Best of 2007

Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire?

Wednes­day the 17th

Ahhhh, me!

As part of our com­pre­hen­sive retire­ment plan Donna and I play the Power­ball Lot­tery every draw­ing. We will plop down $10 and get a quick pick set of num­bers that are good for the next 5 weeks of Wednes­day and Fri­day drawings.

Let­ting the machine pick the num­bers for us is the best way to go. We used too play some fam­ily birth­days, but never won any­thing so what good are they. Besides, we had more than 6 birth­days to chose from, so we had to leave some num­bers off. Then what would have hap­pened if we were to miss the jack­pot by one num­ber and that one num­ber was one of the omit­ted birth­days. How would we feel towards the per­son who had the birth­day num­ber that was wrong? How would we feel towards the per­son whose birth­day we left off and would have won it for us?

When you go to a Chi­nese restau­rant and you get a for­tune cookie now a days they include a set of “lucky” num­bers for the lot­tery. Well, a cou­ple of years ago I got a for­tune that said, “Finan­cial pros­per­ity is com­ing your way!” See­ing this as a good omen, I tucked it into my wal­let with the inten­tion of giv­ing those num­bers a try, but never got around to it.

Yes­ter­day while chat­ting with a co-worker (Hi, Mark) I men­tioned that see­ing as the Power­ball was up to 180 mil­lion that just maybe I’d go buy an extra shot at the prize. I told him about my lucky num­bers and he asked to see my for­tune slip. I thought he was kid­ding when he wrote them down and said he was going to play them. This morn­ing he told me that he really bought a ticket using those numbers.

Tonight on the way home from get­ting our hair cut I stopped at a quick mart and bought a ticket using the “lucky” num­bers too. Had to. Just imag­ine how I would have felt if he hit with those num­bers that I had been car­ry­ing around in my wal­let for years and never played. That’s right, the only thing left to do at that point would be Seppuku.

Life of the Party or Annoy­ing Guest?

Mon­day the 5th

When I went for my esoph­a­gogas­tro­duo­denoscopy (I just love that word, I can’t say it, but boy does it look impres­sive writ­ten down) on Fri­day, I had a hos­pi­tal arrival time of 7:30 and a pro­ce­dure time of 8:30. Donna dropped me off about 7:15 so she could get to work at her nor­mal hour. The patient reg­is­tra­tion clerks were ready and effi­cient, so when I entered the Endoscopy Lab where I was to have my pro­ce­dure, I was very early. All the nurses were sit­ting in a big cir­cle drink­ing cof­fee, cut­ting up and laugh­ing. When I was noticed, every­one qui­eted down and one of the nurses directed me to the wait­ing room and told me they would call me when they were ready for me. They were prob­a­bly hav­ing a morn­ing staff meet­ing or some­thing, but they sure were a happy bunch with all that laughing.

What ever the feel good juice is that they give you before the scop­ing, it is awe­some. One of the nurses stuck the nee­dle in the IV and said this will take about 5 min­utes to kick in. I looked up at the clock and saw that it was 9:05 and I thought that I bet­ter remind the doc­tor that I wanted a pic­ture of my insides, when the next thing I knew I was in the recov­ery area and a nurse asked if I wanted a Coke to drink. Mem­o­ries of the next hour or two are very scat­tered, for me. My wife will tell you dif­fer­ent. Appar­ently I bab­bled on and on, repeat­ing every­thing I said two or three times. Donna even tells me I was tor­ment­ing the other patients, par­tic­u­larly a woman who was in for a colonoscopy. I have zero recall of any of this. I won­der what else I was saying?

Over the week­end I fig­ured out what all those nurses were laugh­ing at when I walked in on them Fri­day morn­ing and why they went so silent so fast. They were prob­a­bly com­par­ing notes on how their patients had acted and what they said while under the influ­ence of the anes­the­sia the day before.

I expect they all had a pretty good laugh about me at this morning’s meeting.

Nim­rod Lane

Sat­ur­day the 24th

We went for a nice long walk in Hitch­cock Woods this morn­ing and boy was it crowded. We saw 4 peo­ple on horses and three peo­ple walk­ing their dogs. One of our favorite pas­times while walk­ing is to make up elab­o­rate his­to­ries of peo­ple who have trails named after them. Mrs. Knox, Mr. Fletcher, Willie Bar­ton, etc. This “lane” is named for the great Civil War Gen­eral Beau­re­gard Nim­rod who died in 1864 while either defend­ing Aiken from the vile north­ern aggres­sors or from friendly fire after berat­ing the beloved com­pany mess sergeant because he felt his grits were undercooked.

