In The Know

Hello World,

I'm thinking that people should probably be sitting down before I just blurt this right out, but the fact of the matter is that we find ourselves perched atop the very last weekend in July, believe it or not, and Monday will already be August, as impossible as that might seem. I can't imagine what's ahead for the weather, since we've already had three weeks with the most torrid temperatures and soaring humidity, so that if the fabled "Dog Days of August" are going to be even worse than this, heck, even the dogs will be flying to Canada for the summer, and not just the famous geese of the same name. Several days, the state declared a Heat Emergency, and at work, they asked us to shut off lights and turn off unnecessary equipment, and when even that wasn't enough, they sent us home early. Although why they thought I wanted to go home, where it was hot, rather than stay at work, where it was cool, is a mystery to me, I'm sure. And I realized that it would do no good to sneak downstairs into the Morgue to chill out, when I discovered that the line for that was wrapped completely around the building, thanks not.

On the local scene, alert readers may recall the contractors-in-the-driveway scenario while I was trying to pack up the car for vacation, some of whom turned out to be roofers. They worked their magic while I was away, and I came home to find that all of the gaping holes in our old roof were a thing of the past, with all the patches seamlessly integrated into the rest of the roof without leaving a trace. For the first time in years, our roof was prepared to act in its original capacity of repelling the elements from the outside, while keeping everything on the inside safe and secure. We could not have been happier if the late and lamented Ed McMahon had shown up at our door with one of those big cardboard checks, because for us, it really did feel like we won the lottery. Unfortunately, I said to Bill, we'll never know if it actually worked or not, because now that the roof was fixed, it would surely never rain again in our area for the rest of our lives, or perhaps ever, until the end of time for all we know. But it didn't take long for us to have a few days with tremendous thunderstorms, with lightning crashing about in all directions and thunder booming like cannon fire, and amazingly enough, we didn't have to go scurrying off for pans and buckets like we usually would in those conditions. So that was either an early Christmas present, or a late Easter miracle, but whatever you want to call it, kindly do so with a few choruses of "How Dry I Am."

Meanwhile at work, we received a broadcast memo from the President of the hospital, for the purpose of welcoming aboard what he described as "the most recent addition to our team," who is now apparently our Senior Vice President for Clinical Systems Development. How remarkably coincidental that this position has just been instantaneously created out of whole cloth, and there's already someone on the spot to fill it - and not just any old anybody who happened to be kicking around the place anyway, but some total unknown who comes to us from some entity identified as Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine, of all things. It goes on to say that the person " ... will be responsible for assisting us in transforming our clinics to a patient centered medical home. This will broaden access to primary care, while enhancing care coordination for the patients we serve. An additional responsibility will be developing an Independent Physicians' Association, ensuring a complete continuum of care for our community." I have to tell you that I have been working here over 20 years, and I have a pretty good grasp of healthcare gobbledygook after all this time, and I have absolutely no idea what this means. I walk through the Clinic almost every single day, and I could not begin to tell you what the heck is a "patient centered medical home," much less how this will "broaden access to primary care." I'm sure an Independent Physicians' Association (whatever that is) would be a great idea, but how that ensures "a complete continuum of care for our community" is entirely beyond me. If this was four months ago, I'd say the Yalies were pulling an April Fool's joke on us, because as it is, I have no other explanation for this in any way.

Also at work, I happened to be filing a memo from one of the consultants, about an equipment proposal that listed two different units for comparison purposes. It then went on to say:

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Once we let them know which model we are going with, they will remove the remaining unit from the quote, which will intern lower the quoted amount appropriately.
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Just when you think you can't be surprised by homophones anymore, along comes someone who manages to take the word "intern" and the phrase "in turn," and somehow make them interchangeable, which you would think would be impossible for just about anybody except the horoscope computer. Well, as I always say in cases like this, the spell-checker is never going to help you with this, although you wouldn't think it would take a college education and a wall full of degrees to come up with a whopper like that one, by golly.

