The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Adventures with Alex
I spent the night with Alex and Ainslie while their parents were out. We told Alex that the next morning he would get to go on a “special trip” with Aunt Anne. He was so jazzed that he didn’t want to eat breakfast. I took him to the Ren Faire.
To no one’s particular surprise, he hated it.
Because we were there early, we stood outside and watched the crowd grow and listened to the town crier do his thing. He saw the spritely…people on the roof and said they could fall and get a big owie. Then he really started to see the costumes.
I was a bit worried about the costumes, because he has historically disliked “characters” – at Disney, at the play and even Santa Clause. I told him the people were dressing up, like on Halloween. No kidding, he actually said:
“Why are they dressed like it’s Halloween?”
I told him, “Because it is fun to dress up.”
He insisted, “But it isn’t Halloween.”
I used the old standby, “They’re pretending.”
He determined, “That’s weird.”
I practically had to drag him inside. He didn’t want to go on a pony ride. Didn’t want to go on any ride. Didn’t want to watch the shows. Didn’t want to go to the petting zoo. He wanted to “go back”. I had to take out my map of the place to prove to him that we were walking in a big circle that would take us back to the car. It took all of 54 minutes and then we were out the gate.
“Weird” and “crazy” were his adjectives to describe the experience.
Luckily, his mother had given me a back up plan – the Faire is right by the Jelly Belly Factory. So we went on the tour. The “factory” was really a warehouse and the “tour” was sitting in a trolley thing, going 20 feet and watching the candy making on video screens.
Alex was the best behaved child in the place. State code says that people are required to cover their heads, so he dutifully wore the paper Jelly Belly hat. He did not whine or cry or complain that it was too slow. Then we got our free sample bags of jelly beans and were led to the retail store. He was so pleased with his free sample that he didn’t ask for a single thing in the candy store. I told him to pick out presents for his parents, which he did.
And then I saw something awesome. Toni, my friend at work, loves the Sunkist jelly candy, but can’t find anyplace that sells them individually wrapped. The Jelly Belly Factory store does. Do you know how many Brownie points I am going to get for this?
Another Rant about One’s Choice of Words
“I will return your call at my earliest convenience,” was part of the recorded message I received from a vendor’s voicemail.
I once had a co-worker that had a similar outgoing message and it bothered me. Not the timing – I don’t expect people to return my calls in five minutes. I don’t expect people to call me back when they are on vacation, or even on the road for business. I certainly don’t want people to call when it is inconvenient. But “I will call you back at my earliest convenience” does not suggest that any urgency is placed on returning the call. It suggests that I will wait until the person I called has nothing else to do.
I know, I know. The “earliest” part modifies the “convenient”. I’m just talking about how it sounds to me, which is as though my call is not particularly important.
When I am the customer, I find it unacceptable.
The Circus
Jason Whitlock was talking about Favre in his Fox Sports column today. He says that “Britney” Favre (he didn’t coin it) is our own fault because we keep clicking on his name.
Yeah. Sorry about that. But this was his higher message:
“You blame the players and their agents. I blame the rules makers, the owners, the grown men with billions who should’ve seen this coming and implemented rules to safeguard the integrity of their games.
Too much of the money in pro sports is tied to individual fame, and not nearly enough cash is tied to the win-loss record. When fans care more about winning and losing than the players in the locker room do, it’s impossible to deny the foundation of the games have been damaged.”
I have never felt that I want the Bears to win more than Brian Urlacher does. But I understand what he is saying, and tend to agree.
It has been said that Walter Payton would have played for another year or two if the Bears hadn’t been nudging him toward the door. Do you remember Neal Anderson? But Payton kept his mouth shut and walked out like a gentleman. He didn’t have to do that, but you’d better believe that Chicago loved him for being ours and we still revere him, ten years after his death. His legend only grows and his memory can make grown men cry. My mother will tell you my disgust with MJ is little more than extreme disappointment that MJ is not Walter Payton.
Favre could have been Green Bay’s Walter Payton. Green Bay is rather less fickle than Chicago, you know. But now? He is the enemy.
Idiot.
Spooky: 10,986 Anne: 1
Spooky the Cat has been really clingy lately. In a Wants to Cuddle While I’m Sleeping way. Middle of last night, he had been sleeping in the crook of my arm when I got up to go to the bathroom. When I returned, he was lying on my pillow.
“Are you joking?” I asked.
He got up and moved to the other side of the bed.
I won one.
One.
Blogs of Note
Google’s “Blogs of Note” had a good one today:
Forgotten Bookmarks is written by someone in a used book store and it writes about random things found during the intake process.
I find things in the donated books pretty regularly at the library. Generally, it is old receipts or airline boarding passes. One volunteer found a fifty dollar bill. But this website finds some really odd and interesting things. I just bookmarked it.
Interior Decorating
I hate interior decorating. I’m not good at it and I don’t care enough. When I first started working, I sat at a 1960-something desk in what had once been a small storage room. From my chair, I was looking at a wall lined with old file cabinets – still in use.
I didn’t care. For those first three years, I was just tickled that I had an office with a door. When those file cabinets were finally moved, I put up a framed photomosaic of Darth Vader.
When we moved to fancy rented property, we all went on a tour of the area. The space was still being built out, and I have no sense of vision for these things, so it was lost on me. What I remember is that we were told that once we moved, we were not to be putting up our own stuff on the walls. We were to choose from among these particular pieces and a print would be framed and hung for us. We were to turn over our certifications for framing, as well.