From Ask Yahoo:

The Amer­i­can Her­itage Dic­tio­nary offers two dis­tinct def­i­n­i­tions of a nim­rod — either a hunter, or a per­son regarded as silly or fool­ish. The dic­tio­nary goes on to explain that the sec­ond mean­ing prob­a­bly orig­i­nated with the car­toon char­ac­ter Bugs Bunny. The wily Bugs used the term in its orig­i­nal sense to refer to dither­ing hunter Elmer Fudd, whom he called a “poor lit­tle Nim­rod.” Over time, how­ever, the “hunter” mean­ing got dropped, and the “dither­ing” con­no­ta­tion stuck.

I Know Why He Did It

Tues­day the 17th

While in DC the other week, after we walked to a lot of the war memo­ri­als in West Potomac Park we headed over to the Tidal Basin to see if we could find any cherry trees that still had blos­soms on it. Unfor­tu­nately there were only a few. There are about three or four vari­eties of cherry trees planted around the basin so that some of them bloom at dif­fer­ent times, but dur­ing our walk we only came across about three trees that looked like they were at their peak. Because of the great dis­tances between bloomed trees, my dream of a sweep­ing panorama of bloom­ing trees with the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­ial in the back­ground (very postcard-like) was squashed. I did take a cou­ple of close ups of one bloom­ing tree. As we strolled along I was look­ing down review­ing my last pic­tures when — SMACK –my head hit a low hang­ing branch. I know now why George Wash­ing­ton chopped down that cherry tree. It wasn’t bad enough to make me see stars, but I did decide from then for­ward that I would wait until I was stopped to look down at the camera’s LCD.

I Can See Still See In The Dark

Wednes­day the 23rd

Today was Donna and my annual eye exams. Good news is that nei­ther of us have any issues nor have our eyes changed enough to war­rant get­ting new glasses.

We went mid after­noon and some six hours later the drops they put in your eyes to dilate them has not not entirely worn off. I think I could take a book into a closet and read it with the light off. You know your pupils are open wide when the lit­tle WinXP screen­saver (bounc­ing logo on black back­ground) has a bright rain­bow hued halo around it.

I remem­ber a cou­ple of years ago we went late after­noon and by the time we left the Eye Guy’s place it was dusk. The sun was down but the sky was still light. Most cars were dri­ving with their lights on and both head­lights and tail­lights were giv­ing off these awe­some star­burst pat­terns. Even the traf­fic sig­nals looked like they were being viewed through a star­burst fil­ter. Very cool effect, but it was dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate on actu­ally dri­ving and not run­ning into any­thing while look­ing at all the pretty lights.

Sun­day Stuff

Sun­day the 3rd

We expected a Sebring for our con­vert­ible rental in Seat­tle, but ended up in a PT Cruiser. Not a lot of trunk room in it, more than a Miata, but no where near as much space as in a Sebring. It was a smaller car than we nor­mally get, so you would have thunk it would be eas­ier to maneu­ver in tight spots, but you would be wrong. It had the turn­ing radius of a bus, which I guess goes right along with the very high seat­ing posi­tion. I’ve always kind of liked the looks of the PT Cruiser and the con­vert­ible has only 2-doors which I think looks even bet­ter than the stan­dard 4-door ver­sion, but appar­ently it is not as dis­tinc­tive as I thought. On one of our ferry rides we were stopped next to a car load of twenty-something females and the dri­ver asked me what kind of car we were in. I replied, “PT Cruiser.” “Oh,” she says, “I thought it was a Beetle.”

Un Happy Meal

Mon­day the 16th

On our way back to the hos­pi­tal in Flo­rence on Sat­ur­day, Susie asked if I would stop at a McDonald’s so young Katlin could get a Happy Meal. Ever the oblig­ing dri­ver I spot­ted a Mickie D’s and got in the drive up line. Susie also wanted a Snack Wrap or some­thing for her­self. Because the only thing I have ordered at a McDonald’s Drive Up in the last three decades is a Hot Fudge Sun­dae, Susie would tell me what to repeat into the micro­phone, in essence trans­lat­ing McDonald’s speak through me. After we ordered and the team mem­ber inside told us, “Dat ill be foe six dee.” I got to repay the ear­lier favor by trans­lat­ing South­ern for Susie, and told her that the total for the food was four dol­lars and sixty cents.

