myweekandwelcometoit

Friday, February 24, 2017

Jump Start

Hello World, Oh February, we hardly knew ye, and here we are already at the last weekend of the month, and March is poised to come roaring in like a lion on Wednesday. Every year, it seems like February gets shorter and shorter, so that March is upon us before we know what's hit us - and this time around, it's even more of a double whammy, since March 1st is also Ash Wednesday on top of it all. In an interesting twist, the calendar tells me that our Eastern Orthodox brethren (and one supposes, the sisthren as well) will be ushering in their season of Lent on Monday, February 27, when usually we expect them to be lagging behind us in the Easter escapades by at least a week. But not this time, because apparently they hopped on their speedy horses, and will be charging up to Easter on April 16th, the same date as the rest of their Western counterparts. You've really got to be on your toes to keep up with these movable feasts, or find yourself left in the dust of holiday hoopla, and wondering where it all went wrong. Speaking of notable dates, of course Valentine's Day was on the 14th, and hopefully a romantic time was had by all, by Cupid. I mentioned to Bill that new this year in my travels, I spotted numerous locations sporting giant inflatable lawn decorations for the happy hearts day, which you couldn't possibly miss, even if you wanted to, by virtue of being large and red and heart-shaped as all get-out. Now this is a business that has really blown up (get it?!) in recent years, starting with Christmas, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and now this. Bill rather waggishly suggested inflatable chief executives in honor of Presidents Day, but believe it or not, I actually saw exactly that on my way to work last week. A corner of the Concordia College campus in Bronxville is dedicated to decorations for all manner of occasions, including religious observances, cultural events, ethnic celebrations, and patriotic festivities of all varieties during the year - and sure enough, after they packed away their inflatable Valentine hearts, out came the huge blow-up president, smiling and waving and just scouting around for any babies to kiss. Well, okay, it was really Uncle Sam, and not an actual president, but hey, that still counts in my book. And after all, it makes the most sense in the world, because everyone knows that nobody is more full of hot air than politicians, let's face it. (Oh, hit that easy target!) In other local news, alert readers of social media might have seen this posted on Facebook by Bill, from the headline of an enormous front page story in the newspaper about the ongoing new bridge construction over the Hudson River - ====================================== Once done, the new Tappan Zee Bridge will be one continuous structure the whole way through ====================================== Gee, I sure hope so! While I admit that I'm intrigued at the idea of leaving a gap in the middle, where people have to try to jump their cars over, to get to the other side (and to be fair, it always looks so awesome when they do that in the movies) in reality, I'm (terra) firma-ly on the side of a friend who observed dryly: "I have always liked the continuous bridge over the discontinuous design." Amen to that! So for all of you thrill-seekers out there who were busily making plans to come here and get your jollies on the observation decks, as Bill described it, "to watch cars get a running start and jump it," I'm afraid the bridge builders have already scuttled that prospect for us all, leaving us with a much more mundane crossing to look forward to instead. It's too bad really, they could have called it the Tappan WHEE!!! Bridge when they were finished, and drummed up a whole new business of rescuers fishing the unsuccessful drivers out of the river, for a tidy profit. If nothing else, it would surely spur the development of amphibious cars in a big way, and here I'm thinking, that might not be such a bad thing after all. Speaking of cars, it must be said that even I immediately lose interest when car commercials come on TV, and I'm well known for happily sitting through almost any commercial with talking animals, super heroes, or animated objects, no matter what it's for. (So, Spiderman, a talking platypus, and an animated toaster oven walk into a bar ..... ) But I recently saw two car commercials that really got my attention, and as we all know, that can either be a good thing, or as Jon Stewart used to say, " ... not so much." The first one was for the Chrysler Pacifica, a well-appointed and not unattractive minivan, that comes equipped with its own vacuum system built right in, so you can suck up those loose cracker crumbs, errant French fries, and assorted pebbles and twigs, on the fly, as it were, and be on your merry motoring way, clean as a whistle. I thought that was a positively brilliant idea, especially for a vehicle whose main purpose is hauling crowds of people, herds of animals, or piles of supplies, and probably takes a beating with residual debris cluttering up the interior afterward. The second one was a little less awe-inspiring, in fact, I'm still shaking my head over it. Our friends at Hyundai have a new offering they call the Genesis, and on the commercial, it specifies "Options Shown" as the car is whizzing by. Mind you, all we see is the outside of the car as it's gliding along a highway - you can't see the inside at all, whether it has air conditioning, a DVD player, or heated seats - so it made me wonder, of what there was visible for us to see on the exterior, what could possibly be considered optional, and not included as standard equipment. The tires? The doors?? The paint??? The mind reels. I have a mental image of people going to their local Hyundai dealer to buy a new Genesis, and being handed a set of car keys and a box full of screws and bolts, only to have the salesman say, "Oh, did you want the one with the options?" I honestly have no idea what message they were trying to convey with that cryptic comment, but it certainly gave me pause, and I can tell you that I would think long and hard before I would trust my hard-earned dollars on something so potentially lacking in features. After all, you're never going to get across the new Tappan WHEE!!! Bridge with a box of bolts and no tires, and you can take my word for that, or my name isn't - Uncle Sam

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