Pot Luck
Hello World,
Happy Spring! It's really true that Sunday, March 20, was the official first day of spring according to the calendar, although it seems that someone forgot to tell the weather trolls, because we had more snow the very next day on Monday, which was about as welcome as you would expect after the kind of winter that we've just had around here. And just when we thought we were finally out of the proverbial woods, and going in the right direction, on Wednesday we got hit with yet another storm that they described as "wintry mix," but which instead ended up as regular snow, with actual accumulations, and thanks so very much not. And since it started as freezing rain and sleet, by the time I got outside to clean off my car in the morning to go to work, it was about two inches of icy slush stuck onto the windows, and getting that to budge was no joke. Speaking of jokes, later that same day, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day, which was really just a cruel prank by the weather trolls toying with us on top of everything else. I may as well say right now that if the poll takers come around asking for my opinion of the weather trolls, I've got some news for them, and it won't be good, believe me.
Speaking of news, I would be remiss if I didn't mention [and here for the sake of public safety, I must point out that sensitive readers should be sitting down for this] that we've had actual dial tone and telephone service at our house for two weeks in a row now, as impossible as that might seem. After wrestling with Verizon since December, and having literally hordes of repair people in and out of the house week in and week out to no avail, we are finally back in contact with the rest of the world, through the miracle of copper wire technology, a mere one hundred years after the invention of the acoustic communications device that has been taken for granted by generations all this time. Not by us, by golly, not after this, I can tell you that. Everyone who came here said the wiring in the house was fine, but the wire out of the house was bad, the wire on the pole was no better, and the wires at the cross-box were even worse, so even after they fixed the immediate failure, it was just a matter of time before something else went wrong. The last guy finally decided to just re-route our entire house connection to a different pole with a new wire, thus eliminating all of those other bad connections at a stroke. Of course, at first we didn't believe it, because nothing ever seemed to work for more than two days at a time, but now it seems like this might really have solved the problems once and for all. And that sound you don't hear is the aggrieved Alexander Graham Bell, who is not spinning in his grave, after his namesake minions have finally restored us to the ranks of humanity who are enjoying his crowning achievement of the 19th century, which has given us so much trouble for the last four months, and through no fault of the late inventor, I'm sure.
In other local news, the home-town fans were understandably elated to welcome Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks, along with his teammate Chauncey Billups from the Denver Nuggets, in a just-under-the-wire deal at the trading deadline that gave their perennially disappointed faithful reason to hope in the future. Now with two genuine marquee players, the Knicks are suddenly being considered as legitimate playoff contenders, although like the first day of spring, apparently no one told the rest of the league, as the current line-up has continued to play like the .500 team they have been all along, thanks not. However, I'm sure we all want to believe that a new day has dawned for the storied franchise, with the promise of a return to the glory days of Willis Reed and Walt Frazier, although even by today's standards, I'd say that these young men have some pretty big shoes to fill, Clyde.
On the home front, we bid a sad farewell to our beloved princess, the redoubtable GingerSnap, who spent
nearly 13 years as part of our family, since first showing up in our driveway one day in 1998. She had a lovely personality, which was sweetly docile without being timid, and although she wasn't the type to pick a fight, she also wouldn't back down from anybody, from the smallest to the biggest. Over the years, she saw them come and go, and she just kept on going, in spite of some significant health issues that may have slowed her down, but never kept her down. Bill looked through the chronology of our cats, and calculated that GingerSnap lived with, through, around and concurrent with 27 other cats in our household, which we figure is some kind of a record that has not been matched before or since, and at this rate, never will be. So now we find ourselves down to our last female in the entire family, who also happens to be the very last survivor of the Invisible Cats, the Little Miss Invisible Potfourri her own self, and I don't mind saying, she's also got some pretty big shoes to fill, by golly.