At the sec­ond win­dow we received our two bags of stuff. Susie’s wrap in one and the Happy Meal in the other. When Susie pulled out the toy from the Happy Meal bag it was a Mon­ster Wheel obvi­ously intended for a boy. I tried to hand it back to the team mem­ber in the win­dow say­ing, “Could we get a girl’s toy?” She wouldn’t take it back, they were all out of girl’s toys. With no Hello Kitty toy on the hori­zon and rather than get noth­ing, Katlin excepted the neon green wheel thing with a frown.

To try and lighten the moment I told Katlin that I guess she didn’t get a Happy Meal after all, but instead she got an Un Happy Meal.

Well, I thought it was funny.

Lost Time

Thurs­day the 9th

Yes­ter­day at 2:35 PM I scraped my arm.The nurse and I spent 20 min­utes treat­ing it. We then spent the next 15 min­utes exam­in­ing the scene of the crime and recre­at­ing the event. We then called in the main­te­nance super­vi­sor to have him look at the offend­ing junc­tion box cover and he then got a main­te­nance guy to remove the cover, smooth off the sharp edge and then replace it. Another 30 min­utes used up. From there we ended up in my boss’s office while he, the nurse, and I filled out the acci­dent report, spend­ing another half hour. Pretty much killing the rest of the work day.

Today the nurse spent almost 2–1/2 hours with me, dri­ving me to two dif­fer­ent doctor’s offices, so I could get my tetanus shot. (At the first place we went, the front office per­son “couldn’t get me in the com­puter”, so we left after an hour.) Back at the plant we spent the next 45 min­utes together to 1) re ban­dage the cut because the doc­tor did a lack­lus­ter job after he spent all of 10 sec­onds look­ing at it, 2) fill­ing out the appro­pri­ate paper­work to have me take a drug test and 3) me pee­ing in a cup and her test­ing it. Later my boss brought around the acci­dent report for me to sign (anther 2 min­utes, but who knows how long it took to com­plete it.)

Next week the Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions, the Facil­i­ties Man­ager, the HR Man­ager, my super­vi­sor, his Man­ager, the super­vi­sor of the depart­ment I was pass­ing through and his man­ager will meet to dis­cuss how to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing again. More than likely after all of these folks spend an hour in a room, a main­te­nance man will be dis­patched to reroute the offend­ing junc­tion box and it’s asso­ci­ated con­duit, another main­te­nance man will be dis­patched to place yel­low tape on the floor to des­ig­nate an offi­cial aisle and the depart­ment super­vi­sor will spend a half an hour instruct­ing his peo­ple not to place pal­lets in the new aisle.

This was not con­sid­ered a lost time acci­dent, even though over 8 man hours have been spent on it so far, with lots more to come, because I did not “miss” any work.

As a bonus, as far as OSHA is con­cerned it is not a record­able acci­dent because I did not require stitches, x-rays, or antibi­otics (tetanus shots don’t count) so our company’s acci­dent free hours num­bers don’t get reset.

Dedo de la Mantequilla

Tues­day the 4th

Once every cou­ple of weeks I’ll have a snack attack and head into the cafe­te­ria to quench it. My usual extin­guisher of choice is Lance’s Peanut But­ter on Nekot cook­ies. These have two draws, 1) I like ‘em and 2) they are only 50¢. Today I opted to go wild and get a candy bar of some kind. It had been awhile since I had a But­terfin­ger bar, so I pressed E9. I know it had been awhile because the last time I bought one it was 65 cents, today the price tag below my selec­tion said 75¢.

The only prob­lem with buy­ing a But­terfin­ger from a vend­ing machine is you don’t usu­ally get to bite off pieces to eat, falling from the E Row always busts the bar up into a bunch of uneven chunks. When I got back to my desk, I opened up the wrap­per and sure enough there were 3 big pieces and one small piece inside.

As I savored that crispety and crunchety candy I read the label and dis­cov­ered that each Eng­lish word was fol­lowed imme­di­ately by it’s Span­ish coun­ter­part — Bar fol­lowed by Barra on the front for exam­ple. I’ve noticed some of the larger chain stores around here have goten ino the same act, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc. Men with a smaller Hom­bres under­neath. Doors -> Puertas.

I don’t like it. Not for the rea­son you think either, I don’t like the cacoph­ony (ruido) of it, Eng­lish and Span­ish. Just pick one. Hell, I don’t even care if you pick Span­ish. With immer­sion, I’ll fig­ure it out.

