You've Got Mail

Hello World, Happy Veterans Day! Today we salute our gallant men and women in uniform (and not to neglect the transgendered individuals while we're at it) serving our country now, as they have for centuries past, no matter when or where. What used to be known as Armistice Day was once a pretty significant holiday from sea to shining sea, but now is a mostly forgotten relic of the distant past, and if you find anyone who actually has the day off, most likely they have a job at a bank or the federal government. That is to say, they work in organized crime. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Speaking of crimes against humanity, Sunday was the end of Daylight Saving Time for another year, and it seemed to shuffle out of our lives without incident, leaving behind it only the continued annoyance of resetting all the myriad clocks, watches, appliances, electronic devices, automobiles, and other assorted gadgets and gizmos that have taken over every facet of our lives - and often, not for the better, I can tell you that. So far my favorite part of DST was a cartoon making the rounds on Facebook, featuring what appears to be a rather pompous Civil War-era old aristocrat, with his thumbs tucked into his vest, announcing: "I will not turn my clocks back. I will then be living one hour in the future. I greet you, people of the past. Your ways are quaint." Ya gotta love it! Apart from that, there has been not much else going on lately, from the redwood forests to the gulf-stream waters, and across the fruited plain. NOT MUCH!!! Of course, history was made on Tuesday, as Americans flocked to the polls in record numbers to elect a white man as the next President of the United States. (There's something about the ill-mannered snickering from our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery that makes me think that they take exception to that last comment, but frankly, I tend to find their political acumen sorely lacking, even in the best of times.) So far my second favorite occurrence of the campaign season was last week, when I called one of our church vendors to schedule a service call, and when they gave me a date of November 8, I asked them to double-check that they were actually open on Election Day. The nice young man remarked, "Oh, that's right, Tuesday is Election Day, I forgot all about it." (???) (!!!) Personally, I don't see how that could be even remotely possible, not even for space aliens living in far distant galaxies, or primitive organisms buried in fossilized rocks since time immemorial. Forgot about it, indeed. Once again, we have social media to thank for my first favorite thing about the elections, and even I wasn't expecting this one. I'm sure we've all long since become aware that whenever our various Friends/Contacts/Connections have a birthday, anniversary, promotion, or other milestone, we receive a notification from the service through which we are friends, contacts, or connections, so we can reach out to them with congratulations or other communications appropriate to the occasion. ("I should have gotten that promotion, you bum!") But I admit that I was taken aback when I signed on to Facebook on Monday, only to be greeted with this RSVP notification: "Election Day is coming up tomorrow. Let hosts know if you'll go." You bet! In other news of a historic nature, the scrappy Cubs came roaring back to win the World Series over Cleveland, in extra innings of the nerve-wracking 7th game, making this a Fall Classic to remember, in more ways than one. Chicago's last World Series win was in 1908, or 108 years ago, and they actually found a resident of the Windy City who was alive for both of them, believe that or not. Interestingly, the original club was one of the most successful sports franchises in baseball history, until the ill-fated 1945 squad that heralded the beginning of the end. According to our friends at www.billygoattavern.com, from the team's inception in 1876 through 1945, their overall record was an impressive 5475-4324 with 51 winning seasons, 16 first-place finishes, 16 pennants, and World Series appearances, winning it all back-to-back in 1907 and 1908. But in Game 4 of the 1945 series, the owner of the nearby Billy Goat Pub brought his pet goat Murphy to Wrigley Field for good luck, and was refused entrance, whereupon he placed a curse on the team, and stamped off in a huff. The Cubs not only proceeded to lose that series, but then went on to become known as the "lovable losers" of the Midwest, and laughing-stock of the major leagues. Between 1946 and 2003, their overall record was a dismal 4250-4874, with only 15 winning seasons, 4 brief playoff appearances, and the World Series was just a delusional fantasy. (Mets fans will never forget the Cubs' legendary collapse in what turned into their own World Series season of 1969, when Chicago led their division by a comfortable 9-1/2 game margin in September with 26 games left to play, only to go down spectacularly in flames by losing 17 of those crucial games, finishing a distant second place, and 8 games behind the team that improbably went on to become The Amazing Mets.) So, yet another famous sports curse bites the dust, and the long-suffering fans of their beloved Cubbies have lived to see the impossible happen right before their incredulous eyes, after 108 years in the making. And somewhere off in The Great Beyond, Murphy the billy goat is having a great big laugh, I shouldn't wonder. Speaking of laughs, this next one is on me. In my continuing efforts to move out of the temporary office pool and into something more permanent, I applied for a clerical position at a venerable community church, that I thought would be right up my alley. When they invited me for an interview, I checked with MapQuest to get driving directions based on the address they gave me. Since it was on the other side of the county, Bill and I took a drive out there beforehand as a dry run to find the place, only to smack into such implacable traffic that by the time we got there, it was dark, and not as helpful as might have been hoped. It was only later that I realized our bumbling around in the dark had led us to the wrong church entirely, so that was even less help than I originally thought anyway. On the morning of the interview, I used the GPS device in my car to bring me to the correct address, around the corner from the wrong church we went to previously, and incredibly, the GPS brought me to a DIFFERENT wrong church in the same neighborhood, thanks not. In a miraculous turn of events, just as I was dashing out the door in the morning, Bill had handed me a slip of paper with directions to their off-site parking lot, since the church had already turned what used to be their parking lot into a nursery school instead. That was a lucky thing, because without it, after the GPS took me to the second wrong church, I would have been up the proverbial tree without a paddle, as it were. Even though it was broad daylight, and I thought I left plenty of time to get there, I was hampered by road construction in unexpected places, highway ramps closed, and circuitous detours that made me despair of ever getting to my destination at all, much less in one piece. I finally pulled into their driveway, just barely getting there on time, and discovered to my horror that I couldn't find any doors that would open into the place, no matter how many I tried, on different sides of different buildings. Then I spotted a door with a paper sign on it, and thought I would go see if it had any instructions on it, as to how to get inside, and along the way, I bumped into a peppy young man going the same way (and sporting 3 earrings) in the front yard, all dressed in blue and carrying a large bag. He didn't volunteer any information, but I announced very plainly that I was lost, and couldn't find my way in, but hoped that he could help me because, as I had surmised with unassailable logic, "You must be the mailman." He accepted this assessment with good grace, but corrected my misimpression by explaining that he was, in fact, the pastor of the church, on his way to the same interview I was attempting to get to. To say that this was scarcely the first impression I was hoping to make, would be an understatement of epic proportions, and recognizing that there was no salvaging it at that point, all that was left was appreciating its comical aspects, however embarrassing. I'm sure it will come as a surprise to nobody that the church decided to hire someone else for the position, but let's face it, I ended up with the better story, so that has to count for something. Maybe not "Curse-of-Murphy-the-billy-goat" better, but for primitive organisms buried in fossilized rocks, I expect it will suffice. Elle