Stuff - Just Some Things I Felt Like Talking About
Lawn mowers, gas grills, plumbing, and carmel apples. Hey, not everybody wants to write "War And Peace!"
Volcanos and Swine Flu - The Fun Of Flying
Everybody knows that the airlines have not been doing that well lately. Between the rising cost of fuel and the ongoing hassles of cleaning up after young Nigerian millionaires with exploding underpants, the industry has been faced with a series of unprecedented challenges.
To add insult to injury, a certain volcano in Iceland (Eyjafjallajokull, whose name is really hard to say for most news reporters; it's pronounced "Xgicxgsrnlglu") recently shut down airports all over Europe and paralyzed air travel world-wide. Of course, most airlines are not compensating the stranded passengers in any way, since a volcano is an "Act of God."
Snow Days
As some of you know, I have a pretty cool day job at a small library. One of the best things about this job is that when the local schools shut down for bad weather, the library shuts down too.
I get Snow Days!
This means that any time there's a chance of snow on a "school night," I turn into an eight-year-old. I monitor every available weather forecast. I scan the western skies. I subscribe to a 24-hour online school closing advisory service. And then, of course, I do my "Snow Dance."
For those of you who live in Southern California, on Mars, or anywhere else Snow Days never happen, the Snow Dance is a highly personal ritual that can take many forms. My own version of the Snow Dance is performed as follows:
Hunting Season: Rabbits 1, Hunters 0
I might be the only male resident of Michigan who is not spending these early days of November stockpiling ammunition and Slim Jims in anticipation of deer season. It’s not that I object to hunting; I just don’t care to do it. And I don’t have anything bad to say about hunters. Of course, this is partly because I make it a rule never say anything bad about people with guns.
I think most of my reluctance to blast woodland creatures goes back to when I was about twelve years old and my dad, also not a hunter, decided to take me out to shoot some rabbits. Two things made him decide to do this:
1. He had inherited a single-shot 12-gauge shotgun from his Grandfather, who had told him that it was good for rabbit hunting.
2. He believed that that we could probably figure out what to do with some rabbits if we happened to get any.
So one bright Saturday morning my dad handed me a burlap bag for “the kill” and a small red box of shotgun shells, A.K.A., “the bullets”. Then he piled me, the shotgun, and our dog, a plump little brown female mutt named Scamp, into his white Volkswagen Beetle and we headed out. Scamp kept watch with her head out the window, alertly smashing bugs with her nose and forehead.
Singing For The Seniors
One by one they came in to find their seats for our concert.
Some of them were leaning on walkers, shuffling carefully along in those little mobile cages, with the two wheels in front and hand brakes. Some of the walkers even had baskets, although I didn't see any with little bells or squeezey horns. In a sense, they were back to relying a sort of bicycle, like they probably did so many years ago. Only these bikes are (hopefully) a whole lot slower.
A few of them where in powered wheel chairs, gliding silently and triumphantly through the door and down the aisle, driving with their little joysticks and a look of satisfaction. Others were in the old style wheel chairs, this one helped by a uniformed assistant and that one by a younger relative there for a weekend visit.
