Double Ticket Day at the Amusement Park

It's double ticket day at Club Bing - MSN's free gaming community.

Just because it's free doesn't mean you don't have to work for it.

1. It can take over half an hour for a game to load on a slow server.
2. The 'sign in' box is hidden. I'm not telling you where it is. I had to find it myself and so o you.
3. Before you sign in, you have to enter a secret code. They give you the code but obscure it so it can't be read by machines or old ladies. I just make a guess at it. Then guess again. And again. Finally they give up and let me in.
4. When I want to replay a game I have to enter another different code. Just read # 3 twice more to see what happens next.
5. There's no 'Boss Button' to quickly go from game playing to working on a spreadsheet when the Boss walks by.

Why do I play then? Because the games are fun and mentally stimulating. Plus you get "free" tickets that you can cash in for prizes or donate to charity. Where else can you get something free for having fun?

I had over 3,000 tickets the last time I looked. Today I had 31. How was I supposed to know the tickets had an expiration date? It's not like they're going to spoil. Perhaps if one wasn't so busy trying to decipher the secret code one might be able to find time to read the small print.

Four Day Weekends

Just got off the couch long enough to say, "I think I'll go take a nap now."

Let's talk turkey

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had an abundance of blessings to be thankful for this year. We haven't had snow yet. That's always a blessing for me, but I know it's a disappointment for others.

As I fixed dinner this year, I was struck by how many memories the simplest chores stirred in my memory. As I fixed an apple pie, I remembered my mother's apple desert that was like a pie, but was baked in a rectangular pan, only two or three apple slices thick, and had a powdered sugar glaze on the top. My mother liked her pies thin, I don't think you can have a pie that's too high.

When I fixed the pumpkin pie, the recipe for pumpkin roll that was on the side of the can reminded me of Cindy, a co-worker who made excellent pumpkin rolls. The utensil I used to beat the pumpkin mixture was bought in Florida, bought with the Christmas bonus from Winter Park Hospital. The whip cost $10, a goodly sum to a college student as I was back then, but I've never regretted buying it. It has served me well.

The pastry blender I used to make the crust brought back memories of buying it at K-Mart. I had a choice between a more expensive model and the cheaper one. I went for the cheaper one and have regretted it many times since.

While I was fixing the stuffing, I tried to remember how Grandma and Mom made theirs. Stuffing is one of the foods that nobody makes like your family. I can't even make it like my family. I think this will be the last year I attempt it. My stuffing is an embarrassment.

I burned my finger when boiling gravy splashed on my finger. I washed it off immediately but it still blistered. It reminded me of a when Grandma accidently ladled hot gravy on to some kid's hand as she/he was reaching across the table. I no longer can remember whether it was a sibling or a cousin or me, but I remember Grandma smearing butter on the burn.

When I put whipped cream on my cranberry sauce, I think of Aunt Joan's cranberry pie. It's not quite the same thing, but memories rarely are.

I still haven't tasted the pies. I hope there's some whipped cream left for me.

The Day After

My shelves are still standing.

Me, not so much.

I can't lift my arms higher than this.

I had to do laundry this morning. In the stackable washer/dryer. I reached up with my right hand to open the dryer door. Wrong move.

I reached up with my left hand to open the dryer door. Wrong move.

I stood and stared at the dryer door for a few seconds, then I said to myself, "Cowgirl up, old lady. You ain't no sissy." Well, I am, but old ladies do what has to be done, so I reached up and opened the door with both hands.

I removed a towel and holding it in both hands started to shake it out. Wrong move. And the same voice said, "Don't be stupid, old lady. Just fold the sucker up and be done with it." So I did.

Wanta feel my muscles?

Yesterday I bought steel shelving for my storage area. You may remember that a few years ago I assembled plastic shelves and they almost did me in, but I held my ground and won that battle. The shelves still stand but they list a little to the front.

This time I went for the big boy: steel posts, metal shelves, over 5'3" tall. I know the approximate height because I'm 5'3" and it was about 2" too tall for me to put together.

I searched several stores before I found the one I wanted at the price I wanted. Still I wavered between a plastic one for the same price, because I can lift plastic. I gripped the box with the metal shelves and lifted it a few inches off the ground. It didn't seem that heavy. After I threw the box into my cart I saw a sign that said "2 man lift" meaning 2 men, not one fat old lady, should have lifted the box. "Now they tell me," I thought to myself.

I picked the box up out of the cart and put it in the trunk of my car all by myself too. At the storage unit, I opened the box inside the trunk and slid the parts out to carry them into the unit a few at a time. Little round rubber discs flew everywhere. I picked them all up, crawling under the car when necessary, and piled them on a box and in my pockets.

The outside of the box said "Easy Assembly No Tools Required". The inside of the box said you'll need a rubber mallet and 2 adults. "Now they tell me."