Going in the opposite, but not any better, direction, is a memo from the Accounts Payable Manager about a new program for rental equipment that was initiated in October 2010, but without any of the necessary paperwork that should have been processed beforehand. She notes that the expense for the program is about $22,000.00 per month, and none of the invoices can be paid, for lack of documentation. Her final salvo is this arresting declaration:

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Please advice if this info is correct. If so this will have a great in pack when the company starts looking for payments.
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So while the consultant combines the expression "in turn" into a single word, here in A/P they go the other route by breaking apart the word "impact" and somehow winding up with "in pack" instead, and not any sort of an improvement, as far as I can tell. Once again, the over-burdened spell-checker is going to have no choice but to leave you high and dry, and hanging out in packs, if you can't get any closer to "impact" on your own. [Please see note above about college education, etc.] Actually, my favorite part about the whole thing is not the linguistic transgressions, but the pure hospital-centric obliviousness to the reality of the situation. The program started in October of last year, and we are now on the brink of August, which is a full 10 months later. Her concern is "when the company starts looking for payments," and I'm afraid that I've got a news flash for her. At $22,000 a month, you can believe that the company no doubt started looking for payments last year in November, and December, and every month after that, and hasn't just been sitting around on their hands all this time, until we practically owe them $250,000.00 by now, and never made any attempt to bring it to our attention. Of course, when you're dealing with a place where the interns are great in packs, getting their attention is probably a lot harder than it sounds, particularly when they're busy transforming into a patient centered medical home, and I ought to know. (NOT)

Elle

Picture Perfect

Hello World,

So here I am, back from adventures in vacation-land, and this was certainly one for the books, and that's not just the marshmallows talking, believe me. I can honestly say that I don't ever remember having this kind of weather in all the years I've been camping, every single day was just perfect, one right after another, eight of them in a row, and it could not have been more ideal the whole time I was out there. I take a weather radio with me so I can keep abreast of the local conditions, in case there's anything I need to be prepared for, and I never turned it on once. Every single day started out beautiful, stayed beautiful, and then turned into a beautiful night of full moons and sparkling stars in every direction. It was like "The Stepford Wives" of vacation weather, and I can tell you that they could sign me up for a time-share of that every year, by golly.

It all started on Friday, when I took off from work so I could finish packing up the car, although it must be said that having hot-and-cold-running contractors all over the driveway made this process a lot more complicated than it usually is. We set off bright and early on Saturday - and even remembered the tent this time - and even better, found out that it hadn't been chewed apart by furry varmints over the winter as might have been expected. There was no traffic to speak of, which is a first in our travel experiences over the years, and we not only arrived at the park in record time, but found both campsites already vacant. In fact, we were surprised not to see the usual "CAMP FILLED TO CAPACITY" sign at the entrance, because it was obvious that there was not a free campsite to be had for love or money, no matter where you looked. We quickly tossed up the tents and rain fly and clothesline, and then hurried to the beach for some fun in the sun. The beach was crowded, as indeed it should have been on such a day, but splashing around in the water is definitely a tonic for what ails you, that's for sure. For lunch, the cheese fries were up to their usual standards, and we made short work of them. This was already way better than last year, when we had all the tedious driving and setting up the campsite, but because it was raining, we never got the reward of spending the afternoon at the beach, which makes it all worthwhile.

After enough sand and surf for one day, we turned toward our next destination, the Gaslight Motor Inn at Medford, where we had stayed last year, and found it much the same, although somehow even quieter. They had been busy refurbishing the rooms since our last stay, and were happy to give us one of the new ones with a 42" flat screen TV, which was nice because we had brought our own DVD player, and had a chance to watch some movies while we were there. The first night, we went down the block to the Metropolis Diner as usual, and glad of it, but the night after that, we found a way to bring our vacation experience to a whole new level. Alert readers may recall that my sister had introduced us to what we thought was the first Denny's on Long Island in Levittown, but we later found out that another one had opened before that in Centereach. So you can imagine how pleased we were to discover that Centereach is handily located within minutes of Medford, and our GPS brought us to the exact spot for dinner, which was a vacation treat that had never been within our grasp until now. Between the weather, the water, and dinner at Denny's, this was about as close to vacation nirvana as we could hope to attain.