Meanwhile at church, the powers-that-be sent out a notice about a special congregational meeting to be held next month, to discuss important matters that could not be put off until the next regular congregational meeting in January. My personal feeling was that it would give us a chance to brush up on our chair-throwing and name-calling skills, since we never get to use them any more at the annual meetings, where peace and harmony prevail, and I haven't slugged anyone with a hymnal in so long that I can't even remember anymore if the green one or the red one packs more of a wallop. We'll have to wait until next month to find out what the actual purpose of the meeting is, because all the letter reveals is "to hold a discussion and create any resolutions" in response to a statement from the Lutheran hierarchy, and long may they wave. I know that people think church meetings are hopelessly boring, but this is the part that really got my attention: "A pot lunch will be served." Hey, far out, man - it's the hippy-dippy flower children tripping down the path of enlightenment, to turn on, tune in and drop out just like the good old days! I say let's go totally psychedelic and break out the hashish brownies, hemp tea and space cakes, so we can party like it's 1967, and I'll bring the black light if you'll bring the incense. (I'll repeat that for those of you on drugs: "Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns, turn on, turn in, turn your eyes around.") In the interests of proper church probity, it must be said that what they probably meant was "a pot-luck luncheon" which is something else altogether, and not nearly as interesting, but I'm not giving up on the MaryJane aspect of this meeting, which might just turn out to be a blast from the past in more ways than one.
And while we're on the subject of things that make your head spin, I was on the phone with one of the hospital vendors who was spelling out a catalog number for me, and actually used the expression: "That's 'K' as in 'candy cane'," and apparently without irony. Of course, everyone knows that I'm too polite to laugh, but I admit that this was one of those moments where I just held the phone away from me and stared at it, as if daring it to make some sense of this, by sheer force of will if necessary. I mean, it's one thing to say "K like cat," instead of kitten, but to come up with two separate words, neither of which has a K anywhere to be seen, that takes a special kind of - well, I don't know what it takes exactly, but frankly, I wouldn't rule out hashish brownies, that's for sure. Also at work, there was a novice orthopedic sales rep who had somehow managed to get on the wrong side of one of our administrative heavyweights, the imposing Katherine Monahan, who chewed her out loud and long, and basically banned her from the premises for the rest of her natural life, as well as whatever after-life she might have had in front of her. I got a phone call later from the territory manager, who assured me that everything was going to be straightened out, and he was going to come in and "smooth things over with Ms. Moynihan." Now, I'll admit that I like a practical joke as much as the next fellow, but I had to tell him flat-out that if his plan was to smooth things over, the most important thing was for him not to call her Moynihan when her name is Monahan, believe me. After raking the new sales rep over the coals, I'd hate to think what she would have in store for this poor schnook, after calling her by the wrong name, but if I was him, I'd be on the lookout for flying hymnals, and plenty of them. And whatever you do, don't eat the brownies.
Elle
Happy Spring! It's really true that Sunday, March 20, was the official first day of spring according to the calendar, although it seems that someone forgot to tell the weather trolls, because we had more snow the very next day on Monday, which was about as welcome as you would expect after the kind of winter that we've just had around here. And just when we thought we were finally out of the proverbial woods, and going in the right direction, on Wednesday we got hit with yet another storm that they described as "wintry mix," but which instead ended up as regular snow, with actual accumulations, and thanks so very much not. And since it started as freezing rain and sleet, by the time I got outside to clean off my car in the morning to go to work, it was about two inches of icy slush stuck onto the windows, and getting that to budge was no joke. Speaking of jokes, later that same day, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day, which was really just a cruel prank by the weather trolls toying with us on top of everything else. I may as well say right now that if the poll takers come around asking for my opinion of the weather trolls, I've got some news for them, and it won't be good, believe me.
Speaking of news, I would be remiss if I didn't mention [and here for the sake of public safety, I must point out that sensitive readers should be sitting down for this] that we've had actual dial tone and telephone service at our house for two weeks in a row now, as impossible as that might seem. After wrestling with Verizon since December, and having literally hordes of repair people in and out of the house week in and week out to no avail, we are finally back in contact with the rest of the world, through the miracle of copper wire technology, a mere one hundred years after the invention of the acoustic communications device that has been taken for granted by generations all this time. Not by us, by golly, not after this, I can tell you that. Everyone who came here said the wiring in the house was fine, but the wire out of the house was bad, the wire on the pole was no better, and the wires at the cross-box were even worse, so even after they fixed the immediate failure, it was just a matter of time before something else went wrong. The last guy finally decided to just re-route our entire house connection to a different pole with a new wire, thus eliminating all of those other bad connections at a stroke. Of course, at first we didn't believe it, because nothing ever seemed to work for more than two days at a time, but now it seems like this might really have solved the problems once and for all. And that sound you don't hear is the aggrieved Alexander Graham Bell, who is not spinning in his grave, after his namesake minions have finally restored us to the ranks of humanity who are enjoying his crowning achievement of the 19th century, which has given us so much trouble for the last four months, and through no fault of the late inventor, I'm sure.
