I know staples are a staple of office life (I’ve been waiting all my life to write that phrase), but I’m a firm believer in the “one stack, one staple” concept. It’s an obsession. It raises my sense of self-righteousness to supreme being levels. Then there’s the lazy stapler. Every office has one. How many times has this happened to you? You’re removing a staple to make a copy, only to find an embeded staple waiting in ambush. I’ve run into stacks with as many as ten embeds. It’s maddening. So please, for the sake of the little fishies down [...]
thumbed-down
One fine whine
One of the advantages of US style health care is being able to obtain services without having to wait until the sun goes supernova (which could be a really long time, since our sun doesn’t have enough mass to go it alone). – common wisdom in the US. When I say common wisdom (an oxymoron in the US) I’m refering to the part about waiting for healthcare, not the part about the sun. Most Americans probably don’t know the sun is a star just like the other pretty lights in the night sky. My doctor wants me to see a [...]
Bad taste and butchery
I get a little uncomfortable when people start talking about “trimming” trees. My reasons break down like this: any jackass with insurance and a chainsaw can get a licence to trim trees in Florida, and Floridians in general don’t seem to like trees. That’s what I gather from the results anyway. I’m not against all forms or reasons for tree trimming. There are times when a tree needs to be trimmed for saftey’s sake, or for the tree’s health. But that’s not what’s happening here. I work(ed) in a large office complex on the water (Tampa Bay) with a lot [...]
Why do I hate thee, DST? How about I tell you
What was good for 1918 isn’t necessarily so great 90 years later. Contrary to common wisdom, some studies show it causes an increase in energy consumption (especially for us poor folk down south) – partly because of a little thing called air conditioning. How often does common wisdom lead us astray? Shifting high noon to lower noon is just asking for trouble. We have nothing to fear but time itself. My microwave shows the wrong time half the year. You ever try riding your bike to work in the black of night? Do we really need another hour to play [...]
Digging for pain and finding a vein
Whining about your dentist is a blogging stapple. Lucky for you, I’m pro-staple. “Are you ok?” This is the great rhetorical dental question of our time. I love it. No offense to any women dentists out there, but this is the point in the post where I pretend to be something I’m not, and slip into the vernacular of the “real man.” I love it because I think it takes some real stones to ask it. Sure, you’re lying prone with sharp – and often powered equipment in your mouth – but they don’t know you from the criminally insane. [...]
Six months of billing futility, revisited
Something about that call isn’t sitting right with me. I finally got through to my insurance company, only to be told the problem: “we’re getting bills.” Now, as some poor shmuck with little more than a family and a mailbox, this sounds like something perfectly resonable to say… if it was born of my lips. As my insurance company – whose sole purpose in the universe is to disburse healthcare dollars for – drum roll please – healthcare, this sounded fishy. Hold onto your skull caps frends, I’m not done yet. You see, I wasn’t exactly speaking to my health [...]
Fun with labels
I was picking up Adam from my in-laws’ place after work last week, and Adam had a little picture they gave him. It was a picture depicting Jesus and Mary. “Do you have your picture Adam?” my mother-in-law asked as we were leaving. “Yes Memere,” (that French-Canadian thing again) Adam replied. Later, as we were backing down the driveway, Adam asked, “why does Memere want me to have this picture so much?” Now keep in mind I’m sort of a lapsed Lutheran, but I try really hard to be respectful. Since l wandered off into the wilderness from church, Cheryl [...]
It’s an IKEA world
Note: the opinions expressed or implied in this post do not necessarily reflect those of the author, or the individuals described herein. The events are dead on though. IKEA came to town six months ago. A month after it opened, we drove over the bridge to see if reality recognized hype in the mirror. We got a sense of the hype and a smidge of the reality, but we never got out of the car. The Tampa police closed the parking lot (it was full). People were parking along the side of the highway. Folks were leaving their cars a [...]
Fickle Facebook friends
Note: I wrote this months ago, so the time references are way off (like someone’s concerned about timeliness… here of all places). I was a social networking snob. At one time I had a blog, a web site, and all of it ran on a web server under my desk. I had Internet cred, and Facebook was beneath me. Like everyone else, I didn’t get Twitter. About a year ago I was talked into Facebook at an Obama event in Dunedin. “We’ll post all of our pictures there,” they said. “Facebook is cool. You’ll be hooked.” So I signed up. [...]
Life is like a box of Splenda
Stuff never seems to stop coming out of that dang box. I have to say, it’s disturbingly light. What lengths do chemists go to create a substance with so little density? Anyway, I bought one three weeks ago thinking we were almost out, but the old one’s still filling tablespoons for Cheryl’s elixir of life (coffee). I had a similar experience this weekend. I was a mad cleaning machine Saturday morning. Cheryl was out on some errands, stressing about all the work that needed to be done around the house. So, I gave myself a good kick in the but [...]