But­terfin­ger in Span­ish is still Butterfinger.

Isn’t That Special?

Thurs­day the 11th

At work there are 4 of us in the “Car Guys” group. We each sub­scribe to a car mag­a­zine and then pass it around among us. Thank good­ness the mag­a­zine peo­ple don’t have a RIAA like group look­ing out after them, we’d be in trouble.

Today the lat­est Motor Trend was sit­ting on my desk. You couldn’t see the cover because of the card stock over­wrap announc­ing your chance to get two sub­scrip­tions for the price of one, your renewal and a gift sub­scrip­tion for some­one, just in time for the holidays.

The tear out card has the cur­rent sub­scribers name already on it, it served as the mail­ing label, so all you have to do is fill out the blanks for your friend and send it back, just check the box marked bill me later. To the left of the address area is the text read­ing, “Yes, I accept! Extend my sub­scrip­tion for 1 year (12 issues) at the pre­ferred sub­scriber rate of only $20 and enter my 1-year gift sub­scrip­tion to the per­son listed above — that’s two sub­scrip­tions for the price of one!”

Sounds great, until you real­ized that you can sub­scribe to Motor Trend for $10 a year from a bunch of places, includ­ing the Motor Trend site itself…

I won­der what their non-preferred rate is?

The Most Fun I’ve Had At Work In A Long Time

Tues­day the 13th

We are get­ting a front office update, no new cubi­cal pan­els or fur­ni­ture, just some new car­pet, wall­pa­per and the trim painted a dif­fer­ent color. They did Human Resources first and now they are con­tin­u­ing through the plant from right to left.

Yippee my area will be sec­ond. There really is noth­ing wrong with the way it looks now, sure there are a few places where the exist­ing stuff is stained from use and there are a few holes, but we are a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity, not a lawyer’s office. Six months from now the place will look nearly as well used as it does now.

I guess I should go pay atten­tion to how HR looks to see what is in store for me, but it has got to be fairly blah, because I have been in there sev­eral times since their update and can­not bring to mind what it looks like.

I know no one else in the office is sure what the new wall­pa­per looks like! The room next door is first to get the rework, last night the con­trac­tor came in and removed the old two-tone gray wall­pa­per. All that was up this morn­ing was the white liner paper cov­er­ing the still older pan­el­ing. For gig­gles I printed out two col­ors of ‘wall­pa­per sam­ples’ and tacked them to wall next to the door into my area. I snagged the back­ground from the Boston Red Sox home page on MLB.com. One was the stock back­ground, dark blue with white-ish socks and in the other I col­ored the socks red.

The idea came from my fel­low front office FRS fan (thanks Gerry) and got the expected reac­tion from my MFY lov­ing man­ager. The best part was the reac­tions from all the other peo­ple that pass that way each day. Quite a bit of them are obvi­ously not base­ball fans because hardly any­one noticed the real con­nec­tion. I bet about half of them were actual argu­ing the mer­its of the all blue paper vs. the blue with red in it. Some noticed the socks in the pat­tern, but couldn’t fig­ure out why they might be there.

The folks in the room that is all tore up, that the “sam­ples” are in, were good sports about it and with as straight a face as they could muster, explained that that really is the choice of paper for the office remodel. Some­time in the after­noon one of the USC fans had made up a small sam­ple with Game­cock logos all over it to add to the mix.

At the end of the day they must have tired of all the peo­ple ask­ing about the redo because they pub­lished an FAQ and pinned it to the wall as well. It con­sisted of one ques­tion and one answer:
Q. Are y’all remod­el­ing?
A. Yes

Monk Moment

Wednes­day the 26th

We spent a frus­trat­ing 2 hours tonight search­ing sev­eral stores for a 32oz insu­lated water bot­tle with a big enough open­ing on top to except ice cubes. They are in every store, on numer­ous aisles as long as it isn’t Christ­mas time and Donna had the mis­for­tune of drop­ping her water bot­tle and break­ing it this morn­ing Decem­ber 27th.

To ease our suf­fer­ing we dined on Car­ni­tas at Marias. We were seated at a booth by the win­dow with a lovely view of the laun­dro­mat next build­ing over. As I looked through the faux wood blinds, it came to my atten­tion that sev­eral of the slats were tilted dif­fer­ent from the major­ity. Reflex­ively, I nudged the offend­ing slats into line with the rest.

Adrian would have been so proud.