In other local news, the home-town fans were understandably elated to welcome Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks, along with his teammate Chauncey Billups from the Denver Nuggets, in a just-under-the-wire deal at the trading deadline that gave their perennially disappointed faithful reason to hope in the future. Now with two genuine marquee players, the Knicks are suddenly being considered as legitimate playoff contenders, although like the first day of spring, apparently no one told the rest of the league, as the current line-up has continued to play like the .500 team they have been all along, thanks not. However, I'm sure we all want to believe that a new day has dawned for the storied franchise, with the promise of a return to the glory days of Willis Reed and Walt Frazier, although even by today's standards, I'd say that these young men have some pretty big shoes to fill, Clyde.
On the home front, we bid a sad farewell to our beloved princess, the redoubtable GingerSnap, who spent
nearly 13 years as part of our family, since first showing up in our driveway one day in 1998. She had a lovely personality, which was sweetly docile without being timid, and although she wasn't the type to pick a fight, she also wouldn't back down from anybody, from the smallest to the biggest. Over the years, she saw them come and go, and she just kept on going, in spite of some significant health issues that may have slowed her down, but never kept her down. Bill looked through the chronology of our cats, and calculated that GingerSnap lived with, through, around and concurrent with 27 other cats in our household, which we figure is some kind of a record that has not been matched before or since, and at this rate, never will be. So now we find ourselves down to our last female in the entire family, who also happens to be the very last survivor of the Invisible Cats, the Little Miss Invisible Potfourri her own self, and I don't mind saying, she's also got some pretty big shoes to fill, by golly.
Meanwhile at church, the powers-that-be sent out a notice about a special congregational meeting to be held next month, to discuss important matters that could not be put off until the next regular congregational meeting in January. My personal feeling was that it would give us a chance to brush up on our chair-throwing and name-calling skills, since we never get to use them any more at the annual meetings, where peace and harmony prevail, and I haven't slugged anyone with a hymnal in so long that I can't even remember anymore if the green one or the red one packs more of a wallop. We'll have to wait until next month to find out what the actual purpose of the meeting is, because all the letter reveals is "to hold a discussion and create any resolutions" in response to a statement from the Lutheran hierarchy, and long may they wave. I know that people think church meetings are hopelessly boring, but this is the part that really got my attention: "A pot lunch will be served." Hey, far out, man - it's the hippy-dippy flower children tripping down the path of enlightenment, to turn on, tune in and drop out just like the good old days! I say let's go totally psychedelic and break out the hashish brownies, hemp tea and space cakes, so we can party like it's 1967, and I'll bring the black light if you'll bring the incense. (I'll repeat that for those of you on drugs: "Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns, turn on, turn in, turn your eyes around.") In the interests of proper church probity, it must be said that what they probably meant was "a pot-luck luncheon" which is something else altogether, and not nearly as interesting, but I'm not giving up on the MaryJane aspect of this meeting, which might just turn out to be a blast from the past in more ways than one.
And while we're on the subject of things that make your head spin, I was on the phone with one of the hospital vendors who was spelling out a catalog number for me, and actually used the expression: "That's 'K' as in 'candy cane'," and apparently without irony. Of course, everyone knows that I'm too polite to laugh, but I admit that this was one of those moments where I just held the phone away from me and stared at it, as if daring it to make some sense of this, by sheer force of will if necessary. I mean, it's one thing to say "K like cat," instead of kitten, but to come up with two separate words, neither of which has a K anywhere to be seen, that takes a special kind of - well, I don't know what it takes exactly, but frankly, I wouldn't rule out hashish brownies, that's for sure. Also at work, there was a novice orthopedic sales rep who had somehow managed to get on the wrong side of one of our administrative heavyweights, the imposing Katherine Monahan, who chewed her out loud and long, and basically banned her from the premises for the rest of her natural life, as well as whatever after-life she might have had in front of her. I got a phone call later from the territory manager, who assured me that everything was going to be straightened out, and he was going to come in and "smooth things over with Ms. Moynihan." Now, I'll admit that I like a practical joke as much as the next fellow, but I had to tell him flat-out that if his plan was to smooth things over, the most important thing was for him not to call her Moynihan when her name is Monahan, believe me. After raking the new sales rep over the coals, I'd hate to think what she would have in store for this poor schnook, after calling her by the wrong name, but if I was him, I'd be on the lookout for flying hymnals, and plenty of them. And whatever you do, don't eat the brownies.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 3:12 PM
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