Lend Me Your Ears

Hello World,

Gosh, doesn't it seems like the month just started, and here we are, at the last weekend of September already, and where does the time go, I ask you that. I always say, once the kids go back to school, the year is basically over from that point, it's just a blur right up until New Year's Eve. The weather has been all over the map, like Comrade Mischka is away for two weeks in the Urals, and the replacement underlings are just throwing darts at a board instead. You'd never know that Friday was the official first day of autumn, inasmuch as it was about 90 degrees at the time with wilting humidity, and the air was so dense that you could write your name in it, which is not an innovation that has anything to recommend it as far as I can tell. At this point, I'm just about ready to wish the notorious Comrade would be coming back from his vacation already, because even though we know that the weather would be bad, at least it would be consistent, nyet?

Earlier in the week, I was having trouble with a program that called for Java Script, and it wouldn't run on my computer until I downloaded the latest version of it from our friends at Oracle. I wanted to see if that worked for other applications as well, so I went to visit our old friends at www.pogo.com, the home of online games of every imaginable description, to take it for a test drive. While there, I tried a few games that I had never seen before, including Word Whomp and Tumble Bees, which seemed simple enough, and with adorably childish graphics that would no doubt appeal to their target audience of game-playing youngsters. Therefore, it was with no small amount of consternation (and here, mortification would not be too strong a word) that I discovered that I was so bad at both of them, that a person might legitimately believe that I was not only illiterate, but had no understanding of the English language to start with. It was a humbling experience, I can tell you that. In fairness, it must be said that I have never done well under time pressure, as I can long since say with honesty that if someone ran up to me on the street, and shoved a microphone in my face, I would never in my life be able to tell them my name on the spot, much less my favorite color - or God forbid, answer any more challenging queries, like how many states there are in the country, or which side won the Civil War. So I did not cover myself with glory in my foray at the pogo game site, and my name (Guest15703) will not be retired with honors in the annals of Word Whomp and Tumble Bees, so don't bother to go there and check up on it. And please don't waste your time asking the other players on my team how I fared at Boggle Bash, because I'm sure they're all still laughing to this day, and I can't say that I blame them, alas.

On the home front, the contractors have accomplished great feats of engineering in their efforts to prevent our ramshackle porches from dis-connecting themselves completely from the rest of the house, and falling headlong into our neighbor's yard. Somehow they have managed to do this without even resorting to supernatural means of turning off the gravity in the area, so this is indeed a significant achievement. They continue to be popular with all of the neighborhood cats as well, and far from scaring them off with their heavy boots and noisy power tools, have probably attracted more than we had before they started. In fact, one day when they were packing up to leave, the ubiquitous Cinnamon (known far and wide as "Mooch" and for good reason, I can assure you) from next door blithely jumped into one of their cars, and was prepared to go home with the man and hope for the best. He had to disabuse her of this notion, since he already has cats at home, and managed to somehow get her out of his car, which is no easy task, and I ought to know, believe me. In light of these developments, I thought it was only fair to warn the neighbors that if any of their cats are missing, they should call our contractors.

Also on the subject of missing cats, our hopes were dashed for bringing into the fold the hypothetical kitten with the two different colored ears (that the contractors had claimed to see in our yard) and in unexpected fashion. I happened to be leaving for work one morning when the workers were on the front porch, and it came as a surprise to nobody when the ever-present Mooch trotted up the steps to supervise the proceedings as usual. "Here she is now," exclaimed one of them, "the kitten with the two different colored ears!" Thanks but no thanks, is all I have to say about that. Bill and I thought that was kind of a dirty trick, after we had gotten our hopes up. The thing about Mooch is that she's such a constant presence in our yard, and has been for so many years, that I can honestly say that we never noticed that she has two different colored ears, which the contractors found so remarkable. So that was one part of the construction project that came a cropper, and in the field of home renovations, we call that an "addition by subtraction."

Meanwhile at work, alert readers may recall the story of the giant electric turquoise temporary boilers that have been taking up space in our employee courtyard since 2001, in their hideous enormous boiler house, until the whole thing burned to the ground in October of last year, in a spectacular conflagration that was a media sensation far and wide. Among us old-timers, we expected it to be a long cold winter of no heat or hot water in our old rattle-trap of a building, since nobody would care if we froze to death at our desks, and it would probably take weeks for them to even notice. (Well, two weeks anyway, after the Payroll staff had died of frostbite, and nobody got paid.) And yet, it was the very next day that another temporary boiler (and why do they make these gigantic things this horrible electric turquoise, do you suppose?) was trucked into the area and wedged into the back of the courtyard, and hooked up around the burnt-out boilers that were still there, with all the heat and hot water that we could possibly want, and then some. We had to admit that we were impressed with their speed and efficiency, however grudgingly. Not so fast! It turns out that the newest replacement boiler was apparently the wrong type of boiler, the kind that uses home heating oil and not natural gas like all of the other boilers that we have on campus - although in any normal business, you would think that this would be the sort of obvious distinction that would be self-evident to anybody who was put in charge of ordering this thing, including the toddlers who were kicking my butt in Word Whomp, thanks not. But apparently this was beyond their capabilities at the employer of last resort, and normally I would say, what the heck.

Once again, not so fast! In these dismal days of skyrocketing oil prices, the hit we were taking for oil deliveries, compared to our regular costs for natural gas, were putting us in a financial hole that we would never climb out of, and as a non-profit organization, we're used to being the in the red, believe me. There's only one reason that I found out all of this, and that's because the Engineering department had to hurry up and distribute bid proposals to permanently replace the boilers once and for all, and sooner rather than later this time around. Suddenly, my phone started ringing off the hook, as every temperature control company in the world got wind of this project (it must be one of those public disclosure regulations for large community projects that are required to be published) and called Purchasing to get in on the action. The calls never stopped, and although it was a bit disconcerting that every Tom, Dick and Harry caller knew more about this than I did, at least I found out about this upcoming undertaking, in spite of the hospital management's best efforts to keep it from me. I can say with complete confidence that this is quite possibly the most popular thing we've ever done at the place since I've been there, as it seemed to get everyone's attention from all over creation, and made people sit up and take notice - whereas usually our profile on the wider scene is on a par with vacant lots or junk mail. In fact, the way things are going, I can tell you that if the hospital had two different colored ears, nobody would notice. In any case, I'd love to just stay here and keep on blathering, but I figure this would be a great time to go back and try my hand at Word Whomp again, after all the toddlers have already gone to bed.

Elle