In addition to eating out two nights in a row, I can assure you that the President's economic advisers have much to thank us for, as we did much to improve the local economy by shopping at not one, but two Wal*Marts, Target, Walgreens, King Kullen, and numerous CVS stores during our stay, snapping up not only practical household necessities, but also the usual ridiculous souvenirs and junk food that are synonymous with vacations. I'm expecting my commendation from the White House any day now.

Bill went back home on Monday afternoon to hold down the fort, and I hunkered down to setting up the rest of the campsite for the duration. Monday night it was so quiet at the park that I actually didn't need my earplugs, which have been a mainstay of my vacations since the beginning. One big improvement in my campfires this year was bringing along a new "zero-gravity" lounge chair to replace my old busted lounge, and it was not only blissfully comfortable for enjoying the campfire with, but has a handy feature that when you take the lock off, it basically launches you right up onto your feet, so you don't have to try and struggle to get yourself out of a regular lounge and instead wind up collapsed in a tangled heap. On the wildlife front, there were plenty of squirrels, even black squirrels, which are so new to the park that startled campers mistook them for skunks. There were the usual deer and raccoons, and all the blue jays, crows and grackles that you could ask for. I could hear chipmunks, and actually saw a couple in different parts of the campground, but alas, this was yet another year with no bad chipmunk pictures at my site. But I did hear what I believe is an Eastern Screech Owl at night, which is the first time I ever remember that happening. And speaking of firsts, I went to the locally famous Duck Pond to take pictures as I always do, and noticed that there was not a single duck at the place. There were seagulls and mallards and Canada geese, but not one solitary regular white duck to be seen from one end to the other, and this is a pretty sizable pond, believe me. I haven't heard of white ducks becoming scarce, but if things don't change, they're going to have to call this the Goose-Gull-Mallard Pond instead.

It was on Tuesday that I walked all the way to the beach, carrying everything I need to stay there all day, and discovered to my horror that I had somehow forgotten to bring the camera along with me. It will come as a surprise to everybody, myself most of all, that I dumped everything in the sand, and turned right around and walked all the way back up to the campsite to get it. So now it can be officially said that I have finally gone completely insane, because anyone can tell you that there is no one more "old school" than I am when it comes to Wildwood Beach, where there is no such thing as walking all the way back up the hill just because you forgot something. In the old days, the camping old guard would not only laugh, they would have you committed to a shady retreat for victims of sunstroke. So I have now officially joined the ranks of the insane, and lived to tell the tale, and still had a great day at the beach anyway. Although I did get more exercise than I wanted to, that's for sure.

Speaking of more exercise, this was yet another year that the vending machine wasn't working by the ladies room, so every morning I had to walk two sections away to the Registration building, and back again, to get a cold drink for breakfast, thanks not. They also moved the barrel where people dump their campfire ashes, so I spent more time running errands than I really wanted to. But in my travels, I noticed that there was really nobody at the park on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, not even the usual spies that crop up every year with their telltale abandoned-looking campsites. It started to pick up again on Thursday, with a steady stream of arrivals from mid-day until late at night, which is what makes good weather a kind of double-edged sword when you're looking to enjoy a quiet week in the woods. Oddly enough, there was a little bit of a sprinkle on Wednesday evening while the sun was still shining, and we thought nothing of it. But they must have had some severe storms somewhere, because the next day, the usually placid Wildwood briny was a roiling tempest of angry swells, with whitecaps everywhere, and thunderous waves crashing onto the shore so that you couldn't even hear yourself think. This was so unlike an ordinary day at Wildwood that I made a short video of it, because even long-time regulars like me very rarely see any real surf at the place, if ever. The beach was strewn with seaweed and driftwood all the way past the boardwalk and up to the bluffs, which is a good 30-feet beyond the usual high tide mark, so it must have been quite a sight at its height. The waves were so ferocious that they scared off the casual bathers, and even the youngsters were wary of splashing around at the water's edge. I was about the first person to actually brave the breakers, and got knocked down for my trouble, but I stuck with it in spite of the extraordinary conditions. Of course, everyone knows that I am now officially insane anyway.