Well. Being all individualistic, I was a bit offended by the concept. But I didn’t have any trouble at all with how it looked when we arrived. The furniture..the cabinets..it was all good. I missed (still miss) my old bookcase, but it was all good.
I may have told you that last year, when my bathroom was gutted, the contractor asked what I wanted. I said, “Exactly what I have now, but with new stuff.” He talked me into a couple of changes. Then I had to go to a showroom to pick out the new stuff. I was introduced to the guy and immediately apologized. I told him straight up that I hate everything. He asked me to be specific. “I hate everything frou-frou and I can’t stand that post-modern spa nonsense”. He told me that my style was “transitional” and I was in and out of there in an hour. I like my bathroom just fine, thanks.
Now my mother is going through it, but with a different contractor. There isn’t one showroom, just some preferred vendors and a general “get what you want”. I am totally useless. Mostly, when she tells me about something she saw, my response is, “I don’t care. Do what you want.”
We are also going through it with the new library space. We have a room, with a bit of latitude in how we set it up. How do we want the workspace set up? How high do we want the bookshelves to be? More light and airy or more room for stuff? More chairs for sitting or more room for storage? We had a meeting to discuss our options. My contribution?
“We’d better get what we can get now, because I do not believe for one second that there will be budget money left for us later.”
So I have gotten it from three sides. My problem, part of it anyway, is that I just can’t picture it. Whatever gift of vision or imagination is just not in me. HGTV? It is not unusual for me to like the “before” houses better.
Of course, it is possible that I am just lazy.
And You Know You Should Be Glad, by Bob Greene
Book 33
I was in the mood for some schmaltz, so I pulled Bob Greene’s And You Know You Should Be Glad from my shelf. I had originally picked it up at the Library Used Book Store.
Greene had a lifelong best friend develop cancer when they were 57 years old and this book tells the story of the friendship and the final journey. Greene’s flashbacks get rather heavy-handed, which is no surprise, but when he is talking about the present day, he does a really good job in describing the things said and things unsaid and how reality hits us in different ways at different times.
Two things stuck with me:
First, I didn’t realize that about five minutes after the scandal – the one that so disappointed me I still haven’t stopped calling him “Disgraced Former Chicago Tribune Columnist Bob Greene” – Greene’s wife died. I was somehow left with the impression that it was a rather sudden illness, and my icy heart started to melt. A bit.
Second, there was a moment in the book when cancer-stricken Jack calls Greene to ask if Greene’s mother might be able to help him find some home nursing care. I remembered from another of Greene’s books that his father had been through hospice care before his death and one of Greene’s better observations was about how hospice care workers become part of your family at the worst time, make everything easier for you, and then it is over and they are gone and you never see them again. But Greene didn’t relate the request to his father’s final illness, just to the fact that his mother can do anything. And when he called her, she knew exactly what to ask, whom to call and how to set it up. Greene noted that things like home nursing care (which he adamantly stated was not the same as hospice care) are things that we never, ever think about until we need it right now. But Mrs. Greene pulled it off.
The end of the story is about what you would expect, and there are no cosmic truths to be found. I think in the end, Greene just wanted to keep his bud with him awhile longer. And give Jack some small piece of immortality.
Reading Education Therapy Dogs
Good Morning America had a story this morning about a new therapy dog program:
Reading to a dog.
The idea is that children learn to read best when practicing aloud. Many are loathe to practice aloud in the classroom out of fear of being judged by other people. Dog are all comforting and non-judgmental. The GMA story focused on using the program with children living in shelters for homeless families, as they are at such high risk for stalling out in school.
I googled it to try to find the name of the organization that sponsors the program, but didn’t find it in the GMA website. I found something very similar was on CBS a few years ago. The part that struck me was the skeptical principal that gave it a try because she knew that if kids aren’t reading at grade level by 2nd grade, we start to lose them. Apparently, 40% of 4th grade students are reading below grade level.
http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/player-dest.swf
Watch CBS Videos Online
T Minus Four Weeks
Like the new school year, the football season always begins with such great hope. A clean slate and everyone is healthy. Of course, with a season that starts with the Packers and moves onto the Steelers, it is best to manage our expectations.
Preseason always messes with my head. All the new people. I spend the entire four games talking about “that guy wearing (some former player’s) number”. And of course, this time I was lamenting the loss of Mike Brown. (I know he was always hurt. But he was a leader. Urlacher said so.) Finally, since the purpose is not to win, but to review your depth chart, we don’t even know whether losing the game means something.
I have not gotten aboard the Jay Cutler bandwagon yet. But I am a sucker for NFL marketing:
Are you ready for some football?
Permanent Residents
So much for highlighting the adoptables:
At the Refuge tonight, I found that one of my favorite Permanent Residents, Comet the Umbrella Cockatoo, had been moved to a different cage in a different room. She has always been rather easily startled, but since she was moved upstairs for the renovation, she has been nearly phobic. I would pick her up and she would cuddle, but if anyone tried to take her anywhere – to a playstand for example, she would fly away in a panic.
Tonight, she let me take her out and bring her into the big room where PJ, the Queen of the Proverbial Jungle (and another Permanent Resident) was sitting on the big java tree. Comet and PJ sat together, grooming each other for about a half hour while I was working.
I went to take a picture, because they were so cute. But they went all diva as soon as they saw a camera:
I make an effort to avoid getting too attached to birds. The idea, after all, is for them to find homes and leave us. These, however, are my girls. So I was very happy to see them make each other happy.
Until they couldn’t stand each other any more. Whatever. It was time for dinner.
The Next Dark Age 