I don't have a rubber mallet and I didn't have time to find 2 adults so I tackled the job myself. First I screwed all the steel posts together. No problem. Then I put the handy, dandy little clips that make the shelves adjustable onto the steel posts. Then I re-read the instructions and removed all the handy, dandy little clips except for the bottom set. To put each shelf onto the posts, you have to slide the shelves over the top of the posts. The first shelf took some accrobatic moves, but still was easier than the plastic shelving had been.

Then I had to put on the second shelf. Over the posts that are taller than 5''3". Did that. I'm now approximately 5'4". Put on the other 3 shelves. Readjusted the handy, dandy little clips for the 3rd shelf as the 2 on the left side were stationed about 2" lower than those on the right.

I moved the shelves closer to the wall and the self adjusting legs actually self adjusted so the shelves sat level. Amazing!

All done in less than an hour.

Then I saw the pile of little round rubber discs. I re-read the instructions. I studied all the pictures. They weren't mentioned in the instructions at all. "Now you can tell me," I thought to myself.

I went back a few hours later and the shelves were still standing. Proudly. Empty, but proud.

This morning, I have a stiff neck, my right elbow feels disconnected, my left wrist won't bend, and I have a few bruises I didn't have yesterday.

But the shelves are still standing.

Let's chat.

You go first.

Current Affairs

I just finished reading the NY Times series Held by the Taliban articles by David Rohde. It gives a fascinating, but scary, glimpse into the minds of Taliban "foot soldiers".

In the fall of 2008, just two months after his marriage, David Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by the Taliban and held for seven months. This series condenses 7 months and 10 days of captivity into 5 articles of terror, boredom, bravery, hopelessness and hope.

I urge you to read these articles or at least look at the accompanying pictures. You will also find the Questions and Answers in the At War blog to be enlightening.

November 11th, 2009

Thank you.

A trillion dollars is a lot of money.

I read the House passed the Health Reform bill yesterday and it's headed for the Senate. I haven't read the bill. I doubt if more than 2 or 3 Representatives read all 2000 pages of it.

I'm not opposed to health reform and since I haven't read it maybe I shouldn't express my opinion of it. But based on other bills passed by Congress, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's a trillion dollar boondoggle, chock full of paragraphs here and there that have little to do with health care but a lot to do with getting some good old boys some good ol' government handouts for their constituents. Whether they need them or not.

And to further prove what an old cynic I am, I'd bet that the bill (1) might improve healthcare for some of the nation's poor, (2) would save or make money for the rich and/or decrease their taxes (which is the same thing), and (3) will be paid for by the middle class who will have higher insurance premiums with no improvement in care.

A Conundrum

I know that a lot of people don't like their jobs. A lot of work isn't very likable. But most of the time, it's not the actual work that people don't like, it's the job. The whole package. The manager, the co-workers, the company personality.

I was thinking about that last week and I remembered a job I held for 3 weeks at a hospital many years ago. I liked what I saw at the interview, but by the end of the first day of training I realized that the place was slightly out of kilter. After I'd been there a couple of weeks, one of the nurses on my floor admitted she cried every day for 6 months when she first started, but then she 'got used to it'. "Don't worry," she encouraged me, "You'll get used to it, too."

Ahh, there's the rub. I didn't want to get 'used to it' but I was too old, too tired, and too discouraged to try to change the attitude of an entire hospital so I handed in my resignation. I could have left then, but it was Thanksgiving week and people had plans so I stayed another week. I'm a team player. They were not.

A couple of years later, I met a nurse who had worked at the same hospital. When she worked there, she was being groomed to become a supervisor or director or some mucky-muck job like that. She never made it. Her family started begging her to quit because the place was changing her personality and they didn't like the new Mom. When the light came on, that it 'was them' and 'not her', she quit.

We both agreed we did the right thing. "Getting used to it" wasn't an option.

The moral of the story is: Never tolerate a job that makes you cry, drink, or kick the cat every day. Either change the job or change jobs.

Don't bank on it.

They changed the time again. I must be getting used to it because here it is 4 days after the fact and I'm just not gripping about it in public. Or maybe it's because I didn't have to complain this year. Everybody else was doing it for me.

I must have received nearly a half dozen emails from the East coast to Indiana which began or ended "I wish they'd just leave the time alone." Sometimes it was "the *&^% time alone". And every day this week when 10:00 rolls around at work somebody says "I'm starving" and follows it up with "That's because it's actually 11:00". And it's not me.

I'm resigned to DST, but since they changed the time back to real time, it's been getting dark about the time I get home. I think they've got it all backwards. When the days are shorter is when I need that extra hour of sunlight in the evening.

Nobody has ever spent a minute they saved with Daylight Saving Time.