After an otherwise uneventful week where nothing bad happened for a change, Bill arrived back at the campsite bright and early on Saturday, to help pack up so we could check out on time. This actually worked better than expected, and we had some extra time to just relax and enjoy the morning, without racing around like a couple of lunatics. Then it was off for a last time at the beach, and although it was crowded again, it was another lovely day and nothing to quibble about. When it was time to pack up and call it a day, we were sorry to bid our fond farewells to vacation-land and turn towards home. Suddenly a brilliant inspiration! It occurred to Bill that we would be driving right past that Denny's in Centereach on our way home, and just about dinner time, and why not take advantage of this additional opportunity to stop there once again, thus adding a little more vacation magic to our journey, before we would have to leave it all behind for another year. So that was just about the perfect cap to a perfect vacation, where the weather could not have been more spectacular, and everything else just seemed to fall right into place. At least that's how I intend to remember it, and now that I've officially gone insane, I can tell you that it will do no good to argue with me, heaven knows.

Elle

Off We Go

Hello World,

Well, I see that July 4th has come and gone, and I was glad to have a long three-day weekend to enjoy it with no other obligations to get in the way. The Flag Brigade did an excellent job of putting the flags out in the morning, upstairs and downstairs, and also remembering to take them back inside later, which is not something we take for granted with The Flag Brigade around here, believe me. On Saturday, we got our plaid on for the 88th annual Round Hill Highland Games at Cranbury Park in Norwalk, and a fine time was had by all, particularly all of us fans of our favorite Celtic fusion band, Mac Talla M'or, who are always a special treat to see live. With the sound of bagpipes still ringing in our ears, we headed off to Denny's for dinner, which somehow managed to add even more wonderfulness to an already wonderful day, especially with their delightful new Hawaiian Tropical Smoothie thrown in for good measure. This is my idea of time off for good behavior, and we made the most of it, by golly.

Yesterday it must have been about 90 degrees out, so I was understandably surprised when I leaned against one of the radiators in the house and burned my hand. I walked around and checked, and sure enough, all of the radiators were red hot and tossing off heat like a drunken sailor throwing punches in a bar-room brawl. Having the heat running full-blast in the middle of July is not a common occurrence in our experience, and it must be said that all of this heat in no way improved the interior conditions in the place at the time, I can tell you that. Of course, Bill leaped into action, and dashed headlong down the basement stairs, and soon had the furnace back under control, from where it had apparently lost its steam-powered marbles, either in a misguided fit of unseasonable insanity, or perhaps diabolical instructions from our power company, I shouldn't wonder. On the other hand, everyone knows that I wouldn't rule out the ghost of Affirmed, either.

Meanwhile at work, the stupid little lot where I park happens to be on the street that the municipality runs their road tests for people applying for a drivers license, and on the days when they do this, you can see the dead-end part of the street is parked solid with driving hopefuls and their instructors, just awaiting the signal to begin. Earlier in the week, I was walking to my building from the parking lot at the same time that one of the applicants took off, no doubt with high hopes and cheerful enthusiasm, only to get to the very first corner and drive right over the curb. Ouch! I'm thinking that's not the most auspicious start to the test, and I'm sure our old friends the dinosaurs would agree with me on that, if they would only stop laughing long enough.

Speaking of inauspicious starts, alert readers may recall that my camping gear was moved out of the attic last year, after the furry varmints chewed on it, thanks not, and after I came back from vacation, it stayed in the living room, where at least I didn't have to worry about it getting chewed on by anybody. Unfortunately, the furry varmints had the last laugh after all, because it turned out to be in a spot that was under a leak, and I never noticed it until I was gathering up everything I needed to pack, and was disheartened to find things like the cot and beach towels all soggy, and once again, thanks so very much not. Now, I will admit that taking pre-wet towels to the beach might be someone's idea of a time-saving concept, but it's the kind of slippery moral prevarication that I simply have to draw the line at, and that's all there is to it.

