wikipedia.org devote several long and incomprehensible paragraphs to detailing the specifics of the process, but it can be somewhat summarized as follows:

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In western Christianity, using the Gregorian calendar, Easter always falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, inclusively. Christian churches use March 21 as the starting point in determining the date of Easter, from which they find the next full moon, etc. [Eastern Orthodox Christianity uses the Julian calendar, which is why their Easter often falls on a different date.] Each year, the lunar month beginning with a new moon between March 8 to April 5 inclusive is designated as the paschal lunar month for that year. Easter is the 3rd Sunday in the paschal lunar month, or, in other words, the Sunday after the paschal lunar month's 14th day.
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Well, actually, that's just about as clear as mud, and it's a wonder that they can get people to agree on when Easter actually is every year, with all of the ballyhoo and folderol they have to go through to get there. It's only a lucky thing that this process hasn't been taken over by the warring factions of the St. Patrick's Day parade, or the fight over the actual date would be tied up in litigation so long that we'd never get around to the marshmallow Peeps and malted milk eggs before it was time to start all over again.

Speaking of dates, it was on Tuesday morning at work that someone asked me about an order that they said should have arrived "earlier in the week," which prompted me to observe that it then could only have been yesterday, since there was nothing else that was earlier in the workweek from Tuesday morning. After all, they haven't invented the "week stretcher" yet, so as it stands now, "earlier in the week" from Tuesday morning doesn't leave you much to play with. In other news on the work front in the local area, it was the unwelcome combination of heavy snowfalls and freezing temperatures that created a patchwork of huge snow mounds throughout our fair city, wherever the plows could push them, in their efforts to clear the streets and no place to go. There's been no possibility of anything melting, so we've been stuck with them ever since. Bill happened to notice one such towering pile on the corner as he walked past our mechanic's garage, and the enterprising proprietor had propped a large sign on top that announced: FREE SNOW, presumably to anyone in the neighborhood who might be interested. Then there was the owner of a bagel shop at the train station, from his location under an overhang, with a sign that offered ICICLES 10c to 25c for his commuter patrons. So the weather may be throwing at us everything that it's got, but we still have our sense of humor, thank heaven.

And speaking of humor in unexpected places, last Sunday was the annual congregational meeting at our church, in spite of the prevailing conditions at the time, and it went off without a hitch and right on schedule. Unlike previous years where the SWAT teams were on stand-by, the National Guard on high alert, and the FBI ready to spring at a moment's notice, this meeting was short, amicable, productive and on-topic throughout, which I don't mind saying, is a novelty that has caught many of us by surprise, and has taken some getting used to, compared to the old days. In fact, it's getting to the point that us old-timers are starting to lose our skills in name-calling, fist fights and throwing chairs, where once we were at the top of our game in these categories. Why, I doubt that I could hit the broad side of a budget deficit dissenter with a metal folding chair at 20 paces anymore, much less toss a bulletin board clear across a phalanx of rampaging ushers like I used to. I tell you, the old ways die hard, and it doesn't even hardly feel like we've really had an annual meeting when everything is so calm and civilized, and people are still speaking to each other when it's over. But on the bright side, there was plenty of delicious salad and pizza, fried chicken and pasta salad, plus brownies and cake, which all managed to take some of the sting out of it, for those of us hoping for a little more excitement. And thanks to our mechanic, everyone who showed up left with a bucket of free snow.

Elle