or how i learned to elevate the mundane

If I should ever win the war against the sending of useless cards to one another in the mail, I will then set my sights against the sending of dead vegetation to each other in a gesture of… what?  Better to be you than the dead flowers I just sent you?

It seems to be far more pragmatic to send plants to someone.  You could easily send a flowering plant that would serve to add color and beauty to one’s surroundings while also sending whatever message you were intending.  Why isn’t this done more?  Because you don’t get a huge bouquet of live plant?  I try to send plants whenever I can, though I must admit that I do still send flowers to my wife when the need strikes or just on a whim.

Folks, send plants.  They live longer and are more rewarding.  Plus, you’re not throwing out some nasty bunch of dead vegetation with mold growing on the stems 3-5 days after receiving dead flowers.

This past weekend was “Reunion Weekend” for my college alma mater (The University of Chicago).  It’s been too hectic lately, so I elected not to go even though this was my 15 year reunion.

I think maybe I’m also a little freaked out that it’s already been 15 years since I graduated from college.  It’s gone by seemingly so fast, and I think about what it means for another 15 years to go by as fast – or faster – than this past 15 years has gone.  In another 15 years, my son will likely be finishing his first year of college.  I shudder to even think about it.  It’s been so fast since the days I was always carrying him around to think about him being in college.

In 15 years my little girl will be nearing the end of high school.  I don’t even want to think of the implications of that.  Where will they go to college?  What will they study?  What will they have learned from us?  Ack!

Of course, since this year is my 15 year college reunion, that means next year is my 20th high school reunion.  I shudder to think about it.  I went to my 10 year.  I don’t know if I’ll make it back for the 20th.  We’ll see….

1. There are apparently resorts in Europe that utilize “natural” sources of radioactivity for people to lounge around in.  This radiation is said to have theraputic or restorative powers.  I imagine it works about as well as you believe it does.
2. Not everyone gets thick skinned, jaded, and cynical about things that are not fully baked or under-delivered.  These eternal optimists sometimes make things work from sheer determinstic will to believe in the dream.  People like this are rare.
3. Cancer can be contagious if you’re immunodeficient.
4. There is only 1 Canadian province that does not require you to ship both English and French text with your product:  Quebec.  They only require you to ship French.
5. It only takes 1 person to introduce an organization’s worth of randomness.

I have a “thing” against cards.  You know, the kind you send people for various reasons like birthday cards, Christmas (holiday?) cards, thank you cards, get well soon cards, happy graduation cards, Valentine’s cards, etc.  Most people get a card, glance at it, determine whether or not the pre-printed text was either witty or touching enough, determine whether or not the personalized text was witty or touching enough, then throw the card away.  Some save it for a few days, then throw it away.  Most who don’t throw it away within a few days, throw it away when cleaning out junk.

Cards are a preposterous waste of natural resources, money, and manpower.  It is on the order of driving an SUV, that’s how wasteful it is, in my opinion.  How many tons of trees are cut down, chemically processed, manufactured with all kinds of dyes and other crap, and then sold and immediately thrown away every year?  How many stamps are wasted sending cards most people will FORGET about in less than a week?  How much crap does a mailperson have to schlep around, especially in February, May, June, and December?  When you open a present, do you really care about the card?  The card opening and reading is usually the most perfunctory thing about the entire process.  It’s some obligatory nonsense that we all pay lip service to because it’s somehow “polite”.

Cards must go.  Hallmark must be forced to innovate with more electronically savvy products.  We must save the trees!  Save the backs of our mailpersons!  Save the gas that schleps the useless cards around!  Save millions of children from the unbearable task of reading a card they could give a rat’s ass about because the PRESENT is BEGGING to be opened!

Cards must go!  Cards must go!  Cards must go!

A friend of mine has a food fetish and has channeled some of that passion for food into his food blog. Recently, I’ve had a little debate with him about one of his assertions. The specific post can be found here. If you read the comments, I’m “relativistboy”.

It has me thinking more globally about quality in America, though. It’s not just food where the standards of acceptability are unacceptably low.  It’s practically everywhere from home furnishings, automobiles, consumer electronics, et al.  And I’m not going to even get started on civil services, public officials, public works, etc.
Why is the bar set so low? Why does the average American buy a poofy sofa velour from Levitz while supposedly the typical Dane buys sectionals from places like this?  Is it purely cost?  Or is it convenience?

VW employees are going to have to start giving up some quality of life time.  I’m crying them a river as we speak.  Hopefully no one will drive into it.

The advent of the in-car GPS navigation system has forever changed the way people find places they’ve never been to before (and, if you’re like some people, re-find places you’ve been to on several occasions).  But, as great as they are, you really need to continue to pay attention since, you know, the car still doesn’t drive itself.

Which is why I find this story really very peculiar.  What do you suppose was going through their minds?  “Oh dear, mum, the motocar is telling me to head into the river, but I see that the bridge is, in fact, not in working order. What to do? What to do? Well, it’s a little computer so surely it must be correct.  We’ll see how it goes, guvnah.  Tally ho!”  Ummm, NO!  The car is – IN FACT – not intended to ford the river by itself.  Not even the Range Rover, friend.  Not even the Range Rover.

5. “I’m rubber and you’re glue”
4. “I know you are but what am I?”
3. “That’s not the rule”
2. “I’m tellin’ on you”

And the #1 phrase that is bearable only coming from a kid….

“I’m the decider”

Addendum:  WordPress doesn’t seem to be able to count down even if I do the counting.  Lame.

An electrical part on our refrigerator broke sometime last Sunday evening.  We noticed last night that the freezer seemed a little warm and assumed that the door must’ve been left slightly ajar during the day.  When the stuff in the freezer seemed even more melted this morning, we knew we had a problem.

So I called the refrigerator repairman from Sears (since that’s where we got our fridge).  They said we were scheduled for an appointment somewhere during the hours of 8am to Noon.  Super.  It, naturally, wasn’t until 2:45pm that someone actually showed up.  Nice.

The repairman replaced the part and the fridge seemed to work fine after that.  Not a warranty replacement, so it was a “bargain” to get out with just a $275 charge.  The only problem is that the stuff in the freezer was so thawed that it could not be refrozen.  It’s actually nice to chuck out a bunch of stuff that was just taking up space in the freezer.  I highly recommend just such a purge to everyone, regardless of the working order of your freezer.  Probably be useful once a year.

The only bummer is that there was about a month’s worth of frozen breast milk in there for little Zoe.  All that had to go.  Now Zoe is at risk for not getting a full year’s worth of breast milk exclusively.  We’re not very happy about that, but the lactation consultants were quite clear about tossing the milk. 

Y’know, I think I like mucking around with the blog infrastructure more than actually writing the blog.

One of the things I’m going to be messing around with shortly is adding InfoCard support to my blog.  I’ve asked Kim Cameron for his WordPress InfoCard code and I can go and get my cert to get it up and running.  Pretty exciting!  Now all 2 of you who send in comments may need to sign up for an InfoCard!  Spam be gone!

I’m also trying to figure out how to get dynamic traffic info on this thing.  I’m probably 80% there.  Whee!