And while we're on the subject of drawing lines, we had a gaggle of contractors at our house earlier, who arrived en masse to consider what might be done about our sagging porch. In fact, there were so many of them, and they created such a disturbance with their equipment, that they actually chased off the neighbor's redoubtable kitty, the omnipresent Cinna-Mooch, and don't forget, this was the cat who plunged head-first into the Vimovo commercial shoot across the street without a second thought. In any case, the contractors decided that they needed to clear some space from the front steps to the side porch, and chopped down some of the more obstreperous weeds along the way, and my poor little pink bleeding heart plant right along with it, thanks not. But I noticed later that they didn't touch the rampant alien mutant poison ivy that was right next to it, they just left it standing right there, waving its tentacles in a menacing fashion, and just as much in the way as anything else that they already cut down. Say, I guess those contractors aren't as dumb as they look, after all.

Alert readers may recall a previous note on the topic of early Christmas music for churches, and by "early," I don't mean early in the history of the Christian church throughout the ages, but early in the sense of arriving in June, rather than closer to the holiday in December. After giving this some thought, Bill had this to say about it:

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I also loved the "ready to sing" songs. Makes me wonder if people have gotten SO ahead of themselves that they are impatient with EVERYTHING. Like the fine print on the Regular Songs might read "we are so excited about bringing this new music to you that we are publishing it before the composer is done writing it. Please be advised that early-adopters will be notified when a complete score becomes available. Your results may vary and sample MP3s are not typical."

Or, perhaps, the Ready To Sing songs actually come complete with singers? Maybe you fill in which parts you, personally sing and they provide the missing people? "Even people with desperate performance anxiety can now perform our Ready To Sing songs with no fear whatsoever! All songs come with a pre-certified singer, Ready To Sing them for you."
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I think he may be onto something there, and frankly, I love that idea of the singers that come along with the music. Taking that a step further, how great it would be to order Sunday School curriculum materials and have them send a teacher with it; or a cookbook that included a first-class chef; or mail-order plants that came with their own gardener - the possibilities are endless. That last one sounds like a winner to me, although there would probably be some disclaimer in the fine print that they are not required to deal with rampant alien mutant poison ivy, alas.

I took a day off today so that I could finish packing for vacation, and now I'm just about as ready as I'm going to be. In the local area, it spent the day mostly raining on and off, so I'm hoping that it has now gotten it out of its system, and I can look forward to a whole week of beautiful weather, not like last year, for heaven's sake. So nobody will hear from me next week, as I will be out in the woods, and splashing in the waves, and completely "off the grid" in terms of modern technology and electronic gadgets of all kinds. In fact, the dinosaurs even suggested that I leave the tent at home, and fashion myself a lean-to out of branches and vines, but I thought that was taking it a bit too far. I mean, I realize that they find themselves hugely amusing - one might even say of epic proportions - but I had to remind them there's a reason they became extinct.

Elle

One Fine Day

Hello World,

Happy July! Monday will be Independence Day, of course, and I hope that you will be liberated from drudgery, free from difficulties, and blissfully unfettered from cares of any kind. Many of us working stiffs are looking forward to a three-day weekend, and grateful for an opportunity to relax and recharge our batteries, as it were, and I ought to know. I can't say that this was a short week at work by any means, because I was there every day, but in every other respect, it certainly had all the drawbacks of a short week, and none of the advantages, which is my idea of the worst of both worlds, and thanks so very much not. So I was glad to see the tail-end of it, and that's putting it mildly, and even though I left early because of the upcoming holiday, it still wasn't soon enough to suit me, believe me. Although in fairness, in order for it to have been soon enough to suit me, I would have had to have left at around 10:00 AM on Monday morning, the way this week turned out.

Speaking of weeks, I can tell you that they're not the same old dog-eared and shop-worn chronologic stalwarts since time immemorial, and that's a fact. It was on Monday that our local newspaper printed the following announcement on the front page of their Life & Style section:

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Writers' Week Starts Today

Manhattanville College's 28th Annual Summer Writers'
Week takes place today through Wednesday
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Let's see - that's Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday ...... hmmmmm. To my way of thinking, that falls rather far short of a week, by at least several days on both ends, so much so that a person trying to catch up with Writers' Week on Friday would be sorely disappointed. You would think after 28 years, that the brilliant and creative minds behind Writers' Week would have figured out that three days do not make a week, and instead would have called it a conference or seminar or workshop, and left it at that. Alert readers may recall earlier in the year when this same newspaper brought us word of the locally famous Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, which runs for 15 days, and represents another example of the poor word "week" being misused in such a haphazard manner as to render it a misnomer through no fault of its own. I mean, it seems to me this is a pretty fast and loose interpretation of a very specific word, which actually describes a precise period of time, and you would think that it wouldn't be subject to this sort of linguistic impunity, like any old abstract concept. Of course, there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, and this is just more creeping equivocation, where words have lost all their meaning. Personally, I blame the Theory of Relativity.

And while we're on the subject of relativism run amok, it was on May 7 that I saw a commercial for the new Anne Hathaway movie, titled "One Day," which was being touted as one of the big summer hit films that we could look forward to after Memorial Day ushered in the official summer season. It was getting a lot of media attention, and I kept seeing ads for it everywhere I went, on television, in the newspaper, and on the home pages of several different browsers, over the course of many weeks. Finally I got so tired of it that I actually read the fine print on one of them, only to discover the following unpleasant surprise: [ "In theaters nationwide August 19." } Excuse me??? Anyone who knows me can tell you that math is not my strong suit, but even I can figure out that's almost 4 months ahead of time that I first started seeing promo spots for this, and far from being the hit of summer movies, is a lot closer to the first day of fall than the first day of summer, by golly. Of course, I'm measuring that in standard weeks, not the screwy newfangled 3-day or 15-day weeks they have invented nowadays.

And on the topic of rushing things, I don't know if this can be blamed on over-enthusiasm, commercialism gone wild, or those newfangled weeks they've just invented, but here was another unpleasant surprise showing up at church last week. It was still in June, and is actually the earliest I can ever remember receiving a catalogue of Christmas music, of all things, when it is still literally 6 months before the season of the holly-jolly-ho-ho-holy-Moses, Batman! Our friends at Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing are pulling no punches, flat-out calling their little visitor "Christmas 2011," and all aglow with stars, ornaments, candles, and more herald angels than you could shake a candy cane at, believe me. Although small in size, it comes packed with page after page of holiday sheet music, music collections, caroling resources, musical dramas and pageants, for churches of all shapes and sizes, and singers of all ages and abilities. The part that caught my eye was the selection of what they describe as "Ready to Sing" musical resources, which they highlight throughout their catalogue so that I don't miss a single one. Apparently this is a growing category in music circles, but for me, it begs the question that if these pieces are identified as "Ready to Sing," what obstacles are in the way of the other ones being ready to sing? Do you have to pass a test? Submit an application and have it approved? Plant it in a garden and wait for it to grow? How far in advance do you have to buy something if you have to wait for it to be ready to sing, and besides, how can you tell when it is finally ready to sing? Does it bloom? Smell? Burst into song? Send you a text message, or chirp like your smoke detector battery when it needs to be changed? I'm afraid this is all too much hugger-mugger for me, and while I'm the first to champion the idea that there's no wrong way to celebrate a holiday, I simply refuse to jump aboard the Christmas-in-June bandwagon, no matter how many herald angels they may throw at me, and that's not just a lot of ding-dong-merrily-on-high, believe me.

In other local news, long-suffering fans of the junior pinstripe franchise have become positively delirious in celebrating the fact that the Mets are two games over .500 for the first time this season, as if they had just won the seventh game of the World Series, or even accomplished something meaningful that would have justified their enormous payroll. In fact, they've gone beyond scoreboard-watching (and this is before the All-Star break, mind you) and are already poring over the standings in the Wild Card races, and while I hate to rain on anyone's parade, there's still another half of the season ahead of us yet. But they've had little enough to cheer them so far this year, or even the last several years in a row, so I suppose it doesn't hurt to let them have their fun. Of course, it may not last long, as their lovable losers will be taking on the Bombers in a cross-town rivalry this weekend, who are legitimately in first place, and didn't get there by accident, or even chicanery, although personally, I wouldn't turn my back on the ghost of Affirmed either. So it could be an interesting week ahead, which as we all know, can apparently last anywhere from three days to fifteen days, depending on your interpretation of the term, and at this rate, there's no escaping the possibility that Christmas might be just around the corner. I don't know about you, but I'll start incubating my "not-yet-ready-to-sing" holiday music just in case.

Elle